20
“True! Haki ya Mungu,” A.C. would say later whenever a listener expressed doubts and tried to dismiss the tale as balderdash. “I am a teller of tales and not a monger of rumors,” A.C. would add, and then, as evidence, he would remind his listeners that he himself had been there. “I was tired, very tired, but Machokali’s question startled me back to life. Where indeed was the Wizard of the Crow? When had I last seen him?
“I now remembered that during those days when all of us were captives of our Ruler’s theories of a world governed by the economy of happiness and sorrow, I never once saw the Wizard of the Crow. It says something of the mesmerizing power of the voice of the Ruler that I never even thought about the Wizard of the Crow. Like everybody else, I had forgotten that it was he who had set free the mouth of the Ruler.
“I left the sick chamber and went to look for him in his room. He was not there. I went down to the reception desk. They had not seen the person I described. I went back to his room. There was nothing that spoke of his presence. Where had he gone? What had happened to him? I went back to Machokali.
“Everything was as I had left it. The Ruler’s mouth still open as if frozen in the act of speaking. The ministers, their faces haggard with fatigue and lack of sleep, heads drooping to one side, were still in their seats, looking for all the world like corpses. Machokali was the only one among them who answered to his name, Ferocious Eyes: he seemed alert to what was taking place, although with him it was not always easy to tell, because his huge eyes were always the same size and never closed, even when he slept. We, the police, were trained to endure hardship, and I was not surprised that most of us were awake and mindful of our calling, guardians of the Ruler and our nation.
“Machokali gestured to me with a slight wave of the hand, and I understood that he wanted us to meet outside. I told him that the Wizard of the Crow had disappeared without a trace. He kept quiet, very quiet, staring ahead, slowly pulling his hair above the right ear, as if his mind had wandered, leaving his body behind. Questions crossed my mind: Had the Ruler succumbed to a heart attack, accounting for Machokali’s state? Where was the Wizard of the Crow, who could raise the dead?”