Ngũgĩ Thiong - Wizard of the Crow

“I just want a cup of tea and a piece of cake,” Nyawlra shouted to Gautama as she walked in and sat at the table. “Why did you want us to meet?” she asked brusquely.

“I was passing by and I thought I would drop in on you,” Kaniürü told her, and by the look on her face he knew that she knew that he was not telling the truth. “So that’s where you work?”

“Didn’t I tell you to leave me alone?”

“Yes, but we need not be enemies.”

“I don’t want your friendship.”

“I wasn’t insisting that we be friends.”

“Listen. I have no time to waste, quibbling over words.”

“Nor I. I was simply saying that even if people part ways, they need not pass one another without so much as a wave of the hand.”

“What do you want?”

“I just want you to know that I still love you.”

“You are wasting your time and mine trying to pick up spilled water. If you start that up again, I am leaving.”

“What else do you want me to talk about?”

“I didn’t ask you out. Why not sing about how great it feels to be a youthwing of His Royal Mightiness?” Nyawlra said, barely hiding her sarcasm.

“Look, you are quite right to be critical of some of the pillars of the Party, pretenders who are out to ruin and discredit our country, such as those in favor of Marching to Heaven! The verdict was in long ago when the children of Israel first attempted the Tower of Babel.”

“Rumor has it that you drew up the plan, or rather the artist’s impression. Why this about-face against your baby?”

He tried not to wince, recalling the humiliation he had suffered at the birthday celebrations, revived by the woman he most wanted to impress with his new connections to power and privilege. He kept quiet, dwelling on the origins of the whole fiasco.

It all began when Machokali gave a talk at the polytechnic where Kaniürü taught. On learning that there was an art department, the minister wondered aloud whether its students could be trusted to breathe life into the lifeless drawing of an architect? If you can, then call on me in my office, he said, just that, an invitation so vague that many people correctly took it for the usual rhetorical challenges by politicians. The minister himself had forgotten all about it when Kaniürü went to his office a few days later, abruptly allowing that, yes, it could be done, and he was there to volunteer his services. It took Machokali a while to grasp what the man was talking about until Kaniürü reminded him of his visit to the polytechnic. Oh, that, the minister said. You mean you can look at a two-dimensional plan and give a visual impression in three dimensions? You know, with the color of life and all that? “It is not easy, but it can be done.” Not of course by every Tom, Dick, and Harry, but he, John Kaniürü, had a degree in art and art history from the University of Eldares and had even studied a little architecture. An artistic rendering was no big deal.

Kaniürü was melting inside at the prospect of working with so famous a minister when the first obstacle to happiness presented itself. After describing in general what he wanted from an artist, Machokali instructed one of his trusted aides to show Kaniürü the drawing. “Look at it only once,” he had said. “The rest I leave to your imagination.” Kaniürü did not then know the significance of the drawing that would serve as inspiration for his art, but when he found himself working under lock and key, being body searched every time he left the room, he figured it was something important. And when he learned that it was somehow connected with the Ruler’s birthday celebration, he gave the aide a note begging the minister to acknowledge his contribution to the national effort. The aide was reassuring; not only would his name be mentioned but he might even be introduced to the Ruler himself, or at least be asked to come forward so the people could see him. These words made Kaniürü thank the minister’s aide profusely, calling him “my friend,” while ignoring all the hints about greasing the palm of the messenger. The aide was compelled to wonder, What kind of person is this who does not seem to know that the carrier of a message must eat? Peeved by the meanness of art teachers, the aide later told the minister that the teacher had said that his name should not be mentioned anywhere, so selfless was he. Unaware of this treachery, Kaniürü for several days considered how best to grandstand in public. He would sit far back so that when his name was called he would have to walk through the throng all the way to the platform. And even if asked simply to stand up, he would be looked at by a thousand heads turning toward him. But instead of being the object of everybody’s grateful attention, he attracted only angry gestures from those who sat near him, and a warning about keeping the peace from a cop who added injury to insult by threatening to blow off his nose with a gun. How could he ever forgive Machokali for treating him like dirt?

Even as the bitterness of the moment came back to him, he controlled himself so as not to show weakness before the woman he was trying to woo back.

He was a little relieved to learn that Nyawlra had not been present at the ceremony, and, as truth is in the eyes of the interpreter, he tried to make her see things through his eyes.

“Believe me, I painted that madness at Machokali’s insistence. He gave me, or rather his aides gave me a copy of the architectural design and they wanted an artistic rendition of Marching to Heaven. To be very frank, I thought that the whole project was stupid and that’s why I insisted on the minister’s not mentioning my name.”

“I admire your modesty,” Nyawlra said. “Humility is certainly more becoming than humiliation.”

“Spare me your mockery. Let me tell you something. There are still many pillars of the Buler’s Party that are as solid as a rock. For instance, Minister Silver Sikiokuu. He, too, can see through this nonsense, and that’s why he came up with the brilliant idea of a personal spaceship modeled on some of those we see on these walls. What has been done is doable. Imagine the Buler ruling space. Sikiokuu is a political genius, a genuine visionary.”

“This is getting interesting. Who owns you, Minister Sikiokuu or His Boyal Mightiness? Whose youthwinger are you after all?”

“I’m not ashamed to say that I belong to the Buler’s Party. Total loyalty. One hundred percent. Were it not for his wise leadership, where would we all be? Imagine the disaster if the likes of Machokali led this country! To be one of the youthwings of the Buler is not a partisan act; it is a patriotic duty. Even university professors and PhDs are enlisting. Girls like you are now needed. The Girl-Youth.”

“I am a woman, a divorcee.”

“I just wanted to make sure that you knew that in the Ruler’s Youth there is no discrimination based on gender or age. Some of our most vocal members are women. A few professors are more than fifty years old. Sikiokuu himself is head of the youthwing movement; he is a genuine man of the people. He aims to make his youth happy. He wants women like you to join…”

“Go back to your Sikiokuu with his rabbit ears and tell him that Nyawlra does not bow to political bosses.”

“What is the difference? You now work for Tajirika, a loyal follower of Machokali.”

“Yes, but I am not employed as a political activist. I am an ordinary employee with an everyday job.”

“What is so ordinary about the ever-present queue outside your offices these days?”

“Didn’t you tell me just now that you happened to be passing by? So you have been here the whole day? And by the way, when are you going to London to get a bigger nose?” Nyawlra asked, and laughed as she tried to imagine how his nose would look if even larger. “Machokali has had his eyes enlarged, Sikiokuu his ears, and Big Ben Mambo his mouth, or rather his tongue. Who better than you to sniff out enemies of His Royal Mightiness?”