Wizard of the Crow (71 page)

“Yes, that was it, and I suddenly realized that I had given a name to the oddity. SIE: self-induced expansion.

“He listened attentively to my story without interruptions. But when I talked about pressing the patient’s belly only to hear the word
coral, crawl,
or
cruel
issuing from his mouth, the so-called Wizard of the Crow raised his head.

“He asked me: Did he say
coral, crawl, cruel,
or
corwar?
At first I could not tell the difference in the sounds. He repeated the words, pronouncing each slowly and distinctly, until eventually I heard the differences; I had to admit that his own word sounded nearest to that emitted by the Ruler. So I told him, Yes, yes, that’s the word. But why
should the man be obsessed with the cold war, now a thing of the past?

“He asked again: And this word or sound came out only when you tapped his tummy? Yes, I said. Are you sure? he asked, and I answered yes. He wrote that down in his notebook. What about when the other doctors tapped the Ruler’s tummy? I told him that I was the only person who had done so. I asked him: Any other questions? At first he did not answer me; it was as if he had not even heard me. I was about to leave when I heard him call out to me. He came nearer. Up to then he had said or done nothing to suggest that he was a witch doctor. His way of doing things and asking questions was not much different from that of any modern doctor. I saw no signs of voodoo or juju paraphernalia.

“But when he now explained in a low voice what he wanted me to do, I could not tell whether he was playing tricks with me or not. Then I felt like laughing. He wanted me to walk past a mirror on a wall.”

The Wizard of the Crow had never met the Ruler face-to-face, and his image of him—tall, big-bodied but not fat—had been formed from watching television and reading newspapers. The Ruler cared about his appearance, but he was not one of those leaders who wears colubus monkey skins, dashikis, or collarless shirts. He was always in Western-style suits decorated with patches from the skins of the big cats that were exclusively his. Of course there was the famous leopard-skin hat shaped like a crown, the symbol of his exalted office and power. That was more or less what was in the wizard’s mind when he entered the sick chamber. He had expected a difference, especially in one now so afflicted, but never this that appeared before his eyes.

He was struck by a stench such as he had often detected in the streets of Eldares, except that now it seemed to be oozing out of the Ruler’s body.

The Ruler’s eyes were full of fear, and the Wizard of the Crow
could not tell whether it was fear of the illness itself or of him, an unknown presence. The first thing, resolved the wizard, was to still any doubts in the patient’s mind, because confidence in the healer is paramount in the healing process.

“Listen very carefully,” he told the Ruler. “First things first. If you hear what I am saying please nod your head twice.”

The Ruler nodded twice.

“Good. If you can hear, you will certainly be able to talk. Don’t worry. There is a strange illness in the land. It is a malady of words; thoughts get stuck inside a person. You have seen stutterers, haven’t you? Their stammer is a result of a sudden surge of thoughts, or calculations, or worry. Now I ask you: who has more worries than a head of state? Who said that uneasy lies the head that wears the crown? What I want you to do is very simple. Look at the mirror on the wall. The people who have had close contact with you—the ministers, the security men, the doctors—will all pass in front of the mirror. Your task is simply to look at their reflections. Let your mind wander freely, forming its own impressions. But don’t worry about putting your thoughts into words. What is important now is for the mind and the heart to think and feel. Let your images, feelings, and thoughts float freely. I will trace the path of your thinking to see where you are obstructed; I want you to help me. I will give voice to your thoughts and feelings. I want to help you break your own silence to yourself. I am only a catalyst conveying your very own thoughts.”

The Ruler nodded in agreement.

Machokali was first to pass by the mirror. The Ruler narrowed his eyes and the skin on his forehead broke into discernible folds as he followed Machokali’s move across the room before leaving it. He shook his head from side to side so slightly that had the Wizard of the Crow not been concentrating on the Ruler’s image in the mirror he would have missed the motion. In the folds of the skin on the

Ruler’s forehead and the light in his squinty eyes, the Wizard of the Crow detected intense anger.

The other ministers took turns before the mirror, but none triggered the look that the Ruler had given the Minister for Foreign Affairs. When it came to the security men and his personal physician, the Ruler averted his eyes as if he would prefer them not to see him in these circumstances.

Din Furyk and Clement Clarkwell were last. Suddenly, the Ruler made efforts to stand up but to no avail, still managing to blurt out: IF!

When Din Furyk heard this he forgot that he was supposed to walk past the mirror and leave without saying a word. He turned to the Wizard of the Crow and shouted, That’s the word! That’s the word he was saying.
^*
As if responding to Furyk s fury, the Ruler kept on repeating the if word, vainly trying to use the wall as support in his attempt to get on his feet. The Wizard of the Crow signaled for Furyk and Clarkwell to leave the room.

The Ruler was panting: trying to stand up while uttering the
if
word had left him exhausted. He rested his eyes on the wizard as if demanding to know: What is it? The Wizard of the Crow answered him, No, you are not lost for words; it is just that the thought of the indignity heaped on you before your ministers and underlings was so overwhelming that initially no words would come out. Now when you saw those two whites walking nonchalantly before the mirror as if they were not aware of your presence or what their kind have done to you, you wanted to give them a piece of your mind, but you got stuck. Stutterers are sometimes unable to get past the first word. Just like you. You got stuck at the word
if. IF I had been white, would they have done what they did to me?
Or,
IF I had been white would they have treated me the way they just did in the presence of my ministers!

“That’s right,” said the Ruler, loud and clear. “That’s what I was trying to tell them. Go and tell my ministers that I want them all here to hear for themselves what I was trying to tell those whites.”

Now it was the Wizard of the Crow who was at a loss for words. He was so taken aback by the Ruler’s quick recovery of voice that he did not know how to respond to the order. He was about to tell him
that his diagnosis had barely begun when the Ruler repeated his command.

“Be quick. Get them here without delay,” he said, as if talking not to a healer but a messenger.

The Wizard of the Crow left the room and passed the message on to Machokali, who hastened to gather the others. As the Wizard of the Crow returned to his room he ran into Furyk and Clarkwell. They wanted to know what had happened. Had he met with success?

“I managed only to release his tongue, nothing more. At least he is now talking,” replied the Wizard of the Crow, looking directly into the eyes of Din Furyk. “He’s still monstrously obese, though his rate of increase is slightly less than it was.”

Furyks reaction was entirely unexpected.

“You are a fraud,” he said, wagging a finger at the Wizard of the Crow. “You are claiming success based on my work. I discovered the illness and even gave it a name. I challenge you in the name of science to a race for the cure for self-induced expansion. But I warn you. The patient is mine and I will patent the patient, the name of the illness, and any cure.”

*
The sound he had been hearing was
korwo,
which means
if.

“I don’t know what drove me to challenge him that way” Furyk wrote in his diary, “but I suppose I did not want him to think that his methods, whatever they were, could outdo science. Admittedly, in its way, what he did was quite
extraordinary.
In a matter of hours he had untied a knot that tested our skills to the limit. Had I not been present to see and hear for myself, I would never have believed it. Still, I was convinced that whatever he had done to avert the hypertrophy of the body and make the Ruler talk was somehow a development of the work that Clarkwell and I had already done. It would have been good to have conferred with him privately to find out the details of his treatment, but he, like those gifted in the arts of conjuring, was not as voluble off the stage as we would have hoped. But he had yet to find a
definitive cure for SfE, and f resolved to do whatever 1 could to solve its mystery before he did.

“The first priority was to register the patent on the patient himself, and on our discovery of the unique phenomena to which we had given the name of self-induced expansion (SIE). That way anything the sorcerer might come up with, if anything, would fall within the intellectual property rights of our new company, which we named Clem & Din. Although we encountered a hitch in patenting the patient, or even his body, because the name Ruler was too general and it would have meant that we had patent rights on all the bodies of all the rulers of the globe, we were satisfied with rights to the discovery of SIE.

“I would now use all the latest gains in the human genome, cloning, and stem cell research to come up with a cure. Science versus sorcery. The battle between me and the Wizard of the Crow was shaping up as one between darkness and light; I felt connected to a long line of Christian soldiers all the way back to the Holy Crusades.”

The Wizard of the Crow did not immediately respond to the challenge. What he now wanted was a little rest and to give the Ruler time to confer with his ministers before resuming what he knew was going to be a difficult case. He really needed the sleep. Coming from isolation in the prison cell in Eldares to an audience with the Ruler in a New York hotel had been a jolt, and his mind and body needed to adjust. A nap would release whatever tension he carried within, and this would enable him to cope with additional pressure.

He lay on his back and while staring at the ceiling felt weightless, ready to succumb to sleep. But questions persisted. This affliction that had visited the body of the Ruler had defied his divining skills. How was he to prescribe a cure without first divining the cause of the malady? He felt as if the illness was mocking him, which reminded him of Furyks challenge. What nerve this Furyk has to think that he
can know everything about an African after only the most minimal of contact? I will take up the challenge, he heard himself saying, addressing both the illness and Din Furyk. Where do I begin the race?

And then, to his amazement, he heard a voice. Nyawlra’s? The voice became more distinct: Go back in time. Arise and go to all the crossroads, all the marketplaces and temple sites, all the dwelling places of black people the world over, and find out the sources of their power. There you will find the cure for SIE.

He wanted to obey, but he could hardly move his legs or any other part of the body. The spirit is willing, all right, he sighed in resignation, but the body is in the way. The voice would not let him go, and it was now singing to him.

The song sounded more like a lullaby than an appeal, and he would have sunk to slumber except that this time the voice had a Nyawlra shape, and she stretched out her hands to him from above. He felt his whole self lighten and he saw himself rise, rise and float, reaching beyond the grasp for Nyawlra. He had left his body behind, and now a bird, he was flying freely in the open sky …

He woke up in flight, laughing, recalling his travels from the pyramids of Egypt to the plains of the Serengeti and Great Zimbabwe; Benin to Bahia and on through the Caribbean to the skyscrapers of New York, alighting everywhere to glean wisdom. The form in which he had traveled had been so real that he automatically touched his mouth: to his relief, his lips were not a beak, and his arms not feathery wings, and the clothes on him were the same as he had on when he first lay on the bed to rest.

How long have I slept? he wondered. Just then a familiar smell hit his nostrils, the stench wafting from the sick chamber, prompting him to return to the task that had brought him to America. He would go back to the sick chamber to see if the Buler had voided all the words from within. He would see him alone and ask him a few questions. He felt rested; the sooner he found a cure or a safe way of extrieating
himself from the whole mess, the sooner he would return to Aburlria and to Nyawlra.

He met three men, white, brown, and black, with identical briefcases, coming out of the sick chamber. The white was cursing:
Oh, damn, we are already late!
Late? The Wizard of the Crow asked himself. Had the Ruler of Aburlria died?

It is said that when his ministers and the entire entourage entered the Ruler’s sick chamber, he did not greet them with the usual preliminaries: how are you, where have you been, thanks for coming, or thank God I am now feeling better. He simply started talking as if resuming the interrupted luncheon. Even the letter delivered by the messenger of the Global Courier Services, Manhattan, was in his hands, exactly the way he held it the day Machokali handed it to him, and he kept on waving it as a prop, evidence and talisman.

“Yes, if my skin was white, would the directors of the Global Bank have insulted me as they have in this letter?” he asked the ministers, who roared back a resounding NOOO!

To say that the ministers were astounded is to understate their various expressions of relief and disbelief. The Ruler was panting as if he had not gotten used to the burden of speech, though his body showed not the slightest sign of deflating. But at least it no longer seemed on the verge of bursting. So his words, whatever their sense, were most welcome to their ears.