Ngũgĩ Thiong - Wizard of the Crow

“Well, let mine then remain the right amount to warm our love. You know I have always been behind you and I never sought to know more than was necessary. Imagine how I would have felt if, when I was in their hands, I knew that I was also carrying all these secrets of the movement? Fortunately I knew nothing, so even if they had threatened to kill me I would have given nothing. For there was nothing to give away.”

“But you carried one big secret,” Nyawlra said. You knew about me and you never betrayed me.”

“Well, that is true, but I also didn’t know everything about you. Up until the moment you entered the room and were introduced as the leader, I had no idea about your position in the movement. You always talked about the movement or the leadership out there. Even on that day, I could not have suspected because you never let on, by hint or gesture, that you would be coming to the meeting.”

“That is because, as I told you the other time, we did not want you to make a political decision based solely on your feelings for me.”

“The deception, if I might call it so, was complete.”

“You admit that you were taken in?”

“Yes, and for a moment as you sat there and chaired the meeting, I thought that maybe I was looking at another person.”

“Then I win,” said Nyawlra triumphantly.

“Win what?”

“The bet. You remember our little bet? You swore that you would not be taken in a third time?”

“Oh, that,” Kamltl said. “This time it is different because you were not in disguise, like the Limping Witch at the State House. But I am more than glad to lose the bet. When the time comes I will buy the wedding ring.”

“I love you,” she said softly.

“I love you, very much,” he said.

They wandered through the market before deciding to avoid the throng and walk along the former Ruler’s Highway, now the Imperial Highway. Soon they came to the former site of Marching to Heaven, now the site of the Imperial Coliseum.

“See the person sitting under the tree?” Nyawlra said. “What is he doing there all alone with legs crossed Buddha fashion?”

“Gautama,” said Kamltl at once.

Yes, it was indeed Gautama seated at the base of the tree, legs crossed Buddha-style, his back upright against the trunk. Hanging from the tree were newspaper and magazine cuttings, in the middle of which stood out a piece on which was scribbled MARS.

“Probably the only material he was able to rescue from Mars Cafe,” Kamltl murmured, recalling the last time he and Gautama talked about Mahabharata, Ramayana, Gita, stars, and space.

Kamltl told Nyawlra that they should just continue with their walk, but then came a breeze that seemed to push him toward the lone person. He changed his mind. They should at least express some kind of solidarity.

“Namaste! Gurudeva!” Kamltl called out.

Gautama thought that he had gotten some followers, and without responding to the greeting directly or changing his posture he started telling them the good news:

I am not alone, see? This tree and the stray animals who come to visit me are all my friends. Even the sun, the wind, and the rain are my friends. Do you recall Hanuman’s parting words to Rama in Ramayana? Beautiful words that speak to the oneness of creation, he said, and, picking up a book beside him, read aloud: Dear Rama, we are indeed your old friends from long ago, and your companions of ancient days come to help you. We are your forefathers. We are your ancestors, the animals, and you are our child man. As for our friendship, we have known you a long time, Rama, and the number of those days is lost in silence.

Ah, the silence of being, said Gautama as now he took his eyes off the book, sighing. Human dreams have no end. Oh, if we would stop hate and wars we would inherit not just the earth but the universe. Listening to what the universe is telling us is the only way for the nations of this our earth to come together and find union with life. Light comes from the sun. Let there be universal light. Space is our refuge. Let’s oppose all intents to take death to space…

They went away wondering if what they just saw and heard was not coming from a man who had lost his head over the loss of the Mars Cafe. Clouds were darkening; rain seemed imminent. They decided to go back to Santalucia, which involved walking back through the city center to catch a bus. They passed near Paradise, then crossed the Imperial Avenue, the Imperial Road, the Imperial Street, and past the Imperial Conference Center before arriving at the Imperial City Square. Construction workers were indeed busy changing landmark names to the Ruling Emperor’s this or that.

The Imperial City Square was a wide-open space, one of the few remaining, and it was here that the unemployed mostly came to rest and pass the time between hunting for work. Some even spent nights there when the police were not around. It was, as usual, crowded this afternoon, and entertainment was provided by impromptu street acts, including prophets of doom preaching fire and brimstone to the unrepentant.

Nyawlra and Kamltl drifted from group to group till they came to a crowd around a storyteller with a single-stringed violin.

“It’s A.G.,” Kamltl whispered. “You remember, the policeman?”

At that very moment, A.G. shouted, “True! Haki ya Mungu, that is exactly what the Wizard of the Crow did.”

The people listened as he sang the story of his search for the Wizard of the Crow, hoping for a blessing from him: the thing of life. “Let nobody lie to you-the Wizard of the Crow will never die. True! Haki ya Mungu!”

A.C. appeared crazed, and Nyawlra thought that he feigned that to be able to say the things he was saying without interference.

It began to rain: people clapped, some saying that maybe the rain would wash away some of the filth on the streets of Eldares.

It was then that A.G.’s eyes met those of Nyawlra and Kamltl. He stopped singing, frowned, and shook his head as if he thought his mind was deceiving him. He resumed his ballad of the famous Wizard of the Crow, who could change himself into anything.

“It’s him,” Nyawlra whispered as they walked away.

“Who?”

“The man who wrestled the gun from Kaniürü.”

“A.G., who once chased us from the gates of Paradise?”

“And also snatched us from the gates of Hell!”

Kamltl and Nyawlra went homeward holding hands, a mixture of teardrops and raindrops running down Nyawlra’s face, the sound of the one-string violin and the man’s voice following them as if the player was telling them that he, too, remembered the night he chased the couple from the gates of Paradise, mistaking them for beggars. To the sound of the violin Nyawlra added her own from her guitar, and the two blended inside her. She let the fusion linger in her mind, knowing that they might never meet him face-to-face to say, “Thank you, A.G… Thank you for the gift of life.”

Thanks to my editor, Erroll McDonald, for his tremendous input into this translation; my literary agent, Gloria Loomis, for her faith and encouragement; and my assistant, Barbara Caldwell, for proofreading and editing; Njenga and Njeri Glkang’a, Gatuawa Mbügwa, Cege Glthiora and Wambüi Glthiora, for detailed comments on the early drafts; Elizabeth Alexander for the maps of Chennai and Susan Prethroe for the safekeeping of earlier drafts; my ICWT colleagues Colette Atkinson and Chris Aschan for providing a creative work environment; the commemorative circle for the late Dr. Judy Wambu that met every Thanksgiving at Wambu’s in Riverside Drive, New York, to whom I read portions of the novel; my brothers and sisters, Wallace Mwangi, Charity Wanjiku, Wambui Njinju, Njoki, Wanjiru Gitakaya; the Limahouse crowd (residents and members of the Kenya Council for Cultural Revival); my comrades in the struggle in Kenya, Africa, and the world (Kamoji Wachira and Wanjiru Kihoro, you deserve more recognition) for their inspiring presence. Special thanks to John la Rose and Sarah White for their active role in the Kenyan struggle. And always in my heart, my children, Thiong’o Senior, Klmunya, Ndücü, Mükoma, Wanjikü, Njoki, Björn, Mümbi, and Thiong’o K, niece Ngina and my grandson, Ngügl.