by Chris Abani
As they bumped over the road at high speed, a tall column of dust kicked up by the tires chased after them. To their right, the water was a black presence, reflecting the moon. In the distance, Elvis could make out small fishing canoes bobbing on the swell, the lanterns burning in their prows dancing like fireflies.
“Yeee!”
Redemption’s shout was the last thing Elvis heard before the bike skidded out from under them and they were free-falling. They came to a stop about twenty feet down the road. Behind them, the motorcycle’s engine roared for a while, the tires spinning in the air, before spluttering to a stop. The single headlight burned through the silent dark.
“Elvis?”
Silence.
“Elvis?”
“Shit, I think I am dead.”
“No, my friend. Wounded, but not dead. Are you okay? Complete?”
Elvis got into a sitting position. Redemption was already standing up. He lit two cigarettes and passed one to Elvis. Elvis accepted the cigarette and took a deep drag; then, pulling himself slowly to his feet, he checked for broken bones. He was fine aside from a few bruises and a torn shirt.
“How are you?” Redemption asked.
“Apart from some bruises, I am fine. You?”
“Man no die, man no rotten.”
Elvis laughed. It felt good.
“What happened?”
“Who knows? Too much drink, bad road, witchcraft. Choose one.”
“Do you realize we could have died?”
“But we didn’t. So dis is an omen dat we will both live long,” Redemption said, walking back to the prone bike. As he righted it, Elvis called out:
“Be careful of spilled fuel with that cigarette.”
“Shut up, my friend. Dis is not a movie,” Redemption said, climbing back onto the bike and kicking the throttle. After a few abortive attempts, the bike came alive.
“Excellent. Not even a scratch. Dis is good omen. Okay, Elvis, all aboard.”
Elvis hesitated.
“You want to spend de night here?”
“Shit,” Elvis muttered, climbing on the back.
As they left, he was glad to notice that Redemption had cut back on the speed.
“So why did you come to see me? You must have been upset to forget I moved.”
“Is that deal you offered me still open?” Elvis asked.
“Yes. And after dis accident, I am confident for both of us. It will go well. Trust me.”
Elvis’s reply was swallowed up by the wind as they gained the freeway and Redemption opened the throttle.
SPIGELIA ANTHELMIA L.
(Yoruba: Ewe Aran)
As in most herbs, this is common to abandoned farmlands and clearings in the forest. It is a small erect herb with a rounded smooth stem. Its leaves are oval and broad at the base, tapering to a fine point at the apex. It has pale pink flowers with dark stripes and its fruits are small, round, warty and two-lobed.
The plant is boiled and drunk to expel worms. Its fresh leaves are considered especially poisonous to domestic animals and can cause their death in two to three hours. An overdose of the extract of the leaves is capable of killing a human. In the past witches used it to exact revenge on their enemies either by mixing it in with the feed of domestic animals or by pouring a large dose of the decoction into a soup or drink.
EIGHTEEN
This is the first step. This is the way it is done.
The protocol is followed strictly.
Afikpo, 1980
Invariably the talk turned to sex. Obed and Titus had seen blue movies, and although they didn’t understand much, they tried to convey what they had seen to the others.
Titus, in hallowed silence, told of how a woman took a man’s penis in her mouth and sucked out his soul while he yelled in pain. The others were not convinced at first, but he insisted he had seen it, white and lacy, dripping from her mouth. Elvis, in Obiechena’s Biology for Beginners, had read differently, but he knew better than to be a nerd by arguing. Besides, Obed was suggesting that they experiment on each other. Elvis wasn’t sure why, but this was something that he wanted to do, so he wasn’t as vocal as the others in his protests.
“Dat is evil, Obed!” Titus shouted.
“Yes, we will surely go to hell for dat,” Hezekiah agreed.
“Dat is homo. It is taboo, forbidden,” Elvis interjected weakly.
“But I saw it in de movies,” Obed insisted.
That one stumped everyone. They sat in the Anglican chapel, a simple bungalow in white at the bottom of the hill, where the cashew groves ended abruptly in a pant of hot white sand. It was nothing like the elaborate Catholic church they attended, and it had less of a religious impact on them. They often came here to gorge on the fruit they had picked from the grove. In the daytime, the chapel was a cool sanctuary from the sweltering afternoon and was always empty except for the bats that infested the roof by the hundreds, and whose dank smell hung in the air just below the musk of angels. At dusk they streamed out in a dense black squeaking cloud to feast on the cashews.
But to Elvis there was an unspoken thing, an air of sacredness that tugged at him. He often lay on one of the pews inside, waiting for an angel to reveal itself to him. The air here was light, unlike in the Catholic church, where the air was oppressive with taboos, guilt, incense, prayers and portents of magic. There were no crucifixes here, no statues, only an oil painting of a brilliant sunrise over the altar. An uncomplicated relationship that he would not dare admit.
“Was it John Wayne doing it?”
“Or Actor?”
“No. Dese were two men I do not know, but dey were doing it and it must be all right because dey do it in de movies,” Obed insisted.
“But we might get caught. You know grown-ups are always dropping in here to pray,” Elvis said.
“Not by dis time. Dey are at work.”
They paired off, alternately lying on top of each other, humping through their clothing. As the afternoon wore on, they became a little more adventurous and were soon down to their underwear, then nothing. Lost in effort, they did not notice an adult appear at the door of the chapel.
Titus saw him first. Though the man did not speak, they knew he had been there a while. Leaping up, they made a run for it, but Elvis had been underneath the heavier Obed, and as he struggled to his feet, fumbling with his shorts, he felt a slap connect with his face. His head jerked back and he fell.
Elvis opened his mouth to speak, but the man put his finger to his lips. He couldn’t focus on any details—what the man looked like or what he was wearing. All he was aware of was the man’s sweaty, hot smell, choking him.
He opened his fly and Elvis saw his huge erect penis pop out. He was petrified.
“Come here,” the man said gruffly.
Zombielike, Elvis went to him. The man placed his hands roughly on his shoulders and forced him down on his knees. His penis was level with Elvis’s face, a twitching cobra ready to strike.
“Suck it,” the man hissed.
With a shudder, Elvis remembered Titus’s story about the woman who sucked the man’s soul out. That would make him a vampire, Elvis thought, and that was for some inane reason more frightening.
“Suck it,” the man hissed again, thrusting his hips forward so that his penis brushed Elvis’s mouth. Reluctantly he let the tip in, sucking on it slowly, as though eating a stick of sugarcane. The man trembled, making guttural noises in the back of his throat. Elvis stopped, afraid the man’s soul had already started to leave his body.
The man did not speak, just pulled Elvis’s head back into his crotch, ramming his penis down his throat so hard he gagged. Tiring of this, he dragged him up. Thinking it was over, Elvis started to turn to run, but the man slapped him hard again, stunning him. Elvis could taste the warm rust of his blood mixing with the man’s musk. Without speaking, the man spun Elvis around, forcing him over the edge of a pew. Holding Elvis’s squirming body down with one hand, the man yanked Elvis’s s
horts down with the other. For a second everything seemed to stop. Elvis felt the man hard against his buttocks, and then a burst of fire ripped him into two. The man tore into him, again and again. The pain was so intense, Elvis passed out. When he opened his eyes, he was on the ceiling looking down on their bodies spooned together. The man had stopped moving and lay sweating and heaving like a farm laborer on break. Elvis closed his eyes and drifted into darkness.
When he came to, he was alone. As he pulled up his shorts, he felt the wetness on his buttocks. Fearing it was the dreaded juice of the soul, he tried to wipe it away. An examination of his hand revealed blood. Dazed, he stumbled to the front of the altar and sat on the floor for hours, staring up at the picture of a sunrise.
Night filled with the screeching of bats streaming out of the roof. Still he sat, staring impassively at the painting, willing Jesus to reach out of the sun and heal him. Inside the chapel, darkness became denser, the only source of light a dim bulb on the porch. Becoming aware of a presence at the door, he turned to look but could only make out the vague outlines of a body. Not too tall.
“Elvis.”
“Yes?”
The figure was still fuzzy as it approached, but soon his eyes came into focus.
“Elvis,” Efua called again.
“Yes,” he replied softly, glad that it was she who had come looking for him.
Efua sat down beside him and held his hand. For a long time neither spoke.
“What happened?” Efua asked, her voice so soft it was almost inaudible. He told her. In the darkness he felt her tense up and wince.
“He’s done dat to me too,” she whispered, afraid to speak too loudly.
“I tried to tell my father about you,” he began, and paused.
“And … ?”
“He didn’t believe me.”
“Grown-ups do not believe children. Are you cold?”
He shook his head in the dark and felt her smile, and the warm saltiness of his tears surprised him.
JOLLOF RICE WITH DRIED FISH
INGREDIENTS
Rice
Palm oil
Salt
Hot peppers
Dry powdered crayfish
Onions
Maggi cubes
Dried fish
PREPARATION
Wash the rice several times in warm water, then put it on to boil for about fifteen minutes. Wash it again and then put it back on to boil. Pour in some palm oil (only a little, because though palm oil soothes the interior like an inner poultice, too much can also clog the veins and cause fevers). Add salt, hot peppers, the powdered crayfish, onions and a couple of Maggi cubes. Add the dried fish, previously softened in hot water. Fried meat is optional, but dried or smoked antelope goes particularly well in this dish. Top up with water to keep from burning. After about thirty minutes, turn the heat down and wait for all the liquid to dry up. Serve. For the best taste, cook in an earthenware pot over a wood fire.
NINETEEN
He does this by arranging the kola nuts on the wooden kola bowl, and saying “Honored guests, kola is here.”
This is to determine two things, the person’s clan and whether they come in peace. If they come in peace, they rub the chalk across their left wrist. The reverse applies if they do not come in peace. Then with the residual piece of chalk, they draw their family and clan marking on the floor, usually a symbol of eight lines: four for the personal, four for the clan.
Lagos, 1983
Sunday Oke woke with a start. It was not a noise that woke him. Nor was it the silence. It was something moving between, deep inside him. Strains of classical music reached him from a radio somewhere in the night. Sunday couldn’t place the song, but he knew the program well. It was called Music of the Masters. The music rode on an undercurrent of static, as though the radio playing it wasn’t tuned properly. In the distance, the early-morning cargo train screamed past. For some reason he thought of the image of a bullet-ridden corpse lying across train tracks. Was that what had woken him? No, he muttered under his breath, remembering that the image came from last night’s news.
It seemed that a lot of bodies were turning up dead on the train tracks in the early-morning hours, riddled with bullets. There must have been a lot of bodies found that way for one to finally make the news, Sunday thought at the time. He remembered laughing when the reporter said the police maintained that the cause of death, in each case, was “the impact of early-morning trains hitting the bodies.”
He got up, swinging skinny legs out of bed, flesh wrinkled and sagging. He yawned and stretched. Beside him, Comfort snored loudly. Her youngest child slept on a mat in the corner of the room. The things that child must see, he thought.
He slept naked, and his sex swung pendulous and full, heavy with regret for a life of too much sex and not enough love. Yawning, he pulled on a pair of babanriga pants and a loose jumper. Unlocking the door, he felt his way down the dark corridor to the backyards and the toilet. He peed, staring at the amber liquid collecting in the bowl as though he expected to divine what had woken him. As he poured the bucket of water in to flush it, he felt like his life was going down the drain.
He felt his way back to the door and stepped into the living room, standing there confused for a moment. Elvis, that was it—he wanted to talk to Elvis. He let himself out again and knocked on Elvis’s door, which opened straight out onto the veranda. The architecture in Lagos never made any sense; maximizing rent seemed to be the main design consideration. There was no answer. Still not back, he thought. Coming back into the living room, he stared at Comfort’s other two children sleeping on the cushions spread out on the floor. The thought of sitting on bare chair springs did not appeal to him.
Deciding to go back out onto the veranda, he pulled a sweater over the jumper, as he felt the cold a lot more acutely these days, and fetched a beer from the fridge chugging in the corner, giving off heat. He spotted Beatrice’s record player sitting on the sideboard where Elvis kept it. He picked it up, holding it tucked in the crook of one arm, while under the other he held some records. Balancing everything carefully with his beer, he walked out to the veranda.
After he set everything down, he put on Miles’s Kind of Blue, sat back on the bench, sipped his beer and let the music wash over him. The sky was oversalted with stars and he traced Orion’s hunt and Pegasus’ winged flight. A shooting star streaked across the sky, stirring an epiphany that disappeared out of reach as quickly as the star, leaving him with only the sense of having imagined it. He reached for his beer and took one more swig.
He played record after record, relaxing until he had no more cares than a rag flapping gently to night’s rhythm. With each record played, he seemed in search of something; the “Blue in Green,” the treads in the shoes of “Giant Steps,” musing about the true meaning of “Epistrophy,” squeezing juice from “Naima.”
That was how Elvis found him when he got home, snoring gently to the Everly Brothers. It was raining.
Elvis rescued the needle from its endless rasp over the inside track of the record. He lifted the vinyl disc off the still-spinning plate and, holding it gingerly between fingertips, blew off imaginary dust. He replaced it in the sleeve that showed the Everly Brothers wearing 1950s coifs. He watched the record player slowly spin to a stop before he shook his father’s shoulder.
“What?” Sunday said groggily.
“Go inside and sleep. You will catch a cold,” Elvis said.
Sunday yawned and stretched, coming awake.
“What time is it?”
“Three a.m.,” Elvis replied, glancing at his watch.
“Where have you been?”
“Out.” Elvis headed for his room, throwing a “Goodnight” over his shoulder.
“Wait.”
Elvis paused, his hand on the doorknob. He didn’t turn around.
“I have been waiting for you.”
Elvis turned around. “For me? For what?”
“Sit down. I need
to talk to you.”
“If it is about Godfrey, forget it. There is no need.”
“It’s not about Godfrey. Sit down.”
Elvis walked over and sat on the bench next to his father. They did not look at each other, both choosing a point in the darkness to gaze out at instead.
“Benji just gave me some disturbing news yesterday.”
Elvis didn’t respond.
“He told me you have been hanging around with dat man dey call de King of de Beggars,” Sunday continued.
“Yes, he is a friend of mine.”
“What type of friend? What would make a young, well-brought-up man like you associate with beggars?”
Elvis was silent.
“De company one keeps tells a lot.”
“What does your friendship with Benji tell?”
“Elvis! I am still your father, respect me!”
Elvis looked at his father scornfully but said nothing.
“Look, Benji told me dat de King, or whatever he is, is a dangerous man.”
“How would Benji know?”
“Benji knows things. Just listen. Dey say dat de King was discharged from the army for crazy behavior.”
“When?”
“After de civil war.”
“That was a long time ago. He seems fine to me.”
“But what kind of man begs for a living?”
Elvis looked pointedly at his father.
“I am unemployed, not a beggar!” Sunday nearly shouted.
“He’s just trying to do what he thinks is right.”
“We all are. I’ve always tried to do just dat. I ran in de first free elections in nearly twenty years, as you know. Den dose army boys came back and toppled de new civilian regime. Of course, de good thing about dat was dat Okonkwo never got to enjoy his victory.”
Elvis remembered the military coup that had removed the civilian government two months into power. As always, there was the national radio broadcast, usually by a northern officer: “My pellow kwontrymen, I wish to ashwar you dat dis hasu been a bloodless coup. Dere will be no bloodshed, but we are imposing a dusk-to-dawn kerfew …” Even as the announcement was being made, army platoons would be taking out the corpses from the bloodless coup and burying them in unmarked graves. The thing that baffled Elvis the most was that everyone came out to have parades to welcome the new reigme in, as though this time for sure things would get better. But Sunday was still talking, so he tried to focus.