Ngũgĩ Thiong - Wizard of the Crow

“I can hardly criticize you.”

They were now relaxed with each other.

“What was the plastic snake all about?” Kamltl asked in a new key.

“You really thought that it was alive?”

“It seemed lifelike, its eyes roving, its tongue flexing. I am terrified of snakes. I hate practical jokes involving snakes.”

Nyawlra looked hard at his face. No, she and Kamltl were not of the same mind; they had arrived at the gates of Paradise by different routes. All they shared were the beggar’s rags they wore. Nothing more. And yet to her he had a good heart. He had grown up poor; he could be one of her party. Then she recalled that Kaniürü, in spite of his humble background, was now a member of the Ruler’s Youth, protecting the rich against the poor. She checked herself. Kamltl might turn out to be another Kaniürü. Besides, he seemed a loner, the type only drawn by the desires of the spirit.

“These days, no woman is safe walking the streets alone. I carry the snake to help me get out of dangerous situations.”

“No, Nyawlra, you are holding something back,” he said.

“Do you really want to know?” she asked with a bit more passion.

Kamltl felt pulled in opposite directions: he wanted to know, and he did not; he did not feel that he had the will to endure the weight of knowing and the agony of choice. Was certain indeterminacy not better?

Nyawlra saw the hesitation in his face and said to herself: This one is scared. She looked at her watch.

“It is almost dawn. You won’t have to go to the wilderness. Sleep on the couch. I’ll give you a blanket.”

As she headed toward the bedroom, Kamltl persisted despite his fears.

“But you did not really answer my question.”

Nyawlra stopped and turned her head.

“You know the Movement for the Voice of the People?”

By instinct, Kamltl quickly looked over his shoulder before answering.

“I don’t, but you mentioned it. Didn’t the Buler declare it illegal?”

“Yes,” she said, not sure what to make of his skittishness.

“What is the story?” Kamltl asked, not too enthusiastically.

“There are two kinds of saviors: those who want to soothe the souls of the suffering and those who want to heal the sores on the flesh of the suffering. Sometimes I wonder which is right. Sleep well. The couch may not be as comfortable as your leaves of grass, but there is a roof over it,” she said lightly.

“But what does the movement stand for? Who are its members? Its leaders?”

“Someday I’ll tell you more,” she said, wondering about his sudden desire for details. She went to the bedroom, from where she now threw him a blanket.

The guitar from the wall had been disturbed by their play earlier. She adjusted it before climbing into bed.

Kamltl sighed with relief, but relief from what? He was unable to fall asleep; he kept turning over in his mind the events of the last twenty-four hours. As in a dream, he didn’t know where he was headed, he thought, yawning from fatigue.

There was banging at the door. Kamltl, who had fallen asleep, was tied to his bed of dreams by a thousand strands of rainbow colors. Who was waking him in his flower garden? Ah, yes, Paradise. A million-star hotel, with a boundless sky as its roof. Oh yes, he thought, a hailstorm must be kissing the gates of Paradise. How soothing. But the knocking at the door persisted, and Kamltl woke up.

He tiptoed to Nyawlra’s bed and woke her up. They both listened, hoping that the intermittent knocking would cease. It didn’t, and Nyawlra put on a shawl and went to the door.

She hesitated as she opened it.

“Don’t be afraid, mother,” the man said, quickly taking something from his pocket and showing it to her. “I have not come to rob you. I am just a plainclothes police officer.”

“What do you want?” Nyawlra asked gruffly, trying to hide her panic.

“I beg you, please don’t be angry. I am the police officer who was here last night. Well not here, exactly-I mean, I happened to be in Santalucia last night, and in passing I saw something hanging from the wall. When I went home, well, I thought about it. True, Haki ya Mungu. I tell you, I hardly slept trying to figure things out. So I came to the conclusion, perhaps, then the doubt, how shall I know the house? But I gathered my courage and came here before dawn, and imagine my relief when I found the thing still there. And I said to myself, you are in the right place.”

Chagrined, Nyawlra remembered the bundle of make-believe witchcraft hanging from the roof outside. How careless of them not to have taken it down! The magic that had sent the police officer away had led him back to the house, though now he seemed unarmed. She became a little defiant within: So what if he has found us? What could he arrest us for? What crime have we committed? Then she recalled that the dictator of Aburlria had decreed that the Movement for the Voice of the People was illegal. She resolved to remain calm and scrutinize the words of the police officer for anything that might be useful.

“What do you want?” she asked imperiously.

The police officer winced at her tone. He kept looking over his shoulder as if ready to bolt at the first hint of danger. Yet he seemed determined, almost desperate, to unburden himself of something.

“My name is Constable Arigaigai Gathere. I have many matters that weigh heavily on me. Please, mother, I want-please-I would like to see you.”

“Me? You want to see me?” she asked, quite puzzled by all this.

“Yes, you. No, yes, true! Haki ya Mungu, Wizard. I would like to see you. Sorry, I mean, I need to see the Wizard of the Crow.”

Later, after his own life had taken twists and turns defying all rational explanation even for him, a trained police officer, Constable Arigaigai Gathere always found himself surrounded by crowds wanting to hear story after story about the Wizard of the Crow. It was then that people started calling him fondly by his initials, A.C., some listeners allowing that they stood for “attorney general of storytelling.” If his storytelling took place in a bar, it was fueled to new heights of imagination by an endless supply of liquor. When the setting was a village, a marketplace, or the crossroads, Constable Arigaigai Gathere felt charged with energy on seeing the rapt faces of the men, women, and children waiting to catch his every word. But whatever the setting, his listeners came away with food of the spirit: resilient hope that no matter how intolerable things seemed, a change for the better was always possible. For if a mere mortal like the Wizard of the Crow could change himself into any form of being, nothing could resist the human will to change.

“And when I talk of him changing himself into anything,” he would stress, “I am not passing on hearsay. True, Haki ya Mungu. I talk of what I saw with my own eyes.”

The story they came to hear over and over again was about the night A.G. chased two beggars from the gates of Paradise. At first A.G. used to say that he was with two other police officers, but in the course of the telling and retelling of the story, they disappeared from his narrative.

“Yes, it all began outside Paradise, where we had been sent to make sure that the visitors from the Global Bank would not be harassed by the crowd of beggars. Early on, the beggars were orderly, but when they started shouting words I would never let pass my mouth, we received orders from on high to silence and disperse them. It was in the evening, I remember. I saw a man in rags look at me with eyes burning brighter than those of a tiger in the dark. I felt his eyes forcing me to follow him as he moved away. I tried to tell him to stop but was dumbstruck. What was even more amazing was that he was not running. True, Haki ya Mungu. The man just strolled swinging a big bag he was carrying; yet no matter how hard I ran after him, the distance between us remained the same.