Wizard of the Crow

15

The Ruler was growing anxious, too. Regarding the captive in the State House, he felt torn by numerous and often conflicting desires. He wanted him dead and alive at the same time. He wanted him alive so the man could disclose the secret of how money grows and dead so that he could never reveal it to another soul or reveal that he had revealed it to the Ruler. He wanted him alive so that he could help in the capture of Nyawlra and the leaders of the Movement for the Voice of the People, and dead for having heretofore kept privileged information to himself. He wanted him alive to cure him, the Ruler, of his bodily expansion, but dead for claiming that he was pregnant, attracting, to the Ruler’s chagrin, the pest known as world media. But what chagrined him even more was that on weighing the two desires he found the one for the body alive outweighing the one for the body as corpse. The captive carried much knowledge that, harnessed properly, could benefit the Ruler enormously, but this thought made him angry, because with it he was admitting that the Wizard of the Crow had powers that he, the Almighty, lacked, and this would not do in a country where he had come to believe the claims of his praise singers that he was the number one in everything. How to unlock the words of knowledge trapped in the larynx of the Wizard of the Crow? The

Ruler agonized over this, and that is why he kept Tajirika by his side at all times. It was not a matter he wanted to discuss with any of his ministers, for he did not want any of them to acquire the knowledge of how money grows on trees. Tajirika was different.

The Ruler had not always been so enamored of Tajirika. He had appointed him chairman of Marching to Heaven initially as an interim measure, pending the release of funds by the Global Rank. But he had started to think well of Tajirika the moment he realized that the man was a crook, better at the art than any of his counselors. It was Tajirika’s disclosure that as chairman of Marching to Heaven he used to demand payment in dollars from potential contractors that first impressed the Ruler and made him decide that he could certainly do business with this man. A person who could make others beg to pay in fresh dollars for services yet to come was way ahead of the game. Kaniuru and Sikiokuu suffered by comparison. These two had asked for kickbacks in Aburirian Runs: what a different approach to wealth and well-being! This showed that Tajirika could be entrusted with any task that required bending or breaking the law under the guise of legality.

Even more, the Ruler was impressed with Tajirika’s discreetness. The contrast with Kaniuru was telling. Kaniuru had rushed to share his plan of crooked gains with Sikiokuu, but Tajirika never so much as whispered a word to Machokali. Not even under torture did he let the secret out. The Ruler needed such a person of unalloyed loyalty by his side.

Events took on a logic of their own, making the unlocking of the wizard’s words of knowledge even more urgent. The queues, which had seemed random and pointless, took on greater organization. The students and the youth, mostly unemployed, were beginning to gather outside Parliament buildings, courts of law, and radio and television stations, media outlets serving as the Ruler’s mouthpiece. Skirmishes with the police occured with greater frequency, and not only in Eldares! Reports suggested that queues were spreading in all urban centers of the country with an intensity not seen before.

Coincidentally questions about the missing minister from all corners of the globe gathered momentum, especially those from London and Washington. Even after the government issued its statement implicating Machokali in a coup plot, the barrage of questions was unrelenting. These trends could not be allowed to continue: his alleged pregnancy made him a laughing stock, insurgents were wreaking havoc all over the place, and pressure from abroad was building. His absence from public view only intensified the pressure and the questions.

He tried to silence the tongues of those wondering why he was not seen in public by recalling the deputy ambassador in Washington to become, effective immediately, the official national hostess at receptions and other functions that required his ceremonial presence. She accepted and signed her e-mail of acceptance as Dr. Yunique Immaculate McKenzie, PhD, NOH, thus changing her name yet again to fit the new rung in her rise to power.

The appointment and acceptance, announced on the radio and carried in all the other media, only fueled the rumors of a debilitating pregnancy as the cause of his absence from the public. The Wizard of the Crow was the only person who, in addition to providing knowledge of money growing on trees, a knowledge that would lessen the Ruler’s dependence on the Global Bank, could squelch all these rumors of pregnancy immediately. The Ruler would force the wizard to confess in public that it was his letter to Machokali, which had generated tales of pregnancy as part of the minister’s coup plot. The only hitch to these solutions was again the tiny word, if, that blocked the wizard’s speech. A wizard to cure the wizard had to be found.

The Ruler pointed a finger at Tajirika and said to him solemnly, “You are a resourceful man, Governor. You were once stricken with the malady of words and you found a cure. A person who can take over a whole armed camp with a bucket of shit and piss as his only weapon can surely find the sorcerer I need. Governor, over to you!”

16

Weeks after his elevation, Tajirika could still not believe that he was now governor of the Central Bank of Aburlria. He could not be blamed for being a little cautious about accepting his new status, for his fortunes had swung from one end of the pendulum to the other, time and again, since the Wizard of the Crow came into his life on that fateful evening at Eldares Modern Construction and Real Estate to look for a job he clearly did not need.

Many were the times he had found himself saluting his reflection in a mirror-Hello, Governor, are you really he? The sound of the word governor thrilled him, recalling as it did the long line of colonial governors of territorial Aburlria. What had started as a playful act of self-affirmation now became a need, and more and more he found himself conversing with his reflection, especially on matters he could never talk about with anybody else. Hello, Governor, what shall we do today? he would say to the image in the mirror as he brushed his teeth or tied his tie. And just before departing from the house: Bye-bye, Governor. And in the evening: I am back, Governor. How was your day at the office? And any of these lines could trigger a dialogue with himself in the mirror.

So when the Ruler gave Tajirika the task of finding a sorcerer to exorcise the evil blocking the voice of the Wizard of the Crow, he was back at the mirror, speaking to his reflection.

“Where shall I start? Should I go along the streets, stopping people and saying, Excuse me, I am the new governor of the Central Bank. Can you please tell me where I can find a sorcerer? A bit embarrassing, wouldn’t you say, for the governor of the Central Bank to go about the streets of Eldares asking for a witch doctor?”

Many Aburlrians did not believe that people, except the aged, died of natural causes. They believed that all untimely deaths were caused by witchcraft. Were Tajirika to openly look for witch doctors, might he himself not be deemed an agent of death and held responsible for harm suffered by others, Machokali, for instance? And suddenly he had a vision of being blamed for all deaths in Aburlria, and he shuddered at his foolishness. He stared helplessly at the mirror, not realizing that he was shouting: “Governor, what shall I do? What shall we do to get the Wizard of the Crow a cure without putting ourselves in danger?”

“What danger?” Vinjinia, who had just come into the bathroom, asked him. “Why are you talking to the mirror? Have you forgotten the past?”

17

Since Tajirika’s capture by the women and Vinjinia’s by Kaniuru and his youth, the two had improved their relationship. Their social life had also changed, and not a week went by without invitations to cocktails and dinner parties at seven-star hotels. The glittering socials and the closeness to power were attractive to her, and the political talk and gossip did not repulse her the way they used to do. The only thing in her previous lifestyle to which she clung with the same intensity was her churchgoing. She went to the same church, All Saints, but since her