Doing Dangerously Well
Page 28
“Yes, sir. Immediately!” A short pause. “Pardon, sir?”
Kolo slammed down the phone.
TWENTY-FIVE
Fallen Leaf
“Hey, Barbie. I’m arranging a trip to celebrate the parents’ fortieth wedding anniversary. But you don’t need to come.”
Barbara was loath to undergo the torture of an entire vacation with Mary and the admiring ancestors, but since her presence was not required, she obviously had to attend. “Well, when are they going? I could be in the country, who knows? Might even be free.”
“I doubt it. It’s all arranged for the end of September. We’re off to Banff.”
“Banff? In Canada?” How ironic that Mary had chosen Barbara’s secret domicile!
“Yep. Initially I suggested Ottawa, but they nixed that. Nothing there.”
“I’m sure you’d find—”
“I’m paying for it all, but I told them you probably wouldn’t be interested.”
What planets were aligning for such good fortune? A freebie, no doubt at one of those old Canadian Pacific castles! She could arrange an itinerary of spa treatments in order to spend the least time possible with the family. And more importantly, perhaps she could obtain information about the explosions. Since the tragedy, she had been unable to reach Wise Water directly, but Aminah had assured her it had been an accident. Femi’s life was now in great danger, so Barbara would have to make this ultimate sacrifice to discover what guise any threat to him might take. She girded herself for the taxing assignment.
“End of September? What a coincidence! I’ll be back from Kenya by then. Yep, I can come.”
As Barbara had predicted, the family stayed at the Banff Springs Hotel, a magnificent bastion of human ingenuity that competed with the colossal reaches of the surrounding Rocky Mountains. In the morning, they gathered in the castle’s sumptuous lounge before embarking on a survey of the surrounding area. Mary’s shrink-wrapped body pranced in front of them, a smile of triumph anchoring itself to her sparse features. Barbara felt a powerful punch of envy, a sense of her pecuniary shortcomings and physical overcompensations.
After a short drive and trek, they stood at the foot of a gargantuan megalith that vaulted past the tree line into a soaring sky, a raging monomaniac that had punched its way upwards through the earth. The parents took a few pictures. Then they looked at it.
“How beautiful! Absolutely massive!” Mother exclaimed.
“Couldn’t build on it if you tried,” Father added.
The parents’ necks craned upwards for a few moments and then, simultaneously, tilted down again to the horizontal and panned over to Mary for the next exhibit.
With this small action, it occurred to Barbara that her sister had made a critical error of judgement. The repetitiveness of the natural world, its overpowering immensity, the bald insolence of a back turned away from human hand, would eventually strike her parents as both menacing and monotonous. They craved Culture.
Barbara took full advantage of Mary’s predicament. “There’s a famous lake near here, right, Mary?”
“A lake? How interesting!” A fat paw pushed an errant piece of hair behind Mother’s ear and patted it back gently.
With Mary pinioned into silent fury, they drove to Lake Louise, a glacier-fed vessel bearing waters of phosphorescent turquoise.
“Just like a postcard!” The parents sighed in appreciation, taking a long breath. Then they looked back at Mary for the next attraction.
She hesitated. “There’s a path along it. We can walk the length of the lake.”
“Wonderful idea!” Father braced himself for an excursion. “Fresh air. Exercise. Good girl.”
“And what’s at the end?” Barbara asked innocently.
Mother tilted an ear towards Mary.
Faltering, Mary hesitated. “Uh, well, nothing. We, um, we walk back.”
Both parents’ eyebrows raised at the same time to the same height.
“Or,” Mary ventured, “we could see Emerald Lake.”
“Sounds fascinating,” Mother beamed. “What’s that?”
“It’s a lake,” Barbara interrupted. “It’s a different colour.” She leaned in towards them to further elucidate. “It’s emerald.”
The parents looked at each other, the horror of the holiday suddenly dawning on them.
“Any antique shops?” Mother enquired.
“Interesting architecture? Bridges?” Father added.
“It’s the antiquity, architecture and engineering miracle of Mother Nature herself.” Barbara swept a balletic arm around the panorama of Lake Louise.
As the tips of Barbara’s fingers deliberately entered her sister’s field of vision, rage curdled within Mary. Nevertheless, she quickly improvised. “We can see how the rental car’s nav system compares to yours. I believe it shows footage of surrounding attractions.”
The parents perked up, walked at a clip to the car and adjusted the nav system’s settings. “Oooh! Well, look at that. Stunning architecture!” They watched the lambent images of the Chateau Lake Louise, the hotel in whose car park they sat.
“What would you say that is? Limestone? Granite? Some local rock?” Mother opined.
“They certainly knew how to build in those days. No expense spared.” Father stared at the miracle of architecture on the rectangular screen.
“Well, off we go,” Mother backed out of the parking lot, reluctantly removing her eyes from the nav system. “Heads down, girls!”
“Mary …” Barbara’s low crouch muffled her speech. “I heard some group bombed your thingy in Nigeria. Water Wipes, Why Water, some name like that. Know them? Must be quite a hit, huh? What’r’ you planning to do?”
Mary’s innards grew taut. Did she mean Water Warriors or Wise Water? “Probably kill them. How should I know? Nothing to do with us. What’s it to you?”
“Nothing. Just making conversation, that’s all.”
“Is the Dam Commission interested? What do they think, Barbie?”
“Well, obviously, they think that Fem—uh, Jegede just made a mistake. They’ve told him off. He says he won’t do it again. So maybe TransAqua should, you know, let it go.”
Mary’s clenched guts relaxed now that she knew Barbara had no information about the AWW debacle. “By the way,” she said, straightening from her duck, “it’s intriguing how much you know about the Dam Commission’s advice. I saw Meyer the other day.”
“Who?” Barbara queried, straightening her Vietnamese tunic.
“Your boss.”
Barbara thought she recognized the name. She fished around for it. “Oh, Herm!”
Mother looked over a precipitous drop as she drove. “You call your boss by his first name?” A small smile played on her lips. “Well, I never.”
“That’s the modern way, my dear,” Father said, leaning back to help his wife negotiate the narrow road. “First names and T-shirts.”
Mary continued, “Strangest thing. He’d never heard of Barbara. No idea who she was.” Her little grey teeth clenched in a thin smile. Barbara imagined wrapping her strand of pearls around Mary’s thin neck and choking her. Then selling the pearls.
“So, Barbara,” Father said, “are we or are we not allowed to tell our friends about your job?”
“Isn’t there some way to change to a less secretive post?” Mother asked in a plaintive wail. “This puts us in a very awkward position, you know, dear.”
“Well, it puts Barbara in an awkward position too,” Mary piped up. “You see, she doesn’t work for UNEP at all!”
“CIA?” Father asked, eyebrow visor raised.
“UNICEF?” Mother asked, her eyes glittering with hope.
“No, Barbie works for Drop of Life, a left-wing, fringe organization—”
“Mary, I …” Barbara tried to interrupt her sister, but then the word hit her. “Fringe? Did you say fringe?”
“What?” Mother repeated.
“—aimed at stopping all corporate activities.
”
“A fringe organization?” Barbara exploded. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“She has no benefits to speak of.”
Mother stepped on the brake, mid-ascent. Father grabbed his heart.
Barbara’s mind raced to salvage the situation, but a small “f” word—”fringe”—held her hostage.
“And she has no diplomatic immunity,” Mary continued.
Father looked as if he were in the first stages of stroke. Stage stroke.
“And,” the final stab, “she works in Ottawa.”
“Ottawa? That backwater?” Father spluttered, miraculously recovering from his heart attack. “Canada is a socialist country for Gods’ sake with, as you can see, a total absence of population!”
Did he say backwater? “They’re not socialists; they’re liberals!”
A split second later, Barbara realized the implications of such an admission.
“Same difference, miss,” Father replied.
Barbara felt crushed. She lived in a backwater doing fringe work.
Mother accelerated; she tended to drive in tempo with her heart rate.
“Yes,” Father said, surveying the landscape with the scrutiny of an engineer, “a communist terrorist. I see it all now. Once you piece together the puzzle, it all makes sense. Vegetarian. Environmentalist. African music …”
As their bodies swayed to counteract the car’s violent movements, Mary snapped a smile. “I need the blueprints back, Barbara, or we’ll sue.”
“You’ll do no such thing!” Mother interrupted. “We’ve had quite enough trouble for one day. And Barbie, you give those blueprints to your sister right now.”
“I don’t have them on me, Mom! Anyway, they’ve been copied hundreds of times.”
Mary clutched her spindles into tight fists, making an unexpected cracking sound. “If you don’t leave your tin-pot mob within a week, TransAqua will sue you right down to the crimson dot on your forehead.”
Barbara snorted. “Yeah, right. And where would your career go after that?”
Unexpectedly ambushed, Mary hesitated, but then pulled her seat belt forward so she could lean towards the front seat. “Dad, do you know what Drop of Life is planning to do next? They’re investigating the Inga Dams in the Congo to stop Inga III from being built.”
“That’s a lie!” Barbara gasped.
“They say the project was a white elephant. They’re looking at cost overruns and corruption.”
“How dare they!” Father exploded. “That was one of my finest pieces of engineering. They have no right to … I’d like to see them survive those conditions.”
“They’re planning to prosecute, Dad.” Mary continued.
Father’s visor eyebrows stiffened into horror.
Outflanked yet again, Barbara felt sick: Mary had planned this, and she had fallen for it. “Dad, you can check on our website. We have no intention—”
“Intention or not, you will most definitely leave Drip of Life.” Father pinched out the words, unable even to look at his daughter. “Bloody heretics.”
“Dad, I can’t do that. People’s lives depend on me.”
Mother swerved into an unexpected U-turn, whispering “Airport” to her husband in explanation. “I know disowning your daughter is a bit old-fashioned, but since a group of terrorists is more important to you than us, you are no longer welcome in this family.”
Barbara took the next flight out, hoping to stave off an ever-encroaching panic, just hours before her parents aborted their own foray into the tedium of the natural world. If they could dispose of her with such surgical precision, how little must she mean to them!
“Name?” The check-in attendant reached for her ticket.
“Barbara.”
“Alrighty! Awesome!” Great dental work: his teeth in perfect rows. “Well, hey, Barbara, just call me Darrell. Would you mind sharing your last name?”
“I’ve been disowned by my family. I have no last name.”
“Think positive, hon. DNA, move outta my way! Now, sweetie, would you mind sharing your previous surname with me?”
She slammed herself down on his counter. “All those years,” she blubbered, “those millions upon millions of seconds, swept away like dust.”
He patted her. “There, there, sweets. They’ll come around. Meanwhile, you-just-live-your-life!” He gave the air a small punch of encouragement.
“I guess so. Just commit myself to work. One hundred percent.”
“One hundred-exactly! Now, hon, about that former surname.”
She rooted in her bag for various documents and handed them all to him. As he checked through (“Immunization? No, don’t need that.” “That ticket’s old. Plucky girl. Lagos, Nigeria? You-are-a-lucky-young-lady!” “Oh hey! You go to yoga, huh?” “Here we go: passport and ticket. Now that didn’t take long, did it?”), she continued musing. “Perhaps they wanted to see a reflection of their perfection in me and they could never find it. And maybe,” she lifted her tear-stained head from the counter while he quickly verified her passport photo, “they saw only their most unspeakable flaws.”
“You look great to me, hon. You’ve got great skin. Don’t let them tell you any different.” He handed her a tissue. “Gate four. To your left. You go for it, girl!”
As she plodded towards the plane, she wondered whether to feel elated or abandoned. Unlike the clans and families in Nigeria, which stuck so tightly together, whose ancestors were as real to them as the living, she felt as disposable as the wrappers on the food court counters. She needed no flood, no calamity, no great wretchedness to wipe out the memory of her existence. If her family could erase an entire shared history so quickly and with so little emotion, she could disappear entirely and no one would even care. Like a leaf falling from a tree.
Her spirit shattered, Barbara returned to Ottawa.
Harsh commands filled the grounds of the recuperation facility within which Femi lived—a voice of authority exclusive to the army. The military had fanned out within Jos, and now it had moved on to the villages.
Feeling the electricity of fear surge into their compound, Femi grabbed Igwe’s hand and pulled him until they reached the crevice of a boulder high above their settlement, as the other insurgents scrambled to get away. With the sudden realization that, in their haste, they had left gourds of water in their hut, along with papers and provisions, Femi slid over the top of a rock slab to peek at the movement below. Ubaldous continued walking around the flame tree, dragging his bandages behind him. A soldier bludgeoned him until he fell.
“No!” Femi gasped.
A soldier turned his head. Femi ducked, a frantic pulse pummelling his temples. It seemed strange. Recently, he had felt entirely indifferent about his fate. Hearing Igwe’s uneasy breath next to him, he realized that though he still welcomed the peace of oblivion, he did not wish to leave his companion behind alone.
The sound of boots grew louder. Femi pushed Igwe’s head down. “I beg, Igwe, stay there! These your gold logos could them.” He peeped around the rock. Two soldiers immediately beneath them stormed into their hut, tipping over pots, pans and gourds. One looked directly at their boulder, indeed straight into Femi’s eyes, yet appeared not to see him.
“Am I a lizard?” Femi muttered to himself. “Can the man not point and at least give me some dignity?”
The soldier turned away with a frown, a sharp nod of his head indicating that Femi should duck back down.
A sudden howl—high-pitched, eerie. Ubaldous had struggled to his feet and, roaring, charged at the soldiers, his arms held up as if controlled by magical forces. Flinching to avoid his touch, the soldiers left the compound at a trot, obviously fearful of spending any great time with its lunatics.
Immediately, Femi descended to comfort Ubaldous, while Igwe rushed for water, cloths and disinfectant.
“Ubaldous!” He used his sleeve to wipe up the blood on his friend’s forehead. “It’s Femi. Don’t worry. E don’ f
inish.”
“Who don’ finish?” a policeman snorted with an arrogant drawl of near-authority. He came up to Femi’s face. “Nothing don’ finish yet. That was army. This be police. No be same thing.”
“Thanks be to Allah! I was worried. They jus’ ran through the place. What kind of job is that?”
With a fearful expression, Igwe pointed to a spot behind the policeman with a trembling hand. “Na evil spirit enter you-oh! Enter your head. From behind you!”
“Where?” The policeman swivelled around, weaving and ducking.
Igwe did not reply: he slackened his jaw and began dribbling.
This disturbance affected Ubaldous outside, who started chattering loudly to himself.
Panicking, the policeman ran away, fearing the evil spirits that had invaded the unfortunate occupants of the village.
Igwe immediately got up, wiped the spittle from his mouth and appealed to Femi. “We’ll be hunted like bush rat if we stay here. What am I saying? Even bush rat know how to run.”
Despite his concern over Igwe’s alarm, Femi grew intransigent, refusing to compromise on this obvious practicality, yet not quite knowing why.
“What’s your problem, Femi? You hear the snap of my finger? This sound should have made echo in Lagos, not Jos. Twenty-five million people to hide among. Instead, you choose some small half-million, who-are-these-new-people town. I beg, Femi. Why you dey risk all these lives?”
These insistent questions immediately prompted the answer he had been too confused to discover himself. “First, most important reason, Lagos too crowded to hear your finger. Second, minor point, Ubaldous. He’s too fragile.”
His companion immediately understood. Ubaldous, an early mentor, one of the earth’s most generous gifts, had shared almost all he possessed with Femi when he had moved to Abuja, sometimes going without food to support him. His faith in Femi’s legal talents had been so great, he had tutored him through the small hours, declining work to do so. But now this great man struggled through unknown topographies, the horror of which neither Femi nor Igwe could imagine. Ubaldous plugged his ears with leaves to fight the enemy voices jeering at him. And beaten though he was, once again he was pacing around the flame tree with jerky, uneven steps, his feet bleeding through his bandages.