At that my host thought he saw something like a smile flash across his lover’s face, an unmistakable sign that she believed her brother.
“Good. Thank you, Chuka,” she shouted back.
Chuka had spoken the language of the White Man to his sister, but now he continued his onslaught in the language of the fathers: “I bu Otobo; otobo ki ibu. Real, real otobo. How should one position his neck or shape his mouth to pass a message into the head of an otobo like you? How? It baffles me.” He squeezed my host’s shoulder so hard that he squirmed.
“Now, listen, Church Rat, my father said I should tell you that if we hear ‘phim’ from you, or any noise at all, you will be in serious trouble. Do you know you are playing with fire? You are cuddling a consuming fire. You are romancing the child of a tiger, Nwa-agu.” Chuka drew a deep breath and released it on his neck.
“Ah, you dress in a respectable fashion, Church Rat,” Chuka said now, pulling up the isiagu on my host by its shoulder. “Looks very good, sir. Otobo. Eh, let me pass the message: no speaking, no doing anything. No phim. Don’t make the mistake of coming out to join the family on the dance floor, or anything like that, no matter what my sister says. I repeat, no matter what my sister says. You hear me?”
Gaganaogwu, I had known my host at that point for twenty-five years and three moons, and I had never seen him that embarrassed. He was wounded as if Chuka had not said words to him but had lashed him with a whip. What pained him the most was that he could not retaliate. As a boy, he had not been afraid of fights: in fact, he had been feared, for although he did not court trouble, he fought with the fist of stone when provoked. But in this situation, he was incapacitated, hand-tied. So although bruised, he simply nodded in response.
“Good, Church Rat, you are welcome.”
For no particular reason, he would always remember those final words, a mix of the language of the fathers and the White Man’s: “Odinma, Church Rat, ibia wo.”
The early fathers often say that a planned war does not take even the crippled by surprise. But an unplanned one, that which is unexpected, can defeat even the strongest army. It is why they also say, in their cautionary wisdom, that if one wakes in the morning to find something as innocuous as a hen chasing him, he should run because he does not know whether the hen has grown teeth and claws during the night. Thus defeated, my host sat stunned for the rest of the party.
The guests started pouring in not too long after Chuka left him. The invitation card indicated that the event was to be held from 4:00 to 9:00 p.m. But the first guests arrived around a quarter after five. Ndali had bemoaned the fact that this would happen—“You will see that they will all follow Nigerian time. This is why I hate attending events like this. If it was not because of my father, I tell you, just count me out.” He watched as the seats filled up all around him by guests who came wearing different attire, usually a man in flowing traditional cloth and his wife in an equally sparkling blouse, a wrappa wound around her waist, a fancy purse or handbag in her hand. Children sat in the last two rows of plastic chairs, with high armrests. By the time most of the seats were occupied, the air was filled with a cocktail of perfumes and body fragrances.
The man who sat by his left arm took up conversation with him. Without being asked, the man said that his wife was one of those cooking “up there in the palace,” pointing to the house of the Obialors. My wife, too, he said, intending to silence the man. But the man spoke on about the big attendance, and then about the hotness of the weather. My host listened with a dry indifference which, in time, the man seemed to notice. And when the seats next to him became filled with a couple, he turned away from my host to them.
Glad that he’d finally been left alone, my host evaluated what had happened: a hand had come, drawn him back so hard he’d almost fallen out of his seat. Then a mouth had asked him why he’d come, called him foolish, called him a hippopotamus, mocked his clothes, laughed at his love for Ndali, and inflicted the death blow: Church Rat. Had the seats been filled as they were now, none of that would probably have happened. These people had all come too late. So late were they that the celebrated entrance of Oliver De Coque—his favorite musician, the great singing bird of Igboland, Oku-na-acha-na-abali, the chief of Igbo highlife music—meant nothing. He sat as if benumbed as the guests rose to cheer the singer. Blood would have stirred within him as the emcee of the occasion and the famous home-video actor Osuofia introduced Oliver De Coque. But the words sounded like the words of a rambler. He would have laughed at Osuofia’s jokes—for instance, the one he’d drawn right out of his famous movie, Osuofia in London, about how white people had mangled his name and called him Oso-fire. But the joke sounded like a child’s gibberish, and it even surprised him that people laughed. The big fat man in front of him, how is he laughing like that? The woman beside the man, why is she rocking like that on the chair? He made no response at all to Osuofia’s constant bellowing of “Kwenu!” to which the people responded, “Yaah!” And when, shortly after the introduction and the invitation of certain persons to the High Table, and after Oliver De Coque mounted the stage to the tune of “People’s Club,” he sat dead as a log of wood. Even De Coque had come too late.
Much to his irritation, the man who sat next to him on the left had been dancing in his chair and had remembered him again. And the man would bend every now and again to comment about the attendance, the music, Oliver De Coque’s genius, and whatever. But the log of wood merely nodded and muttered under his breath. And even this was said with much reluctance. The man did not know that he’d been asked not to make even the faintest of sounds, a phim. It struck him now, as he thought about it, that the order had come from the owner of the party himself, the very host, Ndali’s father. In the midst of these thoughts, he heard something knock at the back of his chair. His heart flew out of him. When he turned, he found the culprit was the boy who sat directly behind him. The boy’s foot had hit his chair.
EZEUWA, there are times when it feels like the universe, as if possessing the face of a laconic man, mocks man. As if man were a toy, a plaything given to the whims of the universe. Get down, it seems to say one time. And when a man sits, it orders him to stand again. It gives a man food with one hand and with the other compels him to vomit it. I have lived in the world for many cycles of life, and I have seen this mysterious phenomenon many times. How, for instance, might one explain that just shortly after my host had been startled by this boy (a mere boy!) and returned his gaze back to the great musician, a hand tapped him from behind again, and before he could stir, he hears, “Obim, Obim, they will call us soon. Stand and come. Stand and come”? Well, the action must have come to him too quickly for him to think it through. And because she’d esteemed him highly before those present by calling him her darling, he’d risen and followed her in the glory of the moment. He would himself be taken in by her beauty, for she was dressed exquisitely. A long string of jigida cascaded down her neck, and she wore some of the beads on her wrists. This woman whom everyone around him was calling the daughter of the High One—Adaego and Adaora. Would it not be the worst disgrace to have, in the midst of all these people, remained seated? So he followed her to wild cheers.
The things they said as she and he left came to him like a big joke of fate. “See him, a worthy man deserving of such a woman!” one man said. “Nwokeoma!” another praised. “Enyi-kwo-nwa!” one woman cried. A man standing in plain clothes by one of the tall standing fans at the end of every two rows gave him the greeting of chiefs by extending his hand against his. In shock, as much as with reluctance, he knocked the back of his hand against the man’s three times. “Congrats!” the man whispered. He nodded, and his hand, as if it had suddenly acquired a mind of its own, patted the man on the shoulder. It occurred to him then that things were happening too quickly—as if his body parts had mutinied against him and formed a defiant confederacy devoid of his control.
With every step, his hand locked in hers, Ndali led him further and further into tra
nsgression. But he could do nothing, for the whole party, spread around the spacious front yard of the compound, had now turned to them, and Oliver De Coque himself had paused his music to give a passing greeting: “See the future oriaku and her man walking by with great strides.” To which Ndali waved—and he waved, too—at the crowd of dignitaries, rich men and women, chiefs, doctors, lawyers, three men who had flown in from two of the white people’s countries, Germany and United States (one of whom had brought a white woman with yellow hair), Chuwuemeka Ike, one senator from Abuja, a representative of the state governor, Orji Kalu. He, a Church Rat—a man who catered domestic fowls for a living and cultivated tomatoes, corn, cassava, and pepper, killed red ants and poked sticks into the feces of yard fowls for worms—had waved at these dignitaries.
They passed so many people on the way into the house. Amongst them were two women who were looking in a mirror, applying powder to their faces; a man (one of the ones from overseas) in dazzling white bariga and a red ozo cap, smoking from a pipe; a policeman with an AK-47 who stood with his gun pointed upwards; two young girls of puberty age, in flowing gowns, looking in a phone under the shelter of the huge veranda with Roman columns; and a bow-tied boy whose shirt had been soaked in Fanta.
Once inside the house, Ndali pressed her lips on his sweating cheek. It was what she did in lieu of locking mouths with him whenever she had painted her lips a darker shade of pink or red.
“Are you enjoying yourself?” she said, and before he could speak, she said, “You are sweating again! Did you bring a handkerchief?”
He said no. He wanted to say more, but she’d turned into the house, and he followed her. Once in, he found Chuka standing midway on the flight of stairs, visibly astonished to see him there. Words hung, dazed, on his lips as they passed Chuka.
“What is it, Obim? Nonso?” she said after they had passed Chuka, stopping again, this time in a small room where shelves of books split the room into four rows.
“Nothing,” he said. “Water, can you give me water?”
“Water? Okay, let me bring it.” At the threshold, she said, “My brother, did he do anything to you?”
“Me? No-oh, no, he didn’t.”
She stayed her gaze on him for a moment, as if unbelieving, then she left the room. Once she was gone, he nearly wept. He sat without realizing it on a small reclining couch that spun, rapidly, and faced the window. He saw now, from the vantage of a hawk paused on a thermal, the party. Osuofia was dancing, interrupting Oliver De Coque every now and then. Chukwu, this is how things sometimes happen to humans: a man becomes afraid of something like this, of being shamed in public, and this fear becomes his undoing. For the state of anxiety is a seed-bearing one. Every occasion pollinates it, and with every action, a seed is begotten. When a word is used that might elicit an unhealthy response, and in the presence of people, he may lose composure and his limbs may quiver. Thus, every inch of the way, propelled by the state of his fragile mind, he does things that further worsen his situation rather than redeem it. He is punished by his own self, as if engaged in a continuing act of unintended self-flagellation. I have seen it many times.
Now firmly in this anxious state, he was so deep in thought that Ndali’s footfalls startled him. He took the cup and drank until it emptied.
“Okay, Obim, let’s go out now. They will soon call us.”
“Ndali, Ndali!” her mother called, with a clatter of feet in the living room.
His heart dropped. I felt pressured to do something, so I flashed in his mind that he be not afraid. Do as much as you can to hold up against these people. To this he tapped his feet on the floor, and the voice of his head said, I will not be afraid.
While I was communicating with my host, Ndali was saying to her mother: “Ma, ma-Mommy! I’m coming out now.” To which the woman responded, “Ngwa, ngwa, quick,” in a voice hardly audible over Osuofia’s, which came from the speakers outside the house.
“Let’s go now,” Ndali said, and she took his hand. “It is our turn to sit at the High Table.”
He wanted to speak, but all he was able to muster was a muffled “Oh.” As if something had wheeled him there, he found himself in the living room face-to-face with Chief Obialor, who was dressed in magnificent regalia—a red-colored long and flowing isiagu—and brandished an ivory tusk. On his red cap were two kite feathers, tucked into both sides of the cap—the way the old fathers dressed. For they believed that birds were a symbol of life and that a man who has succeeded in this world has acquired feathers and, in the proverbial sense, become a bird. His wife who marched beside him wore similar prints on her body and beads around her neck—just as the great mothers did. She held a hand fan, and the bangles on her wrist were innumerable.
When Ndali and he came up to her parents, he bowed before them both in greeting as Ndali genuflected. Her parents smiled back as her father waved his staff and her mother waved her fan in the air. Chukwu, after all that would happen afterwards, my host would always remember how her parents had seemed to show no sign of displeasure at the sight of him during the encounter.
My host, in a state of internal fluster, merged with what was a procession, stepping slowly towards the door of the entrance to the mansion like one being dragged along by invisible ropes. He marched along with the man from Germany, a country of white people, and his white wife, who was dressed like the daughters of the great mothers. Beside them was Ndali’s uncle, the famed doctor who’d sutured blown-out limbs during the Biafran War, waving his staff whose top bore an elephant figurine. Outside, Osuofia was shouting into the microphone, his voice amplified by the speakers: “Now they are coming out, they are coming—the celebrant and his family!” My host followed them with the lightest foot, carrying his body as if it were a walking bag of pus kept alive only by Ndali’s hand in his, until they entered the arena to the noisy cheering and applause of the crowd. He danced with them lightly, even as Chuka, with scorn on his face, constantly came within an inch or two of him. Increasingly, his fear was inflamed and he did not want to proceed. So he withdrew his hand when they began filling the seats in the front row under the awning where the dignitaries were seated behind the High Table and whispered, “No, I can’t, can’t, no” into Ndali’s ear. She held on but as Osuofia began calling on her, she left him and sat in the very first row with her family members and other high-caliber guests. He hurried into the first empty seat behind them.
Egbunu, the slighted man—he is one who has felt himself disrespected by someone beneath him. Such a man has, by stroke of luck, or by hard work, or by strong bargaining by his chi, obtained good fortune or influence. And now, having measured his wealth or influence against those of others, he sees any raising of the hands by those of less estate as a slight to which he must respond. For to be challenged by a man of less fortune disrupts the equilibrium of his mind and infects his psyche. He must restore this quickly! He must strike at the thing that has caused that shift. This must be his response. Although such men were few in the times of the fathers—mostly because they feared Ala’s wrath—I have seen it many times amongst their children. I had seen the sign of this state of mind in Chuka, so I was not surprised when, just as my host sat down, one of the cameramen came to him and whispered into his ear, “Bros, Oga Chuka say make you follow me.”
Before my host could make sense of it, the man had begun walking away as if it were a given that he’d do as he’d been told. That in itself brought a lash of fear upon his back. If the messenger had relayed his message with such confidence, without any doubt that the order would be obeyed, how powerful must his master be? How mighty his wrath? He rose and followed the man as quickly as he could, thinking that everyone must have seen that he was the odd one at the High Table who was now paying for his brazen act of transgression. The man circled the house, past a gathering of women cooking stew and a mighty pot of rice. They walked swiftly past a group of sweating men unloading crates of drinks from the inside of a van. Then they passed through a small gate, b
eside which was a guard hut—a small room. The man turned and pivoted to the outpost. “Enter here, Bros.”
It is in circumstances such as these that I often wish that a chi had more power and could defend his host through some supernatural means. It is at times like these that I also wish my host was wise in the ways of agbara and afa, like the dibia who was my host more than three hundred years ago. That man, Esuruonye of Nnobi, had reached the prime of human superabilities. He had been so strong, so potent in divination, that he was deemed okala-mmadu, okala-mmuo. Esuruonye was able to strip himself of his flesh and become a discarnate being. I saw him twice invoke the mystical ekili and ascend into the astral plane so that he was able to travel in the batting of eyelids to a distance that would have taken him two market weeks to reach were he to walk and a full day were he to go in a car. But my present host, like others of his generation, was helpless in a situation like this—as helpless as a cockerel in the eye grip of a hawk. He merely entered the house with the mysterious man who had given him the instruction.
Another fellow, with the build of a wrestler, stood inside the room, wearing a deep frown on his face. A blue sleeveless shirt hung around the man’s body, embossed with the image of an explosive in motion, its colored sparks like paint stains all over the shirt. “Na the man wey dey disturb Oga’s party be this?” the brawny man said in the broken version of the White Man’s language.
“Na him,” the cameraman said from outside the small room. “But Oga say make we no touch am. Just give am work make im do.”
“No problem,” the heavy man said. He pointed at a blue khaki shirt and pair of trousers, the kind my host had seen the gateman wearing, and said, “Wear that.”
“Me?” my host, with a furiously palpitating heart, said.
“Yes, who else dey here? Look—er, Nwokem, I don’t have time for questions, oh. Biko wear that thing may we go.”
An Orchestra of Minorities Page 13