“Those? Leave them alone!” the man said. “It is all because of the witch doctor-what does he call himself?-the Wizard of the Crow. The ways of witch doctors are strange. Two days have come and gone since he put up the notice outside his door announcing his nefarious business, and at first no more than ten clients came to consult him. Now look at this. All of a sudden, today, well, this evening. I’ve no idea what this is all about. Lady, go your way and I’ll go mine; it’s never good to ask too many questions in the dark.”
Nyawlra had seen many wonders in Santalucia, but this topped them all; she did not know whether to laugh or cry. She went to the back of her house and knocked at the window. There was no immediate response. She waited for a little while and knocked again. At the third attempt the curtains parted. She saw a human silhouette. At the sight of Kamltl, Nyawlra felt relief. He helped her climb through the bedroom window and he gestured to her to be quiet and not budge, and then he went back to his business.
5
From the bedroom where she sat, Nyawlra could not see the actors, but she heard every word between Kamltl and his clients. The whole thing seemed like ritual theater.
“What ails you?” she heard Kamltl ask the man on the other side of the kitchen pass-through.
“My enemies.”
“Your enemies?”
“Yes, my fellow businessmen. You might see us dining and wining each other, and laughing and slapping one another on the back, but this is all a lie. Now it looks as if the Global Bank is about to release funds for Marching to Heaven. Do you know what that means? A contract to supply even tea, butter, cigarettes, or the smallest necessities could make one wealthy for the rest of one’s life. You see my point? If we are always scheming against one another even when the stakes are low, imagine what’s going on now. I own many quarries. All I want is to become the chief supplier of cement, stone, and sand for Marching to Heaven. But believe me, Sir Wizard, my enemies are many, they are everywhere, they are ruthless, and they want what I want.”
“So what are you after at the shrine of the Wizard of the Crow?”
“I want you to add firmness to my hands, smoothness to my tongue, and power to my eyes, so that when I meet Chairman Titus he and I will bond immediately. I want to mesmerize his eyes with mine, soften his heart with my tongue, and seal the deal of friendship with a warm handshake. At the same time, I want you to take away all powers of persuasion from my competitors. Make their hands limp and wet with sweat so that when they shake those of Chairman Titus, they will only piss him off; roughen their tongues so that when they roll them out to sing his praises, they will produce rasping noises worse than the screeching of metal on metal; cause their eyes to run with filth so that when they try to make him captive to their wishes they will only disgust and repel him. Do you know the story of the great battle between the Sun and Wind over who could make Man take off his coat? Wind made Man only cling more to his possession. Sun made him surrender it willingly. Wizard of the Crow, make my enemies the Wind. Make me the Sun. Put me at the head of my class, first among equals in guile and venom.”
“Do you know your enemies? Who they are?”
“Not that well. And that is why I have come to you. We have heard of your amazing powers, that you can tell one’s enemies long before one even knows that one has enemies; and that you can capture the shadows of these in a mirror and scratch them out of this world. Now I am not asking you to kill them-I am a good Christian and I believe in forgiveness-but I want you to do that which only you can do.”
“And who told you all this about me?”
“It’s a long story, but I shall make it short. I was in another queue outside the office of Chairman Titus. He was unable to come to the office, but we stuck to our guns, waiting in line the whole day. Then a friend who heard it from a friend who heard it from a friend who had been told about it by a police officer who supplies him with useful information in exchange for a fee-you know how it is in Aburiria today, nothing is for free and information is power- anyway this police officer told him what you had done for one of his police mates: sent all his enemies packing to the other world and had him promoted to a rank that he could never have dreamt of. Later, rumor has it, you received ten other policemen, the original informant being among them. So I thought, let me sneak out of this queue in front of Titus’s office and secure more powers before I meet with Chairman Titus tomorrow.”
Nyawlra now understood why at about six the queue of the rich and the powerful had mysteriously ceased to be, leaving her and Vin-jinia wondering.
“Sir Wizard of the Crow,” the patient was now saying, “I want you to use only your mirror, and whatever you want will be yours. How much do you charge for divining with a mirror?”
“I don’t put a price on divining. But the mirror demands some effort and decision on the part of he who seeks its power to reveal the hidden. The mirror sees and sends back only what is placed in front of it. You place more, it sees more, you place less, it sees less. So the matter is entirely in the hands of they who seek its powers of divination.”
“Money is nothing to me,” Nyawlra heard the man shout. “I want you to use the most powerful mirror possible. Maximum power. I will place an offering of the biggest envelope possible before the oracle, and I am sure it will please the mirror.”
“I grant you your wishes,” said Kamltl, and he now outlined the same steps he had earlier worked out with Constable A.G. and the ten policemen. “Close your eyes tight. Look for the image that forms in the night of your mind. The moment you see it, you must alert the Wizard of the Crow. Once I capture the image in your mind in my mirror, I will then scratch its hands, mouth, and eyes to weaken them. Weakening the organs of your enemy is the same thing as strengthening yours. It is like any scale. There are two ways of changing the balance between two opposing forces. You either add weight to one side or you remove weight from the opposite side. Divining is a science.”
“It is not the love of science that brought me to your shrine,” the man said with passion. “I want something that occurs without discernible rhyme or reason. I want the pure play of occult powers. I want magic, not science.”
Nyawlra could hardly believe her ears. If she had heard an account of what she herself had heard, she would almost certainly have dismissed it as a lie: the rich and the powerful denouncing scientific reason in favor of illogical mumbo jumbo. And to know that these men belong to the same class as the leaders of new nations? What did the future of the country hold with these men at the helmr
Her ruminations were suddenly interrupted by a rapturous scream from the divinee.
“I can see an image! I see it!” the man was saying in the tone of a child who has discovered a new ability.
“Can you tell whose image it is?” asked the Wizard of the Crow.
“No! No! But it does not matter-let this image stand for all my enemies.”
“Hold it! Hold it right there! Don’t let it slip away” Kamltl told him, and he started scratching the mirror.
“The image is now no more. Instead I see numerous starlets falling in the dark,” the man said. “Maybe it is my enemies shattered like broken glass! This is wonderful! Starlets falling about me, leaving me the lone star in the firmament!”
“Then the deed is done. You saw what you wanted to see. You can now open your eyes. Your luck lies before you.”
“Thank you! Thank you, Sir Wizard,” the man said. “New powers course through me. I can now march in step with Marching to Heaven.”
He left and instantly another took his place. To Nyawlra the procession was like one cinematic frame dissolving into another. The frames may have had different characters, but the story was the same. In the end Nyawlra grew tired of hearing it and fell asleep.
Water splashing woke her up. Kamltl was showering, and she waited for him to finish. He was scrubbing himself with grim determination.
“You almost used up all the water,” she said when they were together in the sitting room.
“It is the stench they left behind,” Kamltl said. “I still feel that I never got rid of it. Look through the window; see if they’re all gone.”
Nyawlra peered outside. The queue of hooded human silhouettes did not appear to be diminishing. She closed the window and looked at Kamltl askance.
