Wizard of the Crow

by Ngũgĩ Wa Thiong'o

  “We said …”

  “Let’s pray” they now said in unison, and Maritha and Mariko knelt in their house and started singing the prayer they had sung in the valley.

  In times of sorrow, O Lord

  Don’t turn away

  Don’t hide your face

  At a time of tears

  Lord of all our souls

  Hearken to the cry

  Of parents and children

  Of boys and girls

  “It was then that I heard something make a movement in my belly” Maritha said, still on her knees. “A strange thought came to my mind, and I started laughing.”

  “Why is she laughing at a time of tears? I asked … but when I saw how she was laughing I also started laughing,” said Mariko.

  And now, as both recalled their laughter, they started laughing in earnest all over again. They were back on their feet, still laughing, then sat down, still laughing, and it was with difficulty that they were able to stop themselves.

  “A glance at each other and we would resume laughing,” Maritha said.

  “We went on laughing walking down toward the lake, but in truth …” added Mariko.

  “Not of our own will; we were under some unknown influence.”

  “When we reached the bank of the river we dipped our feet into the murky quagmire,” they said in unison.

  “And there we stopped …”

  “See that cat …”

  “See that dog …”

  “See that cock …”

  “See the cow …”

  “And more laughter till tears started flowing down my cheeks,” said Maritha.

  “And me, too … tears of laughter,” added Mariko.

  “And all this time Vinjinia and Gaclgua are looking at us, amazed …”

  “And we were wondering why they, too, were not laughing …”

  “And then we saw Vinjinia faint …”

  “And Gaclgua bent down to attend her …”

  “And our tears of laughter continued to flow …”

  “Down into the lake …”

  “Now it was our turn to be amazed,” they said in unison.

  “When our tears of joy and laughter touched the still waters …” Mariko continued.

  “Everything that had stood frozen began to move,” Maritha said.

  “The duikers completed their leaps to the other side and disappeared.”

  “The bird flew away”

  “The cat and the mouse resumed the chase.”

  “The dog barked noisily at the birds.”

  “And the calf followed its mother, mooing for milk. And the goats …”

  “Come, come, little mother, don’t be afraid.”

  “Gacirü turned around.”

  “And she started walking to where we were,” Maritha said.

  “She walked on the water, did not sink …”

  “As if on dry land …”

  “Don’t leave me, don’t leave me here, she said.”

  “She sounded confused.”

  “Take me to Nyawlra …”

  “For she knows everything about ogres …”

  “There was a time you used to tell her stories about ogres.”

  “And she was sobbing.”

  “Keep still, you are now out of danger.”

  “She tried to talk through her sobs …”

  “I don’t know, she said, for since Mother and Father became big in government they have become strangers to the home and to us children … and so when I saw him … and she stopped and there was fear in her eyes.”

  “Especially when she saw Vinjinia approach.”

  “Vinjinia was shaking all over.”

  “Now Vinjinia embraced Gacirü, who was still clinging to me, and Gaclgua was trying to embrace both mother and sister as if gathering his family.”

  “And Vinjinia was telling her, Don’t worry, it’s all right, it’s all right, I am still your loving mummy …”

  “Don’t take me to Father. I saw what he now looks like. I hid in the house until he left and then ran out …”

  “Sssshhhh! Vinjinia said, trying to quiet her. We are going to talk …”

  “We assured the girl that we would take her request to the storyteller.”

  “And that we would keep an eye on her.”

  “And on Sundays she should come to church.”

  “God lives. God rules.”

  “And He would look after her day and night.”

  “We left them there, clinging to one another.”

  “We went away singing.”

  “Because laughter had conquered tears.”

  Maritha and Mariko started singing about the amazing quality of the cross, where joy followed sorrow, as if they were alone in the house, and it appeared that they had forgotten that Nyawlra was there. She stood up to leave, for she did not know how to take all of this. Were they speaking in parables?

  “What? Are you leaving without hearing the rest?” Maritha asked.

  Nyawlra sat down again.

  “We were long past the gate when a car stopped beside us,” Maritha started.

  “It was Vinjinia,” said Mariko.

  “Get in. I should at least take you to the bus stop, she told us.”

  “Well, God works in mysterious ways.”

  “His wonders to perform.”

  “Because we had just been wondering how we would get home,” they said in unison.

  “As she drove she said thank you and then added: I am asking you a favor,” Maritha explained.

  “What you have seen is not for public confession in church or anywhere,” Mariko continued.

  “I told her, We confess only our own sins, not other people’s.”

  And to share joy and laughter is not a sin.”

  “She gave us another thank-you, and then …”

  “She told us to go and tell the one who had sent us …”

  “That she harbored no ill will in her heart, but … And she did not go beyond this, or rather, she did not finish what she wanted to say. She seemed about to break into tears.”

  “Like somebody who has lost her way and knows that she has lost it but does not know how to find it again.”

  At the bus stop, she found her voice again.”

  “Tell her who sent you that she is not to send more messages. Oh, there was a time in my life when I thought I understood, however vaguely, the language of the dove, and I even thought that I could see as in a mirror darkly but see all the same. Today I no longer understand the language of doves. I no longer see my face in the mirror. Yes, tell her we are not ogres. It is a case of white-ache with a cure that has gone wrong, and the Wizard of the Crow is dead. Does she not read the papers? It is better for her and everybody if she remains with the dead.”

  3

  It was in his hotel in New York during his first visit as the Minister of Finance that Tajirika had happened to read an issue of the Billionaire, a magazine about the richest men and corporations in the world; almost all the men white Americans, and almost all the corporations based in America. He started musing about the fate of nations. America, a former colony, was still rising, while Britain, its colonizer, was rolling downward toward Third World misery. And suddenly, out of nowhere, the answer to a problem that had always bothered him about his white-ache came to him. The cure the Wizard of the Crow had prescribed had been in response to Tajirika’s desire to become a white Englishman, moreover an ex-colonial type. The white American male was the desirable ideal. Yes. He should have aspired to be a white American male. But alas, it was now too late to do anything about it. The Wizard of the Crow had been shot dead by Kaniürü and his effigy buried; and as far as Tajirika was concerned that was the end of the matter. No more ifs and ifness for him, especially now with his dramatic rise from jailbird to gold digger to governor to minister and who knows what else awaited himr

  And then one day at a New York street corner somebody handed him a leaflet, and when he later looke
d at it he saw that it was an advertisement for a clinic specializing in genetic engineering, cloning, transplants, and plastic surgery. The ad claimed that the company, Genetica Inc., grew all the body parts in its own laboratory and that its very highly trained staff could change anybody into any identity of their desire, quickly and efficiently, without any side effects.

  He read the ad over and over and started to tremble. His white-ache, which had been in remission, came back with a force that almost swept him off the ground.

  This time around, Tajirika did not hide his secret desire and what he intended to do about it from Vinjinia. Vinjinia agreed that Tajirika could become an American white if he so wanted, but she, Vinjinia, would stay black and settle for a mixed marriage. But she insisted on a quid pro quo, a face- and breast-lift for herself, to which he readily agreed. So while Kaniürü, the then Minister of Defense, was secretly buying pornographic videos on Forty-second Street, Tajirika and Vin-jinia were secretly visiting the Genetica clinic. By the time Tajirika went home with the rest of the delegation, he was the recipient of a white right arm as the first stage in his transformation, obliging him to wear a glove, but that was okay.

  Tajirika and Vinjinia were soon back in New York, and after one week Vinjinia was the happy recipient of a more youthful face and firmer breasts and Tajirika had added a white left leg to his one-white-armed body. Half white, half black, he always wore pants and long-sleeved shirts, and of course a glove on the right hand. When people commented on the glove he explained that it was his way of commemorating the first time his minister’s hand had shaken the Ruler’s.

  Then tragedy struck. Tajirika was making preparations to return to America for the other body parts to complete his transformation when he read in a newspaper that the clinic had been closed because it was not licensed. He also read, to his dismay, that the company, Genetica Inc., was bankrupt and under police investigation. The feds were considering releasing the names and records of clients, the better to uncover the criminal elements and foreign spies involved in the disreputable company. So despite his incomplete state and loss of money to boot, Tajirika dared not complain, remaining a man in transition, with a white left leg and a white right arm. Luckily for him Vinjinia was privy to his predicament, and together they resolved to keep this between husband and wife until such time as they could find a licensed lab with the appropriate genetic technology to complete the transformation. He never swam in public, and even at home he had to be careful in case the workers and unexpected guests caught him with his legs and arms uncovered.

  They of course did not tell the children about what they had done. Though the children noticed their mother’s youthful looks and firm breasts and maybe even thought them a little strange, there was nothing completely out of the ordinary about Vinjinia. But when Gaciru saw her father naked as she was going to the bathroom to change, she thought that she was seeing an ogre and suddenly her mother’s transformation acquired a different meaning. She could hardly run to her for protection. Perhaps these ogres had taken over the bodies of their parents as ogres almost certainly did in stories, except that this was not a story, and her solution was to run away, beckoning her brother to follow, no questions asked. That was when she got stuck in the Lake of Tears.

  In church one day, Gacirü had whispered to Maritha and Mariko the reason she had tried to run away, and they in turn had whispered it to Nyawlra, who whispered it to Kamltl.

  “A permanent clown,” observed Nyawlra.

  “A man in a permanent state of transition,” commented Kamltl.

  4

  Baby D’s Aburlria was full of ironies resulting in daily wonders of tears and laughter. There was a year when people were told that the official celebrations of the Ruler’s birthday involved their going to the nearest bookshop in the morning to pick up yet another special gift from the Ruler and then repairing in the afternoon to the Ruler’s stadium to commemorate some sort of anniversary of Baby D. But whyr Everyone knew how much the Ruler loathed books and writers who would not sing his praises.

  Curiosity drove Kamltl and Nyawlra to the shops, where they found stacks upon stacks of a newly minted book, The Birth of Baby D: The Ruler and the Evolution of an African Statesman: An Objective Biography, written by Henry Morton Stanley, A White Englishman.

  In the book, whatever ills had befallen Aburlria during his reign, like Rachael’s disappearance and the attempted coups by the likes of Markus Machokali and Big Ben Mambo, were blamed on the late Wizard of the Crow and the Limping Witch, and that was why the State had sentenced the already dead sorcerers to a second death and burned their effigies to make sure that even in Hell they would suffer more than the other inmates.

  “Our deaths are confirmed in a book,” commented Nyawlra. “If you ever hear the name Wizard of the Crow mentioned, you must not respond by look or gesture.”

  “This applies to the Limping Witch also,” Kamltl said. “Maybe that is what Vinjinia was telling us. That we let those names die.”

  They looked at each other, feeling sad that the characters Wizard of the Crow and the Limping Witch would have to be no more.

  5

  It was soon after this that leaflets bearing the symbol of a viper and a two-mouthed ogre with the slogan Let Them Not Kill Our Future were scattered in every village and town. It was the first open and mass challenge to Baby D. Every upheaval during the regime of the Ruler, like the drama of shame, had been preceded by leaflets.

  The Ruler summoned his most trusted counselor, the Minister of Defense. Tajirika had just returned from yet another trip to Washington, where he had concluded an agreement on joint military exercises in Aburlria. The discussion touched on a whole range of other matters, for instance, the leasing of land at the coast for permanent American military bases, and he came out feeling that he was being appreciated not only as the Ruler’s Defense Minister but as a leader in his own right. He had even had a private dinner with the retired ambassador Gemstone, attended by leaders of the business community, including defense contractors. The dinner was so secret that even his own bodyguards did not know about it. In his talks, Tajirika had it be known how close he had been to the late Machokali, his friend— in fact, Tajirika had been his protege, which seemed to go well with Washington and emboldened him to repeat the same claims in London.

  “What do you make of all this?” asked the Ruler.

  “It is the curse of the Wizard of the Crow.”

  “Even as he lies in a grave?”

  “Yes—revenge of the daemons.”

  “But we burned their effigies.”

  “Nyawlra’s daemon must have merged with his,” Tajirika, who never liked Kaniürü’s getting full credit for dispatching the sorcerer, further asserted.

  “Male and female daemons working together, eh?” the Ruler asked. “Giving birth to a new wave of pointless resistance?” he added.

  “Female daemons are unpredictable.”

  Tajirika paused, remembering that that very morning Vinjinia had told him she wanted to be relieved of managing the Mwathirika banks to concentrate on running their farms and Eldares Modern Construction and Real Estate. He told the Ruler of Vinjinia’s decision, fearfully expecting the Ruler’s anger at such crass ingratitude.

  “It is all right, let her retire,” the Ruler said rather quickly. “Jane Kanyori shall move from the Central Bank to the Mwathirika banks.”

  Tajirika knew that Dr. Yunique Immaculate McKenzie, who had now combined the roles of official hostess and comptroller of the State House, had been complaining about Kanyori’s frequent visits to the State House to report on the goings-on at the Central Bank and yet was not the governor. With Vinjinia’s retirement the Ruler had found a smooth resolution of the conflict.

  “Yes, Kanyori can handle it,” Tajirika said quickly, not to seem as if he was second-guessing the Ruler’s decision.

  “But we cannot lie down and just wait for the curse of the Wizard of the Crow to thwart us,” said the Ruler, returning to the
subject of the leaflets. “Or let female daemons walk all over us, in silence, without retaliation,” he added, recalling Tajirika’s cowardice in letting himself be thrashed by women. “There must never be another People’s Assembly on AburTrian soil. We are okay with the military chiefs. Wonderful Tumbo has been superb in alerting me of any signs of anti—Baby D feelings in all branches of the armed forces. Most conscientious. And he does it while maintaining the friendliest of terms with the forces. I appreciate your advice on his appointment.”

  “Thank you for trusting my judgment.”

  “But where do we stand in the eyes of the Global Bank, the Global Ministry of Finance, and the West as a whole?”

  Tajirika cited the coming joint military exercises as one more piece of evidence of the Ruler’s return to favor. He had found similar positive dispositions in his contacts with European capitals, London included.

  “Our friendship is back on track thanks to the birth of Baby D. Even Gemstone has good things to say about you in his recently published memoirs, Marching to Heaven: My Life in an African Dictatorship.”

  Knowing the icy relationship between Gemstone and the Ruler, Tajirika did not mention his private dinner with Gemstone attended by key leaders of the corporate community including defense contractors.

  “And he has no shame in stealing my ideas?” said the Ruler, aghast at the ambassador’s impertinence and irreverence.

  “We should have registered the name Marching to Heaven and reserved the copyright,” said Tajirika. “Still, you should rejoice that the West is embracing your ideas. However, it is said that a good reader is the one who casts his eyes ahead to see where lies a comma, a question mark, an exclamation point, or even a full stop. We should do the same. The Global Bank and the Global Ministry of Finance are clearly looking to privatize countries, nations, and states. They argue that the modern world was created by private capital. The subcontinent of India, for instance, was owned by the British East India Company, Indonesia by the Dutch East India Company, our neighbors by the British East Africa Company, and the Congo Free State by a one-man corporation. Corporate capital was aided by missionary societies. What private capital did then it can do again: own and reshape the Third World in the image of the West without the slightest blot, blemish, or blotch. NGOs will do what the missionary charities did in the past. The world will no longer be composed of the outmoded twentieth-century divisions of East, West, and a directionless Third. The world will become one corporate globe divided into the incorporating and the incorporated. We should volunteer Aburlria to be the first to be wholly managed by private capital, to become the first voluntary corporate colony, a corpolony the first in the new global order. With the privatization of Aburlria, and with the NGOs relieving us of social services, the country becomes your real estate. You will be collecting land rent in addition to the commission fee for managing the corpolonial army and police force. The corpolonial powers will reward you as a modern visionary. You will enjoy the irony that just as Gabriel Gemstone has stolen your intellectual property you will have appropriated the intellectual property of the corporate West.”