by Chris Abani
“Does ya father have a job? Does he pay de rent? Pay or pack out,” she said.
“How much?” he asked. He did not have the energy for this.
“What?” Her reply betrayed her surprise. Either this tirade was not about the rent or she had expected more of a fight.
“The rent, how much?” he repeated.
“Three hundred naira,” she said.
He counted out the money from the roll held together with an elastic band and carried in his pocket. Handing it to her, he returned the rest to his pocket. She took the money and folded it into her bra and flounced out. He lay back and shut his eyes.
He was just about to drift off when his door squeaked open on rusty hinges. He sat up. Comfort was back, and when she did not move from her place at the door, Elvis looked at her with raised eyebrows, the way he remembered Roger Moore doing in The Saint.
“Ya papa no dey house,” she said.
“I know,” he replied. “So?”
“Elvis, I dey fear. He drink too much. More than before.”
“What are you afraid of?” he asked.
She shrugged. There was some silence. Then she spoke, her voice breaking slightly.
“Ya papa no love me.”
Elvis yawned. He couldn’t care less whether his father loved her or not.
“Na ya mama he love. Every night when he dey sleep, him go call her—‘Beatrice, Beatrice, soon, soon.’”
Elvis sat up.
“I dey fear say ya papa want to kill himself with drink,” she went on.
“My father hasn’t got the courage to do that,” he said.
“He want to kill himself to join ya mama. Only you fit help him.”
“Me? He doesn’t love me either, how can I help him?”
“Elvis,” she said, catching hold of his arm. “I never talk to you like dis before. I beg you be like son to him.”
Elvis was a mess of conflicting emotions. He’d been pretty sure that he hated his father, and now he had this strange urge to help him. He didn’t believe his father would actually kill himself, but he knew Sunday certainly had self-destructive tendencies. But why was Comfort telling him all this? What did she expect him to do? He felt the walls closing in on him. He shrugged off her hold.
“This is nonsense. I am going out now, excuse me,” he said, standing up and walking past her.
He had no idea where he was going, but after a while he realized that unconsciously he’d taken a bus to one of Lagos’s oldest ghettos, Aje. It was nothing like Maroko. It had no streets running through it, just a mess of narrow alleys that wound around squat, ugly bungalows and shacks. It occupied an area the size of several city blocks, and the main road ran to a halt at either side, ending in concrete walls decorated with graffiti. This was where Redemption lived.
It took Elvis a while to find Redemption’s tenement, a squat bungalow with rooms built around a paved courtyard. Across the street was a kiosk that sold everything from cigarettes by the stick to candy and liquor. In front of it, a man sat on a bench picking a tune out of a guitar whose appearance belied its rich tone. Stopping, he bought two beers and headed down the long corridor to Redemption’s rooms at the back.
“Madam, bring me one bottle!” Sunday shouted. “And one for everybody here!”
He hadn’t left the bar since he got there early in the morning. He looked around for Benji, but he was not there.
“Em, Mr. Philanthropist, before you give anoder person drink, pay for de one you done drink.”
“Haba, madam, why are talking like dis? It is me, Sunday de tycoon. When my numbers win lottery I will make you rich.”
“You never win lottery since de past twenty years, so why you go win it next week? Please pay me money.”
“Madam, dis is me, don’t be like a sourpuss.”
“Who are you? Money for hand, drink on de table. Simple.”
“Hah! dis woman wicked O!”
“I am wicked, eh …”
“Ah, not you, madam, I mean my wife.”
The madam of the bar smiled. She was very ready to extend credit to all her customers, who were mostly poor and unemployed anyway. But even her generosity had its limits, though she understood that they had come to drown their sorrows in her watered-down alcohol. They needed her and she needed them; they drank, she sold. If she was owed, she owed the palm wine supplier, who owed someone else; everyone owed someone these days, it was the vogue. But she needed to crack the whip from time to time just enough so that her customers did not take her for granted.
“Madam, how about one bottle on my account?”
“Which account? Dis place look like bank to you? Cash sale only.”
Sunday gazed stubbornly at the palm wine seller, who in turn tried to stare him down, but Sunday was used to this. They played it out every night and the palm wine seller always lost. He felt confident of victory. It was only a matter of minutes.
“You want to drink but you have no money,” she said, her resolve already weakening.
“We’ve got to start thinking beyond our guns,” Redemption said, slamming down his checker piece and picking up the three he had just killed.
“Damn!” Kansas said as he watched his pieces leave the board.
Elvis took a swig of beer. “What guns?”
“What guns?” Redemption repeated, his eyes never leaving the board. “Don’t you remember dat film, De Wild Ones?”
“Wild Bunch,” Kansas corrected, taking one of Redemption’s pieces.
“You’re sure it’s not Wild Ones?” Redemption said.
“Want to bet?” Kansas asked with a crooked smile.
Redemption recognized the confidence in the smile and declined.
“But what has this got to do with my father and me?” Elvis asked, sounding more than a little frustrated.
“Crown me, crown me king!” Kansas shouted as he won.
“Fuck dis,” Redemption swore, getting up and letting someone else slide into his place. He had just lost ten naira. They were sitting in the backyard of Redemption’s tenement, where there was a money game every night. Kansas and Redemption were the usual winners, making enough to pay their rent.
“See how your constant distraction cost me money?” Redemption said, sitting down next to Elvis on an upturned bucket. He reached for Elvis’s beer and took a deep drink.
“Ten naira is chicken change to you. I need advice,” Elvis said, wresting the beer bottle back and draining it.
“But talking is thirsty business,” Redemption said.
“Please, I just bought you a bottle of beer. You know I don’t have that kind of money. I am a laborer.”
“Okay, okay. Let me treat you,” Redemption said, handing money to one of the kids hanging around the game. “Go and get me two beers.”
“Three!” Kansas shouted from his game.
“Three,” Redemption repeated to the kid.
“Four,” someone else shouted.
“Your mother!” Redemption shouted back. “So remember what I just said?” he continued, turning back to Elvis.
“Something about thinking with guns from The Wild Bunch.”
Redemption shook his head.
“I said we got to think beyond our guns. See you spend your whole life fighting with your father and no time on making your own life. What will you do when he dies? Fight yourself?”
“What of you?” Elvis asked.
“Me too. I spend my life hustling for small money, staying one step ahead of de police. But I will not do dat all my life. You see, I done read Napoleon Hill and as a thinking man, and with de grace of God, I go be millionaire before I reach thirty.”
“So what is your plan?”
“What’s dat thing they say on dat TV show?”
“What show?”
“Bassey and Company, by Ken Saro-Wiwa.”
“I don’t know.”
“Dat’s why you are poor. Bassey always says, ‘To be a millionaire, you must think like a millionaire.’�
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“So something someone said on a television show is your plan?”
“Dis Elvis, you no get faith. Television is de new oracle. No, I go show you my plan.”
Redemption looked around carefully. Satisfied that everyone’s attention was centered on Kansas’s game, he reached under his shirt and pulled out a pouch attached to his neck by a heavy chain. Unzipping it, he pulled out a crisp green passport.
“See dis?” he said, opening the passport.
“What?’
“Dis,” Redemption said, passing the passport to Elvis. “Visa to States.”
Elvis held the passport and stared at the colored stamp inside it, unable to fathom its importance. Redemption saw the lack of comprehension on his face and explained.
“With dis stamp inside my passport, I can go to United States, act inside film and make millions.”
“I see,” Elvis said, not quite seeing but liking the possibility of being in a film with the real Elvis. “How did you get it? I know the passports are easy to come by, but an American visa? I heard people wait months outside the embassy and don’t even get an appointment.”
Redemption laughed.
“You are asking original area boy how I get de visa? I use connection, de same way I go get movie deal.”
Elvis nodded gravely, though he couldn’t take Redemption seriously. It sounded like another mad scheme; and anyway, from the back issues of the show-biz magazine Entertainment, which he often read at the United States Information Service Library on Victoria Island, he gathered that getting into films was hard enough for American professional actors—so what chance did Redemption stand? Still, Elvis said nothing. He had been using the USIS Library for about a year, having found out about it from a flyer he saw at the local library, which had so few books he had to pace his borrowing so as not to finish them all too quickly. Apart from the endless old tomes on chemistry, physics, electronics and philosophy, the local library had an anthropology section that only had books with the word “Bantu” in their titles—like Bantu Philosophy and Bantu Worldviews. Something about the word “Bantu” bothered him and made him think it was pejorative. Maybe it had something to do with not ever hearing that word used outside of that section in the library. The only other books there were treatises on Russian and Chinese culture and politics. These came either printed in bold glossy colors or in badly bound volumes with the fading print slanted on the page as if set by a drunken printer or as though, tired of the lies, the words were trying to run off the page. So it had been with some relief that he spotted the USIS flyer on the bare cork bulletin board.
He gave the passport back. It seemed to him that everyone wanted to leave for America. Just last month, he overheard his father say Aunt Felicia was leaving for America in a few weeks to meet her husband, who had lived there since the late sixties. He had come back to meet and marry Aunt Felicia in an arranged wedding a year before, although neither Elvis nor his father had gone back to Afikpo for the ceremony. Elvis couldn’t afford to; Afikpo was nearly eight hundred miles away.
He mused over his mixed feelings. His fascination with movies and Elvis Presley aside, he wasn’t really sure he liked America. Now that the people he cared about were going there, he felt more ambivalent than ever.
“Listen, Elvis, stop living like dis, you know? If you are going to do dis dancing thing seriously, den do it. Join proper concert troupe and tour de country. I hear dere is money in dat. But if you just wan’ to annoy your father, den you are wasting your life.”
Elvis looked hard at the floor while Redemption spoke. He had thought about the dance troupe route, especially when he saw a good troupe featured on television. But he was afraid that he wasn’t good enough. There was a positive side to not trying at something: you could always pretend that your life would have been different if you had.
“On de oder hand, if you want to make more money for less work, let me hook you up,” Redemption continued.
“What makes you think I am doing this to annoy my father?”
“I don’t. Listen, I wan’ go beat dese amateurs, tomorrow is rent day.”
He then got up and went to rejoin the game of checkers, and as Elvis left, he heard Redemption raising the stakes.
Pensive on the bus ride home, Elvis did not pay too much attention to the cars that in spite of their speed wove between each other like the careful threads of a tapestry. The motorways were the only means of getting across the series of towns that made up Lagos. Intent on reaching their own destinations, pedestrians dodged between the speeding vehicles as they crossed the wide motorways. It was dangerous, and every day at least ten people were killed trying to cross the road. If they didn’t die when the first car hit them, subsequent cars finished the job. The curious thing, though, was that there were hundreds of overhead pedestrian bridges, but people ignored them. Some even walked up to the bridges and then crossed underneath them.
Elvis was pulled back to the present as the car in front of the bus hit someone. The heavy wheels of the bus thudded over the inert body, spinning into another lane. Elvis winced and turned to the man next to him.
“We are crazy you know. Did you see that?”
“Uh-huh,” the man grunted.
“Why can’t we cross with the bridges? Why do we gamble with our lives?”
“My friend, life in Lagos is a gamble, crossing or no crossing.”
“But why not even the odds a little? Did you know that they have soldiers standing on the islands in the middle of the roads to stop people from crossing the busy roads instead of using the overhead walkways?’
“Ah, dat’s good,” the man said.
“Yes, but that’s not the point. Why do we need to have soldiers there to tell us it is dangerous to cross the road?”
“I don’t understand.”
“If you cross the road without using the overhead bridges, you increase the chances of being hit by a car. Simple logic, really.”
“So what is your point, my friend? We all have to die sometimes, you know. If it is your time, it is your time. You can be in your bed and die. If it is not your time, you can’t die even if you cross de busiest road. After all, you can fall from de bridge into de road and die. Now isn’t dat double foolishness?”
Elvis stared at him, shook his head and went back to staring out of the window.
Outside, the road was littered with dead bodies at regular intervals. “At least take away the bodies,” he muttered to himself.
“Dey cannot,” the man interjected into his thoughts. “Dis stupid government place a fine on dying by crossing road illegally. So de relatives can only take de body when dey pay de fine.”
“What about the State Sanitation Department?”
“Is dis your first day in Lagos? Dey are on strike or using de government ambulances as hearses in deir private business. Dis is de only country I know dat has plenty ambulances, but none in de hospitals or being used to carry sick people. One time, American reporter dey sick in Sheraton Hotel, so he call for de ambulance. De hospital tell him dat he must book in advance and dat de nearest available time is de following Tuesday. When de hotel staff insist, talk say de man was about to die, de ambulance department told dem dat dey only carry dead people for a fee as part of funeral processions. If de man was alive, dey suggest make de hotel rush him to de hospital by taxi,” the man continued, laughing.
“How can you find that funny? That is the trouble with this country. Everything is accepted. No dial tones or telephones. No stamps in post offices. No electricity. No water. We just accept.”
“Listen, my friend, anybody rich enough to afford telephone in country where most people dey fight for survival, dey should have de decency to wait for a dial tone.”
Elvis could hardly wait for his stop and trudged home wearily, shoes ringing out on the walkways. It was late and much of Maroko was asleep, awash with moonlight. In the distance a woman sang in a sorrow-cracked voice that made him catch his breath, stop and look around. I
n that moment, it all looked so beautiful, like a sequence from one of the films he had seen. Then the silence was broken by the approach of menacing steps. He turned and saw several figures coming toward him.
“Hey!” one of them called.
Alarm bells went off in Elvis’s head and he took off at speed, trying to keep his balance on the walkway. The figures chased him for a while, their laughter following him. He did not stop until he got home and slammed his door behind him.
Redemption was right; he had to think with more than his guns.
THE CALL TO PRAYER (ISLAM)
God is most great God is most great.
God is most great. God is most great.
I testify that there is no god except God
I testify that there is no god except God
I testify that Muhammad is the messenger of God
I testify that Muhammad is the messenger of God
Come to prayer! Come to prayer!
Come to success in this life and the hereafter!
Come to success!
God is most great. God is most great
There is no god except God.
SIX
The shape is always traced by a divine finger. Look always to the King’s head for the star. It never lies.
The ideal kola nut has four lobes, which join at the nut’s apex, in the shape of a star. The four-lobed kola nut is rare. The most common is two-lobed. The number of lobes, determined by the line running across the kola nut’s apex, determines what kind of person the petitioner is.
Afikpo, 1976
Friday. Under the stern but amused gaze of Oye and the excited, not-missing-anything nine-year-old intensity of Elvis, spread on raffia mats on the veranda, Aunt Felicia and her friends settled down to prepare for the weekend and the parties they wanted to attend. The formal year-long mourning period for Elvis’s mother had just ended. The entire family had performed the full rites, with the exception of his father. Igbo men didn’t mourn women publicly. It was considered bad taste.
The giggling girls had an air of excitement about them that blew through the mustiness of their grief with a welcome freshness. Gone were the unkempt hair and black clothes, and it seemed to Elvis that he had only just become aware of color, seeing it everywhere and in everything, vividly. From the radio in the corner, the Reverend Al Green crooned, “I’m so tired of being alone, I’m so tired …”