by Jowhor Ile
“He has escaped! He has escaped!” they shout as they run toward the road, and then loud arguments follow.
Three days later, a police van arrives and carries four boys away. The whole village is being accused of violence against police on official duty, and Application Master is wanted for inciting the violence.
—
Bendic slapped his arm and yawned. Mosquitoes made faint noises, and stars had begun to appear in the sky. Ma looked up and said it would be a blessing if it rained tonight. “The heat is too much.”
The tall plantain tree in the corner waved its arms and cast a shadow on the fence. In the moonlight, the shadow looked like a pregnant woman with two children by her side, waiting for a bus by the road. Ajie closed his eyes and opened them and the pregnant woman was still there by the roadside, waiting for a bus, with her two children by her side. A southwesterly wind blew and the tree shadow took the form of boats on water, boats with high masts and swollen sails, like the drawing in Ajie’s Macmillan school reader, a drawing that had underneath it the caption: A fleet of boats.
“We will see what we can do tomorrow,” Bendic said. “Once Marcus comes to work, we will drive together to Ifenwa’s house. His brother knows the commissioner of police.”
Ajie looked toward the gate, but it was buried in the half-dark. He could not make out Ismaila’s small concrete four-cornered shed. He wondered what it would be like if policemen came banging on their gate, asking to see Bendic. Ismaila would assume they were robbers. He would bring out his bow and poisoned arrows and aim at the gate. Then he would order the intruders in that big voice of his to vamoose. That is what he would say: “Vamoose or I shoot! Move or I move you!”
NEPA had a change of mind and restored power. “Light has come,” Bibi squealed.
The adults got up, and the children carried the seats as they all trudged back inside. A new energy was injected into their evening. It was not that late, just a little past nine o’clock. They caught the tail end of the news, which was followed by a government-sponsored program about skills acquisition projects for rural women.
Bendic thought aloud about what he had to do the next day. He had to send for Ifiemi, his secretary, so they could draft letters to different people who could influence things. If this whole business of police in Ogibah were nipped in the bud, the trouble could be stopped from escalating. It could be stalled for a while, but only for a while. At some point the wheels would go a full cycle. More trouble would erupt, and on such a large scale that it would be difficult to predict.
Bendic and Application Master did not know that this was just the beginning. There were no dead boys yet. No girls had been dragged into the bush. Graffiti was yet to appear on the walls of the secondary school saying, “Ogibah, Fear the Nigeria Police and Army.” None of these things had happened yet. For now, some policemen had been assaulted, a few boys had been arrested as a consequence, and Bendic was doing his best to save the situation.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Ifiemi, Bendic’s secretary, arrived before nine the next morning and immediately converted the dining area into an ad hoc office. She mounted the Imperial 66 typewriter at one end of the oval dining table. An enormous dictionary was set to her left, the covers frail from regular use. A wooden ruler with smooth edges, correction fluid, thinner, pens (black, blue, and red), erasers, and pencils were all set within arm’s reach. Bendic drafted the letters in longhand on foolscap paper, and Ifiemi typed them out on crisp white A4 sheets. Bendic then corrected the typed drafts with a red pen, after which Ifiemi retyped them. By noon they were almost done. Only a few final adjustments needed to be made, polishing the letter for a perfect tone. This time Bendic dictated what should be added, his sentences delivered in an even tempo, like someone reading Scripture aloud in a church.
The children sat on the veranda, and Bibi mimed Bendic’s words, pretending she had glasses balanced on the bridge of her nose that she kept adjusting, looking up every now and then to stare at the camera like newsreaders who spoke with fake voices and shuffled their papers at intervals.
Bendic, however, didn’t need to look up to any camera as he dictated to his secretary—although there was a time when he drifted off midsentence, his brows lifting over the frames of his reading glasses, as if to acknowledge someone waving in a crowd. Ifiemi’s hands waited on the keyboard. An angel in a thundering white gown hurried past and made the kitchen door sigh. “Are you there?” Bendic asked, as if it weren’t he who had drifted off.
Are you there? This was how Bendic sometimes called for attention. When thoughts crowded his mind and he couldn’t call up which name belonged to which child, he simply said, “Are you there? Bring me a glass of water, please.” The children imitated and used it on each other. Paul would say to Ajie, “Are you there? You have forgotten to tie your shoelace.” “Are you there? Try and bring down your voice, you are shouting.” It could be anyone’s name. You poked the person in the side while asleep and called, “Are you there?”
Ajie would later feel this was a presage to Paul’s disappearance, a sort of rehearsal they had been at all along. That each time they said it to Paul, they were alluding to his eventual disappearance. The time indeed would come when they would look over to his empty bed to poke a finger in the mattress, to ask the question with eyes, not words, and still be left with nothing.
Ifiemi, whenever she didn’t follow any of Bendic’s sentences, simply let her fingers hover above the keys, and Bendic, not hearing the click-clack, would look at her and then repeat the last sentence, adding emphasis, although the sentence itself would have changed—in detail, not in essence.
To His Excellency, Colonel Dauda Musa Komo, Military Administrator of Rivers State
REQUEST FOR INTERVENTION IN THE IMPENDING CRISIS IN OGIBAH COMMUNITY
Your Excellency,
Paul had salvaged one of the discarded drafts from the dustbin; he spread it out.
There was also a letter for the Divisional Police Office (DPO) at Ahoada.
This was not the first time Bendic was taking up matters with the authorities. Once he had taken the federal government to court. That was a story his children all knew to its finest details, even though none of them had been born at the time. There had been an explosion in an oil well near the farmlands in Ogibah, which left the area ankle-deep in crude oil, pervaded with the stench of rotten fish floating belly-up in the ponds, so Bendic took the government of the Federal Republic of Nigeria to court.
The Land Use Decree of 1978 that would make all previous landowners mere tenants of the state was still six years away. It would allow you to farm on your ancestral land and bury your dead, but should anything of value be found, your tenancy would lapse and how you were dealt with was entirely up to the government of the day.
In any case, after the explosions in Ogibah, Bendic sued the government, and the case slowly wound through the courts for two years, and then a verdict was delivered. Bendic lost. The story of the court proceedings had become something of a legend in Ogibah. Bendic stood as his own counsel after he fired his lawyer a few hours before the fourth court session, when it became clear that the lawyer had been bribed like the other one before him.
On that day, March 7, 1974, at ten A.M., Benson Ikpe, the counsel representing the federal government, rose in front of the high court to argue the government’s position in the matter of Benedict Awari Utu & Ogibah Community vs. Federal Government of Nigeria.
Those present in the court said Bendic spoke for so long that his voice got dry and hoarse and the judge asked for a glass of water to be brought.
This was the part of the story Ajie liked best. He would imagine the courtroom. Where would Bendic be standing, being both counsel and plaintiff? In the witness box? The courtroom had a considerable number of Ogibah people. There were more than a handful who had never gone further than Elele before the start of this case months ago, but here they were in the serene expanse of Station Road in Port Harcourt, disgruntled but firm i
n their belief that justice would prevail. There were other people in the court: lawyers, all in black robes, adjusting their blond wigs to a cocky angle, their twig collars flapping out like gills. Representatives from Company sat in a single row in smart suits and spectacles—Ajie didn’t imagine them turning up in coveralls, jungle boots, and hard hats. Some had been flown in from their main offices in Europe.
There was a court clerk as well, and orderlies with severe faces, in navy blue polyester uniforms, their shoes old but well blackened and shined. Over the sea of heads, benches, and wooden partitions sat the judge, chief goon, master of ceremonies. There was something celestial about the array.
Bendic was standing in the witness box. Sheaves and sheaves of documentary evidence he had amassed had been laid carefully in front of him. Photographs of swamplands and ponds covered in grease, ruined cassava farms burned to frazzle. When Bendic answered the questions he was asked, Ogibah heads nodded, and their hearts sighed in affirmation of the details of the disaster. Bendic spoke till his throat got hoarse, and Chief Goon sent an orderly for a glass of water. At this point, as the story went, clapping erupted among the Ogibah people in the courtroom; it could not be helped. Their man had spoken at such great length that water had to be brought for him. Chief Goon banged his gavel many times to calm the court and warned the people very seriously not to interrupt his court session again, else he would have no qualms holding the lot of them in contempt.
Of course, on the day the verdict was delivered, when Chief Goon put down the gavel for the final time, it was to rule against Bendic and Ogibah.
Mboy ka Israel was detained in court that day because he stood up, just before the judge finished reading out the verdict; he pointed at the judge and yelled, “You are a liar, and a thief! Agbra awe eya! Blind devil.”
Ajie let the click-clack of Ifiemi’s urgent fingers on the typewriter keys into his afternoon reverie. There was the sudden yet expected sweep of the carriage at intervals. The carriage return bell, the brisk rolling in of fresh paper. He thought about Israel’s son, Mboy, who was held in the court jail for one night and didn’t make it with the others on the bus back to Ogibah that evening. Ajie thought of the judge; he tried but couldn’t muster hatred for him: At least he had the decency to allow a glass of water to be brought for a man who really needed it. But Ajie sensed his small feelings of gratitude to the judge were misguided. He would ask Paul what he thought. He counted on Paul’s perspective to steer him in the right direction and maybe ignite some indignation in him.
Marcus and Paul were sent off with the letters in the morning, and Paul sat in the passenger seat with the letters on his lap as they headed for the Rivers State Government secretariat.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The next day was a Sunday. Everyone was tired from staying up last night and didn’t appreciate Ma banging on their doors at five-thirty.
“Paul, wake up, wake your brother!”
“Ajie!” Paul hissed and rolled over on his bed but did not get up. “Are you there?”
Ajie stretched and yawned, then got up slowly, feeling a little giddy from the already violent start of the day. There was no smell of frying onions and yam chips in the air, or of scrambled eggs with diced tomatoes. It seemed unfair to have to rush down a slice of bread and tea on a Sunday morning. It was like a reprise from term time: the hassle of school rising bells, running to the dining hall with plate in hand, dorm inspections, standing next to his bunk with the mattress dressed in white sheets while waiting for the incoherent housemaster, Mr. Ubani, to saunter through, randomly asking to see fingernails and teeth before running a finger across the top of lockers for dust.
“Get up for morning devotion.” Ma’s voice came from the passage, and Ajie could hear Bibi shut the door to her room as she made her way to the parlor. Paul was by the door, and Ajie got up and followed as they went to sit in the parlor.
Bendic did not join them for morning devotion. He stayed in bed a little longer than usual on Sundays, and Ma said it was important for their father to rest.
Bibi perched on the edge of her seat, her sleeping wrapper draped loosely around her from the neck down. The reading was from the Book of Genesis. Paul read the verses with his eyes half open; his voice had morning cobwebs in it.
Ajie sat erect, but his eyes were shut tight. Ma looked at him for a while. “Ajie!”
“I’m not sleeping,” he said with his eyes still closed. “I’m trying to concentrate.”
“Hmm!” Bibi sniggered. “Concentrate.”
“Paul, please continue reading,” Ma said, ignoring Ajie so they could get through with the devotion on time.
It was the story of Cain and Abel. The moral lessons could be anything from avoiding jealousy to making a worthy sacrifice to God. Cain offered his less than best to God, then got jealous and murdered his brother, Abel, who had given a worthy sacrifice. Ma facilitated these morning sessions, where everyone was encouraged to contribute, to ask questions.
“If Cain and Abel were the first offspring of Adam and Eve, and Adam and Eve were the first humans on earth, who then did Cain marry to father the rest of the human race? If Adam and Eve had other children later, that would mean he probably married his own sister?” Ajie had his hand on his chin, one leg drawn up on the couch. “Was that how they multiplied and replenished the earth?” He paused for a while, allowing space for thought and for the others to take in the cut of his inquiry. “That would just be disgusting,” he concluded.
Paul hissed at him as he was saying the final word. “It’s like you are going mad, Ajie.” Bibi leaned back on her chair, unconcerned, the way you do when your advice and recommendations have been ignored. She once suggested to Ma that Ajie needed to be given five strokes of the cane every morning when he woke up, and that would set him straight, because, in her opinion, he was becoming something else these days.
Now, however, the word disgusting worked its way all over Ajie’s face and projected across the room, all the way to the center table with the white lace cloth, to the tall room dividers where the silver JVC radio and TV sat, then whipped itself about the room and landed before them on the center table: disgusting.
Ma closed her Bible and placed it on an arm of her sofa; she took a deep breath and said, “Since you want to ask the question and then answer it yourself, I doubt there is anything left for anyone to add. Bibi, any contributions or lessons learned? Paul?”
After their morning devotion, the house bustled with activity. Ma was the army commandant and the children her new recruits.
“Go and have your bath now, the water is getting cold.”
“Bibi, you cannot wear that skirt.”
“Paul, please comb your hair.”
All the while Bendic was in bed, sleeping or reading.
Ajie went into his parents’ room to greet Bendic. The room was twice the size of the other rooms in the house, with its chest of drawers and standing mirrors framed in wood of mahogany tone.
“Come here,” Bendic said, and Ajie sat beside him on the bed. “So your mother is taking you to church?”
Ajie nodded. His eyes strayed into the garden right outside the window. Ma grew everything from vegetables to herbs and flowers. Green peppers stood between corn and okra, and garden eggs next to her queen of the night.
It was Ma who first explained to Ajie, long before any of his primary school teachers did, the concept of photosynthesis. Photosynthesis, she said to him slowly, was the process by which green plants produced their own food with the aid of sunlight. Ajie was intrigued; the words stuck to his mind indelibly. It was Ma who first told him the universe was billions of years old.
“But God made the world in seven days,” six-year-old Ajie said, trying to wrap his head around the gaping discrepancy.
“That is true, too,” Ma replied. “But the Bible has to be interpreted properly. People sometimes forget. You have to use the Bible to interpret the Bible. There is another verse that says, One day unto the Lord is like
a thousand years. One day to God can mean millions, billions, of years for humans.”
“Billions, Ma?” Ajie asked.
“Yes, billions. Science tells us our universe is thirteen point eight billion years old, nearly fourteen billion.”
“Fourteen billion. How many zeros does that have?”
Ma smiled. “Nine. I can show you that later, Ajie.”
Together, they carried out the experiment to prove that green plants would stretch in the direction of sunlight. Ma said creepers illustrated this point best, so they planted some bean seeds in a pot and placed it by the toilet window and observed how, days later, the stem stretched outside, toward the source of light. Ajie was only six, and this certainty of process, of order in nature, made him burn with a zeal that could rival that of any pioneer or prophet. He shoveled in the garden; he dug holes in the ground and dropped seeds in them and watered the spot until the plant sprouted. For two months he carried on until he lost interest in the work. The plants survived without his care for a while but eventually fared badly, and weeds ran amok.
“Quick, quick, everyone, get in the car,” Ma called out. “Don’t forget to bring a Bible with you.” Paul wanted to change his trousers because he had just noticed the seams of the inner thigh had come loose. Ajie went into the bathroom and shut the door, and Ma flung a scarf at Bibi and then grabbed the car keys from the dining table. “Let me not wait for any of you,” she threatened as she headed out to the car.
Since the start of that holiday, church attendance had become a regular thing in the household. Before then the Utus did only Christmas services or when someone invited them for a baby dedication.
