Wizard of the Crow (44 page)

The story, as she read it, was merely an elaboration of the headline, but it tore into her being nonetheless. Her father was appealing to her to come out of hiding, surrender, and thereby earn his gratitude and blessings.

“If you don’t give yourself up within one week, I say publicly to the whole world, I will no longer call you my daughter, for I am loyal to God in Heaven and the Ruler here on earth.”

Although Nyawlra did not always see eye to eye with her father, she loved and revered him deeply, and this prospective public divorce was painful and humiliating. How many times would he deny her, she asked herself, recalling his response to her expression of love for Kaniürü. Yet his judgment of Kaniürü’s character and intentions had proven correct. Might he not have a point now? she agonized. Would she end up regretting her involvement in the politics of change the way she regretted her liaison with Kaniürü? That her mother was nowhere in the picture or the story made her feel that there was more to this than it appeared.

Things became clearer as she read on. Sikiokuu was quoted as saying that the government would leave no stone unturned in its effort to capture Nyawlra and the leadership of the Movement for the Voice of the People. He described them as reptilian, symbolized by their calling card, the plastic snake. They would be ground to dust.

When and how did her father come to join Sikiokuu? Nyawlra began to wonder. She could not quite believe that her father would leave his businesses to come all the way to Sikiokuu’s offices simply to denounce her. Matthew Wangahü might believe in the status quo, but he, like the rest of his class, took pride in having made it on his own and not by availing himself of public funds—stealing from the people, as it were. He would never have stooped to deny his daughter in public unless he was under considerable pressure.

In another column she read, Sikiokuu was quoted as having an invitation
from Mr. Kaniürü to officially open the offices of the deputy chairman of Marching to Heaven and those of the chairman of the Commission of Inquiry into the Queuing Mania. The dates and plans for the opening ceremonies would be announced later. Kaniürü’s picture was not published, but even so he had been quoted in his dual capacity, appealing to all residents of Santamaria and Santalucia, especially singers and dancers, to be ready to welcome Minister Silver Sikiokuu. He, too, had called upon Nyawlra to come forward and give peace of mind to her beloved, including her aged parents. He proclaimed that she would also be of use to the Commission of Inquiry.

Nyawlra began to see things for what they were. Kaniürü’s prose-cutorial zeal was evident. From the moment she had heard of Kaniürü’s appointment as the chairperson of the Commission of Inquiry, she knew that he was capable of using his new powers to terrorize families, but little did she suspect that her family would be an early casualty.

The irony of the situation struck her. Even as Kamltl, her new love, was away visiting his parents, Kaniürü, her old love, had dragged her own father to town to deny her. The only saving grace was that her mother had absented herself, and Nyawlra felt tears of gratitude well up inside her.

Suddenly she became angry and defiant and she heard herself talking loudly to an invisible presence. No matter what you do, Kaniürü, I will never appear before your Commission of Inquiry.

When Tajirika received a summons to appear before the Commission of Inquiry into the Queuing Mania, he was furious upon seeing Kaniürü’s signature on it. Wasn’t he his deputy, actually his clerk, regardless of his being chairman of the Commission of Inquiry? Priorities had to be observed, after all. How would he show Kaniürü that he, Tajirika, was his boss and in the process teach him a lesson in
humility and obeisance to his superiors? He thought of tearing the summons into pieces, putting them back into the same envelope, and writing on top
Return to Sender.

Another idea intruded. Why not write his deputy a letter summoning him to Tajirika’s office to discuss his role as deputy and impress upon him the importance of Marching to Heaven? He imagined the scene. As soon as Kaniürü entered the office he, Tajirika, would show him the summons or better still tear it to pieces and fling them at the clerks face. Kaniürü would quake in terror; Tajirika would smile, walk up to him, and slap him on the shoulder in a friendly gesture of forgiveness: a joke between a deputy and his chief, he would assure the trembling fellow, and the matter would end there. Then he realized that he had no official letterhead or seal attesting to his new position. Only the Minister for Foreign Affairs or the Ruler himself had the power of issuance, and they were still in America. So who had approved Kaniürü ‘s stationery? The upstart may have acted on his own. What should I do? See Sikiokuu and expose the fellow?

It was a day or two after this, before he had even settled on a course of action, that he read about Sikiokuu’s plan to inaugurate the offices of the Commission of Inquiry and the deputy of Marching to Heaven. A little fear crept into his certainty. Sikiokuu was now in charge of the country, and as the Waswahili say,
Paka akienda panya hutawala.
Might he not be devoured by the rat that now ruled in the absence of the cat? But then he quickly dismissed those fears. There was nothing Sikiokuu could do to the chairman of Marching to Heaven, for that would be tantamount to interfering with a special envoy of the Ruler. Still, concerning Kaniürü, he decided on a different course of action.

He would visit the office of his deputy but not on the date specified by the summons, and then only to tell him that he had come for a quick get-to-know-you between boss and deputy.

So the day of the summons came and passed. Tajirika thought to put off his visit for another week. But on waking up the following morning he changed his mind and decided it was better to go there that very day and rein in his deputy right away.

Late in the afternoon Tajirika asked his chauffeur to take him to the street where Kaniürü ‘s offices were located. In the car, Tajirika tried to form the words that would affirm his authority and silence his
upstart employee, but his anxiety prevented him from doing so. Even after he told the chauffeur to park the car on Rais Avenue and wait, he had yet to formulate his reprimand. He strode across the road. The gate opened into a huge enclosed yard. At the end of the yard was a two-story building where there were two sets of offices with its own main entrance. Above one was the inscription
OFFICES
OF THE GOVERNMENT COMMISSION ON THE
QUEUING MANIA
and above the other, OFFICES OF THE DEPUTY CHAIRMAN OF MARCHING TO HEAVEN. Tajirika’s eyes were transfixed on the second sign. The word
deputy
was written in such tiny letters that it was almost invisible, certainly difficult to make out unless a reader stood very close. By contrast the word
chairman
was in big letters and in color so as to be easily read from afar.

Tajirika’s first reaction was to blame himself: why had he not thought of setting up a separate office for the chairman of Marching to Heaven? He was consumed by envy, anger, and frustration: why had Kaniürü minimized the word
deputy
except to dupe readers into thinking that the occupant was the real chairman?

He then took in the people waiting in the yard. They stood in groups of five to conform to the new decrees regarding the length of queues in public places. His anger deepened. Some of them were those who used to come to his office bearing envelopes of introduction. So the traffic of favor buyers had been redirected from his place to the offices of his deputy? So that was why he, Tajirika, no longer received calls seeking his acquaintance? So that’s why the flow of envelopes into his offices at Eldares Modern Construction and Real Estate had dried up? So it was Kaniürü who had diverted his river of fortune?

Tajirika would have liked nothing better at that moment than to strangle Kaniürü. There was no point in his going inside. Might Kaniürü not be impertinent enough to imagine Tajirika as another envelope-bearing supplicant? No, he could not afford the possible humiliation of having to explain himself. Returning to the car, he was beside himself; he could not even speak to his driver and simply gestured him to drive back to the office.

If only he could get in touch with his friend Machokali! Why had the minister not called him from America? When they last met at the Mars Cafe, the minister had said that he would be calling from time
to time to get reports about the activities of his political enemies. Was this not an activity that Machokali ought to know of and even talk to the Ruler about with a view toward stopping Sikiokuu and Kaniürü from taking over other people’s jobs? He feared that the pair’s success in sidelining the boss of Marching to Heaven might embolden them into setting their sights on higher jobs … No, he did not want to think about the possibility of a Sikiokuu coup d’etat; he might go crazy.

Tajirika decided that as long as his friend Machokali and the Ruler were in the USA he would not appear before the commission as summoned, and with that bold resolution he felt at peace. He redirected the chauffeur to take him not back to the office but to his Golden Heights residence.

They came for him at midnight, men in plainclothes. They threw him into the back of a Land Rover like a log of wood, ignoring the entreaties of Vinjinia. They said not a word, did not identify themselves. They drove into the night, leaving Vinjinia standing at the door in darkness and silence.

Vinjinia lay awake, not knowing what to do or even think about the whole thing. Were Tajirika’s abductors police or common thugs pretending to be plainclothes police? What had Tajirika done to deserve this? She had not been pleased with her husband since her own return from police custody. Coldness had settled between them. They hardly talked, and when they did Tajirika simply wanted Vinjinia to go over the questions she had been asked while under interrogation, and only those relating to him and his businesses.

How Vinjinia had felt when the police arrested her, what she thought while in their custody, how she dealt with the ordeal: these were clearly not priorities for Tajirika. What most pained her was her suspicion that deep down Tajirika believed her to be guilty of secretly associating with the women who had brought shame on the Ruler
and Marching to Heaven. Unlike her husband, however, she was not indifferent to her spouse’s newfound woes.

She began her inquiry at the Santamaria police station because the boss, Wonderful Tumbo, was a family friend. She did not know that when Tumbo saw her coming from afar he left through the back door. The men Vinjinia found in the office acted as if they did not believe her story: who would be so crazy as to arrest Tajirika, owner of Eldares Modern Construction and Real Estate, friend of the Minister for Foreign Affairs and chairman of Marching to Heaven? Wait a few days, they advised, her husband would almost certainly turn up. She moved from station to station, receiving virtually the same answer to her entreaties. At one, they were so callous as to advise her to look for her husband in the city morgue. She had no success there, either.

At first Vinjinia went about her search quietly, trying to avoid unnecessary publicity, but soon she turned to the newspapers. One editor told her that the disappearance of an adult was not news he could use. Another pitied her and explained to her why.

Political disappearances had become commonplace as the powers that be proclaimed ignorance and innocence even though relatives and friends swore that they had seen their loved ones hauled off in police cars. Besides, he added with a smile, Aburlrian men were notorious for having multiple homes, some official, others on the side.

Next she tried Tajirika’s friends, but none wanted to have anything to do with the case. At first they would listen to her sympathetically, but as soon as it dawned on them that the government might be involved they would become alarmed, some going so far as to ask her not to call again.

She was advised to get a lawyer to file a habeas corpus, but no one would take her case, citing one excuse or another. “You are wasting your money for nothing,” one lawyer was honest enough to tell her. “In Aburlria we are governed by personal whims.” With the Ruler in America, who was making new laws under which people were being abducted at night? she wondered.

She turned to the church and to her Christian friends for help and moral support but they offered only their prayers; some made it clear by their body language that Vinjinia was not welcome in their homes and at their social gatherings.

One day she stopped her Mercedes-Benz by the roadside, got out,
and sat on some raised ground and began to weep: everything—the government, her friends, and her fellow Christians—seemed to have conspired against her. She started questioning the truths she had taken for granted, like the fairness of government and solidarity of the religious. To whom would she now turn for an answer to her troubles?

In the midst of tears and numerous questions, Vinjinia suddenly thought of the Wizard of the Crow.

Early one day Vinjinia set out and, as on the first visit, parked her Mercedes-Benz in the street and walked to the old shrine, where she got directions to the new complex of wood and stone walls and iron roofs, far tidier than many of the state-owned clinics and hospitals she had recently visited. She was led by an assistant into an inner chamber, where, after being left alone for what seemed an eternity, she suddenly heard the sound of a latticed window opening to reveal a face.

“I’m here to see the Wizard of the Crow,” Vinjinia said.

“Your wish has been granted,” a voice said, and Vinjinia was surprised to hear that it was that of a woman.

“When I was last here, he spoke in a male voice.”

“I wear many faces. I talk in many voices. What brings you to me today?”

Vinjinia hesitated. Then suddenly the floodgates of woes within opened and she told of her tribulations as she searched for her lost husband. By the time she came to the end of her story she was feeling much better, as if by merely listening the Wizard of the Crow had lifted the load she had been carrying all by herself.