Refuge

by Andrew Brown

  ‘Sunday, you cannot … cannot just arrive here and expect me to see you.’ Richard was horrified at the man’s insane intrusion into his professional life.

  ‘Chei! That is not good, my brother. Joke na joke, my friend, because I am sitting here in your office and you are talking to me, are you not? No bi?’ Sunday sat back and grinned at him warmly.

  Richard was silent. The extent to which he had allowed his recently separate lives to overlap, and the danger of contact, reared before him. Previously the possibility of such a blurring of lines had added to the thrill, but now the concrete presence of Sunday in his office horrified him.

  ‘What do you want?’ It was ungracious and cold, but Richard could not bring himself to say anything more.

  Sunday leant forward conspiratorially. ‘Odu. I am sorry to say, but it is a bad business we have, you and I. It is a problem my friend that we now have. The chicken perspires, but we do not always see the sweat, my—’

  ‘Please, Sunday,’ Richard interjected, ‘no rhymes, no slang. Just tell me why you are here. What problem do we have here?’ Despite Sunday’s jovial mood, Richard was dismayed at the man’s inclusion of him in some joint and unknown problem. His thoughts immediately turned to his partners, to his family, to Amanda. He needed to get this man out of the building as quickly as possible.

  As if sensing his unease, Sunday paused, pouring himself more water and inspecting the tumbler as if it were a glass of fine wine. ‘Our problem, my friend, is Abayomi,’ he continued, looking at Richard directly now.

  Richard felt the muscles in his arm and across his chest start to tense. There was something insidious below the surface of the buoyant man’s statement. Richard wondered if he was being threatened.

  ‘You see,’ Sunday continued evenly, ‘our Abayomi is a refugee in this country. She doesn’t have any status here.’ The slang and clever phraseology were gone now. ‘She has to renew her refugee permit every year. And it is time. She has no money to pay for this. And she is too full of the pride to ask.’

  Sunday had placed the proposition squarely on the table. He watched Richard, making sure that he understood. Satisfied, he reverted to his verbiage. ‘O! There will be better deys for okra soup, to be sure. You will be eating the Efik and living the good life, true to God.’

  ‘How much?’ Richard almost spat the words out, like broken teeth into a bowl. His mind whirled with the unspoken threat posed by the man’s presence in his office, of Abayomi’s deportation back to Nigeria, of money paid and never recovered. But, ultimately, his mind settled on the warming thought of her appreciation. Perhaps she would learn of his generosity and repay him with affection. The idea of her indebtedness to him was calming. It suggested a transfer of control into his hands. Perhaps this was the price he would have to pay. Perhaps this was the price of having everything you wanted.

  ‘How much?’ he said again, more urgently.

  ‘Hey, you are not the slacki, brother. The owl is de wisest of the birds, because the more it sees, the less it talks, no bi?’ Sunday sighed dramatically. ‘In naira it would be too much to count. But in rand, fifteen thousand. I would give it myself if I had it, but I do not. She had some but it is taken. Natin spoil.’

  ‘Fifteen thousand rand!’ Richard spluttered. The figure was far larger than he had anticipated.

  ‘O! They have a long throat, my friend, but I do not decide. That is the dollar. It is tapping, my friend, to be sure. But that is the sacrifice.’ Sunday raised his hands in a gesture of innocence. ‘I am no jiga, my brother. But otherwise they will come in a few days and they will take her to the camp and then she will be gone for ever. I will lose my friend; you will lose your babi.’ The description of Abayomi jolted Richard and he felt a rush of blood to his face. Sunday continued without commenting: ‘The egunje, my friend, is not big. Find me something. The gods hear only one wish at a time, no more.’

  It had occurred to Richard that he might part from Abayomi of his own accord, in time, but he could not imagine it now. Losing her so suddenly seemed inconceivable – to have her taken by others without forewarning. It surprised him, the extent to which the prospect seemed traumatic, a wrenching of someone he loved. His distress at the thought was unexpectedly acute. He took the decision in a rush of emotion, motivated both by a fear of losing her and a desire to get rid of Sunday. He reached into his open drawer and pulled out his chequebook. Sunday did not react, sipping his water thoughtfully. It was as if the result of his visit had been decided the moment he had entered the building. Richard was simply acting out his part in the drama.

  ‘Don’t be naming her, Richard. Don’t be naming her on your paper dere.’

  Richard nodded impatiently. He signed off his name with a flourish and snapped the cheque from its book, and held it out to Sunday. ‘Abayomi does not ever need to know,’ he said. ‘Please do whatever is necessary. The cheque is made out to cash. Thank you for coming. You must please leave now.’

  ‘I am outta here, my brother.’ Sunday launched out of the chair and neatly plucked the outstretched cheque from Richard’s hand. Richard caught the clean citrus smell of expensive aftershave as the man drew away from him. ‘I have to speak to the people, my brother. Arrange this paper and pay de man.’

  Sunday folded the cheque and slipped it into the top pocket of his cheesecloth shirt. Richard stood at his doorway and watched him walk, spring-stepped, down the passageway, pushing through the glass doors. He paused at the front desk, leaning out of Richard’s sight to say something to Carmen over the top of the reception counter. After a while his torso reappeared and he gave a childish salute to her, jabbering something inane before turning on his heel.

  Richard felt a sense of foreboding as he watched the man enter the lift lobby. Amanda controlled their finances and was sure to query the large withdrawal. He would need to think of an explanation. Rubbing the side of his head, he decided not to return to the partners’ meeting but retreated into his office, locking the door behind him.

  NINETEEN

  A BAYOMI IS MY wife. We have a small boy. His name is Khalifah.’

  The echo of the man’s voice in the consultation room made the simple statement sound muffled. The words seemed to drift up to Richard from some great depth, like bubbles from an aqualung, the diver hiding far down in the murk. Ifasen sat rubbing his hands together slowly, oblivious of the developing impact of his words. A scratched table separated him from Richard, and they each sat on metal chairs with torn spongy seats, the green vinyl split open in long wounds. On the other side of the door, they could hear the sound of prisoners passing, shouting to one another, ragging the wardens, swearing and laughing. The noise and smell of prison were pervasive. The stink of captured humanity.

  ‘Khalifah is still little. He is in day care. We live in a flat in Sea Point.’

  Richard had placed his hand over his mouth to hide his queasiness. He felt that his face must look drawn and pale. His instinctive response was to tell this man that he was wrong, that it could not possibly be so. His mind railed against the information, immediately searching for a way of dismissing what he had heard. And yet this proud, quiet man was only telling him what he already knew: that Abayomi had a life separate from his own, a life that included family and a husband. It remained a shocking disclosure, and one that, in the instant of the telling, shifted his relationship with her. At a fundamental level, the statement confirmed the nagging undertow that pulled at him whenever he was with her: they weren’t lovers; he wasn’t having an affair; he was her client, a source of income and nothing more. And because of that, she had never been under any obligation to tell him the truth. He was the deceitful one, not her.

  The revelation that they were not lovers was itself a betrayal, and it sliced across their imagined playground. An intense sadness filled him, and an indignance, as if something he cherished had been carelessly destroyed. He baulked at the reality, still wanting to protest his special place, his adulterous presence. His outrage made him want
to hurt the messenger, to tell this serious, straight-backed man that he was a cuckold and that he, Richard Calloway, was his wife’s paramour. But this was absurd, he knew. He was nothing in their lives. He was an unmentioned earning, nothing more. Or perhaps they did talk about him – he felt hot with fury at the thought – perhaps they laughed at him, at his obedience, at his fawning attentions.

  But Richard could tell that his new client had no idea that he had any connection to his wife. She had managed to weave her stories expertly, keeping them a critical distance apart, so that the one never learnt anything of the other. He thought of her ambivalence at the club, the darkness in her comments to him. There had been an anguish in her interaction at the baby-naming ceremony, although she had seemed to introduce him playfully enough. All that time, she had known that her husband was in prison, unable to get bail. He remembered her sudden stillness in the car, the way she stared out of the window as they drove back into the city towards the studio. But, once there, she had smiled and pulled him by his sleeve, imploring him to run up the stairs with her.

  The memory filled him with anger as he faced Ifasen. The thin man continued blithely: ‘Both my wife and I have refugee status only. Because of that, things are often made very difficult for us. You understand this?’

  ‘Yes.’ Richard grappled with his surging emotions, anchoring himself with the details of his client’s case. ‘But before you explain to me how you ended up here, please can I have a look at the charge sheet? Ab … your wife didn’t have a copy for me.’

  Ifasen nodded and pulled a thin sheaf of documents from his back pocket. He flattened the creased papers on the table and pushed them across to Richard.

  Richard read quickly, scanning the relevant passages. His forehead creased into a deep frown as he read.

  ‘What is wrong?’ Ifasen’s tone was still flat and emotionless.

  ‘It’s nothing, really,’ Richard countered. ‘Nothing. Just that people like this guy, the complainant … I met someone just like him recently.’ He laughed incredulously. ‘At a dinner party at my house a week ago.’

  Ifasen stared at him with suspicion. ‘You share your table with men like this, men who falsely accuse innocent men and abuse them and make them end up here?’ He swept his hand in a slow arc, encompassing not just the room, but the whole prison, the full indignity of his position. ‘A man like this is your friend and you share supper with such people in your home?’

  ‘Yes …’ Richard hesitated. ‘But you must understand, none of these men are friends of mine. They are—’

  ‘Please,’ Ifasen interrupted. ‘I think you should leave. You cannot help me.’

  Richard had had no desire to represent Ifasen at the outset and had agreed only as a favour to Abayomi. Perhaps, too, he had to admit, he had hoped that it would make her more generous towards him in their trysts. Ifasen’s status as her husband confused him and he worried that it would increase his antipathy towards the man’s predicament. He thought of Ryno Coetzee at his dinner table, drinking his wine, chatting up his wife, spewing his racism across the room. The irony of his fury at the man trying to charm Amanda, asserting his virility. He wondered, also, what he would tell Abayomi if the meeting was cut short. How would he tell her that he was unable to help? He suddenly felt ambivalent. If this man, his lover’s husband, continued to languish in prison, he could enjoy undisturbed time with Abayomi. With Ifasen incarcerated, the possibility of further unhurried days would become a reality. Perhaps even nights. The thought made him itch with selfish desire. And then shudder with guilt at the vulnerability of his integrity. He looked at Ifasen’s bruised face, wounded but still dignified. To leave now would be monstrous.

  ‘I can help you,’ he said suddenly. ‘And I will help you. This man who made this trouble for you … he is everything that I despise. I will not allow him to do this to you.’

  Ifasen’s face remained in a deep frown. He shook his head, unpersuaded. ‘Why do you share a meal with people you despise? Why do you have them in your home? In my country, we eat with friends or sometimes with those we want something from. Did you want something from him?’

  ‘No. No, in my country, we often end up eating with people who are strangers. We end up serving food to people that we don’t even like. People who will try to steal our wives while we pour wine for them.’ Richard was speaking more to himself than to Ifasen. He laughed to himself as if to emphasise the point.

  Ifasen did not respond immediately. ‘I fear that you are like all the others,’ he said after a while. ‘You look at me and only see an accused. You are like the man in the car, the policeman, the judge. You cannot see the person behind the label that has been stuck on me. I did not ask for it. I did not put it there. You did. It does not serve you to pull it away. And even when I am found innocent, I will always be the accused in your eyes.’

  Richard was taken aback at the directness of the comment. Ifasen was right, he knew. In the beginning, each client had been an individual to Richard. The outcome of their cases had mattered and he had felt a responsibility for their well-being. But the burden had eventually become too heavy, the distinction between success and failure too devastating. Or perhaps he had become bored, tired of the same stories, his clients’ slick defences and excuses. They seldom took responsibility for their conduct. They did not seek his absolution. His job was only to sidestep the sanction, so that they could continue as before. But in Ifasen’s complaint lay the barb of accusation, an allegation of racism and xenophobia. There, too, Richard knew he could not argue.

  He studied the man’s intelligent face, his fine features. The dullness in Ifasen’s eyes made his lids droop slightly, as if he did not really care. There was bruising around his mouth and the sides of his nose.

  ‘Tell me a bit about yourself, Ifasen,’ he said. ‘When did you and … Abayomi come to this country?’ The question jarred even as he formulated it and his voice trembled slightly as he spoke her name.

  Ifasen did not seem to notice. ‘I feel in your question that you are actually asking “why” and not “when”,’ he said, sitting back in his chair. ‘But I will give you both in my answer: the people of our country got our “independence” in 1960. But we simply swapped one power for another. Our new colonial masters are Chevron, the World Bank, IMF, Shell Oil. They are masters without mercy. Corporate structures and not human. Science fiction films show robots taking over the world and we are shocked by the idea. But it is not only in the future; it has already happened a long time ago. These faceless monsters, they stalk my country like vultures.’

  Although Ifasen’s voice remained even, he started to emphasise words with emotion. Richard saw some life return to his face. But it was anger that showed itself.

  ‘We are still poor,’ Ifasen said, sitting forward now, ‘in debt to the World Bank, at the mercy of our masters who suck our oil reserves dry. And our governments, they come and go, and they are all whores in bed with the multinationals.’ Richard flinched at the analogy. ‘Oil companies use the state military and police to protect their interests in the region: hundreds, thousands of people have died because of these companies. The only commodity we export is oil. We are in its clutches. Yet the naria is at 100 to the dollar. Our people live in squalor. Our economy is in ruins.’

  ‘So you have come here to look for work?’ Richard asked.

  ‘No.’ Ifasen frowned. He seemed offended. ‘That is just the background to our story. No, we have come here for our lives … The story is long. Abayomi’s father, he was an economist lecturing at the university. His lectures became more and more critical of the scourge that had gripped our country. I went to listen to him many times. His lectures were more like public meetings. Full of students and other lecturers who wanted to stand up against the economic masters. The writer Ken Saro-Wiwa was campaigning against Shell Oil, to hold them accountable for what they had done to traditional farming lands. The military rulers became uneasy. The corporate monsters weren’t happy with what they saw. M
eetings were held; things were said. General Sani Abacha ordered that Saro-Wiwa and others be rounded up. After a quick military trial, Saro-Wiwa and eight others were hanged.’

  ‘And Abayomi’s father?’

  ‘Saro-Wiwa’s hanging devastated him. But it spurred on Abayomi’s brother, Abazu, and he became a zealous activist. Her mother hid with family in the farmlands. Abayomi stayed behind, living with her aunt, so that she could finish her schooling. The military hunted for Abazu, like dogs sniffing out an injured rat … It was not a good time.’ Ifasen shook his head and looked away.

  Richard glanced at his watch. To his relief he noted that their hour-long session was nearly over. He did not know how much more he wanted to hear. Though he had been hungry for information about Abayomi’s past, the cold details were brutal and complicated his feelings further. He shuffled the papers on the table in front of him.

  But Ifasen was not finished: ‘They visited Abayomi often,’ he said, ‘threatening her. Once, when she was still a teenager, they took her to the police station and kept her there overnight. Abazu kept moving and she could tell them nothing. But in a poor country like Nigeria, informers are everywhere. For money, for one decent meal, they will tell everything. After what happened to her father, she knew that they would never really be safe. The family is scattered now. Abazu lives overseas. Abayomi’s mother fell ill; she wasn’t used to drinking unsanitary water. She needed all of her strength, especially having no contact with Abazu. But inside she was torn apart. Does a person recover from such a thing?’ Ifasen looked at Richard as if he expected an answer. ‘Do you know, there were days when I wished that I could exchange my own parents with hers, let mine vanish, only to give to Abayomi her mother and father? It makes me feel guilty, to think such a thing.’