by Toni Kan
Rushing up the stairs, I grabbed my car keys off the dining table and, telling Fidelia to take care of the house, I dashed downstairs, got into my car and, tyres screeching, roared off in search of my husband.
‘Madam, how pikin?’ one of the guards at the estate gate said to me as I passed, but I was too far gone to reply.
I didn’t know where I was going or what I wanted to do. All I knew was that I was in distress and I wanted to find my husband.
As I drove, with one hand on the steering wheel and the other clutching the phone to my ear, I almost ran into an oncoming car. I put the phone on speaker and then, with two hands on the steering wheel, started to retrace the route my husband takes on his way home from work.
All the time, I kept my ear cocked for sound, any sound at all. At that point, with my heart hammering and constricting from fear, even a slap and a cry of pain from my husband would have been welcome. Any sound, no matter how heart rending, would have been like a sliver of light in the dark and a pointer to hope that my husband was still alive and not pushed out of the car and dead some place we’d never find him.
But the more I listened, the more I heard a voice that was not my husband’s. The voice in my ear was from years ago, twenty-six years actually, and it was the voice of my mother. I remembered it so clearly because my heart had been pounding from fear and intimations of dreadful things the day I heard it.
I was six and my mum and I had gone to the wedding of a distant relative. Was it a man or a woman? I can’t remember. All the details have been swallowed up by the yawning mouth of time. What I remember is that my mother hadn’t wanted me to go along, since my father had decided to stay behind because his favourite team was playing.
‘Take her, please, and let me have some peace,’ my father said, gazing at the television as he watched a football match with Diali, my older brother.
I was bawling and following my mother from the bedroom to the kitchen and begging her to take me, while she tried to shoo me away without success. My mother was angry but it was not at me. It was at my father, who had suddenly changed the plan for the weekend. My mother finally relented, gave me a quick bath and dressed me up in the dress she’d just made me for Diali’s ninth birthday.
All the way, as we drove to the wedding, my mother kept telling me to behave myself.
‘Sit down o, or I will take you home. I don’t want you disturbing me,’ she kept saying. By the time we got there, I was already wondering why I’d ever wanted to go with her.
The venue was a huge hall and I was awed by the enormous mass of gaily-dressed people. The women were decked in shimmering lace and brocade with headgears that seemed to reach into the sky. I stared and stumbled and was glad that my tiny hand was clutched inside my mother’s sweaty palm.
It was a rich and lavish wedding, I remember that. I remember, also, the food and the soft, fried pieces of meat my mother kept passing to me. Then suddenly I was sitting at the table all by myself. I looked up and my mother wasn’t there. All around me were brightly-dressed women with skyscraper headgears. Enveloped by a sense of panic, I rose and went in search of my mother.
The more I searched, the more my panic rose. I was crying and snivelling, and I must have wandered right out of our own hall and into another, because when I tried to retrace my steps, I ended up at a table that was draped in gold and black, instead of the pink and blue that had covered ours.
I was sobbing furiously when I heard the voice. It was strange and loud and intoning my name.
‘Onyinye!’
It was my mother’s voice but there was an edge to it, a desperate timbre. I listened and I could tell, even in my confused and panic-stricken state, that it was coming from loudspeakers.
‘Onyinye! Onyinye!! Onyinye!!! O God, please has anyone seen my daughter? Please God.’
I was trying to get to the speakers but there was a nest of legs like something woven by very industrious birds. Finally, I tugged at a woman’s wrapper and she took one look at my face and knew.
‘She’s here! See her here!’ she screamed, scooping me into her bosom and beating a path through the throng to my mother. My mother was crying, too. I remember that. I remember also that she was bare-footed, her headgear was gone and her hair was dishevelled, while her make-up was ruined by her tears.
‘Onyi!’ she cried, snatching me from the woman who had found me.
She was quiet all the way home and when we got home and I asked her where she had put her shoes and headgear, my mother sighed.
‘I threw them away.’
‘Why?’ I asked.
‘Because they were too heavy.’
I was feeling like that young girl as I drove into the darkness in search of my husband and ever since, many people have asked me why I dashed out of the estate into the dark night and onto the long road instead of waiting, or calling for help. ‘What did you think you would find?’ they ask.
My answer is always a simple one. I needed to be sure. But when they ask what I needed to be so sure of, I find that I am not sure what it was I set out to find. All I know is that something inside me was like a compass pointing me down the dark road.
As I drove, I still strained my ears to listen but I heard nothing. The phone had either gone dead or been discovered. Yet still I drove on, something telling me to go to the Third Mainland Bridge after I took a left turn to avoid the police checkpoint in front.
I drove slowly on the dark and unlit bridge, my car headlights shining in front of me, my heart hammering as my mouth moved in wordless prayer. I was in the middle of the road and would have missed him but for a speeding car that seemed to come out of nowhere. I swerved to the right as the oncoming car’s headlights lit up the interior of my car, and I was straightening up when, in the wing mirror, I saw somebody waving frantically. I stopped and reversed.
What I saw next made me laugh and weep at once. There was a naked man on the bridge, his fingers covering his crotch. I squinted in the dark to see better and who was standing there but Ndu, his face puffy and bloodied.
Acknowledgements
Writing is an intensely personal experience.
But reading, on the other hand, and the very act of book making and promotion and selling and reading can become not just collaborative but very public.
Thank you Bibi, Emma, Kofo, Lynette, Layla and all the other unseen hands tugging at the strings behind the scenes at Cassava Republic.
A special thank you to the journalists and book reviewers and bloggers, book clubs and magazine owners who help push and put our works out there.
Thank you Saraba for publishing ‘Strangers’ and AGNI for publishing ‘The Harbinger’. The other stories appeared, in slightly different forms, in the following journals and newspapers: Drum, Voices Revue, ThisDay, Post Express literary series, Sunday Sun Revue, Daily Independent and webzines like Farafina and Africawriting.com. Others have appeared in anthologies such as Little Drops, Ashes and Diamonds, We-men and Inkwells.
Finally, a big thanks to my father whose library was my first true contact with books and reading.
Awele, Chuka and Ify - love always from Daddy.
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US/Canada Publication Date: Spring 2020
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The magical tales in The Whispering Trees capture the essence of life, death and coincidence in Northern Nigeria. Myth and reality intertwine in stories featuring political agitators, newly-wedded widows, and the tormented whirlwind, Kyakkyawa. The two medicine men of Mazade battle against their egos, an epidemic and an enigmatic witch. And who is Okhiwo, whose arrival is heralded by a pair of little white butterflies?
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Transforming a manuscript into the book you are now reading is a team effort. Cassava Republic Press would like to thank everyone who helped in the production of Nights of the Creaking Bed:
Editorial Design & Production
Bibi Bakare-Yusuf Seyi Adegoke
Layla Mohamed Tobi Ajiboye
Sales & Marketing Publicity
Emma Shercliff Lynette Lisk
Kofo Okunola Nikki Mander
By the Same Author:
The Carnivorous City
Copyright
First published in 2019 by Cassava Republic Press
Abuja – London
Copyright © Toni Kan 2008
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transported in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher of this book.
The moral right of Toni Kan to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the National Library of Nigeria and the British Library.
ISBN 978–1–911115–84–7
eISBN 978–1–911115–85–4
Book design by Tobi Ajiboye
Cover & Art Direction by Seyi Adegoke
Printed and bound in Great Britain by Bell and Bain Ltd., Glasgow
Distributed in Nigeria by Yellow Danfo
Distributed in the UK by Central Books Ltd.
Distributed in the US by Consortium Books
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