Safrat coughed, the smoke from Janet’s cigarette still burning her throat. “My brother said I was talking in my sleep last night,” she said. “In English.”
“I only speak in English,” Victoria said pointedly.
“But were you talking? In your sleep?”
Before Victoria could speak Janet said, “I think I was. When I woke this morning all the people in my room were looking at me.”
Victoria raised an eyebrow and looked Safrat in the eye, ignoring Janet. “Yes,” she said. “He said I was talking.”
“What is this, what is going on?” Adegoke asked. The foreman, a tall, thin man in his twenties, had stepped out of the station as he did every morning, brandishing his wrist with the gold watch at the women. “You are all nearly late. What is this, palm wine and hemp? Is this going to help you do careful work?”
Normally this was the cue for the women to put these things away and file into their telepresence booths, but today Victoria turned to face Adegoke directly. “Your machines are making us sick,” she said. “Why should we go in?”
Adegoke put his hands on his hips. “What are you saying?” he asked. “There is nothing wrong with the machines. They are brand new.”
“Ask Safrat,” Victoria said, pointing to her and stepping aside. “She knows what’s going on.”
“Safrat?” Adegoke asked. “Are you causing trouble here?”
The air was gone from her lungs; if she lost this job Safrat would have to give Tinubu everything she had saved so far as compensation, and his take from the next job would be higher.
“Well?” Adegoke said. “Can’t you speak?”
“I was—I was just noticing many of us seem to be talking in our sleep,” she said, keeping her eyes on Adegoke’s leather shoes.
“That is normal enough,” Adegoke said. “When you don’t work hard enough in the day your mind keeps going at night.”
“We are all talking in English,” Safrat said.
“And you think this is the booths? No, it is impossible. The wall of fire prevents anything like that.”
The women all looked at him curiously.
“The wall of fire,” Adegoke said. He waved his hands around his head. “When the World Bank men built this station, they built it with a wall of fire around it. It keeps things from coming back to you, to the booths. All right?” There was silence. “All right. Now get to your stations and get to work.”
Safrat went to her booth in silence, sat down and hooked herself up to the machine. As soon as the drugs had relaxed her muscles she got to work, controlling a forklift loading cartons onto and off of a ship; the usual rhythm eluded her, though, and she was glad to have had some of Janet’s cigarette. The work went slowly, and by the end of the day she was too exhausted to think about anything but sleep.
Paul was not waiting for her at the end of her shift: Tinubu must have found him a job, she thought, or at least an errand. She carefully made her way home, forcing herself to concentrate on her surroundings, and finally settled down on the steps of her apartment building to wait for her brother.
She awoke to find him standing over her, two bowls of fufu in hand; gratefully she took one, began to eat it in silence.
“How did you do today?” she asked after a few minutes.
Paul smiled. “Tinubu gave me a job, in the Mile Twelve market.”
“A job? For how long?”
“Just for today.” He must have noticed the look that crossed her face, because he quickly added, “But he said he’d get me more, soon.”
“How much did you make?” Safrat asked.
“Two thousand naira.”
“How much did you keep?”
Paul looked away. “Two hundred.”
She shook her head. “You’d have made more selling water.”
“But he said—he promised if I did a good job selling he would find me a regular job—”
“Selling what?”
“Watches today, but it doesn’t matter. . . . Safrat?”
“What?” She blinked, feeling as though some force was pulling her off balance. “What did you say?”
“I asked if you were all right,” Paul said. He leaned close. Glancing away, Safrat saw that almost all of her fufu had been eaten. Had she been asleep, or just away from home? “You were talking again, in English. When I told you about the watches Tinubu gave me to sell you started to say something about gold Rolexes.”
“In English?”
“Yes.”
Safrat frowned, shook her head. “Do you have any paper? For writing, I mean?”
Paul nodded.
“Next time you hear me talking like that, write down everything I say. Exactly the words I say, all right?”
Nodding again, Paul said “All right. What do you think this is?”
“I don’t know,” Safrat said.
The next morning Safrat went back to work, clutching the piece of paper on which Paul had written her nighttime speech. Victoria was already there when she arrived, passing the day’s jug of palm wine around with her friends, and after a moment Safrat screwed up the courage to approach her.
“What is it?” Victoria asked, eyeing her suspiciously.
“What your husband said you were saying, in the night,” Safrat asked, thrusting the paper at her. “Was it anything like this?”
Victoria’s eyes narrowed as she took the paper, squinting at Paul’s rough letters. “I don’t know,” she said. “I suppose.”
“What is this?” Adegoke asked, snatching the paper from Victoria’s hand.
Victoria threw Safrat a look of fury: to the foreman she was just another worker, and she did not like to be reminded of that. “It’s Safrat’s,” she said. “She brought it.”
“Safrat, I told you—”
“It’s nothing,” Safrat said. She reached out for the paper in Adegoke’s hands, but stopped short of touching it. “Please. It’s nothing.”
“I will keep this,” Adegoke said. “But you all should get to work.”
The other women glared at Safrat as they passed into the station, their wine and India hemp unfinished. There would be nothing to do but sit in their booths until the shift began, but nobody, not even Victoria, was willing to argue with the foreman.
That day Safrat was given her least favourite job, clearing, cleaning and stacking dishes at an automatic restaurant somewhere; it was nervous work, too delicate to ever establish a rhythm, and the unchanging perspective made her feel as though she was trapped in a box. The day crawled by, plate by plate and glass by glass, until finally the amber warning lit. She used the last half-hour of her shift to check the machine she was controlling for wear or glitches, then disconnected as soon as the red warning came up. Today she was wide awake. She looked around at the others emerging dazed from their booths, heard murmured English on their lips. She frowned, saw Paul waiting for her outside.
“No work today?” she asked when she joined him.
He shook his head. “Tinubu says tomorrow.”
“You’ll need to,” Safrat said. “We have to hire a babalawo.”
“Safrat—”
“This thing I have, the other women have it too. Some of them, anyway.”
“Did you talk to the foreman?”
She glanced back at the station. “He wouldn’t listen. Not to me.”
Paul sighed. “And the other girls? Will they help pay?” Safrat shook her head. “So why should we do it? Let one of the rich ones do it.” By rich he meant someone like Victoria: rich enough to have her own room, to live in a neighbourhood with running water, to take the danfo to work.
“I think something is wrong here, very wrong,” Safrat said. “I’m afraid to wait.”
After a moment Paul nodded, said “I’ll ask Tinubu to find us a babalawo.”
“No. Tinubu can’t think I’m causing trouble at my job. Didn�
�t our uncle Olisa have a cousin in the city who was a babalawo?”
“Yes, I think,” Paul said. “I’ll see if I can find him tonight. Is that all right?”
Safrat nodded. “I hope so.”
Adegoke watched the women go, looked down at the torn piece of newspaper on his desk. He had been puzzling over it all day, trying to understand what the girl Safrat had written there. Her writing was very poor, but he could make out the numbers: very large numbers, it seemed, and what he thought was the word dollars. A treasure, he thought, she had been speaking in her sleep of a treasure: he had heard stories like this, when he had been a boy in his grandfather’s village east of Uyo. Men who had died over money might live on as eggun, unable to rest until the treasure was found. He thought that was what the message was saying, that the spirit was inviting him to find the fortune, but at the end it turned into nonsense, just a string of numbers. He picked up a pen and copied what he could read of the writing onto a clean piece of paper, hoping it might make more sense.
His hand slowed as he wrote the last sequence of numbers. As he copied them he recognized the first three as the area code for Lagos. Adegoke counted out the remaining numbers, nodded.
He took a deep breath, picked up the phone and began dialling.
“Sit down,” the babalawo said.
Safrat looked around the room: it was scattered with scraps of paper and stubs of candles, wooden bowls and drums and shells of kola nuts. To her surprise the babalawo did not live much better than she did; in his own room, it was true, but still in Isale Eko. She brushed a spot on the floor bare of nut shells and sat down cross-legged.
“My brother says you fear sorcery,” the babalawo said. By brother he meant Paul: in the country there were no aunts or uncles, just mothers and fathers.
“Yes,” Safrat said. “For the last few nights, I’ve been—”
The babalawo held up a finger. “Shh,” he said, then nodded twice, slowly. He unslung the bag from his shoulder and drew out a broad, shallow wooden tray and a small plastic bag full of grey powder. He put the bowl on the floor, opened the bag and emptied the powder into the tray, smoothing it with the back of his hand until it was perfectly flat and featureless. Then he reached into the bag again and drew out eight palm nuts, each with tiny holes drilled into one side. He closed his hands together, shook the palm nuts inside and then tossed them into the tray; some fell with the blank side up, some with the drilled, and he drew lines from one to another in the powder, following some pattern or procedure she could not follow.
“Elegua and Ogunn are present,” the babalawo said. “A road has been opened, or a door. Something that should not have been opened. Does this mean anything to you?”
Safrat frowned. “I don’t know.”
The babalawo shook his head quickly. “Iron is involved. A car, a bridge—”
“A machine?” Safrat asked.
Frowning, the babalawo ran his finger along the path he had drawn between the nuts. “Perhaps,” he said. “Yes, I think so, yes. Oggun is concerned with a machine.”
“Is that what’s wrong with me?” Safrat said. “Is the machine broken?”
“Broken? No.” The babalawo scratched his head, squinting at the palm nuts before him. “There is sorcery in the machine. An eggun, or the work of another babalawo.”
“Can you help?”
“Perhaps.” The babalawo scooped up the palm nuts, put them back in his shoulder bag and then emptied the grey powder back into its bag. Finally he put the wooden tray back into his shoulder bag and stood up. “I will need to see the machine.”
Safrat sighed as she got to her feet. “How much will that cost?”
The babalawo shrugged. “We will see,” he said.
Adegoke looked down at the piece of paper, then up at the building in front of him. He had the right address, but he was puzzled: this was a government building, not the sort of place he’d expect to find a fortune. He had been just as surprised, of course, when the number Safrat had written down had been a real phone number. He went into the air-conditioned lobby, suddenly aware of the sweat under his striped shirt, made his way quickly to the building directory. Number thirty-four, he’d been told: he buzzed for it and waited.
“Who is it?” a voice said. It sounded like the same one as on the phone.
“We spoke this evening,” Adegoke said. He cleared his throat. “I brought what you asked.”
“Already?” There was a moment’s silence. “You have it with you?”
“Yes.”
“All right. Come up to the fifth floor.”
Adegoke looked over his shoulder, then made his way to the elevator. His palms were sweaty despite the cool air, and he felt like everyone could see his wallet bulging in his back pocket. He should have worn his money belt instead. He had bought it when he first came to Lagos, having heard so many stories about how dangerous the city was, but had not worn it long: it was too inconvenient, and he liked having his money easy at hand.
Finally the elevator doors re-opened and he stepped out onto the fifth floor. He was in a waiting room, with a sofa and chairs, a receptionist’s desk. “Hello?” he called. He heard no response, so he sat down on the sofa.
A few minutes passed before he heard footsteps coming down from the hallway behind the receptionist’s desk. He got to his feet, swallowed, and patted the bulge in his back pocket. A well-dressed man with glasses, Igbo or maybe Yoruba, appeared behind the desk. “Hello,” he said in BBC-accented English, extending a hand to Adegoke. “We spoke on the phone?”
Adegoke nodded, took the man’s hand. “Yes,” he said.
“Good. You have the money? A thousand dollars US?”
“Yes.”
“Very good. With that I can get the account unfrozen—it should take about a week. When that’s done I’ll call you and—”
“What do you mean, a week?” Adegoke said. “Do you think I’m going to give you a thousand dollars and just walk away?”
“These things take time,” the man said. “But I promise you, your investment will be amply—”
Adegoke reached out and seized the man’s wrist, glaring at him. “Are you trying to scam me?” he asked. “Do you know who I am? I am Adegoke Omojoro. My uncle is Michael Oyelolo.” The man’s face went pale at the mention of his uncle’s name, and Adegoke nodded. “That’s right. So I want to see my share today, or I take my money and I walk.”
The man pulled his hand away, reached up to pull at the knot of his tie. “Stay here just a minute, please,” he said.
Crossing his arms, Adegoke watched the man go. He was glad he had thought to mention his uncle: Michael was the reason he had come to Lagos, the man who had gotten him his job, and his name opened doors. Adegoke smiled to himself, waiting for the man to return.
He didn’t. Instead a taller man came down the hall, perfectly dressed in a dark suit. Adegoke’s eyes widened, his arms dropping to his side.
“Hello, nephew,” his uncle said.
Safrat had thought she would need to find a way to sneak Paul and the babalawo into the station, but the foreman was not there: only the night shift women were in their booths, and they saw nothing.
“What are you going to do?” Paul asked the babalawo.
“She needs to confront the spirit that is tormenting her,” the babalawo said. “If it is coming through the machine, then that is how she must face it.”
Leading the others down the station, Safrat found an empty booth. “I can do it from here,” she said, “but once I’m in the booth I don’t have any control over what job they give me.”
The babalawo unshouldered his bag, started to root around in it. After a minute he drew out a small plastic pouch filled with a coarse brown-and-white powder. “This is a medicine we use to face the eggun,” he said. “If you swallow this and drink palm wine you will be half-sober and half-drunk, half-dreaming and half-awa
ke. That is the only way to see the spirits directly.”
Safrat took the bag, settled into the booth. “I won’t need the wine, I think,” she said. She hooked herself up and opened the pouch, felt the acrid tang of the powder burning her nostrils. “How much do I have to take?”
“Wet your fingertip, then touch the powder and run it over your gums,” the babalawo said. She did as he had instructed, feeling a tingle run through her and then a buzz as the medicine started its work; just then the drugs started to flow into her from the hookup and she went limp.
At first it appeared the medicine had not changed anything: the vision feed of a sewer-snake faded into her view, twitching as she flexed the feedback motors. After a few moments, though, she noticed a strange double vision, both the sensory feed she was getting from the snake and something like a chain or a rope running down to it. With a prayer to Elegua, opener of paths, she willed herself up the chain.
The sewer-snake’s vision faded from view as she rose, and after a moment she found herself in a space like a cattle pen. She saw herself there, or rather a thing that was labelled SAFRAT: it did not look like a person but a bundle of organs, a beating heart and lungs breathing in and out, hanging in the air. The chain led back down to the snake from it, and all around her were other bundles like it, labelled with the names of all the night shift women. Each had chains leading down from them to their jobs, vacuums or forklifts or dishwashers, but Safrat saw they had other chains leading into and out of them as well. Those leading out went in all directions, but the ones leading in all came from above. She tried to focus on one of the chains that ran down to the women, but instead moved herself into its path.
G01D R0LEX W@TCHES ONLY $30 We represent a w@tch distributor that has overstocked on g01d R0lexes. They have authorized us to offer
Safrat pulled herself away. Paul had mentioned her talking about watches; this chain had to be how the eggun was possessing her—possessing them all. She felt her heart racing, saw it echoed in the pulsing heart within the floating bundle labelled SAFRAT. The drugs normally kept her heart even, no matter how hard she had been working, but the babalawo’s medicine had interfered with that. She made herself rest until she saw it slowing and then focused on the chain once more, following it upward.
Irregular Verbs Page 19
