Wizard of the Crow

by Ngũgĩ Wa Thiong

  “Riders without motorbikes?” said one skeptical officer.

  “Our bikes are long gone.”

  “You, policemen with hair and beard all over you? Defying the long-standing law of the beard?”

  “We had no wherewithal to buy razor blades and shaving cream.”

  “And why not cover them?”

  “Our clothes are long gone,” the apparitions whispered.

  But each rider had retained his shoulder flap with police identification numbers, and each was clutching the license plate of his motorcycle. When the interrogating officers looked into the records they were able to confirm that indeed such men had once existed, but their files had been closed and marked MISSING AND PRESUMED DEAD.

  The riders did not seem to know one another. They had never met since setting out on their mission, but their narratives were almost identical. They told harrowing stories of people from even the remotest corners of the globe forming queues and demanding change. Now, despite years of lonely toil, they were glad to report that people in Aburlria were catching up with the rest of the world; and that from north, south, east, and west, nay, from the remotest rural villages and urban centers, queues were forming and slowly marching toward the capital, singing an end to the causes of all the cries of the dispossessed. They want a clean atmosphere so that people can have clean air to breathe, clean water to drink, and clean spaces to live and enjoy. They reject the rule of the viper and the ogre. Their songs end up in chorus with the other parts of the globe: Don’t let them kill our future.

  “These incorrigible liars must be charged with desertion and treason for stirring up the populace to queue and march toward the capital,” the police chief said, angry at the bad name that these four had given the Aburlrian police in the world.

  But when they showed him letters carefully sewn inside the shoulder flaps, letters with the Ruler’s message and signature, he recalled an earlier saga way back involving a rider in the central region and said to himself, This matter calls for a decision from above, and sent an urgent report to the State House. The Ruler said, Oh, no, these deserters are doing this because they had heard that I forgave the rider from the central region. That was the wrong message to send, and now I must show to all and sundry the fate of those who defy my decree that civil servants must never wear long hair and beards. The riders should be charged with treason before a special court, and when it came to hanging instead of a noose woven from sisal one fashioned from their hair and beards should be used.

  What do you think? said the Ruler, turning to his Minister of Defense and trusted counselor, Titus Tajirika.

  The counselor was struck dumb by the whole saga. The wonder of the supreme deity having covered the apparitions with natural wear from head to foot had left an indelible mark on his imagination: a sudden incandescence illuminating nameless possibilities. Was that how prophets and seers arrived at new thoughts? How the Wizard of the Crow used to get the visions of the hidden?

  He felt a surge of power within, rendering him fearless of the Ruler, at least concerning the spirit riders. He did not even know how the words came to him.

  “Masks of deity,” murmured Tajirika at last. “Truly God works in mysterious ways.”

  “What are you talking about?” asked the Ruler, startled out of his own thoughts.

  “The riders. Their appearance, hair from head to foot. Natural masks. Messengers from the supreme deity. Bearded spirits.”

  “Did you say bearded spirits’?”

  “It is obvious, my Lord, that these are no ordinary beings!”

  “Have them executed immediately,” screamed the Ruler, strangely agitated.

  “Before they are executed, put them on national television exactly as they are to tell the nation that they are spirits sent by the Lord to tell the citizenry not to fall for lies by the new generation of daydreamers clamoring for a new tomorrow. After you, there is no tomorrow.”

  What brilliance of insight, thought the Ruler, feeling calmer having suddenly seen the way to outwit oracles and end all threats to the immortality of his rule! Aburlrians were deeply religious. Even street sweepers were forming their own sects and gaining followers! So once they hear the riders from the Lord, people will take whatever they say as a direct command from above. And if they don’t heed the ban from Heaven, then the anger of the Lord will visit them with merciless vengeance.

  The words that after him there was no tomorrow kept buzzing in his head. He was Aburlria, so how could there be any future after him? He recalled what he used to tell Rachael before he sent her stubborn eyes toward Hell. Yes, I used to tell her that I could bring her future to a standstill, freeze it in the moment, he said to himself, gazing at Tajirika with increasing awe and amazement. The Ruler had not been mistaken when he had seen and realized that a man who could take over an armed camp with only a bucket of shit was unusually gifted, and now he had shown him the way to outwit oracles and spirits, affirming the Ruler’s belief that he himself was the supreme sorcerer.

  At this moment of absolute belief in his counselor, he sensed in Tajirika’s offer of advice and his confident tone the danger he posed. Yes, this man of uncanny insights might one day feel emboldened to challenge his authority. He would strike first. Confront danger before it was too late. This guiding principle in dealing with political adversaries and friends had served him well.

  He had a sudden moment of inspiration. Just as the Lord of Heaven will one day call the world to account, he, too, would call Aburlria to account. What he once told Rachael he would tell to Aburlria. And what he did to Rachael he would do to Aburlria, thus enacting what had never been done by any ruler before him: freeze or even abolish the future of a country. His instrument would be none other than Tajirika. He would send Tajirika on one more mission.

  His plan was simplicity itself. He would send his devoted minister, his very trusted counselor, on a last mission, to order the army for a massacre. Blood would flow. And after the massacre he would set up a commission of inquiry supervised by a couple of observers from America and the European Union, if necessary, which would end up blaming his Minister of Defense. He would then have him executed publicly.

  Thought, Word, and Deed!

  He told Tajirika to put the riders on television, as he had so magnificently proposed. They should say that all queuing and agitation for tomorrow must cease immediately and that if the people failed to heed the call from their ancestors, then the spirits would urge the Ruler to halt the progress of time; the whole country would be bewitched in one endless moment by sorcery, for there was no tomorrow beyond the Ruler. He then asked Tajirika, in his capacity as the Defense Minister, to order the armed forces to mow down any resistance twenty-four hours after the ultimatum.

  Tajirika was hearing the last details of his mission with his thoughts wandering. The talk of a frozen future triggered Tajirika’s memories of the Museum of Suspended Motion. Had that been a sign of things to come? That he would one day become the chosen instrument to freeze the future of… whor

  He looked up and saw the intensity of light in the Ruler’s eyes, and he did not like what he read in it. He acted on instinct rather than cool reason using whatever was at hand, in this case, words.

  “My Lord, I am only your Minister of Defense. Everybody knows that you are the commander in chief, and for chiefs of staff and commanding officers to believe me when I ask them to act I need your written and signed authority, as much for that as to have the masked riders, awaiting execution for treason, released for their appearance on television. I need the seal of your office, my Lord, to bolster my authority. As for the four riders, I think I should first bring them to you so that when speaking on national television they will be animated by the warmth of recent contact with you. You know that your handshake means a lot,” he added, glancing at his gloved hand.

  This is the problem when dealing with cowards, the Ruler thought to himself. They have no backbone. It was easier to deal with and break the likes of Machok
ali and Sikiokuu than this dithering crook. He gave him the necessary authority, a rope long enough for the cowardly but gifted counselor to hang himself.

  7

  Tajirika acted with his usual unerring instinct of self-preservation. With the new authority ceded to him in writing, he sent Wonderful Tumbo to fetch the masked riders from death row and bring them straight to him at the Ministry of Defense. Fortunately, Wonderful Tumbo got to them and found their hair and beards still intact, for no warden dared trim the masks of spirits. A few wardens even knelt before the spirits, begging them to intercede with their ancestors on their behalf.

  Once inside Tajirika’s office, it was the spirits who fell to their knees, confronted by a figure different from the picture of Tajirika they carried in their heads. Ditto Wonderful Tumbo, a longtime friend and confidant of Tajirika’s. Had it not been for his years of police training and experience, he would have fainted.

  Tajirika sat on a raised chair, the one that Sikiokuu had made in imitation of the Ruler’s at cabinet meetings. He wore a T-shirt and shorts made of lion skin. He was draped in a cape of a colubus monkey skin that reached to his feet. Tajirika had discarded the glove used to cover his right hand. To the wonderment of his guests, his right arm and left leg were white, his left arm and right leg black. The riders assumed him a deity. Wonderful Tumbo said loudly, with absolute conviction: He is the chosen one, a man set apart by the gods.

  The four spirits abandoned themselves to newfound joy and gratitude for life restored, and there was nothing they would not do for their savior. They listened with all their power to every word of what was expected of them. They would conceal weapons under their hair when they went to meet with the Ruler at the State House.

  8

  Aburlria heard the news on radio and television. The newspapers also brought out special issues. All carried the pictures of the hirsute creatures. THE SPIRIT MEDIATORS OF POWER, one paper called them. A TELEVISION COUP, another proclaimed. No newspaper had the courage to print what had been said on television, for they all feared the Ruler known for wicked wiles.

  The four spirits calmly said that they had been sent by the dead, the living, and the unborn to tell the nation that the Ruler and the official hostess, Yunique Immaculate McKenzie, had been recalled by the ancestors that very morning. The people should not heed any rumors of a coup d’etat. Aburlria was different from other countries of Africa and the Third World. This was not a coup d’etat. It was premeditated SID.

  In fact, the Ruler must have known that his time to go had come, because a few weeks before, he had ceded all his powers to the new ruler of Aburlria, Emperor Titus Flavius Vespasianus Whitehead.

  9

  For Tajirika, things had gone more smoothly than when he had taken over an armed camp with a bucket of shit and urine. He had taken over the country with a few bullets for the Ruler. Wonderful Tumbo had been effective in ensuring the loyalty of the heads of all the branches of the armed forces. The work he did earned him a promotion to chief of all the eyes, ears, and noses of the Imperial State. Tumbo could not help but thankfully recall the day a policeman he had trained had fought with djinns and got promoted to the State House.

  To emphasize continuity, the Emperor retained for a while the Ruler’s cabinet, except for minor changes. Kaniürü was axed and was dealt further humiliation by seeing Kanyori elevated to full governorship of the Central Bank. Sikiokuu was recalled to become Minister for Toilets and Cleanliness in Public Places. Njoya and Kahiga were now the Emperor’s official executioners.

  The loyal opposition parties were caught with their pants down. Their leaders first went into hiding, only to crawl out of their holes when they learned the armed forces were firmly behind the Emperor. They tried to devise strategies for gain and survival under the new imperial regime. They listened to and scrutinized every pronouncement from the Imperial Palace, as the former State House was now called. Except for a few odd things, like his decree banning all classics in dead languages and all literature by Descartes, his pronouncements did not ruffle too many feathers.

  Even the four sons of the former Ruler, Runyenje, Moya, Soi, and Kucera, in exchange for the Imperial State’s dropping drug and money-laundering charges, agreed, in a written and signed statement by all four, that they knew that their father had succumbed to SID.

  They were retired with honor from military service, but alas the ungrateful four escaped to Europe, where they claimed to be the legitimate heirs to the Aburirian throne and formed a government in exile, with one of them as royal president, the second royal vice president, the third a royal prime minister, and the fourth royal deputy prime minister, although they had public disagreements as to whether all four posts carried executive powers.

  Internationally, recognition from Washington was quickly followed by others. It was only at the domestic front where all was not well. Vinjinia refused to become Empress Beatrice, claiming that she was too old for such royal games. She would be content to look after their house and their properties. If Tajirika wanted to appoint an official hostess, she would not raise any objection unless the hostess crossed the line and violated the marriage bed.

  The climax of Tajirika’s ascension to power came when he addressed the nation and pronounced the end of Baby D. A new era of imperial democracy had dawned, he said, and ordered the construction of a modern coliseum on the site once earmarked for Marching to Heaven.

  10

  And then the Wizard of the Crow reared his head again and dulled the celebratory mood. Who would have thought that a dead man could raise his head in the very heart of the Imperial Palacer

  It happened that as some security men were cleaning up a room rarely used, they came across a tiny bundle of hair carefully tied in a small plastic bag. The room was last occupied by the captive Wizard of the Crow just before his address to the assembly, but the men did not know. It was Njoya and Kahiga, the newly installed imperial executioners, who recognized the plastic bag they had given the Wizard of the Crow at the basement of the All Saints Cathedral and which contained all the hair they had collected before their unceremonious dismissal from their jobs. But how had it ended up in the Imperial Palacer

  This question was very troubling to Emperor Titus Flavius Ves-pasianus Whitehead until he consulted with the bearded spirits, who came up with the answer in the crocodiles of the Red River. No charms, even those from the dead, could escape from the belly of the monsters. But how were the monsters to swallow human hair without the human person?

  One night Kaniürü was invited to the Imperial Palace for dinner as a revered artist, and was conned into swallowing meatballs inside which were some of the remains of the hair of the Wizard of the Crow. Later the same night, Njoya and Kahiga, happy in their anticipation of sweet revenge, took Kaniürü to the Red River. What they did not know was that they, too, had eaten bread with some of the sorcerer’s hair in it and that the four masked spirits were waiting for them at the same riverside. They joined the Ruler in the belly of the crocodiles of the Red River, afterward renamed the Imperial River, and the scaly lizards Imperial Crocs, in honor of their having swallowed up all threats from the dead Wizard of the Crow.

  11

  Nothing could have prepared Kamltl and Nyawlra and the entire Movement for the Voice of the People for what had happened in Aburlria, the Ruler’s SID particularly. He had survived the absurdities of self-induced expansion, self-induced pregnancy, and certainly all the other previous attempts on his life, only to fall to masked spirits. That Nyawlra’s former boss and Kamltl’s tormentor had successfully carried out a palace coup was stunning, to say the least, and Kamltl could not help but recall that other time when Tajirika escaped from prison with a bucket of shit between his legs.

  “But shit is still shit, even by another name,” commented Nyawlra. “The battle lines may be murky, but they have not changed.”

  12

  One evening Nyawlra told Kamltl that two men would come for him on the following day and take him to
meet the Central Committee of the Movement for the Voice of the People so that he could say in his own words and from his own lips that he wanted to become a member. Kamltl was expecting them and yet was shocked a little. It was the first time since their last return from the mountains that he had seen another person enter their place, and he realized how much of a sheltered life he had been leading with Nyawlra, newspapers, and the radio his only windows to the world. The two escorts looked his age and there was a lot about which they could have chatted, but there was not much talk between them and Kamltl was left to his own thoughts. He reviewed his life since that fateful day when he flew out of his body at the city dumpsite, setting in motion subsequent happenings like his flight in time and space in bird form, that added to the miracle his life had become, making him wonder about the thinness of the line that divided the real and the unreal in human lives.

  “We are already there,” said one of his guides, jolting Kamltl from his reverie.

  His two escorts ushered him into a room, showed him a seat, and went into another room. Alone, Kamltl let his eyes pan the walls, over posters and drawings of some heroes and heroines of Aburlrian and African anticolonial resistance who were never mentioned in official documents. Then his eyes rested on a big map of the world with Africa at the center. On the map were red paper arrows pointing at cities circled with a black marker. He was contemplating these circles when he saw, at the Nile Delta, a neon-lit arrow. The arrow began to move down the map, and when it reached a town it would stop and flicker as if asking him to note the spot well. This was too unreal, and he stood up and went near the map to make sure. Yes, the arrow was moving along the trail he had followed and it flickered only at those towns he had visited in the body of a bird. What was the meaning of this?