Wizard of the Crow

by Ngũgĩ Wa Thiong

  “We looked like a procession of gold prospectors,” A.G. would whisper to his ardent listeners as if imparting a great secret, “with Tajirika as the leader of the party.”

  Although they were going to dig for dollars, their thoughts were mostly on the Wizard of the Crow, who never ceased to amaze A.G. How many people in Aburlria would bury money gained from the practice of one’s profession, and then disclose the fact and its location to another? A.G., however, was a trifle concerned about the whereabouts of the Wizard of the Crow. Was he in America or Aburlria?

  Njoya and Kahiga were troubled by the whole business and would rather have had nothing to do with it. Since learning that the Wizard of the Crow had not returned from America, they brooded on the threats made by his other; she would no doubt hold them accountable for his disappearance. Not a day went by without their worrying about retribution. Was the mission a setup on her part?

  Tajirika saw a trap. Why would anybody bury money anyway? What if someone had already unearthed and taken it away? What if the whole thing was a sorcerer’s joke? How could he go back to the Ruler empty-handed? It was clear to him, no matter how he looked at it, that the Wizard of the Crow had put him in a terrible fix.

  He had no particular destination. What they were looking for, according to Tajirika, was a bush among countless bushes. The Wizard of the Crow had not described the particulars; he had just talked about a bush in the prairie not too far from Santalucia. Where exactly should their search begin?

  “True, Haki ya Mungu, we stayed in the prairie for I don’t know how long, digging holes in the ground like ants,” A.G. said. “Nobody from Santalucia or anywhere came to question or trouble us in any way. We were fatigued by the routine, searching and digging day and night, endlessly. I took it upon myself to tell the others, Listen to me: even God when he created Heaven and Earth rested on the seventh day, but we have already worked for more than seven days. What are we trying to prove? Only Tajirika demurred; we accused him of opposing rest because he did no work except move from bush to bush, and hearing this he took a pickax and started digging furiously to show us how a man should apply himself. We stood by and watched him dig nonstop like a crazy person, till he collapsed in one hole and we had to drag him out, and I tell you, by then we were so exhausted that we too collapsed beside the body of our leader, falling asleep.”

  They slept for several days. What met their eyes when eventually they woke up were endless anthills, like mounds of earth, scattered all over the prairie. Kahiga and Njoya suggested that Tajirika should call the State House to let the Ruler know that they had been unable to find the bags of dollars. Tajirika fiercely objected and adamantly insisted: “We must continue with digging until we find the money.” Njoya and Kahiga were just as adamant that the digging of holes should be left to archaeologists, prospectors, and miners of precious metals. All visible terrain had been dug up to no avail. They would sooner rob a bank than lift another pickax.

  Tajirika begged them to persist one more day, but really they were weak and had lost all hope. A.G., who had not taken sides in the dispute, now intervened and told them all that he was tired of their endless wrangling, that while he would abide by whatever decision they arrived at, for now he simply wanted some space to himself: he stood up and started walking deeper into the bush.

  Kahiga and Njoya followed him so as not to break the law that bound them to keep an eye on one another. Tajirika ran after them, imploring them not to shun their duty or leave him in the prairie alone. Not that he himself had much energy left.

  When he came to this point in his narrative, A.G. would pause and ask his audience dramatically: Why do you think I am stressing exhaustion? But before anybody could respond, A.G. would answer his own question.

  “I don’t know what it was-maybe the bush made me think about the night I chased the Wizard of the Crow in his guise as a beggar or two all the way from Paradise to Santalucia. Just as on that night I felt driven by a force so powerful that I could not stop even if I tried, so too on this night, true, Haki ya Mungu, I felt myself propelled by a power unknown to me. At one point I almost tripped over a ridge. I stopped. Before me was a rock ridge cleft into two, the space between them covered by grass and wild growth.

  “All of a sudden I had a funny feeling in my belly for, true, Haki ya Mungu, when I looked all around, I remembered being in the same bush the night I ran after the Wizard of the Crow, and that this was the same ridge over which I had tripped and fallen, losing him, or both of them, or whatever. Later, I would come to learn that my fall had not been accidental, that it had been the work of the wizard. But what is the meaning of the coincidence now? I asked myself. Had the Wizard of the Crow buried the treasure here, guarded by the powers of the netherworld?

  “I sat down on the rock and Kahiga, Njoya, and Tajirika followed suit in silence, for, to be very honest, speech had become unbearable, a burden. We were absorbed in our own thoughts, yes, but I heard myself saying to my companions, The Wizard of the Crow is capable of many tricks. I once chased him across the prairie, and I believe that he led me through a place like this… I thought that they would take up the subject, but none seemed interested in what I was saying. In our own isolation, we all were wrestling with the daemons that so possess a person exhausted in mind, body, and spirit that they make him begin to imagine seeing bright stars in daylight…”

  Tajirika thought he was seeing things. The leaves of the three bushes in front of him were no ordinary leaves, but, no, he could not believe his eyes, and he tried to cry out to the others. He could not find words to tell them what he was seeing so he just pointed, whispering hoarsely, Look, please look, and tell me if this is not more trickery by the Wizard of the Crow. Tell me if those are not American dollars growing on those bushesr

  “None of us could believe what we were hearing. We looked at one another with the same thought: Money growing on trees? Tajirika had gone mad. On closer inspection, we had to agree that those leaves did look like American dollars. Yet we harbored doubts, which disappeared when Tajirika took money from his pocket and, with hands shaking, approached the bushes to compare what he had in his hands with what was there. True, Haki ya Mungu, from where we sat, nobody could tell the difference between the two; if anything, those that grew on the bushes seemed smoother and greener, a little less wrinkled, than the bills from Tajirika’s pocket. Some of the leaves had tiny holes in them and others were frayed at the edges, but Tajirika, our leader, explained that this was the work of worms and other insects who did not understand the value of a dollar.”

  Tajirika fell on his knees before the bushes and started sobbing with joy like a death-row inmate whose sentence had been commuted when execution seemed inevitable and imminent.

  We are saved! he cried, and the others said Amen in unison.

  9

  Kaniürü, Machokali, and Sikiokuu sat as if frozen in time, bickering. The Ruler continued to check his watch now and then, oblivious of them. It is said that, in the light of the weirdness of the scene, heads of the police and army eventually came into the hall to see if something was the matter. But, ascertaining that the Ruler was wide awake, they retreated, muttering to themselves, Politicians do love talking, don’t they, marveling at their ability to confer even in silence. Not like us, men of action, they said to themselves, resolving not to disturb them again. Let them talk till the end of time if they so desire.

  The telephone rang, and the Ruler picked up the receiver.

  “What? What did you say?” the Ruler was asking. His face darkened and his hands shook, sending a tremor through his whole body. The entire State House, the whole country, and the people, feeling the earthquake, recalled the seismatic disturbance during the Ruler’s return from America. On the telephone, unaware of the effect of his shock, the Ruler continued:

  “How can that be?… Are you fulling my leg?” he asked in English “Three of them?… Okay, okay, wait a minute…”

  He tried to cover the mouthpiece with one hand
but, failing, rested it on his prodigious belly and turned to Machokali, Sikiokuu, and Kaniürü, looking at them as if he were seeing them for the first time and asking himself, What are these intruders doing here? Then he remembered that it was their arguments and bickering that had kept him awake:

  “Go,” he told them. “I will settle your case another day.” As they stood up to leave, he commanded them to stop exactly where they stood and to listen to him very carefully. Because he did not ever want to hear that any of them had so much as whispered what they had seen or heard during their stay at the State House, he would require them to sign a pledge: I will never reveal whatever 1 have seard or seen in the State House. He would match the degree of forgiveness to the quantity of signed pledges. He then asked some police to lock them up in their different locations within the State House.

  They had hardly left the room when the Ruler resumed his telephone conversation: “Are you still there?… Good, now tell me, are you sure about all this? The four of you?…”

  10

  He gave orders to the army chief to send three armored cars to the prairie as fast as possible to retrieve the dollar trees and the precious soil in which they grew. And they were to return as slowly as a tortoise so as to risk nothing. Emotions welled up inside: he smarted at the recent humiliations he had suffered at its hands; now he was freed of the need for the Global Bank. How happy he would be to look the Global Bank directors in the eye, with all the contempt he could muster, and tell them to shove it. No more memoranda to those impertinent fools. He would simply relish his newfound wealth. May these money-producing trees live forever! Impatient though he was for the arrival of his men from the prairie, he was still glad that he had cautioned against the armored cars rushing back to prevent the possibility of any of the soil falling by the wayside.

  When they saw the convoy, armed with all manner of firepower, slowly making its way into Eldares, citizens, fearing a coup d’etat, hid behind closed doors. How happy the Ruler was when, after seven days of anxious waiting, he heard the roll of the convoy on the grounds of the State House! Given his present condition, he could not, of course, go out to meet it but instead ordered the police and army chiefs to see to the immediate delivery of the bounty without the usual security checks.

  11

  It is difficult, even today, to make sense of what happened afterward. Even A.G., despite his gift of words, was taciturn, but people claimed that this was because he, Tajirika, Njoya, and Kahiga had been sworn to secrecy under the penalty of their tongues being cut out for blabbering. But when they would close in on him and beg him to explain with ardent pleas enriched by generous offers of drink, A.G. would tell them to gather around so he could whisper a thing or two. And indeed, true to his word, A.G. would tell this part of the story in a whisper so low that it was hard for some listeners to make out all that he was saying, but they would refrain from interrupting him lest he change his mind and leave the story untold. He spoke loudly only when he paused to swear “True, Haki ya Mungu,” his way of punctuating what might otherwise have seemed too incredible a narrative of magic and greed.

  “We were each told to stand behind each present, wrapped in sisal, and, in turns, untie them under the Ruler’s watchful eyes. Kahiga was first to unwrap his. It took him a while because his hands were shaking uncontrollably. This was not chiefly from fear or fatigue. Kahiga was certain, as was I, that as soon as the Ruler beheld what we had brought him, he would, out of gratitude, raise our salaries or ranks or both.”

  At this point A.G. would whisper even lower, and some frustrated listeners, believing that he had really lost his voice, would get up to leave, allowing that rumors of what he would say would overtake them anyway.

  “People, how shall I put what happened next? If I had not been there and seen it with my own eyes, I myself would not believe it,” A.G. would whisper and then shout, “True, Haki ya Mungul” so suddenly and unexpectedly that he would startle his listeners, stopping even those about to leave dead in their tracks, now convinced that it was better to hear the story from the horse’s own mouth than secondhand.

  “So what happened?” they would ask him, and A.G. would take his time, shaking his head as if still incredulous at what he had seen and heard.

  “You mean after Kahiga unwrapped his parcel?” he would ask to make sure that he understood the question precisely.

  “Yes, yes,” his listeners would say in unison.

  “Kahiga’s jaw fell,” he would say, and then pause to let the image etch itself properly in their memories.

  “Why? Why?”

  “The pestilence. They had the body of a white termite and the head and mandibles of a red ant. How can I describe them? They were as big as locusts. I don’t even know if they were termites, but I may be wrong. There are more than two thousand species, and these could have been one of them or a mutant breed. I’ll just call them pests, white pests.”

  “What are you talking about?” they would ask, wondering if the storyteller had had one beer too many. “All the leaves and all the roots of the bush had been eaten by the pests, leaving nothing but bare twigs.”

  Kahiga and Njoya cried out in unison, What is this?

  Kahiga rushed and turned over the soil, as he recounted, to see if the leaves were buried there, only to find more termites fattened to the size of big worms or caterpillars after feasting on leaves of money for more than seven days. He, like the others, could not say what was more amazing, the size of the termitelike creatures or the fact that the pests had eaten all the money.

  The Ruler did not utter a word but pointed to the next parcel and its guardian.

  It was Njoya’s turn. Here, too, the termites had eaten all the leaves as well as the bark, leaving the plant completely denuded.

  And now came A.G. s turn.

  “The termites had not been as thorough with mine; they were still devouring the few remaining leaves before our very eyes. I quickly brushed the pests away; they fell to the floor, leaving shreds of money dangling as if to mock me. Now I can say that the protective magic of the Wizard of the Crow had served me well, for, judging by the look in the Ruler’s eyes, none of us would be breathing today but for those remnants of leaves. True! Haki ya Mungu, I believe they saved us from his wrath, for they had enough green left on them to show that there may have been a time when they had the fuller greenness of a natural dollar.”

  Tajirika, heretofore dumbstruck and immobile, now ran to try to put the shreds together and back on the bush, provoking the first word from the Ruler.

  Stop! he yelled.

  The Ruler stared at the scene, brooding on the fate of we mortal sinners. Frozen with anger, he pondered how best to express his wrath.

  Tajirika felt all of his joints drained of strength, as did Njoya and Kahiga, who concluded that the retribution promised by the deputy wizard they had encountered was about to be visited on them.

  Kahiga decided to deflect the blame.

  “We two had suggested that we pick the leaves right away” he told the Ruler and, pointing at Tajirika, continued, “But this man overruled us and insisted that we pull out the bushes by the roots together with the soil. Your Mighty Excellency, it is a well-known fact that these pests build their termitaries in the prairie.”

  “And so this fiasco would have been avoided,” said Njoya, “if we had picked the money and left the stems and the roots in the prairie.”

  “Beware of this man, O Mighty Excellency. He is very bad, and his head is full of dangerous trickery,” Kahiga added with a hint of passion.

  “He once held a whole police camp hostage with a bucket of shit and urine,” added Njoya in agreement.

  “Is that true?” the Ruler asked Tajirika.

  Tajirika did not answer immediately, unsure as he was whether the Ruler was asking him about the bucket of shit or the manner in which the treasure had been uprooted.

  “I don’t know what these two are accusing me of. I was simply carrying out your orders,” Tajirik
a said.

  “My orders? To hold hostage an armed police camp with only shit and urine?”

  “Oh, no, not that,” Tajirika said, now aware where things were headed. “Your Mighty Excellency, some things are difficult to explain.”

  “I did not ask you to explain anything. I asked you whether these allegations concerning the police camp are true. Was it the first act of a coup attempt?”

  “A coup against you? Never. I would kill myself first. Go back to my ancestors.”

  “I will turn you into an ancestor. A spirit, if you don’t explain.”

  These two policemen must really hate me, Tajirika said to himself. I’m sure I shall not leave this place alive. But instead of despairing, he bolstered his sagging spirits by recalling the saying that even an animal about to be slaughtered tries to kick those leading it to the slaughterhouse.

  “Your Mighty Excellency, as I told you the other day, it was all Sikiokuu’s fault. He had me arrested for nothing whatsoever. He then tried to convert me to a religious sect that believes in St. Thomas and Descartes, one of his French disciples. When I refused, he locked me up and put the Wizard of the Crow in the same cell at midnight, the witching hour. What could I do, Your Mighty Excellency, but seize the only means left to fashion my escape? Believe me, Your Lordship, this Wizard of the Crow is no pushover-he is capable of anything. He has been the bane of my life, always after me. He started the queuing mania. He made me contract that strange malady of words, and why? So that I would go to him for a cure. And he, like Satan of old, first lured my wife. He deceived my gullible woman into handing over the bags of money under the pretext that he would set things right. But what does he do with the bags? He plants them in the prairie, then comes to my cell under the cover of darkness to tell me where to find them. Now, after seeing what these pests have done, I wonder whether they were termites after all. I wish we had hearkened to the words of A.C. when he tried to tell us about the night he chased the Wizard of the Crow across the same prairie. If we had, we might have figured out that the Wizard of the Crow had already bewitched the place. We would have known that all was not well even when it looked well.”