by Chris Abani
“If You Bamboozle Somebody, He Will Bamboozle You,” the King replied.
Elvis nodded; he knew the play well. There were three main characters and some minor ones. The play was short, lasting only two hours, which meant that night’s audience would be small. The play’s characters were the good-time girl Owumara, played by Esau; the joker, or bob, Johnson the taxi driver, played by Elvis; and the old lady, played by the King. Different people played the other minor characters. The play itself had a simple plot with a didactic thread.
The evening’s show always started with a dance during which the band played all the popular tunes of the day. The play followed, and then there was another dance afterwards. For a big audience in a big town, the total number of songs played in one night came to about forty, not counting those played as part of the play. Most evenings began at nine p.m. and finished at four in the morning. Tonight would be different. The town and the audience were small, and Elvis figured they could get away with twenty songs, give or take.
The play itself consisted of an opening and then a scene or play proper. The opening varied between twenty minutes and an hour and consisted of a chorus, an in and a duet. The opening chorus was usually a fox-trot or a quickstep sung and danced by the main characters. Esau excelled at this. The in and the duet were both comedy sketches. The in was performed by a solo stand-up comedian, while the duet was played by two actors. It was within the opening that all of the vaudeville influences were kept. As with all traditional performances, audience participation was encouraged. This varied from applause, weeping and jeering to throwing food and money onstage. A few members of the audience usually joined the actors onstage, improvising with them.
The evening passed uneventfully, and they got away with a fivehour performance, including the dances. Tired but richer, the musicians headed for the van and the local police station. Where they could, they tried to sleep in or near one; it was the safest place for them. While the musicians bedded down on raffia mats in the station’s courtyard, the King counted up the evening’s takings, which he locked in a small metal safe.
A few of the other musicians, George included, were huddled under a neem tree, smoking beside a fire. The neem wood burned lazily, releasing a cooling eucalyptus scent. Elvis, unable to sleep, joined them. They made room for him. Langalanga, the bass player, sat with a metal saw trapped between his knees. With one hand he bent and massaged the blade. With the other he drew his bass bow across the blunt edge, causing the saw to sing: a deep belly growling hunger that rose to the shrill call of morning angels.
George passed him a cigarette and Elvis dragged deeply, blowing smoke rings before passing it back. Thinking about Redemption, the Colonel, his father and the effort to protect Maroko from destruction, he felt a sudden pang of sadness.
George noticed the expression on Elvis’s face and asked, “What is it?”
“I just realized something,” Elvis replied.
“What? Are you in love?”
“No. I just realized that it is only a small group of people who are spoiling our country. Most people just want to work hard, earn a living and find some entertainment. Yet it seems that no matter how they try, they remain poor.”
“What are you talking about?” George asked, confused. “Where did dat come from?”
“Leave him, he is making sense,” the King said, coming over to join them. He laughed deeply and slapped Elvis on the back. “De boy is becoming a man,” he said.
Elvis swallowed.
“Dat is exactly what I have been trying to tell you since I met you. De majority of our people are honest, hardworking people. But dey are at de mercy of dese army bastards and dose tiefs in the IMF, de World Bank and de U.S.,” the King said.
“But how is the World Bank responsible if we mismanage the funds they give us?”
“Funds? What funds? Let me tell you, dere are no bigger tiefs dan dose World Bank people. Let me tell you how de World Bank helps us. Say dey offer us a ten-million-dollar loan for creating potable and clean water supply to rural areas. If we accept, dis is how dey do us. First dey tell us dat we have to use de expertise of their consultants, so dey remove two million for salaries and expenses. Den dey tell us dat de consultants need equipment to work, like computer, jeeps or bulldozers, and for hotel and so on, so dey take another two million. Den dey say we cannot build new boreholes but must service existing one, so dey take another two million to buy parts. All dis money, six million of it, never leave de U.S. Den dey use two million for de project, but is not enough, so dey abandon it, and den army bosses take de remaining two million. Now we, you and I and all dese poor people, owe de World Bank ten million dollars for nothing. Dey are all tiefs and I despise dem—our people and de World Bank people!” the King ranted.
Elvis didn’t know what to say. He looked up at the sky. It was beautiful. Stars. Like so much sand.
“But why don’t we revolt and overthrow this government?” he asked finally, unable to keep the exasperation out of his voice.
“Who want to die?” George said.
“We should retire for de night,” the King said, squinting at his pocket watch in the half-light. “We leave early for Lagos. We go perform for Freedom Square tomorrow. I hear say de Colonel’s boys go dey dere. Time to send a powerful message, eh?”
Nearly everyone laughed heartily. But the King noticed Elvis’s terrified look and took him aside.
“Don’t worry, Elvis. Your matter go done clear by now.”
“How do you know?”
“I don’t, but I just feel it.”
“I’m afraid. The Colonel is trying to kill me.”
“Yes, but by now him go done tire for dat.”
“You don’t know. I’m not convinced.”
“I am sorry, but we must return tomorrow. You can stay.”
“Where? Here? I don’t know anybody here. I don’t even know the language. How can I stay here?”
“Den you must return with us. No worry, I go protect you.”
Elvis spent a restless night, dreaming that the Colonel was chasing him with a large machete, slashing at him madly and only just missing.
Dawn left streaky marks across night’s face, and the men stood by the idling van, sipping gingerly on hot tea flavored with eucalyptus leaves and munching on hard cassava bread. Farmers on their way to the fields called out greetings to the men. Some congratulated them on a good performance the night before. Elvis, mind numbed from too little sleep, yawned back at them.
George stood beside him. “Tired?” he asked.
“Very.”
“Ah,” George said. “It is so, coming and going. Never staying. You realize dis is de way your life will be from now on if you continue with us.”
“Yes, very exciting.”
“Wait a few years. Den tell me if it is still exciting.”
“Why are you so pessimistic?”
“Dis life is like an itch. You scratch and scratch, until you chaff your skin to de bone. But still you itch. I’m not pessimistic, Elvis. Just tired,” George said, walking off.
MOI-MOI
INGREDIENTS
Black-eyed beans
Onions
Palm oil
Fresh chilies
Salt
Crayfish
Maggi cube
Shredded beef
Dried fish
PREPARATION
Soak the beans overnight, then wash thoroughly to remove outer skins. Put beans in a blender with the onions, palm oil, fresh chilies, salt, crayfish and Maggi cube. Add the shredded beef and bits of dried fish. Pour the contents into envelopes of tinfoil or plastic containers. Next, put four sticks at the bottom of a large, deep pot in a cross pattern and cover with water. Put the wraps or containers in the pot on top of the crossed sticks. Steam over a low fire, topping up with water from time to time, until the moi-moi has the consistency of tofu. Serve with gari soaked in milk, water and sugar.
TWENTY-SEVEN
This
is a journey to manhood, to life; it cannot be easy.
The old Igbo adage is: Manhood is not achieved in a day.
Lagos, 1983
Sunday stumbled bleary-eyed out of the house, straight into a rush of people, screaming and shouting. He stood on his veranda lost in an alcoholic mist.
“Sunday! Sunday! Dey have come!” Comfort screamed, running past him and dumping a hastily packed bag in the street before dashing back inside.
It was light everywhere, but it wasn’t sunlight. The earth rumbled as though thunder shook it. Sunday glanced at his watch; it was four a.m., too early to be dawn. He opened his fly and urinated into the street, narrowly missing the bag and a small group running past with an open coffin packed tight with their belongings. He raked up some phlegm and spat with a plop into the nearby swamp.
“What’s matter, eh? What’s matter?” he mumbled, staring vacantly into the bright light.
“Sunday, you stand so? Why not help me pack before bu’dozer come knock our house down?”
“What’s matter? Which bulldozer? Are you mad?”
“De gofment send anoder bu’dozer,” she said, dropping another bag on the ground and going back for more.
“De government can go to hell!” he yelled. “I want to sleep.”
Comfort elbowed him aside and stooped to lift the stuff she had salvaged onto her head. Thank goodness the children were staying with relatives, she thought. She didn’t think she would have managed with them here.
“If you want to die, go and sleep. If not, help me carry something and let us go!” she shouted at him.
“Go where?”
He tried to focus.
“Look, Papa Elvis, bu’dozer is come. Me, I have carry my gold and expensive lappa and I no fit to carry more. Let’s go,” she said urgently as the rumbling grew louder.
A few streets away, clouds of dust and sprays of water rose as the dozers leveled everything in their path—houses, shanties, even the swamps.
“Go where?” he asked again.
She took one more look at the approaching bulldozer, stepped into the street and was swallowed by the crowd. He looked for her, but she was lost somewhere in the sea of bodies flowing past him.
“Go where?” he muttered to himself under his breath. “Dis is my land. I buy dis house, it is not dash to me. Why I go?”
The dozers rolled uncomfortably closer. The vibrations from them shook the windowpanes, dislodging a few, which fell, shattering noisily. The lights cut through the sky and the night was bright, and still Sunday stood on his veranda smiling enigmatically. A few yards away a house built of corrugated iron and cardboard crumbled with an exhausted puff, while the old generator in another exploded.
Sunday became aware of another presence on the veranda. Turning quickly, he gasped when he saw Beatrice reclining on the bench. She noted the shocked look on his face and spoke.
“Sunday, don’t be afraid.”
“Why not? You’re a ghost. Have you come to kill me?”
Beatrice smiled sweetly, and something about that smile sent shivers down his spine.
“No, I came to warn you to leave.”
“And if I don’t?”
“Den you will die.”
He turned away from her. If he ignored her, she would disappear. She was, after all, a drunken hallucination. He laughed. Madam Caro must have laced his palm wine with some narcotic. Whatever it was, it was good, and he was glad he was a regular.
“Sunday.”
He turned back to where Beatrice had been sitting. She was still there, but there was another presence too.
“You’re not really here,” he told her.
“Oh yes I am—and so is he,” she said, pointing to a leopard curled up in the shadows.
“What is dis? Did you bring a spirit leopard to kill me?”
“No. He is here on his own.”
“But what is dis?”
“I am the totem of your forefathers.”
Sunday blinked. A talking leopard, his wife’s ghost, the bulldozers: it was too much.
He turned back to the scene unfolding in front of him and saw policemen and soldiers driving people off with gun butts and leather whips. “Get out! Go! Go!” they yelled. In the distance a mother stopped in mid-flight, remembering her son trapped in her hut. She ran back for him. “Hassan! Hassan!” she screamed. The butt of a rifle chased her screams down her throat with a mouthful of teeth and blood. She crumbled to the ground and the soldier kicked her aside.
“You are going to die here, you know, unless you get out,” the leopard said.
“He’s not joking. Listen, Sunday, you still have a son to care for. Leave,” Beatrice said.
Sunday was getting worried. If Beatrice and the leopard were only hallucinations, why had they remained even when he wasn’t paying any attention?
“You are de one who will die!” he shouted.
“I am already dead,” Beatrice said. “And I think de leopard is a spirit.”
“You disappoint me, Beatrice, eh. Why must you mock me?”
Beatrice’s ghost looked hurt, her lips trembling.
“I came to you in your time of need, but if you like, I can leave.”
Sunday shouted and punched himself around the face.
“In the old days, people were close to their totems, who infused them with their own special attributes, both physical and metaphysical. Lycanthropy was not unusual in those days when the ancient laws were kept,” the leopard said.
“Go and tell your story elsewhere,” Sunday interrupted. “If you are person or spirit, I don’t know and don’t care. Both of you just leave me alone, dat’s all.”
The ’dozers were only a few yards away and policemen and soldiers were running past his house. One of the policemen spotted him slouched on his veranda in only a loincloth, looking for all intents like a man basking in the noonday sun.
“You dere!” the policeman barked.
“He has seen you. Won’t you go, or do you want to die?” the leopard asked.
“Think of Elvis,” Beatrice said.
“You dere, go now before I vex!” the policeman yelled again.
“This is the hour of your death. Go out and fight for your honor.”
“You deaf? I say move before I move you!” the policeman yelled again, advancing on Sunday, and cocking his rifle.
“Well, at least die like a man,” the leopard said with a bored yawn.
Beatrice, already fading into the shadows, watched tearfully as the ‘dozers approached. They were almost upon him and the vibrations were coming from everywhere. Grabbing a cutlass Comfort had dropped earlier, Sunday sprang with a roar at the ’dozer. The policeman let off a shout and a shot, and Sunday fell in a slump before the ’dozer, its metal threads cracking his chest like a timber box as it went straight into the wall of his home. Sunday roared, leapt out of his body and charged at the back of the policeman, his paw delivering a fatal blow to the back of the policeman’s head. With a rasping cough, Sunday disappeared into the night.
Elvis was halfway through his act when Freedom Square erupted. Soldiers spilled out of trucks flooding the area. There was a stampede. People, food, furniture—everything was trampled underfoot. The soldiers laid into everyone with tough cowhide whips, wooden batons and rifle butts, and the air was heavy with screams and shouts. As far as they were concerned, the audience was as guilty as the performers.
“My head O!”
“Yee!”
“Move!”
“Stop or I’ll shoot!”
“Bastard!”
Elvis, completely confused, was unsure how to react, not fully comprehending what was happening. He felt someone yanking at his arm. He turned. It was the King of the Beggars. He was yelling at him, but Elvis couldn’t hear any sound. The King slapped him hard.
“We get to go now,” he said while hurrying Elvis off the stage. They ducked behind an army lorry and headed for the edge of the square and the streets that snaked off it int
o the dark maw of the city. They had almost made it when a soldier stepped out of nowhere. He loomed large and dark, blocking off the light. Elvis saw the King disappear into the distance.
“Identify yourself!” the soldier barked.
“I … I …”
“Bloody civilians,” the soldier said, bringing his rifle butt down on the side of Elvis’s head with a resounding crack. From a great distance Elvis heard the soldier call for help to lift him into the back of a lorry.
Elvis hung from the metal bars on the window, feet dangling six inches from the floor, suspended by handcuffs. The pain was excruciating, building up in slow stages, getting worse with each passing minute.
At first all he felt was a slight ache in his shoulders, which spread until his whole body was one mass of pleasant sweet aches. After about ten minutes he felt a headache coming on, nothing serious. Twenty minutes later his arms were shaking and the pleasant aches were replaced by painful spasms as the weight of his body became unbearable.
Sweat was rolling off him in bucketfuls; his arms went numb and his fingers began to swell like loaves of bread. The rest of his body was torn by a searing-hot pain and he stretched downward, trying to bring his feet into contact with the ground. That only made it worse. Then his head exploded, and tears streaming down his face mixed with the sweat before hitting the floor in sheets of protest. His bloodshot eyes began to film over as his face became congested with blood and his tongue, swollen, protruded from the side of his mouth, forcing his teeth apart. Each pulse beat sounded a million times amplified, and he began to mumble incoherently. Pain did not describe what he felt now. Prayer followed.
After half an hour he was ready to deny his own mother. Against his will, a moan escaped his lips. Softly at first, then in a flood, he was begging, swearing, crying and sobbing. He was concerned with one thing and one thing only—stopping the pain. But then, just when he was about to slip into blissful unconsciousness, the beating began.
