“Let us now share the grace,” he said.
In response, everyone at the funeral massed into a forceful fellowship of noisy throats. I recited as loud as I could with my eyes firmly closed: “May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the sweet fellowship of the Holy Spirit, be with us now and forever. Amen.”
The amen died off slowly, carried along the rows of the massive graveyard whose language was silence. The Pastor signalled the grave-diggers. They immediately returned from where they had sat talking and laughing during the funeral. These curious men began pulling the heap back in haste, quickening Ikenna’s obliteration, as if they were oblivious of the fact that once they covered him, no one would ever see him again. As chunks of earth fell on him, a fresh outbreak of grief erupted and nearly everyone at the funeral cracked open like small pod-producing ifoka nuts. Although I did not cry there, I felt strongly the real palpable reach of loss. With a bewildering air of apathy, the diggers dug on, quicker, one of them briefly stopping to remove a flattened earth-covered water bottle half-buried in the mound of sand that now partly concealed Ikenna’s body. As I watched the men throw more earth into the grave, I dug into the cold soil of my own mind, and it became suddenly clear—the way things always become clearer only after they have happened—that Ikenna was a fragile delicate bird; he was a sparrow.
Little things could unbridle his soul. Wistful thoughts often combed his melancholic spirit in search of craters to be filled with sorrow. As a younger boy, he often sat in the backyard, brooding and contemplative, his arms clasped over his knees. He was highly critical of things, a part of him that greatly resembled Father. He nailed small things to big crosses and would ponder for long on a wrong word he said to someone; he greatly dreaded the reprove of others. He had no place for ironies or satires; they troubled him.
Like sparrows—which we believed had no homes—Ikenna’s heart had no home, no fixed allegiances. He loved the far and the near, the small and the big, the strange and the familiar. But it was the little things that drew and consumed his compassion, the most memorable of which was a small bird he owned for a few days in 1992. He was sitting out in the corridor of the house alone one Christmas Eve while the others were inside dancing and singing carols, eating, and drinking, when a bird fell to the dirt in front of him. Ikenna bent low and inched towards it in the dark and then wrapped his hands around its feathery body. It was a badly deplumed sparrow that had been caught by someone and had escaped, a strand of twine still wound around its leg. Ikenna’s soul cleaved to the sparrow, and he guarded it jealously for three days, feeding it with whatever he could find. Mother asked him to let it go, but he refused. Then, one morning, he lifted the bird’s lifeless body in his hand and dug a hole in the backyard; his heart was broken. He and Boja covered the sparrow with sand until the bird was buried under the earth. This was exactly how Ikenna vanished, too. First, the earth poured by the mourners and the undertakers covered his white-shrouded trunk, then his legs, arms, face and everything, until he was obliterated forever from our eyes.
THE FUNGUS
Boja was a fungus:
His body was filled with fungi. His heart pumped blood filled with fungi. His tongue was infected with fungi, and, perhaps, so were most organs of his body. It was because his kidneys were filled with fungi that he could not stop bed-wetting till he was twelve. Mother became worried he was under a bed-wetting spell. After taking him for sessions of prayers, she began marking the edges of his bed with anointed oil—small-bottled olive oil on which prayers had been made—every night before he slept. Yet, Boja could not stop, even when he had to endure the shame of taking out his mattress—often spotted with urine patches of different shapes and sizes—every morning to dry in the sun, risking being seen by kids in the neighbourhood, especially Igbafe and his cousin Tobi, who could see into our compound from their storeyed building. It was because Father had mocked him for bed-wetting that he caused a stir in our school in the eventful morning of that day in 1993, in which we met M.K.O.
Just as a fungus hides in the body of an ignorant host, Boja lived on unseen in our compound for four days after Ikenna’s death, without us knowing it. He was there—silent, hidden away, refusing to speak, while the entire district and even the town desperately searched for him. He did not suggest a clue to the Nigerian police that he was within reach. He did not even try to restrain mourners who swooped on our house like bees around a keg of honey. He did not mind that his photo—printed on a poster with fading ink—was floating like an outbreak of influenza around the town—spotting bus stops, motor parks, motels and driveways, and that his name was on the lips of the people of the town.
Bojanonimeokpu “Boja” Agwu, 14, was last seen at his house at No. 21 Akure High School Road, Araromi Street on August 4, 1996. He wore a faded blue T-shirt with a portrait of Bahamas beach. The shirt was blood-stained and torn the last time he was seen. Please, if seen, kindly report to your nearest police station or call 04-8904872.
He did not cry out when his photo streamed non-stop across the screens of televisions in Akure, taking up considerable airtime on OSRC and NTA channels. Instead of making himself known, or even just his whereabouts, he decided to appear in our dreams at night-time and in figments of Mother’s troubled visions. So he sat in the big lounge in our sitting room in Obembe’s dream—the night before Ikenna was buried—laughing at Mr Bean’s tricks on television. Mother often reported sighting him in the sitting room, aproned in the dark, vanishing whenever she raised an alarm and turned on the bulb or lantern. Yet, Boja was not just a mere fungus; he embodied a wide variety of his species. He was a destructive fungus: a man of force, who forced himself into the world, and forced himself out of it. He forced himself out of Mother’s womb while she was in bed about to have a nap in 1982. A sudden labour took her unawares like a strong enema-induced bowel passage. The first nudge was a bullet of pain that overwhelmed her. The pain pulled her down and she, unable to move her body, crawled atop her bed, screaming. The landlady of the house where our parents lived at the time heard her cry and came to her aid. Seeing that there was no time to take Mother to a hospital, the woman shut the door, took a piece of cloth and wrapped it around Mother’s legs. Then, with the woman blowing on and fanning Mother’s private place with all the energy she could muster, Mother gave birth on the bed she shared with Father. She often recalled, years later, how so much blood had leaked through the mattress that it formed a huge permanent stain on the floor beneath the bed.
He destroyed our peace and set us all on edge. Father hardly sat for a minute during those days. Less than two hours after we returned from Ikenna’s burial, he announced that he was going to the police station to find out what progress had been made in the search for Boja. He said this while we were seated in the sitting room, all of us. I could not tell what it was that sent me out running after him calling “Daddy, Daddy!”
“What, Ben?” he asked, turning, his bunch of keys hanging from his index finger. I noticed that the zipper of his trousers was open, I pointed at it before replying. “What is it?” he asked again after looking at his zipper.
“I want to come with you.”
He zipped his trousers, gazing at me as if I were a suspicious object lying in his path. Perhaps he noticed that I had not shed a single tear since he’d returned. The police station was built along the old rail track that encircled a bend and veered left into a heavily pockmarked road that was filled with muddy water. The station was a large compound with a few wagons painted black—the colour of the Nigerian police—parked under a fabric awning whose pillars were cast in irons ballasted into the paved floors. A few young men, all of them naked to the waist, were arguing loudly somewhere under a torn fabric awning, while police officers listened. We walked straight to the reception: a huge wooden barricade. An officer was seated behind it on what must have been an elevated stool. Father asked him if he could see the Deputy Police Officer.
“Can you identify yourself, sir?” t
he constable at the desk replied with an unsmiling face, yawning as he spoke, dragging the last word, “sir,” so that it sounded like the final word of a dirge.
“I’m Mr James Agwu, a staff member of the Central Bank of Nigeria,” Father said.
Father reached into his breast pocket and showed the man a red ID card. The constable examined it. His face contorted, and then brightened. The man handed back the card with a full-faced smile, rubbing his hand around his temple.
“Oga, will you do us well?” the man said. “You know say na you be, oga.”
The man’s subtle request for a bribe irked Father, who was an ardent hater of all forms of corruption plaguing the Nigerian nation; he would often rail against it.
“I don’t have time for this,” Father said. “My child is missing.”
“Ah!” the officer cried, as though suddenly faced with a grim epiphany. “So you are the father of those boys?” he asked reflexively. Then, as if suddenly realizing what he’d said, “Sorry for that, sir. Please wait, sir.”
The officer called at someone and another officer emerged from the passageway, stamping his feet in an awkward way. He stamped to a halt, raised his hand to the side of his lean, swarthy face, held his fingers straight above his ear and dropped the hand against the side of his leg.
“Take him to Oga DPO’s office,” the first officer ordered in English.
“Yes, sir!” the junior officer cried and stamped his feet on the floor again.
The officer, who seemed oddly familiar, came forward towards us, his countenance fallen.
“I’m sorry, sir, but we will be conducting a brief search on you before you go in,” he said.
He passed his hand over Father’s body, up to his trouser pockets, frisking. He stared at me, seeming to scan me with his eyes for a while and then he asked if I had anything in my pocket. I shook my head. Convinced, he turned away from me and repeated the salute with his hand cupped above his ear again and cried “All correct, sir!” to the other officer.
The latter gave a curt nod and, gesturing that we follow him, ushered us into the hall.
The Deputy was a slender and very tall man with a striking facial structure. He had a broad forehead that seemed to spread wide like a slate over his face. His eyes were deep-set and his brows bulged as if swollen. He swiftly rose to his feet when we entered.
“Mr Agwu, right?” he said, stretching his hand to shake Father’s.
“Yes and my son, Benjamin,” Father muttered.
“Right, you’re welcome. Please, sit down.”
Father sat on the only chair in front of his desk and motioned that I sit on the other one by the side of the wall close to the door. The office was old-fashioned. All three cupboards in the room were filled with stacks of books and folders. A bright rod of daylight pierced through the aperture between the brown curtains in the absence of electricity. The air smelt of lavender—a smell that reminded me of my visits to Father’s office when he was still working in the Akure branch of the Central Bank.
Once we’d sat, the man placed his elbows on the table, clasped his hands together and said: “Erm, Mr Agwu, I regret to say that we are yet to have a word on the location of your son.” He adjusted himself in his chair, unclasped his hands and quickly put in, “But we have been making progress. We questioned someone in your neighbourhood who confirmed she saw the boy somewhere across the street that afternoon; the description she gave matched yours—the boy she saw wore blood-stained clothes.”
“Which direction did she say he went?” Father asked in a flustered hurry.
“We don’t know for now, but we are investigating thoroughly. Members of our team—” the Deputy began saying before breaking off to cough into his hand, slightly quivering as he did.
Father muttered “Sorry,” and the man thanked him.
“I mean our team has been conducting the search,” he continued after spitting into a handkerchief. “But, you know, even that will be futile if we don’t attach a ransom soon. I mean to involve the people of this town to assist us.” He opened a hardcover book before him and seemed to peruse it while he spoke. “With money on the ground, I am sure people will respond. If not, I mean, our efforts will be akin to sweeping the streets with a broom at night, I mean, by the dim squint of moonlight.”
“I understand what you are saying, DPO,” Father said after a while. “But I want to trust my instincts in this matter, and wait for your preliminary search to be completed before I go on with any personal plans of mine.”
The DPO nodded rapidly.
“Something tells me he is safe somewhere,” Father went on. “Perhaps he is merely hiding because of what he did.”
“Yes, that might be it,” the DPO said in a slightly raised voice. He seemed to be uneasy in his seat: he adjusted the chair by the hook under it, put his hands on the table and began mechanically picking sheets of paper scattered all over his table as he spoke. “You know a child and even adults—having done such a terrible thing… I mean, after killing his blood brother—would be afraid. He might be afraid of us the police, or even you his parents, of the future—of everything. There’s even a chance he may have left the town entirely.”
“Yes,” Father said in a mournful tone, shaking his head.
“That reminds me,” the policeman said with a snap of his finger. “Have you tried to reach any of your relatives in nearby places to ask—”
“Yes, but I don’t think this is likely, though. My sons have rarely visited our relatives except for when they were quite small, and never once without me or their mother. And, most of our relatives are here, none of them have seen him. They came for his brother’s funeral which we just concluded a few hours ago.”
The DPO’s eyes caught mine at that moment when I was staring at him, pondering on the heavy resemblance I thought he bore to the dark-spectacled military man in the portrait behind him—the Nigerian dictator, General Sani Abacha.
“I understand your point. We will do our best, but we hope he returns by himself—in his own time.”
“We hope, too,” Father said repeatedly in muffling tones. “Thank you for your efforts, sir.”
The man asked Father something I did not catch, for I’d gone blank again, an image of Ikenna with the knife in his belly hovering in my mind. Father and the man stood up and shook hands, and we left the office.
Boja was also a self-revealing fungus. After four torturous days in which no one had the faintest idea of what happened to him or where he was, he showed himself. He took pity on Mother, who was almost dying of grief, or perhaps he knew Father had become worn down by it all, and could not sit in the house because Mother swore at him and blamed him incessantly. When Father drove into the compound the morning after Ikenna died, she’d run up to him, opened the door of his car, and dragged him out of the car into the rain, screaming, strangling him by the collar in the rain. “Did I not tell you?” she cried. “Didn’t I tell you they were fast slipping from my grip? Didn’t I, Didn’t I? Eme, did you not know that if a wall does not open its mouth by cracking, lizards cannot enter through it. Eme, didn’t you?” She did not let go of him, even when Mrs Agbati, awakened by the noise, ran into the compound, pleading with Mother to let Father go inside. “I won’t, no,” Mother resisted, sobbing even more. “Look at us, just look, look. We opened our mouths, Eme, we opened them wide and now we have swallowed a multitude of them.”
I cannot forget how Father, pressed for breath and soaking in the rain, kept the sort of calm I’d swear he was incapable of until Mother was wrested off him. Many times in the past four days, she’d tried to attack him, and was often held back by people who had come to console us. Perhaps too, Boja might have looked upon Nkem who followed Father about, wailing incessantly because Mother could not nurse her. Obembe mostly tended to David, who also cried for no reason sometimes and got hit by Mother once when he pestered her. Perhaps, Boja saw all this and pitied her and the rest of us, too. Or, perhaps he was merely forced to reveal himself
because he could no longer hide. No one will ever know.
He revealed himself not long after Father and I returned from the police station. His photo, the one in which he crouched with his hand to the photographer as if he was going to knock the man over, had just popped up on the OSRC News commercials with the heading Missing Person immediately after a clip of the Nigerian Olympic Dream Team being mobbed as they arrived in Lagos from the United States with the men’s football Olympic gold. We were eating yam and palm-oil sauce—Obembe, Father, David and me. Mother lay on the carpet in the other part of the sitting room, still dressed in all black. Nkem was in the hands of Mama Bose, the pharmacist. One of our aunties, the last of the mourners still left, but who would take the night bus back to Aba that same day, sat beside Mama Bose and Mother. Mother was talking to the two women about peace of mind, and of how people had responded to our family’s grief so far while my eyes were focused on the television, where the Dream Team’s Austin Jay-Jay Okocha was now shaking hands with General Abacha in Aso Rock when Mrs Agbati, a next-door neighbour, ran to our main door, screaming. She’d come to fetch water from our well, an eleven-foot well, believed to be one of the deepest in the district. Our neighbours, especially the Agbatis, often used it when their own wells dried or had insufficient water.
She threw herself at the threshold of our storm door, crying, “Ewooooh! Ewooooh!!”
“Bolanle, what is it?” Father asked. He’d sprung up at the woman’s shout.
“He is… in the well oooooo, Ewoooh,” Mrs Agbati managed to say between wailing and mournful wriggling on the floor.
“Who?” Father asked aloud, “what, who is in the well?”
“There, there, in the well!” the woman, whom Boja disliked and often called an ashewo because he said he once saw her going into the La Room motel, repeated.
The Fishermen Page 15