Wizard of the Crow (52 page)

Sikiokuu pressed a button. Within seconds Tajirika was blindfolded and led out of the office, screaming in desperation, What do you and your Descartes want me to dor

Sikiokuu sat back in his chair and for a while tugged at his earlobes.

Then he took Vinjinia’s pictures and looked at each without taking in the details. The pictures had been his own invention, and it had almost broken his man. Everything was going on well until he mentioned the Frenchman. Why did I ever mention this Descartes? What if this idiot of a businessman should one day say that I was urging him to doubt the existence of the Ruler and his government?

What most annoyed him was the fact that he knew very little about Descartes and his philosophy of doubt. He had first heard the phrases bandied around at a cocktail party he once attended at the Eldares French Cultural Center, and they sounded very learned and beautiful on the tongue. Little knowledge was danger, it had been said. In disgust at himself, Sikiokuu suddenly threw the pictures on the ground. What shall I do to contain the situation?

It did not make matters any better when the following day he got yet another e-mail from Big Ben Mambo, Minister of Information, still in America, telling him to make preparations for the greatest airport reception for the Ruler.

Sikiokuu did not know what he feared most: the return of the Ruler while Nyawlra was still free or the Ruler’s return with a loan from the Global Bank that would result in an even more powerful Machokali. A more powerful Machokali would mean a more powerful Tajirika. Was his star beginning to dim? Yet the e-mail had not specified
the date of return or whether the Global Bank had approved the loan. But this was a mere postponement of the inevitable, for he had given up hope of apprehending Nyawlra in whatever time remained.

As he slowly sunk into depression, he got an urgent call from Kaniürü with the incredible news that Kaniürü had finally found a way to get Nyawlra, but he did not want to discuss it on the phone.

Sikiokuu felt like a drowning man who had been thrown a lifeline. He did not delay. He sent his own chauffeur to fetch Kaniürü and bring him to the office.

Kaniürü had gone to the shrine disguised as a worker in a dirty and creased blue uniform and a baseball cap with a fading American company logo.

He had parked his Mercedes-Benz a mile away and walked. He had not breathed a word to anybody about his intended visit, and it was only when he reached Santalucia that he allowed himself to ask for the way to the shrine. He had made sure that he got there in the evening hours just as darkness was falling. No other client was waiting. A woman received him silently and pointed the way to the waiting room. After a few minutes, the same woman came back and showed him the way to the divination room and left him there, again without a word. He felt relieved that the woman had not asked him for anything about himself and, as no one knew his name, he grew even more confident in his disguise. He would give the Wizard of the Crow a false name and invent a history of himself.

Through a tiny window in the wall, Kaniürü saw the Wizard of the Crow holding a small mirror in his left hand. The Wizard appeared to be reading it like a book, not raising his eyes even as he talked to the supplicant.

“You live in Eldares,” the Wizard of the Crow stated.

“Yes,” assented John Kaniürü.

And you do not want anybody to know that you have been to my shrine.”

“Yes. Yes.”

“Even your bosses don’t know that you are here.”

“Yes.”

“Your work, or your name, has it something to do with smell?”

That statement rattled Kaniürü, and it made him pause for a second. It was so close to the truth of his name that he saw no point in denying it. This mirror has a lot of power, he thought.

“Yes,” he said at last.

“So you can be called the Smelling One … no, no … One-Who-Smells … Oh, why is the image of your name becoming blurry? … Oh yes, it’s back. Much clearer now. Something to do with Nose or Noses, something like that.”

Kaniürü almost jumped off his seat. The Wizard of the Crow had not yet looked up at him. His eyes were fixed on the book of the mirror the entire time. How did he know that my name is derived from
nose?
he wondered.

“Yes,” Kaniürü agreed in a slightly tremulous voice.

“And now your job! You used to capture shadows of humans, animals, plants, brooks, the bush.”

“How?” Kaniürü asked, pretending not to know what the Wizard of the Crow was talking about.

“On paper or in stone, the likeness of things?”

“Yes. Yes,” Kaniürü agreed quickly.

“But now you shadow people instead of capturing their shadows.”

“What?”

“You know, the Lord told the fishermen to leave their nets behind and follow him; he would make them fishers of men. You too must have heard the call of your Lord and Master to leave the images of things behind and follow him so as to become fisher of men and women.”

“Yes, something like that,” said Kaniürü lamely.

“The writing on the mirror has vanished,” said the Wizard of the Crow as he raised his head and looked directly at Kaniürü. “I am now ready to hear your story. But wait a minute!” the Wizard of the Crow said, looking at the mirror again. “There is more writing here. It is to do with your being captive. I see a heart held prisoner. Is your heart being held captive by somebody?”

“What does the mirror mean by that?”

For a moment Kaniürü thought that the Wizard of the Crow was
referring to Jane Kanyori. He felt like laughing at the thought, because he had used her only for sexual release and money laundering.

“You mean the woman who works at the bank?” Kaniürü asked, as if the Wizard of the Crow already knew about her. “Jane Kanyori will never capture my heart. She is not bad, but she is not my type and class,” he said, forgetting that he had gone there posing as a base workman.

“Why so? Has another of your class or type already captured your heart?”

“Yes,” Kaniürü said quickly, wondering how the Wizard of the Crow could know about both Jane Kanyori and Nyawlra. There was clearly no need to deny what the wizard already knew. “There is one who captured my heart long ago. She is special, Mr. Wizard of the Crow.”

“Where is she now?” the Wizard of the Crow ventured to ask.

“I don’t know. I wish I knew.”

“Are you looking for her?”

“Day and night. But that is not the reason I came here today”

“The images have all disappeared. There is now only darkness in the mirror,” said the Wizard of the Crow, now fixing his eyes on Kaniürü. “Say what ill wind blows you to my shrine?”

“Mine is not an ill wind,” Kaniürü said. “Mine is the healthy breeze of property.”

“Land? Cows and goats?”

“No, more than land, goats, and cows. Money”

“Newly rich? New money that suddenly came your way?”

“Yes,” Kaniürü said. “But you know how our people are. Driven by envy.”

“And you fear that they might cast evil on your new wealth? That they might make the riches disappear as quickly as they came?”

“You have read my mind, Wizard of the Crow. So I want a magic potion, a magic spell, anything that will protect my wealth forever so that I can sleep in peace.”

“Does your boss know about the new wealth?”

“No.”

“Does anyone?”

“Wizard of the Crow, there is a saying that he who eats alone dies alone, but there are some delicacies that a person should eat alone, even at the risk of dying alone.”

“You are so young and yet so well versed in proverbs.”

“Gray hairs are not necessarily a sign of wisdom,” said Kaniürü, happy at the compliment.

The flattery made him feel that the Wizard of the Crow was a real diviner, a true seer of useful truths, and he began to like him.

“This shrine is for treating the sick—you know that?” said the Wizard of the Crow. “Here we bewitch evil. So let me ask you, has your property sickened you already?”

“Oh, no, no, I’m not at all sick of it. I mean, mine is not a real illness.”

“Here I know only how to chase away real illnesses in even the deepest recesses of the body or mind. So I can be of no use to you.”

“Please help me,” Kaniürü pleaded. “Whatever you want for your services I will pay”

What’s ailing you? Your heart or mind or both?”

Kaniürü quickly decided that he had no alternative but to fake an illness. But what illness? Then he recalled the video and Tajirika’s account of the malady of words getting stuck in his larynx. Well, nobody holds a monopoly on any illness. If he could take over Tajirika’s seat as chairman of Marching to Heaven, why not also his ailment? Kaniürü now bent his head like one weighed down by grave matters. He raised his head and cleared his throat.

“To tell the truth, talking about my illness is a little embarrassing. The situation is like this. Sometimes, when I think too much about my new wealth, words get stuck in my throat, Wizard of the Crow, and when I try to force them out, out pops If. “

“Only one word?”

“Yes, but it repeats itself many times.”

“And when does this terrible thing come upon you? What triggers it? Do the words get stuck only when you think about your new wealth?”

“Sometimes, but also when I’m not thinking about anything in particular.”

“So, what do you want?”

“First, I need medicine to prevent words from getting stuck in my larynx.”

When did you last have an attack?”

“Oh, this morning. I mean, late this afternoon. That’s why I came here in darkness. Emergency.”

“But now the malady is gone; it’s in remission.”

“I told you. It’s an on-and-off thing. It’s sudden.”

“Is it even worse than usual?”

Kaniürü tried to recall what Tajirika had said in the video but he could not remember all the details. So he just improvised as he went along.

“It normally happens at home in the evenings, after office hours. It is worse when I look at a mirror.”

“What do you see in the mirror?”

“My face.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. My face. I know my face.”

“The reflection of your face: it makes you say If?”

“Yes.”

“So the malady attacks you only when you look at yourself in the mirror?”

“Yes, yes.
That’s true.
You got it right.”

“Even in the office? I mean, when you look at yourself in the mirror in the office?”

“Everywhere, I tell you,” Kaniürü added, and now he gave his imagination free rein as he tried to elicit maximum sympathy from the Wizard of the Crow. “It’s a terrible malady, Mr. Wizard of the Crow. Wherever there is a mirror I know the malady is lurking behind it. In the toilets of the big hotels and nightclubs. In buses and taxis. It is as if my enemies inflict me with the malady every hour, wherever I may be. Mr. Wizard of the Crow, I am now scared to leave my home.”

Suddenly the Wizard of the Crow did what Kaniürü had not expected. He handed him a mirror.

“Here! Take this. It sees everything,” said the Wizard of the Crow. “Even what is most hidden.”

Kaniürü’s hands were shaking as he took the mirror. Many thoughts whirled through his mind. For a second he thought of faking a seizure and spurting a profusion of ifs, but he got scared. Suppose the mirror can see all my secrets? No, I am not going to look at myself in his mirror,
no way.
Kaniürü did not even pretend to look at it.

“I am not saying that words get completely stuck,” he said, trying to dig himself out of the hole he had dug. “What I am talking about is
more like a whisper, an echo; it is not a distinct sound. The word whispers itself to my brain. Oh, Mr. Wizard of the Crow, whispers in the brain are worse than actual sounds because they impede the flow of thought. I need protective medicine around my property, for this will allay my anxiety, which is obviously the cause of these whispers. I need protection from my enemies, a permanent cure. Here, take the mirror back.”

The Wizard of the Crow did not take back the mirror. He looked long and hard at Kaniürü’s face.

“Is that all you want?” he asked Kaniürü.

“That’s all I want.”

“Then don’t worry yourself to death,” the Wizard of the Crow told Kaniürü. “You are young. You can still turn your life around. What you need is to get rid of those things that trigger anxiety standing in the way of a new self, a different self. They are the enemy”

“Thank you, Mr. Wizard of the Crow. You have read my mind correctly. Get rid of the enemies who stand in my way or at least neutralize their power over me. I believe in you and your medicine.”

“Hold the mirror before you,” the Wizard of the Crow told him. “Hold it firmly. Now look directly at it and don’t let your eyes wander. Concentrate all your thoughts, all your desires, all your needs, into the gaze. If you lie, you are lying to yourself. If you speak the truth, you are speaking the truth to yourself. When you feel yourself ready to receive the magic of curative and protective words, let me know.”

“I am ready. I am ready for the cure and the protection,” Kaniürü said quickly, fearing that the Wizard of the Crow might suddenly change his mind.

“Are you are looking at the mirror directly?”

“Yes, yes.”

“Say after me:
Remove from me the enemy of life; the days of thieves and robbers are numbered.”

“Remove from me the enemy of life; the days of thieves and robbers are numbered.”

“I want you to chant that seven times.”

Kaniürü did as he was told and chanted the magic words seven times, his eyes and their reflection gazing at each other, his lips and their reflections mimicking each other seven times.

“Now remove all the wax in your ears and anything else that may
block my words,” the Wizard of the Crow pronounced with authority. “Listen to me. Every morning you must stand in front of a mirror, look at it, and say the formula seven times. Do that seven days a week for seven months.”

“Is that all?” Kaniürü asked.

“That’s all,” said the Wizard of the Crow, now taking back his mirror.

“And will that cast a protective spell over my life and property?”