Wizard of the Crow (16 page)

“Who is it?”

“He is not saying. He wants to speak to you personally, and he says it’s urgent.”

Tajirika grumpily snatched the handset, annoyed by the interference. “Congratulations? For what? …
Today?”
he asked, his sourness gone as he stood up and walked away from the chair while holding the phone to his ear. “On the radio? … The morning news? … Are you sure? … I think we’d better not talk about that on the telephone … Yes … Yes … Why don’t you come to the office? … Yes … We shall talk.”

As soon as he put the phone down it rang again; this time he himself quickly picked it up.

“Yes … Thank you … Come to the office.”

It rang a third, a fourth, and a fifth time, and he gave the same
response: Come to the office. He glanced at the window and walked toward it, whistling and beckoning Nyawlra to join him there.

She staggered at what she saw. The road leading to their place of business was jammed with cars, the latest models of all makes, but mostly Mercedes-Benzes.

“What is this all about?” Nyawlra exclaimed, looking directly at Tajirika.

Rapt in thought, Tajirika paced the office, then stopped, looked at Nyawlra, and, in a somewhat tremulous voice, said, “This is one of the greatest days of my life, if not the greatest ever. You might think of it as the day I was born again. This morning Minister Machokali announced that he has recommended and the Ruler himself has agreed that I should become the first chairman of the Marching to Heaven Building Committee. Do you know what that means? You don’t, I can see it in your face, but those people you see in those cars all know the meaning and financial implications of that position. Every one of them wants to introduce himself to me—
make my acquaintance
is the phrase they will all use. But, as you can see, most of them did not even bother to call—they came immediately. I am sharing this with you because since you joined my firm you have brought me nothing but luck. Oh, no, not another call of congratulations! No. Just let the phone ring. I want you to go to your office, receive the visitors, and show them to my office one by one. Keep answering the telephone and making appointments
in the usual way. This is manna from Heaven,”
he said in English, as if loudly talking to himself.

Nyawlra hurried back to her office as Tajirika, sitting at his desk, struck the pose of an executive immersed in paperwork. Soon the reception area was packed, with an even bigger crowd outside trying to get in. And the telephone kept ringing. Nearly overwhelmed, she quickly worked out a solution. She wrote on two pieces of paper
MAKE
A QUEUE: NO SERVICE FOR THOSE NOT IN THE QUEUE. She pasted one on the wall inside and the other on the outside.

The people pushed and shoved, hurling insults at one another as each tried to move up the queue, like children, Nyawlra thought, and all this for the sake of an introduction to the chairman? The dignitaries, all from Eldares itself, were of different communities, nationalities, races, and each wanted to meet with Tajirika face-to-face, and alone. Nyawlra let them into Tajirika’s office, one at a time.

The first dignitary stayed for only a few minutes, but he must have had his needs met, because when he came out he was beaming. It was the same with the second, third, fourth, fifth, and so on. A few minutes with the chairman, and they all seemed in possession of a little happiness as they returned to their Mercedes-Benzes. Tajirika the sharer of happiness with all who came to see him! How was that possible, Nyawlra wondered.

Nyawlra, who had been ushering visitors into Tajirika’s office, taking down names, arranging files, and answering calls, was soon able to figure out what was happening. Each one was pitching business as a subcontractor for Marching to Heaven and hoped to be looked upon favorably. Whether they offered to supply cement, wood, nails, toilet paper, food, or drinks, they talked and behaved as if they knew for sure that the Global Bank had released the money for the project.

Tajirika was frank, impressing upon them that the matter of the loans had not yet been discussed with the Global Bank; that the reception at Paradise was purely social; and that, in any case, no contracts would be given until far into the future. But they would hear none of it. For them it was a matter of simple logic: why would Minister Machokali appoint and release the name of the chairman of the Building Committee unless he was reasonably sure that the Global Bank would release the money? Some of them had read of the billions upon billions that the Bank had loaned Bussia as a bribe to abandon socialism for good. How much more was to be had by a country whose leadership had neither dreamt of democracy nor experimented with socialist nonsense? No wonder they left their visiting cards.

Each card was handed over with thousands of Burls. A few dignitaries had tried to write checks, but Tajirika would not hear of it. Cash or nothing, Tajirika told them, and they were quick to say that they completely understood. A few insisted on a business luncheon appointment, adding even more Burls with their cards. None so much as whispered about the money left behind. All they would say, even to their closest friends, was that they had been to see the chairman and had left their visiting cards. The money had piled up so quickly that, with his desk drawers stuffed, Tajirika was forced to send Nyawlra to buy sacks and cartons for the rest of his abundance.

By four o’clock the queue had diminished but the telephone was still ringing with calls from dignitaries mainly living outside Eldares
who also wanted appointments to see the chairman. Nyawlra knew, by the volume of appointments, that in the coming days she surely would not be able to handle all the work by herself. At the close of business, when the last man in the queue had left, Nyawlra acquainted her boss with her problem.

“Don’t worry” Tajirika told her, happy at the news, for it meant more visiting cards and attendant money. “Remove the No Vacancy sign at the road and put up another one announcing that we are hiring temporary help. Something like Tempa Jobs Available.’ Or just Tempa Jobs.’ That’s what we do when the volume of work increases, but it has never been like this. And Nyawlra, after you put up the sign, call it a day. Go home and I will see you tomorrow. Try not to be late,” he added, to let her know that nothing escaped his notice. “Tomorrow every minute will count!”

Nyawlra spotted, in one corner of the room, three sacks full of Burls. The boss had been right, this was truly manna from Heaven, she told herself as she left. She went into a small storage room adjoining the reception area and took out a big piece of plywood to serve as a billboard, but it was quite big and heavy. She thought it better to leave her handbag on her desk and come back for it after she had posted the advertisement.

It was about five. She walked down the main entrance by the road. Looking upon the old board announcing NO
VACANCY: FOR JOBS
COME TOMORROW, she recalled what had happened to Kamltl, the deliberate humiliation. She was so angry that her hands shook and the new board fell to the ground. Anger gave way to a spurt of energy. She pulled the old board out and tossed it aside. With a sense of triumph, she replaced it with the new. As Nyawlra stood back to survey her work, she felt a presence behind her.

“John!” Nyawlra cried out, startled.

Kaniürü stood a few feet from the new board, almost on the same spot Kamltl had stood the day before, pondering his humiliation. Kaniürü read the new ad aloud:
TEMPA JOBS: APPLY IN PERSON!

“What are you doing here?” she asked him.

“Let’s go for coffee at Mars Cafe,” he said.

“I don’t like coffee,” she said.

“Have tea, a milk shake, soda. Anything. I have some news for you.”

“I can read newspapers for myself. I listen to the radio.”

“This is no ordinary news. It’s something you ought to know.”

Nyawlra turned the matter over in her mind, though she tried her best to seem uninterested in whatever Kaniürü had to tell her. She yawned and sighed as if reluctantly giving in to his pestering.

“Okay I’ll be right back,” she said. “In fact, I’ll meet you at Mars.”

She headed back to the office, carrying the old signboard to put it back in storage.

The door was locked. She dug into one of her pockets and fetched the keys. She opened the door and froze in terror. She was dumbstruck as she stood staring at a gun pointed at her. She closed her eyes, awaiting the worst.

“Oh, it’s you?” Tajirika said, moving the gun away from her. “I thought someone was trying to break in. I thought I told you to go home?”

“My handbag,” she said in a trembling voice. “I have just finished putting up the new sign,” she added in a daze, pointing at the old signboard. “I was returning for my handbag.”

“Good. Help me carry some sisal bags to my car.”

The bags, packed tight with Burl banknotes, were heavy. Tajirika dragged two and Nyawlra one to the boot of his cream-colored Mercedes-Benz.

She watched the car merge with others along the road before disappearing altogether. Then the reality of what might have been struck her with full force. She sat down, weak at the knees, to recover her composure before going to meet Kaniürü at the Mars Cafe.

The Mars Cafe was well known in Eldares for its low-priced but quality offerings of tea, coffee, cocoa, milk shakes, ice cream, breads, cakes, sandwiches, and soft drinks. Many people used it as a rendezvous because its owner, who went by the name Gautama, did not seem to mind customers sitting and talking for long stretches after consuming what they had ordered. But the cafe was probably better
known for its celebration of space exploration through the decorations on the walls and Gautama’s dedicated vivacity.

Over the years, the cafe’s name had changed to reflect landmark moments. It had variously been called Sputnik, Vostok, and Moon-apollo. Gautama especially liked Moonapollo because it not only alluded to a Greek deity but also rhymed with Marco Polo, who had sojourned to the Orient, where space voyages were first imagined in folklore. He often cited, as proof of the Asian origin of the space race, ancient Chinese astronomers who were among the first to focus on supernova. But he moved on to Mir Cafe and the International Space Station Cafe before settling on Mars Cafe, which he vowed to keep until humans landed on Mars, for he believed that the Red Planet held the secrets of the origins of life and the universe. He wanted the name of the cafe to reflect the eternal human quest for truth, freedom, and knowledge. So its walls were papered with newspaper and magazine cuttings featuring not only rockets and other spacecraft and stations but also space travelers. So Yuri Gagarin and Aleksei Leonov could be found side by side with Neil Armstrong and John Glenn and so on.

But though he always looked dreamy when talking about space, Gautama was very down to earth in his cafe and was attentive to his customers. He now watched Kaniürü enter alone, and he hoped to engage him in small talk about the universe. But when Kaniürü told him that he would wait to place his order until his guest arrived, Gautama retreated to the counter and his mental wanderings. Kaniürü kept looking at his watch, wondering if once again Nyawlra had given him the slip. He planned to wait a few more minutes before leaving and would most likely go to her office the next day to ask her why she had stood him up. He felt calmer about having an excuse to visit Nyawlra’s workplace and inspect Tajirika’s properties.

Just then somebody touched him on the shoulder, and, thinking that it was Nyawlra, Kaniürü turned around quickly. His beaming face turned ugly when he saw that it was yet another beggar. He became even more irritated when he saw that the man was crippled. Upon hearing his chant,
Help the poor, these legs were broken during the war of independence,
Kaniürü lost his patience altogether. He pushed the cripple away and screamed at him, Go away! How dare you touch me with your filthy fingers! He yelled at the poor beggar so
incessantly that Gautama, forced out of his spaciness by the commotion, interceded on behalf of the intruder. Gautama gave him a few coins, asked him not to disturb his customers, and guided him to the door.

“I just want a cup of tea and a piece of cake,” Nyawlra shouted to Gautama as she walked in and sat at the table. “Why did you want us to meet?” she asked brusquely.

“I was passing by and I thought I would drop in on you,” Kaniürü told her, and by the look on her face he knew that she knew that he was not telling the truth. “So that’s where you work?”

“Didn’t I tell you to leave me alone?”

“Yes, but we need not be enemies.”

“I don’t want your friendship.”

“I wasn’t insisting that we be friends.”

“Listen. I have no time to waste, quibbling over words.”

“Nor I. I was simply saying that even if people part ways, they need not pass one another without so much as a wave of the hand.”

“What do you want?”

“I just want you to know that I still love you.”

“You are wasting your time and mine trying to pick up spilled water. If you start that up again, I am leaving.”

“What else do you want me to talk about?”

“I didn’t ask you out. Why not sing about how great it feels to be a youthwing of His Royal Mightiness?” Nyawlra said, barely hiding her sarcasm.

“Look, you are quite right to be critical of some of the pillars of the Party, pretenders who are out to ruin and discredit our country, such as those in favor of Marching to Heaven! The verdict was in long ago when the children of Israel first attempted the Tower of Babel.”

“Rumor has it that you drew up the plan, or rather the artist’s impression. Why this about-face against your baby?”

He tried not to wince, recalling the humiliation he had suffered at the birthday celebrations, revived by the woman he most wanted to impress with his new connections to power and privilege. He kept quiet, dwelling on the origins of the whole fiasco.

It all began when Machokali gave a talk at the polytechnic where Kaniürü taught. On learning that there was an art department, the
minister wondered aloud whether its students could be trusted to breathe life into the lifeless drawing of an architect? If you can, then call on me in my office, he said, just that, an invitation so vague that many people correctly took it for the usual rhetorical challenges by politicians. The minister himself had forgotten all about it when Kaniürü went to his office a few days later, abruptly allowing that, yes, it could be done, and he was there to volunteer his services. It took Machokali a while to grasp what the man was talking about until Kaniürü reminded him of his visit to the polytechnic. Oh, that, the minister said. You mean you can look at a two-dimensional plan and give a visual impression in three dimensions? You know, with the color of life and all that? “It is not easy, but it can be done.” Not of course by every Tom, Dick, and Harry, but he, John Kaniürü, had a degree in art and art history from the University of Eldares and had even studied a little architecture. An artistic rendering was no big deal.