Wizard of the Crow (47 page)

“Oh, you should have seen her. Those cheeks. Those breasts. The way she walked. And those clothes that seemed as if the Creator Himself had outfitted her!”

“It seems that even today your mouth waters at the very thought of her.”

“My mouth is watering from bitterness, not love.”

“So there was a time it used to water with desire for her? Let me be direct, or shall I ask directly: was there something between you and her?”

“Our relationship never came to that,” Tajirika said, slightly agitated by the tone and tenor of Njoya’s line of questioning.

“You mean you never wanted to become acquainted with what was between her thighs? Why? Are you one of those Jesus is my personal savior’ employers?”

“Me?” Tajirika asked, reacting to what he saw as a challenge to his masculinity. He even laughed. “I have shown many a woman a thing or two. But Nyawlra was a little intimidating. Not that she spoke aggressively. How can I put it? It seemed as if her eyes could see straight into a person’s heart. Those eyes and the way she carried herself could make even the most lustful of males go limp. Perhaps if she had stayed longer I might … a real man never takes no for an answer, and when it comes to women my motto is Never Give Up.”

“So you lusted after her? Were you
in love,
perhaps?”

“That’s not exactly what I am trying to say, but …”

“I know, I know,” Njoya hastened to add. “As a man I know that once a man’s heart has become captive to a woman, there is nothing he would not do for her.
I understand you completely,
Mr. Tajirika.”

“But I have just told you. Nyawlra was like a firebrand without a handle.”

“So I understand you to be saying or trying to say that you longed for the firebrand but it had no handle.”

“No, no, it is not how you are putting it. But let me tell you, if today, this very day and hour, I were to hold that woman in these
arms, I would wring her neck until she was dead.
She is a traitor,”
Tajirika declared with venom.

“Okay. Let’s set Nyawlra’s case aside. Let’s assume that she was only a secretary. You mean to tell me that your secretary comes to you, her employer, and tells you to hire more labor, and you agree and even okay her request to put up a billboard outside?”

“Yes,” Tajirika said, although he still did not like the way Njoya strung words together, making them sound so sinister.

“How many tempas were you hoping to employ?”

“Say about three,” Tajirika said. “Possibly five.”

“And for three people, possibly five, she persuaded you to put up a billboard to announce to all Eldares that there were jobs to be had?”

“How else would we have put it?” Tajirika asked. “There was more than one job available, so we had to put it in the plural.”

“You assented to her putting it in the plural, suggesting the availability of thousands of jobs?”

“I can’t recall the exact wording,” Tajirika said, feeling a little helpless before this professional twister of words and their meanings.

“You left it to her to arrange the words any way she wanted?”

“Look here, Mr. Officer. She was my secretary. A boss gives a good secretary a general notion of what he wants and it is up to her to respect the letter and spirit of his command.”

“And so it would be correct to say that Nyawlra was in general interpreting your wishes and carrying out your orders?”

“Yes, when she was on my premises. Beyond that I made no claims on her time.”

“Okay A good interpreter of your wishes while on your premises, and a free agent outside the official orbit, right?”

“Right. You can put it that way”

“So how did the queue of the workers begin?”

“You see, for some time after the day of my extraordinary elevation, I was not able to go to the office …”

“Why?” Njoya interrupted.

“I succumbed to an illness.”

“You were ill?”

Tajirika paused. How was he going to explain his strange illness to the inquisitor? An illness without a name?

“A heart problem.”

“A broken heart?”

“No, just heart trouble.”

“A heart condition? That is very serious for a man of your age and bulging flesh. I am so sorry to hear of this, Mr. Tajirika. How long were you in hospital?”

“I didn’t actually go to any hospital.”

“You saw a private doctor?”

“Yes … No …”

“Is it yes or is it no?”

“Both.”

“What do you mean?”

“I went to see a diviner. I am not sure we can quite call his kind doctors.”

“A witch doctor. So you are one of those!
Afathali Mchawi
type?”

“It is better to call him simply a diviner.”

“But Mr. Tajirika, what if you had needed a
bypass
or a
transplant?
Would your witch doctor have managed?”

“Mine was not an illness of the organ itself,” Tajirika tried to explain. “I meant the heart as mind. Something like that.”

“You mean you were mad? Crazy?”

“Nooo!
Hapana! No, no!”
Tajirika denied the suggestion in three languages for emphasis. “I meant heart as when we say so-and-so is heartless or so-and-so is full of heart.”

“A psychiatric disorder,
something like that, is that correct?”

“I don’t know much about the names of illnesses. But I think that a diviner could be called a
psychiatrist
of sorts.”

“Mr. Tajirika, let’s not worry about names. Whatever its name, your heart condition must have been very serious for you to boycott your office soon after becoming chairman of Marching to Heaven. Unless … ?”

“What?”

“It was a ploy, a diplomatic illness,’ or what in our line of work we call an alibi. You draw the plan and you leave the execution to others. Is that not what you told me that bosses do?”

“What do you mean?” asked Tajirika, a little confused.

“Supposing, and we are just supposing, that Tajirika wants an illegal assembly of workers, the riffraff of our society, say potential rioters, to queue outside his office, might he not want to absent himself
and leave everything to the trusted interpreter of his wishes? You see, should he be called before a commission of inquiry he would say I was not there’ and produce his alibi, a hotel bill or a hospital admission slip or a doctor’s letter. You know the story of the thumb and four fingers? They used to be together, all five, a kind of brotherhood of the fingers. Then one day Thumb proposes, Let’s go. Where? the others ask. To Mr. Ndego’s bank, says Thumb. To do what? the others ask. To rob the owner, to rob the bank, Thumb says. What if we are caught? they ask. Hey! I will not be there, Thumb says, and up to this day Thumb remains his innocent self, apart from the other four, who remain bound together by their crime.”

Tajirika wanted to pick holes in the story. In the traditional, it is the little finger that comes up with the idea of theft and there is no mention of a bank. Njoya had also mixed up the story of the thumb with a very different one in which a mother, avoiding a direct answer to her child’s question as to where she is going, talks vaguely about a visit to a fictional Ndego’s home for a meal consisting of one bean only. But Tajirika did not. He was angry and terror-stricken at the drift of Njoya’s inquiry and tone, which smoothly implied treason and death.

“I don’t like what you are insinuating. I am a loyalist. To be very frank, I was taken to the shrine of the diviner without my knowledge. I was that ill. And I missed work not just one day but several days, more than a week. Why should I risk my life’s work and property for the sake of starting a queue of riffraff and job seekers? A job-seeking queue is not exactly a beauty pageant.”

“You claim that you were away from your workplace for days, even weeks. Did you close the office?”

“No.”

“Who ran the office in your absence?”

“The secretary. I mean, she was the only one there who …”

“By the secretary you still mean Nyawlra?”

“Yes … but my wife, Vinjinia, later went there and was
in charge. Completely in charge.
What did I tell you? She is not a village woman. She is highly educated. She has …”

“So Nyawlra and Vinjinia were the ones present when the queuing mania started? Is that what you are saying?”

“Yes!”

“So only those two can give eyewitness testimony as to what occurred?”

“You have spoken.”

“What?”

“Only those two can give a proper account because they were there. All I know is hearsay.”

“When did you go back to work?”

“After the convocation at the site for Marching to Heaven.”

“The one held at Eldares Park?”

“You have spoken.”

“Spare me the Jesus speak. What are you implying, Mr. Tajirika? That I’m Pontius Pilate to your Jesus Christ?”

“No, no, no.
There is no way I would even dream of such a thing. I am human. I am a sinner.”

“Then confess your sins!”

“What do you want me to confess?”

“I was not there when you sinned.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Answer my questions fully and simply. The day you say you resumed work, was that the same day you got cured?”

“By that time I was already cured. A couple of weeks before, in fact. I had been resting at home, not doing much of anything.”

“Mr. Tajirika, you confuse me even more. Please clear this up for me. Are you telling me that between the day you learned that you had been appointed chairman of Marching to Heaven and the day of the dedication of the site, you never once went back to your office to see for yourself how things were?”

“I did go there once, on the morning that I left the doctor’s …”

“You mean the witch doctor’s shrine?”

“Yes, the diviner’s haven. To be very frank, that was also when I beheld the queues for the first time and, believe me, Officer, it was an overwhelming sight. A frightening sight. The queues were all over Santamaria. My own offices were almost under siege. I slipped in through the back door, a special entrance.”

“Let me see if I am getting this right. On that day, you were not ill?”

“I have told you that I had just then come from the doctor.”

“The witch doctor?”

“The diviner.”

“Let’s not quibble over a word. What I want to know is this. You were then completely free of your illness?”

“I assure you that I was completely cured. I never felt better in my life.”

“So now, Mr. Tajirika, why did you then stop going to the office even after you were cured? Or did your heart troubles start up again at the sight of all those queues?”

“You said I should speak the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me God.”

“And the truth shall make you free.
Is that not what the Bible says?”

“But you said that I was not in custody.”

“It is just a way of talking. Tell the truth and shame the Devil.”

“You see, after I had managed to sneak into my office, I telephoned Machokali.”

“The minister?”

“There is only one Machokali in the country, and he is my friend.”

“I just want to make sure. We policemen are like doctors. Modern doctors, not your witch doctors or diviners as you call them. A good modern doctor makes sure that he knows all the facts about a malady. For only then can he prescribe the correct drug. We police detectives are truth diggers, and we like to base our case on facts. So do I take it that when you mention Machokali, you are talking about Machokali, the one and only Minister for Foreign Affairs in the government of the Buler of Aburlria?”

“That’s right. I was calling him to ask him whether he could arrange for armed forces to come and disperse the crowd.”

“That’s strange. Had the minister ever told you that he had powers to call on the army to do this or that?”

“I thought that as a minister he would know whom to contact.”

“Tell me, Mr. Tajirika, had the minister ever told you that he knew of any person or groups of persons other than the Buler who thought that they had the power to authorize actions by the army?”

“Oh, no, no, no. Nothing of the sort.
But what he told me made me look at the queues in a very different light.”

“What did he tell you?”

“He told me that those queues were very important.”

“Important?”

“Yes, because the queues served to show that the people fully supported the Marching to Heaven project. The queues were demonstrations of support.”

“Go on.
What else?”

“As a matter of fact, it was the minister who advised me not to go back to work, that I should stay at home as if I were still ill …”

“Pretend that you were ill? But why?”

“So that the queuers would not disperse after their job-hunting needs were settled one way or another. As long as they waited for me, they had some hope and hope would keep the queues alive.”

“So what he told you is that you should lie and say that you were still ill even though you had never felt better in your life?”

“No, not the way you are putting it. He just wanted the queues to remain in place for as long as the Global Bank mission was in the country and not disperse before the dedication of the site for Marching to Heaven.”

“Okay Let’s see. You are in this grip of a false illness. You have agreed to stay home to recover. Who was looking after your business?”

“Vinjinia, my wife, became the acting manager, with the … the … you know … the secretary as her assistant. A helper.”

“You mean Nyawlra?”

“The same.”

“And because Vinjinia was not very experienced, it was really Nyawlra who was entrusted with managing your affairs, is that not so?”

“Yes, Nyawlra had more experience, but she was definitely not in charge. She was a minion.”

“Demoted? You know how women are: they are jealous of one another. Some women are not satisfied unless they are the only woman in a male domain. The One Woman syndrome.”

“No, she was not demoted and there was no jealousy. To make her happy and ensure continued loyal service in my absence, I had given her the quite meaningless title of assistant to the acting manager. But she was nothing but a glorified receptionist.”