The Extinction of Menai

by Chuma Nwokolo

  Finally he arrived at the last century. The tension in the room grew as Etienam the zealous fathered Cature the smith with the sister of the alien, and Cature fathered Manan the poet with the daughter of Menjabi the wastrel, and Manan fathered Tobin the scholar with the daughter of Simisto the well-digger, and Tobin fathered Zanda the lost with the daughter of the alien . . .

  Numbly, I put the water bottle to the lips of the old man. He drank lustily. ‘Aima Zanda Atturk,’ I protested. ‘Atturk.’

  ‘Emini Tobin Rani, ba Zanda ma mistsa sizili,’ repeated Mata Nimito, in a voice shaded with rebuke; then he fell silent.

  I killed the recorder on my phone. I felt my moorings to my house, to Old Raecha Atturk’s house, loosening. A thought scurried in the dark crevices of my mind, refusing to be squelched: my name was a lie.

  ‘Let’s walk,’ said a thick voice from the door. I rose stiffly and followed Tobin, past Questionnaire and Amana, into the hall. We passed on a creaking floor onto the threshold, pausing to look out for the police before we slipped into the silent, moonlit street.

  ‘He could be wrong,’ I muttered stubbornly. ‘He says what he is told. He’s not GodMenai. He has no way of knowing what goes on in bedrooms!’

  ‘We have no time for this nonsense, Zanda,’ said Tobin intensely, walking ahead of me into the copse that had overtaken Megima’s old vegetable garden. He whipped around, taking my shoulders in both hands. ‘Use your eyes. Look at me! Listen to my voice!’

  I glared at him. ‘I hear the voice of a liar!’ I raged. ‘Why have I lived such a lie?’

  ‘Life is not convenient. Life is what it is.’

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Tobin Rani, son of Manan, son of Cature . . .’

  ‘Spare me!’ My voice was harsh, judgmental, disbelieving. ‘You said my mother was a Laura.’

  ‘Yes. It all gets very complicated . . .’ He scratched his scalp. ‘Zanda, we are Menai: we have no time to beat about the bush. I’ll tell you how it is, as shameful as the things I’ve done have been—’

  ‘By GodMenai! Just tell it! Where is my birth mother, and how did I end up in the house of Atturk?’

  ‘Laura died twenty-one years ago, in England.’

  ‘Where was I born?’

  He shook his head. He crooked a finger downwards. ‘You were conceived here in Kreektown, but you were born in Khartoum, Sudan . . .’ He looked into the trees, at his shoes, and then he looked at me. ‘Laura was married to someone else, that’s the thing. And your twin brother ended up in England, fostered . . .’

  ‘What?’

  ‘. . . fostered by a Chinese lady—’

  ‘I have a twin?’

  ‘Of course.’

  I was silent for an eternity. His eyes gave nothing away. He waited.

  ‘And he’s alive?’

  ‘As far as I know, yes. His name is Humphrey Chow. You are identical twins.’

  I felt my legs going rubbery again, and I leaned against a trunk. ‘Humphrey Chow. Chow.’

  He coughed. ‘I had a relationship with your mother. I am not proud of it, but it happened . . . She was married to . . .’

  ‘Where’s my . . . brother?’ The unfamiliar word came out eventually.

  ‘In London . . .’ He fumbled in his pockets, pulling out a slim book, much-handled. He grinned and, in a voice that sounded helplessly proud, said, ‘He’s a writer like you. . . . I guess that’s blood for you. I’ve put his address on the first page. I won’t get in touch with him again; I seem to mess up people’s lives . . . and I’ve done my share for him . . .’

  It was a novella titled Blank. He turned it over. The photograph of my face above the bio coalesced the emotions swirling in me, gave it an ugly edge of envy. I did not touch the book. Eventually his hand fell to his side. His grin slipped and he looked deflated, a baker whose long-awaited loaf was coming out flat.

  ‘Does he know about me?’

  Tobin shook his head tiredly. ‘I moved Heaven and Hell to make it possible, but . . .’ he shook his head again, ‘he knows me like you used to know me . . . as an . . . uncle of sorts.’ He grinned. ‘I even taught him to speak Menai. But no, he doesn’t know me as his father, and he doesn’t know you exist.’

  A siren began to grow in volume again, from the direction of the square. ‘Why? Why did I end up an Atturk? Why are you just telling me this? I am twenty-five years old, for GodMenai’s sake!’

  He shifted his weight anxiously. ‘That was my deal with Tume and Malian.’ He took my arm. ‘We were to give you as normal a childhood as—’

  I jerked free. ‘They’ve been dead fourteen years!’

  ‘You have to understand: for the love of Menai, I’ve spent most of my life either in prison or in psychiatric hospitals.’

  I looked at him levelly. ‘You’re crazy, then?’

  He grinned again. It seemed a tic he could not control. ‘This is true,’ he said, crooking a finger downwards, ‘what I’m telling you. I’m only mad with the madness of all true Menai. The kind of madness that brings a dead old man back to life again to finish a work that must be done!’ His voice grew gentle again. ‘I don’t know why you took that money, Zanda, but they want you, and they want you badly. Let me help you . . .’

  ‘Mata Nimito wants to sleep in the Field of Stones.’

  ‘He told me.’

  ‘I promised to take him there. I will.’

  Tobin grinned. ‘Do you know where it is?’

  ‘The Mata knows. He’ll show the way.’

  His grin widened. ‘It is two thousand years and four thousand kilometres away. Nobody knows that it still exists. He will try to trace it, not from his memory—which I trust, by the way—but from the memory of our fathers’ fathers’ fathers’ fathers’ father . . . you get the point. He will die on the way.’ He was no longer grinning; his face bore no expression, not even a faint smile. His voice was low. ‘Even if he knows the way, we need help to make it to the end. Professor Balsam and I are working together on this. Our visas are almost sorted, and our expedition truck is waiting at Ma’Calico’s. We’ll find the Mata’s Field of Stones, if it exists. I pledge you that, by GodMenai. But you must save your own life. I don’t want you to take my place in prison. Save yourself.’ He took a sealed envelope from his pocket, wrote a telephone number on it, and gave it to me with the book. ‘Everything you wanted to ask your biological father and never could,’ he said with forced lightness. ‘Don’t read it all at once!’

  I took a step back. The book and envelope hung between us for an age.

  ‘Save yourself, Zanda, find your way to London. Humphrey cannot deny the evidence of his eyes. He will help you. You both escaped Trevi’s accursed inoculation. You’re among the last of the Menai.’

  ‘I can take care of myself.’

  He gritted his teeth and put book and envelope back in his pocket. Then he turned and was gone.

  Save yourself! As though there were anything left to save of my old life. I stood there for an age, swatting mosquitoes from my ears, trying to get my head around all I had heard. The book had confounded me: my face on a book I did not write. A biography for my face that was not mine. That was the icy proof of what he said.

  A delayed rage engaged: two decades of jibes at my colour, my hair, and my ancestry. And here was guilt at arm’s length! I felt an overwhelming urge to throw a punch—and I blundered out from the copse into the path of patrolling policemen.

  * * *

  MY TRAINING as a boxer was useless in Elue’s interrogation room at the Divisional Headquarters in Ubesia. It was unfair, because when he began to lay into me, he had not told me what he wanted and so gave me no opportunity to end my suffering. I felt myself going blind, becoming crippled and impotent. I screamed all manner of confessions before that inevitable moment when I would take a blow on my voice box and become dumb as well. Finally he thought he had softened me up enough and pulled out a notebook.

  I told him every conceivable thing he could possibly w
ant to know. I told them about Adevo’s tent and the four hundred thousand naira I paid him.

  He raised the baton. ‘How much?’

  ‘Five hundred!’ I shouted, and when the baton rose higher, ‘I mean six hundred!’

  I told him about my hideout at Ma’Calico’s and Amana’s gambling retreat behind the treeline. I even told them I was Badu. At that, Elue rose angrily to his feet.

  ‘You think this is all a game?’

  ‘What I mean to say is that I will find Badu! I have paid for him! I will scoop him! You will see!’

  He let that pass.

  * * *

  SOON AFTERWARDS, policemen were piling into troop carriers for the onslaught on Kreektown.

  I was unable to walk properly, so I was dragged into the cab of one of the three trucks and propped up between the driver and Sergeant Elue. A station DPO came downstairs and strutted perfunctorily for the flashbulbs of Rafael, a Palaver photographer, who affected not to recognise me at all, despite the meals he had eaten on my account at the cafeteria. Minutes passed in which I wondered if I dared ask leave to relieve my bladder—my retentive capacity seemed to be shot. It became too late, and a disgusted Elue gave me an elbow in the neck and debarked, joining Patrick Suenu in his car.

  The ride was uncomfortable. The trucks’ headlamps lit up hoardings with graffiti in praise of Badu’s exploits. I cringed in shame.

  There seemed to be a power failure in the village when the trucks pulled into Ma’Calico’s car park. It was busier than normal: an articulated truck, several minivans, and a brand new six-wheeler off-roader that was probably Tobin’s expedition truck.

  Of my car, there was not a trace.

  That disappearance broke the stranglehold of my fear. The realisation that another agency was at work in my affairs bolstered me, though I had no idea who it was. I still stank of ammonia and fear, but I rediscovered some function in my legs. I stumbled after my captors into the bar. At our entrance, the noisy room fell silent.

  We stood there in the middle of the low-ceilinged saloon. The lanterns in the room multiplied the flickering shadows of Elue’s policemen against the walls. The hotelier stared from behind her counter.

  ‘Are you Ma’Calico?’ asked Sergeant Elue, slapping his baton against his thigh.

  ‘Tha’s what they call me.’

  ‘Where’s your daughter?’

  There was a snigger from the shadows around the bar counter. Ma’Calico killed it with a glare. She stepped out from behind the counter. ‘Did they send you to laugh at me, or what is it? I born girl for you?’

  ‘Where’s the room you rented to this criminal?’ shouted Patrick Suenu, gesturing to me, as he pushed to the fore of the posse. ‘We are here to search it for my money! Listen, woman, it is over, you hear me? Your tenant here has confessed.’

  Ma’Calico looked at me blankly. ‘Confessed what? Who is this man?’

  Sergeant Elue pushed her out of the way and I led them through the warren of rooms that was Ma’Calico’s Hotel. The room that had been mine was locked and did not open to my key. Elue rapped on the door; when it opened, it was to reveal a sleepy, half-naked trucker who seemed more surprised to see us than I was to see him. Elue hummed tonelessly as they turned the room inside out in search of money, and my wounds throbbed with anticipatory pain.

  He dragged me back to the parlour, my feet scrabbling to keep pace. Ma’Calico had not moved. She stood with planted feet as Elue pushed my face within an inch of hers.

  ‘You don’t know this man? He says he’s your tenant, your daughter’s boyfriend.’

  I thought I saw a flicker of life in her eyes when the bit about the boyfriend came out, but she only sniffed long-sufferingly. ‘I have to have daughter first before she can have boyfriend, not so? I have nice hotel here where you can sleep and baf before you go. Is three thousand naira for room-and-baf. If you stain my bed sheet, is another five hundred naira. Do you want or not?’

  ‘Woman,’ warned Elue, ‘you may not be involved in this case, but that will change if you lie to me.’

  ‘It’s not here,’ urged Patrick Suenu from the door. ‘Let’s go for the Korba man.’

  Ma’Calico sniggered, pushing the antiquated muzzle of a Mark IV rifle out of her way as she returned to her place behind the counter, ‘You’re going to Korba Adevo and his roughboys this night with these your olden-days guns? I sorry for you.’

  Elue stormed outside, where he ripped the tarpaulin cover off the rear of one of his trucks. He jumped behind a submachine gun and a second later released a volley of automatic gunfire into the night. The police dogs went crazy, the saloon emptied outside, and a crowd began to gather around the angry policemen. In that militarised delta, they did not seem impressed by the firepower on show. Even Ma’Calico had a submachine gun inside a bag of rice in her pantry. A second arms truck had recently been abandoned just outside Kreektown and Amana had told me how Ma’Calico had taken the submachine gun from a roughboy in settlement of his tab. The hotelier didn’t like guns but she didn’t see the sense of being the only business in town without one, either.

  ‘Bring down the bikes!’ barked Elue.

  A tarpaulin came off another truck, ramps were fixed to the rear, and four ungainly motorbikes wheeled down. The new Kreektowners knew their bikes, and the new police issues attracted a little more respect, but Ma’Calico had seen enough tomfoolery for the night. ‘You better hire my donkeys if you’re entering that swamp this night . . .’ she said as she returned to her counter.

  Her business wiles did not wash with Elue. Within minutes the policemen were ready to march on Adevo’s hideout, and there was not an equine ass in the lineup.

  Hameed the secret service agent turned up, attracted by the gunfire. His easy charisma was gone and he glowered resentfully at the villagers, clearly still smarting from his humiliating trip to Abuja during the secession party. He took Elue aside. Moments afterwards, the sergeant stormed back into the bar, Hameed in tow. We could hear his roar from the courtyard.

  Ma’Calico was not intimidated. ‘So you’re talking about Mrs. Udama? You should have said so. Siddon wait for am, she will soon be back.’

  ‘Is she not your daughter?’ asked Hameed.

  ‘You’re mad, you. All my customers call me ‘Mama,’ so is me that born all of them, not so?’

  ‘Let’s go for the Korba man,’ begged Patrick Suenu again from the door.

  ‘Whether she’s your daughter or your customer,’ warned Elue, ‘you better find her before I come back, otherwise . . .’ Then he turned to follow Patrick, ‘You’re coming with us?’ he asked Hameed.

  The secret service agent grinned. A grudge against Kreektown was one thing; a gratuitous gunfight was evidently another. ‘No, Sarge. I’m doing one important undercover investigation like that in Ntupong’s joint.’

  I was assigned to the pillion of the lead motorbike, and the headlamps lit up the track into the forest. Patrick Suenu travelled on the second bike with Sergeant Elue, whining about the warning shots, which could have scared off Adevo with his money. From Elue’s indifference it was clear that the sergeant would far rather avoid a shootout than die for Patrick’s money.

  As we left Kreektown, I heard Tobin Rani’s unmistakable voice in the distance: ‘Arazie, Arazie.’ It took me back years. Among the Menai a woman who needed to rest—or make more babies—would send her young children to a neighbour to borrow some arazie. There was no such thing; it was a naughty adult code that told indulgent neighbours to send children round the houses for a while to buy a frazzled mother some respite.

  After their frenetic barking in the carpark of Ma’Calico’s Hotel, the township dogs seemed as cowed by the swamp as their owners, and I heard only whines on the outward journey. Within a few minutes we had to abandon the heavy bikes, which had become mired in the viscous earth. The policemen staggered on after me, cursing and swearing, up to their ankles in mud.

  Finally we arrived at Adevo’s clearing, where I sank to my kn
ees in disbelief.

  ‘Where’s the tent?’ asked Elue, playing his torch around as his men swarmed the bald spot where the tent had stood. ‘Where’s the generator? Where’s Adevo?’

  My fingers were trembling from the cold and the fear of the baton. When it rapped against my skull, I toppled over and lay still. In that night it was easy to become disoriented, but in the light of the torches, with the anchor of that dilapidated jetty—missing a boat and jeep now—with that sweeping view of the creek . . . it was impossible to be mistaken. Except that Adevo’s massive tent was gone.

  ‘’Shun!’ called Elue. His tired, stinking men straightened, energized by the cancelled gunfight. ‘About turn!’

  ‘You can’t turn back now,’ cried Patrick. ‘I’ve mobilised you!’

  ‘Your money has expired!’ snapped the policeman without embarrassment.

  The return march started, approaching me where I lay. Patrick ran after Elue, arguing, ‘But she confirmed it, that Calico woman, Korba is here. This boy is hiding the real location . . .’

  ‘Am I going to search the whole of Niger delta this night for your stupid money? What is it?’ He dragged me to my feet, swearing, ‘If we get lost this night, I’ll bury you here!’

  We returned to the head of the column. As we went, the nervousness of the policeman penetrated my own funk. I saw how exposed and vulnerable they were, walking in single file through a forest at night. Elue’s fierce grip on my collar was more fear than his native brutality, and it strengthened me, giving my body a second wind beyond torture.

  Arazie! This was Tobin’s signal then: I was to take the policemen on a wild goose chase to buy the villagers time. Despite my memories of disabling pain, I found the courage to take a wrong turn. In minutes, I was hopelessly lost myself.

  We soldiered on forever through cloning paths. One by one, the bright torches dimmed and died until we had only a few anaemic lights in the front of the march. An hour passed, and then another. Drifts of smoke came and went, and the acrid smell of burning became insistent. The oppressive darkness drew closer and the policemen grew more fearful. I fed off their fear. Elue had to have realised that our return was already three times as long as the outbound trip, but he seemed afraid to ask the obvious question. Patrick had fallen silent and had fallen back from the exposed fore into the middle of the group. Eventually, I stopped creekside, in front of Utoma’s poultry shed.