by Anne Simpson
She opened her purse, but when she found some cash he waved it away.
Let me pay, he said.
She wanted to say something about how grateful she was that he was taking her to Imeko. Even if he drove her to the border, there would come a time, soon, when they’d have to say goodbye.
My grandmother used to tell me stories, said Felix. My mother’s mother.
About what?
One was about the creation of the world, about a length of rope leading from heaven to earth, and a man who was given the task of going down the rope to make the world. His servant went with him, carrying a chicken and a calabash, but the man got distracted by palm wine, so he stayed behind, and the servant went down the rope with a chicken and a calabash and left the man behind drinking. And so it’s the servant who winds up creating the world, with the help of the chicken.
He leaned over and kissed the tip of her nose.
Moral of the story: stay away from palm wine. Or maybe never underestimate your chicken? He held up a bone from his plate.
She leaned her head against his shoulder. I’m sorry, she said.
About what?
All of this. She lifted her hands.
He got up, pulled his wallet from his pocket, glancing at the boy, kneeling now, head bent over the generator. He looked down at her and grinned.
Don’t be sorry, beautiful woman, he said.
AT THE BORDER, there were two buildings, both of which looked as though they’d been thrown up in haste. On one side, a sort of shed, and on the other, a flat-topped garage of a building. A line of cars between them. A queue, Felix called it.
They shouldn’t give us a problem, he said. Not the kind of problems we might have run into if we’d gone another way. This is kind of an outpost, and they might let you through more easily.
Sophie got out her passport.
You have your yellow fever certificate?
She nodded, producing it.
Anyway, Felix said, you’ll be with me. As if being with him would solve everything.
The border guard scrutinized her passport, paying great attention to the page with her photograph, and then he asked her to get out of the car and accompany him. She had to take her luggage, which Felix wasn’t allowed to carry. Since Felix was Nigerian, he was told to wait in line, with the car, while Sophie, a foreigner, dutifully followed the border guard, who abandoned her inside the flat-topped building that looked like a garage. She waited in the office, with its counter, single window, and great ceiling fan that made squealing noises as it wheeled around and around. It was missing one of its blades. Two women, sitting in desk chairs and fanning themselves with pieces of folded paper, sat under it. They told her someone would come.
Take seat, said one of the women.
Is this Immigration? I don’t think I need to go through Immigration.
Take seat.
There was no place to sit. Sophie sat on her suitcase, pulled out her dog-eared novel and tried to read. Insects whirred around the single light bulb that hung over the counter. Dusk had fallen, and with it, the electricity chugged and went off. One of the women got up and closed the wooden shutters of the window. Sophie dozed, but couldn’t sleep, balancing as she was on the suitcase.
One of the women peered over the counter at Sophie. Now we go home, she said.
But isn’t someone coming?
The woman made a graceful gesture with her hand, as if she were winding wool. Come tomorrow.
Sophie couldn’t find Felix; he had been allowed through the border and he was parked on the Benin side. She had to ask someone to tell him she was waiting. She stayed by the Customs shed, jury-rigged with a light from a generator, and watched as Felix walked toward it, talked to the border guards. It took time; she waited, and finally they let him take the car back across the border into Nigeria.
Felix put her luggage in the car and he and Sophie slept there with the seats tilted back, or at least they tried to sleep. Felix took Sophie’s hand in his, but after a while he lost hold of it and began snoring. She couldn’t sleep. It was hot inside the car. She was thinking of that time, kayaking, when she raced back as the light was fading. At first, she hadn’t noticed her parents because they weren’t moving, but then she made out her mother at the water’s edge. Her blue shirt. After a while another figure clarified itself. She steered her kayak onto the thin, pebbly strip of beach, where it crunched on stones, and her father stepped close, pulled the rubber handle at the bow, and tugged the bow up onto the shingle of the beach, edged in slick eel grass.
I didn’t notice the time, said Sophie, getting out of the boat. Her feet sank into thick ooze. It was later than I thought.
You need to pay attention, Sophie-girl, said her father, gently.
It could have gotten complicated, said her mother. With the wind changing.
I won’t do it again.
I know you won’t, said her mother. You almost got yourself in a fix.
SHE WOKE BEFORE DAWN, her neck aching. Felix woke too, wiping his face with his hand.
There’s a woman on the Benin side who makes sausage rolls and biscuits and things. Do you want something?
Sure, Sophie said, but she wasn’t hungry. She didn’t want him to go, but she got out of the car so he could go without her.
He went. Then, groggily, she remembered he had her luggage. She had her purse, her passport and some money, but he had everything else. Well, he would come back.
Now she could see him at a distance, outside the car. They must have gone through it, found her luggage. Her red suitcase was on the ground outside the car, and she could see Felix opening his hands, gesturing, explaining. It took a long time. She walked closer. They were angry because he’d driven across with luggage that had not been checked on the Nigerian side. He explained what had happened; Sophie was close enough to hear him.
One of the Nigerians grabbed his shirt, shouted at him.
What was Felix saying to him? It was a mistake.
The officer didn’t think it was a mistake. He was throwing his weight around. He wanted Felix to open the suitcase, but Felix needed the key, which Sophie had.
Where is the key to this baggage? cried the Customs officer.
Sophie produced it, and went toward them to hand it over, but the officer had already asked for metal clippers, with which he cut off the offending lock. He yanked at the zipper. Sophie watched, mute, as he threw things out on the damp ground. What had he expected to find? There was nothing inside except her sandals, tank tops, sundresses, a long navy dress, underwear. Her black underwire bra. He tossed things out in disgust. Occasionally he would speak loudly to Felix, as if Felix couldn’t hear. It was a performance: the officer had a role and Felix had a role. Felix’s role was to remain silent.
Finally, the officer stopped, motioned to Felix to pick up everything. It was over. But no, not quite; he took up Sophie’s briefcase, nodded to an underling to take it. Her laptop. Sophie tried to recall its contents, what she’d left on it. Were there any files she’d forgotten about? She’d transferred everything to a flash drive before leaving Lagos, and put the flash drive — where had she put it? In a side pocket of the red suitcase. She could see the suitcase, an open-mouthed animal lying in the road where the guard had left it. Felix was returning things to their proper places inside it: her blue-backed hairbrush, her plastic bag of miniature lotions, shampoo, and shower gel. He shook her lacy nightgown, folded it, lay it in the suitcase. He did this with each item, taking his time.
Stop, she wanted to call to Felix. He was allowing them to humiliate him.
Someone took her by the arm. Sophie was taken into a curtained room inside the shed where she’d waited earlier. It was not really a room, not even a cell: it was simply enclosed by dirty beige curtains strung around a space the size of a shower. The woman told Sophie to take off all her clothes except her underwear and she complied. The woman frisked her, carefully, not roughly, told her to come out when she’d put her clothes on
again. It was an inferno inside the little room with the beige curtains; there was no electricity and the fan wasn’t working. Sophie dressed and came out.
Pah, the system is down. The woman slapped the side of her computer.
Sophie’s laptop lay on the counter.
Passport, said the woman.
Sophie gave her the passport.
What is your mission in Nigeria?
She tried to think of her mission in Nigeria. She answered, slowly, as a man in dungarees entered. I had no mission. I simply wanted to learn about the country, because my mother was born here.
The woman waved her hand. The man opened the shutters on the window and went out. Maybe someone would find out what Sophie had done, that she had worked for a newspaper, been fired from her job, that what she’d written had started a furor. The man came back in with a short broom and began work in the corner of the shed. Dust flew into the air.
The woman turned and berated him, wheeled back to Sophie.
Did you work for your home country? asked the woman. Did you gather information?
Sophie looked at the woman blankly. No, I did not work for my home country.
Are you working for your home country at present?
No.
Are you carrying information back to your home country?
No.
Everything had been wiped from the laptop, but if they made her show them what she had on her flash drive they would accuse her of carrying information back to her home country.
The woman opened Sophie’s laptop.
You will boot it, she said, indicating Sophie should turn it on. She did. On the desktop was a photo of her family: her mother, her dead father, her grandmother, and Cuba the dog. Her grandmother was squinting.
My family, said Sophie, reassured by the sight of them smiling at her.
But the woman was not interested in Sophie’s family. She flipped through Sophie’s photographs with irritation.
Did you take photographs of government buildings while in Nigeria?
No.
Airports, train stations? Industrial facilities?
No.
Border crossings?
No.
The woman changed tack. Did you carry contraband into Nigeria?
No.
Are you carrying contraband out of Nigeria?
No.
Another guard appeared, spoke to the woman, and slapped the top of the laptop down. They were going to take it from her.
But the woman stamped Sophie’s papers and handed them to her, along with her passport and purse.
Go now, said the woman, nodding at the man.
Thank you, said Sophie.
Sophie left the shed, walking behind the man who carried the laptop as if it were a tray. It was still morning, but Sophie’s skin was slippery and her clothes damp. The sky was stretched taut and it seemed as though the blue was an elastic band, pulled, pulled, pulled; soon it would snap apart.
They arrived at the border crossing, where the man turned and gave Sophie the laptop. A guard lounged against the shed, but not the one who had harangued Felix, and Felix himself was nearby, with the car and the red suitcase, wearing his old orange cap with a leaping dolphin above the brim.
Sophie sighed with relief. Now they could leave.
Felix moved the suitcase toward her, neatly sidestepping a puddle.
What? she said.
I dashed them. I wanted you to have your things back.
Felix, you didn’t. How much?
It doesn’t matter. I couldn’t let you go without your things.
What do you mean?
They won’t let me through. It’s their way of pissing with me. They’ll let you through, though, and you have to go. You’ll be able to get a minivan to —
Not without you.
Yes.
The guard who leaned against the shed with one knee bent, stork-like, against it, seemed to have his eyes closed, but he was taking it all in. He was watching, of course he was watching. The Customs officer, the one who’d given Felix so much trouble, had disappeared.
You’ll be fine, Felix said.
His eyes, his hands, his arms, the way he stood, his weight on his right leg, not his left leg. The stain on his cap, the cap with the happy, leaping dolphin, the scars on his knees that couldn’t be seen.
What about you? she said.
I’ll go home. No, I mean I’ll go to Simon’s. He smiled his old smile. We’ll see each other again, never fear. I’ll come to you.
He took a step toward her, gave her the handle of the suitcase. He put his hand over hers.
I booked that room at the Hotel du Port, but don’t stay there if it doesn’t look good, if you feel worried, he said.
She couldn’t say goodbye. She hugged him, quickly, though she knew people didn’t do that here, they didn’t make public displays, certainly not in Imeko. She felt his arms around her briefly. Then she broke away, taking the suitcase, its wheels dragging, though she could feel him behind her, waiting as she had her papers checked, yet again. She was about to walk through the gate, when the man who had looked at her papers put up his hand to stop her. She could hear two people speaking rapidly in French on the other side of the gate, a kind of dialect, as if the French had softened in their mouths as they spoke, as if it had melted.
What is it? she said.
Problem, said the man. He gave her passport to another man with greying hair, probably the first man’s superior, and they leaned over it together.
What is Halifax? asked the man with the greying hair.
That is in Nova Scotia. In Canada.
We are checking the passport number, said the man. It will take time. Step aside.
She stepped to one side. She almost had her foot in Benin, and they had brought her back; the tightness in her head exploded.
Please, she said. Everything is in order. My passport is in order.
We are checking the number.
The man with the greying hair disappeared and left the younger man at his post. He shrugged his shoulders.
Felix was standing where she’d left him. His hand held his sunglasses and when he raised his arm and waved, the loose arm of the sunglasses flapped open, shut. He knew something wasn’t right because they were delaying it. They were holding her back. She rubbed her temple, trying to ease the headache. They hadn’t told her to wait in the shade and the sun was harsh. She pulled her hat out of her bag and put it on, but there were many small hammers at work under her skull.
At last the man with the greying hair returned. This is a bad number. He jabbed at her passport.
No, she said. It is perfectly good. It was issued only to me by my government. Even as Sophie spoke, she understood that she would not be allowed to cross into Benin. It didn’t matter what she said.
She looked away, swallowed, and turned to him renewed, about to plead her case. She could tell by his obdurate expression that it wouldn’t be tolerated yet she didn’t want to admit defeat.
The man gave her back her passport and she took it without speaking.
She rolled the suitcase over the uneven ground away from him, away from the gate, away from Benin and her chance to leave the country. She paused, collected herself, continued. The suitcase didn’t cooperate with her, and its wheels kept catching on stones so she had to yank it, and finally she picked it up by the handle. Her anger at the officials hardened within her, as if she were constructing something she would need later. Felix was clear as she walked toward him: his hands, the shape of his sunglasses, his cap. Walking away from him, she had been one person. As she walked toward him, she was another person. They had taken something away from her, but what could they do to her now?
14
____
CLARE COULD SEE PART OF Thomas’s driver’s face in the mirror, and it made her curious about the marks on his cheeks: three straight lines, which might mean he was from Oyo. Jacob drove swiftly, with easy movements, and the rosary dangling from t
he mirror swung only a little. A few people along the road stood watching as the silver-grey car passed, and a boy clapped his hands at the sight of it, a Mercedes, sleek and shining, washed the day before and polished by Jacob himself, as if it belonged to him, as if it were part of his own body.
Thomas nodded sleepily in the passenger seat, but Clare was wide awake. At the stalls edging the road the umbrellas were tilted sunflowers, and two boys walked lazily, hand in hand, while an old man teetered on a bicycle. Midday. They could have been on the surface of the moon, and even the fields, once they were outside Makurdi, were chalk coloured. Over the refuse in the ditch grew trumpet flowers, pale winged, with vines curling over the garbage.
They had been to church. Clare went first into the pew as the guest of honour, then Hortensia and Andrew, followed by Monica, a hand smoothing the pleated skirt of her dress, the colour of a pinkish-scarlet amaryllis.
Thomas and Jonathan sat on the other side of the church. Andrew had protested, before church, about sitting with his mother, but Monica countered that he was still too young to sit with the men. Now he took one of Hortensia’s satin hair ribbons and she clutched him around the waist, pinning him down on the seat of the pew. He was convulsed with silent laughter.
Monica inclined her head, giving Andrew and Hortensia a look, just as Clare had given Sophie when she misbehaved.
Monica hissed at Hortensia.
Hortensia let her brother go, and he dropped to the floor, one hand across his stomach, laughing uncontrollably, though he had the sense not to make a sound. His sister’s hand flashed down, into his pocket and out again, quick as a fish. A flicker of hair ribbon, a triumphant grin at Clare as Hortensia released him.
Monica hissed again, and Andrew got up. Hortensia rearranged herself, smiling smugly, already planning her next move.
Clare bent her head over her phone. Why couldn’t they have started out that morning, early, in the cool of the day? Abeokuta was a long way to go; but no, they’d had to wait.
The blue-garbed members of the choir sang and swayed.
