Blackass: A Novel

by A. Igoni Barrett

  Furo looked at the rear-view mirror. This was the first time Headstrong had spoken his name since their falling-out. And yet, though the question was offered in a genial tone, the topic was the same that had started the trouble on Monday. Furo had no desire to go down that route again. And so he said, ‘It’s not that simple. But no, you’re not lying.’

  ‘Aha!’ said Headstrong, and raising a finger, he wagged it in triumph.

  With a laugh Tosin said, ‘I give up.’ She turned to Furo. ‘Has Headstrong told you of his plans to migrate to Bulgaria?’

  ‘Poland! Poland!’ Headstrong corrected, slapping the steering wheel in emphasis.

  ‘Sorry o,’ Tosin said in tone that showed that she wasn’t, and as Furo said with a grin, ‘He has,’ she smiled back at him. Furo deepened his voice in imitation of Headstrong:

  ‘My elder brother lives in Poland—’

  ‘And he’s married to a white woman,’ Tosin completed.

  ‘Two of una no serious,’ Headstrong said. But he laughed too.

  And then Tosin said, ‘And you, Frank,’ but her voice trailed off. After some thought, she reached over the seat back and tapped Headstrong’s shoulder. ‘Before he bites off my head, abeg, Victor, ask him where he’s from.’

  ‘Even you?’ Headstrong said with amazement. ‘He has shown you his bad temper too?’

  ‘Yes o,’ Tosin replied. ‘And just because I asked him one small question.’

  ‘What of me? He threatened to make MD sack me!’

  ‘You’re joking.’

  ‘I’m not, I swear to God. The dude dey vex like full Nigerian.’

  The smile Furo maintained during this exchange was beginning to droop at the edges. Tosin and Headstrong’s tones had remained good-natured, but the facts they traded pointed to the opposite in Furo. In the pause that followed Headstrong’s last statement, Furo felt he had to speak up to defend himself from the guilt his silence signified. ‘Come on guys, I’m not that bad,’ he said, his tone conciliatory, and then closed his mouth as Tosin whirled on him and demanded, ‘What are you saying? So you mean Nigerians are bad?’

  Even as Furo was occupied in weighing what was heavier in Tosin’s tone, the mock or the serious, Headstrong decided. He gave a grunt of amusement, looked over his shoulder, and then burst out, ‘Fire on, Tosin!’ For the first time in days, with a pleasure he had never thought he would feel at the sight, Furo saw spittle flying from Headstrong’s lips. And then he felt it on his face, sprinkling his cheeks – as it also did Tosin’s face. After Headstrong turned back around, Tosin widened her eyes in pretend horror and wrinkled her nose in real disgust. Acting on a feeling that had been building since Tosin entered the car, Furo reached out, took her hand in his, and squeezed. When she looked at him, he mouthed, I’m sorry. She returned the pressure of his fingers. Releasing her hand, he settled back in his seat and said in a chatty tone:

  ‘Actually, I think Nigerians are great people—’

  ‘Let me hear better thing abeg,’ Headstrong interjected. ‘Just tell us where you’re from.’

  With a glance at Tosin, Furo said, ‘I’m American.’

  ‘Barack Obama!’ Headstrong yelled, and punched the car horn with both hands.

  Approaching the Ikoyi end of Awolowo Road, turn into the last street before Falomo Bridge, then take the first right and keep looking left, keep going until you see a shrine. Seventies Lagos in its architecture, the facade of the two-storey building was neo-rustic. Set in the front fence, which was streaked with creeper plants and daubed with protest graffiti, was a wrought-iron pedestrian gate. From the gate a stone-paved walkway cut through a grass patch populated with scrap-metal sculptures, cracked clay pots and wooden wind chimes. More wood inside, from the ceiling beams to the stocky unvarnished armchairs to the slabs of mahogany trunk that served as tables in the restaurant-cum-bar. Hanging from the walls of the dimly lit chamber were pencil drawings of Fela and canvases of Ehikhamenor iconography and framed photos of Lagos street scenes captured in monochrome. A widescreen TV rested on brackets beside the bar, and from a concealed stereo the voice of Fela bemoaned the lot of the common man. The place was packed with dapper folks engaged in one or more of four activities: talking, drinking, dining, and surfing the web on their pricey gadgets. The scent of incense commingled in the air with tobacco smoke.

  Furo walked into this scene, the destination for the book delivery, and after halting underneath the entrance archway to take his bearings, he headed towards the barmaid who welcomed him with a gap-toothed smile. He smiled back before saying, ‘I’m here to see Mr Kasumu,’ and after the barmaid placed a call on the intercom, she told him that Kasumu wasn’t in but he’d left a message that his visitor should wait. Picking up a menu from the stack on the bar counter, Furo turned and approached a nearby table. Headstrong was waiting in the vestibule with the delivery package, and now, in response to a hand signal, he came forwards and placed the carton by the table, and then left to fetch Tosin from the car. Furo passed time by reading the menu, and when Tosin arrived with Headstrong, he offered the menu to her, but she shook her head no. Handing the menu to Headstrong, he asked if he wanted a drink, to which Headstrong replied he wouldn’t mind a cold Harp. Then Headstrong opened the menu, and his expression darkened until, bending towards Furo, he said in a scandalised whisper, ‘Their beer nah four times normal price! I can’t drink here o, the beer won’t taste sweet in my mouth. If you give me half the money I will go outside and buy something to eat. That one is better than wasting money in this rich man juju house.’ Chuckling at the truth of Headstrong’s words, Furo reached into his wallet, then passed across five hundred naira, and as Headstrong stood up with a thank you, he said to him, ‘Don’t go far. We won’t be here long.’ But now, for the time being, he was alone with Tosin in a setting that lent itself to romance, and since neither had ordered drinks, they soon discovered they had nothing to do but avoid each other’s eyes and eavesdrop on the chatter from other tables, some occupied by couples, none of whom seemed as awkward as Tosin looked and Furo felt. A lull in the room’s conversation threw into sharp relief a phrase from the song that was playing at low volume. Bend your yansh like black man, Fela chanted angrily, and Furo, with a frisson of apprehension at the prophetic force of those words, shifted his buttocks in his chair, and then glanced towards the clomping footsteps on the wooden staircase at the front of the room, from where emerged a heavyset man with skin so pale it looked bluish. He carried a tripod in one hand, a video camera in the other, and he was dressed like a journalist, in khaki shorts, canvas boots, and sun-faded face cap, with a backpack riding his shoulders. His T-shirt gave him away as an old Nigeria hand. It was plain white except for the large green lettering inscribed across the chest, which read, OYIBO PEPE. Marching past the table, he caught the direction of Furo’s eye, and winked at him from a deadpan face.

  ‘That’s a man who’s sure of himself,’ Tosin quipped as she watched the man over Furo’s shoulder. Her gaze soon changed direction, a guarded look entered her face, and leaning closer to Furo, she spoke in a whisper. ‘I think someone knows you. She’s coming this way.’

  Syreeta, Furo thought with a sinking feeling, but when he raised his eyes to the woman who halted beside him, the stone loosened from around his neck. The first thing he noticed was that she wasn’t Syreeta. The second was that on all ten fingers she wore silver rings in designs that ranged from animal motifs to adinkra symbols. She was slender, bosomy, her dark skin glistened with lotion, and her henna-dyed dreadlocks fell to her neck. Her unpainted lips, now curved in a smile of greeting, were cigarette-blackened. On closer inspection, her air of melancholy was an effect of her large, deep-set eyes.

  ‘Hey you,’ she said to Furo. She stared at him as if expecting to be recognised.

  Her appearance was too striking for him to have forgotten, so he was sure they hadn’t, and yet he asked, ‘Have we met before?’

  ‘We have,’ she said. ‘You’re Furo.’

  At
that name, Furo’s heart leapt like a flame. He dug his heels into the ground in an effort to keep his face from breaking into expression. In a controlled voice, a voice that barely shook, he said, ‘I think you’ve made a mistake,’ and turned away in a show of indifference.

  ‘I haven’t,’ the woman said. Her tone was dismissive with confidence. ‘We met a few weeks ago at The Palms. I bought you a drink, a chocolate milkshake. It’s me, Igoni.’

  Furo remembered. He remembered Igoni. He remembered their meeting at The Palms, and their chat in the cafe, and the favour he had asked that Igoni refused. He remembered talking to Syreeta after Igoni left, and then going home with her. He remembered everything about that night, and the next morning, and every day that had passed between then and now. Such as who had bought him a milkshake. And this woman, this Igoni, wasn’t that man.

  Not any more.

  Furo felt like laughing and crying.

  It had happened to Igoni, too.

  Somewhere, in some way, it was always happening to someone.

  ‘I remember you,’ Furo said at last. He stared at Igoni’s breasts. ‘You look different.’

  ‘I know,’ Igoni said with a throaty laugh. And then, glancing at Tosin, she added, ‘Let me not keep you. I just wanted to reintroduce myself.’ She opened her clutch purse and drew out a complimentary card, which she handed to Furo. ‘We should meet up soon. Please call me.’

  ‘Sure,’ Furo said. ‘Bye.’

  As Igoni walked away, Furo listened to her fading footfalls, thinking at the same time about what to tell Tosin, how to explain away that nuisance of a name. He was more worried by what Tosin thought than he was curious about Igoni, though he wondered even now about how she handled her transformation. He felt less threatened by the appearance of Igoni than by Tosin’s overhearing of his old name. She and he were in this together, and maybe someday, when he was better settled into his new life, he might call her up just for the sake of finding out what sort of blackassness was hidden under her skirt. But for now, Tosin had to be answered.

  When Furo spoke, his tone was affronted. ‘Some of these Lagos girls are so bold you won’t believe it. That one approached me in the mall and started chatting me up. I had to give her a fake name to get rid of her.’ He paused, watched Tosin’s face, and saw the dawning of comprehension. ‘That’s what I use Furo for – to protect myself from people like that Igoni.’

  On his late return to find Furo waiting for him, Kasumu accepted the carton of books with profuse apologies – so sorry to have kept you waiting, I had no idea my order would be delivered by a white man, he said, his words slurring between belches – and he offered to make amends by buying dinner for Furo and his girlfriend. Furo corrected him about the nature of his relationship with Tosin, to which Kasumu responded with insinuating laughter. At Furo’s refusal of a meal, and then a drink, even one drink, Kasumu raised his hands in surrender before escorting Furo and Tosin to the car with his matchmaking arms draped around their shoulders and his beery hiccups clearing mosquitoes from their path. After Headstrong unlocked the car and Tosin climbed in, Kasumu grabbed Furo’s wrist and dragged him away from the open door, then crowded him against an electrical pole and with frantic whispers offered him the directorship of his NGO for motherless children. The salary and perks would be better than whatever Furo got as a delivery boy, assured Kasumu, and, but of course, everything was negotiable based on his success with attracting donations from all those white people who believed anything they were sold by one of their own. ‘What do you say?’ Kasumu ended, peering into Furo’s face.

  ‘No thanks,’ and freeing himself from the hand that gripped his elbow, Furo jumped into the car, slammed the door, and told Headstrong, ‘Go, go, go!’

  Night had fallen during their wait to deliver the books. Good enough reason, Furo told Tosin, to cancel her plan of dropping off in Lekki to catch a taxi the rest of the way to her sister’s house in Ajah. And so, despite Tosin’s objections that it was too much trouble, Furo instructed Headstrong to drive on past the turning into Oniru Estate. The weekend traffic to Ajah held them up for several hours, and it was almost eleven o’clock when they arrived at their destination in a moonless neighbourhood where the temporary power cut was approaching three months long. After bidding goodnight to Headstrong, Tosin alighted from the car, followed by Furo, who escorted her through the sea-bottom darkness all the way to the front gate before saying:

  ‘Lest I forget, you can book my flight under Furo Wariboko.’

  ‘All right,’ Tosin replied in a tone that sounded preoccupied, and Furo was about to ask what she was thinking when she pre-empted him with the question, ‘Do you want to come in?’

  During their conversation while waiting for Kasumu, Tosin had told him that the house she was going to was her older sister’s, who along with her husband and their toddler son had travelled to Dubai on vacation, and so she would be alone. She didn’t like being alone, she said, especially in a house without electricity. That was when it crossed Furo’s mind that he could, if he wanted, spend the night with Tosin. But did he want to?

  ‘I do,’ Furo said.

  It was the weekend. Knowing Syreeta, she wouldn’t be home, but he would keep to the rules she had enforced on him. He would call her to say he wasn’t returning tonight.

  There was only Headstrong to get rid of.

  Staring at Tosin through the gloom, Furo said, ‘What about Headstrong?’

  Tosin caught his meaning. ‘He can leave. You can stay the night.’

  But the First Lady, Arinze’s warning, Haba! property. He had forgotten about that. It was getting too complicated. The more he had to strategise, the less he felt like starting this romance. Besides, under and beneath all, he wasn’t ready to show his black buttocks to anyone.

  Furo said, ‘Arinze warned me not to let Headstrong keep the car overnight. I can give him money to take a taxi home, but I can’t drive. If he parks here, how do I move it tomorrow?’ Tosin was silent long enough for him to make up his mind, and when she said at last, ‘Do you really want to stay?’ he voiced his decision: ‘Of course I do. But maybe not tonight.’

  The drive to Lekki was swift. It was minutes to midnight when Headstrong eased the First Lady into its usual parking spot in Oniru Estate. While Furo waited by the roadside for Headstrong to lock up, he looked around to confirm that Syreeta’s Honda was missing among those parked. Headstrong approached, and as Furo held out his hand for the car key, the driver said, ‘I think you know Tosin likes you.’

  ‘Goodnight,’ Furo responded, and they parted, back on good terms.

  Upon entering the house, Furo headed straight to his bedroom, dumped his laptop bag on the bed, and was shedding his clothes when the lights blinked out. Standing in the dark with his trousers in his hand, the deep silence before the storm of generators stirred in him a bitter loneliness, so he reached for his phone, and suppressing his misgivings about the line he was about to cross, he dialled Syreeta’s number. The ringing was cut off by a blast of dancehall music. ‘Hello, hello,’ he said without getting a response, and then he raised his voice to a shout, ‘Syreeta!’

  Her cheerful tones broke through the din. ‘Hey sweetie, are you home?’

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘I can’t hear – I’m in a club.’

  ‘With Bola?’ Furo announced with the clairvoyance of jealousy, and Syreeta’s loud laughter only enraged him further. Her laughter fizzled out as she caught the whiplash of menace in his answering silence, and when she said in a cautious tone, ‘You know his name?’ Furo swatted aside her question with his own:

  ‘Are you with him?’

  A teasing note slithered into her voice as she retorted, ‘Are you jealous?’

  ‘Just answer me!’

  ‘No,’ she said, and through the percussive music he caught her sniff of derision. ‘The weekends are for his wives.’ She paused. ‘I only see him on Tuesdays.’

  ‘But you go out every weekend.’

>   ‘I go clubbing with friends. I thought you knew that.’

  ‘Friends?’

  ‘My friends,’ she said sharply. Then she relented. ‘Anyway, Baby’s here.’

  ‘How come you’ve never invited me?’

  ‘But I have. Think well. The day rain fell.’

  ‘I don’t remember.’

  Her sigh retained its force over the distance. ‘Why are we discussing this now?’

  ‘You’re too busy to talk to me?’

  ‘Come on, Furo.’

  ‘Don’t call me Furo!’

  He, too, was shocked by his yell.

  Syreeta spoke. ‘Something’s wrong. I’m leaving right now. I’m coming home.’

  ‘No, no, don’t. I’m sorry I shouted at you. You can stay.’

  ‘Thank you, lord and master,’ Syreeta said with a strained laugh. The bass of a hip-hop tune filled the interlude. ‘But I’ll come back early, tomorrow morning. I’ll take you out. We’ll go watch a movie. Would you like that?’

  ‘I guess,’ Furo said. ‘Sorry again I shouted at you.’

  ‘That’s OK. You’re just a big baby. My—’ Her words got drowned out as a male voice shouted above the partying noises, Oi, Sy, get off the bleedin’ phone, and then she said hurriedly, ‘I have to go now, see you tomorrow,’ and ended the call.

  The first time Furo’s phone rang on Saturday, it was Tosin calling. Syreeta was in the bathroom, she was preparing to take him out to get a pizza and catch a movie, and so, despite Tosin’s hints about the freeness of her day, he kept the conversation brief. On the drive to City Mall, his phone rang a second time. ‘Aren’t you answering?’ Syreeta asked, and after he replied that he didn’t know the number therefore it must be work so it could wait till Monday, Syreeta turned the radio volume back up. His phone continued to ring in the restaurant, and in the time between departure from La Pizza and arrival at The Galleria, a trip of twenty minutes, it rang four more times, all of the calls from the same number that had pestered him during his meal. While Syreeta bought tickets for a showing of The Avengers, Furo stood in line for popcorn and sodas. In the dim theatre, as they walked up the aisle, his phone rang once more. Hurrying down a middle row to the accompaniment of irate shushes from nearby moviegoers, Furo arrived at the velvet-padded wall, sank into a seat and, after thrusting the popcorn buckets at Syreeta, he finally gave in to the caller’s doggedness by switching off his phone.