I, Eric Ngalle

by Ngalle, Eric;

  Sleep left our eyes that night, Chief and Alphonse asked all sorts of questions, I just went with the simple fact that we had been caught and that was it. In the early hours of the morning, Vincent and Chief decide to brave it and go downstairs, they had nothing to hide but still they panicked. Alphonse and I looked through the bedroom window. As soon as Chief and Vincent came into view, a man got out of a blue Volga, grabbed Vincent by the hand, and gave him a couple of slaps in the face. Vincent gave out a big shout, ‘I die today.’ Chief suffered the same fate.

  Chief spoke a bit of Russian but Vincent was far more fluent; they insisted there was no one else in the house, but this all fell on deaf ears as the clients were determined to check the house for themselves. I was calculating the distance between the window and the ground, the idea of jumping played on my mind. As if it would help, I went into the room and hid myself under the bed. Alphonse had found a small cupboard in the living room and compressed himself inside.

  When the clients got into the house, the first place they looked was where Alphonse was hiding. I heard Alphonse screaming as he was being punched, then they booted the door to the room I was hiding in and lifted the bed up, shouting, ‘Here he is!’ I was then dragged from underneath the bed kicking and screaming. I was punched and kicked nonstop for I don’t know how long. I was hit with the kitchen stool on my back until it broke; they used everything they could lay their hands on and battered us. I remember some yoghurt falling onto the shoes of one of the clients, he insisted I licked it clean; I did so with no hesitation. We were beaten, battered.

  ‘Where is our money?’ We were called all the names under the sun. I recognised the two clients but they had brought two other guys, who were Russians. One of them was wearing a military uniform and was standing by the wall next to the door: he remained silent and had the cold eyes of a killer.

  I had given up. This was it for me.

  I looked at Alphonse, who was bleeding—head and legs swollen, for they were using the legs of the stools to hit us without mercy. This beating was only punctuated by questions of, ‘Where is our money?’ I was punched so hard I fell into the bathroom and landed next to some imperial leather soap. As I fell, I remembered how my friend, Mephistopheles, used to convince his mum that he was not well and unable to go to school by biting into a bar of soap; he would pretend to faint and the soap would form unwanted mucous in his mouth, that he spewed out.

  When I hit the ground, I reached for the soap and took a bite, and using my tongue I generated enough fluid to turn it into unwanted mucous. I was dragged back into the room and the punches flowed; when I fell back down, I started foaming in the mouth. I was shaking. Growing up in the village, we had a friend called Liombe, who had died from a fainting fit. I had seen Liombe fainting a couple of times and I mimicked his body movements.

  The client kicked me in my ribs but I did not cry out in pain or anything, I just jerked and shook as if I was at death’s door. I heard Vincent saying I was faking it. Of course I was faking it. What else was I left with? The more they kicked, the more I ignored the pain, I just carried on spitting mucous, until the Russian guys asked my attackers to stop.

  ‘The black is dying,’ he said. The guy stopped and slapped me on my face. Knowing that my trick was working I started taking long punctuated breaths, exactly as my maternal grandmother did before she died. I was shaking my legs like a chicken whose throat had been cut, I shook my hands and jerked my body. The Russian guy then said, ‘Come on, let’s take them to the cars.’ I was still shaking and jerking and pretended I couldn’t walk. I was wearing trainers, a black pair of jeans, a white sleeveless top that was now blood-stained and an unzipped Adidas jacket.

  One of the clients helped Alphonse and he limped slowly in front of me. I walked as slow as possible, avoiding any eye contact in case my eyes betrayed my plans. When we got to the bottom of the stairs and outside the house, Alphonse was taken to a Volga that was located to the right of the building. This was my cue. The guy who was holding me had his hands on my jacket but not on me, he had assumed I was too frail to attempt any sudden moves but he was wrong. Alphonse knew what I was going to do and said, ‘Eric, don’t do it.’

  My need for flight overtook all reasoning within me. Pretending to fall, I unzipped my jacket completely, stretching my whole body forwards and my arms backwards. The jacket came off and was left in the guy’s hands. I was free momentarily as I turned and started running towards the left of the building. The driver, who was sitting in his Lada, opened the driver’s door but I instinctively folded my fists and my hands went through the window, smashing the glass and forcing the door back towards the driver. I was derailed briefly but I kept running.

  I could hear the Russian guy shouting to the onlookers who had stopped, ‘Stop him. Stop him. He’s a thief.’ I retorted to the onlookers, ‘I’m not a thief, those guys are drug dealers, call the police.’ In the confusion that followed, the onlookers stood dumbfounded, were they to stop a poor black man who was being chased by drug dealers or help their Russian compatriots stop a thief? I ran towards the main road, traffic was not that bad given that it was a motorway and I ran across with complete disregard to running into cars. I looked behind me and instead of crossing the road, the guys were running towards the Babushkinskaya metro, as if they had read my mind.

  The traffic police officers that were sitting on the other side of the road did not move, they must have noticed me. I ran as fast as I could, I ran down the stairs and onto Babushkinskaya station. The conductor, an old lady, frowned in despair as to what could have possibly happened to me and we faced each other briefly. I had no ticket and said to the conductor, in Russian, that there had been a diplomatic scandal and that I had to go report the incident to the Cameroonian Embassy and that I was being followed by a gang of criminals. I would not see my reflection until I got to Sheremetyevo airport. She looked at me cynically but opened the barriers, just in time too as I could see the guys coming down the stairs. I scrambled on a train to Sheremetyevo airport and sat down; everyone else moved, probably thinking I had been the victim of some vicious skinhead attack.

  The checking-in had already started by the time I reached the airport and Vincent was there with my Zimbabwean passport. He was in the company of another guy who he said was going to help me through the immigration controls and checks. I had given Vincent a hundred dollars for this service.

  At the checkout desk was a young and very beautiful Russian woman; her mouth almost fell off her face when she saw me. She enquired if I had been in an accident then motioned to her colleague and whispered something into his ears; he disappeared and a few seconds later brought some towels and handed them to me. I was then ushered to the airport toilets to clean myself up. My head was covered in little golf ball-sized bumps, my face was blood stained, my jaw swollen on both sides, the taste of soap had seized control of my taste buds, dried blood was all over my T-shirt, all over my jeans, all over my shoes while my arms and legs were swollen. That was when the pain hit me. The adrenaline had taken me to the airport but once I saw my reflection in the mirror, the gravity of the situation hit home—there were Russian men in Moscow actively looking for me. I thought of the fate that awaited Alphonse and was so glad I was finally leaving Russia.

  I cleaned my face and I tried pushing down some of the little mountains on my head. I did the best job I could. When I got back to the checkout desk a flight attendant, who had been called, insisted that there was no way I would be allowed to get onto the flight, that I was unfit and too sick to travel.

  ‘Jejayeeeeeeeee!’ is how my ancestors would shout if you find yourself in a terrible and impossible situation. I cried, I begged, I pleaded but to no avail. I told them only death awaited me if I should be returned to the streets of Moscow. The flight attendant refused and walked away, insisting I needed proper medical attention and they were not prepared to let me onto the aeroplane, thereby putting other passengers at risk. Vincent and his friend had vamoosed. The Rus
sian girl handed back my passport and closed the gates. My fate was sealed. For the first time in my life I contemplated suicide.

  Chapter 13

  Not only was I lost, not only was I stranded, not only was the fact that I didn’t even have a tree whose leaves could be a canopy for the night, I was paranoid and sceptical of everyone with tanned skin and dark hair. Most of all, the worms in my stomach where forming a chorus, they were shouting, ‘We want food. We want food.’

  I had so much anger burgeoning inside of me it had increased my wrinkles. When I sat down on the train everyone else gave me a wide berth. I was waiting for just one skinhead to even gesture in my direction and there was going to be murder. I hated my father’s family even more. I was planning all kinds of evil that I would unleash on them. I couldn’t think, my stomach was eating itself slowly, the train was even slower and it took an age before getting into Belorusskaya. From there I took the brown line three stops down to Kiyevskaya.

  I exited the train station, crossed the road and went past McDonald’s. My hunger got worse. I carried on walking, past the offices and stopped just before the road veers left towards the diplomatic corpus, then I walked straight into an attaché of the British Embassy. There was a girl at the reception and other workers at the back who were all visible. I remember her name: Sophie. She asked how she could be of help. I narrated to her the incident of the previous night and how I had managed to escape. I told her I was the victim of a drug deal that went wrong, I was hoping now that I was a Zimbabwean and that I could persuade my former colonial masters to come to my aid. She took notes, not believing what she was hearing. I knew Prime Minister Tony Blair and President Mugabe of Zimbabwe were still friends at this time, and I was hoping this entente cordiale would work in my favour and the British Embassy could hide me or help me leave the country. I was desperate and did whatever came to mind. I told Sophie I was extremely hungry; that was the first time I ever ate tiny sausages in beans and tomato sauce with one potato here another potato there. She wrote everything down but, in the end, said that while she would create a file for me, as far as she was concerned, I had to escalate the matter with my own embassy, the Zimbabwean embassy. Yeah right.

  Alphonse had introduced me to a black American who worked at the American Embassy. When I knocked on his door, his wife opened and said he was still at work but she allowed me to wait for him to come home. She offered me sandwiches and hot chocolate, and I munched on them as if there was no tomorrow. When the husband arrived home, I told him the same story I had told Sophie earlier in the day. The truth is I knew all this was futile, I knew that I would only be referred to the Zimbabwean Embassy. I just wanted a place to rest, to sleep, to contemplate—at least for one night. He wrote down everything I said and at around 8 p.m. apologised and said I must leave his house.

  As I walked back towards Kiyevskaya underground station, I thought about ending my life. Who would know? Who would care? As I got closer to the station, the thought of suicide increased, it was as if the gods had decided my fate. I had heard of people committing suicide by jumping in front of a train. Most of the newspaper reports said that these people where intoxicated by homemade vodka. In fact, many years later, while I worked as head of security in HMV in Croydon, a very good friend of mine who worked for Virgin Media, Richard Asamoah (RIP), committed suicide by jumping on the fast train tracks in Streatham, south east London. If I was going to be successful in this mission, I needed a fast train, not one that slowed down as it approached the station. I wanted suicide—not a broken bone or an injury that meant I was fluctuating between death and consciousness.

  I stood on the Kiyevskaya station platform and waited. I had made up my mind, I had given up, I had reached the bottom of Dante’s Peak—this was it for me. My body was with me but my spirit was gone. I felt that gnashing of teeth; death was whispering to me, daring me to jump. I had lost all that made me human, I was a ghost, I was floating, I was flying. I could see my adopted sister Monjowa, as I remember her, her beautiful smile, her bubbly personality. Sister Monjowa had a charming personality. I was in pain for Sister Monjowa who was placed under pressure by my father’s family to reject me that day at the Paul’s chambers. I knew she loved me. As I stood on the platform about to end my life, how I wished she could hug me and tell me all will be fine. I could feel my tears sinking inside of me. I was a man: we don’t cry.

  As the train approached the station, I could see my mother’s face. She had more wrinkles than usual, she looked sad and she was saying something but the noise meant I couldn’t hear her. All I could hear was the loudspeaker on the platform saying, ‘This train will not be stopping at this station.’ It was now or never, my time had come: this was the day the gods had written, today my name was to be erased from the book of life forever, today I was ending my little sojourn here on earth. If in life I didn’t have the chance to question my father, I was ready to join him in the land of the spirits and ask him to right the wrongs his family had brought onto the shoulders of my mother and I.

  As the train approached I could hear the tracks squeaking, then I heard my mother’s voice again. She was shouting my name, ‘Ngalle! Ngalle!’ I smiled, for this is the name my mother calls me when I have done something good. She said, ‘If you kill yourself, I will wake you up and beat you until you die again.’ That’s my mother for you: Iya Sarah Efeti Kange.

  *

  I remember one afternoon my mother was tired from work – I nagged and nagged her for food, she lost her temper and hit me with her workbag. She had forgotten that in her bag was a large glass bottle, and the impact on my right elbow meant the bottle broke and cut deep into my flesh and blood spewed out. My mother cried, she slapped me on the back of my head saying, ‘Look at what you’ve made me do? Your stubbornness is going to kill me one of these days.’ In tears, she hailed a taxi and carried me to the hospital.

  *

  As the train got even closer, I remembered one of my mother’s stories about a farmer’s son who was warned never to sigh or show any signs of tiredness when transporting cotton from his master’s farm to his master’s shed. Unfortunately for him, the load was too heavy for a twelve-year-old boy and when he reached the top of the hill, he sighed and sat down on the fallen branch of a buma tree and fell asleep. In his sleep he saw the devil and his friend Jukuke, who came and took him away; his parents never saw him again. This story never made any sense to me until recently, when I asked my mother about it; she said it was a story that was told by the French to the English Cameroonians to ensure they worked nonstop at the plantations whilst the French reaped the benefits. This was my mother’s understanding of French colonial Cameroon.

  I could see the light at the end of the tunnel and it was that of a fast approaching train. I lifted my heels and leaned forward. I saw my uncles and aunties from my mother’s side of the family, all dead now. They were waving at me to cross over to the other side. With their waves and smiles, I decided to join them. Suddenly I heard this loud shout and a tug on my shoulders, ‘Young man, have you gone mad? Are you trying to kill yourself?’ I looked up and the train went past at full speed. I had missed my chance; today was not the day the gods had set out for me, my name was not on the list after all. It suddenly dawned on me that I had tried committing suicide.

  The voice belonged to Sasha, a young officer in charge of security at both Kiyevskaya underground and overground stations. She backed me against the marble wall and asked to see some identification. She spoke English with grace and purity. She reminded me of the officer who had stopped us at Mineralnye Vody, the buffer zone between Russia and Chechnya in southern Russia.

  Sasha looked like Demi Moore in the film Ghost, only more beautiful. An angel had saved me. She had short, curly, dark hair that just graced the top part of her ears. Her eyes were hazel and her lashes long and thick. She smiled and spoke at the same time. She had thick full lips unlike any other Russian woman I had seen.

  When she took my hand hers were so soft. The
only other hands I have touched as soft are those of Edgar Davids, the Dutch footballer when he played for Tottenham (at the time I worked as a security guard for Lilywhites in Piccadilly Circus, and upon recognising Edgar we arranged amongst the security team to trigger the alarm when he left the store. He was stunned but when we told him it was a prank, he laughed and shook our hands and took pictures with us. His hands were unnaturally soft for a man).

  Sasha’s uniform fitted perfectly in all the right places and she looked more like a pilot than a police officer. She told me her parents had been stationed in East Berlin but she had returned to Voronezh, her parents’ village, just before the collapse of the Berlin Wall. She spent two years in the police academy in Moscow, backed up by her flare for languages—she spoke French, Russian, English, German and Polish—and at the age of twenty-three, she was relocated to Moscow and stationed at Kiyevskaya station as head of security. As she said all these things, in my head I was thinking that she was a spy.

  She took me to the overground section of Kiyevskaya station, where her office was based, and introduced me to her colleagues saying, ‘This is Mr Thambvani from Zimbabwe.’ She proceeded to tell them how she had saved me from committing suicide. They laughed in unison when one of them said, ‘A black man committing suicide in the train station? Things must be really bad in Africa.’

  Sasha gave me tea and bread with assorted meat, she also gave me a sleeping bag and showed me a bench inside the overground station where I could rest. The crowd didn’t bother me; the haggard looks of the many different passengers, awaiting relatives, departing, arriving, their sight did not bother me. The fact that I had attempted suicide did not plague me—my mind was clean as a whistle. I was off to the land of nod. I slept soundly, and not a single dream came my way.