Wizard of the Crow

But oh, once aroused to anger, she is possessed by a dangerous daemon. Even to me her word is law.”

The spell was broken. Mobility returned to the police officers’ feet and they took the Wizard of the Crow to Sikiokuu, Minister of State in the Ruler’s Office.

11

As they drove him away, Kamltl thought about Nyawlra and the scene outside the shrine. Since meeting Nyawlra his life had changed in ways he could never have foreseen. He often felt as if he were walking in a field of dreams. The most fleeting images of her would make his blood rush, suffusing him with a sense of goodness, peace, hope, and great though yet unknown expectations.

What most amazed him about Nyawlra was her humor and laughter in spite of her travails. But no matter how much he thought he knew her, every day brought new surprises. He would never have imagined that, instead of staying inside the house as agreed until he and the police had left, Nyawlra would appear with the force of a hurricane and stage so spellbinding a performance. The police had now spirited him away from her hiding place.

But soon he was awash in doubts, his knees suddenly weak. What if the police officers were already on to Nyawlra? If not, what if they suspected him of really knowing her whereabouts? What if they tortured him?

He decided not to worry about that which he could do nothing about. Even if they tortured and interrogated him about Nyawlra and the Movement for the Voice of the People, there was very little he could tell them. Of Nyawlra’s hiding place, he would die rather than reveal it. And what he knew about the movement was only what Nyawlra had told him, which was not much.

He was so absorbed in these conflicting thoughts and emotions that even when the car stopped outside some buildings he did not realize that they had arrived at their destination.

During the ride, Njoya and Kahiga had talked neither to him nor to each other. The drama outside the shrine had propelled each into his own world as both tried to figure out the implications of the witch’s dance for their respective lives.

When they arrived, Njoya left Kahiga and the Wizard of the Crow in the car and went to find out what the minister would have them do with his guest.

“It is night, a bit late,” Sikiokuu told him, rather curtly. “I will see him tomorrow morning. I don’t want him to think that he is such a big deal that I would stay up all hours of the night to receive him.”

“Are we meant to take him back to his place?”

“Of course not,” said Sikiokuu in English, without elaborating.

“Where should we put him up?” Njoya asked, his heart sinking at these unforeseen developments. “A hotel?”

“You must be joking. As he is a guest of the State-take him to the government hotel.”

“I understand that all the cells are full,” Njoya said, trying to wriggle out of having to imprison the Wizard of the Crow.

“Have him share a room with the madman.”

12

Tajirika felt humiliated at the manner of his removal from Sikiokuu’s office, but he turned his anger against Machokali and Vinjinia. Why had his friend not allowed him to be part of the delegation to the USA? he asked himself time and again. Machokali had said that he would call him now and then, but since leaving for America Machokali had not done so once. The doubts Sikiokuu had planted in his mind started to fester. Yet he still could not imagine any connection between Machokali and Vinjinia. But the pictures of his Vinjinia and the dancing women had shaken his trust in her. Not that he had much to begin with. Tajirika subscribed to the saying that the word of a woman or a child should be believed only after the hearer had slept on it. Nevertheless, there had been things he would have been prepared to swear that Vinjinia was incapable of, but now he was not so sure.

The reports of his wife’s misdemeanor, in having women dance for her, were what hurt most. Although he believed that a woman was inherently untrustworthy, he took it that a man’s wife should be a paragon of virtue. A good man was judged by the goodness of his wife, and a good wife was known for her discretion and ability to cover for the failings of her husband. Such was the woman he had married. A woman who did not demand much from life! A woman who had long ago stopped asking him questions about where he spent the night. A woman who seemed completely satisfied with life around the kitchen and in the fields. A woman who never raised any questions about politics. That was the woman he thought he knew. Could she have feigned all that?

Maybe Sikiokuu and company were right when they hinted that Nyawlra, whom they supposed to be the mother of all hypocrites, had something to do with the new Vinjinia. Indeed, there was no disputing that everything had started going wrong the day he became ill and Vinjinia started going to the office. If he himself had succumbed to Nyawlra’s slickness, why not Vinjinia? He acknowledged as much, yet he had expected her to have the wherewithal to avoid being so deceived as to end up in the company of shameless primitive dancers.

Wife beating was a privilege if not a right of male power, and now in the cell he had no opportunity to measure his manhood. Grinding his teeth in frustration, he was reduced to imagining slapping his wife around and her screams for mercy and forgiveness. This allowed him to think more soberly about other things that weighed on him.

Like the matter of Silver Sikiokuu.

It was clear that the minister was setting an elaborate trap for Ma-chokali and needed Tajirika to pull it off. But what role was he meant to play? Sikiokuu’s call for him to think about “the real meaning” of if, white, and wish still buzzed in his ears. Was the role hidden in those words? And what was the payback? What was the deal? Sikiokuu had been enigmatic about it. Why?

Sikiokuu was softening him up by having him put back in a cell where a bucket was his toilet. The guards emptied the pail once in three days, and sometimes they would not even keep to the schedule. So there were days when the pail overflowed with shit and urine, the stench becoming his daily and nightly companion. But Sikiokuu was underestimating his will to survive, as well as his business acumen. There was no way that Tajirika was going to accept just any deal without some kind of give-and-take.

Tajirika did not put too much store in friendship. There was nothing he would not do to save his skin provided the price was right, except take part in anything touching the Buler’s life and power. That would mean certain death. So he was not about to accept that he may have heard others talking about a plot against the Buler.

How he wished he knew precisely the hour and the day when the Buler and his entourage were returning! Tajirika concluded that he had no alternative but to wait for Sikiokuu to put a deal on the table or for Machokali to return from America, whichever came first.

Late one night his jailers opened the door to his cell, flung a man inside, and closed the door again. Tajirika kept absolutely still in his corner, listening intensely to the breathing of his fellow prisoner. Unable to bear the silence after a while, Tajirika asked: Who are you?” But the man, whoever he was, did not answer him.

He is perhaps a killer brought here in secrecy at midnight to do you harm, an inner voice told Tajirika. He broke out in a cold sweat and started shaking. The tension getting the better of him, he started screaming:

“Don’t kill me. I beg you, don’t kill me. I have committed no crime. Have mercy on me. I have a wife and children. Please don’t spill innocent blood because of money. Whatever they have given you, I promise to double it.”

“Sshh!” the man responded, but Tajirika was so self-absorbed that he did not hear him.

“How much money have they given you?” Tajirika asked, and this time paused, anticipating a response.

“What for?” the man asked.

“To kill me.”

“Why should I kill you? I don’t know you. I have never met you.”

“That’s exactly what I am trying to impress upon you. I am innocent. I have never harmed a soul.”