Ngũgĩ Thiong - Wizard of the Crow

“I know nothing about the Wizard of the Crow being or not being in America. All I know is that I left him in prison,” said Tajirika.

“You were in prison?” asked the Ruler. In the reports that he read the night before, there was no mention of this. “Why were you in prison?”

“Your Mighty Excellency, I was intending to brief you on this and other matters,” Sikiokuu said. “Tajirika wasn’t actually arrested-it was just protective custody. Or, what do you say, Titus?” Sikiokuu asked, hoping that Tajirika would confirm this.

“No, no,” protested Tajirika. “I was being detained for real. I was imprisoned in a real cell. But Your Mighty Excellency, being put in a prison cell was not the worst…” Tajirika paused as if overcome by the recollection of past wrongs.

“Go on, Tajirika,” the Ruler said encouragingly. You have the floor. What is this that you say was worse than prison? A conscience troubled for not disclosing some wrongdoing?” the Ruler added, hoping to direct Tajirika’s revelations to the question of money.

“No, not even that.”

“What could be worse than withholding vital information or keeping bad deeds locked up inside oneself?”

“Being thrown into the same cell with that sorcerer. The Wizard of the Crow.”

“What is all this about?” the Ruler asked Sikiokuu.

“I will explain everything when I report about Nyawlra,” Sikiokuu said, looking at the Ruler with eyes desperately pleading for mercy and understanding.

“Tell me something, Sikiokuu: when you put the Wizard of the Crow in prison, was that before he left for America or after?” asked Machokali innocently, but still trying to stoke the fire of tension. “The Wizard of the Crow cannot have been in two places at once. If he was in America when Tajirika was being beaten, when did he manufacture and unleash these shadows?”

“You should know,” Sikiokuu shouted at Machokali. “Stop pretending. You were the one who requested that the Wizard of the Crow be sent to America. I have kept all your faxes and e-mails on the matter. The Ruler is ill, you alleged in one of them.”

“I did not call you all here to hear you crow about the wizard,” the Ruler said, wagging his finger at Machokali and Sikiokuu. “Why can’t you two talk plainly like my chairman of Marching to Heaven?” he added, nodding toward Tajirika approvingly.

Tajirika felt joy continue springing within. If things continue this way, he might emerge from this ordeal free from the power of these two ministers.

“Thank you,” he told the Ruler.

“Titus,” the Ruler called him by name, still trying to soften him up with regard to the money, “you see now the kind of ministers I have?”

“Well, you will have to do with what you have. What gives birth in the wilderness suckles in the wilderness,” Tajirika said.

“What did you say?” the Ruler shouted at Tajirika. “What did you say about giving birth?”

Only Machokali knew why the Ruler had become so touchy. Still, he did not show by look or gesture that he understood. He and Sikiokuu turned to Tajirika as if adding oil to the fire with the unspoken Yes, why did you say that!

“It is just a proverb,” Tajirika said quickly, wondering why the Ruler had so suddenly turned against him. “I’m sorry.”

“You’re sorry?”

“Forgive me.”

“Forgive you for what? Just answer my questions plainly. Riddles and proverbs are for evening entertainment at one’s own home.”

“Yes, Sir Holiness.”

“Listen to me. I have it on good authority that the queues started outside your office,” the Ruler said, to change the subject from pregnancy and sorcery to queues and money matters.

Fajirika had no clue that the Ruler was so sensitive on this subject, and in his eagerness to undo the error he had made with his proverb he now hastened to expound his theory that it was the Wizard of the Crow who had started the whole queuing mania. At that, Sikiokuu cast him an evil eye, for he had expressly told Tajirika not to make the Wizard of the Crow the originator of the queuing mania, for that explanation would tend to exonerate Machokali. Machokali, for his part, cast him a glance of gratitude. Tajirika saw the evil look from Sikiokuu, but he knew that the eyes of a frog in a brook do not prevent cows from drinking water. Instead of halting his narrative, Tajirika now sat up and recounted how the Wizard of the Crow came to his office disguised as a job seeker…

“Why are you so obsessed with this sorcerer?” the Ruler interrupted him. “Cut out the business of who started the queues and go straight to the question of envelopes of self-introduction.”

In a second it dawned on Tajirika what the Ruler had been driving at all along. Was that really why he had been summoned to the State House? To answer questions about money that he had not used or even banked? The money was cursed, and it had now come to haunt him even inside the State House.

“The envelopes? I was coming to that. You see, there is a connection between the queues and those envelopes,” he said without hesitation.

He told how he had learned of his appointment to the chairmanship of Marching to Heaven and how soon after that a queue of seekers of future contracts had formed outside his offices, how they handed him envelopes of self-introduction, and how by the end of the day he had filled up three big sacks, each at least five feet by two, with money.

“Three sacks full of money? And each bag more than five feet by two? In one day?” asked the Ruler.

He could not tell where or how it came to him-it may have been triggered by the eagerness for knowledge in the Ruler’s eyes-but the idea of vengeance against Kaniürü suddenly formed in his mind and Tajirika found himself exaggerating the story of the money and enjoying it.

“It was not even a whole day” he now said. “Just a matter of a few hours in the afternoon.”

“One afternoon? A few hours?” pressed the Ruler.

“Yes, a couple hours.”

“And three big sacks, each more than five feet by two, full of money?”

“Not just full. I had to push the notes down with my hands and even with my feet until each bag was tight and as heavy as a sack of grain. But, alas, just when I thought that I had finally crossed the valley of poverty into permanent wealth, I became ill.”

The idea of vengeance, initially vague, was growing, and now it formed itself into a definite plan. So far he had talked only about money in general, and his listeners understood it to be in the form of Burl notes. Now in the plan the Burls became dollars. All he had to do was find a way of dropping the name of the currency to ensure maximum impact on his listeners. Tajirika paused and bent his head slightly in a dejected manner, and this reflected in his voice as he now said:

“But after getting well I never once received another envelope stashed with dollars, all in hundred-dollar bills.”

“Dollars? They bribed you in American dollars?” the Ruler kept asking.

“Well, they were out to impress me. Some said openly that they knew that the Aburlrian Burl was nothing, that it changed its value every other day the way chameleons change color. Bunni bure, some would say in Kiswahili, and, because they wanted our friendship to be firm, they thought that it could be made so only by money that was global, firm and permanent in value, and the American dollar fits the bill.”

“They said Burls were valueless?” the Ruler repeated. He was about to explode with expletives, but he changed his mind. “Why no more dollars afterward?” he asked.

“Your Mighty Excellency, when I recovered from my illness, I found that all the powers of my office had been assumed by my deputy, John Kaniürü.”