Ngũgĩ Thiong - Wizard of the Crow

“I wonder who would want her to whisper evil thoughts to a sleeping man?” he asked weakly.

“Your buddy. The man you call your friend. Some people have weird notions of friendship.”

“Who? You mean…”

“Anybody,” said Sikiokuu quickly, retreating from mentioning Machokali, hoping Tajirika himself would bring up the name.

“And what would they want her to whisper in my ear at night?”

“Something about power. Taking power.”

“Yes, but why by a whisper through Vinjinia? And at night, when I am asleep?”

“They may have been trying to soften you up to recruit you into their treasonous acts later,” Sikiokuu said lamely.

Despite Tajirika’s anger at his wife for not reporting his disappearance in time and now for having herself photographed with strange women, he still could not see Vinjinia having conversations on politics with anybody. An inner voice, an instinct of self-preservation, told him to be wary of the direction in which Sikiokuu was trying to push him.

“Let me tell you again,” Tajirika said quickly, as if retreating from the edges of a cliff. “I have never heard any talk, by anyone at any time, awake or asleep, about overthrowing the government.”

“Why do you trust people so much? Why are you so sure that an acquaintance, a close friend, a person high up in government even, has not used your wife for his own evil designs?”

“Quite frankly, Mr. Sikiokuu, I don’t think Vinjinia is capable of political plotting.”

“So you are defending her again? Where have all your doubts gone? Have you forgotten about the photographs so soon?”

“Silver Minister, they pain me; I beg you again to let me go home right away and face this treacherous woman. One night will suffice for me to extract the rotten truth.”

Sikiokuu grew alarmed and annoyed at the direction of Tajirika’s thinking, leading not to Machokali but to his wife’s possible treachery to him, the husband.

“Let’s go back to the beginning. Apart from yourself, have you ever seen or heard or been near any other person who desired to be white? Take your time. The trouble with you, Tajirika, is that you are loyal to the point of being, well, innocent. Don’t rule out anybody just because he may be your friend. Descartes says you doubt everything and everybody…”

“Even the Ruler?” Tajirika asked, genuinely puzzled. “Does he say we doubt the Ruler and his government?”

“I didn’t say that,” Sikiokuu answered sharply.

“Is this Descartes your friend, or adviser?” asked Tajirika.

“Mr. Tajirika!” Sikiokuu said coldly, barely hiding his anger and frustration. “I don’t really have time to waste. But you obviously need more time to think about the real meaning of your own words if, white, and wish.”

Sikiokuu rose from his chair.

“Please don’t go,” pleaded Titus Tajirika. “Don’t leave me in captivity.”

“Captivity in my office?” said Sikiokuu scornfully. “Tajirika, you seem to have a very high opinion of yourself. Were you seriously thinking that I was going to leave you alone in this office? Perhaps having fantasies of one day becoming a minister? Sir Titus Tajirika. You will never be anything more than a clumsy collector of bribes. The Waswahili say that if a Muslim must eat pork, then he might as well choose the juiciest. The same with the English. Better be hanged for a sheep than for a lamb. If you must accept bribes, at least have the imagination to ask for more than just a few symbolic coins, or else keep your nose clean like John Kaniürü, your deputy, and now, in your absence, both deputy and acting chairman of Marching to Heaven. And if he is confirmed in the seat, well, it is all because of your ungrateful refusal to cooperate.”

Sikiokuu pressed a button. Within seconds Tajirika was blindfolded and led out of the office, screaming in desperation, What do you and your Descartes want me to dor

Sikiokuu sat back in his chair and for a while tugged at his earlobes.

Then he took Vinjinia’s pictures and looked at each without taking in the details. The pictures had been his own invention, and it had almost broken his man. Everything was going on well until he mentioned the Frenchman. Why did I ever mention this Descartes? What if this idiot of a businessman should one day say that I was urging him to doubt the existence of the Ruler and his government?

What most annoyed him was the fact that he knew very little about Descartes and his philosophy of doubt. He had first heard the phrases bandied around at a cocktail party he once attended at the Eldares French Cultural Center, and they sounded very learned and beautiful on the tongue. Little knowledge was danger, it had been said. In disgust at himself, Sikiokuu suddenly threw the pictures on the ground. What shall I do to contain the situation?

It did not make matters any better when the following day he got yet another e-mail from Big Ben Mambo, Minister of Information, still in America, telling him to make preparations for the greatest airport reception for the Ruler.

Sikiokuu did not know what he feared most: the return of the Ruler while Nyawlra was still free or the Ruler’s return with a loan from the Global Bank that would result in an even more powerful Machokali. A more powerful Machokali would mean a more powerful Tajirika. Was his star beginning to dim? Yet the e-mail had not specified the date of return or whether the Global Bank had approved the loan. But this was a mere postponement of the inevitable, for he had given up hope of apprehending Nyawlra in whatever time remained.

As he slowly sunk into depression, he got an urgent call from Kaniürü with the incredible news that Kaniürü had finally found a way to get Nyawlra, but he did not want to discuss it on the phone.

Sikiokuu felt like a drowning man who had been thrown a lifeline. He did not delay. He sent his own chauffeur to fetch Kaniürü and bring him to the office.

Kaniürü had gone to the shrine disguised as a worker in a dirty and creased blue uniform and a baseball cap with a fading American company logo.

He had parked his Mercedes-Benz a mile away and walked. He had not breathed a word to anybody about his intended visit, and it was only when he reached Santalucia that he allowed himself to ask for the way to the shrine. He had made sure that he got there in the evening hours just as darkness was falling. No other client was waiting. A woman received him silently and pointed the way to the waiting room. After a few minutes, the same woman came back and showed him the way to the divination room and left him there, again without a word. He felt relieved that the woman had not asked him for anything about himself and, as no one knew his name, he grew even more confident in his disguise. He would give the Wizard of the Crow a false name and invent a history of himself.

Through a tiny window in the wall, Kaniürü saw the Wizard of the Crow holding a small mirror in his left hand. The Wizard appeared to be reading it like a book, not raising his eyes even as he talked to the supplicant.

“You live in Eldares,” the Wizard of the Crow stated.

“Yes,” assented John Kaniürü.

And you do not want anybody to know that you have been to my shrine.”

“Yes. Yes.”

“Even your bosses don’t know that you are here.”

“Yes.”

“Your work, or your name, has it something to do with smell?”

That statement rattled Kaniürü, and it made him pause for a second. It was so close to the truth of his name that he saw no point in denying it. This mirror has a lot of power, he thought.

“Yes,” he said at last.

“So you can be called the Smelling One… no, no… One-Who-Smells… Oh, why is the image of your name becoming blurry?… Oh yes, it’s back. Much clearer now. Something to do with Nose or Noses, something like that.”