Ngũgĩ Thiong - Wizard of the Crow

But now he decided to jog the man’s memory and remind him of their first encounter to see if Tajirika would show some shame. People like these, so self-centered, needed to be told things directly, without ambiguity.

“Do you want to hear a story?” he asked Tajirika.

“Yes,” Tajirika said quickly. “I will gladly do so if the stories will help you spring me from this prison.’’

“I am not so sure about this prison, but if you listen to the story very carefully it might help spring you from a prison bigger than this one made of stone and iron.”

“I knew it. I knew that that’s why you came. I knew that there is no way you would have allowed me to rot in this prison. So please tell your story, begin it right away, and I promise you that I shall not even allow a cough to interrupt you.”

Have you ever heard of Mahabharata, Ramayana, or Bhagavad Gitar The three, or shall we say two since the Gita is a chapter in Mahabharata, are the key texts in the religion, culture, history, and philosophy of the Indian peoples. They were written in Sanskrit, the ancient language of India, though now, like Latin, Greek, Geez, and Sabean, it is dead.

Mahabharata tells of a war between the Kurus and the Pandavas, two branches of the same family. Arijuana, the hero of the Pandavas, is an expert archer, reputedly able to shoot an arrow at targets on the moon. But Arijuana and his teacher Drona hear of another archer, Ekalaivan, whose skills surpass those of Arijuana by far. He can shoot seven arrows into the mouth of a dog as soon as it opens its mouth, giving it no chance to bark. Ekalaivan had taught himself those skills but under the shadow of the statue of Drona, which Ekalaivan himself had erected as a source of inspiration. Still, Ekalaivan claims that Drona is his teacher. Now, the law, dharma, requires a student to give something to his teacher, as a token of gratitude. Although Drona never taught Ekalaivan, he demands his dues. Anything you ask, says Ekalaivan. Then give me your thumb. They cut off Ekalaivan’s thumb. Do you see the humiliation, the cruelty? Drona refuses to teach Ekalaivan, a son of the poor, but when the same, through his own creativity, rises to excellence, Drona disables him so that sons of the rich will have no competition. Arijuana’s superiority is affirmed by Ekalaivan’s forced inferiority.

Do you think that this is a story of ancient India only? It is the story of our times. A rich man has come into riches through the housing business, buying and selling, developing and selling, overseeing construction and getting paid for it. To be fair, the rich man has been considerate and put up a billboard stating clearly that there are no jobs available. But you know how it is! Need, like love, is blind! A tired bird in flight, they say, will land on anything. So one evening a stranger looking for a job enters the man’s office. Even though it’s the end of the workday, the rich man agrees to interview the stranger. He scrutinizes the documents of the job seeker and asks him many questions. But what do you think the rich man does next? Please follow me, he tells the stranger, so that I can give you a proper interview. The rich man takes the stranger to the gate and asks him to read the billboard to test the stranger’s reading skills and comprehension. Now, before I go on, let me make clear that nobody can blame an employer for not having jobs. But think hard and tell me this: how does one find humor in humiliating the already humiliated? Tell me, Tajirika, why this joy at the cry of misery? How would you feel if someone derived joy from your wandering around this prison cell?

Why did you do it, Tajirika? How did I wrong you by asking you for a job?

These revelations hit Tajirika with a force both unexpected and to him, now, seemingly inevitable. He recalled the encounter and knew, even before the Wizard of the Crow had confirmed it, that the stranger and the Wizard of the Crow were one. So that’s why, during the divination and cure of his white-ache, he had felt intimations of a previous encounter? Then, he had dismissed the feeling as a hallucinatory side effect of white-ache. And now it had come to this! Tajirika had never heard of dead languages, and he assumed that the Wizard of the Crow was talking about the languages spoken by the dead. The wizard was in possession of the secrets of dead sorcerers from Africa, India, the world. Faced with the new unknown, he felt terror grip him as never before. For a few minutes he remained frozen in his corner as his mind raced swiftly, feverishly, sinister images giving way to others even more sinister. Still, incredibly, the revelations seemed to throw a light, as he imagined it, on what had been a mystery.

This wizard must be the source of all his troubles! He must have put a spell on the ground outside his office, sparking the queuing mania. The queues had started only a day or two after he had driven this job seeker from the premises of Eldares Modern Construction and Real Estate. He had tied Tajirika’s tongue. He had put a spell on Vinjinia and NyawTra and turned them against him. He had not even been looking for a job but for an occasion to practice malice born of envy and I, an innocent, fell into his trap and gave him a reason to seek vengeance. He even stole my money.

“I gave you three bags of money” Tajirika said, hoping this would mollify him and blunt the edges of his fury.

“Your kind of money smells evil. You can have it back. I buried it in the prairie,” said the Wizard of the Crow, and to Tajirika’s incredulous consternation, he described the burial spot.

Had he been sent now, once again, by Tajirika’s enemies? Brought to his cell at the midnight hour to entrap him with stories and lie about burying money in the ground? He could think of only one enemy with the clout and opportunity.

Sikiokuu’s words haunted him: “Think very hard about …” His last words, and what happens next? The Wizard of the Crow mysteriously turns up in the cell. It was the wizard who had first diagnosed his wish to be white. The wizard had now been sent by Sikiokuu to do away with him once and for all. Sikiokuu had been toying with Tajirika, had even foretold, in his shady way, what would happen. Surely the wizard would start by cutting his fingers off. He probably would have killed me last night, except for my being awake.

Death in human form was walking toward him in slow motion while he remained frozen in a corner, unable to move or do anything about it. Then and there, Tajirika decided that, come what may, he would not spend another night under the same roof with the murderous presence of this India-educated sorcerer who had already cast evil around his offices and home, making problems upon problems rain down on him like hailstones.

Though his strategy was to escape death, his tactic was to keep the Wizard of the Crow engaged in conversation while Tajirika figured a way out.

The clarity of the strategy and the tactics calmed him a little so that, despite the commotion of thoughts and images within, the words that now came out did not betray fear or anxiety.

“I did not mean any harm. I assure you, the test was truly a little joke among men. In fact, I had expected that you would join me in laughter. I wanted to make the weight of not getting a job more bearable.”

“Don’t you think you should think twice about that kind of humor? Such humor can bring about death.”

Death? He has come out in his true colors. Witchcraft and statecraft have joined hands against me. What a powerful combination! This wizard has talked with the dead for a thousand years. He has read all the manuals of sorcery from ancient India and Greece to the present. Whether I am in or out of jail, there is no escaping the all-seeing eye, the all-pervasive power of the Wizard of the Crow. I am badly cornered.