Foreign Gods, Inc.

by Okey Ndibe

  Afterward, he lay down on the couch and thought about his friend Jonathan Falla. The last time they had spoken, Jonathan had raved about the home he and his partner, Chelsea, had just built on the hills of Leverett, Massachusetts. He had insisted that Ike come spend a weekend. “Man, let’s eat, drink, and tell stories about our yesterdays,” Jonathan had said in his exuberant manner. Ike thought about it. Perhaps it would do him good to take up the invitation. Just for a few days, to clear his head, which had fallen prey to a ceaseless churn of memories and sounds, the worst being the constant whir of silence.

  He picked up the phone to call Jonathan. That instant, a dreadful idea flicked through his mind. The notion was this: The reek in his apartment came from him! He’d tracked it in, lugged it all the way from Utonki. And there was a chance that the stink would dog his every step, accompany him wherever he went. He put the phone away.

  It was at first a brush of an idea, something fleeting. The thought irritated him more than it disturbed him. When all was said and done, it was preposterous. But then it stuck, made it impossible to free himself from its snare. The harder he tried, the more entrenched the idea became. His power of resistance was failing him.

  A drink, a drink! Caught in a warp, he knew that the answer was to sedate himself. He needed to run out and pick up a bottle of Jack Daniel’s whiskey or Grey Goose vodka along with some soda. Or he could grab one or two six-packs of Guinness. He realized the need to act urgently, for the odor appeared sinister. Ike sensed it swelling, thrashing about the room.

  A fierce ache beat inside his skull. His eyes shivered with unbearable pain. He placed a thumb on one side of his face, the rest of his fingers on the other, and then pressed. Kneading his flesh, he worked from the chin slowly up to the crown. The pressure in his fingers sought to reach the pain, to mollify it.

  Another thought slipped into his mind: The stink was wafting from the wrapped deity. He sprang up, picked up the swaddled statue, and raised it to his nostrils. One quick sniff was all he needed. His stomach quickened. He threw his head back, repelled by the horrid stink. He propped the statue against the wall.

  “I’ve become a chief priest,” he muttered, sinking in the couch.

  His heart began to pound. He had to stave off the intruding thought.

  Relax.

  Other dreadful thoughts sneaked past each barricade he sought to erect. His head felt light, buffeted both by the odd stink and the fear that gnawed at him.

  Relax!

  It pierced him like shrapnel, this sense of toxicity in the air. His mind zigzagged, contorted by a dizzying flurry of ideas. The befouled air threatened to suffocate him.

  He decided, in desperation, to go to Cadilla’s to buy a drink or two. Standing up, he panned around, looking for his bunch of keys. It was nowhere to be seen. Saw it a moment ago, he bitterly reminded himself. And it was in full view! He rifled through the two suitcases, patted down his pockets, and then dug fingers underneath the crevices of the couch. No luck. He scanned the bathroom and bedroom. Panting, he decided to take a break. He stood still, trying to collect himself, to let his rage subside, to think. Then he threw himself into the same ritual, looking over the spots he’d searched before. It was futile. Frustration.

  After he’d turned over the room more than five times, he sat down and shut his eyes. He drew deep breaths and exhaled through his mouth. Then, opening his eyes, he looked at his feet—and there was the bunch of keys!

  “Ah-ah!” he exclaimed, worn out by his exertions. He lay down and put the keys on his brow, relishing their steel-cold feel. Head dug into the leathery softness of the armrest, he let his legs dangle off the sofa, neither on it nor on the ground.

  Be still, he cajoled himself. Too late to fret. Then a terrible, comforting idea flitted across the mazy screen of his mind. He remembered that his uncle Osuakwu had said that a starved deity was apt to turn dangerous.

  “I’ve become a chief priest,” he said again. Shutting the door behind him, he hurried down the stairs, aware—a realization he embraced calmly, with no fuss—that he was going to buy food and drinks for two. From now on, he’d have to sate the deity’s hunger and slake its thirst. He’d need to keep it in good humor.

  He’d become a chief priest with no apprenticeship, no induction into the god’s protocols.

  I’ve become a chief priest. The thought brought him to the edge of an ironic smile.

  When he came back, he dropped drumsticks of Jamaican jerk chicken and grains of rice on the floor next to the statue. Then he spilled drops of whiskey on the floor as well.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Four days later—three days sooner than he’d planned—Ike arrived again at 19 Vance Street in Greenwich Village. Unlike his first visit to the gallery, when he had fretted outside for a while, he strode in, this time—a portrait of calm and confidence. There was something bouncy inside him.

  The difference was that the statue of Ngene weighed against his arm.

  But his stride was checked momentarily by the stink in the gallery. It seemed more pungent than during his first visit, just days before his trip. It was certainly punchier than the smell in his apartment. He paused only for a moment or two, sniffing the air. Then he walked past the spiral staircase, hardly looking at the content of the showcases as he made for the counter.

  Part of the reason he’d come to the gallery early was that he could no longer stand the stench in his apartment.

  To compound matters, it was a mobile, restless stink. His first night home, it’d stayed in his living room. The next day, it had wandered into his bathroom. By the third day, it had completed its conquest by overpowering his bedroom. The more it spread, the more it took on a palpable character, as if some blacksmith’s bellows were blowing its fumes. The smell had kept gathering strength, at once penetrating everything and pulling everything into itself, until it seemed to waft out of the wall’s invisible pores.

  The smell was unbearable, but that was not the sole reason he’d decided to make an early trip to the gallery.

  There was the menace of insomnia, the nightmare that drove sleep away. Whenever he shut his eyes, his body drowsy with sleep, he’d visualize himself trapped in a valley, a raging flood plunging down a hillside, sweeping up rocks, and heading for him. He would awake with a start, drenched in sweat, too scared to fall back asleep.

  But even that was not the main reason.

  Then there was the question of his bills. The day after his return, he’d picked up his mail. It was a litany of bills.

  He tore open one of three letters from the rental office. The word URGENT was printed in red ink at the top of the page. The letter reminded him of the delinquency of his rent for the months of March and April. It instructed him to immediately pay the sum of $3,000 plus $300 in late administrative fees. Another letter from the power company threatened disruption of his service if he didn’t pay a balance of $277.59 within five days of the notice. Next, he slit open an envelope from Visa. His credit card had a debit balance of $2,682. He gazed at it, brow knitted in a frown.

  But those debts weren’t the main reason, either.

  There was Usman Wai, his old friend who’d made him a loan of more than $1,250. He’d finally returned Wai’s repeated calls that had taken on the quality of a harangue. “It’s about the money I loaned you,” Usman had said after asking a few polite questions about his trip. “I have an emergency—and need it immediately. In fact, like yesterday.”

  But paying Usman back was hardly the reason he hurried to Foreign Gods, Inc.

  The major reason was a phone call just before 6:00 P.M. from his sister, Nkiru.

  “THEY HAVE KILLED MAMA O,” his sister cried as soon as he took the call.

  “Who have killed Mama?” he asked, impatient with her hysterical manner.

  “Osuakwu the devil and his fellow worshippers of Satan. They have broken Mama’s legs o. She’s in the hospital.”

  Shocked, he nearly dropped the phone. “Mama is in the hos
pital? What happened?”

  Ike weathered Nkiru’s tears and tangents of holy denunciations to grasp what had happened.

  On finding out that Ngene had disappeared, Pastor Uka had proclaimed it an act of the God he served. He had then scheduled a special all-night service to praise the true God that had vanquished a false idol. Uka and his congregants were in the delirium of celebration when, just after midnight, an army of idol worshippers stormed in. Pastor Uka was beaten to a near-comatose state. Ike’s mother, after taking several blows and slaps to the face, had dashed to the low-lying window and lifted herself over. She had broken a leg and badly bruised her hip in the jump.

  “It’s the same Osuakwu you love who did this!” Nkiru shrieked in remonstration.

  “Was Osuakwu one of the attackers?”

  “Did he have to be?” she asked. Then she cried, “He arranged it!”

  Ike grew dizzy. “So, how’s Mama?”

  “How is she? As your uncle’s people left her! And now the hospital says they won’t treat her unless I pay a deposit of two hundred fifty thousand naira. Look at me, where will I find that kind of money?”

  “I’ll send it,” Ike said. “I’ll wire two thousand dollars.”

  “When?” Nkiru demanded.

  “Tomorrow. Latest, the day after.”

  “Don’t let Mama die o!” the sister implored, and then hung up.

  THE NEXT DAY DAWNED with a dazzling face. The radiant sun lent a comforting warmth to the air, moved by the slightest breeze. Encouraged by the weather, Ike’s spirits were buoyant as he descended the steps of the subway at the juncture of Lafayette Street and Flatbush Avenue.

  He entered a packed subway car. Legs spread apart, he leaned into a handrail, two women on either side of him, and in front a man with a silvery beard who continually nodded his head as if the very air supplied music. Ike held tight to the heavily padded statue as if to hoard its horrid waft to himself. Besides, he wasn’t about to risk slackened vigilance. Some daring thief might pry the quarry from his grip and dash away.

  He stepped out at his final stop, ascended to the street, and beheld a rainstorm. For a moment, he thought to tarry under a shelter to wait it out. But he didn’t want to risk becoming agitated and fainting away under the storm’s spell. The gallery, two blocks away, seemed a safer bet.

  He stepped out, the waddled statue clasped to his chest, and walked in long, hurried steps, as if it were possible to outstrip the storm. That instant, the storm seemed to change gears. Its roar deafened, muted every other sound. Ike felt lured out, entrapped by the storm’s sparking fury. Pelts burrowed down his hair, turned into crawly worms on his scalp, dribbled over his eyebrows and then down his face.

  Halfway to the gallery, he realized that he’d become hopelessly drenched. Worse, water had soaked through the paper wrap that concealed the statue. His steps were brisk, no question. Yet he felt bogged down, like a man attempting a race in a pool. After a while, he had the sensation that something viscous, dark red, and warm seeped through the paper and dripped down his belly and arms. He raised his arms and peered at his shirt, completely wet and matted to his chest. There was no discoloration at all. But for that ever-present, dreadful fear of a capricious spell, he was fine.

  As he adjusted the statue and extended a hand to push open the gallery’s door, it seemed to pull away from him. A woman stood on the inside, beaming.

  “Gosh, you’re drenched!” she said.

  “Thank you,” he said, and quickly stepped through the entrance.

  He walked with deliberate slowness, as if it had become necessary to atone for his quickened pace out in the rain. With each step, his sneakers squeaked, leaving a track of wetness on the floor. His shirt and pants clung to his body, made him itch. He made circuitous loops, pausing to inspect other deities, his ears tuned to the rain’s doowah, doowah.

  It took several minutes before he loitered near the checkout counter and stood, favoring now this leg, now that. A tall, slightly stooped man in a light green pullover shirt strolled toward him, eyes dully set on the gods in their glass-enclosed cocoons. There was about the man an air of inbred self-assurance, and he seemed familiar in a way that was at once vague and insistent. If he had to guess, Ike might have said he’d seen the fellow on TV or in one or another of those entertainment magazines whose star-studded covers stared at you from grocery store racks. Yet, the more he struggled to place the man, the deeper the impression of an encounter that was more intimate.

  Well, Ike thought, giving up, freeing his mind to focus on the hope that burdened his arm.

  Ike heard the crunch of shoes and looked up. Mark Gruels came into view, holding up a statue. A white woman with a roundish, confident face followed closely behind him. The statue blocked Gruels’s view, so that he brushed past Ike with no acknowledgment. The woman met Ike’s stare but showed little curiosity, her face tinted with rouge, thin lips softened by red lipstick. A curl of silvery hair hung over her left eye. As she walked past Ike, he saw, buried beneath her veneer of makeup, wrinkles that grooved the sides of her eyes. For a moment, her waft of perfume broke the gallery’s clingy stench.

  “Peggy!” shouted the man whose face Ike had given up trying to place.

  “Giles!” the woman shouted back. “I didn’t think you shopped here.”

  “Well, because you didn’t bother to tell me there was such a great store. I had to find out by accident—literally days ago.”

  “I fear you’re now going to raid all the good gods. It’s like you, isn’t it?”

  The moment the man spoke, Ike’s consciousness had been jolted into recognition.

  Gruels turned slightly and smiled at both the man and the woman. “Mr. Karefelis went on a binge the first time he showed up. Two weeks ago. He’s slowed down a bit.”

  Karefelis grinned. He leaned forward and pecked the woman on both cheeks. “And how’s Mr. Lauter?”

  “Paul’s in Paris.”

  “I like the poetry of it. Paul in Paris!”

  “He’s back in three days actually, and we’re having Charles Rosen and Cynthia Fisher over to dinner on Saturday. Would you care to join us—if you’re still in town?”

  “Not on Saturday, I’m afraid. Some clients will be over from Japan, and dinner is planned with them. But so great to see you. You look dazzling as always. Paul—”

  “No, Paul has nothing to do with nothing.”

  “You’re full of poetry tonight.”

  “And you’re the usual Giles, dependable dean of flattery.”

  “And of bullshit!” Gruels added.

  The trio’s laughter shook the air.

  Gruels stood the statue on the counter and slapped his palms. Then he walked around the corner and positioned himself inside the enclosure that marked out the counter. Brows furrowed, his eyes concentrated on the cash register.

  Ike stared at the statue, rotund and gargoyle-like, ocher in color, its face frozen in an expression of infantile glee. It flaunted a swollen belly, large hollowed-out eyes, and a stiff, massive phallus held up in two hands.

  Standing on the same side as Ike, the woman unslung a brown handbag from her shoulder. She exhaled. “All right, Mark,” she said, “let’s go for it.”

  Gruels lifted up a tag hanging from the statue’s neckless head and marked ON SALE. He raised his pair of glasses to his forehead, bent forward, and squinted at the back of the tag. He then punched in numbers.

  “Four hundred thirty-five thousand six eighty—even,” he said.

  The woman unclipped her handbag and brought out a checkbook. Gruels handed her a golden pen. Watching her from behind, Ike felt momentarily woozy. He’d known in some abstract way of the existence of the breed the woman belonged to, the rich who could write a check for half-a-million dollars or more without flinching. Now, he was witnessing such a transaction at close quarters! It was as if something was drawing him into a dreamlike state, as if he was being transported by sheer proximity to the magic. He imagined the incandescence
of the life lived by this woman and by the likes of Gruels. And then he imagined himself living that life, albeit on a much smaller scale.

  She tore out the check. As she held it out to Gruels, Ike felt his knees threaten to buckle. His body swayed, but he rallied and stood firm, anchored by the weighty bundle in his hand.

  “Reminds me,” Gruels said, palming the check. “Can you look in early next week? Say, Tuesday? Are you in town?”

  “I bet I am. Why?”

  “I’m expecting a hot new deity. Something you’d like. It’d be here in three days. I expect it to go fast, too.”

  “I’ll definitely stop by. See you Tuesday, then.”

  “It’s a stunner. You’ll be rapturous.”

  “And where’s it coming from?”

  “I wanted it to be a surprise, but I can tell you. It’s a mountain deity from one of the indigenous peoples of the Philippines. Take my word: you’re going to be blown away. Absolutely!”

  A young man in a pair of shorts and a T-shirt with slightly wet armpits emerged from behind Ike, picked up the deity, and followed the woman outside.

  “Can I help you?” Gruels asked.

  Ike had turned to look at the departing woman, and so Gruel’s attention caught him off guard. Inside him hope and fear warred, constricting his throat. He smiled.

  “Yes?” Gruels said, eyes sharp. His elbows rested on the counter, his shoulder thrust forward. His voice was now joyless, tinged with impatience. It was as if he’d observed Ike’s dawdling presence with mounting irritation, and now, his customer gone, he could vent.

  For an instant, Ike was startled dumb. Could the man have forgotten meeting him just a few weeks ago? There was nobody else in sight. Even so, Ike looked about him, as if to make sure he was the addressee.