Rosewater

by Tade Thompson

  ‘Phone, messages.’

  I sit. I close my eyes. I listen.

  My accountant wants to discuss my taxes.

  The National Research Laboratory calls. They want three days of my time. They will pay. I will ignore them. I have worked for them before and I don’t want to anymore. They’re in Lagos and they want to know about sensitives. I hate going to Lagos and the NRL scientists stare at me as if they want to open my brain while I’m still alive.

  A message from Aminat, her speech like musical chairs. ‘Hello, Kaaro. I know, I know, we were only going through the motions. But I find myself thinking of you and I wonder what … (laughter) Oh, God, this is so … Okay, call back. Or not. I’m not as needy as I sound.’

  She has me smiling.

  A television producer who has been hounding me for two years offers me money and fame if I will appear on Nigeria is Talented.

  ‘Hello, Gryphon.’

  I first think the person has left me a message on my phone but that’s not it. I open my eyes and a shoal of mackerel, oku eko, fly past my face. Miles still plays the horn, but it sounds distant. I am in a place of shifting colours and shadows. I look down at my hands and they are gone. Instead, there are feathers.

  This shit hasn’t happened to me in a long time. I am in the xenosphere-asleep and in the xenosphere. It’s easy to see how. Warm bath, sleep deprivation.

  ‘Gryphon.’

  ‘Who are you?’ I ask, against all of my training.

  ‘I like your plumage,’ she says. ‘Can you fly?’

  ‘Anybody can fly here. Who are you?’

  The fish are beginning to bother me. The air has the consistency of water. I hear an underhum of voices and thoughts of others at low signal. I cannot see this woman although I hear her clearly. No self image?

  ‘I am an individual,’ she says. ‘I am a one.’

  ‘Yes, but what’s your name? Ki l’oruko e?’

  ‘Must I have one?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She is silent for a time. I try to scratch my face, but I tickle myself with feathers instead. I stretch my wings and it feels better.

  ‘My name is Molara,’ she says.

  I snap up one of the mackerels in my beak and break its back, then drop it to the floor between my forepaws. It twitches and lies still.

  ‘Show yourself,’ I say.

  ‘I don’t know how,’ said Molara.

  Definitely a wild strain. I speak, echoing the words of my instructor.

  ‘Think of something you love, something you hate, something you fear, something disgusting or beautiful. Something you find impressive.’

  Fire trucks of all sizes and descriptions stream past, none of their lights flashing. Some of them are toys. Behind each one a red masquerade runs, tiny Lilliputians for the toys, giants for the full-sized.

  A butterfly flowers in front of my face. It unfolds lengthwise with a fourteen-foot wingspan. It is black and blue and its wings move in a majestic slow beat.

  Then I wake, jarred out of the xenosphere at the same time by the phone. I am confused for a moment. The phone stops, then starts again.

  ‘Yes?’ I say.

  ‘You’re meant to be here,’ says Bola. ‘You sound hung-over. Are you hung-over?’

  ‘Oh, shit.’

  I am monstrously late.

  My grooming is sloppy, but better than the metalheads’ so I’m fine. The customers surround the bank like ants feeding on a child’s dropped lollypop. The day after the Opening is always extra busy because people want to see their doctors and get laboratory tests to confirm their healing. The Rosewater medical community is not very robust and comes alive only at this time of year. One would think they would be out of practice.

  The firewall is up without me. They are reading pages of Tolstoy. I sit in the break room and rub ketoconazole cream on my exposed skin to keep me out of the xenosphere. It’s the busiest banking day of the year and I do not want to fatigue myself further. I drink horrendous instant coffee by the cupful to keep myself awake, a benched striker.

  INTERLUDE: MISSION 1

  Lagos, 2060

  It is unbearably hot, but still I wait. I feel rivulets of sweat dripping down my back, in between my butt cheeks. I can just about breathe, but the close, oxygen poor air threatens to make me black out. There are moth balls here waxing aromatic in my nose and mind, whispering fact and fiction about my wife. I can barely keep still. The clothes in the closet caress my back. Down around my feet there are shoes crowding, jostling for space. A dangling belt tinkles with my movements, made loud by the silence. My left hand rests against the warm wood of the door, my right by my side, weighed down by the knife.

  I wait.

  Any moment now.

  I hear a door slam from elsewhere in the house. I hear the beep as the door autolocks, and giggling that makes me see red. Literally, red flashes across my eyes in the darkness, like a surge of blood, just for a second. I can feel my heart driving the blood through my body, demanding that I move. I wait.

  There are bumps and mistakes as two people wind their way through my house, through our house. The door to the room swings open. I imagine them standing there kissing. I hear the sucking sound of their lips. My fist tightens on the handle of the blade.

  ‘Stop,’ says my wife, but she is laughing.

  ‘Okay. No means no,’ says the man, mock seriousness.

  Her perfume reaches me now. I hear the adulterous rustle of her clothes falling to the carpet.

  ‘Really?’ says my wife.

  Now the blood sings in my ears. My head feels larger and my mouth is completely dry. I feel my scrotum constrict.

  Lydia, Lydia, Lydia.

  I do not know if I am thinking this or if her lover is repeating her name over, but her first gasp of pleasure is my cue.

  I break out of the closet. The first few seconds are free because they do not hear me in their passion. I am at the bed. She is naked, supine, legs apart. He is between those legs, his hand buried in her sex, his neck beginning to turn.

  I cut him first, side of the neck, surgical. The blood spurts, but I ignore it and shove him by the right arm. Lydia screams. Her eyes are rather comical circles, the whites larger than I have ever seen. For spite I drive the knife into her left eye, withdraw it, then stab her throat. I look at the man who is holding his neck and wetting the carpet with his blood. His shirt is soaked. His movements lack direction and he will die soon. I turn back to Lydia who is gurgling now.

  I take my time to —

  I vomit.

  I fall to all fours and spew yellow-green slime. ‘Oh, fuck. He did it,’ I say.

  Ohfuckohfuckohfuck.

  ‘Are you sure?’ asks Femi. ‘No hair, no DNA, no physical evidence.’

  I cough. ‘Holy fucking shit, Femi, if I say he did it, he did it. He did it, okay? I fucking did it.’

  ‘Kaaro, calm down.’ She places a hand on my back, but I shrug it off.

  ‘I did it. I bought a Gene-grub and let it feed on me, then I let it loose in the room after I killed them both. An elegant drone hack removed traces of me from surveillance cameras. I paid the staff of the hotel for their blindness. I drowned them in a river of foreign currency. They will go to their deathbeds denying that they ever set eyes on me.’

  I dry heave.

  ‘Kaaro, you mean him, right?’

  Oh fuck, the revulsion. Oh, fuck. Ori mi. Help! Lydia! Lydia!

  Why the fuck does it feel like … Why am I guilty?

  ‘Help me,’ I say. ‘Help me.’

  I crawl into a corner. I cannot stop shaking; I cannot stop seeing my arm rise and fall, the wide eyes, the gurgling …

  ‘Over-identification,’ says the doctor. I forget his name, I do not like him.

  Three months since the assignment. I am sequestered, back in from the cold, as they say. They stick me in a mental joint, for field agents who go over the edge, and I most definitely went over the edge.

  He continues. ‘You identi
fied too strongly with your subject. Ego boundaries blurred and you lost the integrity of your self. You thought you were him.’

  ‘I know that here,’ I say, pointing to my head, ‘but not in my heart.’

  He laughs. ‘That’s an improvement over when you first arrived. If it’s in your head, your heart will follow.’

  I am not so sure. I am not so sure who I am. I mean, I know I am Kaaro, and I work for S45 and I was trained by Professor Ileri and Rosewater is my home and … but … but I remember how Lydia sighs after fucking just before she demands that I get her a glass of water. I remember sliding the ring on her finger the day we get married. The biodome is a mixture of cerulean and vanilla in the background of our wedding photos. I remember her cooking. I remember opening a sauce pan to see the stew bubbling, gurgling, like the froth from her neck when I …

  I feel the tear roll down my cheek. ‘Doc, I miss her,’ I say. ‘If I never met her, why do I miss her so much? Why do I feel guilty?’

  ‘Maybe you feel guilty because there is someone you, Kaaro, have an unconscious desire to kill. The murder of Lydia fulfilled that desire. Down under the surface of our mind lie the demons and gremlins of our base instincts, struggling for expression.’ He checks the screen in front of him and asks, ‘Have you been taking the meds?’

  No. ‘Yes.’ No. They make me impotent.

  ‘This is the third antidepressant we’ve tried. I’ve never seen such a strong reaction. Ileri thinks it’s because your ability is more acute than any other.’

  ‘My wife is dead. I should be sad, right?’ I ask.

  ‘Kaaro, you have never been married. You never even met Lydia. You spent time in her homicidal husband’s mind. The experience was so intense that you can’t disconnect. The pills aren’t working. I’d like to try something else.’

  He slides over consent forms for shock treatment.

  I walk out of the building.

  I really want a cigarette, even though I have not smoked for a long time. I just feel like I should be smoking.

  Nine months. I have lost enough time to have a baby.

  A drone descends to read my identity, then flies off.

  I get a phone call. It’s Femi, so I ignore it. Great service to your country blah blah put the man in jail for life blah blah sacrifice, sacrifice, sacrifice, blah blah.

  I cannot remember everything that happened, gaps in my memory. A part of me thinks perhaps there is a reason for the gaps and that I really do not want to know.

  There’s a sorrow in me, though. I do not know why, but I feel it.

  Whatever they pay me is not enough.

  I look for a taxi.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Rosewater: 2066

  When I arrive home that evening there is a reanimate at my front door, the second one of the night. I encounter the first on the 18.15 Counter-clockwise to Atewo.

  There is a curfew enforced by the Nigerian Army Special Detachment on the week after the Opening. It is strictly an execution detail which exists for the sole purpose of killing reanimates and disposing of the remains. Everybody must be home by 1930 hours or risk being shot or electrocuted or burned.

  I am slightly late and sprint to the platform. I’m breathing heavy when I enter the carriage, just making it before the train starts moving. I am not tired since I only worked a half-day, but my plan is to sit and gather in peace to myself. The banking district is in Alaba. There is only one other stop, Ilu-be, before I disembark in Atewo. The trip takes twenty minutes when the ganglion is working.

  A child walks down the aisle selling water, oranges, nuts, soda, and some other shit. She balances herself by having one hand on the grab rails on the seats. I don’t buy anything. There are four other people in the car. One man stands, back to me, facing a window and wearing a grey suit. His head is bowed. It’s an old carriage. The seats are covered in brown faux leather. It smells stale, but not bad. Six years ago we had old trains imported from Italy. I suspect they were WWII-era but they were replaced with these new ones which look better but are rather basic, like the template from which all modern trains are made rather than a unique entity in of itself.

  Above the luggage racks there are posters on the side panels, mostly showing Jack Jacques. He gives us the thumbs-up and smiles, shooting the whiteness of his teeth at us. Rosewater’s status in Nigeria is dubious, but the mayor is the head of what passes for local government. I have met him; he’s a narcissist, demagogue, and a sycophant to the President. Utopicity is ignored, the unspoken city. The House of Assemblies declared that it is not a legal entity seven years ago. We like to pretend it’s a natural formation like a hill or Olumo Rock down in Abeokuta. There are also concert posters and fly-posted religious adverts. The seats are uncomfortable, but it is possible to doze off, which I do. I come to with a start because I hear snarling.

  The suited man who had his back to me now stands over a couple.

  His right flank is to me, face in shadow from the overhead light. The woman is hitting at him with a rolled up magazine, ineffective, laughable even. With her other hand she cradles her man who appears to be hurt. The growling man sways with the vibrations of the train.

  ‘Hey!’ I say, and stand up.

  Suit man looks towards me. His head is abnormally long and one of his eyeballs is missing, an empty socket gaping like a toothless second mouth. The head is also flattened in a way that accounts for the length, looking like it has been incompletely crushed. The nose is twisted as if the bottom half of his face wants to go one way while the top chooses the other. His left ear hangs by a thin thread of human tissue. Yet with all this there is no bleeding and he is not in obvious pain.

  He is three, four feet away, and he charges towards me. Other than the grey suit, he’s wearing white gloves, a fake carnation in his lapel, white shirt, blue tie. I wait for him, breathing out, then side-kick him in the middle of his chest, aiming for the blue strip. It’s a good hit. I hear the expulsion of foetid air from his lips. He is still standing so I hit him again with the other foot. He staggers back, hits the centre post which rings dully. A part of my mind notes the couple leaving the carriage. I do not blame them.

  The reanimate bounces back at me. I have nothing to kill him with. I do not like to fight. In fact, I’m a coward. When I used to steal for a living I was a sneak thief, not a robber, and I ran away from every physical confrontation until S45 recruited me. Basic hand-to-hand training based loosely on karate and krav maga changed my view on violence very little. I’m not good at it, but I’m okay. I can’t fight multiple opponents like a kung-fu flick, but one reanimate I can handle. Maybe.

  The overhead lights flicker. I grab a hanging strap with each hand, lift myself up and kick him in the head. He falls but gets up again. I hope the couple has raised the alarm, but I think not. The train would have braked, although the driver could have just left his cabin and abandoned the train.

  The reanimate swings at me. I raise both forearms like I’ve been taught, catch his clumsy blows. He bleeds where I’ve broken his face, and there is some pink fluid leaking from his left ear. I jab at his face and belly, trying to buy time and control my breathing and fear. There is nothing in here, in this carriage, to use even as a non-lethal weapon. The windows are double-glazed shatterproof glass. I wonder if I should just run, then wait for the authorities to deal with him at the next station, but I’m in an end-car and he’s blocking the exit.

  The train hits a bend and the two of us are flung right. I grab hold of a seat and just stumble, but the reanimate goes flying into a window. The window does not break, but there is a smear of blood at the impact point. A two-inch square sticker says, ‘Are YOU ready for JESUS?’

  The reanimate is lying across two seats. The middle armrest must be digging into his midsection as he thrashes about to reorient himself. His head is where tall people usually calculate leg room. This is a great opportunity to run away.

  His hand is in an awkward position hung over the next seat. I stamp on the s
houlder joint where the arm meets torso. I feel it give. He falls further, the limb flapping uselessly. He does not cry out.

  He works his way up with one arm. He still tries to hit me with the working arm, but it’s rather pathetic and perhaps funny. I do not fear him anymore. I punch him again-a straight right with my all my weight from the hip. His head rocks and I feel the counter force in my fist, but he’s still standing. Why can I not knock this fucker unconscious?

  I keep punching and kicking till his face is a mess of red and brown. I am still striking him when a man with three stripes on his army green shirt walks into the carriage and puts a bullet in the reanimate’s head.

  ‘It says here you’re licensed to carry a concealed weapon,’ says the Special Detachment guy.

  ‘Yes,’ I say.

  He waits, expectant.

  ‘I can carry a gun. I do not. I choose not to.’

  We are in the station master’s office at Atewo. It is a quick debrief. It is not yet curfew, but the SD units are gathering. This sergeant was on the train and saw the attacked couple. The driver is a bit annoyed that we have soiled his train with blood spatter.

  There is a glass of something fizzy and orange in front of me. The sergeant has a sick mother at home and a disabled older brother. He joined the army to cater, to help. I get this information quickly, in seconds. The fight, the exertion, it has all made me sweat off the antifungal cream. I am open to the world. Or, open to the mind of the world. I just want to go home. This soldier boy thinks he’s helping, but he’s not.

  ‘I’ll have to file a report and this will go to your supervisor,’ he says. He inclines his head like he’s apologetic, like he feels bad about it.

  I shrug. ‘Can I go?’

  ‘I’ve uploaded a curfew pass on your implant just to ensure you get home on time without harassment from other SD units.’

  ‘Thanks.’