Nigerians in Space

by Deji Bryce Olukotun

  After he had promised her luxuries in Nigeria, she had taken the news about the theft rather well. He still felt edgy around her, as if it might set off an argument at any time. She had never mentioned Ferguson’s death again.

  From another shopping bag, Tinuke dropped several newspapers upon the bed, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Berliner Zeitung, Dagens Nyheter, and the International Herald Tribune.

  “Look at The Tribune,” she said.

  The Tribune featured an article about unrest in Somalia and a possible peacekeeping operation by the UN. Newly elected Bill Clinton was prattling on again about homosexuals in the military. In the NBA, Michael Jordan was contemplating his retirement from the game after three successive championships, which Wale thought would be good for the league, or at least for the Rockets. And then, in the briefings section, Wale saw this:

  NASA Puzzled by Moon Rock Theft

  Houston—NASA reported a theft from the Johnson Space Laboratory’s Lunar Sample Collection late Wednesday night. No one was harmed and no suspects have been arrested. Officials explained that the sample, one of thousands taken from the Apollo moon missions, was not scientifically significant and would not fetch a high value on the illicit meteorite market, questioning the motive of the theft. Although a leading suspect has been identified, NASA is withholding the name in order to conduct joint investigations with the FBI.

  Wale tore the article from the newspaper and flushed it down the drain, as if this was the only copy in the world, as if flushing it would mean flushing away the past few days. Still, he felt better. So NASA had withheld his name. The investigators also didn’t seem to understand the worth of the sample. Wale had switched the sample so many times over the past few months that it would be difficult, but not impossible, for the lab to discover its true origins. Then the really good news, that no one had been harmed. It meant that his lab partner Onur hadn’t done anything stupid and had survived the emergency procedures safely.

  “This is good news,” he said.

  “They haven’t printed your name,” Tinuke agreed.

  “It’s probably Rilker. He’s always trying to raise funds in Washington. If Congress learned that one of his own employees stole from his lab, he might lose his funding.”

  He chuckled to himself, remembering how he stole Rilker’s fancy new car right out from under him. The fool.

  “This is hardly a laughing matter,” Tinuke said. “We should get rid of your old clothes. They might give you away. Did you get the money?”

  “The transaction is pending.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It’s normal for this type of transaction because of the amount.”

  “It could mean you’re under investigation.”

  “I doubt it,” he said. “It’s a numbered account. I’ll check again tomorrow.” He didn’t tell her about the security procedures, not wanting to be drawn into an argument.

  Wale couldn’t read German or Swedish so he scanned the other papers for Ferguson’s name, not finding anything other than a mention of the Manchester United soccer coach, Alex Ferguson.

  Now Tinuke was leafing through the passports and Ferguson’s materials. That had also been part of their agreement: full access to everything Wale knew.

  She held up a slip of paper. “And this?”

  “It’s a photovoltaic formula. Ferguson was an expert on solar energy. I think it was a communication code for Bello’s go-between.”

  “That man does not deserve to be named. He shot an arrow into the sky and covered his head with a mortar bowl.”

  That was it, Wale thought, the proverb that could encapsulate Bello. He’d caused all these problems and disappeared into hiding.

  Tinuke was now puzzling out the formula. She hadn’t been top of her class in her nutrition studies but she wasn’t the bottom, either.

  “Why aren’t there any numbers? In school, our formulas always had numbers. Except for the alcohols.”

  He felt suddenly grateful to her, tearfully grateful. He hugged her shoulder, gently, and she didn’t shrug him off. Beside him, Dayo curled over on the bed onto his stomach, deep asleep. There was no need to talk. He stripped down to his underpants and she rubbed him beneath the cotton. She peeled off the straps of her bra and unbuttoned her jeans. He didn’t try to kiss her, knowing not to expect the intimacy. He licked her breasts and her stomach and fell to his knees on the floor between her legs, working his tongue until his jaw burned. Then she pushed him onto his back. He pressed himself into her and they moved together slowly, then roughly, rubbing away the horror of the midnight sun, the nightmare that had beset them.

  Afterwards, he felt comforted by his family laying next to him in the tiny hotel room. What had happened to them? Things had grown too large over the past few years, their apartment had swollen into a house, and his ambition had surged into a burning American beast that had ravaged his boyhood dream of touching the stars. The Texan expanse had divided the family from itself. Now, he thought, they were together again. He drifted off to sleep.

  It felt like a few moments later when Tinuke woke him, waving Ferguson’s note in front of his face. “Does this mean anything to you?”

  “Eh? How long was I asleep?”

  “Three hours.”

  He knew not to ask for Bello, although it was the first thought on his mind. He looked at the paper. “It’s a formula for solar energy conversion, Tinuke, I told you that.”

  “No, Wale, look.”

  Next to each element, she’d written a number.

  Cu=29 Ag=47 Au=79 Al=13 Ga=31 In=49 Sulfur=16 Selenium=34 Te=52.

  “These are the elements?”

  “From the periodic table.”

  “They might be isotopes,” he mumbled.

  The numbers looked familiar, almost as if they were on the tip of his tongue. Then he got it: the printout. 29-47 were the first two digits of his own account number at the bank.

  “Femi said the money was already in the account,” Wale said, leaping from the bed. “This is the number! We can access it.”

  “Wouldn’t that be stealing?”

  “No, no, no. Nothing of the sort. We’ll give it to his wife as soon as our money comes through. We’re not stealing anything. Femi would have wanted us to use it.”

  “Are you going to walk back into the bank? Don’t you think they’ll know who you are?”

  He remembered the Turkish bank teller and her quiet, robotic gaze. If he hadn’t engaged her in conversation, he might have been able to do it. But she would surely recognize him now. He slumped back onto the bed.

  “You’re right. I can’t do anything about it. We’ll have to wait.”

  But Tinuke was already changing into her new dress, primping her hair.

  “No,” she said, “we won’t.”

  The first thing Tinuke did was upgrade their tickets to Cape Town to First Class. On the plane, she bossed the flight attendants about and drank several glasses of Gewurztraminer, while Wale administered to Dayo, keeping him happy, which meant, for most of the flight, pushing in cassette after cassette on the personal video player: Aladdin, The Best of Bert and Ernie, serial episodes of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, which he found himself enjoying despite the oriental themes, and then, when Dayo fell asleep, the director’s cut of 2001: A Space Odyssey. He remembered when he and Onur used to recite the lines back in the lab, Onur playing the part of the ship’s computer Hal:

  WALE: Hello, HAL. Do you read me, HAL?

  ONUR: Affirmative, Wale. I read you.

  WALE: Open the LSC bay doors, HAL.

  ONUR: I’m sorry, Wale. I’m afraid I can’t do that.

  WALE: What’s the problem?

  ONUR: I think you know what the problem is just as well as I do.

  WALE: What are you talking about, HAL?

  ONUR: There aren’t enough donuts for the both of us.

  Onur would vary the last line. The point was to stay awake on the late shift.

  Wale had st
rapped twenty thousand dollars around his body in money belts, pockets, and his underwear and stuffed another thirty thousand in his checked bag. Tinuke had carried the rest, an amount which she refused to divulge. She’d taken the risk, she said, to defraud the bank, so she would control the money. In customs, he grew nervous as a Jack Russell Terrier poked its nose into their luggage on the carousel. The customs agent took one look at their visas and slapped a bold blue sticker on their luggage: DIPLOMAT. They breezed through the lines with ease. Once outside, a limousine already waited for them in the cool winter air. He could see Table Mountain in the distance, cloud-covered and lined with rich streaks of green from the seasonal rain.

  “The Nellie?” the driver asked.

  “Excuse me?” Wale said.

  “The Mount Nelson Hotel, sir?”

  Wale had not thought to book any lodgings, expecting to stay at the fallback point. “We may not be here very long.”

  “The Nellie,” Tinuke declared.

  He was surprised at how casually his wife fit the part, as if she was used to such pampering. She had draped herself in fineries to distract herself, but there was always an accusation on her lips, a question that would cut him to his very core. Wale had downplayed apartheid to her and the coming elections, but he couldn’t help feeling unsettled as the limousine motored down the N2 highway. He expected to see mustachioed policemen beating blacks to death on the side of the road, or protesters toyi-toyi’ing and hurling stones. He saw nothing other than the highway, boxy Renaults, Opels, and Volkswagens, and two cooling towers belching steam from a coal plant. South Africa may have been isolated by the international community, but you couldn’t tell from the quality of the roads. He didn’t see any potholes. Behind the cooling towers, he caught glimpses of shanties and black children playing cricket with highway cones for wickets.

  The colonnaded entrance to the hotel was manned by a black man in full colonial garb and a pith helmet. He waved them in, even though the driver didn’t stop to wait for his approval. They drove along the palm-lined drive, passing two- and three-story pink buildings with sculpted lawns. Two men ran around the car and picked up their bags from the trunk, dropping them on the curb. Then two more men shuttled the bags towards the front desk. All of them expected tips. Tinuke sauntered out of the car, leaving Wale to lead Dayo by the hand. He peeled off a few twenties.

  By the time he arrived inside, Tinuke had rented the Presidential suite.

  “Tinuke, what are you doing? We can’t afford that.”

  “You can’t afford it, Wale.”

  “That’s not your money,” he said. “It belongs to Femi’s wife. We have to give it back to her. Our money is supposed to pay for a home in Jos. We shouldn’t fritter it away in a hotel.”

  “I’m fed up with airport hotels, Wale. I need pampering. I want to arrive in Nigeria refreshed.”

  Dayo spied two children wearing floaties and took off running down the hall. “Pool! Papa. Swimma pool!”

  The suite was gigantic, chamber flowing into chamber, with two bathrooms and two living rooms opening onto a private terrace graced by morning light. Fresh cut proteas and poinsettias were scattered about the room. A leopard skin lay at the foot of the bed with head intact and bared fangs. There were decanters full of sherry, a complimentary bottle of Johnnie Walker Black, and a sparkling ’88 Meerlust chilled in a bucket of ice.

  Diplomats must like to get smashed, he thought. There was enough alcohol in the room to kill a man several times over.

  Wale sifted through his various clothes and decided to put on a fresh shirt. Tinuke put a squirming Dayo in his tiny swimsuit.

  “Wear the agbada,” she said.

  “Out of the question. I’ll stand out like a sore thumb.”

  “We already do,” she said. “Act the part. Don’t try to look local, Wale, or someone will tell you to shine their shoes.”

  Grumbling, he donned the agbada, sent to him from a cousin he hadn’t spoken to in eight years. It was hunter green and lined with gold thread, comfortable and chilly in the winter air. He put on the matching kufi hat. Then he took the wrapped snowglobe and put it in a small backpack.

  “You’re not coming with me?”

  “No, I’m going for a massage. Dayo’s going to day care. Then the pool. Come back with Bello. I’d like to meet him.”

  She didn’t say it. She didn’t need to. Or else. Come back with Bello, or else.

  The taxi driver offered to take him up to the trails of Lions Head as they climbed a steep pass that split the mountain in two. Wale was naturally drawn as a lunar geologist to the outcroppings and the misty crags that followed the shore for several miles, imagining the sand as it compressed and rose above the waves over the millennia, and the forces that had crumpled the mountain range. He knew that South Africa was a mining economy built on gold, diamonds, and platinum, yet few significant meteorites had been found here so it had never really captured his interest. He was here to see Bello.

  The taxi descended into a bay littered with giant boulders that touched the shore like the spiny humps of an undersea creature. Cliffhouses lined the road with fancy sports cars behind locked gates. Here and there, he would see a domestic worker trudging up the hill to catch a minibus taxi to the townships.

  “You Nigerian, sir?”

  “Yes,” Wale said.

  “Thought so. I drive Nigerians around from time to time. Looks like we’re going to beat you to it, then.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Looks like we’re having our elections before yours. It was on the news this morning. Bloody simple idea, I think. Your President up and cancels them when things aren’t going his way. Just like that. De Klerk might do well to do the same here. I like Mandela, he wouldn’t be so bad, but I don’t want his cronies taking over. We’ll all be living in darkness. No electricity.”

  “You must mean Niger. Nigeria is a democracy now.”

  “Could be, sir,” the driver deferred. “Niger, Nigeria, they sound the same to me, man. Like Guyana, ever heard of it? It’s in South America. There’s also Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Equatorial Guinea, French Guiane, Papua New Guinea. I like geography, you see, but I don’t know why the chaps couldn’t find a new name.”

  The driver’s name on his tag, Wale saw, was Piet de Villiers; whether it was a unique name or a common name, he couldn’t tell. They wove amongst the homes for a few blocks, the taxi belching out clouds of leaded gasoline as it ascended the steep hill. The driver pointed out the homes of politicians and local movie stars.

  “This is it, 251 Upper Tree.” Wale stepped onto the street and declined the driver’s offer to wait. “You might need your darkies.”

  “What’s that?”

  He pointed to his sunglasses. “For your eyes.”

  “I’m not going to the beach.”

  251 Upper Tree was modest compared to the luxurious cliffhouses nearby. Instead of stucco and walls of glass, it was a single-story ranch style home with a small concrete driveway for one vehicle and a one-car garage behind it. A short brick walk led to the front steps, with a large and somewhat overgrown garden that had a head-high jade plant. The home must have been one of the first in the community and you could easily miss it because of the ostentatious mansions around it. The perfect place, in many ways, for a fallback point. Bello had chosen wisely.

  Wale adjusted his agbada to make himself more presentable and thought about what he would say to Bello. The taxi driver had unnerved him with that talk about the elections in Nigeria, but he had probably misread something in the tabloids. Still, it was worth asking Bello about it. He also decided it wouldn’t be a good idea to attack the man but to start out politely and go through the proper greetings. He could show him the snowglobe to prove he was still committed, and Bello for all his love of innovation was something of a traditionalist with his proverbs. This could start the conversation properly, get things off on a constructive tone. Then they could devise a solution to fl
y to Nigeria and make sure Wale was rewarded for his troubles.

  There was a security gate with a keypad and a door chime. He pressed the doorbell and could hear the chime ring softly inside the home. He waited a minute for the gate to buzz open. Nothing. After ringing a few more times, he decided Bello might have left the house—why would he wait around all day?—and entered the code from Ferguson’s address slip: 41421. The gate buzzed open. He climbed the short walk and noticed a plastic toy rocket lying on its side amongst an aloe plant, almost as if a child had grown tired of it and tossed it away. He tried the knocker and then pounded his fist upon the door. Growing anxious, he circled around the back of the house, where he found rusty lawn furniture and a barbecue grill that looked like it hadn’t been touched in a long time. Here again, the door was locked. The windows were barred and he could think of no way to get in.

  He would have to wait, he thought dismally, for Bello or one of the other scientists to return. There was no way he would go back to the hotel empty-handed, not after the way Tinuke had spoken to him. That was out of the question. He would even spend the night here on the front steps if necessary. As he walked down the front path to the street, his eye rested on the plastic toy rocket again. Strange. Brain Gain was about going to the moon, after all. He plucked it from the bushes. He gave it a shake and could hear something rattling inside.

  The key fit the top lock easily. He opened the door into a small front parlor, where a chaise longue faced the entrance with a marble-topped side table. A long hallway ran from the front parlor in both directions. To the left, he could see a few rooms branching off the hallway to the side before the house dropped two steps onto a lower level that must have led to the garage. To the right, the hallway opened into a living room with herringbone print couches and an old switch dial TV encased in a large wood cabinet. The bookshelf held a few books, all either volumes about sailing or thrillers for beach reading, the kind that tourists leave behind. There were other nautical-themed accoutrements as well: a ship’s clock, a barometer, and a meter-tall hourglass that could be flipped over on a spindle. He saw no signs that anyone had used the room recently, other than the fact that there wasn’t any dust on the shelves. If the home wasn’t lived in, it was at least serviced along with the garden.