by Wole Soyinka
And the Cartel woke to the increasing rumble at its door.
The Dentist scuffed ashes in the burnt-out shell of the tax office and faced Ofeyi. “What did you think it would lead to, the doctrines you began to disseminate through the men of Aiyéró?”
“Recovery of whatever has been seized from society by a handful, re-moulding society itself….”
“But not through violence?”
“What is the point of that question? I’ve never excluded that likelihood.”
“Those who stand most to lose have woken up to your activities. What do you think they would do?”
“What they are doing now, uproot it where they can, destroy the men whom they held responsible for the spread of the virus of thought.”
“And how will they do it?”
Wondering where this sudden plunge into cross-examination was leading Ofeyi conceded a number of the counter-measures of the Cartel. The Dentist nodded thoughtfully, pointed to the rubble of official buildings.
“Will this stop them? Is that what you think?”
Feeling it was time for a change of roles Ofeyi asked in turn, “What do you think is the answer then? Your selective assassinations?”
The Dentist held his eyes for some moments. “I don’t deny that neither my method nor yours will serve by itself. You have always taken your methods for granted, you can’t envisage any means beyond converting inertia to a mass momentum. But the other side know that what they do is abnormal, it is against nature. And so they are compelled to act together, as an abnormal but organic growth. From the very start. There is one way to break such a growth apart and that is to pluck off its head. Pluck it right off. They make their own rules brother. We must make ours.”
“But the end result of that?”
“You will insist on means and ends won’t you? All right, we’ll make a few more trips. The picture is not all bleak, I admit that. But while you busied yourself on the seminal rounds of the distant ideal, your friends have been ringing your fields in steel. In fact brother, the stranglehold is very nearly complete.”
VIII
“Is that the dog?”
The clerk had not even bothered to turn at the cushioned clang of the carved, metal-studded doors but continued to rummage among piles of paper on a long table. The dongari advanced with his charge as far as the first pair of pillars, pushing him forward at every step.
The clerk turned slightly, demanded again, “Is that the dog Salau that no longer knows his mother?”
The dongari pushed his prisoner to the floor and the man cringed, his head between his arms to ward off expected blows. No sound came from him although spasms commenced around his jaws and his head bobbed up and down. On the raised floor at the opposite end of the hall, a seeming end of the world away from where the clerk had spoken, sat a turbanned figure at the sight of whom the prisoner had promptly lowered his eyes. Impassive and expressionless, permanent slits of boredom and disdain served for a pair of eyes. His figure filled a huge ornate chair. Without the velvet-covered footstool however, his feet would have stopped a good way short of the ground. A mildly hawk-like nose protruded also from a face that was otherwise smooth, flat, without lines or wrinkles.
Sprawled at his feet were a number of shapes in poses of seeming inattention. A young boy raised languid eyes from the comic-strip paperback which had engrossed him until then, looked up at the turbanned figure, then across the vast expanse to the creature who still cringed against the dongari’s feet. The boy fluttered his long lashes, giggled and sent his voice lisping down the hall:
“Is the dog mute then?”
He looked back at the turbanned presence and smiled, was rewarded by a faint indulgent smile from the immobile Buddha form. The dongari took his cue from the interruption, put his bare foot to the prisoner’s rear and catapulted him forward:
“Crawl dog! The Zaki wants you.”
Pausing from time to time only to present the salutation fist of homage in the direction of the dais the man called Salau hastily began his journey to the throne in a strange combination of movements: sometimes he dragged on heels and buttocks, then sprinted a quick yard at a crouch, hands hung low to the ground so that his fingertips retained a light contact with the marble floor, he slid a few more yards on one leg and half-buttock, his palm flat against the ground, then crawled whining on all fours…his movements were punctuated by a quick wringing of his hands, a trembling fist of homage and a quick gargle in the throat as he bobbed his head and saluted:
“Ranka dede, ranka dede.”
He was halfway up the hall before Zaki Amuri stirred faintly, made a gesture, almost imperceptible except to the early spokesman, the clerical figure in a western suit. The clerk at the table stepped to the edge of the marble dais and shouted, “That’s enough!”
The prisoner jerked to a halt, bobbed his head a few times and continued to mutter “Ranka dede.” The boy with the long lashes giggled and threw his head back, reached vaguely into a bowl beside him, took out a sweetmeat at which he nibbled daintily. The other retinue on the floor gave the culprit brief glances from beneath hooded eyes and took no further interest in the event. Except perhaps one who appeared to keep his eyes steadfastly averted from the terrified man in the middle of the hall, unnecessarily, as the prisoner was beyond recognizing anyone in his condition. The man in the turban gave yet another faint nod of the head and the clerk turned interrogator.
“The Zaki wishes to know if you are the man who has sold your birthright for a mess of pottage.”
The prisoner wrung his hands and turned from side to side. “Ranka dede…I did not know…I swear I was misled….”
The clerk laughed. “Misled. Are you a goat with a halter round your neck? Misled! Perhaps we should put one round it now so we can know for sure whether we are dealing with a goat or a responsible head of a family.”
“Ranka dede, ranka dede…”
“Strangers come to you, complete strangers from way across the river. Not even men of the faith but kafiri! They make you promises, bribe you and you agree to foment trouble among your own kith and kin. You proceed to sow disaffection against the subjects of the Zaki!”
“No no your highness, I swear by Allah I am no trouble-maker.”
The clerk’s smile turned grim. “Well what are you then? That is what the Zaki would like to know. What are you? Go on, tell us.”
Salau muttered silent prayers, raised his eyes to the arched ceiling in vain. He swallowed hard, then plunged into explanations he wished he had had time to rehearse.
“What could I do your Highness? The land was truly ruined. I am only an ignorant man and there was no one to advise me what to do. The land was barren through and through. Nothing grew, farming was impossible. And it wasn’t as if I had a job to turn to, like my brother-in-law Abdul and one or two others. But for the mercy of Allah my little ones would have perished of hunger. Once or twice I even stood beside the gates of the mining company to beg from the whiteman—after all it was their doing that brought ruin upon the land. But the gateman chased me away. Imagine, he said I was dirtying up the whiteman’s gate. When I came back again he called the police and they put me in gaol for a week. So what could I do your highness when these men came? The land was costing more to till than it yielded. I ask for the Zaki’s forgiveness on an ignorant man.”
“So when these blaspheming strangers came you thought Allah had smiled on you? They were visitors sent from heaven to make your fortune?”
“Forgive me your Highness. Abdul my brother-in-law misled me. He said the men were out to help poor people like us.”
The clerk snorted. “To help people like you! Because where they come from they have no beggars of their own who need help? And your village head, I suppose he was sick or dying?”
Salau looked bewildered, rolled his eyes round the room in vain search for
elucidation. He was startled back to attention when the clerk shouted: “Answer me! It’s me speaking to you, not the wall.”
“Your Highness will forgive me” the man pleaded. “I don’t understand.”
“I asked if you had no village head from whom you could take advice? Or is it everyday that strangers come to you and offer to make you money from useless land? Especially when you were already paid by those who borrowed the land!”
The man continued to wring his hands. “Ranka dede, ranka dede. I am a very foolish man, I can only ask you to forgive…”
“Not satisfied with your foolishness you even became the agent of these men. You went round to other villages stirring them up, deceiving them with promises of fortune from the sky.”
The man leapt at a straw in the deluge of indictments. “No no, if your Highness will permit me to explain that, I was not their agent….”
The clerk folded his arms, pursed his lips together and waited.
“I was no more than a guide, your Highness. They wanted someone to show them the area around the Mining Trust. What happened between them and other people, I swear by Allah, I know nothing of that. If you ask Abdul your Highness, perhaps he can tell. But I swear I did no more than act as guide.”
“And just what do you know of this Abdul? This man who is to blame for everything?”
“My brother-in-law your Highness. He works at the Mining Trust as watchman. Your Highness, if you will permit me to explain something….”
“The Zaki wants all the explanation you care to give.”
The man swallowed several times, uttered a swift, silent prayer. “Your Highness, as you know, the white men have been digging on those lands for a long time. They pay us something but, what does it all come to your Highness? Nothing much. When they have finished with the land it is useless. Nothing but rocks. The rain washes the best soil away once they have been at it. Apart from a small patch here and there. A goat turns up his nose at the grass that grows there. Please your Highness don’t think it is as if we were complaining. Ever since the village head called us together and told us they have the Zaki’s permission we have let them dig wherever they like. But you see your Highness, when they are done, the land is well and truly finished. A man like Abdul was able to get work with the whitemen as a watchman, but the rest of us…”
The clerk turned sharply at a bored gesture from the Zaki, leant downwards and put his ear to his lips. The accused man prolonged his drone of woe until an impatient bark from the clerk cut him off in mid-word. The boy with the long lashes broke into a prolonged giggle, threw a half-bitten sweetmeat across the floor to the culprit and resumed his comics.
The clerk nodded in response to the inaudible movements of the Zaki’s turbanned lips. “Of course your Highness, he has not told the whole truth.” He spun round at the man again and screamed, “Did these men not tell you that the Zaki had let you be cheated by the Mining Trust?”
Salau shook his head in vigorous denial but the clerk shut him up. “You and Abdul, that was the story you spread round the villages. You wanted them to rebel against the Zaki! Don’t lie dog! You wanted to set Cross-river on fire with the aid of those men.”
The accused spread out his hands in weariness and mumbled pious denials.
“Speak up!”
“Your Highness, they said many things. But Allah is my witness if I said anything to others against the Zaki. I ask you, who am I to raise my voice against his Highness? Sure, they said the white people had ruined the land without paying us enough and Abdul said it was only right that we should get some of the profit taken away by the white man. The white man is not my brother your Highness. I saw nothing wrong in trying to take more money out of him.”
“Can you read?”
The man blinked, taken aback by the change of tack. “Can I read your Highness? No, I…”
“This paper you signed, you and other discontented dogs, do you know what it really says?”
“Your Highness, Abdul read it to me. All it says is that I agree that they take up my case with the Mining Trust. They called it a letter of authority.”
“Is that all?”
“But your Highness, what else could there be? Abdul read it to me. I even asked how much it would cost me. Abdul is my brother-in-law. He said it would cost nothing.”
“And what would you say you illiterate fool, if I told you now that that paper you signed has given your land away to these men who say they have come to help you.”
“She-ge!” The oath came out before he could stop himself. He bowed abjectly, touched the ground with his forehead and begged forgiveness. He launched into a wail of self-pity and demanded of the heavens what sins he had committed to be so put upon. Then he remembered Abdul and stopped, round-eyed.
“But Abdul! My own brother-in-law! Your Highness must forgive me but is it really possible that my own brother-in-law would do that to me?”
The clerk gave him a look of withering pity. “When last did you see your brother-in-law?” he asked.
The man scratched his head. “I must say I have not seen him now for a month. Which is strange. He always comes to my house at least once a week.”
The clerk exchanged looks with the Zaki. For the first time, a tremor of a smile hovered around the lips of the turbanned presence. On the face of the accused, a look of consternation now replaced the earlier bafflement. Then rage. He shut his eyes and silently called down the wrath of Allah on the perfidy of a kinsman, even one of the mere marriage tie, who could do this to him. The clerk observed him carefully, exchanged another look with the Zaki who nodded slightly.
The clerk’s voice now changed to one of fatherly rebuke. “Now you see what you have done by placing your affairs in the hands of strangers from the South. Your father is here. You knew that if you had any trouble all you had to do was come to him. If you felt that the whitemen had cheated you, the man to turn to for redress is the man who gave them his blessing in the first place. Is that not right?”
“Your Highness is right. I have been foolish.”
“You and the others, your land now belongs to aliens who pretended to be your brothers. At least the whiteman only borrowed it. He paid you and returned it to you. And part of the profit he makes he pays into the Treasury. That is how we build you roads and hospitals and schools. But you let too much greed lead you to agitate against the Zaki, your own father who has done so much for you, the only one who knows how to handle these whitemen you grumble so much about. You sign a piece of paper which you can’t read and suddenly you find yourself landless.”
The bereaved man catapulted himself suddenly flat on his face, arms spread out. “Forgive a miserable, ignorant dog your Highness. I am only a child who got misled. Forgive us your Highness and help us get our land back from those accursed unbelievers.”
The clerk looked down on him without surprise. He turned away, leaving the prostrate man with his face in symbolic dust while he informed the Zaki of developments that had taken place over the business. The Mining Trust had sacked all employees suspected of involvement in that and other agitations. This meant all non-natives of Cross-river. Abdul was safely in one of the airless dungeons of the local administration. He would be freed only when he had been tortured into admitting that he had misled and cheated others of their land. And maybe not even then. He was too far gone with the madness to be trusted. Once on the loose he might expose the forgery and resume his agitations. The plump man nodded. For the first time he spoke with some degree of audibility.
“I want a clean sweep of Cross-river.”
“They have spread wide your Highness. Trouble has already begun in the cotton mills up in Darama. The man we sent to investigate believes it is the same men. All the strongholds of the Cartel your Highness, even the cement works at Suro…”
The big man gestured impatiently. “They must be swept
out to the last man.”
The clerk complained. “It is no longer possible to tell who are the men from Aiyéró. They are not newcomers. Many have been in Cross-river for years. It is only now they have begun to show themselves in their true colours.”
“The natives of Cross-river know one another. Those whom they do not know…” The Zaki closed his eyes in boredom, and the subject.
The clerk bowed backwards, returned to the spread-eagled occupant of the central expanse of the audience chamber.
“Get up” he snapped.
The man dragged himself together wearily, resumed his former position, squatting on his haunches.
“You have no redress in law, you know that. An agreement is an agreement. There is nothing in this world so powerful as a piece of paper to which a man has put his fingerprint, in front of witnesses. Nothing can wash the fingerprint away. You have signed away the land of your fathers to robbers from across the river.”
The man murmured, “Let our father help us if he can your Highness. There is nothing more I can say.”
“How many able-bodied men are there in your village?”
After thoughtful frowning the man said there might be over a hundred. The clerk nodded, “Good. Get them together. Tell them what has happened. Let them all go round and take note where all the strangers live. Take note of where they work, where they go to eat and drink. Do you understand that?”
