Wizard of the Crow

by Ngũgĩ Wa Thiong

  “You have told me that this sorcerer deals only with sickness. How then are we to employ him in police work?” Sikiokuu asked skeptically but with a measure of curiosity.

  “Money and power,” said John Kaniürü. “Nobody is averse to rubbing shoulders with money and power. Your title alone, Mr. Minister, and your deep pockets, are enough to make the sorcerer feel so elevated that he will give us Nyawlra without a murmur of protest. I told you, his mirror has more power than…”

  “Okay” said Sikiokuu decisively. “We shall talk about that later. Right now there is a job to be done, and I want it done quickly. I want you to go back to the Wizard of the Crow immediately. Tell him you have brought him greetings from me personally. Tell him that I have authorized you to accept whatever price he names for undertaking to locate Nyawlra.”

  Kaniürü was about to accept the mission when he once again remembered the warning of the Wizard of the Crow. How would the wizard interpret what Sikiokuu had instructed Kaniürü to do? Would he take his reappearance and mission as conclusive proof that Kaniürü had violated his oath? Kaniürü felt further compromised by having lied about his encounter with the Wizard of the Crow, claiming he had been chased away and warned never to return. What if Sikiokuu later recalled this and started questioning Kaniürü’s truthfulness in other areas?

  “I don’t think it is a good idea for me to go back there. After all, he did tell me never to come back. I am a very poor liar, Mr. Minister, I really hate lying, and I would not know how to wriggle out of it. I think it would be better for you to invite him to your office and…”

  “A sorcerer in my office? Never,” said Sikiokuu, rather vehemently.

  “My guess,” Kaniürü went on, “is that he will be so overwhelmed by your presence that he will not even ask for a fee.”

  Sikiokuu kept quiet for a while, thinking about Kaniürü’s latest proposal. He wondered whether this fellow might spark rumors that he had invited a witch doctor to his office, the Ruler’s office. No, Kaniürü must not know of the minister’s further dealings with the Wizard of the Crow.

  “John. You have done well, and I will certainly never forget your devotion to me. You have been very helpful, and I appreciate your not lying to me. Just leave the whole thing in my hands. I shall figure out the best way to handle it. It is dangerous to mix politics and sorcery. From now on I want you to forget that you and I have spoken about the Wizard of the Crow and any possible role he may or may not play in the hunt for Nyawlra and other dissidents of the Movement for the Voice of the People.”

  Kaniürü could not have been happier with the outcome. He may have pushed the envelope a bit, but he had not broken his word to the wizard. And Sikiokuu had not dismissed his idea altogether. If things went wrong and the wizard failed to deliver, the minister could not blame Kaniürü. And if things work out well and Nyawlra… who knew? When he left, he was whistling tunes to himself, savoring Sikiokuu’s having treated him as an equal, almost, and even embraced him as a brother.

  Back in the office, Sikiokuu was deep in conference with his trusted lieutenants Njoya and Kahiga.

  “It is thanks to your video and masterful questioning. But I want you to be very careful in how you go about this. Wear civilian clothes, and at no time must you mention my name,” Sikiokuu told his loyal emissaries to the court of the Wizard of the Crow.

  8

  “I am Elijah Njoya,” one said.

  “And I am Peter Kahiga,” said the other.

  “We are police.”

  “Would you like to see our badges?”

  “That won’t be necessary,” he told them. “All are the same to the Wizard of the Crow.”

  “We are glad to hear that,” they said in unison.

  “What brings you to my shrine so early?”

  “We have a message for you from the government,” said Kahiga.

  “Your powers with the mirror have reached the ears of the State,” said Njoya awkwardly.

  He sensed fear in their demeanor, but this did not signify much.

  He had often seen a similar unease, especially among religious zealots, educated professionals, and high-ranking civil servants who on the surface pretended not to believe in the occult. A priest who used to denounce sorcery every Sunday once came to him at dawn, only to bump into one of his parishioners at the shrine. Each had pro-ceded to claim the wizard as a relative and offered this as the reason for their visit. Both had excused themselves and said they would come back another time.

  We humans are complex, he thought as the memory of that encounter crossed his mind.

  One of the policemen jolted him from his reverie.

  “Listen up. We have been looking everywhere for a woman named Nyawlra,” Njoya said, leaning forward and lowering his voice.

  “And we have completely failed in our search,” added Kahiga.

  “Who might this Nyawlra be?” the wizard asked.

  “Surely you have heard of her,” Njoya answered. “She is a terrorist sworn to overthrow the Ruler’s legitimate government.”

  “A terrible woman,” Kahiga added. “She has twisted the minds of many”

  “Especially women,” added Njoya.

  “Didn’t you hear about the women who shamed the site of Marching to Heaven?”

  “The Wizard of the Crow does not attend ceremonies of which he is not the master,” said the Wizard of the Crow.

  “We want her in custody,” said Njoya.

  “And you are the only person with the power to find her,” Kahiga said.

  “We are asking you to resort to your mirror,” Njoya said.

  The Wizard of the Crow kept his eyes fixed on their faces, but he did not detect any hints of sarcasm or mockery.

  “Mine are healing powers,” he told them.

  “We are offering you a contract. Money is not a problem. Name your price,” Njoya and Kahiga said together. “You do your part, we do ours.”

  “Burl notes are not the issue,” he told them. “Every profession has its own concerns and expertise. You would never ask a dentist to perform a heart transplant. Your skills lie in pursuing those who break the laws of the State. My skills lie in pursuing the forces that threaten the laws of life.”

  “But Nyawlra is a disease. By working against the State, she threatens the lives of many,” Njoya said.

  “Yes, smoke her out of her lair. She is an infectious disease,” Kahiga said.

  “Bring her here to my shrine,” said the Wizard of the Crow. “And everyone who has been infected by her.”

  “She has infected a multitude,” they said in unison. “Crazed the minds of youth. We cannot gather all the infected. Arrest the virus to end the infection.”

  “Bring me the virus and I will find the cure,” the Wizard of the Crow said in a tone determined to end the discussion. “Are my healing powers now supposed to be an arm of the State? What would my clients think were they to know about it? Would this build trust in me? You might as well invite me to the State House and say to the whole country: Here is Sir Wizard of the Crow. He lures clients into his shrine to help the State catch criminals,” he said decisively.

  Instead of getting angry, Njoya and Kahiga looked at each other as if they understood what the wizard was hinting at or what he wanted.

  “We will take your message back to those who sent us,” Njoya told him. “Meantime, we ask you to come up with a price for your services to the State.”

  “There is nothing more to think about,” he told them firmly. “You are guardians of the State, and I am a guardian of life.”

  9

  “Are you sure that they are not just lulling us to sleep?” Nyawlra asked after Kamltl told her what had just taken place.

  Since their return to Eldares and despite the occasional policeman who came for magic, they had felt as if an invisible wall protected Nyawlra from the gaze of the enemy. But since Kaniürü’s visit, she felt as if the wall had suddenly collapsed.

  “If they ever come for me,
” Nyawlra said, breaking their silence about those fears, “assure me that you will never give up the shrine.

  Promise me that you will keep faith with the way of the Seven Herbs of Grace.”

  “Please stop talking like that. As long as you are hiding among the people, no enemy shall spot you.”

  “There is no escape from a spy camped in your courtyard,” Nyawlra said, in a resigned mood. “I don’t know how long I can keep up playing different characters and changing costumes. A cautionary measure is not a measure of cowardice. I would feel more at ease if I could extract that promise from you,” Nyawlra said.

  “What kind of a healer would I be were I to abandon those who seek promises of life amid the threats of death? As for the Seven Herbs of Grace, they are a way and that way belongs to us all. I will also extract a promise from you. If ever they took me away, make sure that the work of the Wizard of the Crow goes on.”

  “Don’t say that,” she said.

  “Okay let’s stop talking as if we are saying farewell,” Kamrö said. “You are not going anywhere, Nyawlra. And neither am I. We are secure in our shrine.”

  They hugged and clung to each other even longer, as if they wanted to seal that sense of eternal security with an eternal embrace.

  “It’s back to work,” Nyawlra said, finally pushing him away.

  “Let me appeal,” said Kamltl, still clinging to her hands.

  “Against going back to work?”

  “The recent ban on checking each other’s scars in daytime.”

  “Not in daytime, in the evening,” she said.

  They always looked forward to their mutual explorations, but now the lingering feeling that she could be captured intensified the hunger.

  But in the evening, when all the clients and workers had gone and she thought the exploration would soon begin, Nyawlra spied Kahiga and Njoya in the yard.

  “Let me talk to them,” Kamltl said, trying to calm her with a confidence he did not feel. “Stay hidden here, ready to flee. You know our agreed signal and the path to take.”

  10

  “Listen,” Njoya told the Wizard of the Crow, “the Minister of State wants to see you tonight.”

  “What does he want?”

  “We are only messengers.”

  “Go back to the one who sent you and tell him that he is very welcome to visit me in my shrine,” the wizard told them. “If I am to administer to his needs…”

  “He has no need of healing,” explained Kahiga.

  “So why does he seek me out?”

  “He is simply issuing an invitation,” said Njoya.

  “You will be his personal guest. A guest of honor,” Kahiga added.

  “Tell him that though I am honored by his invitation, he needs to propose a date and time that are good for him and me.”

  Njoya and Kahiga looked at each other, wondering how they were going to make the sorcerer nicely understand that he had no choice in the matter.

  Njoya cleared his throat and said, “Mr. Wizard of the Crow, we know that you may not be too familiar with what we in government call protocol, and, quite frankly, I don’t blame you. Oh, I am sorry for speaking to you in English. What I meant is that you may not know all the rules of good manners in dealing with the government.”

  “No need to explain,” the Wizard of the Crow replied in perfect English. “Even witch doctors are not strangers to languages. Manze enda mtell buda na masa wenu ati sitago. Mürogi wa Kagogo hachore-wangwi na mtu. Haneed vinaa. Hello-na-zuribye,” the Wizard of the Crow said in Sheng.

  Hardly had Njoya and Kahiga recovered from their amazement at this witch doctor who spoke not only good English but also the latest lingo in town when they saw the Wizard of the Crow start walking back to the house as though his business with them was finished.

  “Hey, wait a minute,” they shouted in unison, and the Wizard of the Crow stopped.

  “I am very sorry,” Njoya told him, “but we cannot leave without you.”

  “Is it your intention to arouse my wrath?”

  “Oh, no, no, nothing of the sort,” Kahiga quickly explained, made uneasy by the menace in the wizard’s voice. “But you know how it is in our country. A citizen cannot refuse an invitation from the government without good reason.”

  Why this odd mixture of fear and authority on the part of the police officers? wondered Kamltl. Had they really come to arrest him, or was the whole thing a cruel sport, their intention all along being to pounce on Nyawlra? Kamltl pondered his options. Play the angry Wizard of the Crow, threatening fire and brimstone? But suppose they called his bluff? Befuse to go? They could still drag him away by force. Besides, resistance might make them suspicious and lead them to probe more deeply into the affairs of the shrine. Suppose they raided the shrine and captured Nyawlra? He would never forgive himself. Far better for them to take him away from her hiding place.

  “Is that so?” the Wizard of the Crow asked innocently. “Wait just where you are; I shall be ready in no time,” he told them, aware that if they had come to arrest him they would not let him out of their sight.

  And sure enough one of them did make a move to follow him, but the Wizard of the Crow turned around and glared at him.

  “Are you sure you want to follow me? Cross my magic lines?”

  “Oh, no! No!” both police officers said in unison. “Take all the time you want, Mr. Wizard of the Crow.”

  He went straight to Nyawlra and apprised her of the situation, instructing her to stay under cover until he and his newfound acquaintances left the compound.

  “It is better this way,” the Wizard of the Crow told her. “It takes their noses away from the shrine and you.”

  As the Wizard of the Crow and the police officers were about to leave, Nyawlra suddenly emerged from the shadows and ran toward them, an open gourd in her left hand and a fly whisk in her right. The threesome stopped in their tracks. The play of light and shadow on Nyawlra made her look otherworldly. She stood in front of them without saying a word, and for a moment Kamltl thought she had lost her mind. Where was the Nyawlra he left cowering speechlessly? Why was she doing this? Nyawlra then dipped the fly whisk into the gourd and shook it over their heads while chanting incantations.

  “If he comes back with even one strand of his hair missing, I will hold you two accountable, accountable, accountable.”

  She circled them and repeated her ritual time and again and with different variations on the same warning.

  At the end of the seventh round, she stopped abruptly and stood a few inches from their stupefied faces. Then, slowly and firmly, as if she did not want them to miss any of her words, she said:

  “And should he become a missing person, you who took him away shall be swallowed by this earth thus!”

  And, saying so, she raised high the bowl and poured the remaining water onto the earth.

  “Or break into pieces like this calabash!” And she crushed the calabash to the ground.

  She then ran back into the house.

  Njoya and Kahiga stood motionless; when they tried to lift their feet, it was as if their legs were chained to the ground.

  “Don’t worry,” the Wizard of the Crow told them. “She is my guardian spirit. My eye of life. As gentle as a lamb. But oh, once aroused to anger, she is possessed by a dangerous daemon. Even to me her word is law.”

  The spell was broken. Mobility returned to the police officers’ feet and they took the Wizard of the Crow to Sikiokuu, Minister of State in the Ruler’s Office.

  11

  As they drove him away, Kamltl thought about Nyawlra and the scene outside the shrine. Since meeting Nyawlra his life had changed in ways he could never have foreseen. He often felt as if he were walking in a field of dreams. The most fleeting images of her would make his blood rush, suffusing him with a sense of goodness, peace, hope, and great though yet unknown expectations.

  What most amazed him about Nyawlra was her humor and laughter in spite of her travails. But no matter h
ow much he thought he knew her, every day brought new surprises. He would never have imagined that, instead of staying inside the house as agreed until he and the police had left, Nyawlra would appear with the force of a hurricane and stage so spellbinding a performance. The police had now spirited him away from her hiding place.

  But soon he was awash in doubts, his knees suddenly weak. What if the police officers were already on to Nyawlra? If not, what if they suspected him of really knowing her whereabouts? What if they tortured him?

  He decided not to worry about that which he could do nothing about. Even if they tortured and interrogated him about Nyawlra and the Movement for the Voice of the People, there was very little he could tell them. Of Nyawlra’s hiding place, he would die rather than reveal it. And what he knew about the movement was only what Nyawlra had told him, which was not much.

  He was so absorbed in these conflicting thoughts and emotions that even when the car stopped outside some buildings he did not realize that they had arrived at their destination.

  During the ride, Njoya and Kahiga had talked neither to him nor to each other. The drama outside the shrine had propelled each into his own world as both tried to figure out the implications of the witch’s dance for their respective lives.

  When they arrived, Njoya left Kahiga and the Wizard of the Crow in the car and went to find out what the minister would have them do with his guest.

  “It is night, a bit late,” Sikiokuu told him, rather curtly. “I will see him tomorrow morning. I don’t want him to think that he is such a big deal that I would stay up all hours of the night to receive him.”

  “Are we meant to take him back to his place?”

  “Of course not,” said Sikiokuu in English, without elaborating.

  “Where should we put him up?” Njoya asked, his heart sinking at these unforeseen developments. “A hotel?”

  “You must be joking. As he is a guest of the State-take him to the government hotel.”