Wizard of the Crow

by Ngũgĩ Wa Thiong

“I got on my motorcycle and went to the road. I targeted big carriers because most of them carried contraband and would rather pay bribes in thousands rather than have their goods inspected. To a police officer they were a blessing, unless bad luck crossed your path and you harassed a carrier belonging to the big men including the biggest of all: even if they were packed to the max with illegal goods, by stopping such a carrier you might end up losing your job. One had to be careful soliciting grease for one’s palms until one was sure of the carrier’s real owner. But I was good at sensing when to be zealous and when not to be. By one o’clock I had more than two thousand, two hundred and fifty Burls in my pocket. Cash. True! Haki ya Mungu! By one o’clock my pockets were bulging with banknotes.

  “For the third time, I was back at the premises of the Wizard of the Crow. The door again opened by itself. But as I was about to enter I heard the voice say that I must not defile the sacred grounds with my uniform, badge, and gun.

  “Again I returned home. Do you hear that? The Wizard of the Crow made me return to my place four times that day; this was what finally convinced me of his powers. Have you ever heard of a witch doctor with an eye for that kind of detail? I put on my civilian clothes and in no time I was back. What do we say? Deeds define needs, and the promptness with which I executed his commands and wishes must have convinced him of my desperate need for a cure against the ill designs of my invisible enemies.

  “He told me to put the money on the table, which I did promptly.

  “Listen very carefully’ he told me in the same soothing voice. Close your eyes and then empty your head of all thoughts: in the shadows of your mind, a picture will form, and when it forms I will capture it in the mirror the way fax machines and computers copy images and transmit them invisibly. Once the image is a captive in my mirror, I will take a sharp knife and scratch it, and from that moment on your enemy will vanish forever.’

  “I covered my face with my hands, shut my eyes tight, and waited. And indeed, after a few seconds, somewhere in the darkness of my mind an outline of an image was forming, but I could not tell whose it was because it kept changing shape and location. Still I shouted, Yes! I can see an image, but it is slippery’

  “Your enemies are very cunning, very slippery, but there! Hold it there!’ he ordered me. Whatever it is, try with all the power of your mind to hold it still! And don’t let it go. There. Like that.’

  “The sound of his knife scratching the mirror made my teeth hurt, as if they were being scratched. All at once I saw the vague image in my mind explode into a thousand stars disappearing into the edge of the darkness in my mind.

  “His image, is it still there?’ he asked.

  “No,’ I answered. It’s gone. Stars disappearing in the dark.’

  “That’s it,’ he said.

  “I opened my eyes and felt a strange sensation. True, Haki ya Mungul This person who is now telling you the story, this person you now see in front of you, this person who answers to the name Constable Arigaigai Gathere, this man felt tears, but they were not tears of sorrow but of joy at having the burden of many years lifted from my heart and from my life abruptly.

  “Go home now,’ he told me in a gentle voice, and all you have to do is find out if there has been a road accident involving matatus. If not today then tomorrow, if not tomorrow then the next day. Your enemy is most likely one of the fatally injured. From today on, never molest a beggar, a diviner, a healer, a wizard, or a witch. If you ever do any harm to the helpless, this magic will turn against you. Everything that you have, including peace of mind, will be taken away. Go now. Your actions will be the mirror of your soul. Look into the mirror, always.’

  “I hesitated. He asked me if I had anything else on my mind. Yes, there was something else pressing. Although I had seen a mental outline of an image, I still could not tell who my enemy was even if I were to meet him in the street. I asked the wizard: Can you tell me the name of my enemy, the one whose image you scratched?’

  “No,’ he said. I don’t want you to go sleepless at night obsessing about his disappearance. Your own actions are a better mirror of your life than the actions of all your enemies put together. That is why I told you to watch what you do to others instead of always thinking about what others do to you.’

  “So you see? That’s why I have said that the man is human yet more than human. He removes all burdens from the heart. I say that because I used to trust my actions completely-I have told you that I am a workaholic-and yet he was asking me to look at my own actions. Maybe the enemy was hidden within my actions. Had I known that, I would have discovered my enemies much earlier and I could have spared myself a lot of torment. I again returned to my place of work having changed into a police uniform. I now had no worries in the world. I was whistling and walking jauntily and I had a how are you’ ready on my lips for whomever I met, including my boss, Wonderful Tumbo.

  “Instead of going back to the road again, I went straight to police headquarters. Why lie to you? Even though I now had no fear in the world, I wanted to know if the first prediction had occurred. Were there any reports of accidents involving matatus? Given the state of our roads-even the few that used to have tarmac at independence were nothing but potholes-I would have been surprised if there had been no accidents, but one could not be sure, fate being so tricky.”

  At that point, A.G. would pause as if to consider the murderous roads. His listeners would call out, A.G., go on with your story. My throat is dry, he would say, but once his listeners replenished his glass he felt a resurgence of energy and resumed his narrative.

  He would then tell how he got to police HQ and asked for the DOB-daily occurrence book. His heart raced: What if the potholes had not claimed their daily sacrifice? What if no matatu was involved in an accident? But he was anxious for nothing; when he saw what he saw he let out an involuntary squeal. In only the previous hour, no fewer than ten matatus had been involved in accidents all over Aburlria, three in Eldares alone. One of these accidents was a head-on collision with a police vehicle, killing fifteen people including three policemen.

  His initial shock was quickly replaced by an irresistible desire to know whether his enemy had been among the fatally wounded: he started flipping through the pages of the DOB like one possessed. His fellow policemen looked askance at him. But A.G. did not notice the looks on their faces. He was entirely absorbed in the DOB.

  He needed the names of the fatally wounded, but the information was scant. Then he remembered that he knew neither the name nor physical characteristics of his enemy. What was important, as the Wizard of the Crow had said, was that his enemy, whoever he was, had been scratched out of existence and must be among the fifteen corpses.

  So the divine prediction had come true. His enemy was no more. He now waited to see whether his life would take a different course. Forward, of course, never backward, his heart sang…

  16

  What struck Nyawlra when she got home was the tidiness of the house. Kamltl had dusted away all the cobwebs, washed the floor and the walls, cleaned the entire kitchen, and made up the bed with fresh sheets. He had also washed, dried, and ironed the old ones. She was ecstatic after her ordeal at work and at the Mars Cafe. Now she felt embraced by warmth and neatness.

  Kamltl had even made a broth of tomatoes and spinach, and all that remained to complete the supper was ugali. In all the months she had lived with Kaniürü, he had never done as much. Even when both had arrived home at the same time after working all day, Kaniürü would always sit down and expect Nyawlra to cook, serve him, and wash the dishes.

  “I will give you a new name,” Nyawlra told Kamltl as she put her handbag on the table and pulled up a chair. “Henceforth you are the Sorcerer of Cleanliness.”

  “Just call me Kamltl son of Karlmlri. Tea?”

  “I will not say no,” Nyawlra chirped happily.

  Kamltl went to the kitchen and put a pot of water on the gas grill. Nyawlra stood up and leaned against the door frame lead
ing to the kitchen and watched him go about his work.

  “I will now be the talk of the whole region,” she said.

  “Why?”

  “Letting a guest cook for the host?”

  “What did Mwalimu Nyerere of Tanzania say? A guest for two days…” Kamltl started.

  ‘“… On the third you pick up a hoe, “ Nyawlra completed it. “It is not Nyerere’s saying. It is a common Swahili proverb.”

  The water in the pot reached a boil. Kamltl went to the cupboard to look for tea leaves, but Nyawlra beat him to it.

  “I am being lazy. Let me do this,” she said, taking out a packet.

  “No, I will make the tea,” Kamltl said, and grabbed the packet from her hands. He scooped some tea leaves with a spoon, but as he was about to put them in the water he paused and asked, “How do you like your tea? The English or Aburlrian way?”

  “The Aburlrian tea, brewed in milk, please.”

  Kamltl put the tea leaves into the boiling water and then added milk, boiling the brew some more. Minding the pot, he said: “Did you know that our way of making tea is not original to us but comes from India?”

  “I thought they had borrowed the method from black Aburlrians.”

  “No, it’s the other way around. Tea, anyway, originally comes from India, China, and Japan. The English were initiated into tea drinking by India, probably in Madras, the first capital in colonial India. But tea making differs from country to country. In Japan they have very elaborate tea ceremonies.”

  “Been to China and Japan also?”

  “No, my knowledge is secondhand. Letters, mainly, from a friend in Japan at Kyoto University. Went there the same time that I went to Madras. He now lives in Shikoku, the island of eighty-eight temples. So, really only in India can I say I saw some practices firsthand, especially in Madras. Some friends once drove me from Hyderabad to Warangal. We stopped at several roadside tea shops, and I can tell you that the similarities…”

  “Hey! Watch out, the tea will boil over,” Nyawlra shouted, stepping toward the grill, but Kamltl beat her to it and switched off the gas.

  “I cannot fully trust a man in the kitchen,” Nyawlra said as they sat by the table to drink their tea. “This tastes good.”

  She complimented him on his talent for housekeeping, and they laughed about it. Then Kamltl grew serious.

  “Do you want to know the truth? I was really trying to clear the stench left in the house by that police officer.”

  “Constable Arigaigai Gathere? He came back?” she asked, and she now sat back, all ears to the tale. “Was he so in need of witchcraft?”

  “To tell you the truth, even I did not expect him to come back,” Kamltl said. “He returned just as I was about to leave the house to look for work. I saw him from a distance and went back inside, leaving the door open. I quickly decided that this kitchen would be my shrine and the living room his waiting room. We would talk through the small window between the shrine and the waiting room.”

  Kamltl narrated the whole saga including the warning to Constable Arigaigai Gathere never to molest beggars and diviners.

  “What if his situation does not change?”

  “His situation started changing even before he left here.”

  “How?”

  “His self-imposed burden of endless suspicion had been lifted.”

  “What if he does not get a promotion?”

  “Then he will come back here.”

  “For his money?”

  “No, to bring more money to find out why the initial divinations did not work. The question is whether I myself can go on with this business.”

  “Why not? All you need are a few seashells, dry bones, Sodom apples, a sackcloth, and a stool and you are all set. Or better still, why not form your own NGO?”

  “NGO? Of witchcraft?”

  “Yes. And soothsaying. Magic healing. You’ll become a consultant for everything to do with magic,” Nyawlra went on, laughing at her own suggestions.

  “A consulting wizard? Maybe I could even have a visiting card: Wizard of the Crow. Divining powers. Specialist in soothsaying, healing, and magic cleansing, “ Kamltl said in the same mood. Yes, everything and anything to do with magic. I cannot think of a business as profitable with so little investment. But the smell!” he added with a discernible change of tone in his voice.

  “Smell? What smell are you talking about? Oh, yes, you said you had tidied up to remove the smell of the police officer. Surely it could not have been worse than the stench of uncollected garbage in our streets,” Nyawlra said.

  “I don’t know what it is,” he began quietly, as if talking to himself. “I can’t quite explain it, but the smell was stronger than that of rotting garbage, a rancid belch, or a ripe fart. Sometimes when I am walking the streets I can detect it from among all other scents in the air and often I come across people and buildings that have it about them more often and more strongly than others. But by the same token I also come across people whose fresh smell seems to drive the foulness away. There are times when the foul and the fresh appear to struggle for the right of passage into my nostrils, like evil and good spirits fighting for the domination of the soul. Today it somehow had to do with your going away and the police officer coming here. How shall I put it?

  “You have seen open fields when the sun is shining after the rains. You have seen dewdrops hanging delicately on leaves and petals, like silver beads, before flowing down. Sometimes smoke rises from the ground to the sky, as if sending out an offering to a deity? Watching it, you feel like bathing in the warmth that hints of imminent birth. Nyawlra, when you are around I feel immersed in the freshness of the fields when flowers are in bloom and bees and butterflies flit about gathering nectar to make the honey of life. That was the atmosphere that you had left behind in the house this morning.

  “But then Constable Arigaigai Gathere arrives. The whole house stunk during his entire stay. And even after he left, the heavy stench remained. That is what propelled me into a cleansing frenzy.”

  Still, no matter what he did, the stench would not go away. Maybe a dead rat was rotting somewhere in the house, so he searched under the bed, the chairs, everywhere, turning things over, but to no avail. Tired and frustrated, he sat by the table in the living room. Suddenly he knew the source of the foulness: the police officer’s money. KamltT immediately put all the notes in a plastic bag, put the bag into an empty cocoa can, and closed the lid. He dug a hole outside and buried the can.

  “The smell grew faint but was still in the air,” he told Nyawlra. “But when you entered the house it disappeared altogether, replaced by the fresh scent of flowers.”

  Nyawlra felt like laughing and saying something lighthearted but, seeing how serious Kamltl was, she restrained herself.

  “Just now I don’t feel like I smell of any flower,” Nyawlra said, let alone a fresh one after the rains. But thank you. I love flowers.”

  “The same kind of thing happened yesterday when I entered your office. I inhaled a sweet scent of flowers from where you sat, but when Tajirika emerged from the inner office I scented the stench of…”

  “…a corpse?” Nyawlra suggested.

  “… a rotting heart, soul, but how can one smell a soul? Besides, I sometimes scent the same from buildings, and now the money left here by that police officer. But money and buildings have no souls.”

  “You know,” said Nyawlra, “if you had talked only about Tajirika I would have said, Yes, I see what you mean. For everything about him rots. Did you see his right hand? It is always in a glove. Why? Because that is the hand that once shook the hand of the Ruler and he wants to retain the touch of power. The hand and the glove are never washed. So whatever he touches stinks. I sometimes wonder what his wife, Vinjinia, thinks about the gloved hand. But the rot goes beyond the hand. Money has corrupted his soul completely. You can’t even begin to guess how much he collected today, and all because he was made the chairman of the committee for Marching to Heaven.
”

  “What? How?” Kamltl asked. “What is the connection between being appointed a chair of Marching to Heaven and collecting money?”

  Now it was her turn to tell Kamltl the story of her day. She told him everything except her encounter with Kaniürü at the Mars Cafe. She did not want to burden him with worries about being followed. But she did talk, almost triumphantly, about the signboards.

  “We removed the old signboard. If you came tomorrow you could get a job as my assistant.”

  “Work a job at that man’s place? I would rather set up a shop as a witch doctor,” he said flippantly.

  “So what are your plans for tomorrow?” Nyawlra asked.

  “I don’t know. I just want to go back to the wilderness tonight. I stayed because I thought you should know that the police officer came back, and about what happened in your house today.”

  “And the money?”

  “I will bury it in the prairie. The earth shall be my bank.”

  “Or are you planting it?” Nyawlra added; the idea of burying the money seemed absurd to her. “Are you planting it like a farmer plants seeds to secure abundance? Well, all I can say is that when your money tree grows, please come for me at harvest time.” She stood up and said: “But let us first eat something before you begin your journey into the wilderness.”

  Nyawlra cooked ugali. Dipping ugali balls in the broth that Kamrö had made earlier in the day, they ate their last dinner together in near silence, each self-absorbed. They had mixed feelings about their encounter and imminent parting. They felt they had always known each other; at the same time they were complete strangers. Their shared experience of the previous night now appeared as events involving other people in another country far away and long ago. Even though they now teased each other into laughter, they felt a little awkward and slightly embarrassed.

  “And when you leave this place,” Nyawlra asked, breaking the silence between them, “how will your patients know where or how to find you?”

  “Who tells you that I intend to go on with this business of witchcraft?” Kamltl said, almost irritated by the question. He was not a witch doctor. He was a make-believe Wizard of the Crow.