“My friend!” she yelled at the top of her voice, obliterating the announcements over the PA system. “Here I am!”
“Make I see,” he boomed back. “So—you have body, as Barbara says.”
Aminah threw her head back and screeched. Within moments, the sound destabilized into a violent wobble that Femi knew heralded the onset of riotous laughter. Though no one turned to face her, she was a pre-eminent artist in this arena—with spectrum, innovation and diapason unmatched by any other—and, like his fellow countrymen, he could only listen in awe. As always, attracting maximum attention served as their most efficient camouflage, as Jegede the legend was rumoured to hide in shadows.
Once she had reached his side, Aminah whispered, “So, who bombed the bus?”
Images of bloodied bodies arcing through the air bombarded Femi’s thoughts. “We think it was the African Water Warriors, but we have no proof. Igwe suspects a virus within. Most of us think that crazy white woman and her gunpowder goddess self organized something. Who knows?”
“Barbara Glass? She was the first one I considered. I was shattered by the thought.”
They snickered.
“And yet she sounded so upset, talking about the losses suffered by ‘we Nigerians.’”
“Hmm.” She raised her eyebrows well into her headwrap. “Well, at least TransAqua’s business is suffering.”
“Why did they think they could do business in Nigeria? Which person did they think would collect their money for them and then, like an idiot, hand it over? Are they mad?”
They both shook their heads, mystified.
It took a day to reach the village that sheltered the woman who knew too much about Kolo’s past. The air still bore a mild, uneasy tang. The thatch on some of the huts had blown away; their mud walls had cracked. The village seemed to be entirely deserted. There was only a haunted silence, broken by tiny sounds like lizards tickling across the sands.
Skinny chickens pecked at the grain that had fallen at the entrance to the village granary. Femi approached it, conscious of a rustling sound within—maybe a child hiding. He rose up on the balls of his feet to peek over its threshold, then screamed. The granary was teeming with rats, four or five deep, fighting for the remaining kernels.
Aminah stood with her hands on her vast hips, staring at a dead dog. “Water sickness,” she said.
Femi looked around for the ancient vendor. His stall still stood at the village entrance, but there was no trace of him.
In shock, they headed for the chief’s lodgings, Femi scolding himself for not coming sooner to talk to him about Kolo. “With all this death,” he said, “who knows if Kolo’s nanny will be alive? And if she is, will she able to talk?”
“Everyone is able to talk, although sometimes in silence, sometimes in screams.”
They entered the low concrete building where the chief had held his audience, and took off their shoes.
The chief, thin and bedraggled, sat on his chair, a few remaining retainers by his side. He had shrunk to almost half his size, so the skin hung tight to his bones. He seemed close to death. Femi and Aminah prostrated themselves before him, but he continued to stare into the middle distance. Femi wondered if the chief had lost his memory—or his mind.
Then a retainer whispered into the chief’s ear, and the old man broke out in a smile, the skin tightening over his bones. “Ah! Femi Jegede!” The chief continued to look past Femi to the other end of the room. “You have returned! I greet you!”
The chief held out his hand. An aide beckoned to Femi, who approached the dais. As the chief grasped Femi’s hand, with a warm smile still playing on his lips, Femi realized the man was blind, ravaged by the diseases carried by infected waters.
“Sir,” Femi said, “I’m so sorry to see you in poor health.”
“Enh, well,” the chief replied, “we all have to go sometime. No man can argue with death, so no point causing wahala when it arrive.”
Tears blurred Femi’s vision and he felt embarrassed by his reaction. Weeping would only prove to the chief that death lay close to him now, and he was glad for a moment that the man could not see. Femi tried hard to control himself, but the more he tried, the more the tears fell.
The chief gripped Femi’s hand more tightly. “Tell me, my son, how can I help you?”
Aminah moved forward and pressed an enormous starched handkerchief into Femi’s hands. He wiped his eyes. “Well, oga, when we last met you, long time ten months, you mentioned a woman in your village who worked for Kolo’s family. Is she still alive?”
“Yes. Of course.” The chief murmured something to an aide, who left the hut, then he turned back to Femi. “Kolo! I will be happy to see that crook back in the gutter where he belongs, if the rats will let him in.”
“No. The rats won’t let him in. They’re too smart.” Femi smiled. “But probably the Swiss will, along with his bank account.”
The chief cackled a dry laugh.
A few minutes later, an old woman entered. She looked like a gecko—thin, with huge, bulbous eyes and greying, translucent skin, on which dust had settled. Though she must have been almost eighty years old, she appeared lithe and intelligent, her movements executed in tight, aggressive jerks.
“Victoria,” the chief said, “these people have come to ask you about Kolo. Please tell them all you know.”
She twitched around, flicking her stare from Aminah to Femi and back. Her eyes came to rest on Femi, her features settling into distrust.
Taking an immediate dislike to her, he asked a short question, phrased as a statement. “Apparently you know a secret about Kolo.”
“I know nothing!”
“Nothing that makes him fear you?”
The woman paused before replying, much like any reptile waits in rigid silence before pouncing on its prey. “No!”
One last terse query. “You have no idea? Money? Drugs?”
He waited for her to uncoil her answer, killing all further probing. She did not disappoint. “No!”
Relieved to be rid of the woman, Femi glanced at Aminah, indicating that it was time to give up, but she sat down, firmly beaching her extensive buttocks on a small stool, obscuring it entirely.
“How is your family, ma?” she asked, her mighty voice ringing round the hut.
The woman jerked her head towards her. “Them all don quench.”
“Water sickness?”
The old woman did not reply, but her eyes lost focus, one drifting off to the ceiling while the other remained on Aminah.
Aminah gestured to the woman to sit down. She hesitated, then perched on the edge of a stool, no flesh to spare for that activity, in a position of imminent escape.
“I’m sorry, ma. No parent should bury her own pickin.” Aminah unfastened the sturdy clasp of her mammoth handbag and offered another starched handkerchief to the woman, then slipped out a pen and notepad.
“But there is only one person who can stop this happening again. One person.” She held an index finger up in front of her to reinforce the number. “And that person … is you!” Aminah’s powerful hands snapped her handbag closed.
The woman’s errant eye returned from the ceiling to Aminah’s face. She stiffened into curiosity.
“Tell me, ma—are you surprised that Kolo became president?”
“Sometimes. No one talked to him as a boy. Now everyone wants to talk to him.”
“Why did they not talk to him?” Aminah’s voice obliterated the sounds of nature from outside the hut.
“He was cursed. His twin brother died.”
“How did his brother die?”
The old woman hesitated, her body inflicted with nervous tics. “Nobody knows.”
“But you do.”
“I was only a servant.”
“Servants know many things.”
The woman hesitated once more, then spoke in jagged phrases. “Kolo killed him. He pushed him in pool.”
“He killed his own brother?” Aminah s
hrieked, making Femi and the chief jump.
“Yes. He never saw me, but I saw him.” Again, she threw a strange look at Femi that he could not decipher—only that it contained discomfort.
Undeterred, Aminah barked, “Why would Kolo kill his own brother?”
“He jealous. The brother very fine, well, well. Very handsome boy. The brother look like angel.”
Femi ran through Kolo’s history in his mind. “I thought Kolo was an identical twin,” he said.
“Yes, but Kolo was ugly. Very, very ugly. Killer then. Killer now.”
“So, is Kolo crazy?” Aminah’s excitement lifted her voice to stadium level. “Crazy like his mother?”
“Kolo na craze-craze.” The woman twisted her index finger on her forehead. “He dey craze like politician.”
Femi found it hard to trust the old woman’s account. She had either hidden the unbelievable truth for decades to protect Kolo or she had erected a formidable armour to protect herself against guilt. Why had she never told this story to anyone? Had her neglect of the boys compelled her to shift the blame onto an innocent Kolo? Had her mind, twisted by some hidden resentment, turned an innocent accident into a calculated murder? Had her attachment to his brother nurtured a hatred of Kolo for all these years after his death, a hatred that had finally led to betrayal?
“Thank you, ma.” Femi bowed low so that Aminah could not prolong her interrogation and the chief gave her permission to leave.
“Such a story!” the chief exclaimed.
“It’s hard to know what the truth is,” Femi ventured.
With few qualms about veracity, Aminah, a hardened journalist, reminded him of their purpose. “I beg, our job is not to worry about Kolo’s nightmares—we have our own. If she tells us this is fact, enh, well, it’s a fact.”
Rumour has its purposes, and in this case, its objective was to topple an autocrat. In this forgotten village, on the periphery of the flood’s thunderous rampage, they had found their instrument.
Back in Lagos, Femi hunted for the photograph of Kolo kneeling before the village chief. While sifting through papers, he came across a picture of his family and paused to breathe in the scent of the fading image: the fragrance took him home. He wiped his fingerprints off it, flattened its edges and, as he did so, noticed Kolo’s photograph underneath the pile. Reluctant to leave behind such an enveloping memory, he handed over the evidence of Kolo’s humiliation to Aminah, barely able to speak. “I thought this might be useful one day.”
“I’ll set it next to the article. I don’t need to mention there’s no link between the two.” Aminah smiled, cheered by the hidden perks of her profession. Readers always assume the worst when the powder keg of words and ostensibly related images are combined.
Mimi’s prediction came to pass. She found a note in Mary’s waste bin: Sinclair had dumped the minister for the environment. Within the month, the man was killed in a skiing accident in the Swiss Alps.
In the bitter cold of March, Barbara sat in her turret office in Ottawa, reading Mimi’s report with disbelief. Forlorn, she went to see Jane, perhaps the most formidable member of Drop of Life, but within wisdom’s close custody. Forgetting to knock, Barbara clumped into Jane’s office, near tears, plopped herself into an armchair and crossed her legs. Her sarong fell fully open, displaying large purple underpants.
With little option, Jane cut short her phone conversation.
Unable to look her boss in the eye, Barbara talked into her lap. “Mimi has now found proof of a chain of extermination from Sinclair to my sister to Kolo. It has just culminated in the death of the minister for the environment.”
Fossilized for many moments, Jane locked Barbara into an evaluating gaze. “Your strategy was to expose complicity at all levels of the organization, regardless of rank. Give me the full details—I’ll get the media on it.”
Barbara hesitated. “Do we have to mention my sister? I mean, she may be a murderer, but she’s very fragile. I can’t even conceive of her life outside the corporation.”
“And what did you think people like that would be like? Look at the armature they construct in order to feel important.”
“I don’t think it’s just a hunger for importance, Jane.” Barbara tilted her head. “Killing helps her fit in. It makes her feel part of a unit.”
Vortices of wrinkles reformed into a gentle expression of concern as Jane at last warmed to her. “Barbara, she’s disposable. The unit operates on instability. And it’s also unaccountable for its actions. That combination promotes lawlessness.”
Barbara tipped her head in the opposite direction, listening to this ancient wisdom.
“All your sister has done is move from the confines of the family to its larger version, the corporation. And in the same way, she has no doubt battled for position, never questioning the underlying values, ethics or benefits of the institution. Am I right?”
Barbara sniffed in response.
The phone rang and Jane ignored it, opting instead to hold Barbara’s hand. “She’s just a serial killer,” Barbara pleaded. “Maybe we can overlook that.”
Jane squeezed Barbara’s hand. “The problem is she’s also a mass murderer, my dear. Brad has been able to track who was involved in the AWW and how they got financing for their armaments.”
“Yeah.” Barbara slumped into her Nigerian buba blouse. “She’s always trying to impress. She’s a Capricorn. She can’t help it.”
With a last pat of the hand, Jane offered words of encouragement. “You’ve done everything you can. Femi will be much safer from now on.”
At home, Barbara recounted her triumphs to a companion in brown slippers who waggled his foot in approval. Although he appeared outwardly calm, she was nevertheless conscious of Astro’s guilt at abandoning those other living things that depended on him—his fish, his plants, his seedlings. Having regained her stability, she suggested that he return to DC to make sure his dependents were safe. With much exhortation, he packed his plastic bags and left with the cat, realizing the time had now come to exchange it for his saxophone.
Once he had gone, Barbara forced herself to rifle through her photographs, each one prompting fresh recollections and deeper sorrows, trying to find the most flattering picture of Mary. At least she would go down in a blaze of glamour.
TWENTY-NINE
Hat with Curtain
A single photograph pushed Kolo to near nervous collapse. It depicted him kneeling in front of a village chief, begging him, according to the article, not to reveal that he had killed his own twin brother.
Emitting a short yelp, he tore through the other papers, then raced to his office in blind abandon, frenzied and beyond all comfort. Kolo peeked through the curtains to assess public reaction. In the far distance, he saw the army trying to hold back masses of screaming people, lashing them with whips.
He retreated to the garage, zigzagging through corridors so that the water could not engulf him, and pulled the trunk door closed, as if re-entering the womb. There he shot home several bolts.
Kolo wept, wailing into his Thai silk pillows, screaming for a saviour. Stubby fingers clutched the duvet, holding on as if it could embrace and console him, as if its warmth came from his brother’s arms.
The article triggered a host of recollections that became superimposed on all his other thoughts. He remembered a time when he had been loved, accepted and cherished, not only by his brother, but by his family and his clan. His brother’s love had felt as close as his skin, as warm as the blood in his body, as constant as his own heartbeat. He might have detached from his brother in the womb, but during the eight years of their shared childhood, and into his adult life, he had never felt unconnected to him. His love for himself and his love for his brother were as one.
For nine months, he had allowed the Inspector General of Police to evade his responsibilities and the killers to dawdle, no doubt in awe of the great Jegede. And, of course, picking up “clients” right, left and centre. Whether or not the t
ime was propitious, Jegede now had to go. Only such an act could divert the public’s attention from Kolo’s humiliation. He would find someone else to pin the murder on, even if it had to be another of Lance Omeke’s clients.
One thing he knew: a rumour cannot be stopped. It requires no proof, has its own momentum and allows others to behave with unchecked malevolence. The village had considered him a murderer, had vilified and exiled him, as the whole country now would.
Hardly able to breathe, he put on his mask with its umbilical link to the oxygen tank, prey to the whims of both gasoline and pure oxygen, at the mercy of the tiniest spark.
The sprawling slum of Ajegunle sheltered Femi and his group. Crammed with workers from the world’s third-largest city, heaving with its detritus and fermenting toxic pollutants, it steamed with activity day and night. The stench from open drains and the asphyxiating fumes of burning tires settled within their pores. They had no electricity, water or sanitation, and found no place to perform ablutions in private. Initially, Femi had rented space for a mat under an overpass, but eventually he and Igwe managed to hire a shack, sleeping in shifts with his followers.
With information from Barbara and assistance from Jane Singh’s black book, the vigorous efforts of Aminah and fellow journalists soon redirected responsibility for the bombing towards the AWW, and the public hesitated, then their opinion lurched towards a rapid resuscitation of Femi’s reputation. Photographs and heroic likenesses of him reappeared throughout the country. Though none had set eyes on him, barbers offered their clients the Femi Fusion, clothiers advertised Jegede Jeans and partiers danced to the Femi Funk. In market stalls around the country, T-shirts depicting Kolo bowing before Femi sold in the tens of thousands.
Six months after arriving in Lagos, a bearded Femi was finally able to wander through the streets to open a bank account—unusual in a cash economy but necessary should Barbara wish to transmit funds. Yussef offered to accompany him on this thankless task. They struggled onto a bus and pushed through the door, jamming themselves between other passengers, squeezing their flesh until it settled into the interstices of the heaving mass of flesh. Femi had to twist one leg around a man’s body until it rested on the man’s crotch, while his buttocks settled in the hollow of another man’s back. Another man’s torso was flattened against Femi’s stomach. Yussef was similarly confined, though, as a smaller man, he was more at the mercy of the swaying crush of blubber. Femi, towering over the crowd, breathed freely. Yussef appeared to be suffocating, his nose jammed into the armpit of a particularly feisty journeyman ostentatiously carrying a briefcase. Few on the bus could afford to bathe.
Doing Dangerously Well Page 34
