“Ah-ah!” the journeyman shouted to no one in particular. “This Kolo! What a rogue! What a ruffian!”
“He’s a termite!” another yelled. “That Femi Jegede will crush him like the insect he is!”
“He’s worried-oh!” someone else responded. “He’s shitting in his gold underpants. Femi will grind him up. This morning, Kolo’s driver came to pick me up in his white Mercedes-Benz. ‘What is that on the seat?’ I asked the guy. ‘What is that smell?’ My eyes were watering-oh. I could hardly see, the smell was so bad. ‘Enh,’ he said, ‘it’s shit. Kolo shit in his white Mercedes-Benz.’ ‘Joh—let me take the bus today,’ I said.”
The passengers erupted into furious laughter, heating up the air.
“Did his driver come with you?” came a bellow.
“Yes,” Femi squawked. “I came with him.”
The passengers once again exploded into loud guffaws.
Yussef motioned helplessly to Femi as they approached their stop. They managed to dislodge themselves from the steaming bodies and made their way to the chaos of the bank. There, a vast mass of people stood in haphazard lines, cursing at each other, small scuffles breaking out as some people from the back successfully bribed the cashiers for service.
“Femi,” Yussef confided as they stood in line. “Stay away from War and Lance.”
“Why?” Femi replied, looking over the heads to find a better spot. “They’re your friends, Yu.”
“We don’t know each other well, sha,” Yussef replied.
“Ah, yes—yours is a northern name. Did you come from the far north?”
“Yes. My brothers and sisters died there. The water was not clean. Even when we found clean water, our containers were dirty. Look at me—every disease has landed on my face.” He laughed, his transparent, grey teeth a testament to his lack of nutrition.
“Nigeria is a very rich country-oh.” Femi shook his head. “Where does the money go?”
The woman in front of them turned around. “To the politicians, of course,” she barked, her hands on her vast hips. She scrutinized Yussef. “Ah, it’s true-oh. You’re very ugly. Look at that.” She made as if to confer with Femi.
“And you?” Femi snapped. “Are you a movie star? Look at your ugly mouth! Why don’t you close it so we can see daylight again?”
A small commotion broke out as the three argued and others jumped into the fray.
Once everything calmed down, Yussef spoke low to Femi behind a cupped hand, angry eyes focused on the back of the woman’s head. “Your life is in danger, brother. I am here to protect you. Kolo has sent killers to find you.”
“How do you know this?”
Yussef hesitated. “I met them in prison.”
“You were in prison?”
“Three years. A policeman murdered my father for protesting when Kolo took all the water from our well.” He picked furiously at a pimple. “So I killed him.”
Femi felt for this young man, who had had no chance to live a life that others take for granted. Even Yussef’s face, bursting with all manner of sores, could once have been handsome.
The woman in front turned around in horror. “Who? You killed who?”
“And since then,” Yussef added nonchalantly, “I find it quite easy to kill people who annoy me. Even people with big lips—they take longer to choke, but if you take time, you can get the job done.”
The woman pushed past them, out of the bank.
They edged forward a good two feet.
As the days wore on, the three friends became more agitated, which aroused Femi’s curiosity.
He took two jerry cans to buy water from a local trader, and Ekong volunteered to take two more, suggesting they stroll through the makeshift walkways of the shantytown for greater privacy. They meandered through the narrow passageways, trying to avoid the waste strewn across their path. Ekong’s wild eyes shone in the flicker of kerosene lamps. Femi could see him stealing sideways glances at him, his eyes never at rest, checking pathways and shacks.
Ekong indicated that he wished to walk in a less crowded area, on the outskirts of the shantytown to a cheaper water vendor. Femi felt ill at ease but followed him nonetheless. They neared a garbage dump. The stench was unbearable: death was all around them.
Femi listened to the sounds of the shantytown, the cries of the dying, their bodies expelling any small nourishment they consumed. He accidentally stepped on a stray dog chewing on scraps, its fur riddled with scabies, ribs protruding from an emaciated body. The dog let out a pathetic yelp. Ekong’s hands flew to his pockets, as if reaching for a weapon. Femi jumped back.
Then, just as unexpectedly, Ekong kicked the dog. They heard its ribs crack. The dog screeched out some faint yowls, struggling for breath.
Enraged, Femi snapped, “Ekong, why not go back home?” He reached down to help the dog, which cowered away from him. Ekong remained silent. Femi studied the young man for a moment. “I beg, forgive me, my friend. Because your name is from the east, I keep forgetting your family could also have died in the flood.”
“Not in—after. Kolo’s company took our water downstream from the Benue River, and my family could not afford to buy it. So we drank contaminated water.”
“Ah! I’m sorry-oh!”
Ekong’s eyes darted around; the man was apprehensive, edgy. “I haven’t told you everything. I came from prison. I killed an official who wanted to take water we had already purchased. I had to protect my younger brothers and sisters. Two had already died. I was senior brother.”
“Who can blame you?” Femi asked. “Who would do otherwise?”
Ekong’s expression relaxed, and he hesitated before speaking again. “Listen to me carefully, I beg. Your life is in danger. Kolo’s spies are living with you already. Someone else arranged that bombing, to put blame on your head. Do not trust anyone. I am trying to protect you, but I have to sleep sometime.”
Femi thought back to those anxious eyes in the middle of the night, to Ekong’s constant agitation, to the nerves that could set a man against an innocent dog. Ekong stayed awake each night to watch over him.
“You must get some sleep,” Femi replied. “Everyone has to go sometime—even the finest orator in the world can’t talk his way out of death.”
When they arrived at the water vendor’s, they found that the tap had run dry.
The next day, Femi went to the market for supplies. Lance, donning his tan cowboy hat with the white fringe, asked to accompany him. His personable nature and affable manner made him easy company.
As they rounded Jankara Square, Femi noticed a man with a ferocious face—a huge, stinking mass with wild dreadlocks snaking from his head, colour of rust, pumpkins and sand. They were matted with all manner of life’s waste: mud, clay and anything this monster might have accidentally laid his head in. He wore no shirt, only a pair of oily shorts slung low on his naked hips, while his trousers lay twisted over his hair. His fatty face screamed at passersby.
A young lady strode past him in a flamboyant nylon shirt with flounces and frills cascading down the front.
“Hey, bitch!” the man yelled. “Yes, that’s right! You! Birthday cake! Look at you! Why you wear icing on your shirt? Come, let me lick icing for you.”
She tutted at him and walked on.
“You prefer make boss eat icing? Okay, go-now! He go eat icing for you—yam and scram. Yam and scram. He no go leave him wife for you-oh.” She hurried her steps, visibly flustered.
The man then spotted Lance. “Hey-hey! Look at you!” He pointed at Lance’s fringed cowboy hat.
“Look at me? What about you?” Lance laughed. “Where your trouser, my friend?”
“Why you wear curtain on hat? Are you Elvis? Who you dey hide from?” The man jerked his head back and cackled. “You no go open curtain? Let me see your face. Watch out, my friend.” He turned to Femi. “Watch out for man wey hide behind curtain. He see you. You no see him.”
Lance chuckled easily. “Crazy, crazy man
. These Nigerians!”
Femi shook his head, smiling. “This country! Ah-ah!”
They turned into the market’s twisting paths, weaving through the endless mud, hopping over open drains and ducking under corrugated roofs. Thousands of people milled about, haggling for each item—cloth, car parts, curry—producing the raucous confusion that so efficiently cloaked Femi’s movements in the big city. Even the odours appeared to comply, coiling and mingling with the clamour, so that the haze of fish stew, perfumes and raw sewage shrouded them.
Lance put an arm around Femi’s shoulder as they walked. “So, you talked to War and Yu?”
“Yes.”
“Did they tell you how we met?”
“No, as a matter of fact, they didn’t.”
“We met in Kolo’s office.” Lance paused, grinning pleasantly.
“What?” Femi tried to stop, but Lance indicated that he needed to urinate and drew him down a small alley.
“In Kolo’s office. He hired us to kill you.” Lance unzipped his fly, pulled out his penis and peed onto the side of a shelter.
“Eh? Kolo hired you?”
“No. To be exact,” he chuckled, “the Inspector General of Police hired us: three men who wan’ slaughter Kolo, jus’ to pound him greasy, yellow brain, dry it, add sugar for make puffpuff. Yu, for having killed his father; War, for having stolen his family’s water; and me.” He laughed. “Ah, Nigerians! What a country. Where your friends are your enemies and your enemies are your enemies.”
Femi looked at this charming man, laughing as pleasantly as if he were telling a joke in a bar.
“Instead of choosing assassins to kill you, the inspector general chose three people who wanted to kill Kolo.”
“And why would he want Kolo dead?”
Lance zipped up. “I think so the minister of finance can become president. He’s the inspector general’s brother-in-law.”
“Are you in government too? This your cowboy hat looks very official. Why you?”
Lance stopped behind some debris and piles of garbage. “Why me? Because I killed three men.” He tenderly patted a passing child on the head.
“Why?”
“I tried to join the ministry of natural resources and they rejected me, although I was highly qualified. I wrote to everyone, even Kolo. No answer. Nothing. Can you imagine? Corrupt bureaucrats!”
“And?”
“And so I threatened to kill Kolo. I killed the interviewer first.” He shrugged.
Femi sought the mystifying depths he had not so far encountered in this man. “Why?”
“I was angry.”
“What? Why?” Femi asked.
Lance’s eyes creased as he smiled, squinting in the shaft of sunlight piercing the alleyway. “I was angry. That’s all.” He had a mischievous look in his eyes as he played with the fringe of his cowboy hat.
“So why did you kill the other two men? Were they Kolo’s?”
“Oh, no.” Lance laughed. “I can’t even remember why.”
The puzzle finally came together. War had suspected Lance all along, and Yussef too, though he was too timid to point the finger of blame before he knew for sure. “Aaah. So it was you who organized the bombing.”
“‘Organize’ is a strong word. It implies something complicated.” He scored under his nails to rid them of any dirt. “I just contacted another group—got paid. That’s all.”
It was at that moment that Femi realized that these attractive, equable features, this charismatic and intelligent face, now radiating an intense excitement, would be the last he would ever see. He thought of his beloved grandmother singing songs of their ancestors as she stroked his forehead, his dear grandfather and his tales of magical spirits, the delighted arms of his mother and father opening wide to accept him. He prepared himself to rush into them, to throw himself back to those who had been lost to him.
There was no use, he knew, in arguing with death.
“Please tell Igwe that I—”
Lance waited with a leer, and Femi realized that Igwe would already know everything he wanted to tell him.
He saw a silver glint and then felt a sharp pain in his neck, as Lance’s hat tumbled, in silent submission, to the ground. Femi wrapped his hands around Lance’s to hold the blade as it plunged deep inside him, for he could feel sensations now. He succumbed to an intense, blissful elation. Their hands met at the hilt of the knife as blood oozed out over them. He could feel the warmth of Lance’s flesh and the hot discharge of blood spurting over them. Lance smiled, an ecstatic, joyous expression. The emotion amplified as it transferred to Femi and spread through his entire body. Femi beamed back at Lance, a gaze that acknowledged the power of their union and the flow of their twin destinies.
Lance pulled the knife away, and the flash of metal struck Femi’s stomach, entering hard and deep. Femi felt the pain of entry, a powerful punch, a twisting, searing pain that sent a flash of heat through his abdomen. Lance, his eyes wild with desire, withdrew the knife, and Femi began to fall. Lance drew Femi closer to him, wrapping his arm around the hollow of his back, the tips of his fingers caressing his buttocks. He struck again, two more stabs to Femi’s chest. Femi heard his ribs crack. He watched Lance twist the knife, making small circling motions above the soft and giving flesh, watched as blood shot out to drench Lance’s shirt, soaking them both, dripping, gushing. Femi rushed into his parents’ arms, jumping into the village river with his brother, his body surging into a euphoric rapture, his groin hard, racing home, running through landscapes of light. As Lance pushed out a scream of exultation, a burning sensation rippled through Femi’s body.
It was the last sensation he ever felt.
A woman with a baby on her back and a large bag on her head picked her way through the treacherous waste at the back of Jankara Market, garbage as high as hills, avoiding the used needles, broken glass and jagged tins in her path. She hoped to find some discarded food or clothing, some small crumbs for her baby, some scraps to keep them both alive. She saw a shirt lying in a pile of rubbish next to a muddy cowboy hat and rushed to claim them. She threw off the bags and food covering them and lifted the hat’s fringe. Her hand touched flesh. And then she saw the splendour of the man for whom her people so fervently prayed, who adorned their shrines. She screamed, dropping her bag and waking her child, a high-pitched shriek of horror, of fear, of the misery of her entire life.
News of Femi’s death spread—first as small drops: tears that fell behind a flash of logos, in the eyes of his companion, waiting for a man who would never return. It continued as a small trickle, filtered out in the sweat of those who toiled the fields, drops of suspicion held in the breasts of those who fished the waters. It grew in waves as news streamed through villages and shantytowns, farms and homesteads. Fury against Kolo rose, no longer angry whispering and repressed complaint, but a turbulent and raging current of confrontation against the forces of authority. Accounts rushed forth from these strongholds, spewed out in towns and marketplaces, a violent torrent of hatred mounting against a deluged president.
That tide wound its way to the great cities and the capital, a mighty, roaring force smashing through the indifference of its inhabitants—a thunderous surge that threatened to wash away the dirt of Kolo’s regime.
And along with the facts, the data, the information, came its Nigerian chaperone: rumour. A great man in life, Femi was to attain immortality in death. More and more shrines built in his honour sprouted in villages deep in the countryside, while pictures of him spread to city households, where anger hammered nails into concrete walls. Stories of his valiant efforts multiplied—of the time when he had made Kolo kneel before him in a small village hut, to the thousands he had saved from the flood, to news of sightings in the hills of the east or the jungles of the Congo. In some areas, he had even been known to turn palm wine into clean, fresh water.
With his death, Femi finally secured the bliss that had eluded him in the final chapters of his life; divested of emot
ions almost too painful to bear, and unattached to a physical body, his spirit became inviolable. No hand could touch it; it seeped into the mind, that area that has no seat within the body. In doing so, it described a nation and its mourning, its aspirations and its despair, not for the span of a regime, or an era, but for centuries.
Here was a man who flowed past clan, past language, past boundaries. The Gandhi of Nigeria had been born, his gentle face ready forever to grace the walls of Nigerian embassies, its already handsome aspect rendered more beatific with each successive generation.
And sitting in Abuja, at the geographical centre of all this tumult, sat a robust woman whose tears would change the course of Nigerian history, whose sorrow caused her voice to grow even mightier, a voice that would soon disturb the eardrums of millions.
THIRTY
Departure
The computer’s jingle informed Barbara that it was ready for use, already open at the Nigeria Today website. Hoping to gauge the political temperature, she meandered over to scan the articles and peek at its welcoming images.
There, in a photo just bigger than a stamp, lay Femi’s lifeless body.
A chill shot up her spine. She screamed and swivelled around, feeling death’s icy breath behind her ear, as if it stood behind her. The sensation lingered, yet she could not find its source. Petrified, she sat rigid for a moment, then swiftly turned back to the computer and enlarged the image with a doubleclick, thinking that perhaps she had made an error. But the greater detail only offered more proof.
Doing Dangerously Well Page 35
