Wizard of the Crow

It was Jane Kanyori. He quickly glanced at the video. A woman was now on top of the hero, guiding his hands over her nipples, and Kaniuru realized that much time had passed since he last relieved himself on real flesh and blood. Kanyori never needed too much coaxing. Not that he was overexcited about her. These times were different from those of Marching to Heaven and money laundering, and after their romp in bed tonight he would call off their relationship.

A glance at the huge suitcase she dragged behind her and he assumed that she was bringing him gifts, but, really, did she have to do this? Denying herself to give him all? Her generosity would make parting difficult, but it would not deter him from letting her know that this was going to be their last night together.

She dragged the suitcase all the way to the bedroom, but when he heard her say that he was to send a chauffeur in the morning to bring home the remaining luggage, Kaniuru smelled something not right.

“What is the meaning of this?” he said, standing at the entrance to his bedroom.

“In the living room,” said Kanyori. “We should talk about it as two good businesspeople. I hate the word businessman for it assumes that women do not do business.”

“What do you want?” Kaniuru asked her after they sat down on the settee in the living room.

“I have come to realize that you are not the churchy type, with their ostentatious wedding ceremonies.”

“Did somebody tell you that I was planning a wedding ceremony?”

“John, I know you are shy, the type of male who finds it hard to say truly what is in his heart. So I made it easy for you. Oh, John, do you know what I did? Shall I marry him? I asked myself, responding to the question locked up inside of you. I wrote down YES and NO on two separate pieces of paper, put them in a bowl, shook it, shut my eyes, then picked one. YES! What about the day? I did the same with the days of the week, each one on a separate piece of paper. I could not argue against the hand of fate. I thought it best to move in right away so that early tomorrow morning, as decreed by fate, we can go for a civil ceremony at the district commissioner’s.”

“Are you crazy? Ondoka. GET OUT!” he yelled, threatening to call the police.

“Hold it! Have you forgotten all the work you and I have done together? A husband-and-wife team?”

“What are you talking about?” he said, moving away from her.

“John, dear,” Kanyori said in a softer voice, moving toward him. “You disappoint me. Has the defense portfolio turned you into a male chauvinist black pig} And here I thought that you were a liberated Aburlrian male? Let me tell you the truth. My heart flew to you the day you trusted me with your secrets and all that money. That’s why I never asked you for a penny for all the work I did for you. Being your confidante was its own reward.”

“How much do you want to settle this?”

“Money? What an insult to your wife!”

“My wife? Over my dead body,” he said at once, and he stood up. “Or over yours?” he added, wagging a finger at her. “You, a wife beater?” Kanyori asked with feigned terror in her eyes. “I have vowed that if any male so much as touches me even with his smallest finger, I would scream so loud that all the secrets that I have locked in my heart would reach all the way to the State House.”

“Are you threatening me? Don’t you know that I can finish you off right here and nobody will ever know or care what happened to you?”

“Oh, dear, and then those I left waiting by the road not too far from this residence will say that I contracted the same illness that finished off Machokali? Luminous Karamu-Mbu? Rachael? What do you people call it? Oh yes, SID. Tell me the truth: were you also involved in Machokali’s SID? I remember you telling me that he once tried to thwart your rise to the top by refusing to say that you sketched the first images of Marching to Heaven. By the way, I checked that story and discovered that Machokali had asked your students to draw the images.”

“Shut up, woman!”

“Oh, so you think that silence is the name of a woman? It is not my name. But I don’t talk much. For instance, it is only my lawyer and a few other people who know that I came home. What will you tell them tomorrow? She appears; she disappears.”

“You have no proof,” Kaniuru said, a sinking feeling in his belly.

“God gave me a foolish attachment to paper, documents, anything with handwriting on it-even those pieces of paper on which you used to practice the signatures of… let us not mention their names. I still have them safe in a bank.”

He weakened at the joints and slumped back onto the sofa. In his brief tenure as Minister Kaniuru had seen the extent of the Ruler’s greed. There was no defense contract, even the tiniest, from which the Ruler did not expect a cut. Not that Kaniuru was judgmental. He had found out in the same period that all the big merchants of death had bribe money built into the costs of securing lucrative contracts for their companies and their governments. So the Ruler was part of a chain of global corruption in the arms trade. And Kaniuru, a quick learner, had no problem with that.

Still, this did not make the Ruler any more tolerant with being double-crossed. But what scared Kaniuru the most was not her reference to the loot from Marching to Heaven but her mention of the signatures. In addition to Sikiokuu’s, Kaniuru had tried his hand at the Ruler’s signature in an attempt to impress Kanyori with his penmanship. She had him by the balls. He thought he was toying with her, and it now turned out that it was she who had been toying with him!

“And by the way, dear Jane, does anybody else know about those papers?” he said, trying to change tack.

“There are two birds who know that if anything were ever to happen to me, SID, for instance, they are to look for the reason in the safe.”

“Jane, my dear Jane, you are so secretive. And those birds… who are they?”

“Their names? Please allow your wife to keep those secrets to herself.”

“How much money do you really want for those papers?” Kaniuru asked, seeing that the tack had failed.

“This is the eve of our wedding. We should be talking Dirty Diana,’ as Michael Jackson used to sing, and not dirty money. The fact is, there is nothing you have touched with your hands that I have not kept safely away. Sometimes I feel like laughing at my foolishness, because even the irons with which I once chained you to my bed are still with me. How do you put a money value on love mementos?”

“When do you want us to marry?” Kaniuru said abruptly, resigned.

“To be honest with you, I married you a long time ago. What remains is for us to exchange rings and sign papers at the district commissioner’s first thing tomorrow. Or shall we invite a priest here?”

“It’s not necessary to call a priest,” Kaniuru hastened to say. “But let me ask you this. Once we marry, I mean, once we sign those papers at the district commissioner’s, will you tell me everything, the names of all those who know about those documents, the bank in which they are deposited, and how we can retrieve them so that we can keep them safe in our own home?”

“What is there to hide between husband and wife? I am sure you will also tell me all about your property and we’ll divide it in half, or we’ll go for joint ownership of everything.”

“You will never get away with this,” Kaniuru burst out in English. “With what?” Kanyori asked, seemingly perplexed. “Marrying you?”

“Listen carefully and understand my words. You are not my wife. My heart belongs to another.”

“You see another woman behind my back?” Kanyori said with feigned anger. “We shall marry and file for divorce at the same time. But remember that divorce comes with a property settlement. A minister’s wife must be kept in the lifestyle she has become accustomed to. I will cite Nyawlra as the other woman. You will, of course, explain why you lied about her death. Oh, my war hero. And you were given and actually accepted a medal for killing a defenseless woman? Your first love? Oh, I know. You killed her with words. Just as you did your parents. Remember how you used to tell me that you were an orphan brought up by a grandmother? What of the man and woman who were once in a newspaper looking for you after the students had dragged you into a police station? I could not believe it, and later I visited your village just to make sure that my in-laws were alive and well. They know me as simply Jane! They will be very disappointed if they hear that their beloved son was divorcing a woman who has been looking after them-oh yes, I have been looking after them-in favor of a woman who opposed the government.”

“Leave my parents out of this,” Kaniuru said, breathing fire.

“Well, I can understand why you killed them with words. But tell me: why did you kill Nyawlra with words? So that you could see each other safely, without suspicions?”

“I am not saying that I am in contact with those terrorists,” Kaniuru hastened to say, terror-stricken by the