Ngũgĩ Thiong - Wizard of the Crow

“What do you make of all this?” asked the Ruler.

“It is the curse of the Wizard of the Crow.”

“Even as he lies in a grave?”

“Yes-revenge of the daemons.”

“But we burned their effigies.”

“Nyawlra’s daemon must have merged with his,” Tajirika, who never liked Kaniürü’s getting full credit for dispatching the sorcerer, further asserted.

“Male and female daemons working together, eh?” the Ruler asked. “Giving birth to a new wave of pointless resistance?” he added.

“Female daemons are unpredictable.”

Tajirika paused, remembering that that very morning Vinjinia had told him she wanted to be relieved of managing the Mwathirika banks to concentrate on running their farms and Eldares Modern Construction and Real Estate. He told the Ruler of Vinjinia’s decision, fearfully expecting the Ruler’s anger at such crass ingratitude.

“It is all right, let her retire,” the Ruler said rather quickly. “Jane Kanyori shall move from the Central Bank to the Mwathirika banks.”

Tajirika knew that Dr. Yunique Immaculate McKenzie, who had now combined the roles of official hostess and comptroller of the State House, had been complaining about Kanyori’s frequent visits to the State House to report on the goings-on at the Central Bank and yet was not the governor. With Vinjinia’s retirement the Ruler had found a smooth resolution of the conflict.

“Yes, Kanyori can handle it,” Tajirika said quickly, not to seem as if he was second-guessing the Ruler’s decision.

“But we cannot lie down and just wait for the curse of the Wizard of the Crow to thwart us,” said the Ruler, returning to the subject of the leaflets. “Or let female daemons walk all over us, in silence, without retaliation,” he added, recalling Tajirika’s cowardice in letting himself be thrashed by women. “There must never be another People’s Assembly on AburTrian soil. We are okay with the military chiefs. Wonderful Tumbo has been superb in alerting me of any signs of anti-Baby D feelings in all branches of the armed forces. Most conscientious. And he does it while maintaining the friendliest of terms with the forces. I appreciate your advice on his appointment.”

“Thank you for trusting my judgment.”

“But where do we stand in the eyes of the Global Bank, the Global Ministry of Finance, and the West as a whole?”

Tajirika cited the coming joint military exercises as one more piece of evidence of the Ruler’s return to favor. He had found similar positive dispositions in his contacts with European capitals, London included.

“Our friendship is back on track thanks to the birth of Baby D. Even Gemstone has good things to say about you in his recently published memoirs, Marching to Heaven: My Life in an African Dictatorship.”

Knowing the icy relationship between Gemstone and the Ruler, Tajirika did not mention his private dinner with Gemstone attended by key leaders of the corporate community including defense contractors.

“And he has no shame in stealing my ideas?” said the Ruler, aghast at the ambassador’s impertinence and irreverence.

“We should have registered the name Marching to Heaven and reserved the copyright,” said Tajirika. “Still, you should rejoice that the West is embracing your ideas. However, it is said that a good reader is the one who casts his eyes ahead to see where lies a comma, a question mark, an exclamation point, or even a full stop. We should do the same. The Global Bank and the Global Ministry of Finance are clearly looking to privatize countries, nations, and states. They argue that the modern world was created by private capital. The subcontinent of India, for instance, was owned by the British East India Company, Indonesia by the Dutch East India Company, our neighbors by the British East Africa Company, and the Congo Free State by a one-man corporation. Corporate capital was aided by missionary societies. What private capital did then it can do again: own and reshape the Third World in the image of the West without the slightest blot, blemish, or blotch. NGOs will do what the missionary charities did in the past. The world will no longer be composed of the outmoded twentieth-century divisions of East, West, and a directionless Third. The world will become one corporate globe divided into the incorporating and the incorporated. We should volunteer Aburlria to be the first to be wholly managed by private capital, to become the first voluntary corporate colony, a corpolony the first in the new global order. With the privatization of Aburlria, and with the NGOs relieving us of social services, the country becomes your real estate. You will be collecting land rent in addition to the commission fee for managing the corpolonial army and police force. The corpolonial powers will reward you as a modern visionary. You will enjoy the irony that just as Gabriel Gemstone has stolen your intellectual property you will have appropriated the intellectual property of the corporate West.”

“A tit for a tat. They steal ours and we steal theirs,” said the Ruler, laughing. “That’s why I have always maintained that you are a crook,” said the Ruler, now laughing as if he had just complimented Tajirika. “A loyal crook,” he added.

Indeed, the Ruler was comfortable with Tajirika as counselor. The Minister of Defense had the common sense and realism of a crook so his counsel was nearly always to the point, but he was a cowardly crook who was once beaten by women and never retaliated and so was safe. Were it not for the cowardly strain in his character, he would be very dangerous, the Ruler thought in passing.

“About this business of corporonialism, why can’t I incorporate instead of being incorporated?” the Ruler continued. “I don’t want to be a company employee,” he added, and laughed aloud at his own joke. “I hope that you did not make any promises to Washington.”

“Oh, no, no!” an alarmed Tajirika hastened to deny.

“I am their only sun here, and they will have to deal with the sun as is.”

“And the West does not want to set with its sun,” Tajirika said, and both laughed at Tajirika’s wit.

“But for now you and I have some work to do,” said the Ruler. “We have to neutralize the impact of these leaflets and threats of queues before they become another menace.”

“Yes, we take the fight to the underworld. Scare and scatter the ghosts of Nyawlra and the Wizard of the Crow,” said Tajirika.

A few days before yet another double celebration of the Ruler’s birthday and the anniversary of Baby D, four apparitions covered from head to foot with long silver hair and beards converged at the headquarters of the Eldares police from four different directions and collapsed at the entrance. The startled police dragged the presumed corpses inside, but before they had decided what to do they heard whispering from the four creatures. All police could make out was the word north from one, south from the other, east from the third, and west from the fourth, but this effort seemed too strenuous for the apparitions, and they fell back, unconscious.

When they finally came to, they identified themselves as the four riders who had been sent to the four directions of the compass to tell people the blessedness of queuing and the joy the queues gave the Ruler. Yes, they had been preaching the gospel of queuing, the beatitude being: “Blessed are they that queue, for they shall receive countless rewards from a grateful Ruler.”

“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.”