I, Eric Ngalle

by Ngalle, Eric;

  I could see my mother’s posture, her head between her knees and her hands over her head, the silence of the drums, the little molikilikili being lifted skywards by his friends, family and teammates. Amalinze, the cat whose back never touched the ground, had been reduced to a laughing stock, reduced to a nobody by a molikilikili from Bokwango village. Enjema had disappeared into the crowd. This was the day my wrestling career ended.

  That evening, before my mother returned home, I took five hundred CFA francs, the equivalent of fifty pence from her purse, I took my chewing stick (I had no toothbrush at the time) and I took my book of Swahili songs of Love and Passion. Again, not wanting to be seen by any one, instead of going past Longstreet which was just five minutes up the road, I walked downwards and climbed the WoPa Takesh hill, I went past Ngunge’s house, past Lovett’s house, continued climbing past Mola Yahanesse’s house, past the house of the Elives (I looked and I could see Peter Kudjo and Peter Matute arguing about something, they waved at me but I carried on), past Ajax Maija ma Ngowa’s stadium (don’t worry about the grandiose name, it was just a small patch of ground where we played football). I followed the narrow path past the Ellison household, and I carried on walking past Borstal institute (a detention centre for part-time criminals).

  Shame and pride meant I had taken the longest route ever. I carried on walking past the beautiful government building, and I could see my school on the far-left corner. The witchcraft used by the molikilikili meant I almost walked all the way to Bokwango village, his village. As the gravel met the tarred road, I saw a taxi and flagged it down. The driver looked at me suspiciously, I was loaded with sweat and was beginning to smell and had completely forgotten I still had charcoal on my face and the red liquid in my eyes that made me look devilish. The driver pointed this out as he drove off.

  Normally I would go and visit my uncle Andre, my mother’s brother, but I wasn’t in the mood now. Uncle Andre’s children are my brothers and sisters. Uncle Andre, being a headmaster, was a strict disciplinarian, he would have enquired as to the impromptu visit. Instead, I travelled to Tiko.

  My sister and her husband, Mola Paddy. They were always pleased to see me because big sister Elizabeth was effectively my mother and Mr Paddy my father. They accepted my gifts of pineapples, mangoes and enyengenyenge. I was here on a self-imposed exile for a month. They never enquired as to my mysterious appearance. My sister was happy as my visit meant she or her husband did not have to rush home after work to cook for Evenye or Fonta, their two young children. These chores were now my calling.

  *

  It was during one of such tours of the Moscow underground, lost in the deepest of thoughts, that I decided to go to a student hostel in a place called Pechatniki—one of the twelve regions in the southeastern area of Moscow. I had heard a lot about Pechatniki, which was painted as being worse than the bottom of hell by those who have been there. I wasn’t just apprehensive—I was terrified. But the thought and knowledge that I was going to meet one of my all-time heroes spurred me on.

  Meeting with Ifeoma the Great had an overwhelming pull and blinded me to all the treachery I had heard about Pechatniki. He was our all-time hero, a footballing demigod. All the youth across the south-west of Cameroon knew Ifeoma the Great and worshipped the ground he walked upon. One of the best periods of my childhood was spent in Mundemba in Ndian Division, amongst the Barondo people, (in my opinion, the Barondo people are the politest in the world, their greeting ritual can send someone bananas) and it was here that I first came across Ifeoma the Great with my little sister Queenta and my nephew Collins.

  Ifeoma the Great was a far better footballer than Ronaldo or Lionel Messi. All the little flicks and kicks those guys are doing today, Ifeoma the Great was perfecting in the late 1980s. He played for Ndian Rivers, the local team in Mundemba, and my nephew, my little sister and I would stay up all night waiting for the return of Ndian Rivers from their away games. More importantly we awaited the return of Ifeoma the Great. We followed the results by listening to one of the greatest radio journalists in Cameroon, Papa Zakarinko, who was so good at radio commentaries that when people started having television sets in the villages, they still would rather listen to his commentaries on radio. I am sure my very good friend Abel Akara Ticha (head of communications at the African branch of the United Nations) honed his skills listening to Zakarinko. I didn’t have any problems at the entrance of the hostel; I had parliaments (Russian cigarettes) that I offered the guards, who were completely different to the ones in Stavropol. They had their guns in plain view—Kalashnikovs that hung on the wall. There were three guards in total, all wearing military camouflage: one who checked documents, one on the side of the window and another at the back. Later, when I came to live in Pechatniki, I found out why it had been coined hell on earth. I noticed that the guard at the back never spoke; he looked like a bulldog with teeth ready to bite one’s head off. The guards in Stavropol only had batons on display; maybe they hid their guns, and were most of the time tipsy on homemade vodka.

  I handed them my Zimbabwean passport and they enquired as to my reasons for visiting Pechatniki. I engaged with them in Russian. We chatted briefly before they handed back my passport. No questions were asked about my lack of visa or residency permit. I was tempted to use the lift to the third floor because I had never been in a lift before. We had a lift in Stavropol but no one used it; the sound it made was as if the engineers who built it were pushing from underneath.

  As I walked the corridors of the third floor in Pechatniki, the smell of Cameroonian pepper soup became more and more invasive. Curiously, all the doors were locked and the silence was intrusive. You see, most of the people who lived on the third floor in Pechatniki were illegal. At the far end of the balcony I saw a guy who introduced himself as Abraham Fenton. I asked if he was related to Cynthia Fenton? As luck would have it, he was.

  *

  Cynthia and I attended high school in Molyko Buea together. I was in upper sixth whilst she was in lower sixth. We had a wonderfully platonic relationship. The Fentons lived in New Layout, they knew my sister Elizabeth, Mr Paddy her husband and their children, they knew my mother, and they knew Collins and Queenta. Abraham had heard about me but we had never met. When I was in the Upper Sixth Form I used to teach history, economics and literature to Form Five students. I could deconstruct classics such as The Canterbury Tales, Silas Marner: The Weaver of Raveloe and The Thirty-Nine Steps as well as the likes of Ola Rotimi, Chinua Achebe, Wole Sonyinka, Nguggi Wa Thiongo. They were birds, I was a butterfly, flapping, catching up with them. My reputation had grown around New Layout and I had my small group of followers.

  *

  Abraham and I became friends and along with Ifeoma the Great, Jerome and Yvan, were my pillars.

  We all lamented when Abraham never returned to the hostel from the killer shift lifting boxes at the market in Komsomolskaya; he had been followed by immigration officials and stopped outside the hostel and taken to a detention centre where he was repatriated to Cameroon. Today, Abraham is an American citizen after his wife got a Green Card and later invited him over. Abraham, in fact, knows Mola Mbua; the juju man, the quack, the charlatan who subjected me to those nights at New Layout children’s graveyard.

  I asked if he knew Ifeoma the Great and if indeed Ifeoma the Great was in the hostel. We walked towards the end of the hallway and Abraham knocked on a door, which was opened by a French lady. The smell of cow foot pepper soup almost knocked me out. There were four other guys in the room besides the French lady, who turned out to be the author of the enticing aroma. I bought two bowls, one for me and one for Abraham. The cook had established herself on the third floor. The pepper soup came with a big bowl of pounded cocoyam, which we call fufu. A very suitable food for the winter: heavy and warm. No one cared about calorie intake at the time and she was making a mint. Almost everyone who worked those killer shifts at Komsomolskaya market came to visit her for some food and alcohol.

  Abraham said
, ‘Go ahead then Ngalle, tell us about Ifeoma the Great.’ I narrated our childhood experience in Mundemba, how we waited for Ifeoma the Great to return from his heroics, how he was regarded as a demi-footballing-god. I was serenading Ifeoma the Great with all kinds of praises without knowing he was sat next to me all the time in a nostalgic repose. After around a half-hour of singing Ifeoma the Great’s praises, he stood up, introduced himself and gave me the biggest hug ever. I felt I had found my big brother again, and I was slightly embarrassed. Ifeoma the Great was the most down to earth individual; here I was shaking hands with someone we had considered to be a god. He looked slightly shorter than I had expected. I wished my little sister Queenta and my nephew Collins were here to witness this moment.

  I bought Ifeoma the Great a bowl of pounded fufu and pepper soup. I bought drinks for everyone in the room. It was great and we reminisced. The last time I had seen Ifeoma the Great was at a bar restaurant back home: I was selling puff puff, when I glanced over and saw Ifeoma the Great kissing Kongwe—one of the twins who lived opposite our house in Mundemba. We spoke about my friend and classmate Orume Nelson Baser and my childhood came flooding back. Little did I know that this little display of one hundred roubles would set a template for what was to come. Little did I know that my reputation was already in the hostel as a fluent Russian speaker. I was in demand. I stayed at the hostel until late in the evening and as I was about to leave for Babushkinskaya, two guys called Essilor and Barthelemy approached and asked if they could meet me at Pechatniki station the next day as they had a business proposal for me.

  I have heard several versions of this incident, from people who were not there, people who were never witnesses. This, however, is what happened: I was there, I actively took part, and I was with Alphonse when he was taken hostage. Alphonse was with me when these men entered our house and used the wooden legs of a broken chair to batter us. Alphonse saw the guy dressed in full military uniform shouting at onlookers to stop me whilst pointing his gun in my direction.

  This is my confession.

  I never told Chief or Alphonse that I had met Essilor and Barthelemy at Pechatniki and that they had proposed a business idea to me. I never told Alphonse or Chief that I had met a Bakossi guy called Francis and that Francis and I had been going to Aviamotornaya, at least two or three times, to visit his girlfriend. It was during one such stay-over in Aviamotornaya that, in a drunken stupor, I mistakenly gave Francis our house telephone number in Babushkinskaya. I had broken the cardinal rule and it came back to hurt us.

  When I left the house that morning, I told Alphonse and Chief I was going to meet with a potential business client. They were happy I had met clients but shocked as to how far I had spread my tentacles. I didn’t follow my routine: I caught the train at Sviblova and met Barthelemy and Essilor at Pechatniki station. They didn’t have money for the connecting trip to Sevastopolskaya, but it wasn’t a problem for me, and I paid for their tickets. They couldn’t speak an inch of Russian, not even simple Da or Niet, to save their lives. Together we travelled to southern Moscow to a place called Sevastopolskaya.

  I dreaded going to Sevastopol. The kind of news coming out from there meant we were putting our lives at risk. One of the rumours was that a Black Ghanaian who had fallen asleep on the train found himself in Sevastopolskaya on the last train. He was found dead with a bullet wound in his head. The investigation showed he was shot with a standard issue police rifle. No one was ever charged or arrested for this. The argument was that the guns had been smuggled into Moscow by an Estonian dissident.

  Sevatopolskaya market was in full flow—it was buzzing—and no one noticed the three black men navigating their way through the crowd. There were no police officers in sight and no one bothered us. It looked like we were in Great Soppo market; everyone was either buying or selling. We came to a stop at a huge liquor store where Barthelemy introduced me to an Armenian man.

  I cannot remember this guy’s name but he took us to the back of his store as they had been expecting us. He presented us with an assortment of goat’s cheese, some mixed cold beef and glasses of vodka. Then he said, ‘Okay guys, how can I help you?’ This was my cue. Barthelemy and Essilor didn’t have a clue what I was going on about, I told him I worked as a translator for an American businessman who was involved in buying and selling fake dollars. This part of the process was by now routine to me. I didn’t even have to think about it, it just flowed. Essilor and Barthelemy would, from time to time, interrupt the conversation, as they couldn’t understand Russian. As the conversation went on, I realised a deal was impending, this guy bought everything I was telling him, and he was ready to invest.

  It’s not a case of my heart being split between Essilor and Barthelemy. I knew that I would not be involving them in the deal. I could not betray Alphonse and Chief. I was the translator, I had the yam and the knife; I could cut any way I saw fit. I arranged to come back and see the client the next day to carry out a demonstration. Again, following the routine, I told him the minimum amount required so that both parties would make money was five thousand dollars. He was quite happy when I told him America was flooding the Russian market with dollars.

  As we left the market, I told Essilor and Barthelemy that the client had said we should come back in a fortnight’s time. I promised them I would sponsor the deal, that I just needed time to gather materials. We stopped at a café and drank a few more vodkas. They were excited that they had someone to sponsor their deal, while I was planning my flight.

  Chapter 12

  Two weeks had passed since we succeeded in scamming the businessmen from Sevastopolskaya out of five thousand dollars. Alphonse and I split three thousand dollars between us and gave Chief two thousand dollars, since he was the main investor. Again, the conversation was of me staying in Moscow to do some more transactions but I was determined to leave Russia. I wanted to trek across Zimbabwe and back to Cameroon. My mind was made up.

  In my briefcase I had one-hundred-dollar bills in different envelopes for my mother and my sister while for my nieces and nephews, I had arranged ten, ten-dollar bills in different envelopes with their names on. On my way to the airport in the morning I planned to stop at the post office and send the money to Cameroon. I even had fifty dollars for my girlfriend Beatrice, who I loved, and who my mother loved even more. I had called Beatrice the evening before and told her I was leaving Russia the following day. This was the later part of summer 1998.

  That evening, after returning from his daily routine on the streets of Moscow, Chief cooked egussi soup and pounded yam. We had invited Vincent to the house and he would accompany us to the airport. I had bought some new clothes, all brand names, and a nice pair of Adidas trainers. As we sat enjoying the food and drinks, the house phone rang once and stopped, it rang again and stopped; the third time it rang I picked it up and answered, ‘Yes?’

  The voice on the other side said, ‘Is Eric home?’ I quietly placed the phone down.

  The next thing we knew, there were multiple knocks on the door and the bell was ringing nonstop. When Alphonse tried peeping through the spyhole he discovered it had been taped up. I looked through the window and saw there were cars parked behind the house. Then my name was called out three times, ‘Erico! Erico! Erico!’ Only a Cameroonian whom I knew would refer to me as Erico.

  Alphonse and Chief looked at me while Vincent was panicking and we could hear footsteps going up and down the stairs. I knew what had happened straight away.

  My plan had completely backfired. I had not informed Essilor and Barthelemy that I had already been to the client’s house and scammed him out of five thousand dollars because I had no plans of telling them. They had been sitting at Pechatniki hostel waiting for me, when the two weeks had elapsed without me showing up, they simply decided to go back to the client’s house and activate the plan themselves, after all, I had done the groundwork and the client was interested. They were welcomed into the client’s household in Sevastopolskaya and were taken hosta
ge at gunpoint. They had been pistol-whipped and beaten for three days until Essilor told them he knew how to reach me. He was taken back to the hostel where he persuaded Francis to give him my telephone number in Babushkinskaya.

  Now Barthelemy and Essilor where downstairs and Essilor was the one calling me Erico. I still did not confide to Alphonse and Chief what I had done and what was going on, instead Alphonse went into the kitchen, lit the cooker and started burning evidence of fake dollars. While the doorbell rang, the door was being banged even louder, ‘Erico! Erico! Erico!’ my name was being called from outside.

  Alphonse considered jumping from the third-floor window into the garden, which would have been possible in the winter. Saul and I accomplished such a feat in Stavropol during the raid at the hostel but that was during the peak of winter, when the snow was about five feet deep; jumping from this window would have resulted in severe injury.

  Chief just sat down and pondered. In the soles of his shoes he had money to the amount of around six million roubles. There was no cocaine in the house and the clients had never met him or Vincent. Though Chief and Vincent were panicking, there was hope for them. I insisted we call the police but Chief refused saying, ‘If the police come to your house you are marked.’ This was it for Alphonse and I, for me especially: not only had I duped the clients, I had placed Barthelemy and Essilor at death’s door. They were now being held hostage, not to be released until Alphonse and I were in custody.