Ngũgĩ Thiong - Wizard of the Crow

Nyawlra shared their hopes that the boss would arrive shortly, for she was desperate for him to hire the extra help she needed. There were more than enough applicants in the second queue, she mused, wondering at the same time how or even whether the boss would interview them all.

After an hour or so of answering the same question many times over, Nyawlra started getting restless and anxious: Why was he so late? She had expected him quite early. Had he been involved in a car accident? Had he been robbed on the way home?

Tajirika’s wife, Vinjinia, who came to the office, was the one who finally resolved matters, but her news was not good: Tajirika was unwell and would not be coming to work today, she said tersely, without elaborating. What illness could have prevented Tajirika from coming to collect more bags of money? He had seemed in excellent health when they parted last night, but Nyawlra did not dwell much on that because she was now preoccupied with what to do about the two queues.

“Was there no message for me?” she asked Vinjinia, who just shook her head.

“Is this place always like this?” Vinjinia asked, as if steering the conversation from her husband to the subject of queues, but she was genuinely curious.

Vinjinia was a homebody, basically Tajirika’s housekeeper. They had three boys and two girls. The eldest son, who had a degree in mechanical engineering, worked for a German firm that sold tractors and agricultural implements. He was married and lived on the coast. The second son and the eldest girl were both residential students at the University of Eldares, the girl majoring in education and the boy in business administration. The youngest, Gacirü and Gaclgua, a girl and a boy, were in a day primary school and lived at home with their parents. Tajirika wanted to send them to a boarding school but Vinjinia resisted-she wanted to look after them a bit longer. Tending the farms and the children kept Vinjinia busy at home in Golden Heights, and she had rarely visited her husband’s office. She was so cut off from his business and political circuit that she had not even attended the famous birthday rally when her husband had shaken hands with the Ruler. She found out about it only after Tajirika returned home, one hand wrapped in a handkerchief, and she had wondered whether something terrible had happened to him. Sensing her concern, he had laughed and explained the sweet mystery, promising to buy a glove for his hand to keep the memory of the handshake from the Ruler alive. She did not understand what he was talking about, but she trusted her husband to deal with outside matters while she worried about life at home.

Only church on Sunday could lure her into Santalucia and Santa-maria. She was a member of All Saints Cathedral, and on Sundays she would mingle with other parishioners-not to catch up with the latest news in the political and business worlds but to ascertain the latest state of her fellow churchgoers’ souls. She was among those who never wanted to miss a single episode in the epic battle of Maritha and Mariko with Satan.

“I have never seen anything like this,” Nyawlra told her, referring to the queues.

“What shall we do about it?” they asked each other.

Why not tell them the truth? they said, looking through the window. The queues were now so long that the women could not even see the rear.

The two women marched to the front of each queue and put up a notice: TAJIRIKA IS NOT IN TODAY: COME BACK TOMORROW. They went back inside to await the outcome.

And now a sight even more amazing unfolded. When those at the head of the queue read the notice and broke the news, those immediately behind them refused to believe their ears and insisted on seeing the notice for themselves. In the end those who read it did not even bother informing those behind them and simply went away in silence, the others imagining that they had simply met with bad luck or did not want to show elation for fear of exciting envy. Those at the back of the queue thought the lines were moving and were joined by others. Even those who had already left, on seeing this apparent movement, would rejoin the queues at the rear. This game of attrition at the front and replacement at the rear continued. Queues without an end, Nyawlra said to Vinjinia as they sought a way out of this dilemma.

They decided to seek help from the Santamaria police station. It was the nearest, and its head, Wonderful Tumbo, was a friend. He promised to dispatch traffic police to deal with the situation.

But it was not until the afternoon that the promised police officers arrived, two in a Land Rover and the other two on motorcycles, wielding bullhorns. They conferred with Nyawlra and Vinjinia. From what they had seen upon driving up to the office, it was obvious to them that their shouted instructions, no matter how amplified, would not carry to the end of the queues. Do something, the women appealed.

After animated discussions among themselves, the police officers decided on a course of action: the two on motorcycles would ride along the queues and shout their instructions through the bullhorns. The others would hang around the premises to spot and quell trouble.

The two riders took to the road, repeating the same message over and over again: Tajirika is not in the office, people should go home and come back another day. But nobody believed them; the queues showed no sign of thinning out, the game of attrition, replacement, and apparent movement in full swing, serving only to confirm that the police officers were lying.

In the office, Nyawlra remembered that an answering machine had recently been installed, and she quickly programmed it to respond, This is Eldares Modern Construction and Real Estate. Mr. Tajirika is away from the phone at the moment. She toyed with the idea of inserting the sentence Your call is important to us, but then she changed her mind and continued. But if you leave your name, telephone number, and the time you called, we shall get back to you as soon as possible. Please begin recording your message after the tone. Nyawlra felt relief and rejoined Vinjinia, who had been at the window, monitoring the goings-on outside.

They had thought that the two police officers on motorcycles would come back within a few minutes, but they were still missing even after one hour. The first to return after two hours was the one who had shadowed the queue of the rich, and he had been able to do so because, in his own words, “my line was not as long as the other one,” adding that in all his life as a police officer he had never encountered such long queues. Even so, his message had had no effect: the queue of the rich remained as it had been all day.

But shortly after five o’clock, something strange happened. The queue of the hunters of contracts vanished. Just like that. Starting apparently at the back of the queue, they had stolen away one by one, and within a few minutes their stealthy retreat had turned into a stampede toward their Mercedes-Benzes; in a short time all parking places were empty. Curious that they should refuse to heed a law enforcement officer but then flee within seconds of one another for no apparent reason! Very strange, the women told each other. Perhaps the same thing would happen to the other queue, they hoped, but no such luck: the queue remained intact with no indication that it would vanish like the other. The police rider attending it was nowhere in sight. As much as the two women strained their eyes and ears, they saw no police officer, no motorcycle.

If you had been there when Nyawlra was telling Kamltl all this, you would have wondered, just as he did, whether to cry or laugh, for, as she told him, there came a time when she and Vinjinia felt that the office had become their jail. The sun was calling it a day, but not the queuers. And the women hesitated to go home without a report from the missing police rider.