by Frank Achebe
Whatever it was, Zach knew he had to take hold of the situation, the dialogue and everything else. Only by that could ne control its outcome.
‘I saw your mother in my dreams.’
‘Don’t bring my mother into this.’ Zach saw that the boy was agitated, except that he was trying to hide his agitation behind his good manners.
Zach could not have known what the nightmares he’d been having of his mother meant until then. He knew he had to lead the boy back into the world of reality, using familiar images—if he could.
‘She had your eyes.’
‘You’ve been looking at her photos, huh?’
‘Not quite, you must understand that I spoke with your father before he passed.’
The boy kept his silence while the others looked on and listened.
‘Your mother, I met her in my dreams. She asked me to save you.’
The boy managed a laughter. ‘You are the one who needs saving now. You—’
‘Your father also asked the same of me. Why do you think I was always meeting you at the river? It could not have been anything in a coincidence. It was because she led me there in my dreams. She led me to this town, every step of the way. She loves you and she saw your fate and she wanted me to help you.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘From when you were a boy, it has been your dream to save people, to lead people, to guide people. Moreover, you don’t like seeing people suffer and you would give everything you can to save them. You told me that yourself.’
‘Good, that is what I’m about. And that is what all this is about.’
‘Exactly, this is your chance to be that.’
He had the boy’s attention and it was a good thing for Zach.
‘A flood is coming.’
‘What flood?’
‘Those who are manipulating you have used you to gather all these people so they can cause a carnage. And you don’t want to be the villain. You wouldn’t want all of these people to die on your account. You’d want to be the hero; you’d want to save thousands of lives. That is why you are their messiah. That is who you are….’
The boy was trying to interrupt with objections and questions but Zach wouldn’t let him. He was speaking over the volume.
‘You have to listen to me. The same people that tried getting at your brother are now doing the same with you. They are taking advantage of your good-heartedness. They want to use it against you. You need to realize that none of this is real. None of this is truly who you are.’
The boy wanted to calm the tension in the air and turn the dialogue in his direction but he could not now do that.
Zach kept on: ‘You need to listen to me. You need to tell those voices to shut up. They tried doing the same thing to me, to your mother and to your twin brother. They are taking advantage of who you are. They are taking advantage of you. You need to tell them to—
‘Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!’ The boy screamed with a piercing voice. That ended the session. With that, he opened the door behind him and stormed out.
‘He did not say anything about his sister.’ Nurse B observed.
‘Maybe we should save ourselves. What does it matter, we’re all going to die after all.’
Zach ignored the nurse and walked to the door. It was locked from the other side.
# # #
‘There has been a problem, sir’ Brim reported. ‘Two boats capsized just this morning. All on board dead. They were sighted by other boatmen.’
‘What happened?’
‘There was sight of a high wave in the river. There was a collision, sort of, between the two boats.’
# # #
Over the crowd, the clouds thickened and rumbled lightly, not enough to cause any alarm. In fact, it passed the noticed of only a few.
Inside the mayor’s room, Zach and the others (except the hunter who was exploring the room) tried to figure it all out. Had Hééb betrayed them? What was going on? What was going to happen next?—
The door clicked and they all looked on watching it open slowly. It was Hééb.
‘Oh, how did it go?’
They told him.
‘That was our last chance. I had to get him to believe I’m on his side. That was how he managed to show up. Thank me later. Now, let’s go. This way….’
‘This indeed is your last chance.’ A voice sounded from the other side of the door. It was Ekeó.
In a minute, Hééb was huddled with the rest inside his former boss’ room, with the door locked behind all of them. ‘I think we’ve just made matters worse. I think I overheard someone saying that two boats capsized not long ago.’
Zach could not believe that what he would thought would not come for another week or two was already home.
‘It’s already started.’
Chapter Twenty-Six: No Boats for the Flood
‘We are all going to die,’ Nurse B exploded. ‘And my sweet sister, how is she going to make it out of this town? Who will carry her?’
‘Yanda, what have I done? I should have fulfilled her wishes of leaving town long ago. Now we are going to leave after all in body bags—if they manage to find one for everybody. What have I done?’ The hunter agonized.
Hééb sniggered foolishly in one corner. He could not understand his own cynical calm.
‘Kuniā, what have they done to her?’ Silas was more articulate than the rest. ‘The door, let’s get the door.’
They could not get the door.
In his corner of the room, the window actually, Zach was confident of one thing: the boy had heard him. The ‘Shut ups’ were not meant for him but for ‘them’. He felt that one like he’d felt all of those other presentiments that had led him this far.
But the anxiety in the moment could not let him trust that one faint feeling of the spirit.
‘I think I can use the window,’ Sails observed. He tried and couldn’t. The ceiling could have been next but it was made of concrete.
# # #
Outside, drizzles filled the air. The sun had gone down. A light wind was blowing.
‘I don’t know. But dear sir, we have to leave this town now!’ Brim announced. His reaction to the news could not have been anything else.
‘Not yet, young man.’
He would not pay any further attention. He paced off and I followed him. Without being told, I knew where he was headed: to his brother. ‘Wait up!’
# # #
Madam Békhtèn’s hall was the first to close followed by Black’s shop. The other places where people gathered for discussions were no longer much of it for they could have perchance made something of the news after all. But all eyes were now on the boy prophet. Not many could see nothing more than an accident in the news of the capsized boat, until it became a bit late.
In the mayor’s room, Zach paced with his hands folded across his chest. He was oblivious of the others as they were of him. Silas was still pounding had at the door. But he was not getting anything out of it.
Outside, the drizzles had now grown into raindrops, large ones, though not enough to make for any haste. It was not unusual for it to rain in Septembers. In Nānti, the line between ‘rainy’ and ‘dry’ season was rather thin. The rains fell at will, and sometimes in January and in February. But this did not look like the normal September rains.
Zach managed to calm down and take a look at the wall clock. An hour of waiting had passed as if it were a second—as if it were an eternity. He was sweating very profusely. He was now not certain of any other thing. Was it all going to pass?
# # #
My dear reader, I don’t know how much more time passed when the door finally opened and standing before them was Kuniā. She stood there for a while before someone else emerged from behind her. It was Ekeó.
Kuniā was pale and by every indication, she’d had very little for food or water in a few days. She slumped and passed out before them.
While they took care of her, Hééb and Zach attended
the boy. He too looked pale. He was bleeding from the nose as well.
‘Here,’ the nurse said handing him a towel. ‘When did that start?’
‘What do you all want me to do?’
The rains were gathering strength outside and they had very little time before it all burned down.
‘Think of anything to get them to walk off the town. Go confess to them.’
‘You might start a riot at that. Besides, they would not believe that you were a fake after all. They will see a conspiracy in it. Believe me; sane people will follow lunatics to the asylum. It has happened before. You’ll need something urgent.’
‘No, wait. Tell them that you had a vision last night and that God told you to tell them to follow you. Do not tell them where. Just walk them off it.’
‘That will take ages.’
‘There is no other choice to it. We leave immediately.’
Zach saw that the boy was getting weaker. The towel in his hand was getting redder with each wipe of his nose. In short, by the time they were done talking, Ekeó had slumped to his feet. They had to hold him together.
‘Can you do it?’
It was then that Zach saw how weak the boy was in himself. He had very little will of his own, very little control over his own life. He was very self-less. Those who were seeking a revenge had turned all of that against him.
It was this weakness, this non-resistance and abandonment to the powers that tried to control him, was what scared Zach. It meant that it could all mean nothing at the end.
‘I can’t.’ He was beginning to cry.
Zach would not allow him. He needed his word for it. ‘Yes, you can. And yes, you will. This is your true destiny as a messiah and you will fulfil it. Are you with me?’
The boy managed a nod.
‘Help him with a glass of water.’
They did and set him on his foot again. But the traces of a lost battle with the powers that were trying to control him were all over him.
On the other side of the room, Kuniā was catching her breath. She had had a long talk with her brother after he’d come to see her. She had continued from where Zach had ended. She had more materials at her disposal and had prevailed.
# # #
‘Someone needs to warn the rest of the town that this was not a mere rain.’
That would have to be the hunter. ‘No, you don’t know me. I’m a drunkard. They are going to take me for a joke.’
‘Silas, you will go with him. Anywhere you find people gathered. Tell that to leave the town, any way they could. Immediately. In no time, the whole town will have disappeared under water.’
‘We go to the school first and then the market.’
‘Where’s Hééb?’
Hééb had slipped out of the room to no one’s notice.
‘They certainly can’t take the river. What other roads lead out of the town?’
‘The bridge and the boulevard.’
‘The boulevard?’
‘Yeah, it runs through the other towns.’
Zach’s heart sank when he heard the bridge.
‘The bridge, where does it lead?’
‘There is an interstate expressway, a double-lane past the woods on the other side of the bridge.’
‘What about the bridge?’
‘Yeah, it’s off the town in some ways. That’s why they managed to construct it.’
# # #
From the north of the town, two men ran up the boulevard screaming: ‘Wave, wave, high tide. The river has woken.’
From the west, two women ran into town, screaming that they’d sighted a high tide from the river.
From the south, the hunter and Silas were screaming their lungs out to whomever they saw.
From the east of the town, the crowd followed the boy from behind. Behind him walked Zach with Kuniā in his hand. Everything was going on as planned.
Above, the sun had disappeared under the rain clouds that had thickened. Lightning and thunder now splashed themselves across the darkened skies. The rains were increasing in intensity but not enough to make the people start scuttling yet. The procession that had managed to kick off was going on still undisturbed.
# # #
It could have been anything but it did not matter what it was: the people were being evacuated in relative peace. Zach saw that the boy was getting weaker with each step and so he eased off Kuniā’s hand and held his.
By the time they arrived the boulevard, it was already packed. Explosions were sounding in the distance. Fissures were opening in the ground and forming violent fountains that rose into the air ripping off roofs.
The boy kept walking and the crowd kept following.
They had not gone a hundred metres into the walk up the boulevard when the boy slumped. He could no longer continue. With his slump, the skies burst open in great rage and the long awaited flood started its journey to the town. The earth under them shook. Every light in the skies disappeared under the thick clouds. It was apocalypse for the men and brethren of Nānti.
It would be less than fifteen minutes before the flood—or whatever it was—arrived.
They crowd needed no other leader apart from their own fear of death. Deathly screams were heard as people lunged into any direction that led away from the town.
Zach had to carry the boy off the road in order to avoid him being trampled upon by the surging mass of people racing off.
None of them seemed to care about him. Not one.
Zach laid him by the road and leaned over him. ‘Can you hear me?’
The blood from the bleeding noses had now covered much of the boy’s face. The boy was muttering things under his breath. Zach bent down and listened: ‘This is my town. No man shall look up to the skies with hope. This day shall be cursed….’
Zach took it back with a ‘Shut up!’
The boy stirred and opened his eyes. ‘Did we win?’
‘We did.’ Zach answered.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘You don’t have to be. We won after all.’
‘It’s not easy being the one that leads the way.’
‘It never is.’
There was a lot the boy, now in his own skin, wanted to say. But he felt that Zach would figure it out on his own—somehow.
‘I can feel the ground under me shaking. They have come to take me, haven’t they?’
‘No, I’m with you.’
‘It is cold out here.’
The Kuniā joined them. She was carrying a stray child on her back. She leaned over her brother, tears mixed with the rain streaming over her face. ‘You did it.’
Zach excused them. A look at the boy’s face showed that his face was gradually returning to the original deathly look.
‘I’m sorry. Forgive me.’
‘You don’t have to be. You did it. Mother is waiting to take you home.’
‘Yeah, I can see her. She has my eyes. Promise me one thing Kuniā.’
‘What?’
He wanted to tell her to remember him but she did not pick out the words as he slipped out of this world into the other.
Zach now had to drag her along in the walk to the bridge where his last confrontation with the powers that be—or the powers that once were—awaited him.
# # #
Othí stood in the door of his home. It had been almost a month since he last stood there. He knocked but not a sound replied him. He looked down to see that cracks were appearing in the ground from which water was seeping to the surface.
Without any further deliberations, he stood back and jammed at the door with his back and then his leg and then with his whole body. It budged after all and he stepped in.
‘Yanda! Yanda! Omila!’
There was no answer as he rummaged the two-room apartment he’d shared with them.
‘The school! The school!’ he muttered under his breath as he headed towards the town centre where his children went to the local primary school. If Yanda had anything left in a life, i
t was her children. Being a proud woman, she had high hopes, all of which had betrayed her. And for the pride of her heart, she could not let them go, instead she carried them into the next generation. She invested all her high hopes for the future in her children. They were all she had and for her lofty dreams, she gave them all she had. She was not educated herself but as she would tell her drunkard husband, the world had no place for drunkards. She was sure that the best way to make a living in the world was to put a collar on her children’s neck or a title to their names. And she was going to give them the chance at whatever cost.
It could not have been any other place. School had resumed two and half weeks ago. Yanda made sure that her children started school not a day later. She would oil their legs and faces with Vaseline every morning and when she returned from the market, she would wash their school clothes till they shone and sometimes, till they tore. But those sacrifices were the expression of her hopefulness that one day she would put high-sounding titles to their names and a high position for them in the society. No one had given her a guarantee that she would not be betrayed by them, for she needn’t none. Those hopes though they belonged to the future, were enough to take her through every other day of her life.
When the brouhaha ensued and people ran for their lives in whatever direction, there was only one direction for Yanda: the school. There was not another. The distance was not much and she had covered it in a flash.
The hunter arrived the school. The skies above him were pitching in their blackness, it could have been the end of the world—their world, as prophesised. But it hardly mattered. They meant something to him. They were the more reason for his guilt and self-loathing. It was not just the wine. It was the fact that his life belonged to them, the life that he was bent on wasting on beer and local gin.
The surprise of which he had spoken to Zach would have him give Yanda the only thing she’d ever asked of him—get out of the town. He could sell a plot of land, the last of those he’d inherited from his mother. He had put out sales notices. If he could manage to sell one before the end of the year, he could give Yanda a New Year. He had sold many lands before but had drunk the money he’d received from them, which for his reputation and weak-mindedness, which were easily exploited, had turned out to be pittances. That had been the chief source of the quarrel between him and Yanda.