by Chris Abani
“It’s not because nobody tries but because de reasons are complicated. And your King, how is he fighting? By begging?”
“No. He is a poet and a regular speaker at Freedom Square. He is also an actor and uses theater to fight the government.”
“Maybe you should have run for office, not me,” Sunday said with a smile. “But de point is, how will staging plays defeat a military government? Bigger men, like Wole Soyinka, have tried, but nothing changes. If he cannot do it, how can a beggar?”
“I don’t know. I think everyone is just trying to find their way.”
“Are dey finding de way, dese people you speak of?”
“I don’t know, but I do know some people are trying very hard and others are not.”
“So?”
“So they will eventually find a way.”
“Who are ‘dey’ dat you speak of? Do you even know?”
Elvis shrugged and looked away. Sunday chuckled.
“What?” Elvis asked.
“You sound grown. Like a man; yet you are not a man, and so dis is only de voice of others speaking through you.”
“What?”
“Elvis, sometimes even good people use us.”
“Who is using us?”
“I am saying dat dis King is using you.”
“To do what?”
“Who knows? But Benji says all dis political agitation is a front, dat it is to help him find and kill de officer dat killed his family during de war. Dis is not for change, but revenge.”
Elvis lit a cigarette and took a deep drag. Part of him knew his father was speaking from fear. Everybody around him was afraid of change, of rocking the boat, in case they disappeared. Yet part of him had begun to doubt the motives of everyone around him, so he could not totally dismiss his father’s concerns.
“The King does good work. I support him.”
“Den you are a bigger fool dan I thought. Don’t you know dat when de King is next arrested you can be implicated by association? Elvis, try and understand. I am doing dis as your father, not as a stranger. I am trying to help you.”
“The way you helped Godfrey?”
Sunday’s wince was audible and Elvis immediately felt a pang of guilt. Maybe his father was trying to help him. But it seemed too convenient. He had alternated between ignoring and bullying him all these years; yet now, hours after being confronted with the murder of his nephew, he was suddenly concerned for Elvis.
“You have a bad mouth,” Sunday said. “You get dat from your mother.”
Elvis said nothing, lighting another cigarette instead.
“Dis is why I don’t talk to you. Every time I try, you shut me out with your rude comments,” Sunday went on.
“I think you should go and sleep off your guilt instead of putting it on me. It’s not working,” Elvis said, tossing his half-smoked cigarette into the street and getting up.
“Elvis … I …”
“Goodnight,” Elvis said. On impulse, he bent down and kissed the top of his father’s head before walking briskly to the door of his room.
As he went inside, he looked back. Sunday had not moved from his seat, except to run his finger meditatively over his bald spot where Elvis had kissed him.
ROAST VENISON
(Igbo: Ele Ahurahu)
INGREDIENTS
Venison
Vegetable oil
Apples
Allspice
Fresh bonnet peppers
Diced onions
Salt
PREPARATION
Dig a hole about two feet square and build spit support from two forked tree branches. Fill the hole with coals, wood and kindling. Light the fire and hang the venison over the flames to burn off the fur. Scrape hide regularly with a knife to clear the fur.
Spread large banana leaves out on the floor and lay the venison on them. Wash the soot off with water, then cut the shin of the animal in several places and stuff with a mix of the ingredients above.
By now the fire should have died down to a steady heat with low flames. Hoist the venison over the fire using a length of metal guided through the animal and suspended from the spit supports. Turn and roast slowly for about seven hours. Best served communally on trays with salad, palm wine, music and dancing.
TWENTY
This is the journey the kola must make. The eldest man, in presenting the kola nut to the gathered guests, must say, “This is the King’s kola.” The youngest boy in the gathering then takes the bowl and passes it to the eldest guest and says, “Will you break the King’s kola?”
The complexity of the kola-nut ritual comes from the peculiar way that age and lineage are traced among the Igbo. Certain Igbo groups trace lineage along matrilineal lines, though others are unapologetically patriarchal. The kola-nut ritual provides a ritual space for the affirmation of brotherhood and mutual harmony while also functioning as a complicated mnemonic device.
Afikpo, 1980
The call, though soft when it came, terrified him. Panting and sweating, he struggled to see through the darkness. Familiar objects took on a different life. There it was again, insistent.
“Elvis … Elvis.”
“Who is it?”
“Innocent.”
Muttering curses under his breath, Elvis got up and felt his way to a candle and a box of matches. He lit the candle and opened the door. Innocent stood shivering outside. His tortured look caused Elvis to gasp.
“Innocent?” he said, the name loaded with questions too hard to articulate.
“It is me … I am hungry,” Innocent replied.
Nodding, Elvis led the way to the kitchen out back. On tiptoe, he reached for the key that was always above the door, on the lintel. Carefully, so as not to wake anyone, he reheated some rice and stew for Innocent. Watching him eat, Elvis felt a strange mix of revulsion and pity, yet did not know why. There was something else too—something that had to do with the terrified looks Innocent shot around the room.
“What is wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“You seem upset.”
Innocent paused in his eating, empty spoon midway between the plate and his mouth. He looked at Elvis as though he were seeing him for the first time. He put the plate of rice down, although he kept hold of the spoon. He held it in midair as if it were a baton and he the conductor of some orchestra. He seemed to be deliberating within himself whether to tell Elvis something. After a while he sighed.
“I used to be a soldier in de Biafran war.”
Elvis was a little surprised by that. It just seemed to come out of nowhere.
“I know.”
“Yes. Well, dat time na rough time. I was only a child, you know.”
Elvis nodded.
The alabaster Madonna wept bullet holes. They traced a jagged pattern down her face and robes to collect in a pool of spent shell casings at her feet. She trampled a serpent underfoot, which seemed to be drowning in the brass waves. Her arms, folded over her Immaculate Heart, kept it from flying out of her chest. Her face, cast lovingly toward heaven, wore a sad smile. Sitting among the shell casings at her feet, a thirteen-year-old Innocent sucked on a battered harmonica. The sound whispered out of the honeycombed back, floating up, past the Madonna to an askew Christ on the cross. It went in through the wound in his side, worming around and out the nails in his feet, condensing on the walls of the pockmarked church in a dew of hope.
In the burned-out skeleton of the church, in the reluctant shadows cast by the walls, a group of soldiers, rifles in arms, bristled. They were young, most no more than fifteen. The sweet smell of marijuana floated past them, mixing with the smell of stale sex, warm blood, burned wood and flesh, rising in an incense offering to God. Cicadas hummed and the very air, hot and humid, crackled with the electric sigh of restless spirits. The smoker, seventeen, the oldest person in the platoon, was known simply as Captain. He stubbed out the spliff he was smoking, grinding it into the dry, crumbly earth. It was 1969 and they were part of
the Biafran army’s Boys’ Brigade.
The harmonica sang breathily as Innocent teased a hymn from it. The notes fluttered hopefully, hesitantly, a fragile thing. But as the sun warmed them, they rose steadily. Some of the soldiers in the shade who were familiar with the Catholic hymn hummed along. The hymn brought back memories of a different time, a different place.
“Hey, Music Boy! Play me another song,” Captain shouted.
Innocent stopped sucking on his harmonica.
“Like what?” he asked.
“You know de Beach Boys? Play dat.” Captain laughed loudly.
Innocent turned away and went back to playing the hymn. There was no love lost between him and Captain—mostly because out of everyone in the platoon, Innocent was the one he usually chose to bully. Across from him, tied to a tree, were the corpses of the Catholic priests who used to run this parish. Their white soutanes were caped in crimson. On the floor near them, one dead, one whimpering in shock, were two nuns who had been raped by Captain. The dead one had tried to struggle. Innocent had watched, afraid to intercede, afraid of what Captain would do to him. He had stared into the nun’s eyes that were as grey as a fading blackboard, watched her implore him as the life ebbed away, steeling himself. Like Captain said, “War is war.”
The rest of the carnage—the shooting of the priests, the burning of the church and the slaughter of the congregation who had been worshipping inside it—had been done before they got there. Most of the dead had been refugees fleeing from the advancing federal troops. Innocent could no longer tell the difference between rebel- and federal-controlled territory. The lines kept shifting.
It was Harmattan, and everything was coated in fine red dust. A sloughed-off fragment of another hymn popped into Innocent’s head, the words flooding: “Are you washed in the blood, in the soul-cleansing blood, of the Lamb?” He shrugged it away and went back to his playing.
The other boys in the platoon rippled toward Captain. They were hungry and wanted permission to go scavenging. Innocent took the harmonica out of his mouth and gazed past them.
Off to the right was the priests’ house: a one-story structure with big, sweeping verandas and a balcony that wore a lovely ornate wroughtiron balustrade. Bougainvillea crept up the walls in green-and-purple lushness. The building’s brilliant whitewash surprised the red earth of the courtyard. To the left stood two low bungalows that had been the school. In the middle, behind him, were the smoking remains of the church, its once-white walls mascaraed in black tear tracks. In the quadrangle between the buildings rose the statue of the Virgin, shadowed by the statue of Christ on the cross perched in front of the church. Towering above the Madonna and Christ was a bamboo flagpole. On it white twine beat forlornly in the wind, wishing for a flag.
Some bodies littered the road into the church compound and on the dry grass that was tenaciously holding on to the hard earth. They were mostly women, some men and even a few children. Some of them had been shot; others had been hacked to death with machetes. A few had been clubbed. Blood stained their clothes. The whitewashed stones lining the road were flecked with the dried blood, like teeth stained with pink dental dye. There were still pools of blood, clotting flies into a knobby black crust. The earth was baked so hard it couldn’t absorb any more blood. It refused to soak it up.
Even though the enemy had been responsible for this massacre, Innocent knew the rebels weren’t much better. He had long since lost any belief in the inherent goodness of the rebel cause and the evil of the enemy. Once he had been driven by deep idealism. Now he just wanted to survive. He had seen Captain commit enough atrocities to realize that they were all infected by the insanity of blood fever.
He looked at the dead bodies. They had probably converged on the church compound believing they would be safe here, protected by God’s benevolence and man’s reputed fear of Him. How wrong they had been! He could have told them that. There is only one God in war: the gun. One religion: genocide.
He looked up to see Captain studying him intently.
“Oi, Music Boy!” Captain called. “Music Boy!”
Innocent ignored him.
“Oh, Music Boy is angry dat we defiled God’s servants. He believes God is going to punish us. Dat’s why he is playing his mouth organ, to ease de souls of the dead mercenary priests to heaven or hell,” Captain said, bursting into deep laughter.
Innocent stopped playing. He was suddenly nervous; there was something dangerous in the way Captain laughed. Still laughing, Captain got up and walked over to Innocent. Innocent sprang up and walked away.
Captain stopped and turned to one of the boys in the group. “James.”
“Sar.”
“James, aim at dis bagger and fire on command.”
James hefted his Mark IV rifle up, rammed a bullet into the breach and pointed it at Innocent’s chest.
“At yar command, sar!” he said.
“Do you see? Do you see obedient, eh? Next time I call you, you jump up, run over and say ‘Yes sar!’ Do you understand me?”
“Yes sar!” Innocent said, snapping to attention. He knew Captain was a little crazy and capable of killing him.
“Good. Music Boy!”
“Yes sar!”
Captain laughed. Turning to James, he said, “Ajiwaya,” a Biafran army term meaning, “As you were.” James lowered the rifle. It was still cocked. He held it gingerly. Having no safety catch, it was extremely dangerous to carry once cocked. James spoke up, deflecting Captain’s attention from Innocent.
“Sar. Permission to speak, sar!” he said.
Captain gave him a perfunctory nod.
“We are hungry, sar. Can we sarch de priests’ house to see if we can find food, sar?”
“Go on,” Captain said.
The group broke rank and with whoops of glee tripped their way to the priests’ house. It had not been burned, and that made Innocent suspicious. The whole place was probably booby-trapped. He shouted a warning, but nobody listened. They were too hungry. None of them had had anything more substantial than wild fruit foraged in the forest. No meat, since most of the animals had fled deep into the jungle to hide.
Innocent remembered the last time they had meat. One of the boys had shot a monkey. They had done it before—shot monkeys. Cooked them into a pepper soup that smelled delicious. But Innocent could never eat any. The monkey had looked so human, the small hands so like a child’s, scraping the side of the container used as a pot. One monkey, obviously not dead, had jumped up after being shot. One of the boys had crushed its skull under the butt of his rifle, cutting off its baby squeal. Everyone teased Innocent about not eating the monkey. Called him a coward. A woman. Not a warrior. He pointed out how much like cannibalism it all seemed. Captain swore at him, saying he would make him eat the next dead enemy soldier they came across. The boys hooted with laughter. The last time, however, only a few weeks ago, he had given in to the taunting and taken a piece of the meat. Later he was sick, but he couldn’t get the taste of it out of his mouth. The frightening thing was, he had enjoyed it.
A few minutes later, the boys emerged with tins of pork, stale bread, bottles of hot beer and altar wine. They had been left behind by the federal troops, who were mostly Muslims. They brought the loot to Captain, and only when he had selected what he wanted did they pounce on the rest. Tins were bayoneted open. Hot beer boiled over roughly opened bottles. Nobody paid any attention to Innocent or offered him any food. There was only one motto here: “We shall survive.”
Innocent got up and walked up the three steps into the burned-out shell of the church. The fire hadn’t consumed everything. Three walls, the roof—three-quarters of the church—had been burned. In the still-smoking pews he saw the roasted corpses of the congregation. They had been shot, clubbed or macheted to death and then tied to the pews to roast with the church. The air was heavy with the stench of roasted meat, not nauseating, but actually mouthwatering. Innocent wondered if they had all been dead or whether some had survived
the shots, clubs and machetes to be consumed screaming by the fire. Did dying in a church guarantee you a place in heaven? he wondered, walking up the aisle crunching soot, ash and charcoal underfoot.
The altar had miraculously survived. It was still set for mass: white altar cloth, chalice, communion wafers still stuffed into the ciborium, water, wine, candles, flowers and an open missal. Innocent walked round the altar and read the open page. He used to be an altar boy, and the Latin was not difficult for him to read. “Kyrie eleison, Christe eleison, Kyrie eleison.”
Behind the altar, not wearing a single bullet hole and only slightly cracked from the heat, was a stained-glass window. It filtered the harsh sunlight in soft blues, yellows, pinks, oranges and greens. Innocent noticed that the floor, the altar, the missal and his own body had become a patchwork of color. He licked the tip of a blue finger and peeled away a red page, an orange one and a green one. He paused and read. “Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis … Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, dona nobis pacem.” He smiled at the last line: “Grant us peace.”
His stomach rumbled and he wished he had fought with the others for some morsel. He looked out. The rest of the platoon was now gorging on papaws plucked from a nearby tree. His eyes took in the now barren tree—so much for that idea. He turned back to the altar. Nobody was going to miss the communion wafers, and he was sure God didn’t want him starving to death. Carefully hoisting his rifle onto his back and dropping his harmonica into his pocket, he picked up the ciborium and began stuffing his mouth full of the sweet white circles of bread. Finishing it off, he emptied water into the wine in the chalice. Saying a silent prayer for forgiveness, he reached for the chalice. Even as he picked it up, he heard the click of the bomb arming itself. The bastards had booby-trapped the altar.