Foreign Gods, Inc.

by Okey Ndibe

  This time, his eyes seemed to conjure up the very words of the profile. It began with the strange story of that eccentric and reclusive Japanese businessman named Ryoei Saito and the record-breaking $82.5 million he spent to purchase Vincent van Gogh’s Portrait of Dr. Gachet and the princely $78.1 million that fetched a smaller version of Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s Au Moulin de la Galette. Then the magazine dived into the new art of god collection, “gaining ground as a new diversion for the wealthiest of the wealthy whose after-dinner drone is peppered with talk of million-dollar losses in capital ventures, the purchase of multimillion-dollar yachts, or splashes of excess on the island of Saint-Tropez, a haunt of Hollywood stars and well-heeled titans of the corporate world who think nothing of spending forty-five thousand dollars on a bottle of Dom Perignon.” Two pages described the growing exotic taste for primitive deities and sacred objects. After two decades of nurturing itself in the shadows, “this passion for Foreign Gods has emerged as a visible and powerful cultural current and force.” It named some of “the big-name, dazzling players in the trade, and its dark and not-so-dark secrets: jealousies, betrayals, cattiness, derring-do, and brinkmanship.”

  Over the last ten years, major galleries had opened in such locations as Seattle, Napa Valley, Palm Beach, and Atlanta to cater to a rising appetite for foreign deities and sacred objects. But the oldest shop—and the acknowledged dean of them—was Foreign Gods, Inc., “a gallery that occupies two floors, located on a quiet street corner in Greenwich Village, New York.” The rest of the piece focused on Mark Gruels, a Harvard Business School graduate who took over the running of the gallery after the 1996 death of his father and gallery founder, Stephen Gruels-Soto. Ike found Gruels’s boast arresting: “Yes, we’re the world’s oldest god shop.” Then he lingered over the section on the gallery’s so-called Heaven:

  “A summons to Heaven doesn’t come easy or cheap,” said Robert Pemberton III, a collector of rare gods and ritual objects. “I waited three years to receive my first. It’s to be treasured.”

  Mr. Pemberton’s use of the word “summons” is no idle quirk; it’s the precise lingo for an invitation to view, and bid for, the fare tucked away on the gallery’s upper floor.

  Less lucky collectors may get their thrill on the first floor, open to all comers. It is here that the gallery stores what in the art world might be called the secondary market. Except that a lot of the items even on the first floor command dizzying prices.

  Ike glossed over the section about Mr. Gruels, who described himself as “a hands-on, hardnosed, intense, but forward-looking business executive with a modern outlook—and a zest for life.” Gruels’s “charm and infectious humor often persuade collectors to put down several hundred thousand dollars for a godhead from the Tiv pagans of Africa, or fork over a cool million for a sacred totem from a remote, often unpronounceable Southeast Asian tribe.”

  Having read the piece numerous times, Ike had lost interest in the lush portrait of Mr. Gruels as “a hard frolicker who had dated some of the city’s most desirable women and been linked to a major Hollywood actress.” Nor did he care to go over the gallery owner’s intellectual sophistication, his habit of quoting Derrida, Foucault, and Lacan, or his notorious misadventure in Morocco where he, his girlfriend, and two other friends landed in jail for flaunting their ill-clad bodies near a mosque during Friday prayers.

  He stopped reading and then put the badly rumpled magazine in his carry-on bag. If he felt the urge, he would read it again—perhaps for the last time—during his flight.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Ike stayed awake for the New York to Amsterdam leg of the trip, his chest knotted tight with apprehension. His mind flitted from his mother to his uncle, obsessed with their physical scars. His mother’s right thumb was shriveled from an attack of whitlow she suffered years ago, when Ike was in his first or second year of secondary school. He remembered the evening he’d surprised her in her bedroom. She sat in bed and stared at her disfigured thumb, tears trailing down her face. He’d hurried away to his own room to weep into his pillows and curse the disease that had reduced his mother to such anguish. And then there was the grotesque scald of flesh on Uncle Osuakwu’s abdomen. He’d seen it years ago, on a day Osuakwu entertained an audience at the shrine with stories of his experiences in Burma during World War II.

  “Look at this,” his uncle had said, pulling up his undershirt to expose a gash in his belly. Osuakwu paused, running his fingers along the singed, darkened scar. “First, the white man forced me to go to Burma to fight in a war that had nothing to do with me. It was a quarrel between different white brothers. And then the white man gave me this as payment.”

  Ike’s spell of sleeplessness left him feeling haggard. He was so fatigued that he drifted off to sleep shortly after KLM’s Boeing 767 taxied down the runway at Schipol Airport and lifted itself into the air, bound for Murtala Muhammed Airport in Lagos.

  The last scene he remembered was the clarity of the dawn sky in Amsterdam, a wide blue dome with no cloud puffs in sight. As the plane ascended, he looked out the window at the immensity of the sky. Then, casting his eyes down, he saw the vast mat of the landscape, the streets of Amsterdam marked off by geometric patterns amid marshes and expanses of green. Seen from the heights, the rugged beauty of the unfurled scene seemed unbearable, and he shut his eyes.

  His mind lolled, unable to cleave to anything, ideas or images. Then it slowly began to focus on the last time he sat down with Uncle Osuakwu at the shrine of Ngene. Something about their discussion struck him as significant, but the details of it remained vague, even foggy.

  As Ike hovered between sleep and wakefulness, a startling idea seized him. He had the sensation that Queen Bee had somehow gotten on the same flight. And that she had sneaked up and sat right behind him, staring at the back of his head. He unglued his eyes and swung back. His severe eyes met the stare of a red-haired white woman. She gave an apologetic grin, then sharply looked away.

  Moments later, he was asleep. It was a restless, fitful sleep, troubled by a churn of unwelcome images. First was Queen Bee the day their divorce was finalized, her face exultant and mocking. Then Cadilla floated into the picture, his face signed with a terrible smirk, he and Queen Bee wantonly commingled, heaving on the couch until, exhausted, they lay in a heap, panting. Soon the raucous habitués who gathered outside Cadilla’s store took their turn to menace his half-formed, sad dreams.

  It was a long, torturous affair. Hardly rested, he heard, as if somebody had leaned into his ear and pressed wind in it, the whir of the public-address system announcing commencement of the descent into Lagos.

  He stretched himself, relieved to expel the languor of a tormented sleep. Looking out the window, he saw the patternless crisscross of lines and tangents that marked the landscape of Lagos. His stomach tightened at the vision of the city’s marred, ugly layout.

  He must have dozed off again briefly, for he awoke as the plane glided, hovered as if in fleeting hesitancy, before its tires made smooth contact with the tarmac. The passengers went into a tizzy of clapping. One woman yelled, “Jesus is Lord!” Another woman replied, “Satan is a liar!” Shouts rang out all around: “God is great!” “Praise him!” As the plane sped fiendishly on the tarmac, rattling, several passengers stood up, opened the overhead compartments, and began to tug at their hand luggage.

  A woman’s high-pitched voice came over the public-address system. “Sit down! Sit down!” it ordered shrilly. “Ladies and gentlemen, you’re to remain seated until the aircraft has come to a final stop and the FASTEN SEAT BELT sign is turned off. Keep your seat belts fastened!”

  More passengers stood up and began to pull their bags. Among the second batch was a flabby woman who sat across the aisle to Ike’s right. As she wrestled with her luggage, her buttocks filled the aisle, brushing against him. He made a disgusted face, hissed and drew away from her.

  The big-bottomed woman brought down one bag. She panted as she tried to pry a second one,
wedged between two heavier bags.

  Ike waited until every passenger had left before he retrieved his hand luggage and made for the exit. A splash of sizzling, humid air stung his skin once he stepped onto the covered tunnel that led to the airport building. It was a harsh heat, but he found it oddly comforting. Soon sweat tickled the small of his back. He breathed deep, grinned to himself, and thought: This is the air of Lagos, clingy and muggy.

  His watch read 5:51 P.M.

  He completed immigration formalities, lifted his suitcases onto a trolley, and then beckoned one of the uniformed porters to push it.

  “Oga, bring money to settle customs,” the porter said in pidgin, gesticulating wildly, eyes averted.

  “What do you mean by settle customs?” Ike asked, feigning ignorance.

  The porter flashed a rogue, wry smile. “Ah, oga, you no be Nigerian?” he quizzed, pushing the trolley.

  “I’m a Nigerian,” Ike said stiffly, walking beside him. “So?”

  “Customs no go let your luggages pass unless you settle them,” the porter said in a tone of starchy finality.

  “Wait.” Ike pulled at the trolley to force the porter to stop. He stared at the porter’s face. “You’re asking me to hand you money to bribe customs, or they won’t let me go. Is that it?”

  The porter looked away, a nervous grin on his face. “Oga, dis no be matter of big grammar. If you blow grammar, customs go vex for you.”

  “I don’t have anything illegal in my suitcases. So don’t worry about any trouble with customs.” He removed his restraining hand to let the porter continue his push.

  The porter shook his head in a sad, bemused way. “Customs go delay you, oga.”

  “It’s okay. I have time.”

  As they neared the customs post, Ike thought he saw the porter’s lips move in some secret communication with a man dressed in a pair of dark blue pants and a light brown shirt.

  “Hey, this way,” the uniformed man commanded.

  “I been warn you, you no hear,” the porter muttered in a tone of triumph and vindication. “Okay, make you go blow grammar to customs.” He stopped the trolley in front of the officer and stalked off.

  “Who owns this?” the officer said in a loud voice, as if the prospect of Ike’s ownership was doubtful.

  “If you mean these two suitcases, they are mine,” Ike said, trying not to stare at the toothpick hanging from the officer’s lips, his sweat-sodden armpit, or the belly that sagged beneath a belt.

  The officer pulled the toothpick. “What do you have inside this?” He kicked the top suitcase with his dusty black shoe.

  Ike checked his rage. “Personal effects.”

  “Personal effects? Open de thing.”

  Ike unlocked and lifted the cover of the suitcase. Bent over, his drooped belly swaying like a free, soft weight, the officer rummaged through the suitcase, taking out clothes and setting them down on a raised platform. Then he stood up, panting, his eyes red.

  “You have twenty-two packet shirts, twelve dresses, many, many trinkets and sixteen deodorants.”

  Ike nodded.

  “That na commercial quantity. You have to pay duty.”

  “What do you mean by commercial quantity?”

  “Na buying and selling.”

  “It’s not true.” Ike looked him straight in the face. “They’re gifts.”

  The officer sneered. “Gifts?” He sharply turned away.

  “Don’t you have family members? And don’t you buy them gifts?”

  The man turned and gave him a harsh look.

  “These are gifts for my mother, my sister, her husband, their children—and my friends.”

  The officer shrugged, unimpressed. “I done tell you. This na commercial quantity.”

  “Show me where it’s written that somebody who lives abroad can’t bring in twenty, thirty shirts as gifts.”

  “Are you trying to teach me my job?” he asked, raising his voice. He pointed to his sodden shirt. “Are you saying the government that gave me this uniform is stupid?”

  Even though he’d not visited Nigeria for more than ten years, Ike was quite familiar with the Nigerian customs’ ritual, a huffing game designed to browbeat tired, cowering passengers into parting with a bribe. He was determined not to be bamboozled or terrorized, dead set against backing down.

  “Did you hear me mention the government?” he fought back. “Did I once say the word stupid? All I said is, show me any law that says I can’t bring in shirts and dresses as gifts.”

  Another officer, tall and sinewy, strolled to the scene.

  “Wetin dey happen?” he asked his colleague.

  “Na dis rat,” the big-bellied officer rasped, sweeping his arm in Ike’s direction. “He thinks coming from America gives him right to teach me my job. He thinks he can blow grammar.” In a moment, two other customs officers, one of them a woman, swooped in. “Common rat!” the first officer cursed, sticking the toothpick in his mouth.

  “He has no right to insult me,” Ike protested, alternately seeking eye contact with the three officers. Each gave him a hostile, sideward glance. “He can’t call me a rat.”

  “If he calls you, what can you do?” said the woman. “You think you’re somebody because you come from America?”

  “America my nyash!” cried another officer.

  “You shouldn’t insult me,” Ike shouted. He panned about for any sympathetic passengers. Three passengers briefly made eye contact and then looked away, trudging after porters pushing their luggage. One of the porters made as if to shake a customs officer’s outstretched hand. Instead, the porter dropped some folded dollar notes into the officer’s palm, which immediately clenched. Ike felt something like a pebble wedged in his throat. Another female officer shambled to the scene.

  It suddenly dawned on Ike that he risked overplaying his indignation. With nothing incriminating in his suitcase, he could bluff and—with luck—get away with it. But if the feud escalated, the officers could remark him—and, on his day of departure, with Ngene tucked inside his suitcase, they could single him out for particular torment. Despite that chastening thought, he found no easy salve for his fury.

  “Why should he insult me for bringing gifts?” he asked in an even, temperate voice, seeking a path from anger to some dignified amicability. “Ask him whether I said one insulting word to him.”

  “See his yeye mouth,” the big-bellied officer said.

  “Suffer-head,” the lanky officer derided. “He washes plates for a white woman in America and thinks he can come here and make mouth.”

  The officers broke into peals of belly-quaking laughter.

  “De man na proper church rat,” the other female officer said. “Leave am to carry him poverty dey go.”

  “Carry your rubbish dey go, foolish idiot!” the big-bellied one said, a pugilist sneaking in a punch after the bell.

  Ike glanced at his watch, his temper near the boiling point. The officers had wasted more than forty minutes of his time. Yet, he silently prayed that none of them would be around the day of his departure. If they detected him, they’d be like a pack of hyenas. They would chew through his bones.

  Outside the airport, he landed in a swarm of bodies, a riot of voices, and a rich harvest of smells.

  A man in a flowing white gown grabbed the handle of the trolley. “Yellow, make I push for you,” he offered.

  “Take your hands off!” Ike barked, and gave a ferocious push.

  “Welcome sir,” chirruped a man with a gnarled stump for a right hand. “I prayed God to give you safe journey, sir. Please, sir, spare me one dollar.”

  “Taxi? You want clean taxi?” asked another man.

  Ike waded through the crush of people, passengers, mendicants, peddlers, and idlers. It was as if he kicked and pushed his way to the taxi stand.

  “Stopoff Hotel,” he announced to the first driver in line.

  The hotel was only a mile and a half down the major road leading from the airport. Tw
ice the cab was stopped at police checkpoints. At the first, a man sporting an unbuttoned shirt, an ugly, antiquated gun in one hand, peered into the front seat and asked, “Where from?”

  “Airport,” the driver answered.

  The officer beamed a flashlight in the backseat. He saw Ike’s stony face and gave a sluggish, buffoonish salute.

  “I dey your side, sir,” he said.

  “I’m tired,” Ike replied.

  With a lazy wave of the hand, the officer granted passage to the taxi. A quarter of a mile later, they ran into another checkpoint. From the back, Ike hissed.

  “If criminal come so, they run,” said the driver. “Na to collect money be their business.”

  Another gun-wielding officer lowered his face close to the front passenger window. “Wetin you carry?” he asked.

  “Luggage,” said the driver.

  The officer turned to Ike. “Na you be de owner of de luggage?”

  Seething still from the encounter with the customs officers, Ike folded his hands, threw his head back in a sign of weariness, and answered, “Yes.”

  “Come and open,” the officer said.

  “What exactly are you looking for? The luggage has been checked at the airport. That should be enough.”

  “Open for him, sir,” the driver whispered.

  Ike got out, followed by the driver. The driver lifted the two suitcases to the ground, and Ike unlocked them. The police officer stood there gazing at the suitcases for what seemed a full minute. Then he asked, “You live in America?”

  “Yes.”

  He tarried as if time was needed to digest the information. Then he said, “What’s the purpose of your visit?”

  “I’m a Nigerian,” Ike said. “Do I need a special reason to come to my country?” He saw the driver shift uncomfortably. “I’m here to bury somebody,” he lied.

  “Anything for the boys?” the officer asked in a wheedling tone.

  Ike realized that the façade of his motel could be seen down the road. “Funerals are expensive,” he said, pushing further into his lie. “I have nothing to spare.”