Wizard of the Crow

Nyawlra, when you are around I feel immersed in the freshness of the fields when flowers are in bloom and bees and butterflies flit about gathering nectar to make the honey of life. That was the atmosphere that you had left behind in the house this morning.

“But then Constable Arigaigai Gathere arrives. The whole house stunk during his entire stay. And even after he left, the heavy stench remained. That is what propelled me into a cleansing frenzy.”

Still, no matter what he did, the stench would not go away. Maybe a dead rat was rotting somewhere in the house, so he searched under the bed, the chairs, everywhere, turning things over, but to no avail. Tired and frustrated, he sat by the table in the living room. Suddenly he knew the source of the foulness: the police officer’s money. KamltT immediately put all the notes in a plastic bag, put the bag into an empty cocoa can, and closed the lid. He dug a hole outside and buried the can.

“The smell grew faint but was still in the air,” he told Nyawlra. “But when you entered the house it disappeared altogether, replaced by the fresh scent of flowers.”

Nyawlra felt like laughing and saying something lighthearted but, seeing how serious Kamltl was, she restrained herself.

“Just now I don’t feel like I smell of any flower,” Nyawlra said, let alone a fresh one after the rains. But thank you. I love flowers.”

“The same kind of thing happened yesterday when I entered your office. I inhaled a sweet scent of flowers from where you sat, but when Tajirika emerged from the inner office I scented the stench of…”

“…a corpse?” Nyawlra suggested.

“… a rotting heart, soul, but how can one smell a soul? Besides, I sometimes scent the same from buildings, and now the money left here by that police officer. But money and buildings have no souls.”

“You know,” said Nyawlra, “if you had talked only about Tajirika I would have said, Yes, I see what you mean. For everything about him rots. Did you see his right hand? It is always in a glove. Why? Because that is the hand that once shook the hand of the Ruler and he wants to retain the touch of power. The hand and the glove are never washed. So whatever he touches stinks. I sometimes wonder what his wife, Vinjinia, thinks about the gloved hand. But the rot goes beyond the hand. Money has corrupted his soul completely. You can’t even begin to guess how much he collected today, and all because he was made the chairman of the committee for Marching to Heaven.”

“What? How?” Kamltl asked. “What is the connection between being appointed a chair of Marching to Heaven and collecting money?”

Now it was her turn to tell Kamltl the story of her day. She told him everything except her encounter with Kaniuru at the Mars Cafe. She did not want to burden him with worries about being followed. But she did talk, almost triumphantly, about the signboards.

“We removed the old signboard. If you came tomorrow you could get a job as my assistant.”

“Work a job at that man’s place? I would rather set up a shop as a witch doctor,” he said flippantly.

“So what are your plans for tomorrow?” Nyawlra asked.

“I don’t know. I just want to go back to the wilderness tonight. I stayed because I thought you should know that the police officer came back, and about what happened in your house today.”

“And the money?”

“I will bury it in the prairie. The earth shall be my bank.”

“Or are you planting it?” Nyawlra added; the idea of burying the money seemed absurd to her. “Are you planting it like a farmer plants seeds to secure abundance? Well, all I can say is that when your money tree grows, please come for me at harvest time.” She stood up and said: “But let us first eat something before you begin your journey into the wilderness.”

Nyawlra cooked ugali. Dipping ugali balls in the broth that Kamro had made earlier in the day, they ate their last dinner together in near silence, each self-absorbed. They had mixed feelings about their encounter and imminent parting. They felt they had always known each other; at the same time they were complete strangers. Their shared experience of the previous night now appeared as events involving other people in another country far away and long ago. Even though they now teased each other into laughter, they felt a little awkward and slightly embarrassed.

“And when you leave this place,” Nyawlra asked, breaking the silence between them, “how will your patients know where or how to find you?”

“Who tells you that I intend to go on with this business of witchcraft?” Kamltl said, almost irritated by the question. He was not a witch doctor. He was a make-believe Wizard of the Crow.

About to respond, Nyawlra looked at her watch, and she suddenly let out a cry as if she had just remembered an important appointment. She stood, grabbed her handbag, and hurriedly addressed Kamltl:

“I have to be somewhere. Don’t go to the wilderness tonight. Be my guest one more day. I will be away for a few hours only, but don’t wait up for me. Sleep on the sofa, like last night. Please don’t open the door for anybody. I have no friends or family who visit me here, even in the daytime.”

She did not wait for him to respond. She just left.

Who is this woman? Kamro walked over to the couch, befuddled. Where is she going? Who is she going to meet? But soon he was lost in thoughts and worries about himself.

He was glad that Nyawlra had offered her couch once more. But what was happening to him? Yesterday morning I was a job hunter. Midday I was a corpse, a piece of garbage about to be buried among other garbage. In the afternoon I was an object of Tajirika’s self-amusement. In the evening I was a beggar among beggars outside the gates of Paradise. Last night I was on the run, pursued by His Mighty’s police force. This morning I was the Wizard of the Crow, divining for one of His Mighty’s police officers. And tonight I am a watchman in the house of a mysterious woman whom I met only yesterday.

Brooding on all of this, he fell asleep. Nyawlra shook him out of his stupor the following morning and offered him tea and bread for breakfast.

“You don’t want to tell me that it is already the morning of another day?”

“Yes, dawn is breaking and bright is the light of a new day,” she sang.

“When did you come back?” he asked. “I did not hear you open the door.”

“Early this morning,” she said, and he noted her silence about where she had been and what she had been doing. He chose not to probe further.

Before they finished breakfast, there was a knock at the door. Nyawlra opened it to reveal Constable Arigaigai Gathere. Kamro quickly hid. Nyawlra’s face showed fright, which turned to wonder as Constable Arigaigai Gathere fell to his knees and bowed his head.

“My Lord Wizard of the Crow. I told myself you had to be the first to know. I am so happy and I don’t know how to thank you.”

“What happened?” Nyawlra inquired, as if she herself was indeed the Wizard of the Crow.

17

What happened? These were the words his listeners said whenever A.G. came to this point in his story. But A.G. was not to be hurried: it was his narrative and he would tell it his own way, letting events unfold instead of abridging them into a phrase. Stories, like food, lose their flavor if cooked in a hurry.

“How could you kneel down before another human being like you and me?” someone would ask him.

“Human? The Wizard of the Crow is more than human: had you been in my position, you would have done the same.”

“Why?”

“Because he changed my life,” A.G. would say, and then paused.

Seeing how attentive they were, A.G. would tell his listeners how on the day after the fulfillment of the oracle foretelling the matatu accident, he reported for duty. He had wanted to reach his place of work before anybody else, certainly before his boss, so as to make up for his lateness the day before. To his surprise he found his superior, Inspector Wonderful Tumbo, anxiously awaiting him. Let’s walk together to my office,