Ngũgĩ Thiong - Wizard of the Crow

“And who told you all this about me?”

“It’s a long story, but I shall make it short. I was in another queue outside the office of Chairman Titus. He was unable to come to the office, but we stuck to our guns, waiting in line the whole day. Then a friend who heard it from a friend who heard it from a friend who had been told about it by a police officer who supplies him with useful information in exchange for a fee-you know how it is in Aburiria today, nothing is for free and information is power-anyway this police officer told him what you had done for one of his police mates: sent all his enemies packing to the other world and had him promoted to a rank that he could never have dreamt of. Later, rumor has it, you received ten other policemen, the original informant being among them. So I thought, let me sneak out of this queue in front of Titus’s office and secure more powers before I meet with Chairman Titus tomorrow.”

Nyawlra now understood why at about six the queue of the rich and the powerful had mysteriously ceased to be, leaving her and Vin-jinia wondering.

“Sir Wizard of the Crow,” the patient was now saying, “I want you to use only your mirror, and whatever you want will be yours. How much do you charge for divining with a mirror?”

“I don’t put a price on divining. But the mirror demands some effort and decision on the part of he who seeks its power to reveal the hidden. The mirror sees and sends back only what is placed in front of it. You place more, it sees more, you place less, it sees less. So the matter is entirely in the hands of they who seek its powers of divination.”

“Money is nothing to me,” Nyawlra heard the man shout. “I want you to use the most powerful mirror possible. Maximum power. I will place an offering of the biggest envelope possible before the oracle, and I am sure it will please the mirror.”

“I grant you your wishes,” said Kamltl, and he now outlined the same steps he had earlier worked out with Constable A.G. and the ten policemen. “Close your eyes tight. Look for the image that forms in the night of your mind. The moment you see it, you must alert the Wizard of the Crow. Once I capture the image in your mind in my mirror, I will then scratch its hands, mouth, and eyes to weaken them. Weakening the organs of your enemy is the same thing as strengthening yours. It is like any scale. There are two ways of changing the balance between two opposing forces. You either add weight to one side or you remove weight from the opposite side. Divining is a science.”

“It is not the love of science that brought me to your shrine,” the man said with passion. “I want something that occurs without discernible rhyme or reason. I want the pure play of occult powers. I want magic, not science.”

Nyawlra could hardly believe her ears. If she had heard an account of what she herself had heard, she would almost certainly have dismissed it as a lie: the rich and the powerful denouncing scientific reason in favor of illogical mumbo jumbo. And to know that these men belong to the same class as the leaders of new nations? What did the future of the country hold with these men at the helmr

Her ruminations were suddenly interrupted by a rapturous scream from the divinee.

“I can see an image! I see it!” the man was saying in the tone of a child who has discovered a new ability.

“Can you tell whose image it is?” asked the Wizard of the Crow.

“No! No! But it does not matter-let this image stand for all my enemies.”

“Hold it! Hold it right there! Don’t let it slip away” Kamltl told him, and he started scratching the mirror.

“The image is now no more. Instead I see numerous starlets falling in the dark,” the man said. “Maybe it is my enemies shattered like broken glass! This is wonderful! Starlets falling about me, leaving me the lone star in the firmament!”

“Then the deed is done. You saw what you wanted to see. You can now open your eyes. Your luck lies before you.”

“Thank you! Thank you, Sir Wizard,” the man said. “New powers course through me. I can now march in step with Marching to Heaven.”

He left and instantly another took his place. To Nyawlra the procession was like one cinematic frame dissolving into another. The frames may have had different characters, but the story was the same. In the end Nyawlra grew tired of hearing it and fell asleep.

Water splashing woke her up. Kamltl was showering, and she waited for him to finish. He was scrubbing himself with grim determination.

“You almost used up all the water,” she said when they were together in the sitting room.

“It is the stench they left behind,” Kamltl said. “I still feel that I never got rid of it. Look through the window; see if they’re all gone.”

Nyawlra peered outside. The queue of hooded human silhouettes did not appear to be diminishing. She closed the window and looked at Kamltl askance.

“When midnight came,” Kamltl explained, “I wrote a notice, CLOSED FOR THE NIGHT: COME BACK TOMORROW, and I asked the one I saw last to hang it outside.”

“They are doing exactly what they did in the day when I posted the notice about Tajirika’s absence,” Nyawlra said.

What are you talking about?” Kamltl asked, puzzled.

She told Kamltl about her day at the office and about the grant of special powers to Sikiokuu to crush the Movement for the Voice of the People. Kamltl in turn recounted his adventures as the Wizard of the Crow.

“A never-ending dream,” Kamltl concluded.

“More like a never-ending nightmare,” Nyawlra said, looking at her watch and suddenly standing up. “It is very late. Tomorrow we shall need all the strength we can muster to face the queuing daemons.”

When we wake up,” Kamltl said, “we shall find them gone.”

But the queues did not go away. For a while all the news of the Global Bank mission, the battles of Mariko and Maritha with Satan, and the saga of flying souls and pamphleteering djinns was supplanted by the drama of the invasion of Eldares by queuing daemons.

Nyawlra and Vinjinia arrived at the office at about the same time every day. They talked of how curious it was that the queue of hunters for future contracts had dwindled to zero, Nyawlra neglecting to tell Vinjinia that it had simply changed location. Pressed by Vinjinia to do something about the remaining queue, the Santamaria police said there was not much they could do without the report from the police motorcycle rider who had still not returned. So the two women waited patiently for the return of the rider to signal the end of the queue.

Their monotony was broken only when Vinjinia brought her two children, Gacirü and Gaclgua, to the office during midterm break. The children said that they did not want to stay home with their father because he kept on barking a single phrase over and over, and they were a little afraid that he might be turning into a dog.

Gacirü and Gaclgua were so excited by the sight of the queue that they quickly forgot about their father’s illness. They stood by the window, looking out and asking endless questions. Were they students? For only in school had they seen people queue. They soon grew bored with the whole thing, as there was little out there by way of shoving, hide-and-seek, or frantic chases eliciting admonition.

Gaclgua was the first to ask their mother to tell them a story, and Vinjinia pointed at their new auntie.

Nyawlra sang them work songs and recited poems about weaver-birds and elephants. But the children wanted stories. Nyawlra told them that stories were for evenings only, at home by the fireside and not daytime in the office by the phoneside. Hakuna matata. Gacirü and Gaclgua would pretend that it was evening and the office was home and all the people in the queue were listeners. Eventually Nyawlra yielded and said she would tell them a story about a blacksmith, an ogre, and a pregnant woman.