Nigerians in Space

by Deji Bryce Olukotun

  The first thing he noticed was that there was a big rock within reach. Without changing his position, he slowly pulled the rock towards him with his free hand. It was a gift. With it, he could knock out Chung and take the car and get away. And with the dagga in his veins this seemed a real and desirable possibility. Chung had just told him that he was going to kill him, after all.

  Then he saw a shuffle in the sand before him, and a little white crab shimmied out. One claw was much larger than the other, and it rubbed the smaller claw back over its eye just like the one he’d remembered when Ip had leveled the gun at him. The wind picked up and began to cut at his bare feet. Thursday didn’t know what it meant to see the same image twice. He wasn’t sure if he was seeing the crab again or if he had never seen before it in the restaurant, and now his mind had projected the crab back there. Either way he let go of the rock.

  When a fly tickled Chung’s nose, he awoke to find the rock next to Thursday. Smiling, he threw the rock into the water and said, plain as day: “You no gangster. Let’s go.”

  Thursday hated driving around in total silence, so he kept on asking questions as they did their tasks. He found out that Ip didn’t own that Chinese restaurant. An Indian guy called Rodney owned it and Ip rented out the room when he had business. In reality, Ip owned the sushi restaurant down the street, which was flooded with Japanese tourists once a day on their way back from the tour to the Cape Point who would pay six thousand rand each for his abalone awabi sushi. He had another front, too, a scooter shop specializing in Chinese Vespa clones. His sixteen-year-old daughter ran it under her own name, and she’d made enough money to open another one. Thursday got the impression that Chung was in love with her. When Chung talked about the girl, it was possible to imagine the goon wasn’t going to kill him, but if Thursday asked too many questions about her Chung would get jealous and scowl.

  Once they’d collected everything he had plenty of time to himself. The siphoning system for the large bathtub kept air flowing in, and he didn’t have to feed the abalone as often once they settled down. He’d read comic books and The Voice tabloid while spooning beans out of a can. His neighbors gave him privacy, and one of the wives, a petite, round-faced woman, would knock on his door and offer him a plate heaped with oily, flavorful dishes like he’d never had before. Sometimes he’d go out walking and he had a feeling that Chung was watching him, but he didn’t care. He liked looking at the people pulling their dogs along the narrow streets, with their excessive apologies if the dogs stretched at the leash and yipped at him. After a while he realized that other than people with dogs and the backpackers, no white person ever walked on the same side of the street as him, and he figured out that they were crossing it so far in front of him that he wasn’t aware of the change-over. It made the streets feel perpetually empty. He told himself that the last thing he needed was to be recognized. But he didn’t want to be ignored, either.

  Six thousand rand was more than enough money to get to Joburg or far enough away that Ip wouldn’t find him, but he didn’t seriously consider it, not when Leon and the abalone were dependent on him. So when Ip called him in to Rodney’s after a week, he wasn’t too worried. He calmly opened the cooler and showed the healthy perlemoen nibbling on the kelp.

  “What are those blimey little discs?” Ip asked.

  “Babies.”

  “What do you mean, babies? Are they sick?”

  “No, they’re healthy and they made some kiddies, my broer. About a thousand of them.”

  Ip couldn’t hide his excitement. “A thousand! How long?”

  “Three years before they’ve got good flavor. I could probably get that down to two with the right diet.”

  “You made good on your word, Hampton. We’ve got two more shipments coming in from Bettys Bay tomorrow. Look after them for me.”

  “Pay me first.”

  That was the day that Thursday began to believe in a higher power. Five hours later he had fifty thousand rand in the bank, six shooters of tequila in his stomach, and he’d won four games of foosball and two of pool. He had his own apartment and Leon was going to be freed. You could buy a car with fifty thousand rand. You could fly to Joburg fifty times. There was a job for him if he wanted it and for the first time in his life he felt he had a skill that no one else had. He was gifted with abalone.

  His beatific, half-toothed smile won him a lover that evening, a cute girl named Helen with dyed black corn rows and sunburn. She peeled herself off from a group of foreigners and looked at him across from the bar. He decided to use a move that Leon had taught him.

  “No woman, no cry!” he half-sang as he approached her.

  “I’m sorry?” the girl said.

  “No woman, no cry!”

  “You mean, Bob Marley?”

  “That’s right!” He called the bartender over. “Two Bob Marleys!”

  The bartender poured out two shots of amarula, cinnamon liqueur, and peppermint schnapps the color of a Rastafarian flag.

  As he’d expected, she liked it, and he ordered two more.

  “This woman won’t cry,” she agreed.

  “What’s your name, sweetie?”

  “Helen.”

  “Where are you from?”

  “Oslo.”

  “What part of Cape Town is that?”

  “It’s in Norway. Oslo is the capital.”

  Thursday recovered himself. “You’re traveling through then, backpacking.”

  “No, I work at a nonprofit in Woodstock. I teach art to prisoners.”

  “You traveled all the way to South Africa to teach art to prisoners?”

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t you have prisoners in Norway?”

  “Not like here.”

  “But why would you want to spend time with prisoners? We’ve got beaches, mountains, the karoo. You should see Hermanus. It’s a lekker spot for whale watching.”

  Helen smiled: “I like naughty boys.”

  Thursday laughed with her and ordered another round of Bob Marleys. When he turned his head back to look at her, she grabbed him and pushed her tongue into his mouth. He took her back to his apartment and she took off her clothes before she left the bathroom. Whenever he was about to have sex, Thursday would remember that Leon had once told him that a real man stays in control until the moment of orgasm, and that’s the only time when you can do whatever you want, but if you lose control too early and thrash around like an eel, then the girl will stop respecting you because she’ll know she’s got power over you. Helen didn’t ask him to use a condom and he didn’t have one anyway, and she guided him into her as soon as they lay down. “Oooh, yes, Hampton, do it!” She thrust her hips, bringing her face up for a kiss, and came quickly. Thursday kept Leon’s advice in mind as he went on for another few minutes until they fell down together.

  “You never told me, Hampton.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Why are you here in Obz? I go to Stones all the time and this is the first time I’ve seen you. You don’t have any furniture in this apartment. You don’t have any suitcases. Why are you here?”

  Thursday thought about telling her everything, even his real name, but he’d be gone in a few days. He would have saved up enough money to free Leon and he’d leave as soon as he could. There was no point in getting mixed up with her when he’d only wanted to have some fun.

  “I’m on vacation,” he said.

  When he woke she was gone. No note, just a half-empty beer bottle with an imprint of her lipstick.

  Chung picked him up the next day and laughed. “You got a girl!”

  “No,” Thursday lied. “We just went out to weeties. All we did was talk.”

  “I know. You can’t hide.”

  He was feeling guilty about it, for he realized he’d spent two hundred rand the night before that could have gone towards Leon’s bail. “I didn’t think living here would be so expensive.”

  They stopped by Ip’s, or Rodney’s Chinese Restaurant, o
n the way to another job. He walked with Chung through the dining room feeling like he was a regular at the place. The thug stopped him from going in to the back room and knocked on the door. Ip unlocked it.

  There was a coloured man sitting in the chair across the table. He was plump, with a paunch and an aquamarine tee-shirt on. Thursday didn’t recognize him and took up a place next to Chung. On the wall, where the Jet Li movie poster used to be, there was a double-handled broad sword with intricate filigrees on the blade. A cooler sat on the desk. The coloured man was smoking a cigarette and throwing sidelong glances at the sword.

  “Hampton, this is Adrian.”

  “Pleased to make your acquaintance,” the man said, formally. “I’ve heard a lot about you.” Thursday went to shake the man’s hand, but Chung held him back.

  “Check it out, Hampton,” Ip said.

  Thursday opened the cooler box and saw some sickly looking abalone covered with ice. They were a good size, not as large as those he had brought from Hermanus, but respectable. “Half of them are dead,” he said. “The other quarter will die no matter what. But I can save these ten here.”

  “You heard the man,” Ip said. “Those go to the dryer. We’ll weigh them when they come out. Two thousand a kilo. I’ll pay you three hundred each for the live ones.”

  Adrian agreed. “That’s good perlemoen. I know it’s worth more than that but I need the money.”

  “Next time, keep them alive.” Ip began counting out hundred rand notes.

  But Thursday had noticed something else in the cooler. He whispered it into Ip’s ear and Ip stopped counting. He put the cash back into his pocket.

  “What?” Adrian asked, trying to act casual.

  “I’m going to write you a check instead.”

  “Why?”

  “Because these were farmed.”

  “I don’t give a shit if they’re farmed. They taste the same.”

  “It matters,” Ip said.

  “It does?” Thursday asked.

  “Shut up.”

  “So, are you going to pay me?”

  “Sure. But not in cash.” Ip pulled out his checkbook. “The money will be good when they clear customs. That’s about two weeks. Don’t cash it until then.”

  Thursday swallowed. The last time Ip had offered him a check Chung had put a gun in his face. But this time what happened was even faster. As Ip handed Adrian the checkbook, Chung snatched the sword from the wall and spun around the desk. Adrian lifted up his arms to protect his head, and Chung slashed his stomach in a quick, measured movement. His intestines spilled into his lap like a bowl of egg noodles. Adrian’s face recoiled in horror. He breathed in and out like he was in labour. Reaching down, he began stuffing his insides back in as a low whimper grew and grew until it became a piercing wail.

  Then Ip nodded and Chung jammed the sword in the smuggler’s windpipe. Adrian fell over onto the floor, his whole body spasming, until he was face down in his own mire.

  Thursday hadn’t moved the entire time. Ip began flicking his finger at a spot of blood that had gotten onto his shirtsleeve.

  “Why the fuck did you do that, Chung!” Thursday shouted.

  “Shut up.”

  “No,” Ip said calmly. “Hampton deserves an answer to that question, Chung. The government has declared war on abalone and developed an enzyme that the farmers can insert into their tanks. When someone puts in a few drops of indicator solution, the abalone change color and the enzyme ruins the flavor. That’s the danger with farmed abalone, Hampton. It can be traced. I’ve got a graduate student who is researching the formula of the solution, but she’s not ready yet for an antidote, if you will. If we don’t keep an eye out we’ll end up in prison for fenced abalone. And we don’t want that, do we, Hampton?”

  Ip spoke as if there wasn’t a gutted man bleeding on the floor.

  Thursday remained furious at Chung—what would stop him from doing the same to him? And why so brutal? What good did it do anyone to kill someone like that? He could have just shot him.

  Silently Thursday busied himself with sorting the live abalone from the dead ones in the ice. A few could be saved, some dignity restored. The smuggler’s body jiggled madly for a moment and then stopped.

  “Don’t start getting judgmental, Hampton,” Ip insisted. “There’s no time for fools in our operation. It’s business. Now if you’ll please excuse us.”

  “We need to get these some water from the Atlantic.”

  “Chung will be right there. Have a seat in the restaurant and order yourself something on me.”

  Leaving the cooler behind, Thursday ordered a Coke from Rodney’s wife and opened a fortune cookie. People are attracted to your quality leadership. He nibbled at it and the tiny piece swirled in his stomach, creating a torrent, and he ran to the bathroom to vomit. After thirty minutes of nursing the Coke, he went back and knocked on the door. Chung opened it. The body and the blood and the grime were nowhere to be found. It was a regular dining room at a Chinese restaurant.

  When they stepped out onto the sidewalk, the sun was brighter than it ought to have been. Thursday expected it to be a gray day, with rain and dogshit on the sidewalks, but the sun was there, shining onto the white plates of the people taking their breakfasts at Mimi’s. Across the street an old man was leafing through a recipe book in the used bookshop. Somewhere kids were kicking a soccer ball. Maybe a girl was sunbathing. And soon a customer would be eating a bowl of prawn lo mein a room away from where a guy’s neck had been skewered by a sword.

  Chung was in good spirits, though, and put on some black wraparound sunglasses and said they were going for a drive. They took the N7 to Saldanha Bay, where the ericae were blooming in their showers of microcosmic colors, with blossoms so small they looked like speckles amongst the cows and the sheep going to their salt blocks in the hot sun.

  “I hope Ip gets Leon out soon,” Thursday said before he could help himself. He needed Leon to put those intestines in perspective.

  “Forget Leon. You’re Hampton. You be Hampton.”

  “Leon’s my mate,” Thursday sulked.

  “Leon not your mate. Leon a fool.”

  “You don’t know him.”

  “He said he turn you in. He shot dog. Stupid.”

  Thursday bolted up straight. He remembered that dog he’d read about in the newspaper back in Hermanus, Snoopy, the Border collie that the police had used to sniff out illegal abalone. He’d even been grateful that the dog had been shot, because it had meant the dog wouldn’t sniff the abalone in his bathtub.

  “What do you mean he shot a dog? He didn’t shoot a dog. That wasn’t Leon.”

  “Knowledge. You said knowledge. I read the paper and he shot dog. That’s knowledge.”

  “But Leon said he would turn me in.”

  “Did you shoot dog?”

  “No.”

  As Thursday was denying it, he was remembering the sound of gunshots above the sound of the waves in the surf on the beach that night. Someone had fired a gun. He’d assumed it was the police.

  “Did they catch abalone that night?” Chung pressed on.

  “No.”

  “Then how Leon turn you in?”

  He could recall some muffled dog barks from that night, too. Why hadn’t he made the connection before? Leon had shot the dog! He had shot Snoopy! Of course, that was what Fadanaz was going on about. That was why bail was so high! He had never in his wildest imagination considered that Leon had lied to him so deeply; he thought he had learned how to sort through his kak. The Mercedes, the job: he began to wonder if Leon had actually been sick that night at all when he’d dived in to get the perlemoen. Thursday cranked down the window and stuck his head out the window. The green hills rushing past him were undulating like a serpent.

  “Pull over. I’ve got to mamok.”

  He stumbled out and vomited into the weeds.

  Chung gave him a joint to smoke when they were back on the road. “Forget Leon. You’re Hampton. You
work for us.”

  The power was out in Obz when he returned, and the sunsetting rays clung to the ceiling before the apartment was pulled into darkness. Unlike power outages in Hermanus, when Thursday had rushed to the generator to restart the pumps at the abalone farm, in Obz it meant you stayed inside. Being coloured, he wasn’t a target for muggers, but he also wasn’t stupid and could hear the rough Afrikaans of the youth gangs from Woodstock when they would walk the sidestreets looking for excitement. If they were tikked up with amphetamines the color of his skin didn’t matter, they’d take him on all the same. Leon had always gotten Thursday’s back in Hermanus and kept the gangbangers off him, but those days, Chung had just informed him, were over.

  He began siphoning the bathtub and lit a candle. Otherwise he spent the night alone. Helen sent him a text message asking if he wanted to meet for a game of pool. He thought she was his one tie to Leon, that she could help him find Leon with the art classes she taught, but he wasn’t sure what he’d say to Leon, not after Leon had lied to him and treated him like a peon. He thought of Helen and Leon and the crab on the beach and none of it made any sense. So much of his life was run by Leon; Leon was his measure of the world; Leon sifted through it for him and showed him where to go, and where not to go. He was a bully, but that was a price Thursday had been willing to pay for culling sense from the chaos. But now Leon had crossed a line. In this lie there was no friendship. No guidance.

  Thursday couldn’t eat a bite at Rodney’s Chinese Restaurant again knowing what went on in that back room. Another shipment came in, this time with a few dozen perlies from Geoffrey’s Bay, and after he gave his approval, Ip paid the man in cash and the smuggler left happy. Ip tossed five hundred rand to Thursday as a bonus and Thursday promptly handed over fifty of it to Chung for a bag of dagga.