Wizard of the Crow (109 page)

“Actually it is not only Gautama,” said Kamltl, not picking up the lighthearted tone. “There is also Kaniürü.”

“Don’t you remember the statement from his wife, Jane Kanyori, that he has disappeared? SID?”

“And the new Emperor? He still has his business. Modern construction. Your old workplace?”

It became a walk down memory lane, back to the bad and the good that had happened to them in Santamaria. Nyawlra winced as she recalled the day she narrowly escaped arrest with the inadvertent help from A.G., thanks to his belief that she was the other manifestation of the Wizard of the Crow. They sat down almost at the same roadside spot where they sat on the day they first met.

“Whatever drew me to you on that day was blessed.”

“And who would have thought that the place where you took the test would later become the starting point of the queuing mania? Or Tajirika’s imperial journey?”

“Well, let’s say that even then he was an emperor of wood and construction. I wonder if they restored the original board with NO
VACANCY
…” Kamltl started.

“For Jobs Come Tomorrow,”
they said in unison, and they laughed together.

Their laughter and this reunion with their beginnings considerably reduced the tensions that lingered between them.

“Okay let’s go and get our coffee before it gets cold,” Kamltl said.

“Did you make an order through an invisible phone?”

They rejoined the human traffic, but after a few blocks they realized that they had gone past the place and so they turned and went
back the way they came. Again they missed the place a second time and they went back, looking at each and every building carefully.

“No, it is not that we are going past it,” said Nyawlra. “Look.”

The building that used to house the Mars Cafe had been demolished. The site was fenced off with a wall of corrugated iron sheets. By the side was a big billboard: UNDER CONSTRUCTION:
GLOBE INSURANCE
CORPORATION: THE TALLEST BUILDING IN AFRICA; A REAL MARCHING TO HEAVEN.

“What happened to Gautama, I wonder,” Kamltl said. “Did he go to one of the planets you just recited?”

“Most likely he moved his business elsewhere in the city” said Nyawlra. “Let’s leave Gautama and his Mars Cafe alone and look for another place.”

“What about Chou’s Chinese Gourmet?” Kamltl suggested.

“It is a restaurant, not a coffeehouse,” Nyawlra said.

At the Santamaria market they bought the day’s issue of the
Eldares Times
and went inside another coffeehouse and found a corner to themselves. They took separate sections of the newspaper and bent down to read as they waited for their order.

Nyawlra’s eyes caught another reference to joint military exercises, and she commented, “I don’t know why they would want to mount these Euro-American-Aburlrian exercises when the cold war ended long ago.”

“And what are you going to do about your caves?” asked Kamltl.

“It does not mean that these exercises will involve looking for our hideouts in the mountains. But even if they were, remember that in Aburlria there are many hills and mountains, and where would they begin and end their search unless they decided to put permanent military camps in all the hills and mountains?”

“I don’t mean they would mount such exercises merely to look for possible hideouts for possible rebels, but they could stumble upon them,” argued Kamltl.

“Even if they did, remember, the people provide the best hideouts. To their joint military exercises we respond with joint political exercises with our people.”

“All the same, your people should be careful,” said Kamltl.

“Why do you talk as if you are outside it all?”

Kamltl did not answer immediately.

“What is the matter, Kamltl?” she asked. “These last few days, you have not been the Kamltl I know.”

“I’ve been thinking about why the love of my life hid so much from me.”

“But you were not then a member of the movement; how could I have entrusted you with its secrets? Would you respect me for that? What if everybody were to do likewise, be indiscreet with their spouses or lovers?”

“Well, I thought you were all too close to one another …”

“Yes, we are close—so?” Nyawlra asked, a little defiantly.

“I felt as if you had put me aside,” Kamltl said.

Nyawlra laughed. “Are you jealous?”

“A little, yes.”

“Only a little? I’m disappointed.”

“More than a little!”

“Take your mind away from those thoughts. It is true that we are very close. We have gone through a lot together. That is a bond of politics and it is as it should be. Yours and mine is a bond of love. And it is also as it should be. But today our relationship is much stronger because to the bond of love we have now added that of politics. Mind you, I would be lying if I said I was not happy to see you wriggle with a little jealousy. Thank you. But jealousy beyond acceptable limits is bad for love, for it means that whenever you see me talking or laughing with a guy or coming home late you will be stricken with grief and pointless suspicions. A little jealousy warms love. But too much of it harms love.”

“Well, let mine then remain the right amount to warm our love. You know I have always been behind you and I never sought to know more than was necessary. Imagine how I would have felt if, when I was in their hands, I knew that I was also carrying all these secrets of the movement? Fortunately I knew nothing, so even if they had threatened to kill me I would have given nothing. For there was nothing to give away.”

“But you carried one big secret,” Nyawlra said. You knew about me and you never betrayed me.”

“Well, that is true, but I also didn’t know everything about you. Up until the moment you entered the room and were introduced as the leader, I had no idea about your position in the movement. You always
talked about the movement or the leadership out there. Even on that day, I could not have suspected because you never let on, by hint or gesture, that you would be coming to the meeting.”

“That is because, as I told you the other time, we did not want you to make a political decision based solely on your feelings for me.”

“The deception, if I might call it so, was complete.”

“You admit that you were taken in?”

“Yes, and for a moment as you sat there and chaired the meeting, I thought that maybe I was looking at another person.”

“Then I win,” said Nyawlra triumphantly.

“Win what?”

“The bet. You remember our little bet? You swore that you would not be taken in a third time?”

“Oh, that,” Kamltl said. “This time it is different because you were not in disguise, like the Limping Witch at the State House. But I am more than glad to lose the bet. When the time comes I will buy the wedding ring.”

“I love you,” she said softly.

“I love you, very much,” he said.

They wandered through the market before deciding to avoid the throng and walk along the former Ruler’s Highway, now the Imperial Highway. Soon they came to the former site of Marching to Heaven, now the site of the Imperial Coliseum.

“See the person sitting under the tree?” Nyawlra said. “What is he doing there all alone with legs crossed Buddha fashion?”

“Gautama,” said Kamltl at once.

Yes, it was indeed Gautama seated at the base of the tree, legs crossed Buddha-style, his back upright against the trunk. Hanging from the tree were newspaper and magazine cuttings, in the middle of which stood out a piece on which was scribbled
MARS.

“Probably the only material he was able to rescue from Mars Cafe,” Kamltl murmured, recalling the last time he and Gautama talked about Mahabharata, Ramayana, Gita, stars, and space.

Kamltl told Nyawlra that they should just continue with their walk, but then came a breeze that seemed to push him toward the lone person. He changed his mind. They should at least express some kind of solidarity.

“Namaste! Gurudeva!”
Kamltl called out.

Gautama thought that he had gotten some followers, and without responding to the greeting directly or changing his posture he started telling them the good news:

I am not alone, see? This tree and the stray animals who come to visit me are all my friends. Even the sun, the wind, and the rain are my friends. Do you recall Hanuman’s parting words to Rama in Ramayana? Beautiful words that speak to the oneness of creation, he said, and, picking up a book beside him, read aloud: Dear Rama, we are indeed your old friends from long ago, and your companions of ancient days come to help you. We are your forefathers. We are your ancestors, the animals, and you are our child man. As for our friendship, we have known you a long time, Rama, and the number of those days is lost in silence.

Ah, the silence of being, said Gautama as now he took his eyes off the book, sighing. Human dreams have no end. Oh, if we would stop hate and wars we would inherit not just the earth but the universe. Listening to what the universe is telling us is the only way for the nations of this our earth to come together and find union with life. Light comes from the sun. Let there be universal light. Space is our refuge. Let’s oppose all intents to take death to space …

They went away wondering if what they just saw and heard was not coming from a man who had lost his head over the loss of the Mars Cafe. Clouds were darkening; rain seemed imminent. They decided to go back to Santalucia, which involved walking back through the city center to catch a bus. They passed near Paradise, then crossed the Imperial Avenue, the Imperial Road, the Imperial Street, and past the Imperial Conference Center before arriving at the Imperial City Square. Construction workers were indeed busy changing landmark names to the Ruling Emperor’s this or that.

The Imperial City Square was a wide-open space, one of the few remaining, and it was here that the unemployed mostly came to rest and pass the time between hunting for work. Some even spent nights there when the police were not around. It was, as usual, crowded this afternoon, and entertainment was provided by impromptu street acts, including prophets of doom preaching fire and brimstone to the unrepentant.

Nyawlra and Kamltl drifted from group to group till they came to a crowd around a storyteller with a single-stringed violin.

“It’s A.G.,” Kamltl whispered. “You remember, the policeman?”

At that very moment, A.G. shouted, “True!
Haki ya Mungu,
that is exactly what the Wizard of the Crow did.”

The people listened as he sang the story of his search for the Wizard of the Crow, hoping for a blessing from him: the thing of life. “Let nobody lie to you—the Wizard of the Crow will never die. True!
Haki ya Mungu!”

A.C. appeared crazed, and Nyawlra thought that he feigned that to be able to say the things he was saying without interference.

It began to rain: people clapped, some saying that maybe the rain would wash away some of the filth on the streets of Eldares.

It was then that A.G.’s eyes met those of Nyawlra and Kamltl. He stopped singing, frowned, and shook his head as if he thought his mind was deceiving him. He resumed his ballad of the famous Wizard of the Crow, who could change himself into anything.

“It’s him,” Nyawlra whispered as they walked away.

“Who?”

“The man who wrestled the gun from Kaniürü.”

“A.G., who once chased us from the gates of Paradise?”

“And also snatched us from the gates of Hell!”

Kamltl and Nyawlra went homeward holding hands, a mixture of teardrops and raindrops running down Nyawlra’s face, the sound of the one-string violin and the man’s voice following them as if the player was telling them that he, too, remembered the night he chased the couple from the gates of Paradise, mistaking them for beggars. To the sound of the violin Nyawlra added her own from her guitar, and the two blended inside her. She let the fusion linger in her mind, knowing that they might never meet him face-to-face to say, “Thank you, A.G…. Thank you for the gift of life.”