by Wole Soyinka
“Six years plus. I was a student of dentistry.” He hesitated, stopped, then asked in turn, “And you?”
“A mere three months, but already sick of it.”
“How come?”
“I miss everything.” Then he surprised himself again by blurting out, “The so-called study tour was forced on me. I despise myself for not resisting it to the last.”
The stranger waited, not bothering to disguise his expectation. Ofeyi shrugged. “You want to hear all about it? It’s the same old story. Nothing is secret any more about the plight in which we’ve found ourselves.”
He said nothing while Ofeyi sketched for him the affair of the Cocoa Campaign, culminating in the suspended shooting of the Aiyéró film. Only then, smiling with a slight superior condescension did the Dentist comment:
“Rich black earth or rich blackguards—you can only shoot one.” Then he elaborated as Ofeyi caught the disturbing note and looked up. “Working alone that is. Now if you had a different kind of technician assisting you, you could shoot both, working together. Working together” he repeated, then stood up.
“You will remain here for a while? In this country I mean.”
“I can break my itinerary, go anywhere” Ofeyi admitted bitterly.
“Try and remain here, if only for a few days. After all, the advertising business is quite flourishing here too.” He flicked his head towards the door. “And your oriental friend?”
Ofeyi grinned. “A fascinating woman. I was trying to get her to see the cancellation of her flight as an act of God. She seemed to think so already—but not on my account!” he added ruefully.
“I can offer you my apartment” he said. “Why don’t you stay for a few days at least. We have much to talk about.”
“All right. Thanks.”
* * *
—
A shimmer of vapour from gasfires at evening. Toast and reverie morning and evening. A frail figure of paradox, young and solemn who tried to draw the world within her inward peace—“I want the world in here, within me, but first, I must submit my conscience to the universe.”
“Listen Iri…”
“Don’t!” Her young eyes grew hard and angry for the first time since they met.
“What’s the matter?” He was really taken aback.
“Not any more. At first I was not sure, now I know it is the name of some woman you know.”
He fell silent. “Yes” she continued, “I knew I was right.” She broke into the more familiar smile. “Now that you have admitted it I am no longer angry. But don’t use the name any more.”
The moment passed, the outer world was re-interred, in its place only the two large eyes which filled the sitting-room, luminous votives moving on invisible radials to the centre of the universe. Taiila turned and looked at him. He understood her language by now and knew that she was inviting him to join her. He shook his head and said, “I have told you not to wait for me.”
She sighed. “We pass and re-pass each other but you will not step off your circling path. You are trapped on your violent circumference Ofeyi. Why won’t you rest?”
“Mire and mud, for some these are the paths to beauty and peace. We may meet at several intersections, you and I, the mystery virgin of a transit lounge….”
She came forward and took his hand. “But you still don’t believe it was fated. You think it is all an accident, my brother a doctor in your country, our plane cancelled on my way to visit him, and just you and I in that lounge. You still don’t believe it was all destined. Can’t you see I am meant to save you?”
Ofeyi tried to infuse his voice with all the sincerity he felt. “Believe me I envy you your glimpses of redemption. I really do. Only you must believe also in my own commitments. Leave me to track my own spoors on the laterals, Taiila. Moreover,” he added, “if we were destined to meet so was my meeting with the Dentist.”
Church bells, fresh snow timbred, air that became clean music, the black steeple and chimney skyline in a crisp winter air. Savagely crunching beneath his feet the cotton deadening of commitments, he accompanied her to her observation post to view the line of nuns walking endlessly towards the sound of vespers, seeking the infinite in mists, trudging along her vision of radials gathered into the heart of an impenetrable stillness.
Blackbirds pocked a world of snow, plunging into white horizons of her infinite silence.
“Let’s walk” he suggested. “My shoes soak up the snow standing on this one spot.”
“Is that the only reason?”
“Why? What other reason could there be?”
“You resent my watching the nuns.”
“You are silly” he chided. “I want to stretch my legs, perfectly simple.”
“And I want to stretch my soul. I want to stretch my soul to embrace the infinite.”
“Listen sister…”
“Don’t call me Sister.” She turned away, walking briskly. Her lips were drawn in disappointment. “I did not expect you would try to mock me.”
At first he did not understand. Then light broke and he tried to explain. “I didn’t mean sister like Reverend Sister. Just sister, the way I would say brother.”
Her smile drew against the bleak landscape. “I know. I like to see you contrite.”
“And I’d like to spank your impudent bottom.”
They walked back slowly to the house. “You should be a doctor” she announced, with the frowning solemnity of one who has given deep thought to a problem. “You are a beautiful person you know. Inside of you I see so much beauty.”
Ofeyi thanked her, caustic-toned.
“Oh you are quite beautiful outside too” she went on calmly. “But that is not important. The true doctors are the real healers, and healers radiate beauty. That is what heals you know. The beauty they radiate from their own persons.”
They were back in the flat. He warmed his hands against the gas fire. When he turned she was standing directly behind him, watching him sadly. He raised her paradoxical face, a mixture of adolescence and experience and tapped her chin with a finger. “You are very wise, of that I am sure. And beautiful inside and out. And if you are both things, why this fascination with a nun’s life. Have you really thought it out?”
“A nun too is a form of healer, and healing is beauty….”
“And healing takes many forms. There is the way fire heals. And the way wind heals by tearing down and blowing dirt into void. Even if one is blinded by too sudden and too much light, it reveals inner truth. I also seek beauty, but that kind which has been tested and stressed. Only such beauty lasts. Be a nun if you insist, but stop preaching at me.”
“I don’t trust men of violence!”
“You should not eavesdrop on private discussions.”
“I could not help overhearing…”
“Then you must forget what you heard.” He took her hands in his and spoke more gently. “In any case you heard an argument, nothing more. You should know from what little you heard that I also do not believe in violence. But I see it, I recognize it. I must confront it.”
She turned away from him and sat on the window-sill. Ofeyi felt his being sink inwards in a sigh closed to the pain on her fragile face. Through half-shut eyes he addressed the ceiling. “These encounters destroy a man bit by bit, they dam up passages of clarity, the essential. Do you understand? My feelings are incoherent. I meet you, grow towards you, I think of the mystery of even encountering you. I am aware also of the growth of self-deception, because you stand for only one part of my longing….”
“The peaceful part?”
“Yes. The stillness.”
Her face was suffused with sudden radiance. Ofeyi stared at her in surprise. “I know I shall be able to help you attain that. Some day. I know that everything is linked. You must believe that. And I am striving to obta
in a glimpse of the entire network. I know I will arrive at a state of detached consciousness where I shall stand aside and comprehend it all in one instant. Even if it lasts only one moment, it will be enough for me. And for you. Yes, for you. That is what makes me happy.”
“For one so young, you seem to strain for a glimpse of the doorway to death.”
She stretched her long neck through the window, straining to see the receding procession of nuns. It made him think of a swan framed against thin icing on a lake at twilight. “There could not be any beauty to equal theirs” she murmured. “To spend a whole life in self-preparation for that moment of perception of the infinite. To perceive, understand and be at peace. Ofeyi tell me, can you think of a more complete moment of harmony? Is life not unbearable without belief in such a moment?”
Her breath stopped as a knock sounded on the door. They glanced at each other. She spoke wistfully, “Your host knocks with such gentleness, but it is the knock of a violent man. Even if I had not met him or ever heard him…” She hurried away towards the bedroom, shut the door firmly behind her.
“Come in” Ofeyi called out.
The youth from the airport encounter entered, carrying a small suitcase. Small and compact though it was it hit the floor with the dead resonance of heavy metal as he set it down. “It is all in here” he announced. “When do you plan to leave?”
“Tomorrow if there is a flight.”
The visitor’s eyebrows lifted in surprise, his head turned a fraction towards the bedroom door through which Taiila had disappeared, his eyes asked the question.
Ofeyi shook his head, his grin though slightly soured in regret reassured the man. Glancing towards the door just to make sure it was not ajar Ofeyi said, “Surely you did not think there was a serious dilemma?”
“I wasn’t sure.”
“It is strange” Ofeyi said, “but she herself thinks in terms of little else but destiny. Everything—destiny! Our encounter at that airport lounge. Your happening along at the same moment. She weaves all the strands in a private accommodating mesh and outside of that…nothing exists. I am not sure mind you…if you hadn’t happened along.” He shrugged. “I was at that stage of self-pity, negativity and I don’t know what else. Maybe you’ve been through it also, the stage at which one asks, what is the bloody use?”
He gestured towards the arm-chair. “Whisky? Oh, I forget…”
“No, it’s all right. I am…no longer on duty.”
Ofeyi glanced at the suitcase. “Yes…to quote a title from the world of fiction—mission accompli?”
The youth smiled apologetically. “I’m afraid I am not familiar with the world of fiction. In fact, I rather despise it.”
Vainly attempting to keep the scorn from his voice Ofeyi retorted, “Aren’t you overdoing the Lenin bit?”
“No, no…”
“You see everything as a threat. No drink while you are engaged on—even on long distance business. As for women, art, music…”
The youth held up his hand. “It is only a habit of discipline I have acquired with time. As for Lenin, no, he merely distrusted those aspects of the arts which he found will-sapping. A natural precaution.” He grinned disarmingly. “Why are we quarrelling anyway? What you have told me about your work, your music for instance, how could I be against that? It was sufficient threat to the Cartel of organized robbery and murder to send you packing on this leisure trip. As for women, well, I am looking forward to meeting the famous Iriyise….”
“We’ll drink to her.” Ofeyi poured out the whisky. “And to that suitcase. One is as essential as the other—depending,” he spoke with slow emphasis, “on mental attitudes.”
They drank. A thoughtful silence fell on both. The youth paced up and down, suddenly restless. He burst out suddenly, “You have thought what to do if they search it?”
Ofeyi spread out his hands. “But I honestly do not know what it contains.”
“I am sorry to have to ask you to do it, but I have been too long away. No contacts at home, nothing! And—I dare not be anything but clean on arrival!”
“Listen, let us assume the worst. My position is clear. A chance acquaintance asked me to take the suitcase back for him, even paid the excess charge on it. That is my story and you don’t have to bother your head about any slip-ups.”
The youth’s eyes remained bitter, swearing through narrowed lips. “Bastards! They are all so stupid, so shortsighted. To pass dossiers on us to our worst enemies at home.”
Ofeyi was somewhat surprised at the passion of his resentment. The pattern was wearisomely familiar. A violent change of government, the new leaders courted recognition from neighbouring power, offered dowry in the form of wanted fugitives from that area of repression. Sometimes trussed and wrapped like mail-bags. And dossiers complete with aliases, photos, activities and lists of connections. Dirty deals, the old bargaining in human flesh, a slave market among the middlemen of the black continent, perpetuating their historic role in a lucrative betrayal of their own skin and flesh. It boiled down to this, neither more nor less, sustaining the putrid form of power with a market in flesh, an internal slave route lined in shameless sophistries.
“At least you got out in time” Ofeyi consoled him.
“Stripped bare! Of comrades, contacts, equipment. Almost of ideology. Christ! The lip-service those stooge leaders pay to liberation movements! Why the betrayal, tell me that! Why, if we were such a threat didn’t they simply let us go on to Mozambique. That was where we were training for, Mozambique or Bissau.” He calmed down slowly, sipped his drink with increasing thoughtfulness. “Well, perhaps they did me a favour. I can put that training to some use on home territory. It has taken a long while to accept that cliché, but charity does begin at home.”
“You have not forgotten our agreement?”
“No. I shall wait. I have kept up with the situation and…you have briefed me some more. But I’ll give myself time to study it all over on the spot. I like to see, to get to know faces. Even those who…” He stopped short, drained his glass at a gulp.
Ofeyi regarded him with his former unease. “We should not work in different directions….”
He met his gaze frankly. “I cannot guarantee that.”
“Time!” Ofeyi stressed. “Time to educate on a truly comprehensive scale. Nothing can be achieved by isolated acts, we have to organize.”
It drew a mere grunt of partial agreement. “Of course. But one cannot ignore the real incorrigible enemies who are impervious to education. The kind that hunted us down as soon as they came to power, the fat bourgeoisie who immediately began to suck up to them and lick their boots in public! What do you think I have done all these years of roaming around? What else was there to do except watch the pattern multiply itself and prove endemic throughout the continent! Bloated, ignorant armies hanging on to power until they drop like rotten fruit! A conspiracy of power-besotted exploiters across national boundaries, bargaining with outsiders against us! Lip-service to revolutionary movements to drown the cries of internal repression. Tell me friend, what are they selling? All this haggling and under-the-counter deals, what is the commodity? Us!”
Increasingly disturbed, swirling his drink round and round his glass, wondering how much of the personal emotion would go into settlement of the score of betrayal. The youth appeared to read his thoughts: “Don’t worry about me,” he said. “I speak like this only from frustration at my long inaction.” The boyish grin returned. “And the effect of the whisky. That is why I never drink on duty. At the point of action the machine takes over. The decisions are made in advance because I must avoid the luxury of doubts. Don’t worry about me,” he repeated.
* * *
—
Dream-like in its drift round and round the pool the craft came again close to the outlet. Archways of overhanging boughs framed the narrow passage, a change
in the motion of the paddle steered his craft at last into the passage and his face was flicked by sappy leaves. He made no effort to duck them. Fear death by…no, it was not a watery death he feared, only a death from error. And not his, but the death of others brought upon by faint decisions. And if those decisions were his, then it was worse than his own death, being the death of an idea, a stretching out of the passage towards his own eventual demise no matter by what name it went. A favourite title might be loss of faith.
To Ahime he had explained this, saying “No, I have no wish to die yet.”
The old man shook his head at what he deemed delirious talk.
“To go into that place is to court death. Wait for the frenzy to die down. You can help no one. If it is given for the men of Aiyéró to be the sacrifice…it was a good cause.”
Not sacrifice, he had thought bitterly, only more scapegoats to lay a false trail of blood away from the altar of the unholy god, Mammon. No, not sacrifice. Ahime, priest of the acrificial knife, he of all people should know better than to desecrate that word.
So Ahime led him to the pool. “Whatever bones lie beneath the water, the spirits that left from them must be beneficent ones, of that I am certain. Just sitting on the shore I drift off sometimes for an entire day. At the end I feel restored, rejuvenated. No matter what trials drove me there to seek its peace, they are resolved, as if an oracle had whispered in my ear.”
The only voice that came was the call of Iriyise. And it was no whisper but a loud cry of anguish. And trapped voices of the men of Aiyéró who had gone out at his call, vanguard of the new idea….
The channel opened abruptly into a wide expanse of water. He took his bearings from landmarks in the receding town, stood up in the craft and secured the engine over the stern. Seizing the cord firmly between fingers of his clenched fist he pulled. The engine roared into life.
He kept his eyes on the prow-riven sea, refused to acknowledge the lithe old man who had leapt out from the meeting-house at the sound and raced to the shore, only to be confronted by the receding churn of water. But before it vanished round the next curve of shore-line Ofeyi raised his arm in greeting, his gaze fixed steadily ahead.