New York, My Village

by Uwem Akpan

  Consumed by the image of being pushed from the pier, I dashed inside. He paused to say he knew I was inside now. I feared if they saw my finger rosary that meant they really came close. Or were they using binoculars on me? Was I followed every time I went out? Was it one person or a group?

  A WHITE MAN THREATENED to drown me.

  I was tormented by the fact that Black subjugation was accomplished by the unbelievable magnification of terror across racial lines—in the blood-soaked voyages across the Atlantic, this very ocean which separated New York from Ikot Ituno-Ekanem, these voyages which shall always cast a shadow on any Black person, irrespective of whether they still called Africa home or had bloodied their knuckles and heads for four hundred years on the iron door of America’s heart.

  If Lucci’s words pierced my heart—I who had a home to return to in Nigeria, an extended family, an ethnic group, a language, a culture, an ancestral land—I could only imagine what it would do to African Americans. What would it take for America to finally process African Americans into citizens? I could hear the echoes of the stamps of my visa denials by Santa Judessa and Lagoon Drinker.

  Where would Keith Jim-Stehr go after four hundred years?

  I knew neither Brad nor Emily nor Molly nor Paul would ever deport Keith. I could imagine, too, how these comments would boil the blood of those Americans who recently risked their lives to console our Ikot Ituno-Ekanem with the true message of Christ, these folks who had even made us believe we could risk reconciliation within Biafra.

  “Mr. Lucci, listen, I’m sorry for ignoring all your phone calls,” I said in an attempt to get him to rescind the eviction order.

  “You made me look really stupid!”

  “I really apologize for insulting you. I should never have threatened to sue you. I don’t know what got into me. I feel really bad … since you asked in your voice mails how many relatives I lost in the war, well, my family really suffered—”

  “Please, please, your old friend’s heart can’t handle too much pain today! Okey dokey, you can stay on in the apartment. Apology accepted. Just be nice, okey dokey?”

  He began to cough like his lungs were on fire. I apologized endlessly for causing him so much stress, till he hung up.

  * Read Roy Doron’s “Biafra and the Agip Oil Workers: Ransoming and the Modern Nation State in Perspective” in African Economic History, 2014.

  CHAPTER 30

  Canepa’s lawyers had sent me a strongly worded letter

  THE FOLLOWING SATURDAY, BRAD, ALEJANDRA, KEITH, and I rode the C back from getting our chemicals from Washington Heights, because the bugs had migrated back to their fumigated apartments. Keith came anyway, though his apartment had been safe since he had hired the expensive firm and sniffer dogs.

  Our interminable affliction, which brought us together in the first place, had finally sent us on a group outing. We were as animated as boarding students going home on vacation, because finally we had got all the authentic chemicals. We laughed triumphantly and continually. Brad and Alejandra looked honestly funny; their beautiful J.Crew boots were now shapeless and lopsided due to PackTiting—something they said had to do with using heat to rid an object of bedbugs. But I became more determined to buy the shoes for Caro and myself, because no shoes were meant to be cooked like that. We laughed at the pest control guy in Washington Heights, who swore we all had the wrong mattress covers because the right ones should have “anti-bedbug certified” written on them. He sold us his.

  Outside the subway station, when I kept ignoring Lucci’s renewed calls, Alejandra winked and said finally I had a secret lover and had lost my gentleman’s status in her eyes. I said it was Lucci, who wanted to checkmate Canepa, whose lawyers had sent me a strongly worded letter two days before. It ordered me to pay rent straight to their client, beginning with December’s. The lawyers had warned me how “aliens” could be criminally prosecuted under New York housing laws, how I might never be able to leave America because of the slow case. They had mined my particulars from my angry voice mail to the landlord; the copy of the letter for Lucci had also come to my mailbox. On the phone, Lucci had said I must trash the letter but should not offer the landlord any information as it was a final stratagem to cancel my apartment’s lease. Lucci also insisted that, on this important matter of forking out another December rent, his lawyer had counseled I should write the landlord’s lawyers promising to pay after Christmas when I would already have arrived in Nigeria.

  Alejandra suggested I should write a nice appeal letter straight to the landlord, not the lawyers, during Thanksgiving week. She said, if I was Catholic, she would advise me to say so in the letter. Keith said, as a former friend of Canepa’s, he believed mentioning soccer would be equally effective, that Canepa attended every World Cup with his family, that he came to America at age nine and his beloved Palermo soccer club and Mafia violence was how he remembered his Italian childhood. He said while he did not know how I could phrase all of this in the letter, I should not be surprised if he knew more about Nigerian soccer than me. Alejandra said I should just say that as a child I rooted for the Italian national team when they won the World Cup in Spain in 1982, that it was my first-ever World Cup and I loved Paulo Rossi’s goals and Dino Zoff’s goalkeeping heroics. Jeff and Brad said to include rent receipts, and that, most importantly, I would leave before Christmas.

  On reaching home, I quickly got the stuff ready in a big brown envelope. Yet I had no guts to mail it to the landlord, because I was afraid Lucci was monitoring my movements. I hid it deep in my suitcase like I never wanted to remember it.

  THAT EVENING, I was caught off guard when the landlord himself called. His voice tight and guarded, he had gone straight to the point: his inspectors would finally come on Monday. I got off my recliner, my knees unfeeling.

  “Good … g-g-good evening, Mr. Canepa!” I greeted him first, stammering, balling my fingers.

  “You heard what I said about inspectors, right?” he barked.

  “I did. But, permit me to begin by thanking you for calling back though I’m an illegal occupant of your property. God bless you for your patience.”

  “No, wait, did you not get my lawyers’ letters to you and Greg Lucci?”

  “I got them, sir, and forwarded his.”

  “Otherwise, we can’t be having this conversation!”

  “Please, I just want to say I’m sorry for all the pain I’ve caused you, my landlord. The truth is I didn’t even know I was illegal. So I’m in a state of total shock and confusion right now, as any three-month visitor to a strange country who receives a letter like this would.”

  “Okay.”

  “And, cross my heart, I shouldn’t have shouted at you in my voice mail!”

  “I think so, too.”

  “Well, since August I’ve been here on a fellowship at Andrew & Thompson.”

  “Yes, I know of Andrew & Thompson … Go on.”

  “I am sorry, too, for berating you about the bedbug secret!”

  “What bedbug secret?”

  “I thought I said something like that in my voice mail that night.”

  “No, I listened to it again five minutes ago.”

  “My bad, then.”

  “Listen, I have to call up more tenants and subletees elsewhere, hopefully legal ones.”

  “I promise you I shall return to Nigeria shortly before Christmas. Please, I’d be grateful if you could call your esteemed lawyers off my ass. It would really be sad if a little feud with your fellow Sicilian-American Catholic affected this innocent Annang-Nigerian Catholic!”

  “But Lucci, in response to my voice mail, said you’re his bosom friend, that you met in a vacation on the beaches of Swakopmund in Namibia.”

  “Really?”

  “Well, he knows an awful lot about your life, your decision not to have children, how I must not disturb you because you’re really traumatized writing a memoir at Andrew & Thompson about the Biafran War. In five voice mails, he went on and on abou
t how, unlike African Americans, you so gently helped him understand his racist blind spots. When you first arrived, you said the rosary together on the pier and attended Mass together—”

  “Please, permit me to interrupt you! As the ancestors say, I disrupt the words from your mouth, not your heart.”

  “Spare me the proverbs, will you? What’s the date on your return ticket?”

  “December twentieth.”

  “But are you truly writing about the war?”

  “Yes, I’m editing a war anthology, sir.”

  He was quiet.

  I assured him I did not even need the inspectors anymore. This was because we were so positive about annihilating the bugs the following day, Sunday, given the fury with which we were going to deploy the new chemicals. And I did not believe his inspectors would find anything on Monday. After I had said all the sweet Italian soccer stuff Alejandra had suggested, after I had explained I had already paid December rent as deposit to Lucci, the landlord cleared his throat and said if I left before January, he would waive my rent. He said, though he disbelieved everything Lucci said, he was cutting me slack, for he himself remembered the devastating posters of the Biafran War. I thanked him and said goodbye, but he asked if I could come downstairs.

  “I’m already under your window!” he announced tautly as my heart skipped. “Ekong, it would be nice to conclude our little agreement with a handshake.” I went to look down the window, only to see a fat old man waving to me. He was in a milk-white suit and matching shoes and a shiny yellow newsboy cap. I could not tell whether he was sitting or standing. From this height, he looked like an egg sunny-side up on the curb. Afraid he might ask for proof of my paid rent in order to implicate Lucci, I decided to lie that I had paid cash. For my safety, I studied the street carefully before going down.

  Standing up delicately from a folding cane seat, Tony Canepa wobbled politely up to me. He was a bulky man with soft features and his jowls sagged like his face was just hanging on to his quick large eyes. He looked really familiar, but I could not place him. I blurted out that I might have met him before. He shook his head slowly like it might fall off his neck and offered a trembling two-handed handshake. As he struggled for words, his eyes blinked as though he had forgotten something precious. I steadied him. Looking him in the face, I reassured him I would leave before Christmas.

  He cleared his throat and explained he actually wanted to meet me because I said I was sorry. He said he was touched, for New Yorkers never apologized to him, no matter how much they abused his properties or left nasty voice mails. He moaned that relatives in his beloved Palermo had revealed Lucci’s grandfather was an inveterate soccer ticket racketeer, just like his progeny. “Please, my brother, pray that soon Saint Joseph, the patron saint of landlords, will take Lucci off my property and out of my life,” he said, his eyes closed. Though everyone had said he was a talker, I knew he had to be really frustrated with Greg Lucci to pour all this out to a total stranger.

  “THERE ARE PEOPLE NICKNAMED Zoff and Rossi in your village?” the landlord said, lightening up, going back to what I had told him earlier on.

  “Absolutely, sir,” I said as I helped him settle back onto his cane seat.

  “Good. Let me tell you the story of how your Nigerian soccer team converted my grandkids to ardent soccer buffs at the 1998 World Cup in Nantes, France—”

  “Nigeria vs. Spain. Everything stood still in Nigeria. No traffic, nothing.”

  “Yes, yes, the Spanish supporters, in their red and white, were already triumphal in their drumming and dancing. But your Nigerian fan club was unyielding. Your diaspora people flew in from all over the world! In green and white, they filled the atmosphere with singing and drumming and trumpeting; they gyrated and danced as though they were going to spill onto the pitch.”

  “Sir, there’s nothing like the World Cup.”

  “And I’ve always loved how your team gels, despite its diversity, all the divisions back home. Suddenly there’s no tribe, no religion, nothing but possibilities! Someday I shall tell you how I came to know a bit about your country. I’m just happy Spain has since let Blacks into its team, unlike Argentina!”

  “Who’ll save the country of my beloved Pope Francis and Maradona?”

  “Ekong, it still hurts I didn’t see Spain’s second goal against Nigeria live two minutes into the second half. I was jostling back from buying hot dogs, burgers, and drinks, since my American grandchildren hated les galette-saucisses. Worse, the ecstasy of the Spanish fans knocked most of the food on the floor. The kids took one look at my face and knew I wasn’t going back.”

  “Spain two, Nigeria one … na shakara.”

  “For the next twenty-six minutes, the game hung in a balance. Spain missed their chances and Nigeria dug in. To beat back the tension rising from the pitch like a fog, everyone, except my disgruntled grandkids, exploded into mammoth waves as spectators rose and hollered. Finally, the Spaniards succumbed to pressure, peeing on themselves, conceding an own goal from a fluke shot by Garba Lawal. Nigeria two, Spain two!”

  Tony Canepa bolted up and folded his chair to really dramatize things, as his voice rose above the evening traffic and a film of tears lit up his eyes. When he took off his yellow cap and smiled and laughed, I knew immediately he was the old man in the portrait on my shelf, a portrait Lucci had once made me believe was his, a portrait I had smashed under the bath.

  Now I masked my shock at Lucci’s lie in big laughter, clapping as Canepa recounted how some Nigerians had completely stopped watching the match and were lost in a colorful dance. I laughed even more when he attempted to mimic our fans’ asa-asara dance, the kind of display TV cameras never picked up, because the match itself was too riveting—blink-and-you-miss stuff. “But Ekong, the world can never forget that twenty-five-yard half-volley thunderbolt from Oliseh,” Canepa said, giving the air an uppercut. “That rocket graced the post and bulged the onion bag. You guys sank the Spanish armada and took the lead for the first time, twelve minutes from the final whistle. Nigeria three, Spain two.”

  I told him how that goal stole my mind and I suddenly found myself seated silently on the beer-wet floor under the bar table drinking palm wine in celebration, how I couldn’t see the TV screens but just the legs of the chanting crowd hopping like in slow motion. I was feeling the underside of the table with my palms like one who had finally touched the sky but was still singing, “Higher and higher.” He recounted how the swashbuckling Jay-Jay Okocha orchestrated our team’s new self-confidence, opening up spaces for us to shine, how we played like a powerful intricate machine made up of 250 or 500 parts representing our ethnic groups. “I told you I know a bit about your country and war!” he hollered, holding my shoulders. “We all sang the referee’s name, imploring him to remain fair till the end, because too many Black teams never get their dues even in soccer! One day, FIFA shall regret fining and shaming Black players who protest racism from the fans directed at them on the pitch by walking off!”

  “Ha, you said it, boss, you s-a-i-d it!” I agreed, shaking his hand, bowing.

  “My grandkids were shivering, chewing their nails, stamping their feet, cussing, irrevocably falling in love with the beautiful game before the final whistle … Ekong, I need to run. Are you sure you don’t want exterminators?”

  “I’m positive.”

  “Listen, if you want to hang around to experience American Christmas, that’s fine. But I know by New Year you’ll be watching European soccer under some bar table back home, ha. Because in January my lawyers shall throw the kitchen sink at your friend. I must upgrade the apartment and rent it to a new tenant!”

  After Canepa had gifted me with a bottle of wine from his car and left, I called up Lucci to say I had promised the landlord I would take care of the bugs. He was quiet. “Did you give him the rent details?” he barked. I said no. To assure him I had not broken my promise to protect his lease, I explained that his enemy had called me, not vice versa. He relented and chuckled
when I assured him even Nigerian housing judges would not rule against bosom friends like us.

  THE NEXT DAY, Keith was already hard at work when I returned Jeff’s chair. The Asian American burst out laughing, because no one wanted to remember how it got into my apartment. It was like very serious spring cleaning. Personally, I spent a long time unscrewing the panels from all electrical outlets and joints, which the Washington Heights pest control guy emphasized were the main conduit for bugs traveling in between apartments and buildings. I let my boom box do its thing, thumping out Angelique Kidjo’s “Conga Habenera” and Bez Idakula’s “Say.”

  But, as I sprayed the JT Eaton Kills Bedbugs white powder through its long nozzle, as directed, into the now-exposed sockets and boxes and joints, it dawned on me this was the same powder on my office carpet. I stopped because my hands shook, and I sat on the floor. The fact that I had always suspected the office thing was made specifically for me did not ease the shock.

  I played with the powder a bit, fingering it, smelling it, basically reenacting that day I knelt in my cubicle to study it. Now, when I sneezed, a procession of diverse feelings went through me. At first it felt like someone had bugged my cubicle. I was angry. Then I felt violated, as though I should have been told. I was disappointed. It did not matter who did this, though my mind blamed it on the Humane Society Two.

  When I called him, Father Kiobel wanted to laugh but could not. “Ekong, I must tell you this,” he said. “Of all your American troubles, nothing has scared me like you breathing this carpet powder stuff day in, day out. I had hoped you were hallucinating about it. But when it disappeared from your cubicle, it started appearing in my dreams! I just pray Ujai doesn’t need a shrink … it’s not looking good.” I pleaded, if it came to that, he must let her parents know I was ready to pay for her mental health costs.

  I went back to work as though my zeal could heal her: I screwed the panels back on and powdered the backs of the fridge, stove, microwave, TV, even the grille of the AC, which had been turned off earlier in the fall. After replacing the mattress cover, I exploded in one last long blitz, spraying everything in the apartment with JT Eaton Kills Bedbugs Plus and Steri-Fab. The alcohol in the latter made me sneeze again, and I knew right away this was the mystery alcohol on my desk and Emily’s. At the end, I vacuumed the place to destroy the eggs even though I did not still know what they looked like. Since I had no PackTite to bake the books Andrew & Thompson had given me, I used the powder to draw a thick ring on the floor around the bookshelf. Carefully, to save the books—or to trap them, if the bugs were already there—I employed water to cement and set the edges of the ring, so the heat vent would not blow it away.