Wizard of the Crow (11 page)

Kamltl never saw Wariara in Klambugi again. He continued staying in the village, but without Wariara life was no longer the same. Although in the last days of their friendship their review of their encounters in the city had become rarer and rarer, he still missed their occasional review of the day’s hunt for jobs. It was increasingly difficult and hollow to live in the village where everything, even matatu rides in the morning, reminded him of her. Besides, he feared that everybody was aware of his alcoholic spell. He too decided to leave Klambugi for Eldares for, as he reasoned to himself, a fisherper-son does not cast the net in the same spot or a farmer continue planting seeds in the same hole.

He continued looking for a lucky break in Eldares but without ever getting it and without even seeing any glimpses of light at the end of the tunnel of his life up to that point. In the first few months Kamltl thought about Wariara, often wondering where she was, what she was doing, how she was surviving, or even whether she was alive. But months and months of daily problems eventually removed any lingering images of Wariara from his mind. He had enough problems of his own without having to add to them by worrying about another free agent.

Yes, there were countless disappointments in his three-year search for a job, some heart-wrenching, but none had plunged him into such depths of humiliation as the fake job interview. Was it because it was the culmination of what had happened to him the entire day since morning? Indeed, were he a believer in witchcraft, curses, and evil spells, Kamltl would have taken what had happened to him in the morning as a sure sign that, right at the break of day, somebody had cast evil his way.

On waking up to start what he now called his day of humiliation, Kamrö had made an important decision about the way he would support himself in this cruel city. He would follow what he called Buddha’s footsteps, or at least those of his followers. The best hours for this would be in the evening when it was a little dark: he did not want any of his friends or former classmates to meet him in his new occupation, however holy. He therefore set himself two tasks for daytime: continue knocking at offices for a job and also look around for the most promising premises of his new occupation of begging. Market survey, he called it.

He started his scouting mission at the Buler’s Plaza, situated in
the city center. Around the plaza were some of the leading hotels, the haunts of foreign clients, particularly tourists from Europe, America, and Japan. He passed by Angel’s Hotel and when he saw how crowded it was with tourists, even at that hour of the morning, he stopped, and the thought crossed his mind, Why don’t I take the first step in the imitation of Buddha here and now instead of waiting for the evening hour? His eyes moved along the crowded veranda all the way to Angel’s Corner, famous for its acacia bush around which were chairs and tables graced by waiters in white flowing dresses, red bandanas, and of course marching red fezzes.

It was then that his eyes fell on … who? Margaret Wariara? He had not seen her for more than two years, and now this! She was dressed in a miniskirt, high heels, and a brown wig. She stood holding hands with a white tourist whose hanging belly was held in place by two suspenders, waiting for the waiter to finish clearing and tidying up their table. And then Wariara turned her head and for a split second hers and Kamltl’s eyes met before she resumed her previous posture by her man. Both Wariara and Kamltl knew that they had seen and recognized each other, but they acted as if their eyes had not actually met. They never exchanged a word, a look, not even an embarrassed gesture of recognition. Kamltl moved away quickly as if safari ants had suddenly bitten his legs.

He tried to make himself feel angry with her, but no matter how he tried he did not feel anger, for he could not see the difference between what he had decided to do, the Buddha way as he called it, and what she was doing at Angel’s Corner—the way of the fishers of men, as she had called it in the song of farewell. But the encounter with Wariara at Angel’s Corner did temper his earlier embrace of the Buddha’s way, and he decided to knock at more office doors and see if one of them would open for him to enter. One lucky break after more than three years of searching was all he needed.

And indeed, moving from office to office asking the same question, is there any vacancy, was what he did the rest of the morning, until the middle of the day when hunger drove him to the foot of the garbage mountain to see if he could find some cast-off tomatoes or the remains of any other edibles. What he liked about tomatoes, pineapples, and bananas was that no matter the dirt on them he could always peel off the skin and reach the clean content. As it
turned out, he did not pick up anything because that was the time he collapsed and felt himself, or rather his soul-self, disconnect from the hungry body.

The two incidents, the encounters with Wariara and then with death, were what made him desperate to get a job before he had taken a step in Buddha’s way. He did not want his and Wariara’s paths to ever cross again in any angel’s corners in Aburlria or anywhere else. And it was this desperation that had made him ingratiate himself with Tajirika, ending up with his drinking dregs from the cup of humiliation.

Standing by the side of the road, pressing hard against the wall, he felt all his afflictions coalesce into one, and an intense pain suddenly jolted him away from the wall and onto the road again to beg. The first step in any enterprise is the most difficult, but procrastination was not an option. The only place he had to skirt was the Ruler’s Plaza, where he had seen Wariara and her new lover; otherwise it did not matter to him where to begin.

Absorbed by what had to be done, he forgot his thirst, hunger, and fatigue. He walked on determinedly, ignoring his surroundings, and paused only when he found himself near the Ruler’s Square. The square was as good a starting place as any, he told himself, and headed toward a public toilet not far from a seven-star hotel. The septic system had collapsed; all the pails were overflowing with human waste. Even the floors were full of shit. Still, the public toilet would be his changing room. In one corner he found space relatively free of shit and piss and went about disguising himself. He opened his bag, took out some rags, and quickly changed. With a felt pen, he drew lines of misery on his face. In no time he had transformed himself from a respectable-looking job hunter to a dire seeker of alms.

Somewhere, bells for the evening Angelus rang, and as if by coincidence the muezzin also started calling the faithful to prayer. For a
moment it was as if the two were in competition, the bells intoning
Angelus Domini
and the muezzin calling out:

A good omen, he thought, perhaps the beginning of a reversal of fortune.

It was a good thing that praying and begging were not yet crimes against the state.

Paradise, where Machokali was hosting a welcome dinner for the visiting mission from the Global Bank, was one of the biggest hotels on the Ruler’s Square, famous for the seven statues of the Ruler all in watchful silence, as seven fountains from the mouths of seven cherubs performed a kind of water dance in obeisance to the sculptures. Four statues stood at the corners of the square and showed the Ruler on horseback in different postures, while three at the center depicted him riding a lion, a leopard, and a tiger. The cherubs spouted jets of water into the air in turns night and day. Spots lighted the statues and fountains in the hours of mist and darkness.

One could always tell the origins of the guests at the various seven-star hotels by their different reactions to the statues and fountains: foreign guests would often stop for a minute or two to admire the dance of the fountains and comment; native dignitaries, so used to the scene, would march right through the square without so much as a glance, except when they were in the company of foreigners, in which case they would pause here and there to explain what was unique to Aburlria in the design of the statues, the placement of the
fountains, and the choreography of the fountains, not forgetting the significance of the number seven. It’s the Ruler’s sacred number, they would say, as if imparting a secret. And the big cats? a visitor might ask. The Ruler’s totems, they would say solemnly.

It was not much different tonight as guests streamed into Paradise; a few foreigners stopped and made perfunctory remarks as the native majority went straight to the reception area as if afraid of missing out on what had brought them there.

The rumor circulating in the country was that the delegates might actually be bringing a lot of cash to give to the poor; after all, it was not called the Global Bank for nothing. So in addition to invited guests who arrived in chauffeur-driven Mercedes-Benzes and others answering the call of duty, scores of others, barefooted but armed with expectations, waited outside the gates of Paradise for a share of largesse. The crowd camped outside the gates fell into three distinct groups.

The police were there to protect the visitors from any intrusion by hoodlum beggars, but they were under strict orders not to use excessive force. Visiting dignitaries should not be given the impression that Aburlria was awash in conflicts. The image of a country at peace was crucial for wooing finance for Marching to Heaven.

The media were there in great numbers because no matter how one looked at it the entire business was news. No one had ever heard or read, even in the Global Book of Records, of a country asking for a loan for such a project, at least not in recent memory; the only comparable scheme had been in biblical times, but even then the children of Israel had been unable to complete the Tower of Babel. The media had two overriding questions: What did the delegates from the bank think about this revival of a scheme that had proved too much even for God’s own chosen? Would the Global Bank come up with the money?

The third group was actually not alien to these premises. There were always beggars loitering around those kinds of hotels at all hours of day and night. But that night they were there in unusually large numbers, looking for all the world to see like wretchedness itself. The blind seemed blinder than usual, the hunchbacked hunched lower, and those missing legs or hands acted as if deprived of other limbs. The way they carried themselves was as if they thought the
Global Bank had come to appreciate and even honor their plight. So they sang,
You are the way; we are the world! Help the poor! Help the poor!
in different languages because the delegates were assumed to have come from all the corners of the globe. The beggars would occasionally push one another out of the way, but as long as they did not try to break through the cordon around Paradise the police did not interfere. Even when goaded by some, the police remained calm, at least for a while.

But when all the guests entered with “no comments,” the media in the yard became visibly and increasingly restive about the state of equilibrium. News was generated by storms, not doldrums. Some started training their cameras on the beggars with their crutches and deformities. The foreign journalists were particularly interested in the scene, for they believed that a news story from Africa without pictures of people dying from wretched poverty, famine, or ethnic warfare could not possibly be interesting to their audience back home.

Almost as if in answer to the prayers of the media, a group of beggars started shouting slogans beyond the decorum of begging. Marching to Heaven Is Marching to Hell. Your Strings of Loans Are Chains of Slavery. Your Loans Are the Cause of Begging. We Beggars Beg the End of Begging. The March to Heaven Is Led by Dangerous Snakes. This last slogan was chanted over and over.

Many observers agree that the slogans would have elicited nothing more than gentle rebuke from the police but for the mention of the word
snakes,
all too reminiscent of those snakes that had disrupted the Buler s birthday celebration. The M5 relayed the hostility of the beggars to Sikiokuu, stressing that the hoodlums had said “snakes” not once but repeatedly.

Sikiokuu had been in his office working late yet keeping his ear to the ground, hoping that something would go wrong at Paradise so he could make it look even worse. The news from M5 was not unwelcome. He recalled how the Buler had taken him to task for not acting quickly enough to prevent the disruption of his birthday party. He was determined not to make the same mistake again. He did not even consult the Buler. He gave the orders.

Although they had tried to be stoic and some even aspired to good humor, the police had been chafing under their order of restraint. So
they were now jubilant about the business at hand. With their riot gear—clubs, shields, and guns—the police attacked the crowd.

Birds of a feather may flock together in times of peace, but when there is danger each flies alone. A miracle appeared as the beggars dispersed. Those with humps fled upright; the blind could see once again; the legless and armless recovered their limbs as they scurried from the gates of Paradise.

Two unfortunate beggars found themselves being chased by three police officers. Covered in rags from head to toe, both carried bags clutched tightly, which was their undoing, for the police had convinced themselves that the bags were full of Burl notes the two had been collecting all day and night; their six eyes more on the bags than on the beggars themselves. The beggars found wings.

The scent of money made the three police officers deaf to all calls to return to their ranks. One police officer shouted a promise to let them go free if they would only let loose their bags, but pointlessly Discouraged, he gave up. But like dogs on a hot trail, the other two police officers kept up the chase as if bewitched and could not say no to their feet. They did not even realize that they had now left the well-lit streets of the city for the dimly lit Santalucia.