The Extinction of Menai

by Chuma Nwokolo

  ‘Guess what, you’ll have to prove it. They’re reopening the file. The old commandant’s gone, and there’s a new man in the desk. He’ll look the other way tonight because of Uncle Stephane, but tomorrow, they’re coming for you, and you’d better not be at my house.’ She jerked the door open. She looked at me implacably. ‘Goodbye, Izak.’

  I returned her glare for a frozen moment. Then I asked quietly, ‘Is it too much to ask? To love me unconditionally?’

  It was the right thing to say. She paused for a moment, and when she entered the cab she did not shut the door. We did not talk through the journey home. The Hub was busy that night, but she seemed to drift above the work, finishing the installation on her workstation and road-testing it. Upstairs, I watched her undress and sit silently up in bed. We stayed that way for a while. We listened to the house settling down for the night. The nocturnal surfers were quieter than mice. Occasionally, we caught the rumble of conversation from the television in Mishael’s room.

  Presently, Mishael closed up shop. An unseasonably heavy rain had begun to fall, breaking the ardour of congregating mongrels. It covered the panes of the windows with a fine beadwork of water. It poured steadily for twenty minutes, then tapered off into a steady drizzle. Next door, a teenage girl and her father bailed water from a large drum, collecting roof runoff for household chores. Lightning flashed, streaking the sky momentarily, showing the chocolate bronze of their wet bodies.

  I rose and followed her onto the deep balcony, where she had spread a thin mat. We sat on it, wrapped in separate blankets. A copy of Balding Wolf lay on the mat. A bored breeze fanned through the balcony, browsing the pages of Phil Begg’s debut issue. My limbs slowly grew leaden. The tentative silence grew, became safe. She hugged herself. I sat inches away, but we did not touch. We were delicately strangers all over again.

  ‘Unconditional love,’ she whispered. ‘How did you know exactly the right thing to say? During those years, I imagined all sorts of things . . . including . . . yes, terrible crimes, and all I thought was, Why didn’t you just tell me . . . ? We could have got through anything. We were married just six months . . .’

  I wiped away her tears. ‘I didn’t do it, Dee.’

  ‘I believe you, but reading your story in tomorrow’s Balding Wolf won’t prove anything.’

  ‘It will make things worse. I invented a . . . fictional explanation for the suicide . . .’

  ‘You need to find out the truth for the police, for me . . .’ She sighed. ‘Where’s this sister of his?’

  ‘Back then, she lived in Kreektown, in Nigeria.’

  ‘Guess where we’re going tonight.’

  I stared. From the bathroom, Mishael snorted.

  ‘Is there any such thing as a private conversation in this house?’

  He laughed, ‘When you married my sister, you married me.’

  * * *

  SHE WENT to pack, and I took Mishael aside. In a few minutes we had a strong alliance going. It was a heated argument: I was anxious to keep her safe but happy to lose the argument, but about 10:00 p.m. she caved in. That was when we spread a map on the table. The best way to miss the police dragnet was to head for the border that night. I would take a Kumasi bus at the crack of dawn, cross into Ghana, and fly into Abuja through Accra Airport on Friday. Mishael left to get a cab.

  ‘I’m going to regret this,’ she predicted.

  ‘No, you’re not.’

  ‘You’re going to the most populous country in Africa to look for one woman. You have one first name, and you don’t have an address.’

  ‘I know her hometown, and they are an endangered nation. Only a few hundred left. How difficult can that be?’

  ‘That’s a very small needle. It could take you forever. We should be together forever.’

  ‘I won’t put you on the line, Dee; people die around me. I’ll be back, soon.’ I kissed her slowly. It was all we had time for. ‘And you,’ I said, eventually, ‘did you . . . remarry?’

  She stiffened. ‘I was wearing your ring, living with my brother, so that’s not the question you meant to ask, was it?’

  ‘No.’ I said miserably. She waited, but I was silent.

  ‘What if you forget me again?’

  I undid a button to show the name tattooed on the base of my neck. It was still sore. ‘I’ll never forget you again, Dee.’ She gave me a long, tremulous hug. I took her hand. Her fingers were wet and squiggly, live things with a nervous mind of their own, but I managed to slip her ring back on, just as the taxi pulled up outside.

  ‘Wait,’ she whispered, and ran downstairs, barefoot. A moment later, the taxi driver pulled away with a muffled oath, and I heard her shouting with her brother. It went on for a while, a good-natured sporting.

  She came back into the room as the main door slammed downstairs. There was a mischievous grin on her face. ‘You might lose your head in an accident,’ she explained. ‘There’s a better way to help you remember.’

  ‘. . . the taxi?’

  ‘Crazy man. He wanted an arm and a leg. I’ve sent him off. Mishael’s gone for another cab.’

  She stopped in the centre of the room. She said, shyly, ‘I warned him not to come back within an hour . . .’

  I took her clumsily then, kissing her ears, her cheeks, her lips, wondering whether sixty minutes was enough for us to get to the bed.

  ZANDA ATTURK

  London | 15th April, 2005

  When I opened my eyes again it was 6:00 a.m. and I was alone with an earnest weatherman on television.

  I grabbed my coat and broke out of the room, trying the phone again as I went. I headed to the newsagents that Amana haunted. Her phone was dead now. The vendor had not seen her in two days. I began to tick off every place we had visited. I hadn’t eaten in twenty-four hours, but I wasn’t hungry. By the time I returned to Humphrey’s house I had reached a personal nadir. I squatted on a stair, unable to bring myself to knock. The euphoria of my speech for the Menai nation had quite ebbed, and I was overwhelmed by a loneliness deeper than words. I climbed on a double-decker bus and went up onto the top deck. I sat there for hours while the bus went in and out of termini, until the bus pulled up in Victoria and two policemen came up to escort me off the bus.

  When I got home the landlord was waiting. He was angry that I had left both radio and TV on all day. It had wrecked his siesta, he said. Also, as there were many other people wanting the room, did I want to pay for another week or what? I didn’t exactly see the queues, but I told him I still had a weekend to run and would let him know on the morrow. I went up. There was no sign of Amana. Through spasms of hunger I could still think clearly, and I realised I would have to call the police. I read the papers: there were worse things that could happen to a lone woman in London than deportation as an illegal immigrant.

  I pulled out my phone to make the call, and it slipped to the ground. I made no move to pick it up, as I listened to the radio news of the standoff between Miss Amana Udama Bentiy, first-ever female candidate for the throne of Nanga, and the kingmakers’ choice, Elder Rantan.

  A flood of relief swept through me, followed by blinding anger. It did not last. A vengeful hunger followed me downstairs to the fish ’n chips shop, where I tamed it with a meal in a paper bag. Then I glared at the man who had just taken my last currency note. My hunger had been replaced with a sick, complicated feeling in the pit of my stomach. This was exactly what I did not want to be: crippled by the disappearance of somebody from my life. So much for my clear emotional strategy. I had to return to Nigeria. I had to see her again, even at the risk of arrest and execution. There was just the small detail of a passport and a ticket home.

  I phoned Freddie Jacks. ‘About that job,’ I told him. ‘I’ve forgotten the question I had in mind.’

  * * *

  Notes from the National Historian

  Nigeria Archives, Abuja

  15th April, 2005

  A man in his mid-twenties, matching the description of the wanted
vigilante Badu, was arrested by airport security on the 15th of April, 2005, upon debarking from an international flight into Lagos. He was travelling under an assumed name. He was easily identified by the ‘Wanted’ posters displayed in the airport building.

  Log Two

  SLEEPCATASTROPHES

  Kreektown | June/July, 2003

  Namalie Kama

  Dede Orando

  Emini Barde

  Sama Adeda

  Births

  Nil

  Extant Menai population: 120 (NPC estimates)

  GABRIEL IDOWU

  The Presidential Jet | 16th April, 2005

  The president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria was crying, and his special assistant for protocol was not very happy about it. They were in the presidential jet on the last hour of a marathon flight to New York. The president had spent thirty minutes on his position paper for the meeting with President Bush, forty minutes on a telephone call to his daughter, and the last half hour on a magazine that was now causing him, surreptitiously, to dab his eye with a fold of his resplendent purple robe.

  Dr. Idowu did not like that. Only the tough got anything from the cowboy in the White House. He wanted his president in a hard-hitting and savvy frame of mind, not in a soppy and sentimental one. He wondered how the dodgy-looking Balding Wolf magazine had found its way into the presidential space. It was not like Mr. President had walked past any newsstands lately. All it would take to start a scandal about the presidential hairline was a photograph of him reading the magazine.

  Idowu picked up his copy of the position paper, circled a passage at random, and crossed the aisle. ‘Your Excellency, sir,’ he began.

  ‘I want a national award for this writer.’

  ‘Sir?’ Idowu was flabbergasted.

  ‘This man, he got it completely. Did you read his speech at the House of Commons? I want an honorary national award for him. Put him on the list.’

  Idowu took the magazine proffered by his boss. He was still seething at the list Oga had sent down: he had suggested eight of his people and five had been bumped off. Idowu was scheming to revisit the list. ‘He is Chinese!’

  ‘Is that not amazing?’ said the president, pressing the service bell. ‘My own writers are disturbing me for contracts, and look at that: a Chinese! This story is the best memorial for those Menai people—may their souls rest in peace. What do you think?’

  ‘An excellent idea, Your Excellency,’ began Idowu cautiously, because the best way to antagonise Oga was to tell him his ideas were harebrained, ‘although, of course, these Chinese . . . the politics of it . . .’

  ‘What politics?’

  ‘Well, you know . . .’ Idowu floundered, but he was a history PhD, and even when he was floundering he still impressed. ‘He might reject the award for political reasons . . . like Benjamin Zephaniah rejected the Queen’s O.B.E. That would be quite embarrassing for Mr. President . . .’

  ‘Tea,’ said the president to his hostess. To his aide he made a face. ‘That was a colonial O.B.E. This is my award.’

  Idowu hesitated, wondering how far he could push this. ‘But just last year, Chinua Achebe rejected your award—’

  ‘Exactly.’ Mr. President grinned broadly. ‘So we’ll give it to a Chinese writer. That will teach him a lesson. Foolish man.’

  * * *

  TWO MINUTES later, the hostess was serving a three-course meal to an agreeable appetite. A hostess had once been reassigned for actually serving a cup of tea when ‘tea’ was requested. Dr. Idowu inputted ‘Humphrey Chow’ onto the honours list on his laptop, and another of his contacts dropped off. That was too much money to refund. He decided to try again. Mealtimes were good for bedding in ideas. He crossed the aisle with the infernal magazine. ‘Bush might be worried about the Chinese influence.’

  ‘What Chinese influence?’

  ‘You know, cropping up everywhere, oil contracts, construction contracts . . . and now, our honours lists . . .’

  ‘Hmm.’ Mr. President used the napkin delicately. ‘What do you suggest?’

  ‘Well, maybe a nice letter, with a decent cheque, something like that.’

  ‘Excellent idea,’ said the president sarcastically. Idowu flinched. It was not a good sign. ‘For your own presidency.’

  NANGA-NOMINEE AMANA

  Ubesia | 16th April, 2005

  I learned more about my mother’s past in the previous two days than I had throughout my life with her. These long conversations with Dr. Maleek, Uncle Justin, and others who knew her at my age did not exactly transform my opinion of Eva Udama, but I would someday visit her grave and take flowers. I was thinking of Eva this morning when my chambermaid roused me with more urgent reasons to visit Abuja: she brought news of Badu’s arrest. He was on trial for his life at a tribunal in the federal capital.

  Zanda’s arrest hit me like the bolt of a crossbow. My private quarrel with him evaporated. I saw how like my mother I was, after all: how my life could be twisted forever by one love affair gone bad. Uncle Justin arrived soon after for consultations that ‘could not be postponed.’ I balled the itinerary he had prepared for me in my palms.

  ‘I’m sorry, Uncle Justin. Cancel my programme here. Zanda needs my personal attention in Abuja.’

  ‘Impossible. Amana, your stool is not secure. You must meet with the chiefs ahead of the kingmakers—’

  ‘This is more important.’

  ‘You can’t think like a girlfriend anymore! Your nation is in crisis! A secession is in progress! Leave Zanda to me, I’ll do what I can. Focus on your nation. Your duties—’

  ‘Uncle Justin . . .’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘You could have brought Zanda back with me, spared us this trouble in Abuja . . . He was the one that led you to me.’

  ‘That was your decision! You said he betrayed you, you—’

  ‘I know. That was a lover’s fury. It was personal then, and it is still personal now. Remember that visit you made to Ma’Calico’s with Nanga Saul? I’m glad he did not delegate it! I would not have honoured his will, if he did. For thirty minutes he . . . held my hand. It made all the difference. I have to be in two places right now, and it is not hard to tell where I will go. There are roles that even a nanga cannot delegate: the duties of a parent to a child, of a wife to her husband . . .’

  ‘You are not yet married, Amana.’

  ‘Exactly, Uncle Justin,’ I said softly. I pulled off the headdress and laid it on his shoulder. ‘A sad and lonely nanga is no asset to her nation. Take charge here, Uncle Justin, I’ll be back as soon as I can.’

  He followed me to the door. ‘There is war in the streets, Amana. How do you propose to get to the highway, to get to the airport?’

  ‘It is time to find out if I am the warlord of the Sontik. If the people on the streets are my people!’

  His lips settled in angry lines, and he raised his voice as I started back to my rooms. ‘I cannot do what needs to be done! You may win a husband and lose a nation!’

  I smiled at him as he stood in the doorway. I hoped it was the unperturbed-exterior smile. ‘Your best is all I ask, Uncle Justin. If we all win our families, we can never lose our nation.’

  I liked how I turned the tables on him, giving him one of those irritating pep talks with which he had tried to drown me since I arrived.

  In my chambers I stripped off the rest of the ceremonial regalia of the nanga and scandalized my chambermaids by pulling on a jean skirt and jumper. I ordered up a chauffeur for one of my father’s unmarked cars for the trip to the airport. I had to start thinking of them as my cars—but that would come. In the perpetual comparison of Nanga Saul and Nanga-Nominee Amana, I would always fall short. It would be my duty to make comparison irrelevant by making my own way.

  By the time I got downstairs, Uncle Justin had arranged an escort of guardsmen. I left for the airport, worrying about Zanda and thinking on the father I barely knew, and on my first and only meeting with him.

  ELDER
RANTAN

  Ubesia | 18th March, 2005

  The Nanga’s Residence sat on the last remaining acres of green in the heart of Ubesia, with Era Creek forming a natural boundary to the south. Inside the darkened bedroom lay Saul Bentiy, ailing traditional ruler of the Sontik, with Justin Bentiy, his cousin and seal bearer seated by the drip stand beside him.

  When the nurse opened the door, Elder Rantan and three other elders filed solemnly in. They wore the ceremonial traditional gown of the male Sontik, which stopped several inches shy of the ankles. Around their shoulders sat their luxuriant togas.

  They bowed stiffly and murmured, ‘Che Nanga.’

  ‘Greetings, my chiefs.’

  Elder Rantan was irritated by Justin’s presence, and by the plastic chairs arranged for them beside the Nanga’s bed; they were too plebeian for a future Nanga. ‘Open the curtains!’ He ordered.

  The nurse hesitated, but Saul Bentiy nodded and she pulled away one curtain to reveal a stretch of Era Creek. ‘Leave us now,’ said Saul Bentiy.

  As the door closed behind her, Elder Drosa looked pointedly at Justin, voicing Elder Rantan’s own opinion. ‘I thought this was a meeting of the Throne Council. It is not for nothing that the Sontik say that the cousins of the Nanga are as far from the throne as the children of the peasants.’

  ‘My cousin cannot aspire to the throne,’ said the Nanga slowly, with just a little of his old fire. ‘You cannot teach me the customs of my realm. But I might need my seal bearer before this night is done.’

  Elder Rantan drew aside the other drape and lounged on the upholstered sill. Such rudeness would have been inconceivable when the Nanga was still truly alive. The entire south wall of the bedroom was a window, and Elder Rantan looked through it at the vast real estate that was the Nanga’s official residence. The private marina stretched for a kilometre along the creek. In the distance were the mangrove shrouds of virgin creek country.

  The sight of the luxury boats bobbing on the Nanga’s private jetty brought an involuntary sneer to Elder Rantan’s lips. The personal wealth of Nanga Saul would be a bridge too far, and Saul’s girls could keep it. With the governor’s patronage, Elder Rantan was no longer quite the destitute elder. The prize was the Nanga stool itself, not to mention the potentially huge spin-off from the secession. The imminence of great things stirred Elder Rantan’s blood, making him reckless. ‘Why have you called us here, Nanga?’