Ngũgĩ Thiong - Wizard of the Crow

“I want you to know, Mr. Whitehead, that we are now coming to the most difficult part of the matter, so I want you to listen very carefully. What does the Holy Bible say about matrimony, holy matrimony?”

“That women should obey their husbands.”

“But that is after they are married. What about the marriage itself? What does the Bible say?”

“Mr. Wizard of the Crow, aren’t you digressing a bit?” Tajirika said, treading lightly so as not to offend his benefactor.

“You see, when two people are joined in holy matrimony, they become one flesh, or something like that.”

“What has that got to do with becoming white?”

“Logic, Mr. Clement Clarence Whitehead, simple white logic. A certain African sage says that whites are driven by logic and blacks by emotion. Think with white logic, not with black emotion. If it is true that when a man and woman are joined in holy matrimony they become one flesh, then the quickest and surest way to change the color of one’s skin is to marry into the color one wants to become. That means, Mr. Whitehead, that you must marry white so as to take on the whiteness of your spouse.”

“I hear you, and what I have heard so far is good,” Tajirika said.

“But how do I know that my wife will not take on my blackness, leaving me in the same black hole? Or does she become black and I white?”

“Why should you care? This is all about your becoming white. Look for a white woman who wants to be black, one of those forever frying herself under the sun, and you simply exchange colors. A kind of barter trading in color, don’t you think?”

Up to that point Vinjinia had not seen anything wrong with the steps the Wizard of the Crow proposed to cure Tajirika’s white-ache. But when now the talk turned to possibilities of Tajirika’s marrying white, she became wary: visions of a broken marriage, a broken home, seized her, and she could no longer hold her tongue.

“What are you saying, Mr. Wizard of the Crow? You are telling my husband to divorce me and marry a white woman? And you, Titus, how dare you even think of it? You would divorce me just like that after all the years we have been together? And with God blessing us with children?” She said all of this hastily, for she did not know to whom to direct her pain.

“Keep out of this and let the Wizard of the Crow finish what he was saying,” Tajirika shouted at Vinjinia with piercing, angry eyes. I have always said that black women have no manners, he said to himself as he turned back to the Wizard of the Crow, ignoring his wife completely. “After I marry white, what next?”

Nyawlra could hardly believe what she was hearing or what she saw unfolding before her. She felt like laughing but the laughter stuck in her throat as she witnessed another crisis erupt.

Vinjinia had started trembling and shaking like one possessed. At first Nyawlra thought it was from anger. Then she saw her fall off the chair onto the floor, where she started rolling. Tajirika rushed to Vinjinia and tried to lift her up but failed. Nyawlra was about to help him but then thought better of it. Let them settle their differences on their own. But Tajirika did not seem to be in a mood to settle anything, resentful as he was that the wizard’s rituals of magic transplant were now at the mercy of female daemons. After struggling to get his wife back on her feet, Tajirika managed to make Vinjinia sit up on the floor. Her eyes were wild and it seemed as if she was not even aware who Tajirika was. In a world to herself, she now took out a mirror from her bag and looked at her face. And then, to Nyawlra’s utter amazement, Vinjinia started coughing and muttering, “If! If only!”

To Tajirika, this seemed like the proverbial nail in the coffin of his dreams.

“Oh, Vinjinia, why have you done this to me?” he groaned, as he now turned helplessly to the Wizard of the Crow.

“She has caught your illness,” the Wizard of the Crow told Tajirika. “The disease is contagious, you know.”

He asked that Vinjinia and Tajirika trade places so that Vinjinia now faced the window directly, Tajirika silently observing.

The Wizard of the Crow took her through the same paces as Tajirika earlier on.

“Even wisdom locked in the heart never won a lawsuit,” the Wizard of the Crow now said, trying to massage her soul. “So vomit every word and let your thoughts come out without fear.”

Vinjinia did not need much coaxing.

“If my skin were not black would my husband have thought of leaving me? If only I could become white!” she said.

As soon as she uttered the last word, Vinjinia felt a big load off her mind; she, too, experienced the joy and relief of one who had just confessed her sins. She went through the steps already taken by her husband, even changing her name to Virgin Beatrice Whitehead, finally turning to her husband as if to say: I am a black sinner like you, and together let us seek salvation in whiteness.

“What shall we do to become white?” husband and wife asked in unison.

“Whites come in various tribes: Germans, French, Russian, Italians, Portuguese, Spanish, and even Japanese…”

“We want to be English,” they said, interrupting him.

“The English? Hakuna matata,” the Wizard of the Crow assured them. “But one small hurdle and we shall be on our way. The English, just like other whites, are of different varieties. And today there are also those black Britons who come from Bangladesh, Pakistan, India, Hong Kong, the Caribbean, and even from Africa…”

“We want a pure English skin,” they said promptly.

As Nyawlra sat in constant amazement at the drama unfolding before her eyes, the Wizard of the Crow told husband and wife to close their eyes and picture the kind of English person each wanted to become. He would capture these images in his mirror, the better to realize their dreams. Both shut their eyes.

He began with Tajirika, who quickly said that he could see an image in his head. Not very clearly, though, he added.

“Hold it there and don’t let it go,” the Wizard of the Crow told Tajirika. “There, I see him… yes, the man is as white as can be, in rags for trousers, and a leather jacket with brass buttons. His hair is blue and green and yellow, and is porcupine-style… a punk, no doubt about it, a punk…”

Tajirika interrupted him in horror: “No, not that kind of Englishman for me. I told you, I want to be a real Englishman.”

The Wizard of the Crow told him to open his eyes to let the image of the punk vanish.

Now it was Vinjinia’s turn. At first she was excited when the Wizard of the Crow spoke of a woman dressed in fur walking about in the streets of London. Oxford Street. Dean Street. A side street. But the woman was a Soho Square prostitute. Vinjinia screamed in protest, being the Christian that she was. The Wizard of the Crow then told her to open her eyes to allow the undesirable image to go.

A heated quarrel erupted between husband and wife, each berating the other for their respective choice of image: punk and whore.

The quarrel would have gotten worse, but the Wizard of the Crow intervened, warning them that if they continued fighting like that they would end up a cantankerous English couple. And it would certainly interfere with the emergence of other images that might present far more desirable choices.

The Wizard of the Crow ordered them to close their eyes again. They should try their best to imagine a more harmonious joint image of a ripe old age together.

“The colonial type, like the ones who used to lord over us here in Aburlria,” Tajirika clarified.

“They looked pure white, with their special clubs and attack dogs,” added Vinjinia.

“Lords. Aristocrats. Blue blood,” they agreed.