by Wole Soyinka
“We will do as you say your Highness.”
“Do that, but no more. Do nothing more than what you are told.”
“I understand your Highness.”
“There is more than one way of obtaining justice. The Zaki has decided to forgive your past foolishness. But there is to be no more nonsense. Keep your mouths shut and your eyes open. Get yourselves ready. Wait until the Zaki gives you the word. Until then, do nothing on your own.”
The man touched the floor with his forehead. “I know now the Zaki has forgiven his wayward son. Ranka dede.”
The big man stood up. Immediately all the recumbent retinue leapt onto their haunches and gave the homage of the fist. Excepting the boy with the long lashes who rose lazily to his feet, picked up the bowl of sweetmeats and minced onto the platform. Placing his hand on the boy’s head Zaki Amuri swept out of the room.
The retinue rose one after the other, wandered through the chamber aimlessly. Two squatted back onto the floor and began to gamble with a well-worn pack of cards. Mostly they meandered outside, intending to pick up gossip, their noses already full of the scent of action and relief from boredom.
A lone figure, the one who had averted his eyes from the persecuted man slunk through the courtyard of Amuri’s palace. Half-brother to the incarcerated Abdul, his was the first vague warning to reach the settlement at Shage. But even he was too late.
* * *
—
They had watched as the hundreds of combat-ready soldiers, para-military waggon-loads and armoured cars invested the city. The darting eyes of plain-clothes security men betrayed them, their lethal bulging pockets conspicuous as they sought to mix among the crowds. Mentally, mindful of their training, perhaps they succeeded. Physically there was no crowd for them to mix with. The people stayed at home, shops and offices were shuttered in this first daylight curfew in the nation’s living memory. So the fearful secret eyes of order mingled among the shadows of store frontages, merged into trees and packing-cases, merged conspicuously with the silent air and waited. And it was their fear most of all, and the hungry prowl of those impersonal armoured cars and alien cartridge belts from Cross-river in the deserted city which conveyed a plain summons to death on the dusty streets, one that none of the hidden watchers could misconstrue.
Ofeyi felt its essence as the protrusion through a slanted ridge of a toxic tuber. A man stubbed his toe on it and maybe dies; death as sowed by these false farmers, the power-men, was planned to burgeon under the soil. The offensive outcrop was only a wilful, incidental wart, a mere tip of the iceberg that might warn or kill. The real death that the people were called upon to die was the death from under, the long creeping paralysis of flesh and spirit that seized upon them as the poison tuber might spread through bowels of earth. Those noisy individual deaths were merely incidents. The real extermination went on below.
Before the first train came to a complete stop there commenced an unholy racket of boots and rifles and metal-studded rucksacks as the men leapt, jumped, crawled between the waggons as if by pre-arranged signal. The sliding doors of the freight waggons gravelled open on burnt-out castors and ungreased tracks and the soldiers who were still half-asleep at the last level-crossing dashed through openings into the rusted goods-shed of the old abandoned station. The manoeuvre was all over in a few minutes and the train once again picked up speed, rolled onwards into the modern station where the reporters waited, officially invited to witness the baselessness of rumours of the daily haul of Cross-river soldiers into the rebellious city.
“Walk through gentlemen, examine the length and breadth of the waggons and see for yourselves. Perhaps you think they are hiding in these cotton-bales? Or among the groundnut sacks? Or maybe hanging on the underside of the waggons? Gentlemen, I think your informants have been watching too many American films. This is not the Wild West you know!”
In the darkness and rust of the deserted station, barely five miles away, the reinforcements awaited dusk and assembled their weapons. Metallic clacks issuing from the still and smokeless yard only deepened the desolation of the railway yard. The sun’s reflection on glazed rails seemed strident; long after the last hiss of steam from the departed train flakes of rusted iron separated and fell off the sides of the rails. Ofeyi kept his mind on the motion of such peelings, felt the exercise dissolve tension raised by the morning’s sinister incursion.
“Why come ye upon our peaceful people with such fuss and noisome fright and with devilish instruments of war….”
But his companion would not even permit himself a smile. “Because we invited them. You have seen dogs lay on their backs and beg to be tickled. When a people do that, they are begging to be kicked.”
“It is creepier than that shrine of curses at Gborolu.”
The man merely shook his head. “This is far more effective. Curses fly in the air, same as bullets, but impotent.”
Curfew Town—the name was bound to stick, ousting its real name Gborolu—had been wrung dry of all propaganda juice squirted through the Corpse’s organs night and day. City of the New Era, Future Cosmopolis, its spotless ultra-modernity was a symbol of the progressive and unblemished character of the men of Jekú. It was the planned city, it proved that Jekú had a plan. An old, crumbling village, primitive, clannish and locked in decadent rituals of vengeance had been transformed into a clinical exhibition city of factories, colleges and civic contentment. Against all unrest Curfew Town was assertively immune. No tendentious propaganda could penetrate its geometric bungalows and high-walled state of welfare being.
When ledgers were questioned which could not be explained even in terms of the ever accommodating roads and projects that defied penetration, Curfew Town absorbed the missing millions into its benevolent purity and experimental essence. Look at the prototype of the future city. Prototypes are invariably costly. We must experiment. The experiment is not yet ended but the natives of Gborolu are proof and witnesses of the new quality of life and justification of the cost of providing this. Here is a report of the Secretary and Auditor to the Board of Planning, himself a native of Gborolu and a luminary among the citizenry….
“I shall show you a little-known sector” Ofeyi’s companion had promised, “something a little different from the supermarkets, the real Gborolu that no man of Jekú dare penetrate.”
It was already night when they came upon an undulating settlement of bee-hive clusters, parked the car and began to walk. Almost at once the heady smell struck them, and it required no further sniffing to establish its nature—strong, fermenting liquor. Successive rulers, beginning with the white invaders had striven in vain to suppress an industry that won fame, it was claimed, from the quality of the water from the wells. Next to the tell-tale clumps of camouflaged distilleries, the wells were the most ubiquitous. Hardly a depression could be found in which a well had not been dug; it was a saying also that what Gborolu did not kill with liquor it cured with its waters. In the dark damp of fermentation sheds the old women of Gborolu also nursed strange fungoid growths to which many, even from the far metropolis, turned for alleged miracles of pharmacy when all else had failed.
They found their way to that ancient heart of Gborolu along tracks which wound round low hills in serpentine coils, leading unerringly to the wraiths of incantation which rose into the night, vibrant and raw-nerved. It was a plaint of anguish and anger, and yet demand and prayer also, uttered mostly with a determined impatience. They were overtaken from time to time by broken defiles of lamp-bearing figures; in the still air the incense of oil rose and hung heavily, clogging the distant trill to which latecomers were hastening preceded by the earthy smell of palm oil. The Dentist led him onto a hillock; once on higher ground they could observe the entire scene of a thousand flickering lights coiling in and out of dark clumps and moving in the direction of the chorus of incantation until at last they joined a vast basin of lights from where the chanti
ng had commenced. From the valley bottom they rose higher and higher up the sides until Gborolu became a subaqueous cave to whose sides clung thousands of tiny limpets, luminous with soft dull metallic fires. From the centre of it, propelled by an urgency of pain and bitterness came the chant which became more recognizable as it was swelled by voices of the new arrivals—a chant of curses and excommunication. Pausing hardly for breath it rose and fell, shaped and toned as though by those convoluting tracks through which they had come, modulated around the rhythms of the hills, a blend of Gborolu’s herbs and unguents floating on oil exhalations from the burning lamps of hate.
The names were audible to the listeners, and the intensity of uttered maledictions…“water is enough for a load, may it weigh you down but never slake your thirst…may you be remembered as we remember carrion…the tree of hate you planted has touched the sky of pride—it must fall on you when you shelter beneath it…the death of a viper brings joy to the farmer’s household—may you bring joy to the heart of Gborolu….”
And the names, punctuating the curses, over and over again…the Cartel quads, the Jekú leaders…
If a collective intensity could alter the course of history, or a pooling of psychic strength alter the path of nature…it was no less easy to accept than that organ peals and the sift of light through stained-glass windows should operate on the lateness of rains, averting drought and the threat of smallpox. A basin of oil-lamps and crouching shadows actually sought to disturb the peace of mind and material ease of the four-headed beast that trampled their dignity with iron hooves? Yet it seemed credible, at least significant. For these were the inhabitants of the new dwellings of concrete and glass, among them were the upholders of the new bourgeois conceit, yet they had turned backwards and inwards in desperation to this old eternal community of feeling which made every spot a shrine, a temple, a pool of agony or ecstasy, which a community of feeling, sought to transcend limitations of tramped self and transform it, in union with others, into a weapon for aid or destruction of distant forces. Their need—Ofeyi was none too sure of their faith—but their need was undeniably pervasive; it reached him, disturbed him profoundly and seemed to alter the balance of merely sensed forces in the night air. A collision between the cry of Gborolu, and the nightly talisman of the Cartel, whose live burial of a cow in the dead of every night sought to preserve their potency and guarantee a lasting ascendancy over a people that had lately begun to rumble and shift under their feet….
But in addition, the Cartel possessed the bullets. Cowed by superstition they might sow a live cow in their backyards but, they raised a crop of armed serpents when the need arose.
* * *
—
At night the soldiers poured into the city. Silently. Obedient to the death infection of the beleagured town even more than their own need for silent movements. One understood now that more than one side played the game of Gborolu. The means of this curse was however tangible, the end was the embalming of an entire people even as they breathed, deadening their nerve centres, willing the vital organs to malfunction, ending all coordination among the physical and thought processes. The peace of the town would thereupon be presented to the world—a wax composure, a dead composition of serenity.
“Whoever first invites the other to death” said the Dentist, “literally has his cake and eats it. For the recipient to pretend non-recognition of the invitation is to accept his own demise. To accept it is to meet the first man on his own terms. To misinterpret it is to deny one’s intelligence, in which case we lose our sense of wholeness after, which is a form of death. In exchange for the surrender we receive a permit to remain alive, but it is really a certificate of death.”
It had gone beyond the mere imposition of a curfew. The many faces which peeped through chinks in the windows to witness the filtering of alien bodies through the city’s alleyways were stunned; they admitted reluctantly that they witnessed a brutal extermination of their own selves. Alien forms had come upon their will to life with an ultimatum which left them unprepared. They knew in advance that an alien intrusion was not merely an abuse of sectional boundaries but far more painfully an irritant in the eye. Open or shut the eye remains bloodshot, the resultant flow of suppurated rheum unending until the irritant is removed.
“I still insist” the Dentist commented, “self-defence is not simply waiting until a lunatic attacks you with a hatchet. When you have watched his attack on a man up the road, you don’t wait any longer. But you see, you rationalists have given birth to a monster child by pretending that the lunatic can be reasoned with. That is why our people die. Because you paced in silence at the incubation of a monstrosity, preoccupied with a study of the phenomenon. Tell me, if you took a mouthful of food and you felt an acid burn your mouth, do you roll it round and round on your tongue thoughtfully or violently spit it out?”
He drove the Fire Brigade car casually in and out of barricades without drawing more than casual, perfunctory looks from the patrols. Sometimes he even received a salute. They watched the grime and coal-dust coated soldiers multiply every moment. The few private cars on the road were stopped and checked. These were the doctors and the few “essential services” men who had been issued passes, the only relief from a festoon of khaki, steel helmets and bayonets. Ofeyi found his discomfort increasing with every sidelong glance that the Dentist gave him, a glance of subtle mockery and impatience.
He groaned, “God, how I long for peace. Peace, just peace, anything for peace, that much abused, much dirtied word peace. Just peace.” He paused. “Yes, that is the problem. A just peace.”
“You are calling on a rapacious beast. One with the most ravenous but selective appetite. The more it is fed with the wrongful diet, the more determined it is to wait for the genuine sacrificial meat. It is best to feed it properly from the first. Everything else is buying time with innocent victims.”
Feeling himself challenged, Ofeyi began to speak urgently. “Listen, hesitation is one thing…”
“It is everything” interrupted the Dentist. “It means consolidation by the opposition.”
“We are discussing means. I don’t want to foul up the remnants of my humanity as others do by different means. Through surrender or compromise for instance. To accept any depredations on one’s total personality is to cripple oneself in more ways than one.” Ofeyi looked sidelong at his companion and grinned. “After a while, even the act of making love to a woman seems to take place under sufferance. I mean, the same senses are involved. And so pleasure, even ecstasy is tainted by the coarsening of the senses through compromises. So it is hardly worth it, not even the orgasmic moment of compensation for the torments of survival. The situation, social or political situation overwhelms, fouls and corrodes even the most intimate sensations. In such a situation one is only half a man, no matter how superhuman his woman swears he is. The sentient, sensitive totality of the man recognizes that he is only a mangled part of his human potential.”
The Dentist drove through cordons of intrusive bayonets and levelled sub-machine guns. Once when it appeared that a senior, intelligent looking officer intended to take a closer look at the credentials of the occupants of the car he jumped out and took the battle to him. “Are you the commanding officer? I haven’t been able to get anyone on the phone but I want to know whether or not you intend to provide any special guard for the petrol storage tanks at the Ministry of Transport. It is a fire hazard and a natural target for saboteurs…”
Ofeyi watched, admiring his nerve. Except for details of scruple, he found himself increasingly accepting the fact that they were kindred spirits. A rage engulfed him at his imprisonment within the dilemma, an exaggeration of the mere part against the whole. There was something a little unnatural in this process of resolving the ethics of assassination, preparing oneself to accept or reject the cold-blooded necessity with a minimum of feeling. Demanding in return only the residual sensation of a fr
eed conscience, exhilarated, a dreamless sleep, the knowledge that one has taken decision on behalf of the guiltless inmates of overcrowded prisons, of innocents disembowelled on the point of stakes, shot in the silence of their homes, pauperized and degraded by a totalitarian maul, brained by leprous accretions that even devoured their own fingers in the reckless pace of gluttony.
If it were possible—yes, that was the grim temptation—if it were possible to ignore even the unformed, irrational whisper, the purely psychic intuition, to succumb to the peace of amnesia, expunge all knowledge and define freedom as the freedom not to listen; to read only the official newspapers, to avoid conversations, refuse to open letters whose origins could not be immediately identified and thus evade the cry of distant suppliants, to shut off the strident radio and exist only in the sterilized distillation of the experiences of others, to cling only to the moments of insulating sensuality…
He heard the car door slam, the Dentist’s voice next to his ear demanding, “What were the ravages playing on your face? You didn’t imagine we were in any difficulties did you?”
He denied any lack of confidence in his guide’s resourcefulness. “No, I was merely thinking.”
“You have an unbelievably expressive face! But we must get out of town immediately and change this car. I have another waiting just on the outskirts. A change of clothes and we can drive back in and resume our tour of inspection.”
Ofeyi nodded agreement. As they drove towards the town borders he said, almost to himself, “Do you know, his children call me Uncle.”
“The most notorious murderers and mass-murderers have been noted for their love of children,” was the Dentist’s dry comment.
* * *
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