Refuge

by Andrew Brown

  She smiled at him, as if she had been hoping for him to offer. Her lips were full and soft, crinkling at the corners. Today, her skin seemed lighter, the colour of cinnamon. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘You’re a good man, Richard.’

  He wanted to respond but the waiter arrived with his coffee, placing it carefully in front of him. Again the man hovered until Abayomi gently waved him away. Her mood had lifted perceptibly. She sat back and sipped her orange juice, her top lip curled over the glass rim. He let his eyes travel over her face, taking in every deviation.

  She half-smiled back at him: ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing,’ he answered untruthfully. Then added: ‘I just like to look at you.’

  She put the drink down in front of her and waved her finger at him. ‘I will have to charge you to look, then.’ She laughed, a little rawly perhaps, but her eyes seemed bright. Richard blushed at the mention of money, but felt his chest heave. She was able to exert a direct physical effect on him.

  ‘So … Mr Richard Calloway, mister city lawyer. I have shown you what motherland Nigeria can do for you. Something new and exciting, I think?’ There was something almost accusatory in her voice and it made Richard’s colour deepen. She feigned a demure look, but was unrelenting: ‘So, mister city man, I am the foreigner here. What new things can you show me? Where can you take me? What can you show me in your African city?’

  Richard wasn’t sure what she meant and he looked at her quizzically. To his relief, she continued before he had to formulate a reply. ‘Show me something in your African city. And don’t take me to that smelly puddle by the sea you call a waterfront – where I come from we have the Niger Delta, filled with ships and people and animals – it is so big it is a country on its own. And not that little string that pulls the cabin up the mountain so the tourists don’t have to walk in the sun. And not the smart restaurant where they serve “African” food but bring ice and slices of lemon in my bottled water. And please not a fancy farm where white people sip their wine and forget about history and its slaves.’

  Richard scrambled to think of an appropriate response. He could not afford to be flippant; her tone was teasing, but the underlying accusation was focused. She was goading him.

  ‘You see,’ she went on, ‘I think that the white people in this country like to think of themselves as African, but don’t really want to have to live in Africa. They will rather drag pieces of Europe across the ocean to plant here. To lighten up the dark continent. You will not be part—’

  ‘Zorina’s,’ Richard blurted out, interrupting her.

  ‘Sareena?’ she asked, pleased that she had egged him into a response. ‘What do you say? Saleena?’

  ‘No. Zorina’s. I would take you for lunch at Zorina’s.’ Richard had been there only once, but remembered the simple plastic tables, freshly wiped with a damp cloth. It had been frequented by construction workers in smelly overalls and businessmen in smart suits and bright ties. The place closed on a Friday for prayers, but for the rest of the week it was open. ‘The owner is a Malay woman,’ he explained, ‘descended from slaves. She lives in the Bo-Kaap, where her ancestors lived, next door to a small mosque. Her shop is just down from the Bo-Kaap; it’s really just a hole in the wall, but she makes mutton curry salomies and you can get Coo-ee ginger beer in glass bottles with a metal lid that you need an opener to take off.’

  ‘So do you eat this food with your hands?’ Abayomi asked, her eyes narrowing.

  ‘Yes! But the spices will stain your fingers yellow.’

  ‘All right, white boy. I am interested in your yellow food and your slave woman. We will try some together.’ She pushed him on the arm with her finger. ‘But you haven’t shown me that I am wrong. Just because you know one woman who was once a slave; she’s just been a tourist here longer than me.’

  Richard laughed and shook his head in defeat. ‘Okay, you may have a point. After lunch at Zorina’s, I would take you to Pickwicks for the best coffee in the city. Near the backpacker lodges in Long Street. We would sit on high stools next to Goths, druggies – guys with tattoos – and African art traders. We’ll drink dark coffee and listen to club beats and watch the mixed-up world outside pass by.’

  ‘Pickwick?’ She cocked her head to the side. ‘Yes, I have seen that place. Yes, you can take me there. But who owns that one?’

  ‘I think it’s owned by a Jewish man,’ he said, crestfallen.

  ‘A Jew, a Malay slave, a European and a Nigerian.’ She clapped her hands. There was something childish in the gesture. ‘That is the best you can do! What a sorry bunch we all are! Not one of us comes from here; we are all immigrants.’

  Richard laughed out loud, but Abayomi looked more serious when she spoke again: ‘So why then am I the one to be treated like dirt? Just because I got to the party late, after you three had already arrived and eaten all the cake.’

  Richard was quiet for a while. He pondered her references to being Nigerian: how little he knew of that country and yet how the untried assumptions prickled under his skin. The waiter filled up his cup with steaming coffee. Richard tore open a sachet of sugar and concentrated on stirring the dark liquid, mulling over her question. The coffee was sharp and pungent and he took several small sips, savouring the taste before carefully placing the cup on the stained coaster in the saucer.

  ‘I don’t have an answer for you,’ he said at last. ‘I don’t understand why things are as they are. Human nature is something that constantly surprises me … and often appals me.’ The words formulated unthought on his tongue, but as he heard them drift towards her, their sincerity made him frown with emotion. This was not a drunken discussion in a strip joint; this was no social babble at a dinner party. He could not remember when last he had expressed himself with such unrestrained honesty. He looked up at her: her eyes were focused on him, listening to him with her full attention. She was no longer smiling. ‘I think we live in such fear,’ he confessed. ‘And of all of us, I have the least reason.’

  They fell quiet for a moment. Then Abayomi leant forward and placed her hand on Richard’s. ‘I should go, but you will visit soon, yes?’

  ‘No, please,’ Richard said, a little more passionately than was appropriate. ‘I mean, stay a bit. I know nothing about you. Tell me. Tell me anything. A memory. A story from your homeland.’

  ‘You want a story?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Okay.’ She sat back and was silent for a moment, as if sizing him up. ‘This is a story that will tell you a little bit about where I come from. It is a story of when I was fifteen years old. My father introduced me to a man who had come to visit us. My father was sitting outside with this man and a group of friends. They were talking seriously, each one listening to what the other had to say, each one letting the other finish without interruption. I thought then: this is how we should talk to one another.

  ‘The men greeted me as you would a child,’ she said. ‘But this new visitor, he put his mug down in the dirt and got up. He stepped away from his chair so that he could face me. And he greeted me as if it was only him and me, as if no one else was there or mattered. He took my hand with both of his. He had soft skin. Warm. Like old cloth. Then he blessed me. Only then did he introduce himself: “I am Ken Saro-Wiwa, a friend of your father,” he said. “It is an honour to meet your father’s daughter.” I saw that my father’s eyes had filled with tears.

  ‘That night my mother made a special meal for our visitor. After supper we sat in the living room and Saro-Wiwa read to us from a new play. I didn’t understand it; I was too young. It was full of political references that made the adults whistle and clap. I remember how excited my father was. He was such a quiet man, but he clapped his hands together and his face was flushed as if he’d been standing at the fire.’

  Richard was transfixed by her story. She did not look at him, but spoke towards the table, as if confessing, her hands clamped around her empty glass. There was something forlorn in her voice, although the story itself seemed
to hold no tragedy.

  ‘Afterwards my father said to me: “That is the greatest man you’ll meet in your life, my daughter. Cherish that.”’

  Abayomi went very still, as if summoning up some strength to continue. When she looked up at Richard, he was shocked to see tears brimming over her eyelids. ‘A few weeks later, I listened to President Abacha on the radio,’ she said. ‘He declared Ken Saro-Wiwa an enemy of the state and a traitor. My whole body went cold that day. My father was crushed. I understood for the first time just how unpredictable life is, and how unfair. Our president announced that Saro-Wiwa would be hanged. And ten days later, he was dead, hanging from the gallows with eight other innocent Ogoni men. It broke my poor father, may God bless him.’

  Richard did not know how to respond without sounding trite. The story was so utterly removed from any of his experiences. He felt a surge of paternal concern for his companion. ‘Why don’t you return home, to your father, to your mother?’ he asked. ‘They must miss you.’

  ‘I can’t do that. My mother passed away from illness some time ago …’

  ‘I am sorry for that … but your father, you should visit him,’ Richard persisted.

  ‘I cannot go back,’ she replied, dropping her eyes. She clearly did not wish to engage further on the subject.

  Richard stopped prying and sat in silence for a while. He sipped at his cooled coffee. ‘I know absolutely nothing about your home country, about Nigeria. Do you know what horrifies me? Not that such a terrible thing should happen, because it happens all the time, in one country or another. Even in this country. But what really frightens me is that I should never have heard of him – the playwright – that such an event should pass me by, living here in Africa, sharing our continent, but knowing nothing. And, it seems, caring about nothing.’

  Abayomi nodded, seeming tired. ‘This is what I see in your country, Richard: when someone turns off your electricity for an hour, or a judge is found drunk in his car, or a politician is accused of taking a bribe, your country responds as if the whole place has become chaos. I see the crying letters to your newspapers, the headlines that always speak of “crisis” and “disaster”. How can every day be a crisis or a disaster? This I cannot accept. You are a spoilt people, I think.’

  Despite what she was saying, her voice remained lyrical. It was difficult for Richard to judge the seriousness of her challenge.

  ‘But you don’t understand: you have electricity that can be switched off; you have judges whose worst crime is to drink too much; you have people to catch your corrupt politicians; you have journalists to tell you the stories. In so many ways, you are still a colony, a silly, childish nation. You are rattled by any small complication. You immediately announce that the end has arrived, that your country has descended into African chaos.’

  Richard found her irresistibly fresh, but there was a blade of personal accusation that kept him on edge.

  ‘Let me tell you about chaos,’ she went on. ‘Let me tell you about my poor, beautiful, suffering, awful country. Wole Soyinka calls our country “the open sore of Africa”. And he is not wrong. In Europe they sit and wonder at the music of Sade or the writing of Ben Okri. But back home there is nothing but chaos and self-interest.’

  She described the poorer areas of Lagos to him. There was no planning, she said, no authority telling people what they may build or how they may build it. No one watched, because no one cared. The slums were mixed in together with houses and small-scale factories. People breathed the fumes of backyard metal-works and children walked in the flow of tanneries and unlicensed butcheries. In places the dried blood of slaughtered animals smeared the pavements until they were black. The roadside was thick with rotting rubbish. At times the smell of so many people, all living and moving together, was too much to bear. The air seemed poisonous with sweat. The problem was the heat. And it was always humid.

  ‘You would call this place hell. But in Lagos, everyone is on the move, shouting, some laughing, some swearing, all pushing for a bit of space. That is what we do in Nigeria, we fight – with a smile or with a frown – for a little more space.’

  The cars could hardly move, she told him. The narrow roads criss-crossed in mayhem, the edges of the surface taken over by traders. The traffic lights did not work and people walked in the road as much as they did on the broken sidewalks. Taxis hooted and pushed, the doors always open. People jumped on, people fell off, but the taxis just kept moving forward.

  ‘Then you will see a big black Mercedes. He will force his way along, like a big lion, and hoot with a loud horn, forcing other cars off to the side, pushing people with his bonnet, cutting a space for himself. The people sell anything: fruit and meat and baskets, jewellery, radios, cheap drugs, foreign currency, Chinese imported goods. There is no black market, because there is no proper market. If nothing is legal then nothing is illegal. Anything goes here; this is Nigeria. And no one is watching; no one cares. Every politician is being bribed, every military official, every local official, they will all take your money. Some will keep their promise; some will not. Life is desperate and hard and dirty. This is Nigeria. This is what my people have become.’ Abayomi reached down for her bag, preparing to leave. ‘My country’s soul is rotting away.’

  Richard watched her in wonder. But when she looked up, her face was saddened: ‘So do not judge us when we escape from this living hell. When we come here and grab an opportunity. And compete with you for something better. Here you are used to receiving. We in Nigeria have learnt that to survive is to take.’

  TEN

  RICHARD REVERSED HIS car out of the double garage. He was soothed by the familiarity of the bricked roadway drumming on the wide tyres. The day was clear and already warm, generating a sense of well-being that made the recent disruptions to his life seem a little foolish. For a while, the meeting with Abayomi had left him more miserable than before. He had squabbled with Nadine at work, and Amanda remained distant. After two days of agonising, he had woken up with a clear resolution: he would regard the Nigerian temptress as a passing client. His intimacy with her would be a receding memory, and over time it would release its hold on him. He would recommit himself to stability, to a family life. He spoke the words to himself in his mind, willing them to hold together, to suppress the tickling thrill that still fluttered in his stomach.

  The car glided down the estate lane, shaded by the overarching oak trees. The rising sun shone through the young vine leaves, casting a pale-green glow across the vineyard floor. He would take his family on a holiday, he thought, to escape the dreary Cape winter. A surprise two-week trip to somewhere exotic, where they could play in the sun and be easy in each other’s company. Bali perhaps, he mused, as the booms lifted for him and he drove out of the grounds into the gathering traffic. Tanned bodies lying sultry on the beach, soaking up the rays while Cape Town hunkered down into its rain jackets and damp shoes. Or somewhere more interesting, like Morocco or Egypt. Yes, he thought, somewhere in the north of Africa, where he could show his family the real beauty of the continent. The dark richness of her soul. Richard sighed loudly as his heart again tightened, aware that his thoughts were returning implacably to flirt with the prospect of seeing Abayomi again.

  ‘Godammit!’ He slammed both hands down onto the steering wheel, causing the tyres to shudder on the road. He could not escape the irritating childishness of his captivation. Yet he continued to revel in the rush of new emotions that coursed through him. He was both repulsed by and morbidly drawn to the possibilities.

  The traffic entering the highway was backed up down the on-ramp and his SLK rolled to a standstill. The headline boards of the competing newspapers were strung up on the telephone poles. Richard stared at them through the passenger window on his left. ‘Crisis in SA cricket’, ‘Tourists mugged’. Richard thought of what Abayomi had said. The paranoia of the advantaged, feeding off the doomsday prophets like jackals on poisoned carrion. The tabloids were no better, aiming purely for shock value with
out the pessimistic analysis: ‘Man eats child’ and ‘Druggie kills bergie’, the posters proclaimed.

  Richard looked away. He was startled to find someone standing next to his window, patiently waiting for him to finish reading the boards. The young man had painted his face in ludicrous streaks of white and red and wore a sickly yellow wig made of foam and string. He grinned inanely at Richard and pushed a folded page of jokes against the window. Richard was trapped and started to pat his jacket pockets as if trying to find his wallet. The lights turned green and he pulled away immediately, taking the corner with a small squeak of tyres, only to come to a halt again as he joined the traffic on the highway.

  His cellphone jarred his nerves further, vibrating in the plastic holder and increasing in volume with each ring. Richard kept looking up while he fumbled with his free hand for the phone. He pushed the green button on the phone and spoke towards the small microphone that protruded discreetly from the car’s visor.

  It was Nadine. Richard was amazed at how early she started work each morning. It had never been a requirement of the job, but she was unerringly at work well before him, sorting through his mail and arranging his diary.

  His secretary did not waste any time on pleasantries. ‘I have a message from Dumbela.’

  Richard frowned: the trial was not due to start for another week and all the pre-trial exchange of documentation had already taken place. There was no need for the prosecutor to speak to him. Unless they have located that witness, he remembered, suddenly alert. He waited for Nadine to continue.

  ‘Dumbela says they want you to bring Svritsky to court first thing this morning. Otherwise they’ll be arresting him.’ She paused briefly for effect. ‘They want to revoke his bail.’ There was a glimmer of pleasure in the way she shared the news.