by Leye Adenle
‘Do you take hot or cold showers?’
I dropped the curtain as if I’d been caught doing something bad.
Adesua looked resplendent in her costume: black tights, shiny black boots up to her knees, a white shirt under a fitted black coat with a short tail, and a fluffy black scarf loosely tied round her neck. She also had a black top hat. We would look similar on stage. My heart skipped a beat. I was expected to go out there and do magic, and it wouldn’t be like during my initiation when Brother Moses guided my arms. I would be alone and I didn’t know any magic.
‘Hot or cold?’ she asked again.
‘Warm.’
‘Follow me.’
I followed her. I peered into the other room on our way out. It truly was empty. Adesua led me round the bungalow. The children were too caught up with Brother Moses’ fireworks to notice us. Behind the bungalow there was a cubicle made of corrugated iron sheets set upon a concrete slab four feet by four feet. There was no roof over the shower stall. A transparent shower curtain hung over its one open side. She drew the curtain aside and held it up for me to step inside. There was a pail of water on the wet floor. A dry towel hung from a nail in a corner. It smelt of soap in there.
The curtain rested on her back as she bent to put her finger into the water. She stirred and removed her finger.
‘Is that ok?’ she said.
I put my hand into the water. ‘It’s ok, I guess,’ I said.
‘Not warm enough?’
‘It’s fine.’
‘Is it warm enough or not?’
‘I usually use very warm water. Almost hot, in fact, but...’
She bent and stirred again with her finger. Steam swivelled off the top of the water.
‘What about now?’
She just used magic to warm up my water. I know that in light of all that had happened it should not have sur- prised me, but it was not like making elephants disappear or flying over the Grand Canyon. It was useful magic. Do- mestic magic. And it had been unexpected.
I hesitantly tested the temperature of the water. ‘It’s perfect.’
She stood up straight and looked at me.
‘Thanks,’ I added. I hoped it hadn’t come too late. I felt vulnerable standing there in nothing but boxers and so close to her in that little space.
She continued staring. There was no emotion on her face, unless extreme lack of interest counts. Apathy. It certainly wasn’t the emotion I wished to evoke. I was conscious of her missing soul.
I didn’t want her to hear me bring up the matter of her missing soul. I had to block my mind to her, but I didn’t know how. Could she read my mind? Was she reading my mind and listening to me thinking that I had to stop her from reading my mind? How had I managed to block out Brother Moses? Why had he been trying to read my mind in the first place?
A terrible thought occurred to me. What if I hadn’t managed to block out Brother Moses? What if he only said I did so I wouldn’t know he was reading my mind? Something from the night before had disturbed me about him. What was it? I remembered. How did he know about the coin? His explanation wasn’t really an explanation. But no. That wasn’t it. That wasn’t the only thing. There was something else nagging, tugging, calling my attention to what I was missing.
My shoes.
That was it. The missing shoes. How did he know about Titus Titus making people take off their shoes before they got onto his spaceship?
A cold shiver spread goosebumps over my body. In my flat, both Brother Moses and Adesua had taken their shoes off and placed them on the stool.
Adesua continued staring at me.
Chapter 28 Omo Pidan Pidan
The sight of captives being led to execution has always baffled me.
Why do the condemned go willingly to their death? What is going on in their minds? Why don’t they fight? Why don’t they struggle? Why don’t they plead? Why don’t they try to escape? Getting dressed up as Mr Magic evoked those images and made me wonder what I would do if it was I being led to the slaughter.
I did not trust the people I was with. I did not know what their true intentions were. One thing alone was certain, there was fatal danger ahead, but all I could do was play along and play my part until the end they had planned for me. There was no escaping them. There was no beating them. I was being led to the slaughter, so I, like all those fated people being escorted to the noose that would soon be around their necks, followed the directions of my executioners with obedient subservience and I understood why the others don’t run.
Back at the glasshouse, Brother Moses had tried to explain how everything was a dimension. He said that every human concept, notion, feeling, was a dimension all of its own. What we named, he said, was the murmur of the dimension hidden to us. As such, weight was an entire dimension. Love was also a dimension too, and even joy was its own dimension. He told me of a dimension in which the inhabitants experienced gravity as déjà vu. In another, he said, time was sensed, just as we smell wet soil before the rain reaches us.
He assured me I would discover my own dimension, the first of many that only I would be able to access and the discovery of which would make me a most grand magician, like my father.
Getting ready to go on stage to perform magic tricks for a crowd of village kids, I felt I had discovered my first dimension.
I felt a bond with every man, woman, and child before me who had faced the countdown of a firing squad, approached a hangman’s noose, been led to an altar dripping with blood, or faced a cross on which they were to be strung. The hopelessness that paralysed their will stretched across continents and through millenia, connecting each and every one of them. Every one of us. I knew I had discovered something so powerful, so pro- found, yet so hopeless, for what magic tricks could be learnt from hopelessness?
Brother Moses was done with the fireworks and he was entertaining the kids with oversized playing cards that vanished in one palm and appeared in the other. Adesua was in the truck looking at me, her hands on the steering wheel. Next to her, sitting very close, Rachel also watched me through the dusty windshield, and with a steeliness reminiscent of the brutal vagueness which I’d come to expect from Adesua. Oddly, it reminded me of my mother.
‘Are you ready?’ Brother Moses said. His cards vanished from his clasped palms. The children applauded.
I nodded. He waved at Adesua. The engine of the big car roared to life.
‘Follow me,’ he said.
I followed. The children followed. Adesua drove slowly behind me, my manager, and my new fans. Under the morning sun we marched, to the cheer of the children and chants of ‘omo pidan pidan’.
‘What does pidan pidan mean?’ I asked. I knew enough Yoruba to know what omo meant. Child.
‘Magician,’ he said.
I looked at the kids. They were clapping and skipping, holding hands and repeating the chorus, ‘omo pidan pidan’.
‘They’re calling me a magician’s child?’
‘Yes.’
‘How do they know that?’
‘They can read.’
Once more he had managed to give me an answer that was less than an answer. I searched around us for what he meant and found it behind, slowly keeping up with us. I moved out of the lorry’s way and let it gain on me. On the side of the lorry was a painting of a magician dressed in a black suit and a black tie, holding a black hat from which red block letters grew out accompanied by orange sparks: Mr MAGIC! Beneath the painting of the magician was the proclamation: SON OF THE MOST AMAZING GRAND MAGICIAN IN THE UNIVERSE!
I let the lorry move further past me. I caught Adesua’s face looking at me in the wing mirror. On the back of the lorry the magician’s gloved hands were spread above the body of his levitating assistant, floating perfectly straight at waist height, her arms crossed over her belly, her eyes shut. Under this image was written: AMAZING MAGICAL DISPLAYS. Whatever that meant.
I moved to the other side of the lorry. This paint- ing was of the magician, his fe
male assistant, and a man dressed in purple. The faces didn’t look like us, but there was no doubt who they were meant to be. In front of the magician was written in two lines, OMO PIDAN PIDAN ATI AWAN OSERE RE. The letters were accented but the marks meant nothing to me so I did not dwell on them. I recognised the word, ati, so the sentence up to that was, ‘The magician’s child and’. I guessed the remainder to be ‘his assistants’.
I looked into the cabin through Rachel’s side but I couldn’t see her as she was sitting so close to Adesua. I continued round the lorry, going full circle until I had re- joined Brother Moses in the middle of our escort party. Perhaps they thought he was the magician and I was the helper.
‘What exactly do you expect me to do?’ I said. ‘You know I don’t know any magic, right?’
‘Don’t speak so loud, Master Osaretin,’ he said. He looked at the children. ‘You know magic. You just don’t know that you know.’
‘You think I will get in front of them and suddenly know how to do magic?’
‘Yes. Something like that. Don’t worry about it. You’ll be fine. And your assistant will be there.’
‘What did she tell Rachel?’ ‘Everything.’
‘What do you mean, everything?’
‘Everything. She has to come with us so she can be safe. She would soon learn who we really are. Better to tell her now.’
‘She told her about the magic?’
‘Everything. Magic, your father, who you are, why there are people looking for you. Everything. She has to know everything so we can protect her.’
‘Are you protecting her or are you just interested in finding out what happened to us on that man’s spacecraft?’
‘We are protecting her from him.’
We walked a few more paces without talking. I was sure he wasn’t reading my mind or he would have seen the next question coming.
‘What has this got to do with my mother?’
As I expected, it caught him off guard. He looked at me
without his smile and walked into a little village boy skipping along in front of him, almost knocking the child over.
Chapter 29 What Itohan Knows
‘Why do you ask about her?’ a startled Brother Moses said.
He was shocked. He was surprised. For once I could see past his effervescent smile into a person who was un- prepared and uneasy and perplexed all at once.
‘Did you know her?’ I asked.
It had all suddenly come together in my head in an instant, and in that same instant I had realised what a weapon it was if I played it right. The pieces had been there all along: the behaviour of my mother following my father’s death, her failure to mourn, how detached she was from me, the unapologetic curiosity with which she studied me when I caught her watching, the fact that Brother Moses was friends with my father yet never mentioned my mother.
‘I know Itohan,’ Brother Moses said, ‘but this has nothing to do with her.’
‘You said Titus Titus will use the people I care about against me.’
‘Your mother can take care of herself.’
‘Why? Is she one of us?’
‘No.’
‘What is she? A witch? A mermaid? An alien?’
‘She is something different.’
‘Different? How?’
‘Just different. Master Osaretin, there are things we do not know that we are better off not knowing. Leave Itohan out of this.’
‘She’s my mother.’
‘Yes, yes. But this is not her problem. She has done her part.’
‘Her part? You mean she knows about all this?’
He looked away. He began to talk to a kid who had been trying to catch hold of his hand. I stopped walking and pulled his shoulder so that he was facing me.
‘What do you mean she has done her part?’ I asked again.
Adesua honked. We looked at each other through the dirty windscreen where the wipers had thinned out the dust. This time it was I who looked away as if she were nothing.
‘Tell me what you mean,’ I said.
‘She gave birth to you.’
‘Yeah. So?’
‘So her part is done.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘And I don’t expect you to. Once your training is complete you will understand everything. No one will have to tell you anything. You will know things even I do not know. That is why we are here. Remember what I told you about the dimension in which all things are possible?
The one that can only be accessed through the imagintions of others? It is there that you will begin to discover everything, including yourself. You want answers? Well then, focus on what we are here to do. Focus on your training. Mesmerise these children, and if you succeed you will see their minds opening up to you and expanding your own.’
I knew he was trying to distract me from the question. I knew there was more to my mother than he was pre- pared to tell me. I also knew that there was no way I was going to get the truth from him by simply asking. I had to think of another way.
Adesua pressed the loud horn again and gestured to me.
‘Does my mother have a soul?’ I said.
‘What?’
I had startled Brother Moses again.
‘You said my father once entered the dimension of death.’
‘What was he doing there? Did he go to get her soul back?’
‘I already told you, Master Osaretin, nobody knows why he went there.’
‘Nobody?’
‘Well, maybe one person.’
‘Who?’
‘Itohan.’
‘My mother.’
‘Yes. Your mother. His wife and assistant.’
‘She was a magician too. I knew it.’
‘She was more than that.’
‘What else was she?’
‘I think you have to ask her that yourself. Can we continue walking now? We are keeping everyone waiting.’
Adesua was about to press the horn again, so I looked at her. Her hand hovered over the steering wheel as we eyed each other. I had known what she was about to do before she did it. Her surprised look confirmed that it wasn’t just coincidence. Just like I could predict the coins and hide my thoughts, I was also able to see into the future. Or had I merely read her mind?
Chapter 30 The Village Doctor
It turned out that where we had spent the night was some sort of outpost. Half a mile down a road that cut through the forest, we arrived at the actual town of Faka fiki, and it was a real town.
The forest had been cleared, and streets and houses had been built where wild animals once roamed. The houses were not glorified huts like the bungalow we slept in, they were two and three storey buildings painted in the brightest colours – sky blue, yellow, bright green, pink – and they had elegant gardens that stretched out to wide sidewalks. Each garden was unique with its own variety of flowers and ornamental trees.
There were trees with all yellow leaves and others with all purple leaves. And the grass was the greenest I had ever seen. On the driveways of some of the beautiful houses, SUVs, sport cars, and other luxury vehicles were parked. There was a blood red Maserati; a silver Mercedes coupe; a white Lamborghini. What was this place? Who owned the cars? In one driveway there was a black Harley Davidson leaning on its stand. My brain refused to see Odedina or any of the men from the night before owning any of the luxury cars or the big houses.
The kids ran ahead of us on the cobblestone road lined with streetlights, chanting, ‘Magic, magic.’
‘What is this place?’ I said. ‘How come they are so rich?’
‘They are hunters and farmers, but that is not where their wealth comes from. A long time ago the women who first settled here discovered something that made them very rich. So rich that the money is still bearing interest to this day, enough for every child of Faka fiki not to ever have to work.’
‘What did they discover?’
‘Only the women know. They pass the secret knowledge from
mother to daughter.’
‘What could it be?’
‘Ask Itohan. She might tell you, since she didn’t have a daughter.’
‘Wait. What? My mother? But she’s Edo.’
‘Yes. But her mother was from here and she herself lived here when she was a child. That is why you are safe here.’
‘She never told me that.’
‘Did she tell you she was Efosa’s assistant?’
My mother could not be from this town. No disrespect to the inhabitants of Faka fiki, but she was five foot eight.
‘Look, they have come to meet us,’ Brother Moses said.
We had come to a roundabout at the end of the road.
A concrete dolphin balanced on its belly with its tail up in the air was pouring water out of its mouth into the palms of a mermaid sitting next to it with its tail curled upwards. Even in Lagos I had never seen a fountain so beautiful. Behind it was open land. Behind that the forest spread out. A group walked up from the road to the left of the fountain. In front were the short men, in jeans, shirts, and baseball caps. Behind them were women as tall as my mum. At the centre of the women was one with a white wrapper round her chest, coral beads round her neck, and a crown on her head. The crown was blue and appeared to be made of stiff cloth. It fitted tightly around her hair- line, fanning out like a flat-topped cone. It had two lines of white cowry shells around it. Set into the shells were large gems of various colours.
How was it that the women were tall and the men short? The children all looked the right size for their age. Was it something to do with the secret the women had discovered? Were the male children playing around me destined to stop growing at some point while their female playmates continued to grow past them to become such tall women?
The adults lined up in front of us. The children mingled among them. Odedina was in the front row in a pair of brown linen trousers and a white short sleeved linen shirt. He smiled at Adesua in the lorry.
The queen wasn’t that old. She was about Brother Moses’ age. I wondered if there was a king. She looked at Brother Moses and I could see the recognition blossoming on her face.