The Carnivorous City

by Toni Kan

  ‘How did you meet my brother?’

  ‘He came to me. I was at a boutique. I tried on these sandals, thought they were too expensive and put them back. I was getting into my car when he walked up to me and handed me a bag with the shoes inside.’

  ‘The slippers?’ Abel corrected her.

  ‘Yes, the slippers. Your brother was a real charmer. I asked him, “Did you guys change your mind?” assuming his boss had sent him to give me the slippers at the price I had bargained. But he shook his head and said, “I don’t work there.”

  “So, what’s this about?” I asked getting a bit apprehensive. He said, “I saw you try them on. I thought it would be a real shame if you didn’t have them. My name is Sabato.”

  ‘He had lovely manicured fingers. I was forty-six. I had not had sex for seven years but when I touched that twenty-six year old boy, I felt my body come alive. We were lovers by that evening.’ She took a long drag. ‘Let’s have some cognac, do you mind?’

  Abel did not. She pressed a bell and a domestic help appeared.

  ‘Get the Courvoisier,’ she told him, crossing her long legs. ‘So, I asked you before about his wife. What’s going on there?’

  ‘Nothing. We don’t agree.’

  ‘Why? Did you try something funny?’

  ‘No. Old history; something that happened before they got married.’

  ‘I remember. Something about the nightclub, right?’ Abel nodded. ‘She will forgive. Women are forgiving. That’s why God gave us the ability to have babies.’

  Abel thought about that as his drink was poured but couldn’t see how it was related to anything, so he asked a question.

  ‘Did Soni confide a lot in you?’

  ‘Yes, he did. I was like a mother to him and he was an open book, easy to read. He had a stubborn streak though.’

  And he was fucking his mother, Abel thought, then smothered it.

  ‘So, did he tell you about what he was working on? Something you think could have led to his disappearance?’

  The lady stood up and began to pace with her glass in one hand and a freshly lit cigarette in the other.

  ‘Soni was bound to die like this,’ she said stopping in front of Abel.

  ‘Die? He is missing.’ Abel said, sitting up.

  ‘Missing? Accept it, Abel. Soni will never be found, not alive. This is Lagos. Some people have to die. Their blood is sacrifice to the hungry beast that is Lagos. That is how it is.’

  ‘So, you think he is dead?’

  ‘I don’t think; I know he is dead, Abel, and if you are truly his brother you must feel it too.’ She settled in the seat beside him and took Abel’s hand. ‘Do you know the things your brother was into? Bad things, criminal activities. Do you know the kind of men whose wives he was sleeping with? Your brother had many enemies. Too many people had reasons to wish him dead.’

  ‘Did you wish him dead?’ Abel asked, taking his hand from hers and looking straight into her eyes.

  ‘I needed him too much to wish him dead. He was good in bed, although sometimes a big dick is not enough.’ She rose and drained her drink.

  Abel stood too.

  ‘I lost a husband in a plane crash and I know what it means not to have a body to bury. But we choose our paths in life. Your brother chose his.’

  THE AXE HEAD

  Abel could hear a woman yelling as he awoke.

  It was a Saturday and he had hoped to lie in until noon, at least. The whole process of searching and meeting with various characters was beginning to take its toll and all he wanted to do was laze in bed.

  By the time he made it to the restroom and back he could hear Ada pacifying the loud woman.

  ‘Auntie no vex o. I am really sorry,’ Ada was saying.

  ‘Sorry ke; that’s all you will say? My brother is missing and all you can tell me is sorry. I had to hear it from strangers. And Chiedu has been in Lagos since and he didn’t even bother to come and see me, eh? Where is he? Where is Chiedu?

  She was referring to Abel.

  He pulled on a pair of jeans and threw on a T-shirt, wondering who could be causing all that commotion.

  When he stepped out, a chubby-faced woman was standing in the upstairs living room and Ada was on her knees, begging her to sit down. It took a moment for Abel to register, then he cried out, ‘Auntie Ekwi!’

  Her hug was full and encompassing, crushing Abel against her ample bosom. She had always been well endowed and Abel remembered how, as teenagers, he and Soni, with Soni in the lead, would stand behind the bathroom and watch her bathe, fascinated by the huge breasts resting on her slight frame. Now, the years and child bearing had balanced things out.

  ‘Chiedu, you came into Lagos and you didn’t come to see me or ask after me,’ she said to him in Igbo.

  ‘Auntie no vex,’ Abel told her in pidgin before switching to Igbo. ‘Auntie, the things my eyes have seen, eh.’ He steered her to a couch. They sat down and Ada took the seat next to them.

  ‘What did your eye see that made you unable to call and say, “Ekwi, I am in town o.” Haba, I had to hear about my own brother from a stranger, a complete stranger and at the salon for that matter. What happened to Sabato?’

  Abel was surprised at how, even though his aunt had called him ‘Chiedu’, the name everyone called him by as a child, she, like everyone else called Soni by his nom de guerre, Sabato. It was a clear sign of his full transformation; he had descended into the underworld of Lagos and jettisoned his old life. While Abel remained Abel Chiedu Dike, his younger brother had been rechristened. He would forever remain Sabato Rabato.

  ‘Auntie, it’s a long story. They found his car in Shomolu, half inside the gutter. The engine was on and the music too, but Soni was gone. I received a text and I came down as fast as I could. We have visited the police and many of the people he used to deal with. No one seems to know anything. So we keep searching.’

  ‘Does Sister know?’ she asked, referring to Abel’s mum, who was in the village and hadn’t been informed.

  ‘No. Ah, we can’t tell her something like that.’

  Soni was their mother’s favourite and news of him missing would devastate her. However, he also knew that, because the whole family had a sense of the kind of business he indulged in, the one that had made him an insanely rich man, they had always half expected this kind of news. It was simple: as with the spouse of a man who has gone to war, there is always a sense of dread when there is a knock at the door. That was what it was really like for many people living in Lagos, especially those like Soni, who dealt in the kind of things he dealt with. Soni was a true soldier and Lagos was his battlefield. It was not difficult to see why he could so easily become a statistic.

  ‘You know this is not something you leave to policemen alone. They will take your money and do nothing and if your mother is not aware I cannot sit down and do nothing. What kind of aunt would I be if I heard and did nothing, eh?’

  Abel knew the question wasn’t meant to be answered so he just made the right noises.

  ‘I know a man; he prays and he sees things. We have to go and see him for prayers. He can help us where the police can’t. We have to go and see him.’

  Abel knew she wasn’t asking for their permission. She was giving an order. As his mother’s youngest sister, she was like a mini-mother.

  Ada made breakfast, and after they’d eaten they all they piled into her BMW. Auntie Ekwi directed them to a place in Shomolu, off Morocco.

  Once clear of the Island, Ada turned off Third Mainland Bridge into Adekunle, then drove the length of Herbert Macaulay and past Sabo bus stop until they got to Jibowu where she then turned into the road that led to Yaba College of Technology.

  They drove left, past the building that used to serve as headquarters for highlife maestro Oliver De Coque’s booking office, then right and straight past the gate that led to the military barracks in Yaba.

  The road ahead split into three; one that led to Jibowu, which was where they had come
from, one that went straight to Bajulaiye and the heart of Shomolu. Auntie Ekwi asked Ada to make a left and they drove into the third one, Morocco Street, past the Morocco family residence, which now had a telecom mast sticking out above the fence like a rude phallus. They drove as if they were heading to Onipanu then made a quick turn. There were two more turns before Auntie Ekwi told them they were there.

  ‘Iyawo,’ she said to Ada, using a Yoruba term that signified ‘our wife’. ‘Oya, clear well from the road, so no one will brush your car.’

  Ada parked and Auntie Ekwi directed them into a bustling compound with a dim corridor and as they walked down to the back where the prayer house was, Abel wondered why the corridors that ran through the middle of tenement houses were always dark.

  The prophet was dressed in a flowing white gown and had a red sash tied around his waist.

  ‘Welcome, my children,’ he said even though he didn’t look much older than Abel.

  He produced a bowl of water and asked them to wash their hands.

  ‘He that seeks must come with clean hands and a pure heart,’ he intoned. ‘Wash your hands and confess your sins that our prayers may not be hindered.’

  They washed and waited.

  He took up the bowl, raised it above each person’s head, muttered something and then went outside and poured it into the gutter that ran by the side of the church.

  ‘My Lord, I called yesterday and you asked us to come today,’ Auntie Ekwi began. ‘We need your help. The police are trying but our brother is still missing. His wife is here and his son is at home. This is his brother. We want answers. Help us to go to God in prayer and we shall be grateful.’

  If he had heard Auntie Ekwi, the prophet showed no sign of it. His eyes were squeezed shut and a vein stood out magnificently on his temple. He seemed to be concentrating intensely.

  ‘The man of God asked, “Where did it fall?”’ the prophet began, circling the room with slow steps, his eyes shut tight.

  ‘And what happened next? “When he showed him the place, Elisha cut a stick and threw it there, and made the iron float.” What we seek Lord Jehovah, send it up to us. Give us light where all is darkness because you are Jehovah God and nothing is impossible for you to do. You asked us, is my hand too short to save? Wherever your son is give us insight. Give us light where there is darkness, direct us where we do not know where to go, make our axe head float. Make it float. Make it float. Make it float. Make it float. Make it float.’

  ‘Make it float’ became a song, a rhythmic chant he intoned, eyes shut and feet stamping gently as he walked around the room, his voice rising, his head bobbing, his body swaying.

  He stopped abruptly, whirled around on the balls of his feet and said ‘My children, pray. Open your mouths and call on God. Let his light break through our darkness. Pray.’

  As their prayers bubbled forth, the prophet’s voice rose with every word uttered until he lapsed into tongues, stamping his feet and clapping in rhythm to his words.

  It went on for about thirty minutes before he said a huge ‘Praise the Lord’ and all was quiet.

  His white gown was drenched but there was on his face something almost beatific, a calm that seemed alien to the charged environment that had just been.

  ‘I see our brother shrouded in darkness. We must do more. On Friday next week, we shall all gather here to pray and keep vigil. We will start at midnight and end at dawn. God will intervene.’

  Auntie Ekwi thanked him. As they rose to go, she nudged Abel with a sharp elbow in the ribs. ‘Find something for the prophet,’ she whispered in Igbo.

  Abel parted with the money in his pocket, which the prophet received with a ‘God bless you, my son.’

  They dropped Auntie Ekwi off at home in Ilupeju. Because Abel hadn’t been to her house before and hadn’t seen her husband since Soni’s wedding, he stayed back to reacquaint himself with her two sons and talk about Soni and home and politics with her husband while Auntie Ekwi and Ada prepared lunch.

  By the time they were done it was already past three. They drove in silence out of Ilupeju down to Town Planning Way and onto Ikorodu Road. Ada cruised past Obanikoro, Onipanu, Fadeyi and Jibowu, into Surulere.

  Ojuelegba was busy, and as they slowed in the traffic leading to the bridge that would take them into Western Avenue, Abel felt someone tapping on the window beside him.

  ‘Smoke, bros. Smoke,’ a young man said, pointing to the hood.

  ‘Ada, stop, stop. He says there is smoke coming out from the engine,’ Abel said already reaching for the door lock. The young man was running alongside the car, pointing but Ada kept on driving.

  ‘It’s a trick, Abel. There is no smoke. If you stop, you are in trouble. Once you open your engine they will disconnect something and that’s where it starts. You could get robbed or killed or made to part with some money.’

  The young man, noticing that Ada wasn’t slowing down, had stopped jogging alongside them. Abel saw him cross the road to wait for another hapless driver.

  ‘First time it happened to me, I lost my handbag. I was lucky it was in the afternoon,’ she said, slowing as she indicated right.

  Back in the seventies, Fela had written a classic song about Ojuelegba. A concourse of sorts, it was a pure melee of cars, people and sounds. There were buses stopping in the middle of the road to pick up passengers, passengers jumping and falling off buses because the drivers would never come to a full stop to let off their fares, and in all that confusion traffic wardens were trying and failing to sanitise the madness and enforce some kind of order.

  Things had improved a lot since then. The traffic lights worked, bus stops with roofed stalls had been built and Ojuelegba had become a tad gentrified, but it was still a part of Lagos, a place with a soul that gravitated towards the chaotic, an anarchic impulse that could never fully be tamed.

  ‘Let’s have some pepper soup. Do you mind?’ she asked as she veered into the right lane, beside Teslim Balogun Stadium. ‘They make really nice ones at O’jez and I haven’t been here in a while.’

  ‘O’jez. I thought it was in Yaba,’ Abel said, recalling that, on his last visit to Lagos for Soni’s wedding an old friend had taken him to a place called O’jez somewhere in Yaba.

  ‘Yes, they were. They have a bigger place here.’

  Ada turned left under the bridge beside the stadium. She waited for the road to clear then drove across into the National Stadium complex, past commuters massed around the bus stop. Men and women with muscular torsos and no legs pushed themselves along or simply lounged in pimped-out, hand-powered bikes and wheelchairs. A couple of them were smoking weed openly.

  Ada drove slowly because of the speed bumps and Abel took in the rows of shops selling running shoes, swimming trunks, trophies and odd assortments of sports paraphernalia. They made a right and then she found a spot.

  ‘Oya, come let me show you what it means to point and kill,’ she said and there was trilling laughter in her voice.

  As they walked into the rectangular enclosure, Abel noticed the rows of cars parked to the far left while two mobile policemen lounged in the shade with AK-47s slung across their knees.

  ‘Why didn’t you park inside?’ Abel asked indicating the wide empty spaces.

  ‘The car is safe outside and it is easier to leave. This is one of the safest places to hang out in Lagos.’ They found a red table with four seats, all branded with the logo of a popular alcoholic beverage. To their right was a huge wall covered by a Visafone billboard, and underneath it was a screen showing music videos of Nigerian artistes.

  ‘This place is a major hangout for Nigerian actors,’ Ada told him. ‘Come here often and you will meet all of them. They usually sit upstairs though.’ She wiped their seats with a paper napkin. ‘It doesn’t fill up until around 7pm, when it gets dark. Soni used to say that’s when people stroll in with women who are not their wives,’

  ‘Like me,’ Abel blurted out.

  ‘Really?’ Ada asked, the guarde
dness coming back.

  ‘Don’t mind me joo.’ He forced a smile.

  A slight Chinese lady in jeans and a sky blue top ambled over to their table, her face ablaze with a smile.

  ‘Madam, how far?’ she said, standing beside Ada. ‘E don tay o, how oga dey?’ she asked in unaccented pidgin.

  ‘Oga travel, na im broda be dis.’ Ada indicated Abel.

  ‘Oga welcome,’ she said, turning to Abel. ‘Wetin una want.’

  ‘Give us the 1,800 pepper soup,’ Ada told her, then turned to Abel to ask what he wanted to drink.

  ‘Big stout and a coke.’

  ‘Give me Smirnoff Ice.’

  ‘I go bring am now-now,’ she said, and strode away.

  ‘Is that woman Chinese?’ Abel asked.

  ‘No, she is from your village.’ Ada smiled. ‘The first time I met her, I was shocked too.’

  ‘You guys come here often?’

  ‘Yes. Soni always made time. Here and the movies; he made sure we came at least once a month. He liked the grilled fish and chips. Me, I prefer the pepper soup. Now, I am not sure whether I should have come. The memories are flooding in.’

  ‘It’s ok,’ Abel said reaching out and touching her hand. It was the first time they’d had any kind of physical contact and he felt her pull back instinctively. ‘You can’t stay cooped up in that house forever.’

  ‘I know, but it’s hard sitting here waiting for pepper soup when Soni is not with me. I never came here without him, except when I brought my siblings.’

  ‘What did you call him, my brother?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Just asking.’

  ‘I called him Soni. What else should I call him? Honey?’

  ‘No, not that. It’s just that everyone calls him Sabato, even Auntie Ekwi and her husband.’

  ‘I know. It was like a title and less a name; you know, something honorific. Soni used to laugh too when old schoolmates who knew him as Kanayo or Soni would call him Sabato. He said he felt like they were showing him respect by not calling him by his real name. You know how, in Nigeria, once you become a governor, your friends stop calling you by your name and start calling you Excellency? That’s how it was.’