12
Of all the cases he had faced, Kamltl would say afterward, Tajirika’s would rank among the most difficult. As a diviner, Kamltl worked out the nature of a problem by how a client answered questions. But Fajirika could not and did not answer any questions. It was as if he were deaf, his mind in another world and distrustful of the one he now inhabited. It was frustrating, but Kamltl kept on whispering to himself, To save one’s patients, one must keep one’s patience.
The Wizard of the Crow asked Vinjinia to sit next to her husband. This took her aback, for she thought a sorcerer divined without questions. She was hesitant about revealing the more embarrassing details of Tajirika’s story. A few omissions will do, she told herself. But she heard the Wizard of the Crow echoing her unspoken words. No omissions, the Wizard of the Crow told her, looking her straight in the eye. If she needed help, she had to tell him the whole truth, he told her firmly but gently. How quickly this wizard has read my mind, Vinjinia thought to herself, a little scared; she was largely forthright in her retelling.
She recounted how Tajirika had come home one night with three sacks full of Burl notes, how he had sat at a table in the living room and counted the money, bill by bill, jotting down subtotals, every now and then jumping up for joy. He had called on her to keep him company as he did his figures. He had told her that this was just the beginning of better days to come. She recalled very clearly Tajirika stretching his legs on the table, leaning against the armchair, and talking as if in a dream, repeating the words this is only a beginning of things to come over and over.
My dear Vinjinia, you have no idea, he had said. My appointment as the chair of Marching to Heaven was announced this morning, and by the evening I had come into possession of all this. The morrow would bring even more money, for there were many more people coming to see him. If in just one day I have harvested this much and Marching to Heaven has not even begun, when the Global Bank releases its loans and the construction actually begins, my money will go through the roof. By the time all is said and done, I will be the richest man in Aburlria, the richest man in Africa, probably the richest man in the whole world, and I will be in a position to have anything I want, except … except … and it was then that he started coughing uncontrollably, not finishing the thought. He rushed to the bathroom in that state and stayed for a long time. Vinjinia told of how worried she was and how she had gone to the bathroom to check on him. Well, she found him staring at himself in the mirror, repeating the word if. This continued day after day, and she had decided to remove all mirrors from the house. As the days went by, Tajirika’s seizures became increasingly worse, and now he sat staring into space as the wizard saw him now … That is all, she said, rather abruptly.
Nyawlra compared this version of the story to what Vinjinia had told her in the office and found some telling discrepancies. In the first version, Vinjinia had not mentioned anything about Tajirika’s obsession with being the richest man in Aburlria, Africa, and the whole world. She had not mentioned that Tajirika had started his ifs on the same night he took the money home and counted it. She had told her that the ifs had seized him the morning after.
Vinjinia waited, her heart pounding, for a response from the Wizard of the Crow. She had wanted to tell him everything, but she could not bring herself to talk about how Tajirika had scratched his face, the real reason for the removal of the mirrors.
“Have you told me the whole truth?” the Wizard of the Crow asked.
“Yes,” Vinjinia replied. He might be able to bring down even crows from the sky, but there was no way he would know what she had left untold, she reasoned.
“It is all the same,” said the Wizard of the Crow. “My divining mirror will reveal to me whatever you may have left unsaid. Now turn his face this way and make him look directly at this opening.”
Again Vinjinia felt her heart racing. How did he know that she had not told all? Maybe I should confess … but before she had completed her thought, a mirror had already replaced the face of the Wizard of the Crow at the aperture.
The effect of the mirror on Tajirika was immediate. He woke up as from a dream, stared at the mirror, and started scratching his face. Vinjinia let out a frightened cry. She lurched forward, grabbed him by the waist, and began pulling him away from the mirror. Tears flowed down her cheeks in a mixture of fear for him and embarrassment at not having been straight with the Wizard of the Crow. Tajirika planted his feet firmly to the ground, his hands reaching out for the mirror. Vinjinia struggled with her husband to no avail: his hands remained outstretched toward the mirror and he groaned time and again. If. If’only!
If something were not clearly the matter with Tajirika, Nyawlra would have burst out laughing, for the scene reminded her of cartoons she had seen on television. When the Wizard of the Crow withdrew the mirror, both husband and wife fell to the floor, as if Tajirika had been released from his bewitchment. After struggling to free herself from the entanglement, Vinjinia managed to put him back into the chair. She was panting from the effort, even as Tajirika was weeping freely, like a child whose favorite candy had been snatched away. As he heaved, he kept on saying, If! If! If!
“I am sorry I forgot to tell you the bit about his scratching himself,” she said to the wizard without much conviction, “but this weeping is something new,” she added.
“Let that not trouble your heart.”
She was relieved that the Wizard of the Crow had shown understanding and did not dwell on the sin of omission; this drew her closer to him and she made a sincere effort to catch every word from his lips.
The Wizard of the Crow started talking as if thinking aloud in their presence. His voice was round and soft, and it soothed and carried the listener along. Nyawlra felt her heart drawn to the voice almost as if she had never heard it before. To Vinjinia the voice felt particularly powerful because it was disembodied. Even Tajirika responded to its soothing tone, gradually quieting down, and, for the first time in a long while, he seemed to be listening to someone. Vinjinia noticed this change in him and was even more grateful to the mysterious voice.
“… that is where we diviners come in,” the Wizard of the Crow went on, as if continuing talking to Vinjinia. “Words are the food, body, mirror, and sound of thought. Do you now see the danger of words that want to come out but are unable to do so? You want to vomit and the mess gets stuck in your throat—you might even choke to death. Your husband’s illness is not yet fatal because its cure is not beyond the reach of our powers. Woman, identifying a sickness is the first step on the road to recovery and I think the problem with your husband can be seen in the difference between his ifs. They describe negative and positive wishes. Woman, your husband’s thoughts are stuck in his head so that his wishes cannot be denied or fulfilled. His wishes are shards of words stuck in his throat. His enemies lie within him, and they want him to choke over his unvoiced wishes …”
Vinjinia felt a mixture of dread and amazement.
“So what are we going to do about it?” she asked the wizard.
“I do not charge for divining ills, but the cure may require one to dig deep in one’s pockets.”
“How much will it cost to get these thoughts unstuck?”
“How much is his life worth?” asked the Wizard of the Crow, who, as Kamltl, had decided that though he would not seek vengeance he would certainly relieve Tajirika of the three bags of bribe money.
“There is nothing I would not give to free him from what is killing him inside. Wizard of the Crow! Smoke out his enemies! Pursue them to the very gates of Hell.”
“Well, it is up to you to decide what you want to do. The bewitching is in the very money he has received. Bring the three bags of Burl notes here so that we can find out where the evil is hidden. Go home and think about it. Come back tomorrow or any day you want. Then we can talk about my fee for releasing your husband’s wishes.”
The authenticity of the wizard convinced Vinjinia, but his putting into words what she herself had been thinking, that the evil resided in the bags of money, made her believe in his powers even more.
She wanted Tajirika healed that very morning, she told him. She promised to return with the three money bags and more to cover whatever fee he might charge for rooting out the evil.
The Wizard of the Crow told her to take her patient with her and hurry back before other clients arrived. Or, better still, they should leave the young maiden behind to keep their places warm. He was a first come, first served wizard.