by Wole Soyinka
“They would have found her there. The thing to do is to find her. Where do we go next?”
“Home. Back south man, there is nothing to do here.”
“Let’s drive around. We will visit the night-haunts and listen to the gossip.”
At the gate the guard stopped them at the sentry-box. “Which of you is Mr. Ofeyi?”
Ofeyi identified himself.
“The Lieutenant wishes to speak to you.” He handed him a receiver through the square hole in the booth. The lieutenant’s voice came through on the line.
“Is that you Mr. Ofeyi?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know the suburbs of this town very well?”
“Fairly well.”
“On the route to the airport, about four miles out of town there is a road which goes towards some agricultural settlements. You know those experimental farms that rather became the pattern? I believe the model came from down your way, some place called Aiyéró.”
“Yes I think I know it.”
“Well, if you take that road and go on a few more miles, you will find a few of those…er…native Christian churches. They are dotted all over the place, usually with no more than narrow footpaths leading to them. Now, two of those churches contain survivors in hiding. I suggest you try them.”
“Thank you, I will.”
“Be careful when you go there. They are understandably nervous and quite a few have weapons for their own protection. And of course be careful not to lead their hunters to them.”
Ofeyi promised he would take all precaution.
“It is a waste of time of course, but I think it would help you if they told you how hopeless your quest is. They at least know what they are talking about. They should be able to convince you where I failed.”
Ofeyi began to thank him but he cut him short. “No, I’m only offering it as the only alternative to making my men forcibly escort you out of town. I feel responsible for the safety of any friends of Magari.”
* * *
—
“I pissed in my pants” Zaccheus said, “when that man stepped out and asked who was Ofeyi. And then I hoped it was to arrest you and bundle you out of town.”
“He thought of it I’m sure, then thought better of it.”
“So where are we heading now?”
“To find a church.”
“A church!”
Ofeyi stopped the car in the middle of nowhere, stepped out and looked in every direction. “Of all the vague directions…” he muttered. He climbed to the top of the car while Zaccheus remained within, wishing himself five hundred miles from the spot. Ofeyi climbed down at last and opened the door on Zaccheus’ side.
“I think we’ll have to walk the rest of the way.”
Zaccheus sighed. “Just tell me something. Do you know where we are?”
“Come on.”
He sighed his resigned bulk out of the car. It seemed to him at that moment the most singly foolish act he had ever committed, leaving the safety of the vehicle in the middle of a clearly murder-filled environment. He hunched his shoulders to receive the first blow that would confirm their joint sanity.
“Ever heard of something the oyinbos call a suicide pact, maestro?”
“There are people around Zaccheus, but they are those who are used to other fugitives turning up.”
Zaccheus gasped, staggered and nearly fell as Ofeyi pushed him aside suddenly. He pointed downwards to a spot from which a huge swarm of bluebottles had just risen.
“You nearly stepped into that mess.”
The drone flies and a hundred other varieties settled back on the offal. Mostly it looked as if it had once been the intestines of some animal. The path fell silent again as they left the mess behind them, the bushes fell aside then closed about them.
“If only I’d remembered the cocoaine” Zaccheus continued to moan. “A suicide pact deserves a last drink before the end.”
Abruptly the grass ended, gave way to a burnt swathe which stretched for some distance before them, a wide patch of black and grey ash and floating carbon wisps. The world stretched out on every side, brown, limp and arid. Against the landscape rose a single baobab, dry and stunted. Its trunk was broad and even up to a few feet, then it was overtaken by an abnormality or retardation that seemed, from the lumps, swellings and contortions, a blight of human infections—rickets, beri-beri, kwashiokor, and a variety of goitres. A distended belly in the middle of the trunk thrust its wrinkled navel at the black horizon. From malformed shoulders balanced on a flat chest writhed an abortion of limbs. Where the head might have been thinner branches hissed skywards, daring forked tongues in a venomous protection of whatever mystery hoard lay within the so-called tree of life. For there was nothing that called for protection from this wasted emanation.
At the edge of the arid stretch they paused. The baobab held both hypnotized. Zaccheus snapped his fingers round his head to ward off evil: “They can call the baobab their tree of life, I just call that one a bad omen.”
“Let’s go on” Ofeyi said.
“Look boss, let’s sit down and plan this thing properly. Why don’t we simply move back to civilization, have a square meal, dig up a friendly native and return to this place. I mean, we are not working scientifically.”
“The church is around here” Ofeyi insisted.
“Who’s been burning grass here? Them or us? And why?”
“Us, obviously. There is no sign of a building burnt down is there? So it can’t be that the raiders found a hiding-place and set it on fire. The fire could only have been by the fugitives.”
“I don’t get the logic.”
“So no one can sneak up on them. One of the churches must be beyond that next stretch of bushes. I’m sure they’ve posted guards and we’ll be watched walking through the burnt patch.”
“In which direction then?”
Ofeyi seized his arm and pulled him out of their camouflage. When they came to the baobab Zaccheus halted, leant against the tree and began to take off his shoes.
“Do they pinch?”
“Help me up this monster. If I can get a foot on that protuberance, I can make it to the top. Bad omens should be trampled on.”
Ofeyi comprehended at once and hoisted him onto the look-out post, watched Zaccheus scan the horizon on all sides. After a long while he announced wearily, “Not a building in sight.”
“You were looking too far out. Try and look into the bushes. See if you can detect movement or footpaths. Don’t gaze into the bloody horizon man.”
Zaccheus tried again. Suddenly his face lighted up. “Help me down. I think I’ve got it.” He scrabbled down onto Ofeyi’s shoulders, leapt down and retrieved his shoes. “Yes, I think it’s over there, just where the bush is broken by that lemon shrub or something. Come on.”
“Did you see movements?”
“Nothing. Just a break in the bush.”
Sweaty and itchy from dust and ash and countless needles from the snapping twigs, they traversed the broken path for another half a mile, then came suddenly on a stockade of low stakes. The church, a mud structure painted yellow and white stood in the midst of the stockade. A graveyard, well-tended, stood a little to one corner of it. The entire surrounding was deserted.
Then the bushes broke behind them. Four men emerged from both sides, two armed with guns and the others with matchets.
“What do you want?” asked the foremost.
“We are friends” Ofeyi assured them.
But the men only continued to stare at the intruders and Zaccheus shouted irritably, “Can’t you see for heaven’s sake we’re not Cross-river people.”
“Your names?”
They supplied them.
“Where were you born?”
They submitted to a prolonged inte
rrogation.
The leader said at the end, “It isn’t that we don’t believe you are not natives of this damnable place. But we have had traitors among us who tried to buy off their own lives and property by betraying their own people. Many have done strange things. What do you want?”
“We are looking for some friends.”
There was another silence while their spokesman gave them a further inspection. Then he signalled to his companions, adding in explanation to the two intruders, “You will have to be blindfolded. This church here is not our real hiding place.”
They allowed themselves to be blindfolded. The leader continued to speak. “We are waiting until we are fully prepared. Then we take the long journey home on foot. By river and through forests. We are placing no further faith in public transports and guarantees of safety. One of our camps believed in the radio claims of order and trooped out to the airport to fly to safety. They were butchered to a man.”
“We heard about that” Zaccheus said.
“They should not have believed those lies. Their leader came here and we warned them. Better to trust in the forest and fight our way through any villages we encounter on the way. Sooner wild beasts than the human jackals we have just learnt to know. They should have listened to us.”
The procession moved on. One man placed a hand underneath the upper arm of each of the blinded men and guided him forwards. They told them when to crouch and when to raise their feet. They forded a small, muddy pool and climbed over fallen logs. After thirty minutes of the fumbling walk they came to a halt. Hands touched their faces and they felt the blindfolds removed.
Zaccheus blinked. The sight that confronted them could only be called an armed camp. Hostile eyes surveyed them from all sides. Finally one of the captors asked, “Shall we take them to the old man’s hut?”
There were imperceptible nods and the two captives were again nudged forward until they stood before an improvised shelter, a shack which appeared to have been constructed from odds and ends then roofed over with tarpaulin. “Wait here.”
One of their escorts entered the hut. They heard low-voiced snatches of the conversation.
* * *
—
In the hut sat an old man, alone, his head bowed as if in thought. Before him was a bowl which contained some boiled maize, and a plate of groundnuts. There was no furniture in the room, their host was seated on a mat onto which he now waved them. Then he made a strange gesture over the bowl of food and muttered:
“Food is sacred.”
Ofeyi gasped, looked up to encounter Ahime’s eyes staring straight into his. The old man took up two corn-cobs and offered them to his guests.
“Try this” he invited.
They accepted the maize, began to eat, thoughtfully. The old man continued, “I sent word to a mutual acquaintance to trace you in Ilosa. He was to tell you that I was already on my way to Cross-river. I had the slight hope that it might make you return to Aiyéró—at least to look after things in my absence.”
“I left as soon as Zaccheus returned with his news.” Ofeyi stopped, struck now by the light mockery in the old man’s voice. He asked, “A mutual acquaintance?”
“He traced you once before. Anyway it turned out that he also had already made for Cross-river.”
Ofeyi waited but the old man said nothing further. Instead he asked, “What are your impressions of our camp?”
“Unreal” Ofeyi admitted. “Who organised it?”
“Our mutual friend.” The flicker on Ahime’s face widened to a grin. “Surely you can guess who it is by now?”
“Someone from Shage? I’ve recognized a few of the workers from there. And from the Mining Trust.”
Ahime shook his head. “Only one man has the training to organize protection for such an open camp.”
The elusive name flew to Ofeyi’s tongue at once: “Not the Dentist!”
Ahime nodded. “I don’t think of him by that name he has since acquired. Demakin is how we still refer to him in Aiyéró. And now I have to ask your forgiveness for the long deception. Your meeting abroad was no accident. Not what transpired between you two—that was your affair. But each time you sent me one of your postcards I wrote to our sons in that part of the world to look out for you. Demakin was only one of many.”
Ofeyi digested the news with some measure of irritation as if he felt that he had been no more than an object of study to both men. Perhaps Ahime guessed what went on in his mind for he went on to add:
“He is very secretive by habit, perhaps it comes from his training. He wrote me that he had met you but he made me promise not to mention his links with me or with Aiyéró. That’s the way he’s always acted.”
Then Ofeyi recalled some detail in the little of himself that the Dentist ever revealed. “Was he lying” he asked, “when he said he was born in Irelu?”
“No. Like you he came to Aiyéró from the outside. But the effect of our community on him was to make him take off from the country. The last I heard of him was that he was off to join some liberation group. That is, until he found himself in flight to Europe when he wrote me a most bitter account and asked for news of home.”
The noise of newcomers entering the camp interrupted them. “I think he’s back” Ahime said.
A copper-haired head bent down to let himself into the tent and stopped at the sight of Ofeyi. They stared at each other for a wordless moment. Then the Dentist grinned, came fully into the tent. Zaccheus made room for him on the mat.
“Well. I wondered how long it would take you to find me.”
“To find you out, you mean” Ofeyi countered.
The Dentist looked sharply at the old man who merely shrugged.
The Dentist spread out his arms. “Ah well, I should have told you a long time before.”
“It’s strange” Ofeyi conceded, “how it never occurred to me I would meet you in Cross-river.”
“I came to try and stop four men—Amuri, Batoki, Biga and their uniformed stooge. It was the first chance we ever had to get all four together, at one blow; the situation was even appropriate, they were meeting to plot the fine details of this horror. Well, I needn’t tell you we failed.”
“What happened?”
“We were betrayed. We set the ambush on the road from their meeting. All the information was right—the hour, route, the place. Only, just before the motorcade came through, a helicopter began hovering above our heads. It wasn’t even searching.”
Ahime said, “What about tonight? What have you decided?”
“It can be done.” He turned to Ofeyi. “We need a few more weapons for our own defence. I have just been scouting a police armoury and we raid it tonight. Would you like to help?”
Ahime said quickly, “Ofeyi has other things on his mind.”
“Ah yes of course. The great search for a woman.” There was an awkward silence. The Dentist himself broke it by asking, “Tell me, why is it important? I mean, you’ve taken the most suicidal pains over this, we know that.”
Ofeyi returned his penetrating look, frankly. “Each person does what he is best at, remember?”
The Dentist, recollecting, said “Touché.”
“But it is a little more than that” Ofeyi added. “I’m sure every man feels the need to seize for himself the enormity of what is happening, of the time in which it is happening. Perhaps deep down I realise that the search would immerse me in the meaning of the event, lead me to a new understanding of history.”
The Dentist turned to Zaccheus. “And your friend here, what does he think? He has been with you most of the time hasn’t he?”
Zaccheus shook his head vigorously. “No, don’t ask me anything. I lost half my band in one of the very first attacks. I saw Celestial abducted. What am I to do? Sit down and die of self-pity?”
Zaccheus’ outburst left t
hem all evading one another’s eyes, staring at the tent walls or at the floor. Ofeyi resumed eating, biting savagely into the maize.
Ahime tried to turn their minds away from that loss. “We plan that the camp should go into the furthest depths of the forest, join the river at the confluence and follow it home. For me this is a cleansing act. It will purify our present polluted humanity and cure our survivors of the dangers of self-pity.”
The Dentist continued, “I insist on seeing it first as a good toughening exercise. The Aiyéró idea treks back to source, but it marks the route for a more determined return. Ofeyi, if you find the woman in time, would you join us on the trek?”
Ofeyi thought rapidly. “I don’t know what her condition might be.”
“Even if she were seriously ill…we know how to move fast through any terrain, even with our wounded.”
The question seemed important to the Dentist. Ofeyi could not quite understand why and searched his face for a clue. Ahime waited on both.
“She may be dead” Zaccheus said, suddenly.
“Then we will take her body with us” the Dentist said.
If his intention was to shock, he was only too audibly successful. The Dentist ignored the gasps and went on calmly. “No, I haven’t quite changed places with the cocoa-man here, who plucks symbols out of brothels. But we must acknowledge the fact—pimps, whores, thieves, and a thousand other felons are the familiar vanguard of the army of change. When the moment arrives a woman like Iriyise becomes for them a Chantal, a Deborah, torch and standard-bearer, super-mistress of universal insurgence. To abandon such a potential weapon in any struggle is to admit to a lack of foresight. Or imagination.”
He stood up, thrust a handful of groundnuts in his pocket. “I must see to some urgent arrangements. If Pa Ahime hasn’t told you already, we also have devoted some energy to searching for her. But we have to complement each other, I mean, even after she is found. I have already turned my mind to the strategy for the future.”