Wizard of the Crow (34 page)

Later that evening Officer Tumbo passed by Tajirika’s residence, but in a borrowed car and in civilian clothes and a false mustache, his head covered by an egg-shaped hat. The officer did not attempt to explain his disguise but went straight to the point. Tumbo told Tajirika that Nyawlra, his trusted secretary, was a wanted person in connection with the drama at Eldares. What about my wife? What about Vinjinia? Tajirika asked when he saw the officer ready to leave without so much as mentioning her name. Officer Wonderful Tumbo seemed genuinely surprised by this, as if her disappearance was also news to him. After Tajirika described the mystery of his wife’s vanishing, how his office had been locked up, and how her Mercedes was parked outside, the officer said that everybody who had been in touch with Nyawlra was under suspicion and his guess, but it was only a guess, was that Vinjinia might be in the hands of the political police in the Ruler’s office. A new squad had been created recently to crack down on members of the Movement for the Voice of the People, and everything Tajirika had said showed their hand, but he could not be sure. Tumbo now seemed to want to fly out of the house. He was already at the door when he turned and asked Tajirika not to call him at the station again, promising that if he came across any more information he would be sure to pass it on.

Tajirika was more shaken than he was before Tumbo’s visit. How did I come to employ an enemy of the State? He started reviewing Nyawlra’s working for him. She had started soon after he was appointed to the committee that eventually came up with Marching to Heaven. How could a woman so beautiful, so polite, so well mannered, so hardworking, so meticulous, become involved in subversive movements? Or had she been taking him for a ride? Yes, that must be it.

How had he failed to detect Nyawlra’s hypocrisy? There were signs, but he had been too blind to see. For one thing, how was it possible that a woman so beautiful never put her good looks to work, as others, even at the university, were doing these days?

Nyawlra’s eyes never shone with a flirtatious glint. Not by word, gesture, or look did she give an opening for those lurid jokes and
comments that often opened floodgates of easy passion. It was rare in Aburlria for a woman to have such strong morals, and it clearly indicated something not quite right about her, and he, Tajirika, who prided himself on his ability to read character, especially that of women, should have paid more attention to this.

But what about his wife? What was the connection between Nyawlra and his wife? Had she, too, been deceiving him, pretending to be a good wife, a woman who never raised questions even though she knew that Tajirika slept with other women? A woman who was so uninterested in politics and world affairs that she would rather switch off the television and the radio rather than watch or listen to a news program? Was she faking a lack of interest? Had she become involved in radical politics when he was incapacitated? It is said that two women together are a pot of poison and one is influenced by the company one keeps.

He recalled that when he was suffering from white-ache, it was these two women who had taken him to the shrine of the Wizard of the Crow. That in itself was strange, and it should have alerted him. Vinjinia had always proclaimed herself a Christian. She never missed church on Sunday and had remained a faithful member of All Saints Cathedral. Why had she not turned to her Christian congregation for support instead of opting for the services of a sorcerer? Inwardly he was grateful to her for not exposing his illness to her fellow church members, but still, how did she arrive at witchcraft? Maybe she and Nyawlra had been in collusion all along and he, Tajirika, had been sharing his office with an enemy of the State by day and his bed with an enemy at night. What madness made him employ Nyawlra as a worker and Vinjinia as a wife?

His conversation with his mates came back to haunt him. Daughters of Eve. Black Daughters of Black Eve. They are going to know that I am the man, Tajirika swore to himself. They would forever rue the day they started playing radical politics in his office.

During these bouts of self-bolstering bravado, he would feel a sudden resurgence of hope quickly followed by deep despair at the thought of the absent Vinjinia and the renegade Nyawlra.

That Machokali had not responded to any of his many telephone messages increased his worry. Even when he dialed Machokali’s cell phone, it was the chauffeur who picked up only to tell him that he
would pass on the message to the minister. To make matters worse, officer Wonderful Tumbo had not shown his face again.

He tried to figure out how he could extricate himself from the mess he found himself in. He wanted to save his skin and those of his children from disaster. He even thought of calling a press conference to publicly disassociate himself and his family from the activities of Vinjinia and Nyawlra, reaffirming his loyalty to the Ruler, his government, and the plans for Marching to Heaven. But how could he do a thing like that without first alerting his friend Machokali? After turning this idea over in his mind, he decided to put it off. He would wait a few days, but if after the third day he still failed to connect with his friend the minister or get fresh information from his friend Officer Tumbo, he would go ahead and denounce his wife and Nyawlra in public. He had to save his investments by any means necessary, and after this resolution he felt slightly better.

He started drafting the press statement. He stumbled over words and phrases, but he persevered and for a time the task kept his mind busy.
Dear Gentlemen of the Press. I have called you here today to tell you and, in telling you, tell the world that I would give up my life for the Ruler. As I am so loyal, how could anyone imagine that I could possibly have anything to do with a worker,
a simple secretary,
or
a simple housewife,
subverting the Mightiest of Governments … etc.

Three days passed and still there was no call from the minister or visit from Officer Tumbo. Tajirika stared at his unfinished press statement and felt he had arrived at a cul-de-sac: how could he denounce women accountable to him whose whereabouts he did not knowr What if his statement was turned against him, claims made that he had probably murdered them and buried their bodies in the backyard and was only pretending that they had disappeared?

Dispirited, weighed down by having no clear way out, he simply clung to his glass of whiskey for support and comfort.

It was then that he heard the screech of a car coming to a stop outside. He stood up, and as he was about to peer through the window the telephone rang. For a second he was torn between the car and the phone. He went for the phone. He was glad: it was Machokali, and he was certain that a conversation with his friend the minister would clear things up or clear the way for his press conference.

It was obvious that Machokali did not want to talk on the phone, and within seconds they had agreed on a time and a place to meet.

As he put the phone down, he heard the sound of the car leaving. He rushed to the door.

Vinjinia entered.

“Where in heavens have you been?” Tajirika asked.

“In the secret grip of the State,” Vinjinia said lifelessly.

“What are you talking about?” Tajirika asked, unnerved more by the confirmation than by his previous uncertainty.

State
and
secret
often go together. The secrets are known to only a few called secretaries in some countries and ministers in others, but both names reflect their roles as servants of state secrets. The Great Dictator of Aburlria alias the Ruler of the Free Republic of Aburiria did not trust anybody to keep his secrets. Even those ministers reputed to be close to him because they were the last to see him at night and first to see him in the morning were never sure about their fate, or whether by sunset or sunrise they would still be holding their jobs.

There was chilling precedence for this.

How many times had the dictator lifted a few, singing their praises, taking them with him everywhere for every ceremony, and just when they started believing that they were indeed “the beloved of the father” the dictator would suddenly pull the magic carpet from under them. Having fallen, the ex-beloved, bruised and broken, would crawl on all fours, crying out for mercy and forgiveness, this for a day, a week, a month, a year, or several years. Then suddenly, out of the blue, the dictator would hear the man’s cry and send political fixers to assuage his misery. Arise, you may walk again, the dictator would say to the saved, and the man, so grateful, would forever wax lyrical about the dictator’s boundless generosity, especially when blessed with a directorship of this or that marketing board, chairmanship of this or that wildlife society, or even another ministerial post.

The dictator’s reputation for making minister plot against minister, region rise against region, and community fight against community was now a matter of legend. He would side with one warring faction, which would rejoice at its alliance with power only to wake up one morning to find that the dictator had sided with its adversary, for a time, at least, before changing sides again or even goading altogether another faction into the fray. The dictator, seemingly above it all, looking good as he appealed for peace and understanding, would be embraced by all the feuding parties as a Solomonic prince of peace.

Though aware of this, the well-to-do, the self-appointed leaders of communities, members of Parliament, and especially cabinet ministers never ceased competing to sit on the right side of the father. Yet the winner always lived in terror of being displaced by a rival wilier in the ways of sycophancy. The problem was that the Ruler never let anyone know what was expected of him to retain his place of honor. Even humility and self-abnegation, however abject, were not enough to prevent one’s downfall. For in his long ascendance to ultimate authority, the Ruler had himself been the nonpareil master of humility and self-abnegation.

As to how he rose to the mountaintop of power, many stories are told. According to one version, he emerges in history as a champion of an unquestioning humility before power. He was first widely known during the colonial times for seeming meek and mild-mannered to every white man with whom he came into contact. All the white settlers’ and missionary reports about him concurred that he was a good African, and later, “our man.” Whether in school, the government bureaucracy, or the army, his servile bearing facilitated his climb up the ladder of success. He had failed to attain his high school diploma, but nonetheless he ended up an assistant headmaster of an African school on a settler’s farm in western Aburlria. Seeing that full head-mastership was the most that he could ever attain in education, he quit the profession and went into the colonial army, becoming a self-proclaimed Military Officer of Information. His main job was helping to produce leaflets in praise of the heroic deeds of the colonial army against the nationalist insurgents. He rose to the rank of corporal, and there he would probably have remained had the nationalist insurgents not forced the colonialist mother country to rethink her strategy. When it was clear to the white settlers that independence for

Aburiria was inevitable, the Ruler-to-be was once again appointed their man in the coming rearrangement of things. He was a natural choice, and it took careful planning that spanned several years. First they shrouded him in a mantle of nationalism. Even though the future Excellency was then just a journalist, he found himself climbing the military ranks from corporal to sergeant to sergeant-major all in a matter of weeks. It was then that the future Excellency produced a carefully worded statement completely unlike any of the leaflets he had hitherto produced. For now he called for improvements in the working conditions of the black people in the army; he vowed that otherwise he would quit his military post and forfeit promised honors to struggle for the rights of his people. A week later, he resigned and announced his intention to form his own nationalist political party.

Fhe party not only would fight for improved working conditions for black Aburlrians in the army and for the promotion of blacks to higher ranks, but would also champion the causes of all the smaller pastoral communities and fight for their right to wear traditional clothes and carry cultural weapons like bows and arrows, spears, and knock-berry clubs. They would sooner do without schools or even adequate grazing grounds than give up these cultural symbols so crucial to the defense of their traditions now threatened by larger ethnic communities, mostly supported by so-called progressive parties who had joined hands with terrorists to demand freedom now. Freedom now? All that these progressives wanted was for the whites to leave so that they would appropriate the grazing fields and watering holes of small communities and abolish their culture. Whereas those other parties wanted land and freedom, the Ruler-to-be’s party wanted freedom with honor and scoffed at the idea of a timetable for freedom. The mother of the colonial state was happy. The white settlers were happy. The blacks in the colonial army were jubilant: they now had a champion and need not fear about their place in the new black order.

When independence was negotiated, the white settlers rallied behind the man and his party with secret money and diplomacy, and urged him to demand that as the representative of smaller communities he must be the second only to the first president, who was from the bigger communities. Failing that, the smaller communities should demand self-rule and secede if necessary. Most important, he and his party would have nothing to do with the armed insurgents.

The former colonial army, now renamed the national army even before negotiations had begun, also made its preferences known. The nationalist insurgents were shut out of direct negotiations in Europe. All else followed a preordained logic. Why not talks between the “main” parties to avoid future ethnic strife? The result was predictable. The agreement to merge all the nationalist parties into a United Party to ensure harmony between the major and minor ethnic groups, with the future Ruler now as number two to the First Ruler, a man advanced in years, was hailed as a triumph of moderation by all sides, and mostly by the mother of the erstwhile colonial state.