Foreign Gods, Inc.

by Okey Ndibe

  Ike raised a hand frantically.

  “Yes?” Gruels said.

  “We haven’t discussed the price. Could you tell me the range?”

  Gruels’s brow became furrowed in exasperation. “No, really,” he said, slowly. “I discuss prices only when the inventory is in front of me. That’s policy here at Foreign Gods. But you can be sure of one thing—no dealer tops our offer. You said you’ve got great merchandise. You get me a great item, you can count on getting a great offer. That’s a promise.”

  He extended a hand. More out of confusion than design, Ike hesitated for a moment and then took it. Again Gruels placed his left hand on Ike’s shoulder.

  “Don’t think I doubt that this is a great god. But this gallery is huge on authentication. Remember that. Nothing beats seeing things on paper—photographs, books, documents. If there are mentions in one or two scholarly texts, that’s terrific.”

  Ike’s heart chugged as he headed for the exit. Once outside, he drew deep drafts of air until he felt steadied. And then, in quick, springy strides, he hastened back to the garage.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Ike’s body was belted to the car seat, but his spirits soared. For a moment, it seemed unreal that this was his last day as a cabdriver. His meeting with Gruels had not gone quite as well as he had hoped, but it was far from woeful. The man had said he’d love to do business with him. That, in the end, was what counted. All Gruels asked for was to see Ngene—to see something. Fair enough, Ike thought. After all, everything was set for his journey to scoop up the wooden statue of that ancient god of war named after a moody, mud-colored river.

  It was already 11:36 A.M. There was the option of retiring to his apartment, but Ike dismissed the urge. At all hours, the noisy street intruded into the apartment, breached his solitude. It was better to roam the streets awhile, perhaps pick up a few last passengers, and trust the accustomed routines of work to contain the thoughts that sawed through his mind.

  He’d worked as a driver for thirteen years, ever since graduating from Amherst College, cum laude, in economics. Now, it would be over. He had a confirmed seat on a KLM flight bound for Lagos, with a stopover in Amsterdam. From Lagos, he would travel east to Utonki, the riverine town where he was born and had lived through secondary school. He’d wait for the perfect accomplice: a dark, moonless night. Then he’d tiptoe into the doorless, rectangular shrine. He’d sneak away with the war deity and be on his merry way back to New York City, where he would sell it to Foreign Gods, Inc. Gruels had refused to name a price, but Ike expected the gallery to offer far more cash than he ever made in any two or even three years he worked as a cabdriver, first in Springfield, Massachusetts, then Philadelphia, Atlanta, Baltimore, and now, New York.

  After driving past several passengers, he finally stopped for two young women who hailed him on Chambers Street. They were headed for Mansoory Deli on East Fortieth Street. Settled in the backseat, they chattered. One had pale skin, a freckled nose, and dimpled cheeks. She prattled about visiting the Alps with two Norwegian friends but failing to ski even once; about different pubs in London; and about “making out with this mad cute guy” at a nightclub in Amsterdam.

  Whenever she paused, the other—tanned and big boned—filled the silence with pieces of an extended story about private tango lessons she’d taken in Buenos Aires with one of the city’s most famous dancers. The lesson was a birthday present from her grandmother.

  When they got out, the tanned girl handed Ike a twenty-dollar bill for a fare of eighteen dollars and seventy-five cents. “You too,” he muttered, in response to the freckled one’s spirited wish of a great day.

  For a moment, he again entertained the idea of heading for his apartment. He intended to turn right on Second Avenue. Instead, he turned left, toward United Nations Plaza. Nearing the plaza, he fixed on a man who seemed at once part of the familiar bustle and outside of it. The man, in turn, sought him. There was a certain air about the man, the more powerful for its oblique quality. A diplomat, Ike thought, most likely European. The man seemed to possess an inbred, controlled charm. He was tall but with the suggestion of a stooped shoulder. In Ike’s eye, the shoulder’s slight curvature was a flattering feature; it hinted at personal gravity and the shouldering of diplomatic burdens.

  He would make the perfect last passenger.

  “Columbus Ave.” the man said. “Three twenty-two.” His voice was so soft and muffled that Ike couldn’t tell whether his accent had a trace of foreignness. He trailed a rich, spicy fragrance into the cab.

  “Hello,” Ike said. When he heard no response, he added, “Good afternoon.” Then, “Welcome, sir.”

  Not even a cough came in acknowledgment. The passenger held open a paperback book, hands raised in a boxer’s defensive stance, a sparkling golden watch at his wrist.

  Ike released his foot from the brake, and the car jerked forward, rolling up First Avenue. He had only gone a block when he was forced to stop. Ahead, a long line of cars shat a smashed omelet of red brake lights.

  For the next ten minutes, the car did little but idle.

  The passenger turned on the overhead light. The sun had vanished. Dense, lumbering clouds loomed. Lightning signed the sky. There followed a slow, liquid growl, a sky-sized monster’s after-meal belch. Ike wanted to fight off the word rainstorm, but couldn’t.

  He sat up from his slouched position. Something vibrated against his left thigh. He shuddered. Then, pulling a cell phone out of his pocket, he saw notification of a text message. He studied the phone with irritation, certain that the message was from Big Ed Thelwell, his Jamaican neighbor and fellow cab driver. It was Big Ed who had pressured him to get the phone. For two or so years, Ike had defied all taunts about living in the past. He rather liked his antiquated, cordless landline. He abhorred the idea of other people being able to reach him at all hours, wherever he was. He slid the phone back in his pocket, uninterested in the message. Spine straightened, he pulled forward, as if hugging the steering wheel. The sky unleashed its torrent. The first sheets lashed against the car’s roof and windshield. Then, as if some invisible conductor had given a cue, the storm ceased, leaving a mizzle of long, tiny darts.

  IKE FEARED STORMS.

  He was a second-year student in secondary school when the first assault happened. He was in the school’s crowded cafeteria. A rainstorm began. Its doowah, doowah made him groggy, turned his limbs weak. Before shocked onlookers, he staggered this way and that, like a senseless drunk, and then fainted dead away. “You seemed to be sleeping,” a friend told him later. “You even had a smile, as if you were having a sweet dream. Or just playing a game.”

  Ike remembered the sensation of absolute calm. That, and a feeling of being carried on something soft like a cloud, calm as a lake’s surface on a windless day. And he remembered seeing many things that shimmered with such heartbreaking beauty there was no language to describe them.

  The next time it happened, four storms later, he was in the classroom, taking French. Later, a classmate told him that the irate French teacher, Robertson Iwu (Monsieur Iwulili Iwuliti, the students named him) had rushed at him, trademark cane at the ready. The teacher was certain that Ike was up to some folly. He released two or three strokes on Ike, who lay there, motionless. His body absorbed the lashes without as much as a twitch. The furious teacher fled the classroom, convinced that his famous cane had flogged a corpse.

  It was after this episode that the principal sent Ike home to seek medical treatment. His parents took him to a doctor. Numerous tests later, the baffled doctor said he had found no explanation.

  One day, Ike went to visit his paternal grandmother, Nne. He told her about the strange force that snatched him away sometimes during rainstorms, and about the indescribably beautiful things he would see during his raptures.

  “Ngene has favored you,” Nne said.

  Taken aback, Ike asked, “What does that mean?”

  “You’ll find out once you’re old enough to understand.
The same thing happened to your uncle, Osuakwu. Be patient.”

  “Are you saying I’ll be the chief priest, like my uncle?”

  “I don’t speak for Ngene,” said Nne.

  Ike never shared her words: not with his parents or anybody else.

  In the intervening years, the storm-triggered spells happened less frequently. Sometimes, a few years went by without one episode.

  There had been only a few public incidents in the United States. After each episode, he awoke in a white room filled with bright lights and to questions about illicit drug use. While a seizure happened, it was close to rapturous release. Fear was in the anticipation. And then shame followed, when he noticed the curious glances of witnesses, their fear-filled whispers. It was that shame that made the experience anguished, impossible to forget.

  That was why Ike never worked any day a storm was in the forecast.

  He remembered the anchor saying last night, “Keep it right here and stay tuned for pinpoint weather, coming up next.” And then there was Derek Jeter pitching some credit card. Ike had dozed off. He startled awake as a sports reporter screeched about the Yankees’ tie-breaking home run in the second game of a split doubleheader against the Boston Red Sox at Fenway Park.

  IKE’S HEART BEAT VIOLENTLY. His hands shook. Sweat pooled in his armpits, and then licked his sides. If only the passenger would hold a conversation, he might be able to keep his focus off the storm, and fight off an attack.

  The cab’s electronic clock blinked 1:32 and then changed to 1:33. A frantic idea chimed in his mind. Music! He would use music to hold off the storm’s paralyzing doowah, doowah. He clicked open the glove compartment, shuffled through several CDs, then put one in. The sound deafened. In the haste to turn down the volume, he mistakenly raised it.

  The passenger banged. “What’s that?” he cried over the amp of the music.

  “Music.” Ike twisted the knob sharply left. Then, in a calmer voice, he said, “Shakara.”

  “Chaka what?” the man asked hotly.

  “Ra.”

  “I don’t care for it.”

  “It’s by Fela,” Ike said.

  “I don’t care for the fella.”

  “Fela Anikulapo-Kuti. That’s the musician’s name.”

  “Turn the damn thing down,” the man said. “I’m reading.”

  Ike’s foot beat a tam tam on the accelerator, in time with the music. The traffic eased slowly forward. Ike switched off the CD and rolled down the front windows.

  A blustering breeze whistled. The scent of rain on sun-baked asphalt swelled his lungs. He marveled at the storm’s tease, how it started and ended with equal suddenness.

  In the midst of his thoughts, a bolt of lightning flashed, followed by a slow belch of thunder. Then the storm resumed, fiercer. Soaked pedestrians dashed for shelter. Ike’s windshield and windows turned blurry with vapor. He clicked on the cab’s headlights. He wiped the windshield in large, circular motions.

  A blind woman walked across the street, led by a Seeing Eye dog. First dog, then woman, stopped at Ike’s car. Skirt and gray sweater drenched, she tapped her stick on his fender. Then she used the stick to prod the dog. Tongue lolling, the dog feinted left, then right. It was all futile—Ike was bumper to bumper with the next car. He felt stirred to hop out and help the woman across. But he was sure that if he stood, he’d pass out.

  In a fit of desperation, she hit the fender harder. Then, her hollow gaze in his direction, she raised a finger, her lips formed to deliver a curse. Ike drew the gear up to reverse. From behind, a long blast of horn rasped. He lowered the gear once again to drive, foot firmly held to the brake. She delivered another curse. Then she turned the same direction as her dog and let herself be led back the way she came.

  “Is it good?” Ike asked.

  “What?” The response came after a moment’s silence.

  “I mean the book,” Ike said.

  The passenger muttered inaudibly.

  The rain beat against the cab’s windows. Ike would not stand for the looming spell of silence. He’d talk and talk, do whatever it took to draw the man out. Even if all he got in exchange were listless grunts or bored silence.

  “I will write a book someday,” he said.

  “You will?” the passenger asked quickly. “What about?”

  “About Foreign Gods.”

  “Foreign, did you say? Foreign what? It’s hard to understand your accent.”

  Ike brushed off the hurt. “There’s a gallery called Foreign Gods, Inc. They buy and sell gods. That’s what I plan to write about.”

  The passenger guffawed. “Why, that’s a neat idea.”

  Ike felt elated, awake. “It’s going to be interesting.”

  “Where?”

  Confused, Ike gave no response.

  “Where’s the gallery?” the man elaborated.

  “Oh, here in New York. On Vance Street, number nineteen.”

  “You don’t say,” the man said. Then he coughed, eyes fixed on his book.

  Ike felt let down. He wanted to keep talking, to keep the conversation going. In fact, it didn’t matter whether the passenger spoke back or not. Let the man just listen: that would do do do. Doowah, doowah, sang the rain. From somewhere deep inside of Ike, tales surged to the surface, weaving in and out of the storm’s refrain. A torrent of words to repel the storm’s doowah. The words spun, chasing down several stories that, in midstride, suddenly changed contours. He had many stories to share, too little time. There was his former wife, Bernita Gorbea; he recalled how he could never equal her lacerating tongue, his dread of her fiendish lovemaking, the sheer nastiness of their divorce. There was his friend, Jonathan Falla. It was Falla who, back in college, first sowed in him the idea of looting his people’s ancient god, a war deity at a time bereft of wars. There were a lot of wars it could fight for us here, Falla had told him. Think of all the shit it could do for black folks in the States. How it could sneak into the White House or Wall Street. Cause mayhem and shit. Help overthrow this whole unjust system and shit. And it was Falla, too, who had sent him the copy of New York magazine that profiled Mark Gruels, the owner of Foreign Gods, Inc.

  Ike found himself telling all these things and more to his passenger—whatever came into his mind, no matter how inappropriate or fragmentary. Anything to fight back the power of the storm pelting his windshield.

  He talked about old friends and classmates back in Nigeria. About his mother who bombarded his e-mail. Each new e-mail bore the same message as the preceding ones: it reminded him of a promise he had failed to keep. And there were his forays into gambling, a venture driven by dreams of great fortunes that always ended in huge losses.

  “You gamble?”

  Ike started at the man’s voice. “Yes,” he said. His voice sounded weary, distant, and unfamiliar.

  “And you blame your mother for your gambling?”

  Ike’s eyelids blinked uncontrollably. Fingers entwined, he raised his hands behind his head, thrust out his chest in a fatigued stretch, and yawned.

  “You gamble, you gamble. To blame your mother …”

  Doowah, doowah, raged the storm. Ike reeled, as if struggling to jiggle free of the seat belt. His body settled into a sweet laggardness.

  “To blame your mother for your choice is foolish,” the passenger said.

  Ike was helpless. He tried to raise his eyes to the rearview mirror but failed.

  He heard his passenger ask if he was all right. But the storm’s wild, whirring music was already sweeping him up to that terrain of enchantment, up in the cloud, way beyond the wet, weeping skies.

  A sharp metallic blare sounded. It was not just one driver honking; there were three or four.

  And it was over: the storm had calmed, and a faint, vague light hovered in the sky.

  It seemed he had been driving on autopilot.

  “I’m going to guess,” he heard his passenger say. “Jamaican, right?”

  “Nigerian,” Ike replied, surpris
ed by the calmness in his voice.

  “Nigerian!” the passenger exclaimed, filliping his fingers at the same time. “One of our smartest attorneys is from there. His name escapes me, but he’s a smart, smart kid. Not a bit of an accent.” He slapped his palms. “None at all.”

  The sky glowed, its vast dome tinged with turquoise. Now that it no longer mattered, the man seemed interested in talking. He said his name was Giles Karefelis.

  “Ikechukwu Uzondu,” Ike responded.

  Three times Karefelis tried to pronounce the name. Then he protested, “It’s too hard to say!”

  “It’s Ike for short.”

  “Eekay,” Karefelis said, mangling the pronunciation. “How do you spell that?”

  “I-K-E. Ee-kay.”

  “That’s Ike,” the passenger said in an excited tone.

  “It’s the same spelling,” Ike explained. “But mine is pronounced Ee-kay.”

  “Eekay,” the man repeated, omitting the hyphen.

  Ike winced. “Your way of saying it means ‘buttocks’ in my language.”

  Karefelis roared with laughter.

  “But my name means strength,” Ike said. “Ee-kay, not Eekay. It’s short for Ikechukwu—God’s strength.”

  “Ike’s a proud American name, too. It was Eisenhower’s name. He was a great American general and president.”

  Ike eased forward and pulled up outside 322 Columbus Avenue.

  “Here,” said Mr. Karefelis, holding out two crisp bills. “You’ve been a great sport, Ike.” He strode away in a brisk gait, leaving Ike with two $50 bills—and a venerable American name.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Ike drove as if in a daze, then parked when he arrived at Saint Stephen’s Church, a few blocks from his home. He loved sneaking into that church during quiet times, when nobody else was around and he could sit in solitude and let the silence swirl around him. Stealing away, sneaking into the church, was often what he did after fights with Bernita. But today, with the lights dimmed, the stained glass seemed too dusky, more stained than lustrous, the series of saints’ images too sad and spectral. And then he wondered whether the sadness had sprung from his own heart, discoloring his eyes. He fixed on a large wooden crucifix that seemed to dangle from above the altar, surveying everything under. After a while, he felt himself the focus of its expressionless stare. He gazed back, disquieted.