Foreign Gods, Inc.

by Okey Ndibe

  “Praise the Lord!” Uka exclaimed. His belly flapped up and down as he sprang from the sofa, clapping hands, a wide smile stretching his cheeks.

  Ike waited for the pastor’s excitement to run its course. Then he said, “My little request is that God should first give me an advance of one million.”

  Uka dropped back to the sofa, momentarily speechless.

  “I think it’s a fair deal. I’m tripling the seed.”

  Uka’s response came in a weary voice. “You can’t change how God works. First you sow, then you reap. I told you that.”

  “What happens when the seed is not there?”

  “You can’t tell me you don’t have fifty thousand dollars.”

  “I can tell you,” Ike said sharply. “If God ever spoke to you, he would have told you that. You seem to believe that American streets are littered with dollars.”

  “You can always take a loan.”

  “Of fifty thousand?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did God just suggest that?” There was a dash of mockery in Ike’s tone.

  Uka sat biting his lower lip, silent. Ike’s ire rose. He stood up and straightened his back. He walked over to the pastor.

  “You’ve been exploiting my mother,” he said, his hand jabbing the air as he spoke. “She gave you her meager feeding money. She bombarded me with letters. Come home, come home, she cried. Come and meet this powerful pastor. Come, she begged, and be saved from your uncle and grandmother. My poor mother! You’re not satisfied with stealing her feeding money. You dreamed up a scheme to get your filthy hands in her son’s pocket. You call yourself a man of God, but you’re rotten. Rotten inside and out! You say your God wants me to sow fifty thousand dollars. But fifty thousand, in truth, is the size of your greed.”

  Ike paused. His mouth was dry; his chest puffed. Uka sat gravely, immobile, hands clasped, with an impression of detachment in his posture, as if Ike’s fiery words were directed at another man. He stared blankly, as though he saw nothing and yet everything. At irregular intervals, his toes rubbed against the carpet.

  “I went to visit my grandmother last night,” Ike continued. “Yes, I was with her for more than two hours. We talked and joked. She didn’t eat me. This is the woman you just warned me not to see—or I’d die. The birds in your dreams, do they tell you such pathetic lies?”

  The pastor’s face twitched, but no words passed through his lips.

  “Tell me,” Ike pursued. “After all the lies you tell, how do you lie down and sleep? I would spit on you—but I don’t want to dirty my spit!”

  Turning sharply, Ike scudded toward the door. He twisted the knob and stepped outside. Then, peeping in just before he banged the door, he saw Uka look up. “I want you to know I’m going to see my uncle. Today, not tomorrow.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Ike stepped out into a breezeless, sweltering afternoon. The sun was overhead. Its rays singed, its heat sizzled on his skin.

  He’d intended to walk home and tell his mother all about his spat with Pastor Uka but decided to call on his uncle right away.

  Ike’s shadow was a squat, disfigured thing on the ground. He walked briskly through the heat. His legs seemed powered by some strange energy. Having blitzed Pastor Uka, he was in a buoyant mood, free of resentment. Drums of victory beat in his head, but he cautioned himself against over-celebrating. From the outset, he’d known that the pastor would be the weaker of the foes he would have to engage and dominate. His uncle, Osuakwu, was bound to be far tougher.

  In planning the operation in the comfort of his apartment in New York, Ike had not foreseen any obstacles. But now, his two feet planted in Utonki, his mother’s home within shouting distance of the shrine, he found himself increasingly powerless against the fear-tinged breeze that lashed him when he least expected.

  Ike knew this much: that until he entered the shrine and sat among other men and looked his uncle in the face and spoke words that would shake off the nervousness in his voice and dislodge the doubt in his heart, until he peered at the statue itself and remained steely, he could afford no sense of victory.

  The twin emotions of elation and terror tussled within him as he walked. He was aware of the irony of hastening to see an uncle he would betray in a matter of days.

  Betray! The word stung. But Ngene was no longer what it used to be, a war deity. The warriors of Utonki had not fought a war in more than a hundred years. In fact, there were no warriors to speak of.

  Years ago, before he traveled to America, Ike had listened, captivated, as a frail old man recounted the story of Utonki’s last war—a short-lived campaign to punish the people of Amanuke whose fishermen had encroached on the Utonki River.

  “The fight lasted only a day,” the bent warrior recalled through fits of coughing. “Our warriors were so fierce that we wasted the enemy’s blood.” He exposed yellowed teeth in a sly nostalgic smile. “The next day, we gathered at the glade of Ngene to gird ourselves for another battle. We found ourselves suddenly surrounded by soldiers in peak hats, their guns trained on us. Then a white man stepped forward and asked for our leader. Ataa, our greatest warrior, stood up. In battle, pellets bounced off his body. Machetes grazed him, but they could never scathe him. A warrior of his stature had not been seen in Utonki for many, many moons. The white man took him away, and he never returned, alive or dead, to Utonki. The white man also gathered and hauled away our guns and machetes. He said the queen who ruled his country was now also our ruler. This woman we’d never seen—and who had never seen us—had declared that the river no longer belonged to us. She’d ruled that any stranger who wished could come and fish in it.” He bared his teeth again. This time, the smile was baleful, a thing born by pain.

  As Ike recalled that story, he felt that Ngene was now no more than a retired god, a slumberous deity, in limbo. Its decline began on that day when the white man burst upon Utonki’s warriors and showed his superior hand.

  Or perhaps Ngene was always a shirker, a dozer at his duty post, except that the warriors of Utonki did not know it. Else, how could it have failed to sniff out the white man’s ambush? On its watch, how could the white man’s army have crept upon the spears and guns of Utonki and crippled them?

  He calculated the uncertain cost of spiriting off Ngene against the certain advantage of an assured windfall. True, the deity’s disappearance would propel Osuakwu into a state of shattering grief, but what of it? He thought about the once-upon-a-time when every living soul in Utonki, man, woman, and child, paid obeisance to Ngene. That time was now a vanished memory. Today, most of the people had become Christians. They had traded in their war deity for the one whose love was so overpowering that He assented to being impaled. Ike pictured Ngene as a deity staring with dejection at the backs of its former followers flocking to churches—and to charlatans like Uka.

  Mark Gruels had argued that, in a postmodern world, a god that didn’t travel was dead. There was a ring of truth to it, perhaps a chic kind of ring, but he found it comforting enough. In an age when gods must travel or die, he, Ike, would become the instrument to refuel Ngene. It had fallen to him to show the world to Ngene, stuck too long in Utonki, and Ngene to the world. He pictured a party that would be thrown on the marvelous lawns of some swanky home to celebrate the acquisition of Ngene. It would be an extraordinary affair, the biggest debut party, graced by all the big collectors. They’d cast killing eyes of envy at the lucky new owner of Ngene, an African god of war.

  A film of sweat spread over Ike’s face. He searched in the pockets of his pants for a handkerchief. Finding none, he ran a palm across his slick forehead and then rubbed the sweat between his hands.

  He looked at the lump of his shadow, then remembered a game he used to play as a child, trying to outwit his shadow. He would stand stock-still until he was certain his shadow had been lulled to inattentiveness. Then he’d suddenly sprint, feint, or bob. Like the game with the mirror, it amazed him that, whatever his gambit, he never was able to
shake off his shadow. It clung to him with tenacity, impossible to elude.

  “Who do I greet?” asked a woman in a high-pitched voice.

  Squinting against the glare, Ike made out a woman with a woven basket delicately balanced on her head. He acknowledged her greeting with a smile.

  “I bet you don’t remember me,” said the woman.

  He didn’t remember her name, but he knew her story. She was the widow of a truck driver who’d died years ago in an accident the week before she gave birth to their first child, a son. The baby had been born a spitting image of his father, complete with a scar above his left eyebrow, an exact copy of a scar on his father’s face. People marveled at the resemblance. It meant, they said, that the man’s death was premature, it had not been cleared in the spirit world; the accident that claimed his life was the work of some spiteful, malevolent dibia. His son’s uncanny resemblance meant that the man had reincarnated.

  As the story played out in Ike’s mind, he suddenly remembered her son’s name. “You’re Obiajulu’s mother,” he said.

  “You know me,” she said exultantly, smiling. Then the smile disappeared. “You must have heard,” the woman said, as if the words themselves bore light. “Obiajulu left me.”

  “Ah-ah!” was all he could say, as if a ballast of heat had hit him. It was then that he noticed the funereal blackness of the woman’s wrapper.

  “Obiajulu became a truck driver, just like his father. They’ve taken him away from me. The truck he was driving ran into a ditch. He was thrown out, and the truck fell on him. I saw my son’s body, crushed like pulp. It’s less than two months ago that we put him in the earth.”

  Sorrow swelled his head. “Ndo,” he said, hurrying away.

  “Ooh.” She sighed in acknowledgment.

  Death seized his thoughts. Dead, dreary things flickered into his eyes. The caked, clayey earth bespoke death. A hardy slab, untouched by rain, the earth seemed baked in some radial oven. Death presented its awful face in the charred bark of trees. It loomed in the scalding rage of the very air. Its scent laced the air, giving it the reek of turned earth and dead, rotted leaves.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Something twisted inside Ike’s heart the moment he faced Osuakwu’s homestead and the detached oval structure to the left that was the shrine. Freshly polished, the shrine’s earthen wall glowed. Much of the wall was decorated with uli drawings, a labyrinth of wriggly lines and loopy geometric patterns. Ike made out a river, two sacred pythons—one curled up, in repose, the other stretched out, in motion—a swarm of fish, and numerous portraits of cheery people standing or squatting in canoes afloat on the river.

  Two cars were parked outside the grounds. Both cars gleamed in their white exterior and ash interior. One was a Mercedes-Benz, the other a Toyota 4Runner. Ike walked so close that his arm grazed the Mercedes. In the front seats of both cars sat a driver and a police officer, their seats reclined, eyes shut in indolent slumber.

  Ike crouched and entered the low open eaves that served as the shrine’s entrance. The transition from the glare of sunlight to the shadowy dimness of the shrine left him unseeing. A twinkle of motes swarmed before his eyes, tinted gray. There were several men in the shrine—their voices and silences touched him—but he was too blind to tell them apart.

  “Osuakwu!” he hailed, looking in the direction of a figure in a reclining chair.

  “Who am I greeting?” asked the man. The voice was unmistakable, a raunchy baritone he immediately recognized as his uncle’s.

  “Who are we greeting?” the other voices echoed.

  Osuakwu’s voice was warm, the others’ genial. Reassuring voices. Ike had been wound tight by fear, but now he had to let that fear uncoil and seep away.

  “Osuakwu!” he greeted again.

  “Eeh!” his uncle replied. “Who greets me?”

  The air reeked of gin and palm wine. Ike’s sight had been restored; the fuzziness dispelled. In a furtive move, he flashed his eye to the right-hand corner where stood the wooden statue of Ngene. Then he hastily looked away. He looked about him, relieved to be able to make out the human forms.

  “Does your own son have to announce his name?” he teased. “It’s Ike. Ikechukwu.”

  Osuakwu was splayed out in a cane chair. He sprang awake as Ike announced himself, then made an exaggerated motion of wiping at his eyes. “Who am I seeing?” he said. “Did you say Ikechukwu?”

  “Osuakwu,” Ike greeted.

  In silence the other men observed the re-acclimatization between the chief priest and his nephew.

  “My eyes are not lying to me, then?” Osuakwu asked. He wiped at his eyes again. “It’s not a dream I’m dreaming?” He extended a hand.

  Ike chuckled, then rushed forward to take the hand.

  Osuakwu’s hand was frayed and wrinkled, like worn leather. His grip was strong, his hand scabby. He held on, swinging Ike’s hand from side to side, in no hurry to let go. He muttered, “My son, my son,” as if in time to the rhythm of the swinging hand.

  The old man still boasted a full head of hair, cut evenly low, lush in its absolute whiteness. His exposed torso was chafed and scaly but seemed otherwise sinewy and invigorated.

  “Osuakwu, are you going to eat that hand?” teased one of the men.

  “It’s as if he doesn’t know that our hands are also itching to be shaken,” another said.

  “Release the hand,” another admonished lightheartedly.

  There was an uproar of laughter.

  “I see you’re all about to die of envy,” Osuakwu said. “You’re all threatening to die if I don’t let you touch my son’s hand. Yes, all of you are hungry to touch this hand softened by the air in the white man’s country. Will you all die if I say you won’t shake this hand? Well, then, start digging your graves. This son of mine won’t shake your shitty hands. Not today. If you’re dying to shake hands, then seek out efulefu like yourselves. Go shake fellows whose hands are dry and withered, like yours.”

  The men cackled with laughter. Osuakwu said to Ike, “Better shake their hands, Son, or an owl’s chilling hoot will not let me sleep a wink tonight. If you don’t shake them, they’ll send their witch-wives to suck my blood tonight.”

  Laughter resounded within the shrine.

  “Don’t mind Osuakwu,” one of the men said to Ike. “He speaks so easily about witches because he knows no witch dare fly near his house. Any witch that dares, dies.”

  “You’ve spoken the truth,” Osuakwu concurred. “But that doesn’t mean you won’t poison my drink if I deny you my son’s hand. Or use nsi to blind my eyes.”

  Four of the nine men were about the chief priest’s age. The rest were much younger. The older men’s faces were rife with wrinkles, their teeth crusted with yellow plaque. Each man asked if Ike knew him. He remembered most of them by face and knew five by name. There was Iji, the sharp-tongued old jester who specialized in mongering scandal. There was Akwuniko, the sinewy middle-aged man with vein-lined hands who carried the Ijele masquerade. There was Man Mountain Polycarp, a spry, bearded mini-giant of a man, a retired driver for a department store in Port Harcourt. A fiery labor unionist, Polycarp used to dazzle youngsters with tales of heroic worker strikes. He also relished telling stories about a man called Karl Marx, a name he pronounced as Kalu Mazi. “He was the greatest friend of workers and poor people in the world,” the driver would say. His face set in awe, he added: “And you’ve never seen a beard as bushy as Kalu Mazi’s. His beard is in the Guinness Book of World Records because it was proved that he had the biggest beard in world history.” There was Agbusi, Osuakwu’s assistant in priestly duties. Agbusi was a gourmand of legendary status; his waking hours were occupied with eating and drinking, punctuated only by the intermittent moments when he talked. There was Jideofo, a willowy, light-skinned man whose red Volvo Ike vividly remembered. Jideofo passed himself off as a diviner, but others in the community had unflattering things to say about that claim. They dubbed him a failed trader tur
ned scam artist. Some said he was an outright fraudster. There was a story that he’d fleeced a well-heeled Hausa businessman in the northern city of Jalingo and then fled the city in time as the fuming dupe closed in on him both with police and a private hit squad. Such was Jideofo’s guile that he easily evaded the hunters hot on his heels. Some said he was the boss of a gang of armed robbers who menaced highways, far and near. It was rumored that he was impotent. This, despite—or indeed because of—his succession of wives and harem of paramours. His public fondness for women, his detractors said, was a mask, meant to leave the impression that he was a virile lecher. There was even a story that he’d been an affluent widow’s gigolo. The woman had pampered him, taking care of his material needs in expectation of his devoted amorous attention. Jideofo had cheated on her for several years before she finally found out. Discovering his plan to marry a glamorous young woman, the distraught widow had cast a spell of impotence on him. Some claimed that Jideofo was a womb swindler. He’d procured some charm from an Indian mystic for his malevolent purpose. He married a woman long enough to raid her womb, scouring it for all its ova. He mystically turned the harvested ova into a wealth-generating magic. He then sent his hapless victims away, barren for life.

  “Sit down,” Jideofo said, flashing a disarming smile. He slid aside, pressing his body against the wall, to make room on the raised platform. Ike felt a brief fear, but calm quickly returned. He accepted the offered spot, sandwiched between Jideofo and Agbusi.

  “Nno,” Osuakwu said.

  “Nno. Nno,” the others chorused, welcoming Ike.

  Eyes bathed Ike. Beads of sweat rolled from his armpits. A croaky note pierced the silence. Ike craned his neck, searching for the source of the sound. Jideofo stood up and rifled through his trousers, producing two sleek cell phones. Brow creased, he inclined the ringing phone to the light. Finally pressing the phone against his ears, he shouted, “Chief Jideofo here.” As he carried on a loud conversation, the other men talked in muted tones.