But no sooner had he solved this problem than Njoya and Kahiga walked into his office to complicate his life.
23
As faithful servants of the State and loyal lieutenants to Sikiokuu, Njoya and Kahiga felt duty bound to acquaint him with the intelligence they had gathered on the phone without disclosing how the information had come to them. They mostly wanted to convey the seriousness of what Sikiokuu had done.
“It is our duty to let you know of any threats to the security of the State,” Kahiga started, “and we now fear that Aburlria is facing anger untold.”
“Aburlria may come to tremble with troubles as yet unknown,” Njoya added.
“What kind of troubles?”
“Unimaginable,” Kahiga said.
“Brought about by what or whom?” Sikiokuu asked, recalling his own indiscretions of the night.
“The Wizard of the Crow,” Njoya added.
“The result of jailing him,” said Kahiga.
“He might lose some of his hair,” warned Njoya.
“Or some of his nails,” Kahiga added.
“Or fall and sprain his ankles,” Njoya said.
“He might suffer a bellyache from the food we feed prisoners,” Kahiga said.
“He might be scarred by beatings.”
“His bones might ache from the prison bed that’s as hard as rock,” Kahiga said.
“He might disappear the way the enemies of the State disappear in Aburlria,” said Njoya.
“Then those of us who have had anything to do with his disappearance will vanish from the face of the earth.”
“Like dinosaurs,” stressed Njoya.
“Or implode, break into pieces like a broken mirror…”
“Shut up!” Sikiokuu shouted at his lieutenants. “Go away, misery. Do you think that the Wizard of the Crow is God’s twin brother?”
24
Njoya and Kahiga were Sikiokuu’s most faithful lieutenants in the power struggles, and their dissension over this matter affected him like an ache from one’s bodily organs. He recalled the mirror he had shattered. The two men were not in the room when he stomped the mirror, so how did they come to dangle before him the image of broken pieces? Had the wizard transmitted to them, through his sorcery, the words they were saying? Was this the beginning of the breaking up of his social and bodily organs? He was overcome with fear.
Tossing and turning at midnight, Sikiokuu would hear a voice saying, almost mockingly,
With the resolution, he had achieved clarity of mind, he thought, and early the next morning he went to the office, expecting important news about the Ruler’s arrival date. There was a time when he did not look forward to the return of the delegation, for it meant Machokali’s triumph. But now, sure of Tajirika’s confessions and the certainty of the wizard’s inevitable descent into Hell, he felt no unease. He was even looking forward to it. He found no faxes so he opened the computer. But before he had cleared his e-mail, the telephone rang.
It was Tajirika. Why was he calling so early? A good omen? As they exchanged greetings and the reasons for the early call, Sikiokuu opened an e-mail message and started reading it silently.
The sender was Machokali. Sikiokuu was sick to his stomach. Was the Ruler dying? What if the Ruler were to anoint Machokali as his legitimate successor? The thought was too horrible to contemplate, and in his own mind Sikiokuu started planning to seize power.
He thought he had better read the full text of the message carefully to see what might be hidden between the lines. He was dumbstruck. For there, in the main body of the e-mail, was the name Wizard of the Crow. He could not believe what his eyes were reading.
Sikiokuu was to send for the Wizard of the Crow, issue him a diplomatic passport, help him secure a visa, and put him on the next available plane to New York.
He felt paralyzed. His lieutenants, Kahiga and Njoya, had forewarned him of troubles unimaginable. He recalled his resolution. He sat back in his chair, stared at the ceiling, and tugged at his earlobes meditatively.
SECTION III
1
After going home, Tajirika acted like a person cured of one malady only to become victim of another even deadlier one. He had an irresistible yearning to beat his wife. Every night he dreamed of it, woke up in the morning with the thought of it, and spent the whole day nursing every little hurt into a provocation that would justify it. Still, nothing in Vinjinia’s words and actions warranted a beating.
Tajirika was surprised to find that Vinjinia had run all his businesses efficiently. She had kept good records. If anything, under her stewardship, the businesses had actually grown and had attracted new clients and orders. All in all, she had come through as if she had been a businesswoman all her life. Instead of making Tajirika happy, this faultless performance served to increase the doubts he already had about her. Where had this new Vinjinia been hiding before this? To catch her in a lie, he tried every ruse, springing questions on her at random, but she would answer them all simply and clearly.
“Okay, you can now resume your place in the kitchen,” he told her without a word of thanks.
She had run the home as efficiently. And in her accounts of her social ins and outs he saw no inconsistencies. Left alone to his thoughts, Tajirika concluded that all was a show; Vinjinia’s supposed competence and wifely rectitude were nothing but hypocrisy. Was this not the picture she had always presented to him before his abduction? The face of a person without too many questions about this or that? The face of loyal silence? But a woman who, while presenting him with the wifely ideal, had still found time and energy to consort with shameful dancers? And yet not once during all the years of wedded bliss and procreation had she once mentioned them. If anything, she had expressed only contempt toward tradition and ritual performance. How, then, had she come to know these women to the extent of being photographed together in public? When did she start keeping their
