Ngũgĩ Thiong - Wizard of the Crow

“I don’t know where you have been, much less what happened to you. But whatever the case is, I am very happy to see you back and alive. I have hardly slept. You just caught me as I was going to the office to work out how to look for you, where to begin. I had already tried to get Minister Sikiokuu, but no one picked up the telephone.”

“Leave Sikiokuu out of it,” Vinjinia said. “This was all Kaniürü’s work.”

“John Kaniürü?” Tajirika asked, feeling like hacking him into pieces. Kaniürü had gone too far, intruding in his affairs. Not only had he taken over his job, but he had had him arrested and tortured for not obeying his summons. Now this same Kaniürü had dared touch his wife. “This has to stop. Both of us cannot be tethered in the same kraal,” he said bitterly, tears in his eyes.

“Don’t waste your time on the likes of him. Let him be. He did not beat or rape me. I managed to untie the noose around me.”

Vinjinia told him everything, from being kidnapped at the gate to almost becoming fodder for the crocodiles of the Bed Biver.

When Tajirika heard the nature of Kaniürü’s interrogation, he knew immediately that Kaniürü was acting at the behest of Sikiokuu. He felt ashamed that he himself had been party to the inquiry into the women who had beaten him, for now he felt indirectly responsible for the kidnapping. He held his tongue and said nothing that might reveal his own complicity. He was glad that he had not said a word about his telephone conversation with Sikiokuu. Still, it was hard to keep anger and frustration at bay. Why did Sikiokuu entrust Kaniürü with a task that clearly belonged to the police?

“How did you manage to get away?” he asked.

“The Wizard of the Crow! I remembered him in my hour of need,” Vinjinia said, but she did not tell him that she had disclosed to Kaniürü that she had been to the shrine to ask for help. She still did not want Tajirika to know about her earlier face-to-face involvement with the Wizard of the Crow.

By the time she finished relating her story, Tajirika was beside himself with laughter. He laughed until his sides hurt.

“You told them with a straight face that those women did not exist, that they were figments of the imagination, mere shadows? And they believed you? Kaniürü’s brains must be mush!” Tajirika said, recalling how the women had sat on him; how heavy they had been; how they had swaggered, one even brandishing a machete; how, finally, they beat him up. He broke into hilarious laughter again.

“Why do you laugh so? A wounded bird will land on anything.”

“Oh, I can’t wait for them to go to the shrine in search of the wizard to question him,” Tajirika tried to explain amid his laughter. “They will not find him there.”

“Not find him?” Vinjinia asked quickly, guiltily, because she feared that the story she had told Kaniürü might mean trouble for the Wizard of the Crow.

“The Wizard of the Crow is in prison under heavy police guard.”

“In prison? How do you know?”

“Because I saw him there with my own eyes. I was with him in the same cell. And I left him there, under Sikiokuu’s care.”

Vinjinia did not say another word.

Tajirika’s jollity persisted. Had Kaniürü, his archenemy, been outwitted by Vinjinia, a woman? He was full of admiration for his wife, and, on his way to the office, he savored Kaniürü’s injured manhood.

As for Vinjinia, she was stunned: How had the Wizard of the Crow managed to be in two places at the same time? How could he be in jail and at the shrine, promising to send a delegation of wise elders to restrain Tajirika? The Wizard of the Crow had indeed fulfilled his part of the bargain. Now it was time for her to fulfill hers. She changed into the traditional leather skirt and ochered top.

“What?” Sikiokuu lashed out the following day when Kaniürü called to report the goings-on at the banks of the Red River.

“Just what I told you. They are not real women. They are shadows out of a mirror-mere reflections. That’s why, now you see them, now you don’t. Like the women dancers at the ceremonial opening of my office. I have never seen or heard of them again.”

“Is that what Vinjinia told you? Those shadows-who creates them?”

“The Wizard of the Crow. Through his mirror. Something like a hologram. What they now call virtual reality.”

“Wait a minute. The women who beat men, alias the women of the people’s court… Are you saying the Wizard of the Crow sent them as holograms or virtual reality to actually beat up Tajirika?” Sikiokuu asked with a touch of sarcasm. “Is that what she told you?”

“Yes.”

“You know, don’t you, that Tajirika’s wife beating took place after, not before, his release from police custody?”

“Yes.”

“And you know that it was only after he beat his wife that he himself was beaten?”

“Yes, by those women, certainly. With clenched fists, lashes, and open-handed blows,” Kaniürü added, laughing, as if giving an eyewitness account. “Powerful magic indeed.”

“This is no laughing matter.”

“I know, and that’s why I need a squad of plainclothes policemen to attack the shrine and arrest the Wizard of the Crow together with all those who work for him or who go there for healing. The police will then burn the place down. Witchcraft hates fire like nobody’s business. We need to act quickly, unexpectedly, before his magic can react.”

“Hold it. Not so fast. One thing at a time.”

“Yes, Minister.”

“Vinjinia: did she tell you that she herself went to the shrine?”

“Yes. And that’s why I believed her. Her tone betrayed no lie. She freely admitted that she had gone there in person to ask for help. Her admission is significant because, although many people of our class, like you and me, will go to see a sorcerer at night, they would never admit it, not even if you tortured them day and night.”

There was a pause, as if each was pondering what had just been said, while both considered their respective encounters with the Wizard of the Crow. Kaniürü himself had lied about his own visit to the wizard. And Sikiokuu was wondering, Does this Kaniürü know anything about my meeting with this Wizard of the Crow in my office? Who would have told him?

“Listen. We are not talking about the poor or the rich, this or that class. We are not communists. What I want to know is this: did Vin-jinia tell you that she and the Wizard of the Crow met face-to-face?”

“Yes.”

“You are very sure- I mean, that she said she had seen him with her own eyes?”

“Yes.”

“John, you are very highly educated, went to university?”

Kaniürü did not detect irony in the question. He took it as a compliment.

“Yes. And was later a lecturer,” Kaniürü said proudly, trying to embellish his educational achievements.

“And so you know the proverb that a woman’s word should be believed only after one has slept over it?”

“Yes, and that’s precisely why I didn’t bother to tell you about it right away. I wanted to review her claims to see if there were any holes in her story. I did not find any. I believe that I did tell you about my hunch that this Wizard of the Crow is the one mostly behind much of the strange things happening in this country. And if I may speak the truth and shame the Devil, that man has peculiar gifts. I don’t even understand why you did not arrest and detain him for questioning when I first told you about him. If you had done so we would have known quite a lot by now. Mr. Minister, give me the force I need and I will show them how to turn the Wizard of the Crow into a lamb.”

“And what if I told you that Vinjinia’s story is an impossibility, that the Wizard of the Crow could not have been involved, that he’s not even around?”