And After Many Days

by Jowhor Ile

  “I think it’s hideous,” Bendic said.

  “I like that kind of red, it’s not screaming,” Ma replied.

  “It doesn’t go with the green paint of the house. It’s a bit much,” Bendic said, winding down his window. “I guess he’s stealing enough money these days to have his walls gold-plated. What is stopping him? I suppose it’s not surprising that his father, Nwokwe, gives him no counsel.”

  “I saw Egoyibo the other day at the school board,” Ma said. “She told me if you see the money that young man is spending building hotels in Omoku…obviously, it’s not all his money. Why can’t the Youth Front vote him out as secretary?”

  “OYF is not what it was when it started. He has blocked their mouths with money. I hear he plans to run for local government councillor.”

  The car veered off the road, and their house was immediately in view—tall, white, alone, and at a distance. They went past the Seventh Day Mission. The churchyard was swept clean. A fruit tree stood to the side with an old car wheel slung on a low branch; an orderly struck it at appointed times to notify members of church activities.

  Children suddenly appeared from everywhere, shouting, running toward the car, throwing themselves about. Marcus tooted the horn and the excitement thickened. The smell of carbide was in the air when Ajie stepped out. The four-day festival would commence in two days.

  A cannon sounded from another quarter of the village to signal the countdown. The shrieking children scurried around Bendic and Ma, shouting greetings, jumping up and down, as they were rubbed on the head and asked about their parents. It was bedlam around the car while Bibi and Paul’s friends gathered to talk to them, and Ma had to raise her voice to ask Paul to get her handbag from the car. “The house keys are in my bag.”

  Marcus opened the trunk, and some of Paul’s friends moved closer to help with the luggage. Bendic was exchanging pleasantries with some of the older people who had just dropped by. He moved closer to the trunk to oversee the off-loading, pointing at items that should be left on the ground beside the car, nodding for some to be taken upstairs.

  “Look how they have grown!” Ine exclaimed, slapping herself across the breasts as she gaped at Paul, Bibi, and Ajie. She popped her eyes at the children, then back at Bendic as if the rapid growth had all been his doing. “Come come come.” She beckoned and threw her arms open for the three of them.

  “Madi,” Paul greeted first.

  “Mmayi,” Ine responded.

  “Iye,” Paul replied.

  “Ogbowu.”

  “Iye,” Paul replied again, completing the greeting, and then made his way back to the car.

  Bibi was next in line. There were no shortcuts. Morning, noon, or night, the performance was always followed through.

  “Your children speak Ogba like they never left this village for one day,” Ine said to Bendic, looking impressed. Bendic shrugged as if to say it was the least expected of him.

  Paul hurried past with another boy; they were holding a sack of beans between them.

  “Careful,” Bendic said, turning aside from Ine, “mind your backs.”

  Some other grown-ups came over to join Bendic and Ine. Ajie picked up his bag just as another man arrived and shook Bendic’s hand.

  “Your wife did not come with you?” Eleza asked Bendic.

  “She has just gone inside,” Bendic replied, pointing to the house, “to make sure these things are put in their right place.” As if purely for the woman’s pleasure, he added, “Does a car travel without its engine?”

  “It does not happen!” the woman yelped with a clap of her hands, dizzying herself with laughter. More people arrived, saying greetings, repeating questions already answered. Ajie carried his bag upstairs and came back to find Ogunwa saying to Bendic, “It’s good that you bring your children always.”

  “At least twice every year,” Bendic said. “All their long vacations are spent here, and Christmas. Sometimes we are even here for the Easter break.”

  “You know, Josiah’s children came home last year and couldn’t even greet properly,” Ogunwa said, then shook his head. “They were barking at their poor grandmother in English, saying they hated the village, they wanted to go back to Port Harcourt.”

  “You don’t mean it.”

  “The question you should ask me is where was Josiah when all this was happening,” Ogunwa said, looking Bendic in the face, ready to deliver his punch line. “He was in Port Harcourt! Dumped his children here and ran back with his driver the same day!”

  There was a scattering of laughter.

  Ajie walked past and wondered why people found silly stories like that amusing. He thought Bendic should be paying more attention to the off-loading. With all the trouble they went through in Port Harcourt, buying things over the week, packing and labeling gifts for different relatives, it would be a real shame to get things mixed up. Nne Nta’s quarter bag of rice was being hauled past Ajie, the name tag taped to the sack flapping, almost falling off. The two gallons of kerosene had been set aside beside the car, but where were the bags of spices for the women in Ma’s meeting?

  Ma’s voice cut through the din. Ajie saw one of his parents’ friends setting his shiny stainless-steel White Horse bicycle securely on its stand. A package wrapped in a black bag was tied on the back carriage. “Application Master!” Ma called out, her own voice exciting her. “Application Master!” Each time he confirmed with “Mmu-yagbe. That is me.” His face cracked open, and his tongue trembled as he laughed. He was dressed in tobacco-brown trousers and a shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows. The red of the shirt had bled out until the color was now a dull brown. He put his hands up and called Bendic several times by his praise name. Bendic gave him a firm handshake and called him by his real name, Mark. Mark turned toward Ma and embraced her.

  Mark and Ma had gone to the same primary school in Obite. The story went that after his standard six—this was back in the days when, according to Ma, a standard-six certificate was a rare thing and far superior to the university degrees awarded these days—Mark took his certificate and headed off to Port Harcourt in search of work. He spoke and wrote impeccable English; he could draft minutes, compose persuasive letters, and had a natural aptitude for quick learning. He applied for secretarial positions, clerk positions, office boy positions, but nothing was forthcoming. With his application letters and standard-six certificate in hand, he rose early every morning and went from office to office, through all of the old Port Harcourt town area and the new layouts, yet no job was offered to him. Meanwhile, in the village, his mother bragged about how her son had gone to get a white-collar job, how he had an excellent certificate; she said that son of hers was not at all made for farm work. When Mark returned to the village many months after, without a job or the promise of one, his mother, bewildered, asked him, “So what have you been doing?”

  “I have been applying,” he said to his mother. To show he hadn’t been playing about in Port Harcourt instead of looking for a job, he went to his box and brought out a creased manila envelope that had gone soft, like cloth. Out of it he brought his application letters and his standard-six certificate, which was so worn that it was barely holding up in the middle where he had folded it. His mother took a look at it and said, “Well done.” She was swamped at that moment by a sense of overwhelming dignity at her son’s effort. He had been working so hard at making applications that he had ripped his certificate in half. As she later said to the other women, her son was the application master.

  Even this afternoon, three pens were clipped on the breast pocket of Application Master’s shirt: red, black, and blue, like an auxiliary nurse. There was an austere shine to the aging leather of his sandals.

  Paul tapped his brother on the shoulder. “Make yourself useful,” he said, “carry something else. See the yams.” He gestured toward the car, and Ajie sauntered back, mumbling that Paul should let him be.

  Ajie’s friend Ossai arrived, and soon after Gospel and Uba
joined them, and the whole posse buzzed their way upstairs.

  “There is a spot at Uhwo where a buffalo is calving,” Uba said.

  “Liar! Everyone knows there are no buffaloes anymore in Uhwo.”

  “I swear, I can take you this evening, or tomorrow morning if you are free.”

  “A grass cutter got caught in my trap,” Ossai said, “at Uhwo, too.” Soon the trap would claim a deer, he boasted. When should they go see his lucky spot? But the dances were beginning, they needed to go cut raffia to get the skirts for the outfits.

  “Tomorrow, if the weather holds.”

  “Whether the weather holds or not,” Uba insisted, “we have to cut the raffia, latest tomorrow. It’s important.” Their voices and the noise of their footsteps bounced about, echoing as if the staircase were an empty house.

  —

  Bendic sat on the puffed armchair in his parlor. His chest hair was a mesh of gray, and the low mound of his belly heaved gently. Ma’s sequined blouse was up on a hanger on the balcony, airing in the breeze. She had changed into a laid-back flowered round-necked blouse that didn’t matter.

  Bibi burst into the boys’ room. “Oh my God! I knew I would forget something! Paul, please check if I put my slippers in your bag by mistake.”

  “Very unlikely,” said Paul.

  “It’s okay if you don’t want to help,” Bibi said, and turned toward Ajie. Paul unzipped his bag, rummaged through the sides, and asked her to have a look.

  “What about you, Ajie?” Bibi asked, looking at his bag. Ajie pushed his unpacked bag toward her; she looked down at it for a second, then pulled out some clothes from the bag, felt inside hurriedly, and decided she may have actually left the slippers at home in Port Harcourt. She turned and walked out of the room without saying a word. They overheard her lament to Ma, who said something back to her in a low voice.

  “Akabuka Market?” Bibi wailed. “I can’t even believe you are suggesting that. Do you really think I will find that type of slippers in Akabuka Market, Ma?”

  The sun began to cool and visitors trickled in. Some dropped in for a quick greeting, others sat down long enough to be offered something: kola nut and pepper, garden eggs, soft drinks, groundnuts. Paul and Ajie looked over the quadrangle from their window, watching the comings and goings.

  Downstairs, a woman walked toward the door with her son in tow. He was head and shoulders taller but followed like he lacked all volition. Ajie felt this visit would have something to do with school fees, a school levy, or money to register for some final exam.

  “Holding court,” Paul said as he lifted the gauzy blind, then let it fall back to place.

  “Kings hold court,” Ajie said.

  “Local magistrates do, too,” Paul responded, not exactly sidestepping the combat his brother was trying to initiate. “I think Bendic should take up a chieftaincy. Chief before his name will suit him. I think he already performs the duties one way or the other. But you know Bendic.”

  “Chief Benedict Utu,” Ajie enunciated slowly, lending the title its required weight. “It sounds good.”

  A shrill, angry falsetto rose from the parlor and stayed up. Raised voices weren’t unusual during sessions at Bendic’s parlor. Other voices joined in. Ajie could tell most of the men by their voices.

  “Jonah,” Paul said with a small laugh. “I wonder who he’s giving the sermon to today.”

  “Don’t worry, Ikpo will soon shout him down.”

  “Shout Jonah down? Are you kidding?”

  Ajie always found Jonah amusing. Not just for his slight voice (and how it didn’t match the deep lines on his face and the stoop of his shoulders) or how easily rattled he was, but the name, too. Weren’t his parents aware of the fate of that Jonah in the Bible? The whole shipwreck business and living in the belly of a whale for three days? Ajie had read the story on many occasions and each time greatly relished Jonah’s tantrums and self-pity, even though he thought him mean-spirited.

  A man knocked on the door downstairs. He stood waiting, didn’t try the door handle. Paul stuck his head out the window, greeted the man, and told him the door was unlocked, that he should just give it a push. The man made to push the door as Paul ran downstairs anyway to let him in, and Ajie followed.

  The man had no upper lip. Half his face was gone, deep holes burrowed in by a childhood affliction of smallpox. Still, he wasn’t hideous. He was tall and athletic, yellow like the sun. He was the high priest of the Ntite shrine. His name was Aduche, and they knew he had a great love for Bendic. Everything he had seen and knew of the world could be sensed in the quiet power of his gait as he stepped into the entryway. He placed his hand on Paul’s cheek as he responded to their greeting. Ajie could smell the tobacco and wood smoke and something else on his clothes, and when he smiled at them, it was all gum. He looked down at Ajie for a brief moment. His gaze had a quality possessed by no one else Ajie had met in the whole world. It was something of a shared secret. It made him feel special; it seemed to be saying that he, Ajie, was useful in a way that was particularly important and that a time would come when this purpose would be made clear.

  “Where is your father?” Aduche asked, as if he didn’t know the way.

  A hush had fallen over the crowd in the parlor, except for Bendic’s voice, which kept rising and falling, strong, though the words were muffled to anyone standing in the stairway. Conscious of Aduche walking behind them, Ajie tried to keep pace with Paul, who was taking it slow, not skipping the steps two at a time, as he normally would. It was a stately procession, two boys marching to the altar with a high priest on their trail. It was Abraham with a dagger hidden by the girdle of his loincloth and Isaac in front of him, wondering where the sacrificial lamb was. Ajie knew if anyone had to pick between him and his brother that Paul would be preferred, Paul would be set aside for saving. But Abraham had to choose “the son whom he loved” to offer as a sacrifice. Why was he put to that kind of decision? Why and how was it possible for him to love one son more than the other? What was so terrible about Ishmael that his own father’s love for him fell short, therefore disqualifying him as the worthy sacrifice? Why was Ishmael not preferred? Would Bendic love Paul enough to kill him if it were God Almighty asking him to give his most precious son?

  These were questions Ajie needed answers to. But more, he wanted to be worthy. He wanted to be the son too difficult to give up, the one so greatly loved and therefore singularly suitable for sacrifice. Matters of this nature meant a huge deal to him between the ages of eight and nine. He would lie in bed at night and toss the questions around in his mind, and at some point, just so he could give himself some kind of answer to be able to go to sleep, he would decide what Bendic would do if he were in Abraham’s shoes. But there was so much to consider before that. Where would Ma be when all this was happening? It was difficult to imagine her sitting quietly in the kitchen while Bendic wrestled with this dilemma.

  This was what would happen. After listening to the Lord’s command, Bendic would reply to the Lord Almighty, Maker of every living thing—the beasts of the fields, the birds of the air, and all the creatures of the sea, everything that walks, crawls, flies, and swims—“Leave my boys alone.” That was exactly what he would say: “Leave my boys alone. If you want someone dead, by all means, here I am, and please do the killing yourself, don’t make someone else do the dirty job.” At which point Mr. Ifenwa would spring up and cheer from the crowd of witnesses, whistling at Bendic’s courage, his thumb raised high, and then shouting: “Or just make him a prisoner of conscience!”

  Paul pushed the screen door open and walked into the parlor, holding the door as Ajie followed him in. Bendic looked up at them; there was a pause in his speech as he held their gaze, was there a message for him, did they want something, or had they come to sit and listen? He finished his sentence as Aduche stepped into the parlor.

  “Swooooooy!” Bendic roared. “Swoy! Agbra Obigor.” Spirit of the bushes. Lord of Obigor forest. Bendic stood erect li
ke a soldier in a parade as he called the high priest by his many praise names, then he doubled over, waist down, and greeted. Bendic gave Aduche twofold respect because he was from Bendic’s mother’s people. He owned Bendic.

  “Should I rise?” Bendic kept asking after the greeting was over.

  “Please,” Aduche responded, “please rise, son of my sister.”

  “You are sure?” Bendic insisted as some laughter came from the crowd. The air in the room had lightened. Bendic straightened up, submitted to a hug from Aduche, and waited for the man to take a seat that had been vacated for him. “You arrived just in time. I was finishing.” Bendic beckoned to Paul, and when he came close, he whispered in his ear, “Tell your mother to bring the whiskey. She should also put an unopened bottle in a bag for when Aduche is leaving.”

  Some of the faces in the room that day were not regulars in the house; some weren’t particularly close friends of Bendic, although with the way things were in Ogibah, if someone wasn’t your friend, it was very likely he was your brother. The lightness in the room did not last for long. There was something extra in the air that day. As Paul and Ajie went off to get the drink, they heard someone bang his fist on the table, and soon there was shuffling as two men were restrained from getting into a fight. Paul and Ajie hurried back with the whiskey in time to hear Nwokwe shouting.

  “Let your father eat shit!” He pointed at Jonah, his red kepe nearly falling off his head. “You say I ate bribe from Company?”

  Jonah advanced toward Nwokwe, shouting back, “Did I say it behind your back?”

  “You say I ate bribe, can you swear? Do you have witnesses? Swear by Ntite, let’s see whether you will last three days.” Nwokwe snapped his fingers.

  Some people pulled him away, asked him to be calm, to have some respect for the gathering and for Bendic, who had arrived from Port Harcourt only today, and for the elders here.

  “Were you people not here when he accused me?” Nwokwe retorted. “You all saw him open his mouth to talk like someone born yesterday.”