Wizard of the Crow (57 page)

The news quickly spread throughout the camp. The entire squad of the guards rose in arms. Police reinforcements arrived at the scene. But the wardens who were no more than a step from Tajirika kept on shouting: Leave him alone. He has
it.
He is in handcuffs. Don’t provoke him. His shit carries death.

Thus they marched, guns cocked all around, until they reached the office of the chief of the Eldares Remand Prison. The chief, the armed guards, and the police reinforcements were all scared of the prisoner rumored to carry death. They knew that he was handcuffed so there was no pressure on them to take any action that might make the situation worse. When asked what he wanted, Tajirika remained consistent in his one demand: he must be taken to Sikiokuu.

The camp chief called Sikiokuu: There is a prisoner here who has virtually taken over the camp with a bucket of shit. He demands to see you. What should we do with him?

What? Has Tajirika lost his head completely? This was Sikiokuu’s first reaction to news of the crisis. Anticipating the return of the Ruler, the last thing he needed was more aggravation to add to his stressed nerves. But the absurdity of the situation struck him: Tajirika taking over an armed camp, a bucket of shit as his only weapon? Sikiokuu cracked up, which momentarily served to lighten his manifold burdens. Yet the more he thought about it, the less amusing it became. Suppose the media found out that the chairman of Marching to Heaven had chased a detachment of the Ruler’s armed forces with a bucket of shit? Suppose they carried the picture side by side with that of the Ruler returning home with buckets of dollars for Marching to Heaven, a welcoming crowd of dancers and diplomats around him? He imagined the caption: THE
RULER
RETURNS HOME
WITH BUCKETS
OF DOLLARS FOR MARCHING TO HEAVEN. THE CHAIRMAN OF MARCHING TO HEAVEN GIVES MARCHING ORDERS TO ARMED GUARDS WITH A BUCKET OF
SHIT.
Horrible! Remove his handcuffs immediately, he ordered, and ask the man to surrender the bucket. Then, not trusting the camp chief to handle the matter with the necessary discretion— he was not even supposed to know the identity of the two prisoners in the cell—Sikiokuu dispatched his henchmen, Elijah Njoya and Peter Kahiga, to the scene to lead the negotiations.

Tajirika insisted that he would hand his bucket over only after a meeting with the minister. He even had a say in the travel arrangements. While Kahiga sat behind the wheel and Njoya next to him, Tajirika sat in the backseat alone, a configuration that suited everybody. Tajirika would keep an eye on the officers, ready to douse them with shit if they tried to cross him. The officers were spared having to sit next to the bucket.

When they arrived at Sikiokuu’s, Njoya and Kahiga shielded their captive from public view, taking him through the back door.

Sikiokuu motioned to Njoya and Kahiga to leave and join two other police guards in the outer room. Tajirika and Sikiokuu stood there sizing each other up.

What Sikiokuu saw in Tajirika was the look of a trapped, wounded animal. So dangerous was Tajirika’s look that Sikiokuu searched high and low to offer him a way out. He tried humor to ease the tension.

“Hut, sasa, story zako? Ni nini tnakalau wanakubringiya kinaa? Nt haart wanakuitia?”
Sikiokuu asked in Sheng.

“I don’t much care for your outdated Sheng,” Tajirika snapped angrily, thinking that Sikiokuu was taking him lightly. “You and I are no longer children. I am not here to play
Fathe
and
Mathe.”

“I was just welcoming you, Mr. Tajirika,” Sikiokuu responded quickly, somewhat disappointed that his Sheng had been rebuffed. “What’s gone wrong between you and these policemen?” Sikiokuu asked, as if he himself had nothing to do with it.

“Nothing,” Tajirika pressed on. “I want to talk man to man.”

“Okay! But first let’s uncuff you, and please put that bucket down. Let my men take it out. It is stinking up the whole building.”

Why should I trust you with my shit?”

“My word is my bond.”

“Swear in the presence of one or two of your police officers that no matter the outcome of our talks, you will never again put me in the same cell with the Wizard of the Crow.”

“Only that?” Sikiokuu asked, completely taken aback by the request.

“For now!” said Tajirika. “The rest is between you and me.”

Despite his anger at the sorcerer’s intransigence, Sikiokuu had not planned on keeping him in jail for more than a day. As soon as the Wizard of the Crow used his sorcery to locate Nyawlra, Sikiokuu
planned to release him. In fact, Sikiokuu had thought that if he kept the two together for one night, Tajirika’s scary stories of torture would terrorize the Wizard of the Crow and soften him up before their meeting the following day. A lesson in manners.

“What went wrong between you and the Wizard of the Crow?” asked Sikiokuu, relieved and curious at the same time.

“Do you know what it means to share a roof with one who learned sorcery from the dead and regularly talks with the tongues of the dead? Will you swear before a police witness or not?”

How did a lesson in manners turn out like this, with Tajirika babbling all manner of paranoic foolishness?

“Okay!” said Sikiokuu to mollify him a little, for indeed the minister had no idea what Tajirika was talking about. Maybe under torture the man had lost his mind. What was he to do with a crazed chairman of Marching to Heaven? How would he explain it all away? He decided to go along with Tajirika’s nutty request, and he shouted for Njoya and Kahiga.

Thinking that their chief was shouting for help, Njoya and Kahiga rushed in followed by the two other police officers, their weapons drawn.

“Put your guns down,” Sikiokuu hastened to tell them. “This gentleman and I are old friends. In fact, I needed only two of you, but it is probably better that you all are here because I want all of you to witness what I am now going to say. He must never be put under the same roof as any witch doctor of whatever name. If anyone breaks my rule he will lose his job without notice, period. Besides, this gentleman is not a prisoner. He is in protective custody because he is assisting the government in matters concerning the security of the State. Okay, my friend?” Sikiokuu asked him.

“It’s okay” said Tajirika, as if a big weight had been taken off his mind, but he still looked dazed, and his voice quavered.

“Remove the handcuffs,” Sikiokuu instructed Kahiga.

Tajirika stepped forward, but as he put the pail of shit on the table, the better to extend his hands for the handcuffs to be removed, he suddenly tripped over a chair and fell, splashing the contents of the bucket all over the office. Some of it found its way onto Sikiokuu’s face and clothes; some on Kahiga, Njoya, and the two police officers, and some on the Ruler’s portrait on the table. They
thought that Tajirika was enacting what he had been threatening the whole day. Njoya and Kahiga ran back to the anteroom and hid behind the door as a shield against more filth. The two other police officers jumped up and down, screaming,
The deadly virus!

“Shit!”
shouted Sikiokuu, shaking his big befouled ears, and as he ran toward an inner chamber he was heard to shout:
The idiot deserves to be shot!

Tajirika heard the words
be shot
and thought that Sikiokuu had issued an order to that effect.

On the ground, smeared with his own shit and urine, Tajirika implored:
“Don’t shoot me. I beg you, don’t shoot me.
I was lying. I don’t have the death virus.”

The two additional police officers were so relieved by his confession that they felt grateful, helped him to his feet, removed his handcuffs, and took the bucket away.

As he stood waiting for them to return, Tajirika felt as if a cloud had been lifted from his head, as if he had suddenly woken up from the delirium of a high fever. He also felt a little foolish and unsure of the next move. What should he do? Wipe his face with his soiled shirt? Followed by the two other police officers, Njoya and Kahiga came back, swearing under their breath: Let’s hustle him back to the torture chamber and teach him a lesson. Emerging from the inner chamber, Sikiokuu caught Njoya and Kahiga’s words and warned them to stop the nonsense. He then ordered the two police officers to get soap and water and clean up the mess under the supervision of Njoya and Kahiga.

“After you finish, go back to the other room and wait for further instructions. And you,” he said, turning to Tajirika, “follow me.”

But before entering the inner chamber, Sikiokuu suddenly remembered the portrait of the Ruler. He rushed to the table and grabbed it.

“There is a sink in the bathroom over there,” Sikiokuu told Tajirika, pointing at a door. “Go in there and clean up a bit. I am afraid I don’t have any spare clothes.”

Even Sikiokuu had not changed into fresh clothes. He had certainly tried to wipe off the mess from his own shirt, but the soiled spots could still be seen. Now he started working on the portrait of the Ruler, trying to clean the spots, but every time he thought he had
finished another seemed to emerge as if from inside the portrait, and in the end he gave up and covered it with a towel. Tajirika found him trying to freshen the air in the chamber with perfume, but no amount of perfume could quite remove the stink in the offices of the Ruler.

“It’s hopeless,”
Sikiokuu said, and he kept the bottle of perfume on the table and sat back in a chair. He then pointed to another chair for Tajirika to sit, and once again they faced each other as before in the outer office, but this time there was only the coffee table between them.

“Mr. Tajirika, what you did today is the same thing as taking hostages, a crime in national and international law. And I must tell you: but for the fact that you were in handcuffs, they would have shot you dead. Let me give you a piece of advice. Don’t ever play with fire again, and I really hope to God that the reasons that drove you to hold the armed forces at shit-point are solid enough to withstand the wrath of the State. Tell me everything you came here to tell me. And let me warn you. I don’t want more foolishness from you. No more playing around. First: what happened between you and the Wizard of the Crow? Or should I send for him to tell me his version so that you both can argue about your differences in my neutral presence?”

Sikiokuu’s mention of the Wizard of the Crow and the possibility of his coming to the office revived the terror that had driven Tajirika to demand that he be brought to Sikiokuu. Would he never escape the wizard completely? Were their fates tied together? Maybe the Wizard of the Crow had already bewitched him beyond recovery with potent brews from India. Tajirika once again imagined death in the human form of the Wizard of the Crow approaching him relentlessly, like clockwork. Death could now be anywhere, even right outside. Tajirika relived the encroaching helplessness that had brought him to seek Sikiokuu’s protection. He now jumped up, went around the table, knelt down, and grabbed the legs of an astonished Sikiokuu in an abject embrace.

“Please,
I beg you. Ask the Wizard of the Crow to release me from the spell of death he put on me last night. Wasn’t that why you sent him to me? His witchcraft is powerful. I knew it from the moment he cured me of my malady. But little did I then know that he gets secret recipes from the dead. If you ask the Wizard of the Crow to remove all the spells of death from me, I promise to do and say whatever it is you want me to do or say. Save me. Rescind the order to kill me.
Please.”

As soon as he recovered from the shock of Tajirika’s embrace, Sikiokuu started sorting things out. So, Tajirika thinks that the sorcerer and I are working together, that I sent the wizard into his cell to cast a deadly spell on him? How could such a thought have occurred to him? Here was a misunderstanding he was not about to clear up, for it served his purposes well. The Wizard of the Crow had become a secret ally who had brought about what torture had failed to do: make Tajirika offer to cooperate.

“Mr. Tajirika, will you please go back to your seat and tell me what is on your mind?”

“No, you must first ask him to remove the evil spell.”

“What did the Wizard of the Crow tell you?”

“It is not what he said. But it was not hard for me to figure out that you sent him to my cell with orders to kill me. I recalled my conversation with you the other day and how it ended. Were the three words you told me to think about not the same as those whose meaning the Wizard of the Crow had divined when I first went to him with my malady? You followed our conversation by smuggling him into my cell at midnight. Why did you send him in the dark of night if it was not because you wanted him to harm me? Mr. Sikiokuu, I am not a fool. I know exactly what you are really after. You want him to return the malady of words into my body. Thoughts without words are like steam without an outlet. You want me to drown in my own thoughts or else explode under their pressure. And if that fails, he will chop off my thumbs. The Wizard of the Crow even confessed to me.”

“Confessed to you? Confessed what?”

“That he started the queuing mania.”

“He told you so?”

“Not directly. But last night he reminded me that the day I went to his shrine was not the first time he and I had met. A while back I had put up a no jobs’ sign at the main entrance to my office building to
keep away the many job seekers who swarmed it. So whenever a job seeker ignored the writing on the signboard and strayed into my office, I would routinely ask him to go back outside and read what was on the sign:
No Vacancy.
But the Wizard of the Crow made me do something I had never done before. He made me walk him to the sign and stand over him as he read it. A day later, I became afflicted with my malady; and then the queuing started at the very spot where the Wizard of the Crow had stood as he read the sign. Can all this be a coincidence?” asked Tajirika, shaking Sikiokuu’s legs as if seeking an answer from them. “What more proof do I need to see that he was the origin of the queuing mania? The question is this: who sent him to my office and why? Or am I supposed to believe that a person with a good and lucrative business in sorcery would just stray into my office and ask for a job he does not need unless driven by other motives? He was clearly sent to try me with afflictions as Satan once did to Job, but unlike Job I had no chance against his wiles. To have given him a job would have been to give him ample opportunity to cast an evil spell on my business. My business would have died slowly, and with the failure of my business I would no longer have been found fit to continue as the chairman of Marching to Heaven. And if I denied him a job, as I did, he would exact vengeance, as he did, first by making me ill and then by starting the queuing mania. Two questions remain: when I met him at his shrine he never gave the slightest hint by tone or gesture of the fact that we had met before, so why did he do so now, after you had put him in my cell? Mr. Minister, if you are not the one who sent him on a mission to start the queuing mania, then who was it? Who else would have a motive for destroying me and undermining my chairmanship of Marching to Heaven?”