Ngũgĩ Thiong - Wizard of the Crow

Standing on the shore, one could often spot them in the middle of the sea, astride the crests of the waves, splashing water on every side, racing one another to an unknown destination. Sometimes they would whistle the softest of tunes in the ears of male swimmers, and not many such men, especially when alone, could resist the power of the wordless songs. There were frightening stories of some who had followed these water-women all the way to their lairs under the sea, only to discover that the women had no feet, or rather that their lower body comprised a fishtail with scales big enough to cut a person into a thousand pieces. A few were lucky and escaped, but there were many others who were lost forever, victims of the alluring power of the female riders of the sea.

There were other stories of other women who had the power to change themselves into whatever form they chose, gazelles, antelopes, but mostly cats. Many a young man had gone for a walk at twilight holding hands with the woman of his dreams, waiting for darkness to fall to satisfy his desire, only to find himself staring at the glowing eyes of a cat.

Was Nyawlra one of these women of his childhood fears? Different images of her flashed across his mind. In the office, she is a secretary, on the roadside, a comforter. In the evening, she is a beggar among beggars. Later, in the prairie, she effortlessly outruns him and three police officers. Now she was blocking his escape, dangling a fork-tongued snake in front of him? Come to think of it, when telling stories, she had constantly been changing her voice in her mimicking of various characters. The number of times she had changed her name hinted at something! Had she not walked away from a car accident unscathed? And the bit about the donkey braying at the clinic… there was something about her that did not add up.

A mixture of fear, frustration, and curiosity rooted him. He had always been terrified of snakes; the mention of them made his body quiver. She had said this one was poisonous. A bite on the nose or the eye would surely mean his end. What a day! What a night! The day had seen him narrowly escape burial in a dumpsite, but the night would see his life end with a snakebite! He feared what would transpire next. Would she change into an antelope, a gazelle of the prairie, or a cat? Or the mermaid that she was? She seemed indeed human, but with these women one could not be sure. What was a water-woman doing on land, anyway? He looked at her eyes and light danced in them. No, she was trying to hypnotize him, to distract his eyes from the snake.

His eyes focused on the snake, he started moving backward, slowly, the water-woman following him step by step and in rhythm as in a choreographed dance. Even when he entered her bedroom, Kamrö did not see the bed in the middle, riveted as he was by the impending danger. Her mission, his death by snakebite, accomplished, she would turn into a bird and fly away to trap some other unsuspecting male or return to the sea to tell her water-sisters about her wicked triumph.

Kamrö felt defiant. Even a bull in a slaughterhouse resists to the last; he refused to be a helpless victim. He pounced on Nyawlra.

They wrestled on the floor as Kamrö reached for the hand that held the snake to pin it down. Nyawlra was too quick for him; she slipped his grip and grabbed his shirt as he tugged at her dress. Soon they were both half naked, pausing to stare at each other with mutual fascination. Kamltl had never seen a neck so long, so beautiful. Her eyes still shone brightly, like those of a cat at night. He looked for the snake on the ground, only to see it lying inert.

“Oh, that! It is a plastic snake,” she said chuckling.

Kamltl did not grasp the import of her words; he was transfixed on Nyawlra, her long gazelle neck, her shapely breasts so full, her nipples, the color of blackberry, so erect, the light in her eyes animating her. It was only after a second or two that the meaning of what she had said dawned on him.

“A plastic snake?” he asked, relief embedded in disbelief.

“Yes,” she said, and laughed again.

His relief was superseded by anger. Nyawlra sensed this and tried to slink away from his rage. He strode after her as if intent on strangling her or something. In silence, they circled each other, Kamltl trying to catch her, she just managing to slip away. Then suddenly he flew toward her and they fell on the bed. They were tremulous amid the rustling of clothes. Their lips met.

Kamltl had not been with a woman since that disastrous morning with Wariara. The act had left distaste in him, diminishing his desire. He had not felt deprived during his time of abstinence. But now he knew that something important had been missing in his life. Nyawlra was in a similar position. Her relationship with Kaniürü had soured her on love, and she had not taken up with any other man. Now they felt themselves drawn to each other by a power they could not resist.

“Slowly and gently, young man,” Nyawlra told him. “Some men rush as if they are late for an appointment. A woman is not a service station.”

She guided his hands to her nipples, down to her thighs, his touch forcing her to sigh and groan. They were now ready to move to the next step.

“Put it on now,” Nyawlra told him.

“What?” he said in a daze.

“Don’t you have a condom?”

“Condom? Oh, no!” he said.

It was as if some red ants had bitten Nyawlra, for she suddenly threw him off, jumped up, and sat on the bed.

“What have I done wrong?” Kamltl asked, baffled.

“Wrong? Did I hear you right?” Nyawlra asked, full of fury. “You would enter me without protection?”

“I have not carried condoms with me for a while. I assumed that you were on the pill or something…”

“Do you think that pregnancy is the worst that can happen to a woman? Pregnancy is not a malignance. It is only a problem when people are not prepared to shoulder the responsibility of bringing a child into the world. Don’t you know about the virus? Pregnancy is life. The virus means death.”

“I don’t have the virus!”

“How do you know? And even if you know about yourself, how do you know that I am not carrying AIDS, syphilis, gonorrhea, or any other STD?”

Discomfort had now replaced desire. Kamltl went to take a cold shower to cool his body. Nyawlra waited for him to finish and followed suit. Both clothed once again, Kamltl, in a shirt without buttons, went back to the sitting room, and Nyawlra, in a fresh dress, went to the kitchen.

Kamltl’s mind drifted to life with Wariara. They had never talked about their sex lives before meeting each other; he was surprised by how little he knew about that aspect of her. Recalling their encounter at the Angel’s Corner earlier in the day, he felt uncomfortable in his own body. What if he had caught a virus from their sole intimate encounter and had been about to pass it on to… no, he did not want to think about his possible carelessness. He was grateful to Nyawlra for having put a halt to things, even more so now that she interrupted his thoughts by offering him some tea.

“I’m sorry” he told Nyawlra. “I should not have lost it that way. I have never been so drawn to anyone. Usually I prefer to get to know someone better before this kind of thing happens. But something about you makes me feel that we have always known each other. Maybe it has something to do with our shared experiences today. But I want you to know that I am not trying to excuse my behavior.”

“I am sorry, too. In college I always kept a couple of condoms in my handbag, because even then I believed that people who do not know each other well should protect themselves; because you can never tell who is carrying death into the act of love. When I got married, I stopped; and even after the marriage ended, I continued with the bad habit of not arming myself. But now I should have known better, for nobody knows when she or he might be in a situation where the body overpowers the will. If a person refuses to wear a condom in these days of the deadly virus and he still wants to go the distance, he is my enemy, not my lovemate, and I should not let him touch me. That is why I threw you off, because I thought you were one of those men who think it unmanly to wear condoms.”