Wizard of the Crow Read Free Page B

in the country knew something or other about the Ruler’s birthday because, before it was firmly set in the national calendar, the date of his birth and the manner of its celebration had been the subject of a heated debate in Parliament that went on for seven months, seven days, seven hours, and seven minutes, and even then the honorable members could not arrive at a consensus mainly because nobody knew for sure the actual date of the Ruler’s birth, and when they failed to break the impasse, the honorable members sent a formal delegation to the very seat of power to seek wise guidance, after which they passed a motion of gratitude to the Ruler for helping the chamber find a solution to a problem that had completely defeated their combined knowledge and experience. The birthday celebrations would always start at the seventh hour of the seventh day of the seventh month, seven being the Ruler’s sacred number, and precisely because in Aburlria the Ruler controlled how the months followed each other—January for instance trading places with July—he therefore had the power to declare any month in the year the seventh month, and any day within that seventh month the seventh day and therefore the Ruler’s Rirthday The same applied to time, and any hour, depending on the wishes of the Ruler, could be the seventh hour.
    The attendance at these annual assemblies always varied, but that particular year the stadium was almost full because the curiosity of the citizens had been aroused by a special announcement, repeated over and over in the media, that there would be a special birthday cake, which the entire country had made for the Ruler and which he might make multiply and feed the multitude the way Jesus Christ once did with just five loaves and two fishes. The prospect of cakes for the multitude may explain the more than usual presence of victims of kwashiorkor.
    The celebration started at noon, and late in the afternoon it was still going strong. The sun dried people’s throats. The Ruler, his ministers,and the leaders of the Ruler’s Party, all under a shade, kept cooling their tongues with cold water. The citizens without shade or water distracted themselves from the hot darts of the sun by observing and commenting on what was happening on the platform: the clothes the dignitaries wore, the way they walked, or even where each sat relative to the seat of might.
    Immediately behind the Ruler was a man who held a pen the width of an inch water pipe in his right hand and a huge leather-bound book in his left, and since he was always writing people assumed that he was a member of the press, although there were some who wondered why he was not at the press gallery. Beside him sat the four sons of the Ruler—Kucera, Moya, Soi, and Runyenje— studiously drinking from bottles labeled Diet.
    Near the sons sat Dr. Wilfred Kaboca, the Ruler’s personal physician, and next to him, the only woman on the platform, who was also conspicuous by her silence. Some assumed that she was one of the Ruler’s daughters, but then, they wondered, why was she not speaking to her brothers? Others thought that she was Dr. Kaboca’s wife, but then why this silence between themr
    To the Ruler’s right sat the Minister for Foreign Affairs in a dark striped suit and a red tie with a picture of the Ruler, the emblem of the Ruler’s Party.
    The story goes that Markus used to be an ordinary member of Parliament. Then one day he flew to England, where under the glare of publicity he entered a major London hospital not because he was ill but because he wanted to have his eyes enlarged, to make them ferociously sharp, or as he put it in Kiswahili,
Yawe Macho Kali,
so that they would be able to spot the enemies of the Ruler no matter how far their hiding places. Enlarged to the size of electric bulbs, his eyes were now the most prominent feature of his face, dwarfing his nose, cheeks, and forehead. The Ruler was so touched by his devotion and public