The Extinction of Menai

by Chuma Nwokolo

  but Exodus was a week in the making,

  and when Menai flowed from Kantai

  there was not one of her children left behind.’

  ‘There was not one of her children left behind.’

  The gathering cupped their hands in solemn applause as Mata Nimito fell silent. The older Menai spoke of Mata renditions that went on for five hours at a stretch, but this was his longest, most intense, performance in recent memory. They touched upraised palms in farewell and drifted home silently, salting away the song in memory.

  * * *

  TUME WAS a quick study. He was particularly drawn to the mananga, and within six months it was no longer possible for the villagers to tell whether it was the old man playing or his young servant. He never did set up his restaurant. He soaked in the Mata’s teachings and passed his memory tests, and he knew that given wisdom and the salt of the ancestors he would succeed the mata. Nine months passed and Tume married Malian, buried their child, built his own mananga, and was getting bookings to play at functions as far away as Sapele and Port Harcourt.

  * * *

  THERE WAS a new excitement in Kreektown. Most evenings, when the mananga struck up they would listen in the village for the first ten minutes, to see whether it was a tune-up or a jam. If Tume was in the mood for a session, generally the village emptied towards Mata Nimito’s enclosure. It was years since the Mata last had a successor. There was a time when Tobin Rani had been called to copy the ancient texts, when he may have thought he would be the choice, despite his bloodline. But Tobin soon loved Tume as a brother, and when he was called to fetch his twins in the Sudan, he came for the counsel of the Mata and travelled with Tume and Malian to Khartoum.

  BADU

  Ubesia | 22nd April, 2005

  I woke slowly, knowing what I had to do. That certainty helped me to manage the fear that came with the knowledge. I found a heavy-duty torch in the main kitchen and an extra BL-5C phone battery. I left the chalet and walked down to the sweep of water where the outboard motors were moored. The guard was smoking a wrap while he twisted souvenir bicycles and motorcycles from copper wire. Every now and again the lantern flickered as a moth found the flame and perished. Three mosquito coils around him spread their sulphuric smell like a mantle. He pressed a toke on me, and I took a long, unaccustomed pull, so that when I finally stepped off the jetty I wasn’t sure whether I was running on bravery or dope.

  I did not know the waterway home. I had taken the ferry many times between Kreektown and Ubesia, but I had never boated there myself. Yet the stars were out, and despite the cloning waterways of creek country, there was never a chance of my getting lost.

  The journey was up-creek against the current, with a wind behind me that made the surface of the water choppy. The outboard motor tore a sacrilegious hole in the silence of night. I tied up at the deserted Kreektown jetty, waiting a few minutes for the silence to return to its previous tenor. I sat there, bobbing on Agui Creek, allowing the memories to wash over me. Looking north from the creek, I could just make out the abandoned classrooms of Kreektown Secondary, my alma mater, which we all called Nimito’s School. I stepped out onto the ferry stage.

  It was now a true ghost town.

  During that walk home, Badu seeped out of the urn in which he lived, licking his fury into the spaces of my life, burning away frivolities, firing the pliable clay of my weak vexes until it became a ceramic rage. An ugly bitterness soured my tongue, poisoning my anticipation of the future with the irremediable pain of my past. As I walked down those benighted streets I heard the laughter of my rested youth, heard Malian’s warm banter, felt Tume’s presence . . . and I heard all that in the creak of a door on a broken hinge swinging out of the way of errant breezes, saw all that in the desolate holes of windows, in the burnt-out homes, and in the feral dogs that growled from the windowsill of Ma’Bamou’s house.

  My rage was laser-thin again. Those two feet that walked Kreektown’s ashen streets left deep footprints from the weight of nation on my shoulders. And yet, I was no longer free . . . Badu could no longer do without reservation. There were all the possibilities of Amana, all the responsibilities . . .

  I walked into the Atturk house and stood in the threshold, in the darkness, breathing deeply, receiving. The rage of the Menai’s crown prince filled me and I turned and exhaled it into Mata Nimito’s skies. It was wide enough, deep enough for all the troubles of mankind. I fought the beast of Badu with the equanimity with which the ancient Nimito had faced the inevitable end: he was there again, the poetic spirit of the Mata, counselling peace to the vengeance of his crown princes. I fought until I was shaking with the fury of it. Then I turned, disconsolate, into the claustrophobic house.

  It had not been torched. I snapped the light up and down, through the small house. I was alone with the rodents and bats that screeched through in flaps of night, snagging insects with each pass.

  I stood silently, waiting. I had learned the hard way that memories fled when I searched actively for them. They would be nowhere in sight when I hunted desperately. When I reached out slowly, they were often there at hand. Without trying to remember, I turned around in the dark, around and around . . .

  I went towards the well in the courtyard. Halfway there, I stopped. It was obvious and it was wrong. I sighed.

  I went to the grave of the dead judge and dug up his phone once again to swap in the new battery pack. On my way out, I ran my hand over the jamb of the door; there, in the crevice where I used to hide my savings, was Badu’s last video card. I smiled. It was time for Adevo to earn Patrick Suenu’s money all over again.

  I was hurrying after that. I ran to the jetty, jumped in the boat, and spun it around and roared out into the middle of the creek, gunning the throttle hard until I could feel the vibration right through my body, I sped through the mangroves until it opened up, the creek, with wider spans of skies and sweeps of water. As I neared Ubesia, I killed the engine and let the boat drift awhile. With steady hands, I thumbed on the phone and scrolled the call log to her number. I dialled.

  She answered on the third ring. Her voice was thick with sleep, but there was no grogginess there. ‘Who is this?’

  ‘You know,’ I said quietly. And waited, and waited, for her to run out of curses.

  I had drifted a mile before she lost her voice. I had learnt far more about the Omakasa family than I cared to know.

  Hoarsely, she demanded, ‘Why are you calling me, you freak?’

  ‘To give you a chance to . . . say what you’ve just said.’

  ‘And that makes it better? Murderer, ease your conscience if you like, you’ll still hang for it. I’ll come and watch the trial—’

  ‘I’m free,’ I said casually. ‘They got the wrong man.’

  There was the faintest of pauses. ‘I see. This call is to get your accomplice released! The effrontery! You take me for a fool? He’ll hang, and they’ll get you, too, now that I know you are still free.’

  I shut my eyes. The boat creaked underneath me. I struggled to keep my voice indifferent.

  ‘I don’t have accomplices. Pitani knows that.’

  ‘Pitani identified . . .’

  ‘Pitani was wrong. They arrested a mentally ill British writer who has never been to Nigeria before. Google Humphrey Chow—and look, I really don’t care. But when they hang him, you will also have blood on your hands . . . except that, unlike me, the blood will really be innocent blood.’

  ‘Why did you call?’

  ‘You want to bury your father’s body?’

  She was silent for an age while I drifted several yards down-creek.

  ‘Listen, your father took a bribe and sentenced the Menai to extinction. I am not sorry I killed him, but I have nothing against you as a person, and some folks like a place to take flowers. Do you?’

  ‘Yes,’ she breathed.

  ‘I’m sending Pitani’s video out today. I’ll include the location of the judge’s body.’ I paused. ‘You won’t hear from
me again.’

  ‘Wait!’

  I waited. ‘Hello?’ I prompted eventually.

  ‘Giving me a rotting body changes nothing,’ she said, softly, with incandescent malice. ‘You’ll still burn in hell.’

  I looked at the phone quietly. Then I put it to my ear again. ‘In that case, I’ll give your father your regards. You just try to save yourself.’ I broke up the phone a final time, stowed the battery, and dropped the rest of it overboard. I was trembling under the weight of responsibility for the deeds of Badu, fighting the overwhelmingly seductive desire for schism, to bury him deep and slab over the memory of what he . . . of what I had done . . . But I had done just that for years—slabbed away my people and their fate, only to feed the venom to a Badu. I was not walking that path again. I let the viciousness of her rage wash through me. I sloughed that into the inky creek as well, as well as I could.

  There was an agreeable aroma in the air, and I realised I was the object of curious scrutiny. I had drifted into a darkened grove whose giant trees locked fronds, like fingers, over my head. A line of huts built on stilts hugged the east bank of the creek. On the makeshift verandah of one of those huts a young man seared fingerlings on a wood fire. He had a small, ironic smile. ‘Oyibo, come chop,’ he said.

  I tied up my boat on a stilt and clambered carefully up to his balcony. The walls were thin. I did not know how many families were asleep, and it did not seem the time for conversation, but his name was Kofi Brass. And the fish was good. ‘Fine boat,’ he said enviously, tossing picked-over skeletons of fish into the creek. The fish were leftovers from his anaemic catch, and we took them fresh from the net beside him.

  ‘Fine fish,’ I said.

  He was young, but he sat hunched over like an old man, his vest white and luminous in the light of the small fire. He put a thumb and little finger to his ear and mouth. Sympathetically, he asked, ‘Your wife?’

  I nodded, guardedly, wondering how much of my conversation he had overheard. He was about the age I was when I fled the delta. I wondered at his past. I wondered at his future . . . if Badu would leave him any . . .

  It was 6:00 a.m.

  NANGA-NOMINEE AMANA

  Ubesia | 22nd April, 2005

  I watched the boat come in, wondering who it bore: the coward I resented and loved, or the hero I feared and admired. I did not know whether to be cross or pleased. I had told him not to leave the estate; it was much too dangerous, with all the Badu flak flying . . . yet he had travelled all the way from Europe to me with a price on his head . . . and I knew I would not much care for a man who did as he was told, anyway. I watched him tie up and then climb the stairs that led up to the South Chalets. I dressed swiftly, folding my headdress into my bag. The traditional session for choosing the Nanga was being held that morning, and Justin would be waiting, with his judgmental eyes.

  I opened the door and saw Lantanya. I did not know how long she had been standing there. The oldest of my half sisters was also the best educated of us, and she had led their tight-lipped but determined opposition to my appointment. Only her respect for Nanga Saul had kept her from filing a court action. Now she was holding the instruments I had signed the night before. ‘What’s this family trust nonsense?’

  I sighed. ‘I told Uncle Justin not to show you that until—’

  ‘Uncle Justin does what he wants, even with Papa.’

  ‘So. Will you do it?’

  ‘Next time you want to bribe someone, give her something she doesn’t already own. I have been running Papa’s business for the last eight years.’

  I shrugged. Softly I said, ‘But you don’t own it, Lantanya. Nanga Saul willed control to me.’

  She smiled contemptuously at me and I swallowed. Before her, I had been unable to call him ‘Papa.’ The old resentment began to grow again.

  ‘Why?’ she asked. ‘Why would you give control of the Nanga’s haulage business to us, unless you know the DNA tests will come back negative?’

  ‘That is why I told Uncle Justin not to give them to you now,’ I said evenly, ‘until I am undisputedly Nanga, until you can take them as a gift, not a bribe.’

  She stared at me with intense, intelligent eyes. In the crook of her sneer, a tic jumped intermittently. I shut the door softly behind me. ‘Besides, you’ve run it well for years.’ She did not step aside as I tried to edge past her. There were half a dozen inches between us, and I stopped and locked eyes with her. ‘And there’s no point leading the Sontik, if I can’t lead my own family.’

  She was silent for a long time. The early dawn was still but for the swish-swish of a gardener scything a lawn. It was true that I had never missed having siblings: not until the reading of the will, when I stood in the same room with three grown half sisters in whom I saw uncanny fragments of me replicated and remixed. The last time, there had been so much distance, and I had despaired over the hard words and the mean emotions that swirled between us. This dawn, there were just those six inches, begging a truce of words. I put my arms around Lantanya, but I had misconstrued her involuntary proximity: I was hugging a statue with breasts of adamantine.

  ‘You trade a wealth you cannot keep for a throne you cannot get,’ she said quietly. ‘My father may have been senile in his old age, but even a DNA result cannot make you my sister.’ She turned away. At the head of the stairs, she paused. Her voice was measured and determined. ‘There has never been a female nanga, ever. And if there were going to be one, it would have been me.’

  In another moment I was alone in the corridor. I was angry, but only at myself. First, I was jumping all over Estelle in her Abuja hotel room—like a short-model Ma’Calico auditioning for a Big Brother house; now I was trying to cuddle up to the sitting CEO of the multinational Bentiy Haulage. I had to get my head back in gear. My name was Amana Udama, not Evarina Udama—and Ma’Calico was dead. No one was ever going to fall helplessly into the arc of my embrace. If I could keep one man there for all of his natural life, that was more than enough. For all the rest, I had to take care of business—in businesslike fashion. If love made the world go round, it was my duty to cure its dizzy spells.

  ESTELLE BAPTISTE

  Ubesia | 22nd April, 2005

  I wrapped myself in self-pity, in a blanket, and watched him through the curtains where he squatted on the balcony. I kept repeating the refrain that had kept me sane through the previous day: ThisisnotIzak. Thisisnot-Izak. It did not help. They were not the same person—Zanda’s Nigerian accent broke the spell as soon as he opened his mouth—but I could not stop staring at him, and between my desire for him to be my husband and for my husband to be free, I was going crazy myself. In Abuja, Izak’s trial was still going on, but with the state of emergency affecting flights and travel by road too dangerous, I could not get there.

  I rose. I had to walk, run, get away.

  I snatched a bag and a shawl and skittered to the door. I was out on the balcony, then on the stairs. I clattered down the first flight, onto the landing, and stopped. He had not moved. Something about his attitude stopped me, and I walked back slowly until I was standing between him and his view. His eyes were open and unseeing, blinking steadily. I sank slowly down until I was sitting on my heels, like him, at eye level. His face was scrubbed clean of emotion. I peered into his eyes, trying to see into that place where the brothers lost themselves.

  I touched his face. I saw him slowly come back to himself. I saw the focus of the eyes seize my face, I saw the muscles of his face force a smile that did not reach his eyes. He swallowed, raised his brows, took my hand.

  It was the closest I had ever been to this brother.

  ‘Where were you?’ I asked.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Just now. What were you seeing?’

  ‘You think I’m crazy too?’

  I grinned. ‘I think you are . . . passionnant . . . too.’

  He did not talk for a while. Then his eyes glazed a little. ‘Maybe I should give myself up, Dee—’

  ‘
Please don’t call me that.’

  ‘Why? I thought . . .’

  ‘It does something to me, when I hear it from you. Only Izak calls me that. And Amana now; she will not listen. My name is Estelle.’

  ‘Estelle,’ he said softly, which was almost as bad, ‘I don’t know what I would have done this morning . . . if . . .’

  ‘If what?’

  ‘A young lad invited me to share his breakfast. A part of me was going to kill him if—’

  I laughed quickly. This was not the sort of confession I liked to hear. ‘I’ve felt like killing Mishael—my brother—a thousand times.’

  His smile disappeared. ‘I’ve done more than feel.’

  I squeezed his hand. Nervously. ‘Did you kill him?’

  He shook his head vigorously.

  ‘Is that progress?’

  His eyes glazed again. ‘I couldn’t kill Pitani either. The inspector general. I remember . . .’ He took a deep breath. ‘Don’t worry about Humphrey, he’ll be out soon. I’ve taken care of it.’

  We looked down at the same time, at the bottom of the stairs. We had not heard her approach until her heel clicked the bottom step. He let my hand go. There was a cold smile on her face. ‘The trial is on TV,’ she said.

  We stood slowly as she came upstairs. I had done nothing wrong, so why did I feel guilty?

  He walked past her. ‘I have a few things to sort out,’ he said, just as coldly.

  Then he was gone.

  * * *

  WE WATCHED the trial in the small living room. She sat with arms folded, legs crossed, withdrawn. It was the third day of the trial at the special tribunal. The crowd was still outside, screaming, Badu! Badu! Inside the tribunal sat my husband, in the same chair, staring as blankly as his brother had, a few minutes earlier. Some policeman stood in the witness box, giving evidence. Suddenly I knew they were going to kill him. Mishael had been right. I hated this country, especially this woman who played the saint, only to act the adolescent because I held my brother-in-law’s hand. I wished I had stayed in my hotel in Abuja, instead of coming to Ubesia to be trapped so far from Izak. I grabbed the blanket, entered the bedroom, and slammed the door against her. I fell on the bed. I piled the bedclothes over my face and wept.