The Madhouse

by TJ Benson

  That night André was dying in his dreams again and Max woke up as usual to save him at the brink of death. He could only go a few steps from his bed before he was pulled down by a slumber so powerful that he fell like a puppet whose strings had been snipped.

  The parents woke up to the moans of their sons in the throes of a bad dream and rushed to the children’s room. Max was on the ground between their beds, writhing as though tied up and crying loudly with eyes shut while André lay on the bed, not showing any sign of breathing, still and peaceful. The mother fell on her knees and cradled Max’s head in her lap, crying, trying to persuade her first son to wake up. ‘It is just a bad dream,’ she said. ‘Wake up, my son.’

  The father perceived the sour tomato in the air and traced its origin to the kitchen where the pot of stew was making faint gurgling sounds. As if saving someone from a fire, he rushed to grab the pot, kicked the back door open and hurled it out over the fence, into the night.

  In that instant in the children’s room, the boys sprang out of their dreams, gasping for air, and Sweet Mother grasped them against her body, violently as though she had just reclaimed them from thieves, crying as they cried too. They were so sorry they had caused her so much grief, so sorry they had been born into the world.

  ‘What did you dream?’ asked the father.

  André couldn’t stop his sobbing long enough to say anything meaningful.

  ‘André!’

  ‘We were telling stories on a mountain,’ came Max’s voice from his mother’s side. ‘One boy came and pushed him down. I wanted to jump quick-quick and catch him, but the boy was holding my leg.’

  ‘The boy is my friend,’ André finally said, and they all turned to him. ‘He was hiding behind the chair with me that day the rain was falling plenty-plenty.’

  ‘Who is this boy, for goodness’ sake?!’

  ‘Daddy, I checked and he is not in our school. Maybe he is from another school.’

  ‘Then what is his name?’

  André looked up at his father. ‘He doesn’t have a name, Daddy. He died in Mummy’s stomach. He said he is my twin brother. Daddy, is it true?’

  ‘I am sure these things are happening because we stopped going to church,’ the mother said to the father. ‘We have to take them for counselling.’

  ‘You know that isn’t going to help. They say their prayers before meals; that is enough.’

  ‘How do you know, ehn?’ She tightened her wrapper and glared at him. Then she turned to look at the children. ‘Next Sunday both of you are following me to church.’

  ‘But Mummy—’

  ‘Don’t “Mummy” me anything.’

  ‘But you said we have a choice—’

  ‘And choices have consequences! Look at your brother. Can’t you see? It is not normal, the way you people do everything alone. You don’t play with other children—’

  ‘But Mummy, it was you that said we should not leave this house,’ said André with his thick eyebrows furrowed and small face pinched, so righteous even at the age of five.

  ‘Mummy just allow us … erm … one year,’ said Max. ‘Let us pretend God is not real for one year.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Ahn-ahn, Sweet Mum. Okay, one hundred days. Then we will start going to Sunday school. Even me – I will join children’s choir.’

  Eventually the parents decided to go along with their son’s experiment. One hundred days without God. But on the very first Sunday after remembering to forget to pray in the morning, after breakfast, they fell into the conundrum of what to do with their Sunday. What do you do with Sundays when you live in Nigeria and it is 1994?

  Sweet Mother returned to God while their father returned to alcohol. She sought the Almighty in the new crop of Pentecostal churches sprouting everywhere and returned home as late as her husband, sometimes even later than he. She lost her sleep. She stopped painting. Instead she used her nights to wrestle with spiritual forces: marine spirits, strongmen of the supernatural world and sinister night caterers. She spoke in tongues. She used anointing oils on her boys. She bought blessed brooms to clear the ceiling of spiritual cobwebs malevolent creatures had woven.

  Every weekend there was some deliverance service or prayer retreat or night vigil somewhere that gave her hope for her boys. She left the comfort of her small church in Sabon Gari because after an excursion to bathe them in River Kaduna had failed to stop the dreams, the elders advised her to wait on the Lord. All she wanted was for them to be free from those homicidal dreams so she would quickly adapt to the doctrines peculiar to the church she had put faith in like any other member, but once she was convinced her time was being wasted she would leave. In each church there was nothing she was told to do that she didn’t do, and it was these extremes that would make Max resent his mother and disenchant him with Christianity for the rest of his life.

  The following September she made him go to boarding school, which made things worse. Max fought this, of course. He had anticipated it once he finished his common entrance exams and quickly immersed himself in the choir of the next church his mother sought help from, so that when she decided he would go to boarding school it was with Sunday-school teachers and the choir master she was forced to battle, as politely as possible: ‘Ah, but he needs to be with other children his age’; ‘I know, I know there are children in this ministry but we need him to have the boarding-school experience’; ‘O, children’s camp? That’s better o. Because he has never slept outside our home, he doesn’t know how to be with new people. Thank you, I will think about it,’ and she never returned. Besides, she had anointed her nipples with anointing oil and forced them to suck as long as possible, just as the general overseer had instructed, yet the homicidal dreams did not cease.

  Forced breastfeeding was the last straw. Max didn’t mind when one church made them walk all night because they were already familiar with its wonderful solitude. But sucking his mother’s breast at his almost-teen age? As he knelt down in defeat and waited for her to unclasp her bra, he turned to look at André trembling beside him and the power to say no to her was born.

  This was not The Thing disturbing her. The Thing that possessed Sweet Mother still loved them in its own way. Their father feared her when it came but they knew not to fear because they belonged to it. This was something else. Something Max would never forgive. He never told their father about the forced breastfeeding and she didn’t mention it to him because it was trivial to her. She would never know, as long as she lived, that Max had ceased to be her son because of this simple maternal act. Their father would probably have noticed it when it started had he not been too far gone in his gleeful alcoholic stupor to be aware of the extremes Sweet Mother was taking them to, and Max could never forgive him for this. The resentment bloomed when his father agreed with Sweet Mother to send him to boarding school.

  ‘Daddy, I thought you said you were my friend,’ he howled from a sharp pain in his gut when they told him one hot night. Thunder crackled outside and lightning flashed, catching the lethality in Max’s eyes but the father didn’t register it then, for this was his child, the baby boy he had delivered himself.

  ‘I am, but your mother is right.’

  ‘You don’t know my mother,’ Max said. ‘You don’t know Sweet Mother.’

  He opened the door and shot out of the house into the rain and thunder and lightning before his father could ask what that meant. The father looked at André and the mother, who was silent, and it occurred to him that his first son would not return from that storm. So he bolted after him and caught him just beyond the gate, but Max wouldn’t be conquered that easily; in fact, the father was surprised at his strength. It was either that his little boy had become so strong or that alcohol was weakening him. It took some wrestling in the mud to hurl the boy over his shoulder, and he vowed never to drink a bottle of beer again. As the father turned back to the house, his mind travelled to the time when it had been just three of them.

  The child runs int
o the tiny room and leans heavily on the door, gasping for air, his head pressed against it so that it is slightly ajar, his blood pumping in the silence with terror and delight. He knows resting will increase his chances of being found and losing the game but he doesn’t mind because in his little heart, he wants to be found. He anticipates the delightful death he will die when his father pushes the door wide open and picks him up into his big arms and takes him outside to throw up to the wide hungry sky, then catch him before holding him by the hands only and spinning round and round, lending him flight, round and round and round.

  ‘Round and round, Father, the world goes round and round.’

  ‘Yes, my son. Do you want me to show you?’

  Yes, of course, so his father would pick him up and show him how the world goes round and round.

  Once they were inside, Sweet Mother dragged her easel to wedge against the door to keep the storm from seducing her boy. This was the first time in months she had touched her art things. Max struggled out of his father’s arms and ran to the bathroom. The father remained there, stunned that his flesh and blood would revolt against him with such fervour. He thought it was just a precursor to teenage angst but later Max suspended his water-colour experiments and went on hunger strikes. He chewed the sleeping vegetables raw so that he wouldn’t have to communicate with his family, and after a week of almost perpetual slumber his father uprooted the remaining vegetables in the garden and placed an indefinite ban on their use.

  There was no need because boarding school was due to reopen in a matter of days. If Max got into the boarding house he would be lost to them forever. The father realised the danger and began to persuade the mother to reverse their decision. She reminded him that Max had already been accepted and it was on scholarship, no less, paid for by the government, so they would only have André’s school fees and home meals to worry about. Unless the father wanted to go and get a government job.

  Max decided it was best not to look André square in the face on the day he was due to leave with his house master. André cried and cried, and when the school bus came for Max, bringing such fanfare to the inhabitants of Freetown Street, André tried to kiss him on the mouth as he had done since he could remember but Max turned his face away. Max sat sullenly in his bus as it drove away, ignoring the neighbours who had come out of their houses to praise him and give admonitions and snippets on moral conduct in a secondary-school boarding house.

  His house master had already gone to the trouble of going to the market to get his set of provisions, bucket and exercise books. The man had visited them two weeks earlier at the behest of the school principal, to congratulate Max for not only getting admission into the prestigious grammar school but also winning one of the eight scholarships awarded to four boys and four girls. It was a hotcake scholarship, sponsored by the old students’ association, which produced ministers and professors and other distinguished people in the country.

  Max had been sleeping one of his vegetable sleeps in protest when his house master arrived. The parents apologised for their son’s absence but provided his most decent T-shirt and trousers as measurements for his uniforms.

  ‘Your uniform fits you well,’ he said in the bus, fishing for gratitude from the boy. Young boys like him ought to be grateful for opportunities like this. The way the economy … the way the country was going … But Max wasn’t thinking about how lucky he was.

  Max had never met any man whose baritone rivalled his father’s. He suspected it was his beard that deepened his voice. Max couldn’t wait to grow one. ‘Thank you, sir,’ he said.

  The man smiled and patted his shoulder. ‘You are fit for our school. Gratitude will serve you well in life.’

  ‘What of the other students?’

  ‘O, they are with their house masters as we speak. One is coming from Kano, the other is coming from Benue. They will arrive tomorrow.’ The man’s deep voice became grave. ‘Make sure you make friends with them so that you continue to pass with high scores.’

  But it was impossible. Max was not used to making friends; he never had to. He had grown up for André, lived for André. André was in his thoughts during break period while his mates played ball and did assignments and ate buns with zobo and talked about the colour of Mrs Ayati’s underwear. André was on his mind when Bibiana, already the most beautiful girl in JSS 1, came to ask for help with maths problems. She was the scholar of his house and really was just looking for an opportunity to be close to him but his mind was with his brother.

  ‘This is why we sent you to boarding school,’ Sweet Mother complained on his first visiting day. She hadn’t come with André and Max wanted to know why. ‘I know he is your brother but you are too attached to him. Even I, and he grew inside my stomach, I don’t attach myself to him like that, ehn.’

  He knew her real motives: she had sent him here to sever whatever spiritual link he and André had and prevent the dreams. But that was not how it worked. He needed to be there to see those dreams. He needed to be there to rescue André, to wake him up.

  ‘Mummy, thank you, but I don’t want money. My pocket money has not finished. And I need to go and finish our art project.’

  ‘Ahn-ahn, are you chasing your mother away?’ she laughed.

  ‘No, Ma, but we are submitting on Monday and if I don’t—’

  ‘It is okay. Oya, go; I will greet Daddy for you.’

  Somehow Max managed to stifle all this guilt when he learnt about her cancer, years later. Of course she didn’t tell him to arouse empathy, for she knew she had long lost her first son; she only wanted him to tell André because Max was the only one who could find him whenever he was lost in the world.

  Max composed himself after her phone call and thought of her cancer as a change of weather. He googled André, whom he had not talked to since his university days in Enugu when he had turned up at his door without warning. One could track André’s movements by international headlines that year. Ah, there: caught in a trans-national suicide ring. Some detective had cracked a case of multiple suicides all over the world orchestrated by an artist who wanted to use the death of his subjects to propel his work into fame. André would have been the last but was arrested moments before taking his life in the photographer’s apartment in Oakland, California. Max dropped the phone on the bed beside him, hands trembling, and tried to inhale. A change in weather.

  ‘Thank God you came,’ André cried across the formica table.

  Max thought the grey jumpsuit made him look pale.

  ‘Thank God! Where Sweet Mum and Popsy?’

  ‘Nigeria. Look, I came here to tell you something.’

  ‘Why you no carry dem come?!’ André banged his cuffed fists on the table but Max gave a guard by the door a thumbs-up and a small smile. ‘E never enter Nigeria before I know, I know but I see am for dream. Why you no carry dem come?’

  ‘You are supposed to be receiving special care,’ Max said, wringing his hands under the table and squeezing his eyes in regret. ‘I should have come earlier.’

  ‘It is not too late,’ André whispered, his face sweating now, begging Max with his eyes. ‘Call them, tell them to get on a plane now.’ But Max was shaking his head at the ground so André forgot how to be calm. ‘Call them now! I saw it in my dream! It is coming to Naija! I know what I saw, Max, believe me; you know I see these things, Max! Call them!’

  Max looked away from his brother’s dog eyes that could convince him of anything. ‘I should have come earlier, monitored your mental care.’

  ‘YOU ARE NOT LISTENING TO ME.’ André banged the table to punctuate each word and the guards pounced on him. ‘You never—’ He started crying as they dragged him away. ‘You stopped listening to me.’ For a few moments they had touched hands.

  Max was surprised to find moisture in his own eyes. ‘Mother has cancer!’ he shouted at André, who was still struggling with the guards.

  André stopped struggling and fell limp in their arms, staring at his elder brot
her like tranquillised prey.

  ‘Lymphoma, second stage.’

  ‘Natural disaster,’ said André to himself. The guards pulled him up. ‘A natural disaster is what I saw.’

  After André was dragged away, Max covered his face with his palms and inhaled the smell of his brother on his hands. It reminded him of the last time he had seen his brother. He would speak to the warden concerning André’s mental health. This was America. Their mother’s body was fighting against her across the ocean. A natural disaster, André had said.

  The last time Max had seen André, he had washed his brother in his small bathtub the way he would have washed himself. He rubbed the soap gently on the swollen face, down the neck to the hairy chest, hoping it soothed his skin as it would his.

  André mumbled ‘thank you’ in the tub of bubbles and Max nodded absentmindedly, as if he believed him. André may have been genuinely grateful, but just wait till the next Friday night. It was 2010, the year of good music. Wizkid and Wande Coal throbbed in dance halls nationwide and André couldn’t get enough. He could be found in one every Friday night, in whichever part of the country he was that year. Why had he come? That day, he had been found beside a bar in town with a fresh tattoo on his midriff proclaiming in block letters, Property of Macmillan Shariff. If found, return to Block 45 ground floor, Block A, 2nd Avenue, Lowcost Housing Estate. Godbless.