Wizard of the Crow

by Ngũgĩ Wa Thiong

  Vinjinia seemed sincerely appalled by the prospect of visiting a slumyard. But the more she recalled the stench of the glove and Tajirika’s elongated nails encrusted with dirt, the more she realized that she had to control her squeamishness about such places. Her husband’s illness was getting worse. She didn’t see that she had any alternative but to pay the Wizard of the Crow a visit.

  “I am a faithful member of All Saints Cathedral, and I know what they would think of me if they suspected or found out that I have had dealings with witch doctors,” she said. “I don’t want to be excommunicated or become like Maritha and Mariko, the subject of weekly tales. But just now there is no place I would not go in search of a cure. Where does one find this Wizard of the Crow? And please, Nyawlra, not a word of this to anybody” Vinjinia pleaded.

  10

  What? Tajirika is to come to me to be cured? No, no, I can’t deal with that, Kamltl responded instinctively. The humiliation he had suffered at the hands of this man had scarred him badly, and he feared that the sight of his tormentor would inflame him further.

  “I take the trouble to bring my boss to you so you can take his money” Nyawlra reasoned with him, “and all you can say is no? Why else would I lure him here, knowing that the malady is hopeless? All you need do is look at him, shower him with saliva, sputter some mumbo jumbo, send him home, and pocket his money”

  He wanted no part of this, Kamltl insisted.

  “I will bring him in the dark; there is no danger of his shadow crossing yours,” Nyawlra said, and with that the tension between them broke as they burst out laughing.

  It was while laughing that Kamltl suddenly felt possessed of an emotion so powerful that it almost made him tremble. Bevenge. Good luck was bringing his enemy to his door for him to exact the sweetest vengeance. Strange that the prospect of evil had excited him more than the thought of doing good.

  Kamltl told Nyawlra nothing of this, for he did not want her to dissuade him from his course of action. Besides, he wanted to enjoy the unfolding of his scheme by himself. He imagined possible encounters with Tajirika, wondering how best to set his plan in motion. Before Tajirika’s arrival, Kamltl would make a billboard, NO CURE TODAY: FOR CURE COME TOMORROW, and plant it nearby. He would then take Tajirika down memory lane by testing him on his English literacy.

  An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth: the words from the Bible had never rung truer for Kamltl.

  “All right, let him come,” Kamltl told Nyawlra enigmatically.

  11

  Vinjinia drove her black Mercedes-Benz to the Santalucia shopping center where Nyawlra was waiting. They had agreed to meet very early in the morning so as to get to the shrine of the Wizard of the Crow before the arrival of other clients. Although Nyawlra herself had suggested the shopping center, she acted as if she were unfamiliar with this section of Santalucia.

  Nyawlra sat in the passenger seat and looked around at Tajirika. She was expecting a sickly-looking person, but the Tajirika she saw did not seem ill at all. His belly had shrunk a little so his dark suit fit him better. He sat in the backseat of the car, its windows shuttered. Sometimes he would cast an eye in her direction, but when Nyawlra tried to meet his gaze it was clear that he was in a world of his own and did not recognize her. So she concentrated on directing Vinjinia to the shrine.

  It was then that she noticed that Vinjinia was driving without the aid of rearview and side-view mirrors. When Vinjinia needed to turn, she stuck her neck out her window or sought Nyawlra’s assistance to see if the coast was clear. Nyawlra was about to tell her that the mirrors were not properly adjusted, but the evil glance that Vinjinia cast in her direction froze the words on her lips.

  Though she understood, it did not lessen the terror at being in a car in a part of the town the driver hardly knew. Fortunately, the traffic at that hour of the morning was light, though Nyawlra was relieved when they got to her street. She showed Vinjinia where to park, a few houses from her own, and they walked the rest of the way.

  On entering the house, they heard the voice of a man they could not see order them to seat the patient in a chair facing a small window in the wall between the waiting room and the inner chamber. Nyawlra and Vinjinia sat close by. For Nyawlra, this business of pretending to be a stranger in her own house tested all her patience and acting skills.

  While Kamltl could see the entire body of the person before him, the patient could see only the face of the Wizard of the Crow, but Fajirika did not seem to care whether or not there was a face; in fact, he did not seem to take in any of his surroundings. He just stared into space, completely silent, his hands cupping his chin. His stillness was now and then interrupted by a seizure of ifs.

  Fhe man must be living in terror of his own silence, Kamrö thought, and witnessing this misery Kamltl felt sorry for him: all thought of vengeance vanished. Kamltl was now preoccupied with the challenge posed by the malady: What was this that had made voluble Tajirika a prisoner of silence? And why if and if only}

  12

  Of all the cases he had faced, Kamltl would say afterward, Tajirika’s would rank among the most difficult. As a diviner, Kamltl worked out the nature of a problem by how a client answered questions. But Fajirika could not and did not answer any questions. It was as if he were deaf, his mind in another world and distrustful of the one he now inhabited. It was frustrating, but Kamltl kept on whispering to himself, To save one’s patients, one must keep one’s patience.

  The Wizard of the Crow asked Vinjinia to sit next to her husband. This took her aback, for she thought a sorcerer divined without questions. She was hesitant about revealing the more embarrassing details of Tajirika’s story. A few omissions will do, she told herself. But she heard the Wizard of the Crow echoing her unspoken words. No omissions, the Wizard of the Crow told her, looking her straight in the eye. If she needed help, she had to tell him the whole truth, he told her firmly but gently. How quickly this wizard has read my mind, Vinjinia thought to herself, a little scared; she was largely forthright in her retelling.

  She recounted how Tajirika had come home one night with three sacks full of Burl notes, how he had sat at a table in the living room and counted the money, bill by bill, jotting down subtotals, every now and then jumping up for joy. He had called on her to keep him company as he did his figures. He had told her that this was just the beginning of better days to come. She recalled very clearly Tajirika stretching his legs on the table, leaning against the armchair, and talking as if in a dream, repeating the words this is only a beginning of things to come over and over.

  My dear Vinjinia, you have no idea, he had said. My appointment as the chair of Marching to Heaven was announced this morning, and by the evening I had come into possession of all this. The morrow would bring even more money, for there were many more people coming to see him. If in just one day I have harvested this much and Marching to Heaven has not even begun, when the Global Bank releases its loans and the construction actually begins, my money will go through the roof. By the time all is said and done, I will be the richest man in Aburlria, the richest man in Africa, probably the richest man in the whole world, and I will be in a position to have anything I want, except… except… and it was then that he started coughing uncontrollably, not finishing the thought. He rushed to the bathroom in that state and stayed for a long time. Vinjinia told of how worried she was and how she had gone to the bathroom to check on him. Well, she found him staring at himself in the mirror, repeating the word if. This continued day after day, and she had decided to remove all mirrors from the house. As the days went by, Tajirika’s seizures became increasingly worse, and now he sat staring into space as the wizard saw him now… That is all, she said, rather abruptly.

  Nyawlra compared this version of the story to what Vinjinia had told her in the office and found some telling discrepancies. In the first version, Vinjinia had not mentioned anything about Tajirika’s obsession with being the richest man in Aburlria, Africa, and the whole world. She had not me
ntioned that Tajirika had started his ifs on the same night he took the money home and counted it. She had told her that the ifs had seized him the morning after.

  Vinjinia waited, her heart pounding, for a response from the Wizard of the Crow. She had wanted to tell him everything, but she could not bring herself to talk about how Tajirika had scratched his face, the real reason for the removal of the mirrors.

  “Have you told me the whole truth?” the Wizard of the Crow asked.

  “Yes,” Vinjinia replied. He might be able to bring down even crows from the sky, but there was no way he would know what she had left untold, she reasoned.

  “It is all the same,” said the Wizard of the Crow. “My divining mirror will reveal to me whatever you may have left unsaid. Now turn his face this way and make him look directly at this opening.”

  Again Vinjinia felt her heart racing. How did he know that she had not told all? Maybe I should confess… but before she had completed her thought, a mirror had already replaced the face of the Wizard of the Crow at the aperture.

  The effect of the mirror on Tajirika was immediate. He woke up as from a dream, stared at the mirror, and started scratching his face. Vinjinia let out a frightened cry. She lurched forward, grabbed him by the waist, and began pulling him away from the mirror. Tears flowed down her cheeks in a mixture of fear for him and embarrassment at not having been straight with the Wizard of the Crow. Tajirika planted his feet firmly to the ground, his hands reaching out for the mirror. Vinjinia struggled with her husband to no avail: his hands remained outstretched toward the mirror and he groaned time and again. If. If’only!

  If something were not clearly the matter with Tajirika, Nyawlra would have burst out laughing, for the scene reminded her of cartoons she had seen on television. When the Wizard of the Crow withdrew the mirror, both husband and wife fell to the floor, as if Tajirika had been released from his bewitchment. After struggling to free herself from the entanglement, Vinjinia managed to put him back into the chair. She was panting from the effort, even as Tajirika was weeping freely, like a child whose favorite candy had been snatched away. As he heaved, he kept on saying, If! If! If!

  “I am sorry I forgot to tell you the bit about his scratching himself,” she said to the wizard without much conviction, “but this weeping is something new,” she added.

  “Let that not trouble your heart.”

  She was relieved that the Wizard of the Crow had shown understanding and did not dwell on the sin of omission; this drew her closer to him and she made a sincere effort to catch every word from his lips.

  The Wizard of the Crow started talking as if thinking aloud in their presence. His voice was round and soft, and it soothed and carried the listener along. Nyawlra felt her heart drawn to the voice almost as if she had never heard it before. To Vinjinia the voice felt particularly powerful because it was disembodied. Even Tajirika responded to its soothing tone, gradually quieting down, and, for the first time in a long while, he seemed to be listening to someone. Vinjinia noticed this change in him and was even more grateful to the mysterious voice.

  “… that is where we diviners come in,” the Wizard of the Crow went on, as if continuing talking to Vinjinia. “Words are the food, body, mirror, and sound of thought. Do you now see the danger of words that want to come out but are unable to do so? You want to vomit and the mess gets stuck in your throat-you might even choke to death. Your husband’s illness is not yet fatal because its cure is not beyond the reach of our powers. Woman, identifying a sickness is the first step on the road to recovery and I think the problem with your husband can be seen in the difference between his ifs. They describe negative and positive wishes. Woman, your husband’s thoughts are stuck in his head so that his wishes cannot be denied or fulfilled. His wishes are shards of words stuck in his throat. His enemies lie within him, and they want him to choke over his unvoiced wishes…”

  Vinjinia felt a mixture of dread and amazement.

  “So what are we going to do about it?” she asked the wizard.

  “I do not charge for divining ills, but the cure may require one to dig deep in one’s pockets.”

  “How much will it cost to get these thoughts unstuck?”

  “How much is his life worth?” asked the Wizard of the Crow, who, as Kamltl, had decided that though he would not seek vengeance he would certainly relieve Tajirika of the three bags of bribe money.

  “There is nothing I would not give to free him from what is killing him inside. Wizard of the Crow! Smoke out his enemies! Pursue them to the very gates of Hell.”

  “Well, it is up to you to decide what you want to do. The bewitching is in the very money he has received. Bring the three bags of Burl notes here so that we can find out where the evil is hidden. Go home and think about it. Come back tomorrow or any day you want. Then we can talk about my fee for releasing your husband’s wishes.”

  The authenticity of the wizard convinced Vinjinia, but his putting into words what she herself had been thinking, that the evil resided in the bags of money, made her believe in his powers even more.

  She wanted Tajirika healed that very morning, she told him. She promised to return with the three money bags and more to cover whatever fee he might charge for rooting out the evil.

  The Wizard of the Crow told her to take her patient with her and hurry back before other clients arrived. Or, better still, they should leave the young maiden behind to keep their places warm. He was a first come, first served wizard.

  13

  “Where were we?”

  Vinjinia suddenly applied brakes and the car skidded to the side of the road. Fortunately, no other cars were near them. She could not believe her ears. Was this her husband talking? She dared not turn her face.

  “What did you say?” Vinjinia asked, just to make sure that she had heard right.

  “I am asking you-where were we?” Tajirika asked again, like a person coming out of a deep sleep.

  When she glanced at him over her shoulder, his face did not tell her much. The voice was decidedly his before the ifs.

  “So you are well again? Praise the Lord,” she said, not trying to hide her joy. “We have been to the shrine of the Wizard of the Crow!” she added, as if they had visited a family doctor.

  “What? The shrine of a sorcerer?” he asked in a sleepy voice.

  Vinjinia decided not to hide anything from him and told him that he had been seriously ill since the night he brought home three bags of Burls. The illness had perplexed ordinary physicians and she, Vinjinia, was now glad that she had brought him to the healer’s shrine because even before the Wizard of the Crow had done his business, Tajirika was already on the mend, talking for the first time in a long while.

  “Who has been spreading rumors that I am ill?” Tajirika said, interrupting her. “If I have been ill, then know that now I am quite well, thank you.”

  “But we have to go back,” Vinjinia said.

  “For what?” he asked with mounting irritation.

  “To bring him the three bags of money. The evil is in the bags.”

  Tajirika felt like climbing over the front seat and giving Vinjinia a few slaps to the face.

  “This is why I have always said that African women are gullible. You would actually let a sorcerer ensnare you with his tales? I cannot believe that you, a grown-up, the mother of my children, a churchgoer, were about to take three big bags of my money to a sorcerer!”

  “You decide what you want to do. All I wanted was for you to get well, even if it meant my visiting places that I would not ordinarily go. All I wanted was for you to be well enough to go back to work as before. Think of the thousands of Burls you have lost since becoming ill!”

  “So you thought you would add to the loss by giving my money to a witch doctor?”

  “I don’t deserve your insults. If you feel fine, then let’s not go back to the shrine. We don’t owe him anything. He has not administered his cure.”

  As soon as they got home, Tajirika
insisted on being shown where Vinjinia had kept the three bags of money. She pointed to the strong room and left feeling wearied by his lack of interest in what had happened to him and chafed by his lack of gratitude.

  He opened the bags one by one just to make sure that all the bills were there. After sewing the sacks shut, he lifted them in turn, as if weighing them, before placing them side by side. He then kneeled before the one in the middle and stretched out his arms as if gathering them to himself, forming a cross with his body. Then he tried to close his eyes as if in prayer, but they would not close. He tried to say something. Nothing would come out. He tried to force words out. Then suddenly the coughing came back, and the ifs and if only‘s.

  Vinjinia rushed to where he was kneeling. That did it. The Wizard of the Crow was the only person who could exorcise the evil, and after the exorcism no force on earth could make her bring the bewitched bags of money back into her house.

  14

  Kamltl did as he had done earlier, placed a mirror at the window, and once again Tajirika was drawn to it as a moth to light and started scratching himself. This time Vinjinia, who kept mum about what had occurred at home, the temporary recovery and sudden relapse, did not try to hold him back. Kamrö then removed the mirror, and Tajirika’s eyes and his own were locked in a stare. Tajirika’s seemed to beg for the return of the mirror.

  “I will let you see the mirror,” the Wizard of the Crow told him gently, softly, and clearly, as if dangling the prospect of candy, “but you and I must first have a talk. If I put the mirror back, do you promise to try to force out the words stuck within you? Will you let me help you complete your thoughts?”

  Tajirika nodded impatiently as if he was ready to do anything just to see the mirror once more. When the Wizard of the Crow put the mirror back, Tajirika resumed scratching himself while muttering ifs.