An Orchestra of Minorities

by Chigozie Obioma

  For a moment, they did not speak, and he let what Jamike had told him sink in while the latter replied to a message on his phone. He let his eyes hover over the calendar with the Star beer advert on the wall beside where they sat and on a poster of American wrestlers he knew and whose names flashed in his mind as he gazed at the poster: Hulk Hogan, the Ultimate Warrior, the Rock, Undertaker, and the Bushwhackers.

  “So Elo said you want to start school? He said you are having some problems and I can be able to help you.”

  My host threw himself up in thought, as if lifted from within by a monstrous hand. “Yes, Jamike, yes, my brother. I have a problem.”

  “Tell me, Bobo Solo.”

  He wanted to speak, but the recollection of that name, which his mother used to call him, made him pause for a moment, for somewhere in the itinerant years long traveled into oblivion, he saw himself standing in the room, laughing as she laughed and clapped, singing, “Bobo, bobo, Solo. Bobo, bobo, Solo.”

  He took up the bottle of beer and drank to calm himself. Although it tasted strange to him—for he rarely drank—he felt obliged to take it. When a man receives a visitor, he eats and drinks that which the visitor eats and drinks. Then words burst out of him like wine from an uncorked bottle carrying in it an amalgam of emotions—fear, anxiety, shame, sorrow, and despair. In the torrent of words, he told Jamike everything that had happened up till two days prior, when he’d been threatened at his home. “This is why I told Elochukwu that I have to return to school quickly. In fact, I don’t have choice. I love Ndali very much, my brother. I really really really love her. Ever since she came into my life, I have not been the same again. Everything has changed, Jamike, I’m telling you, everything has changed. Every single thing, from a to zed, have changed.”

  “Ah, that is serious problem, oh, mehn,” Jamike said, sitting up in the chair.

  He nodded and took another sip of the drink.

  “Mehn, why don’t you want to leave her?” Jamike said. “Is this not easiest for you instead of this stress?”

  Egbunu, my host was silent at this. For in this moment, he recalled his uncle’s counsel and even Elochukwu’s partial counsel. He knew because he’d heard from somewhere he could not recall that a person must reconsider their position if everyone else is saying something that contradicts their own position. And a part of him, a part that seemed to have resolved into a shadow, wanted to submit, to accept that the only way was to leave her. But another part was defiantly resolute not to, and it was this part that urged him with a ferocity he could not suppress. And I, his chi, I was in between, desiring that he have her but fearful for what it might cost him. And I have come to understand that when a chi cannot decide the best path on which to lead its host, it is best if the chi remains silent. For in silence the chi yields, fully, to the complete will of its host. It lets man be man. This is better, far better, than a chi who leads its host to a path of destruction. For regret is the poison of the guardian spirit.

  He spread his hands over the table and said, “That is not it, my brother. I can go if I want, but I love her very much. Jamike, I’m ready to do anything to marry her.”

  Gaganaogwu, in the grave ills that would befall my host later, I would look back frequently and wonder if indeed it was in these words that all that happened later was first hatched. A twitch appeared on Jamike’s face after my host said those words, and Jamike did not respond immediately. He first looked around at the house, then nodded and sipped the beer before he said, “Ah, love! You don hear D’banj’s ‘You Don Make Me Fall in Love’?”

  “No, I never hear,” my host said, continuing quickly so Jamike would not go on discussing the needless song, for he wanted to unburden his heavy mind. “I love her so much I go do anything for her,” he said again, this time with much restraint, as if it had cost him much to say it. “I want to go back to school now because before my father died, he was sick, and so I dropped out to help him grow his business. This is why I did not go to university.”

  “I see,” Jamike said. “I know you didn’t drop out because you are not brilliant. You were brilliant, mehn. No be you score second, third, for class behind Chioma Onwuneli?”

  “It is so,” he said, for he remembered days now long past. But it was the present and the future that he must reckon with. “I have complete GCE. If I return to school, er, my brother, I am sure once they don’t think I be illiterate again, them go accept. I strongly believe this.”

  “Tha-that is very true, Bobo Solo,” Jamike said. His eyes watered, and he blinked. “Very true.”

  “It is so, my brother,” he said. He felt, for the first time in weeks, somewhat relieved, as if he’d solved his problems by simply recounting them.

  “So since you say it is fast and quick to school in Cyprus, that I can get a degree within three years, I want to go there,” he said with relief, for it struck him that he’d said everything he said simply because he wanted to tell Jamike this.

  “Very good, Bobo Solo! Very good, mehn!” Jamike lifted himself summarily out of the seat and slapped his hands. “High five there, nwokem!” Then sitting back, Jamike gazed at his hands with his eyes scrutinizing the lines as though it were a foreign hand. “Is that sweat?”

  “It is so,” he said.

  “Wow, wo-ow, wo-ow, Bobo! So you still sweat like Christmas goat?”

  He laughed. “Yes, my brother Jamike. I still sweat on my palms.”

  “Bobo nwa.”

  “Errrr,” he said.

  “You have found the solution, mehn!” Jamike said, shaking his finger. “You have found it. You can now go and sleep.”

  He laughed.

  “Cyprus is the solution.”

  IJANGO-IJANGO, it is true, as the great dibias among the fathers often say: that in this world which you have created, if a man wants something very much, if his hands do not desist from chasing it, he will eventually possess it. At the time, like my host, I, too, had thought that the encounter with his old schoolmate was the universe lending him what he had been longing for. For he returned to his house later that evening with a slight tremor in his gait from the drink he’d shared with his friend and with a hive full of honey in his heart. When he went to sleep, the squawking of the hennery in his ears, he began to digest it all: the island on the Mediterranean Sea, as beautiful as the ancient Greece of the books he read as a child. The ease of admission into the universities. “No JAMB!” Jamike had repeated again and again. “You only need GCE, only GCE.” The timing of it: how it had happened exactly when he needed it. He could start in September, four or five weeks from now. The uncanniness of the possibility threatened to throw everything into unreality. How affordable it was: “It is cheaper than all these Nigerian private schools,” Jamike had boasted. “These nonsense schools we have here: Madonna, Covenant, it is better than them all.” And what is more? He need only pay the first-year school fees and campus apartment, and by the time he got to the second year—in fact, even the second semester—he would have earned enough from part-time jobs to pay the next school fees and board.

  Even now, as he slowly drifted off to sleep, he saw Jamike dance with his words, a ritual dance whose effect was hypnotizing. He let his thoughts linger on the auspicious suggestion from Jamike that it would be great and healthier for his relationship with Ndali if he went abroad to live for the first few years of their marriage. Jamike had insisted, in a most convincing way, that it would make her parents respect him even more. Then he considered the last thing Jamike had said about this country, which had only served to increase his hope: “You can easily go to any other part of Europe, or US. By ship, very cheap. Within two hours! Turkey, Spain, many many countries. This will not only be the best opportunity to please Ndima—” He helped him say the name. “Oh, sorry, Ndali. It is also an opportunity for you to experience a good life. In fact, look, if I be you, I will make all the arrangements without telling her. Look at all the big land, big house your father left for you. You can do it, mehn. Surprise he
r!” Jamike said this with almost a scowl on his face, as if angered by his own words. “Surprise her, mehn, and you will see. You will see that you will not only gain her respect, but, I tell you”—Jamike licked his thumb with his tongue until a gasp of erhen erupted—“I swear to almighty God, Ndali will love you die!”

  These last words had come out of Jamike with such assurance and certainty that my host let out a laugh of relief. He laughed again now as he remembered it and stood up. He picked up his jeans, which lay on the chair by the bed, and took out the piece of foolscap on which Jamike had made notes. He’d brought out a pen and a book from his back pocket, the book folded through the center from him sitting on it. With a glib smile, he detached a leaf from the book and said, “I am a practical man, let us come down to practical,” then he began to scribble all he had said down.

  2 semesters scool fees = 3000

  1 years accomodation = 1500

  Bank deposit = 1500

  Mantainanse = 2000

  8000 euro

  Gaganaogwu, the peace that came upon my host that night was like the pure unspotted waters of Omambala. After he’d gazed at the paper as many times as possible, he folded the paper. He switched off the light and walked to the window, his heart throbbing wildly. He could not see much outside even though the moon seemed to be bright. For a moment, the house across the road looked as if it were on fire, its roof a raging vermilion and smoke rising from it. But he soon saw that it was the streetlight cast on the building and the smoke was rising from some cooking hearth.

  9

  Crossing the Threshold

  AGBARADIKE, the great fathers in their discreet wisdom say that seeds sown in secret always yield the most vibrant fruit. So my host, in the days following his meeting with his old schoolmate, shielded from the world the inflorescence of joy that grew along the edges of his heart. In secret, his plans grew, unbeknownst to Ndali, who returned from her weeklong trip to Lagos three days after he met Jamike. He hid his father’s old briefcase, in which he stored the documents he collected, under the bed. He attached his heart to the bag as if it contained everything he owned, his very life.

  As the contents of the bag increased, so did other joyful developments. He did not have to persuade Ndali to go back home after she returned. She went back by herself, deceived by Chuka’s lies that their mother had taken ill. This resolved his fear that something else might happen if he was not able to persuade her to return as Chuka had warned, an encounter which—not wanting her to escalate issues with her family—he kept from her. When she came to see him exactly two weeks after he began his plans with Jamike, her mood was wholly changed. She had come from church that day, lighthearted.

  “I can’t even believe it, Obim,” she said, clapping her hands playfully. She sat on his legs. “Can you guess what Daddy said?”

  “What, Mommy?”

  “I told them that you bought JAMB forms to go back to school. So they said that if you register at a school, that would be a good first step. It would show your seriousness to become somebody.”

  Egbunu, he was stunned by this. It seemed to him that something he could not see had peered over his shoulder and looked into the pot of his secrets. For having resolved all along not to tell her about his plans, as Jamike had advised, not wanting her to stop him, he’d only told her about the form he’d bought. Yet he knew he could not hide it from her for too long. So as he took more steps in this direction each day, he’d assure himself that he would tell her about it. But by the end of the day, he would push it like a thing with wheels into the future and say not today but tomorrow. But if tomorrow Ndali came home with a fever after a long day at school, he’d say Tomorrow, she will be home all day and it will be easier then. But alas, that tomorrow would come with a phone call first thing in the morning that her uncle had suffered a stroke. Over the weekend, the voice in his head would resolve, perhaps on Sunday after church. And as if by some alchemic manipulation, today was that Sunday. Now that she had said something that touched the core of the very thing he’d been keeping secret, he resolved to tell. “Mommy, consider it done!” he said.

  “Er, Obim?”

  “I say, consider it done,” he said even louder. He made her stand, and he rose, too, swaggering slightly. “I have gone to school and come back.”

  She laughed. “How? Abi in spirit or in your dreams?”

  “Just watch, er.”

  He went into the room and retrieved the bag at the foot of the wall beside the bed in what was once his sister’s room. He blew away a spider that lay on the fading coat of arms inscribed on the bag’s leather skin and carried it with him back to the sitting room. He put the bag on the center of the table.

  “What is in the bag?” she said.

  “Abracadabra—you will see.” He waved his hands over the bag while she bobbed with laughter. Then he opened it and handed her the documents. He’d arranged the documents in the order of lowest cost, so when she began from the last one, he said, “No, no, Mommy, begin here, first.”

  “Here?”

  “Yes, that one.”

  He sat down to watch her peruse the documents, his heart sounding a nervous beat.

  She read the header on the paper aloud: “Admission letter.” She raised her head. “Wow, Nonso, you got an admission!” She rose to her feet.

  He nodded. “Just read on.”

  She returned her eyes to the paper.

  “Cyprus International University, Lef-lef-ko-sa?”

  “Lefkosa.”

  “Lefkosa. Wow. Where is this place? How did you get it?”

  “It is surprise, Mommy. So just look, just look.”

  She read through.

  “Oh God! Business Administration? That is very good!”

  “Thank you.”

  “I can’t believe it,” Ndali said. She threw her hands into the air, swirled into a half circle and faced him again, and kissed him.

  “Read all first, Mommy,” he said, detaching himself. “Then you can kiss me after. Read.”

  “Okay,” she said, and looked at the book between the files.

  “Your passport?”

  He nodded, and she looked through it, with her face filled with light.

  “Where’s the visa?”

  “Next week,” he said.

  “You will go to where—Abuja?”

  “Abuja.”

  He saw a shade begin to grow over her face, and he stiffened.

  “Read it all, Mommy, please.”

  “Okay,” she said. “Letter of accommodation,” she said, and glanced up at him. “You have accommodation already?”

  “Yes. It is so. Read, see, Mommy?”

  But she dropped the documents back on the table.

  “Nonso, you are planning to leave Nigeria and you are just telling me?”

  “I wanted it to be surprise. Look, Mommy, your brother came here after you go to Lagos. No, no, listen first. He came with thugs to frighten me. Actually, I have no choice. I have to do something. Listen godunu first. Look, I luckily saw my former classmate who schools in this beautiful country, Cyprus. And he told me everything. How everything is cheap, school fees, and jobs easy to get. Degree, I can get within three years, if I do what he called summer schools. That is why I did this.”

  “Who is this person you met?”

  “His name? Jamike Nwaorji. He just went back to Cyprus—actually four days ago. He was my classmate in primary school and also secondary school.”

  She took up the documents again, as he’d hoped, and went through the course curriculum, then returned her gaze back to the inscriptions on the softer foolscap.

  “Wait oh, I still don’t understand.”

  “Okay, Mommy.”

  “You are leaving Nigeria when you said you want to marry me?”

  “It is not so, Mommy.” He opened his mouth to say more, but he could not form words, as the confidence that had been painstakingly constructed over the days and weeks prior, the confidence derived from the res
ult of weighing everything on the scale and deciding he could give up everything for her, had suddenly flattened. To shore it back up, he moved closer to her and sat on the arm of the couch.

  “How is it not so? This is a school abroad.”

  He took her hand. “I know it is abroad, but it is actually the best way. Imagine in two and half years, I have a real, authentic degree? Imagine, Mommy? Even, you can always visit me. You graduate next year June, and by then I would actually also be going to my second year. You can come and stay with me.”

  “Jesus! Nonso, are you saying…” She clasped her palms over her head. “Forget it, just forget it.”

  “No, Mommy, no. Why don’t you tell it to me, why?”

  “Forget it.”

  “Nne, look, I am doing this because of you, only because of you. Actually, I never even wanted to go back to school, but that is the only way I can be with you. The only way, Mommy?”

  He put his hand on her shoulder and gently pulled her towards him. “You know I love you. I love you very much, but see what they are doing to me. See how they disgraced me. They really disgrace me, Mommy. And who knows, maybe it is just the beginning. Just the beginning, and, you don’t know, I don’t know. I’m coming, Mommy…”