What a day! Nyawlra thought as she walked down the road to the bus stop. She suspected that there was a lot more to her boss’s illness than Vinjinia was letting on. If the police officer had not interrupted their tete-ä-tete, maybe…
She had just crossed the road when she felt a hand on her right shoulder. She turned around quickly, clutching her handbag firmly. There were so many stories of daylight robbery in the streets that it had now become second nature to hold one’s bag tighter at the slightest friction with another person.
She did not know whether to laugh in relief or shout in anger.
It was the ubiquitous Kaniürü.
Nyawlra thought of pretending that she had not seen him, but a voice within told her, Let’s hear what he has to say, we might glean a thing or two about what’s going on in the higher reaches of government.
3
At the Mars Cafe, they again sat across from each other in barely veiled hostility. Kaniürü ordered coffee, Nyawlra a chicken and vegetable sandwich, which she proceeded to eat with gusto, as if it had been the best meal she had ever had.
From where they sat, they could see a section of the endless queue.
“What’s this all about?” Kaniürü asked.
“Is that what brings you to this side of the city?”
“No, you!”
“Stop stalking me!”
“It is not me. My heart!”
“I didn’t know that you had a heart.”
“Stop that sarcasm. I just wanted to tell you that since we last met I have now done a little arithmetic, and some of the answers might interest you.”
“You have now taken up math? What happened to the painter’s easel and brush?”
“You know what? I have come to agree with your father. Were I in his shoes, I would not let my daughter marry an artist. Art is for women and children. There is something effeminate about it. That’s why you dumped me, right?”
“Dumped you? On which heap?”
“Let’s be serious. Now, about the man we discussed the other night… When I went home I thought a great deal about him. I concluded that the man in the suit who went into the public toilets was the one who left in rags. Nyawlra, I must tell you this: he was one of the beggars outside Paradise, and we now know that the real force behind the beggars’ gathering is the so-called Movement for the Voice of the People. He must be a member, as are all these people in the queue outside your office. How do I know that? The queue begins where I first saw the man standing, which could mean that while he was talking to you he was actually casing the joint. These people all want to smear the Ruler’s good name by exaggerating the severity of unemployment, by dramatizing the plight of the unemployed. That man, your friend, is a threat to the stability and security of the country.”
“You’re out of your mind. You seem to have acquired the art of spinning tales! Yesterday he was a djinn; today he is provocateur, inciting anti-government activity!”
“There is no reason he cannot be both. You wait and see. The government has engaged an expert in djinns and djinn warfare. My own view is that those djinns are fake, mortals pretending to be djinns. And the policeman-what is his name? Gathere, Ariga, or something-is just a storyteller.”
“And you, of course, are not.”
“A human or a djinn, the man is a member of the Movement for the Voice of the People. He and you were together. Therefore you too could be a member. QED.”
He knows nothing, she said to herself. Still, she was not amused by his logic, however warped. She sought to distract and confuse him.
“So Grace is talking to John. John is a youthwinger. Therefore Grace is a youthwinger. QED. Your logic is impeccable, worthy of Aristotle.”
“It’s not only white people who know logic. We too have logic, black logic found in our proverbs. You know the saying that he who keeps the company of lepers becomes a leper?”
“Well said,” Nyawlra responded, laughing. “Preacherman, whose company do you keep? Crooks and looters. Therefore…”
“Listen to me. I am now the only one who can save you. Surely you’ve heard or read that the Ruler has banned the Movement for the Voice of the People?”
“An old song. Why don’t you sing a new one through His Master’s voice? Since when are you a spokes-youth for His Mightiness? Yet I have not seen you driving a Mercedes-Benz, the hallmark of arrival.”
“That’s only a matter of time. Nyawlra, you don’t seem to understand what I am trying to tell you. Let me be more blunt. Do you know what the dissidents have been doing lately? Scattering plastic snakes and anti-government leaflets all over the country. The Ruler has given Sikiokuu special powers to crush this movement: its entire leadership, membership, supporters, and misguided fellow travelers. The minister intends to mobilize the entire secret security system, including us, the youthwings of the Ruler’s Party. You see where I am coming from? I am giving you one last friendly warning. Come back to me or else…”
“That sounds more like a threat than a friendly warning; either way, you are wasting your breath,” Nyawlra said as she stood up to go.
“Nyawlra, please listen to the logic of your heart. Since you and I parted, you have not taken up with another, and neither have I. What does that tell you?”
“Exactly what you’ve just said and nothing more,” Nyawlra said, and left chuckling to herself.
“You woman. You! One day you will come back to me crawling on hands and knees!” Kaniürü mumbled to himself in frustration.
4
Nyawlra had put on a brave face in order not to show worry in Kani-ürü’s presence, but her heart was racing. She was sure that Kaniürü and Sikiokuu knew very little about the movement. However, caution would not be cowardice if she could find a way to stop Kaniürü from finding her again. Quitting her job was one option. But how would the movement be able to gather inside information about Marching to Heaven and the activities of the Global Bank mission? Changing her workplace was another. But would she always have to be on the run because of one man, Kaniürür
She thought about Kaniürü and the years they had known each other. Their beginnings had looked so promising, at least to her, and she used to conjure up beautiful images of a future together: how they would always wake up at dawn, and with their youthful eyes raised to the azure they would hold hands and boldly step out into the world to build a home, the foundation of their new tomorrow! How differently this had turned out! Both came to look at the failed dreams differently: whereas she became convinced, with each passing day, that she could never change his ways to fit her ways, Kaniürü always believed, even after they divorced, that he could convert her to his own way of looking at the world. He was the man to lead and she a woman to follow.
So absorbed was she in her thoughts that Nyawlra hardly noticed anything about the bus and matatu ride. Not that it mattered. She had taken the route so many times that she knew almost by instinct where to get off and her way home.
And that was why, suddenly, Nyawlra halted a few yards from her house, her mouth agape. Moonlight supplemented poor street lighting. She was baffled: in front of her house stood a queue.
At first she thought that she had lost her way. Perhaps she had taken the wrong bus. She should not have wasted so much time at the Mars Cafe, leading her to miss her regular bus and matatu. Or maybe she had gotten off at the wrong stop or taken a wrong turn! Maybe the job seekers had seen her leave the office and had followed her home. But she could have sworn that at the time she left the Mars Cafe, the queue that began at the billboard outside her office was still there. Looking more carefully at the men lined up before her, she saw that they were all dressed in suits, a far cry from the patched-up, worn-out vestments of the job seekers. But she could not make out their faces; the men wore hoods and wide-rimmed hats.
Nyawlra thought of approaching one to ask what this was all about. She took a step and stopped. What if they were the newly activated eyes and ears and noses of the Buler? Suddenly she thoug
ht about Kamltl. What had happened to him? Her fear deepened as she recalled how Kaniürü had told her that Sikiokuu had been given special powers to crush opponents of the regime. Kaniürü was obsessed with Kamltl, and he may have directed the state security forces to her home. Or had A.G. returned with a police squad? A.G. had hinted that he would do as much, and now that he seemed to have been entrusted with the task of capturing djinns, he might be intent on bagging the Wizard of the Crow.
She walked briskly to the house of one of her neighbors to find out what was going on. But on her way, she saw a man come out of his house and go to the back, where he pissed against the wall. She approached him just before he reentered his house.
“What is all this about?” she asked nonchalantly, gesturing toward the queue without revealing that she was the occupant of the house under siege.
“Those? Leave them alone!” the man said. “It is all because of the witch doctor-what does he call himself?-the Wizard of the Crow. The ways of witch doctors are strange. Two days have come and gone since he put up the notice outside his door announcing his nefarious business, and at first no more than ten clients came to consult him. Now look at this. All of a sudden, today, well, this evening. I’ve no idea what this is all about. Lady, go your way and I’ll go mine; it’s never good to ask too many questions in the dark.”
Nyawlra had seen many wonders in Santalucia, but this topped them all; she did not know whether to laugh or cry. She went to the back of her house and knocked at the window. There was no immediate response. She waited for a little while and knocked again. At the third attempt the curtains parted. She saw a human silhouette. At the sight of Kamltl, Nyawlra felt relief. He helped her climb through the bedroom window and he gestured to her to be quiet and not budge, and then he went back to his business.
5
From the bedroom where she sat, Nyawlra could not see the actors, but she heard every word between Kamltl and his clients. The whole thing seemed like ritual theater.
“What ails you?” she heard Kamltl ask the man on the other side of the kitchen pass-through.
“My enemies.”
“Your enemies?”
“Yes, my fellow businessmen. You might see us dining and wining each other, and laughing and slapping one another on the back, but this is all a lie. Now it looks as if the Global Bank is about to release funds for Marching to Heaven. Do you know what that means? A contract to supply even tea, butter, cigarettes, or the smallest necessities could make one wealthy for the rest of one’s life. You see my point? If we are always scheming against one another even when the stakes are low, imagine what’s going on now. I own many quarries. All I want is to become the chief supplier of cement, stone, and sand for Marching to Heaven. But believe me, Sir Wizard, my enemies are many, they are everywhere, they are ruthless, and they want what I want.”
“So what are you after at the shrine of the Wizard of the Crow?”
“I want you to add firmness to my hands, smoothness to my tongue, and power to my eyes, so that when I meet Chairman Titus he and I will bond immediately. I want to mesmerize his eyes with mine, soften his heart with my tongue, and seal the deal of friendship with a warm handshake. At the same time, I want you to take away all powers of persuasion from my competitors. Make their hands limp and wet with sweat so that when they shake those of Chairman Titus, they will only piss him off; roughen their tongues so that when they roll them out to sing his praises, they will produce rasping noises worse than the screeching of metal on metal; cause their eyes to run with filth so that when they try to make him captive to their wishes they will only disgust and repel him. Do you know the story of the great battle between the Sun and Wind over who could make Man take off his coat? Wind made Man only cling more to his possession. Sun made him surrender it willingly. Wizard of the Crow, make my enemies the Wind. Make me the Sun. Put me at the head of my class, first among equals in guile and venom.”
“Do you know your enemies? Who they are?”
“Not that well. And that is why I have come to you. We have heard of your amazing powers, that you can tell one’s enemies long before one even knows that one has enemies; and that you can capture the shadows of these in a mirror and scratch them out of this world. Now I am not asking you to kill them-I am a good Christian and I believe in forgiveness-but I want you to do that which only you can do.”
“And who told you all this about me?”
“It’s a long story, but I shall make it short. I was in another queue outside the office of Chairman Titus. He was unable to come to the office, but we stuck to our guns, waiting in line the whole day. Then a friend who heard it from a friend who heard it from a friend who had been told about it by a police officer who supplies him with useful information in exchange for a fee-you know how it is in Aburiria today, nothing is for free and information is power-anyway this police officer told him what you had done for one of his police mates: sent all his enemies packing to the other world and had him promoted to a rank that he could never have dreamt of. Later, rumor has it, you received ten other policemen, the original informant being among them. So I thought, let me sneak out of this queue in front of Titus’s office and secure more powers before I meet with Chairman Titus tomorrow.”
Nyawlra now understood why at about six the queue of the rich and the powerful had mysteriously ceased to be, leaving her and Vin-jinia wondering.
“Sir Wizard of the Crow,” the patient was now saying, “I want you to use only your mirror, and whatever you want will be yours. How much do you charge for divining with a mirror?”
“I don’t put a price on divining. But the mirror demands some effort and decision on the part of he who seeks its power to reveal the hidden. The mirror sees and sends back only what is placed in front of it. You place more, it sees more, you place less, it sees less. So the matter is entirely in the hands of they who seek its powers of divination.”
“Money is nothing to me,” Nyawlra heard the man shout. “I want you to use the most powerful mirror possible. Maximum power. I will place an offering of the biggest envelope possible before the oracle, and I am sure it will please the mirror.”
“I grant you your wishes,” said Kamltl, and he now outlined the same steps he had earlier worked out with Constable A.G. and the ten policemen. “Close your eyes tight. Look for the image that forms in the night of your mind. The moment you see it, you must alert the Wizard of the Crow. Once I capture the image in your mind in my mirror, I will then scratch its hands, mouth, and eyes to weaken them. Weakening the organs of your enemy is the same thing as strengthening yours. It is like any scale. There are two ways of changing the balance between two opposing forces. You either add weight to one side or you remove weight from the opposite side. Divining is a science.”
“It is not the love of science that brought me to your shrine,” the man said with passion. “I want something that occurs without discernible rhyme or reason. I want the pure play of occult powers. I want magic, not science.”
Nyawlra could hardly believe her ears. If she had heard an account of what she herself had heard, she would almost certainly have dismissed it as a lie: the rich and the powerful denouncing scientific reason in favor of illogical mumbo jumbo. And to know that these men belong to the same class as the leaders of new nations? What did the future of the country hold with these men at the helmr
Her ruminations were suddenly interrupted by a rapturous scream from the divinee.
“I can see an image! I see it!” the man was saying in the tone of a child who has discovered a new ability.
“Can you tell whose image it is?” asked the Wizard of the Crow.
“No! No! But it does not matter-let this image stand for all my enemies.”
“Hold it! Hold it right there! Don’t let it slip away” Kamltl told him, and he started scratching the mirror.
“The image is now no more. Instead I see numerous starlets falling in the dark,” the man said. “Maybe it is my enemies shattered like broken gl
ass! This is wonderful! Starlets falling about me, leaving me the lone star in the firmament!”
“Then the deed is done. You saw what you wanted to see. You can now open your eyes. Your luck lies before you.”
“Thank you! Thank you, Sir Wizard,” the man said. “New powers course through me. I can now march in step with Marching to Heaven.”
He left and instantly another took his place. To Nyawlra the procession was like one cinematic frame dissolving into another. The frames may have had different characters, but the story was the same. In the end Nyawlra grew tired of hearing it and fell asleep.
Water splashing woke her up. Kamltl was showering, and she waited for him to finish. He was scrubbing himself with grim determination.
“You almost used up all the water,” she said when they were together in the sitting room.
“It is the stench they left behind,” Kamltl said. “I still feel that I never got rid of it. Look through the window; see if they’re all gone.”
Nyawlra peered outside. The queue of hooded human silhouettes did not appear to be diminishing. She closed the window and looked at Kamltl askance.
“When midnight came,” Kamltl explained, “I wrote a notice, CLOSED FOR THE NIGHT: COME BACK TOMORROW, and I asked the one I saw last to hang it outside.”
“They are doing exactly what they did in the day when I posted the notice about Tajirika’s absence,” Nyawlra said.
What are you talking about?” Kamltl asked, puzzled.
She told Kamltl about her day at the office and about the grant of special powers to Sikiokuu to crush the Movement for the Voice of the People. Kamltl in turn recounted his adventures as the Wizard of the Crow.
Wizard of the Crow Page 17
