by E. C. Osondu
Two strong arms gripped him. He was startled. He turned around. They were armed policemen. They were chasing a thief or a robber, it was not clear but they were after someone. Now they had him.
Gabriel did not return home. Nobody knew where he was. He was arrested and searched. The shiny empty bullet casing was found in his pocket. There was no need to ask him any further questions. He was taken straight to prison.
By the time he was eventually released he had lost a lot of weight. He was told to remain in the Family House and see a doctor but he refused. He preferred to return to the village.
People in the Family House said his case was like that of the man who was visited by death. Death showed him a list of names, your name is top of my list I must kill you today. Unknown to death, this man made the best-tasting yam pottage. Don’t kill me until you have tasted my pottage, the man pleaded. Death agreed. After all, Death reasoned, I will still kill him today whether on an empty stomach or on a full belly and why not do it on a full belly. The man went and prepared the most delicious yam pottage for Death. Even the aroma made Death’s mouth water. The man served Death the yam pottage in beautiful dinnerware. Death was taken aback by the man’s act of hospitality, nowhere had he been this welcome or well received. Death enjoyed the food so much that after eating, Death decided to take a nap. As soon as Death began to snore, the man went to Death’s list and moved his name from the top of the list to the bottom. Death soon woke up, stretched, and decided that he was going to do the man a favor and repay the kind host for the hospitality. Death decided that instead of starting from the top of the list, he would start at the bottom.
Until this day people still say that if living in the Family House could not cure Gabriel of his bad luck, nothing on earth could.
CURRENCY
Uncle Currency, according to what we heard, had the best job in the world—his job was burning money. His job was to throw bundles of old, torn, discontinued currency notes into a huge furnace. He spent money the way others drank water. People said, how do you expect him to treat money with any respect, when he burned money every day? We heard that he entered his workplace wearing only his underwear and emerged wearing the same so that he would not have the opportunity of pocketing some of the money headed to the incinerator. But he was soon bringing bundles of currency into the Family House. How did he do it?
The bundles of currency were not new, in fact some did look tattered and torn, but money was money, and they could be Scotch-taped and repaired. Some looked moldy and even smelled, but it was the smell of money and you could always give them a bath. It was from him that we first saw money being given a bath. He would fill a large basin with clean water. Powdered detergent was poured into the water and the old currency was poured into the soapy water and stirred around gently. The water was poured away and then the currency was rinsed. The money was taken indoors and placed on an ironing board, and white paper placed between the board and the money and then the currency was ironed. It emerged crisp and ready to be spent.
Currency was said to be a model worker, or so we heard initially. He always had a stack of shiny coins on the table in his room. Things began to change when he started coming back to the Family House with a large bag that looked like a postman’s carrier bag.
Initially he would go to work in the mornings and come back later in the evening, but soon we were told that he was now working what was referred to in quiet tones as permanent night duty.
We were expected to tiptoe around his room when we were passing by it because he was on permanent night. Either he had just come back from work and was tired and sleeping or he was sleeping before he left for work.
We would later hear that it was during night duty that Currency and his colleagues and the policemen and soldiers who were the security guards at the mint came together and held a meeting.
—How can we be burning money when it is what we work for?—
—We don’t even have enough of it and we are burning it—
—But we must show that we are doing our work—
—We can burn something, it doesn’t have to be money—
—We can burn newspapers and other forms of paper—
—How do we do this without anybody finding out?—
—We are all in this together and, come to think of it, we are not doing anything wrong, we are merely helping—
—I agree we are helping; it is like eating food that is going to be thrown away regardless—
Soon we heard in the Family House that there was an underground building being constructed outback. Everyone referred to it as underground until the bricklayer, a man nicknamed Puei who always had a menthol cigarette burning on his dark lips, told us it wasn’t an underground building but a basement. It was in this new basement that Currency was piling up the money he was bringing in from work. Initially he and his colleagues had been operating on the principle that if they stole too much the owner would notice, so they burned half of the money and kept half, but soon enough they were not even burning any at all. They were now burning ordinary paper and taking all the money for themselves.
Evidence of the money coming into the house was everywhere. The house was repainted in white and there was even a suggestion that it should now be called the Whitehouse, but someone mentioned that another Whitehouse was already in existence in a far-off country. A new borehole was dug and a water pumping machine installed. New electrical fixtures were installed. New carpets were laid. Even the old wire mosquito nettings on the windows that had turned tobacco brown from dust exposure were replaced. And of course these changes did not go unnoticed.
—Have you heard the latest? The son is bringing money to the house in bags—
—Money in bags? That must be juju money. Only the banks have enough money to carry in bags—
—He works at the security mint where they print money—
—I know someone else who works there, it doesn’t mean they can take the money as they please—
—He works in the incinerator. He works at the place where they burn the money—
—Ah, so it is money that should be burned that he is bringing home—
—That is a big one, but how does he do it?—
—He is not alone. They have people at the top—
—I don’t blame them, though, why burn money. This money that is so scarce that we poor people never have enough—
—If you ask me, I think they should find a new way of disposing of the money. Why burn it? Why not just give it to the poor?—
Soon rumors began to circulate about money that should be burned finding its way back into circulation. Someone later attributed the leak to one of the people in the team who had bought a used car and had a sign boldly painted on the back windscreen that proclaimed: MONEY HAS NO MASTER. Others said it was because of the lavish lifestyle of some of those in the team. When confronted, a certain one among them had said that money was like smoke—it could not be hidden.
One night Uncle Currency and his colleagues were arrested while on night duty. They were caught red-handed stuffing bales of cement paper into the furnace while another member of their team stuffed old currency into a van. They were first taken to the office of head of security for questioning.
“Tell me everything and we’ll make it easy for you,” the head of security said to the men in the team, who were all wearing only white briefs, as they were all expected to not wear anything with pockets while working.
“Tell me, how long has this been going on?”
The men were silent. They had all agreed that if and when this day eventually came, they were all going to swallow their tongues and not utter a word.
“Keeping silent will not help you. We just need to be sure the money has not fallen into the wrong hands.”
Still the men were silent.
“You know every piece of currency has a number. This means we can trace the money, and anybody caught spending it will be arrested. We do not number the money
for nothing.”
The men remained silent because deep down they knew the security manager was lying; they had spent some of the money and nobody had noticed any difference, the money had simply done what they were told money did best, which was to circulate—it had gone back into circulation.
The long and the short of it was that the case died. The men in the team were asked to resign. They were told never to say a word to anyone as to the reason why they lost their jobs. They were told to keep whatever it was they had stolen and to never step foot in the mint again, they should not even return to visit their former colleagues. Those who heard said that the men told the security supervisor that they would share their loot with him and he let them get off slightly. Others said that it was because the men in the team had enough money to consult the best native doctor and the best Aladura Prophets and this helped them to get away with their crime. Whatever it was, Uncle Currency was now without a job. He told those who would listen that he had amassed enough money to pay himself a pension even if he lived as long as Methuselah.
One morning we woke up and Uncle Currency’s posters were on walls and electric poles and on trees and empty drums and on house gates and on corner shops and roadside stalls. He was contesting for elections as a councilor. The man who was the present councilor had been a councilor for so long that many assumed that his name was councilor. He had never faced a challenger, and when he heard that Uncle Currency was contesting against him he sent emissaries to him to ask that Uncle Currency withdraw from the race.
“Wait until I die, I am not greedy. I am not the type that will say I want my son to be a councilor because I am councilor. You are still young. Wait until I pass away in office and then you can take over.”
People on the street wondered why Uncle Currency was going into politics to contest as an ordinary councilor.
—Why doesn’t he want to stay home and start enjoying his money?—
—Why does he want to waste his stolen wealth on politics?—
—He should go and contest for something bigger and leave the old councilor to continue—
—He is not happy that he is not in prison for theft—
—Why are you complaining, this is the only chance we have to get our hands on that money. Let him contest. At least he’ll spend that money and some of it will get into our hands—
—Do you want to vote him in, the council doesn’t have enough money for him to steal—
The councilor soon sent a delegation to Grandpa to tell Uncle Currency to forget about his ambition for now and wait for the councilor to serve out his term.
“He is not a child, he is a grown man. I cannot tell him what to do.”
“You can at least advise him to wait his turn. I waited my turn. That is the way we met it, it is the better way.”
“I think he has his mind made up. There is nothing I can do.”
“At least you can help me inform him that a young man may have more clothes than an old man but he cannot have as many rags.”
It was assumed that no one would be attracted to Currency’s campaign, but they were wrong. Early the next morning women brought out large iron pots, bags of rice, vegetable oil, and tomatoes, and a cow was slaughtered. As the aroma of jollof rice rose into the air and spread into nostrils, people began to gather in front of the Family House. It was free food. You need not bring anything but yourself. The food was free, served in a plate and a spoon provided. It was like a party. After the feasting people were told to spread the word, the slogan was OUT WITH THE OLD AND IN WITH THE NEW.
When the old councilor heard the slogan they said he cursed aloud, saying those who are singing out with the old, may they never grow old, may they never taste old age, may they perish young.
Soon, though, the slogan was in people’s mouths, and was being shouted from street to street. It began to crop up in regular conversation between people. If a man bought a new shirt and his friend observed that he had a new shirt on he would tell his friend that we now live in an age of out with the old and in with the new. If a man had a new girlfriend, he would say that he was following the new slogan to get rid of the old and bring in the new.
The cooking and sharing of food continued. It was a party every day. In the morning people gathered and sat on iron chairs while waiting for the food to be ready. As soon as the food was ready there was no need to line up to be served; the food was brought to them right where they were sitting.
Three days before the election Uncle Currency disappeared. Better put, he vanished. People saw him in the morning going from door to door, then they didn’t see him again. Kidnapping was out of the question, no one kidnapped a grown man in broad daylight.
Tata Mirror was consulted. She said all that her mirror showed to her was that he was going to return. People were sent out to search for him. The next day his posters were mysteriously pulled down from trees and electric poles and walls and iron gates. People who came for their free food were sent away. They were told to join the search party.
A delegation was sent to the old councilor to find out if he had anything to do with Currency’s disappearance. His response was to raise his palms outward and upward. Everyone knows that I have always played politics with clean hands. I know nothing about this and I will be vindicated.
By the day of the election, Currency’s candidacy was already forgotten in keeping with the saying that you cannot give a man a haircut in his absence. People went in and voted. They came out smiling and saying to no one in particular that it wasn’t their fault that the other candidate decided to abscond, if perhaps he was around they would have voted for him because they had not forgotten the free food he gave to them.
Just before the election the old councilor came up with a new slogan—New Is Good but Experienced Is Better. When asked if he knew anything about his missing opponent, he gave the same response, showed his hands, spread them out, raised them heavenward, and answered—my hands are clean.
—We all know how he made his money—
—You cannot start with evil and end up with good—
—Like the old councilor said, life is turn by turn, you wait your turn in life—
—Good things come to those who wait—
—In our generation the saying was that the patient dog gets the bone but for this generation they believe the patient dog starves to death—
—At least he shared his money by giving food to the masses—
—What is food, you eat it today and you shit it out the next day. The old councilor brought pipe-borne water to our neighborhood—
—Sad, though, no one deserves that fate, better to be dead and buried than to disappear and give false hope—
And then one morning a few days after the election, Currency wandered back into the Family House. He looked like he had not slept or had a bath for days. He could not say a word. He simply stared at everyone. He couldn’t respond to any questions.
He was given a bath, his clothes changed. He was given a haircut. The next morning he took up a position that he would occupy for the rest of his life. He pulled a wooden chair and sat on the balcony overlooking the street and began to count from one to five thousand, after which he would start from one . . . He would occasionally dip a finger on his tongue, as if to moisten the finger, then commence counting all over again.
When he was called inside to eat he would go in and eat. He spoke no words to anyone. He gave the impression of someone who did not understand words. But when he started his counting there was a serene, satisfied look on his face and he actually articulated the words out aloud. Because of this it was at least known that he still had the ability to speak. But for the numbers, he said no other words and made no other sounds. He showed no interest in the people around him.
People did talk about the man who sat on the balcony of the Family House counting numbers. Children on their way to school would watch him as his lips moved, wondering if the numbers coming out of his mouth were the same as the ones the
ir teachers wrote on the blackboard in school.
—But this world is bad simply because he wanted to be a councilor, an ordinary councilor, look at the high price he had to pay—
—He should have just continued to enjoy his money and leave politics for those who know how to play it—
—How do you know it was the old councilor that did it to him?—
—That is true, I never heard anybody accuse the old councilor of being that evil—
—You know he got a lot of money when he worked at the place where they print money. They even had to build an underground house for the money—
—So what are you suggesting? You think they did this to him because of his money?—
—I am not saying anything, don’t ask me questions to which I have no answers—
—There is nothing they will not do in that house for money—
—You should rephrase that to say: there is nothing they have not done in that house because of money—
And so Currency sat from day to day on that wooden chair on the balcony of the Family House counting away one . . . two . . . three . . .
SOJA
We all called him Soja, a corruption of the word soldier. We heard that when Soja was much younger and only a member of the Boy Scouts he was already using his Boy Scouts uniform to intimidate bus conductors and avoid paying his bus fare. It was no surprise when he absconded from school in form two and took the train to the army depot up north to train as a soldier.
Later when he returned from training wearing his well-starched army uniform and gleaming black boots, he regaled listeners with stories of his time at the training camp. He said one of the duties of fresh recruits was to sweep the nearby military cemetery where all recruits who died in training and the soldiers who died in local and foreign wars were buried.
He said the sergeant-major who was their training instructor would bark at them to sweep the graves thoroughly. He told the fresh recruits that they’d be buried there sooner or later. Sooner if they died during their training or later if they died on the battlefront. You have sold your body and soul to the army and we can do with it what we like. Among other things, the sergeant-major told them that the first soldiers were bandits.