by Wole Soyinka
Furo turned to Syreeta. ‘I’ve seen the opening. Do you want to turn around? Aren’t we going to see your friend any more?’
‘We are,’ Syreeta replied. ‘See where the petrol station is? VGC gate is right beside it. I’ll cross over and drive by the side of the road till we reach the gate. If I stay here I’ll have to go far ahead, I’ll have to follow this traffic till after Ajah junction, then turn around and start coming back. With this go-slow, that will take us at least another thirty minutes.’
Furo was tired of sitting, his buttocks ached, and yet he wasn’t eager for Syreeta to take the shortcut. He felt too conspicuous to break laws openly.
He spoke. ‘I don’t trust that LASTMA guy.’
‘He won’t try anything,’ Syreeta responded, and turning to smile at Furo, she added in a teasing tone: ‘You white people fear too much.’
Furo didn’t return her smile. ‘I still think it’s safer to stay on the road.’
Of course Syreeta ignored his warning, and after she forked over two hundred naira for the illegal toll – special fee for special people, white goatee said with a brooding glance at Furo – and drove through the breach, of course the traffic warden jumped down from his perch and bolted forward to accost the car. Syreeta tried to drive around him, but the man was nimble for his size and he also seemed to have no regard for his life. When finally he leaped on to the bonnet and bumped his forehead against the windscreen, smearing the glass with sweat, Syreeta braked the car to a stop, wound down her side window, switched off the ignition and removed the key, then stuck out her head. ‘Are you crazy?’ she yelled. ‘Do you want to break my windshield? What sort of nonsense is this?’
The traffic warden slid off the bonnet, dashed to Syreeta’s side and grabbed the steering wheel through the open window. ‘Your key,’ he puffed, and glowered at Syreeta with his sun-darkened face only inches from hers. His chest rose and sank with each breath.
‘Are you joking?’ Syreeta snapped. ‘I’m not giving you my key!’
‘Give me your key, Madam,’ the traffic warden said again in a voice whose threatening tone had jumped several notches, and his knuckles bunched on the steering wheel.
‘No,’ Syreeta said, and shook her head in emphasis, leaned back in her seat, calmly returned his stare.
‘You this woman, I’m warning you o, give me the key!’
‘Why?’ Syreeta shouted back. ‘Oya, tell me first, what did I do?’
‘You don’t know what you did, ehn? OK, I will tell you after you give me the key. Just do as I order. Obey before complaint.’
‘No fucking way,’ Syreeta said.
‘You’re looking for trouble.’ This said quietly, his tensed forearm trembling through the window. Vapours of cold air wafted out of the car into his shiny face.
‘You’re the one looking for trouble,’ Syreeta said. ‘Didn’t you see other cars passing? How come it’s me you want to stop? You think you’ve seen awoof? You better get out of my way if know what’s good for you!’
‘If you move I will show you!’ the traffic warden growled in warning, at the same time shoving his second hand through the window to grasp the steering wheel. His flexing muscles seemed prepared to wrest out the steering wheel, and his expression showed he would try, but Syreeta, to Furo’s growing wonder, didn’t appear in the slightest bothered by the suppressed violence of those arms in front of her chest. With a mocking laugh she averted her face, stared straight through the windscreen, ignoring the traffic warden. It was a deadlock.
Furo knew there was nothing he could say to defuse the situation, and nothing he could do in his broke state, but still he felt compelled to act. He leaned across Syreeta, met the traffic warden’s hostile eyes, and said in a beseeching tone, ‘Excuse me, oga,’ but Syreeta whirled around and shushed him with a curt ‘No.’ He settled back in his seat. Syreeta was handling this all wrong. She should be ingratiating herself to the traffic warden, not provoking the man to arrest her. With her car impounded she would pay a fine many times larger than the bribe that had prompted the traffic warden to pick on her, while he, for all his exertions, would get nothing except paperwork to fill.
The traffic warden broke the silence. ‘Answer me, Madam,’ he said, and Syreeta did, she turned her face to the window and told the man in haughty tones that she would have his job for the embarrassment he was causing her. Furo rolled his eyes in exasperation at her words. But surely she must know what to do, he thought. Nobody who had lived in Lagos more than a week could remain ignorant of the survival codes, and yet Syreeta flouted rule after rule. The traffic warden had begun shouting the threat Furo was waiting for – he demanded to board the car and lead Syreeta to the nearest LASTMA office. Bureaucratic hellholes, LASTMA offices, and if the traffic warden made good his threat then Syreeta would be lucky to retrieve her car before the month’s end. And only after paying a heavy fine and settling the bill for mandatory driving lessons and a psychiatric evaluation, this last a precondition for allowing her back into the madness of Lagos roads. Furo felt he had to warn her, and he opened his mouth to do so, but Syreeta spoke first.
‘Furo, I’m sorry, please get down from the car.’
He tried to catch her eyes. ‘This is not the best way—’
‘I know what I’m doing,’ she cut him off, her right hand cleaving the air in time to her words. ‘I’ll deal with this idiot my own way. Just get down.’
Sighing in resignation, Furo reached for the door handle, and the traffic warden released his grip on the steering wheel and sprinted around the car’s front. As the man grabbed the door and yanked it open, Furo looked at Syreeta. ‘Should I sit in the back?’ he asked. ‘I don’t mind following you to the LASTMA office.’
‘No need,’ Syreeta said. Then she noticed the anxiety on Furo’s face, and her expression softened, she curved her lips in a smile intended to reassure. ‘It’s OK, I have this under control.’ She cast a look around. ‘But there’s no place for you to wait around here,’ she muttered, as if chiding herself. ‘Oh, I know. Why don’t you walk to VGC? Go inside and wait for me near the gate. I won’t be long.’
Behind Furo the traffic warden snorted with derision, and Syreeta threw him a vicious look. Furo spoke quickly to forestall the attack gathering in her face. ‘If that’s what you want,’ he said, and climbed down from the car, then stood watching as the traffic warden clambered in and slammed the door. He heard the harmonised clicks of the car’s central lock, followed by the whirr of Syreeta’s side window closing. When Syreeta and the traffic warden turned on each other with furious faces, Furo spun around and strode away from their muffled yapping.
Avoiding the curious stares of the pedestrians he passed, Furo walked quickly to the filling station, then cut across its concrete expanse and approached the double gates of Victoria Garden City. Two lines of cars flowed through the estate gates, entering and leaving. In front of the entry gate, right beside the sleeping policeman, stood a uniformed guard. Hands clasped behind his back and feet spread apart, he eyeballed each car that clambered over the bump. He raised his head as Furo approached, and his shoulders stiffened, his features gathered into a scowl. Furo realised there was someone walking behind him. A man wearing black jeans and a white T-shirt, his hair cornrowed, a rhinestone stud glinting in one ear. Furo turned back around, and slowed his steps to a shuffle, unsure if he should walk past the guard or state his business. Deciding on the action least likely to cause offence, he halted by the guard and said, ‘Hello.’
‘Good afternoon, sir,’ the guard replied with a smile. ‘Are you here to visit?’
‘Yes,’ Furo said.
‘I see, I see,’ said the guard, and ran his hands over the front of his epauletted shirt, smoothing it out. He ignored the cars entering the estate; he stared hard at Furo’s nose. ‘Who is the person you want to see?’
‘I don’t know her name . . . she’s the friend of my friend,’ Furo said. ‘Well, actually—’
‘I see, not a problem
,’ the guard interrupted, and threw a suspicious look at the cornrowed man waiting behind Furo. ‘What is her house number?’
‘I don’t know,’ Furo said. ‘The thing is, I’m supposed to—’
‘Not a problem,’ the guard said and wrinkled his brow in contemplation of the problem before him. At that moment the cornrowed man made an impatient noise in his throat, and then he moved forwards, muttered ‘sorry’ to Furo, and said to the guard, ‘I’m going to Mr Oyegun’s house.’
The guard aimed a hard stare at him. ‘Can’t you see I’m attending to somebody?’
‘I’m in a hurry,’ the cornrowed man said, his voice urgent. ‘Mr Oyegun is expecting me. I know his house, I’ve come here before.’
‘Respect yourself, Mister Man!’ the guard barked at him. ‘Or you think anyone can just walk in here anyhow? Who are you anyway? Move back, move back – can’t you hear me, I said move back!’ He flapped his hands in the chest of the cornrowed man, drove him back behind Furo. ‘That’s how we Nigerians behave, no respect at all,’ the guard said to Furo with a grimace of apology. Lowering his voice, he asked: ‘Do you have your, erm, friend’s phone number?’
‘I was trying to explain,’ Furo said. ‘I’m supposed to wait for someone to pick me up here. If you don’t mind I’ll just stand in that corner.’ He pointed to a spot just inside the gate.
‘Oh, I see,’ the guard said, nodding his head. He waved Furo in. ‘Not a problem at all, you can go inside. Should I bring a chair for you?’
‘I’m OK,’ Furo replied. He passed through the gate, strode a few paces to the road’s grass shoulder, and turned around to face the road. The cornrowed man had moved forwards, he was speaking with the guard, who shook his head with vehemence and remained standing in the way. The cornrowed man flung up his hands and uttered something in complaint, then with a stony face he pulled out his mobile phone, dialled a number. After repeated attempts at reaching someone on the phone, all seemingly unsuccessful, the cornrowed man again spoke to the guard. The guard ignored him, he stood with his fists clenched and his boots planted apart, he glowered at passing cars. The cornrowed man gave up talking with a gesture of dismissal. Pocketing his phone, he whirled around and stalked off, and the guard glanced over at Furo. ‘Are you sure you’re OK, sir?’ he shouted across. ‘You’re sure you don’t want a chair?’
Syreeta drove through the gate barely three minutes later. Furo started to raise his hand, but let it fall when he realised she’d already seen him. She pulled up, and he climbed into the Honda’s chill, which was spiced with a whiff of the traffic warden’s sweat. The skin over Syreeta’s cheekbones was stretched tight, a vein beat in her temple, and the car radio was off. Furo knew better than to ask about the traffic warden, how she had got rid of him so quickly. He held his gaze away from her face; he stared through the windscreen. Road signs whizzed past. No honking. No hawkers. No litter. No parking. No okadas and danfos. The quiet through which the car sailed was deeper-rooted than the fact of the silent radio. No crowds, no roadside garbage, no traffic jam, no noise.
The Lagos he knew was far from this place.
from the forthcoming novel Our Time of Sorrow
Jackee Budesta Batanda
The bell announcing prayer time rang earlier than usual and more urgently this time. The bell was an old tyre rim tied to a mango tree branch dangling close to the ground. Its persistent ringing reminded me of the numerous times the phone in the vicar’s office rang. I had learned to tell the time by listening to the sounds in the night. The way the trees whistled meant that it was still early and although my brain had become accustomed to the bell ringing at a certain time, my body was still weak. I didn’t feel like praying today or ever again. I just wanted to remain lying on my mat, between the other sleeping forms, listening to the sound of their breathing and snores, and waiting for the End of the World. I tried to imagine what kind of dreams they had when their souls visited the land of dreams; instead my thoughts kept drifting to my own dream. It had been about Mzee Turomwe who doubted and would be killed. In my dream his head was dangling before me, his mouth wide open as if he had managed one last protest before his head was severed. His eyes kept winking at me, and then his mouth twitched into a smile before resuming its mournful countenance. I had opened my eyes to find myself on my sleeping mat and failed to get back to sleep again.
I had difficulty sleeping after I had crept out of the banana plantation ahead of Byaruha, who followed me much later as planned so as not to arouse suspicion. We knew we were treading on dangerous ground. During one Mass, Owa Puroguramu had announced that the Blessed Mother had banned sex because it made us impure. We were the brides of the Lord Jesus, and we had to keep our purity if we were to go to heaven. That had been the day marrieds were separated and banned from further sexual liaisons. I had not bothered about the purity because I never cleansed myself enough. In any case, none of the penance I performed could rid me of my original sin.
Byaruha had singled me out long before the prohibition on sex was announced. He said he would cleanse me of my sin and then I was too scared to know any better. I also gave in because he was one of the inner circle of police also known as the ‘Blessed Ones’ and I believed he had the powers to cleanse me. He had broken my virginity and since then had continued having privileges with my body.
I never stopped him. This was not as bad as the sin I had carried with me from birth, which made everyone stare at me as if I gave off a rotten stench. I was the love child of a married woman and a priest, a taboo within the community. I was blamed for every bad thing that happened, because of the ‘demon of seductive temptation’, they said, that had led to my birth. The visionary singled me out for exorcism, the day Ma and I joined the Movement. It seemed the demon that possessed me returned in another form and I did not chase it away. I gladly welcomed it back and let it repossess me. Byaruha seemed to know. I still had to do penance for that sin I had no hand in creating. I had accepted Byaruha’s intrusions on my body as a purging of my sin and had come to accept the sex as I had learned to carry the demon which had settled in my body from the day of my birth.
This morning I did not feel like seeking the grace or face of God. I wanted to lie in contentment with my little demon and listen to the voices that the woman who lived in a little store by the chapel had told me about. She was a closely guarded secret, only a few people within the community knew about her. It was my job to feed her and I had nicknamed her the Secret Woman – I didn’t know her name. The voices, she had said, communicated to us from beneath the earth, if we only learned to listen to them. These same voices had predicted Mzee Turomwe’s murder.
I started to move as the others woke up slowly from their fits of interrupted sleep. We were being called to the House of the Lord, and no one ignored the summons. I sprang up, threw my thin blanket aside, rolled my sleeping mat and joined the others heading for the door. We rushed to wash our faces, to rinse the sleep from our eyes and the dreams from our heads because lateness was a mortal sin. The bell could be the sign we were waiting for that the end had come. We wouldn’t want to be left behind. We brushed against each other but only nodded greetings as we scrambled for the door like people rushing out of a room on fire.
By the time we entered the chapel the elders and visionaries were already assembled. It was a large rectangular room. We usually sat on the cold cement floor when we were not standing. The wooden blinds were shut to keep out the early wind and the spirits that would still be loitering about at that time of the morning. We immediately took our places on the floor – children in one corner near the altar, while the rest of us took the remaining places. The guards leaned against the walls. We were told they were there to protect us from any attacks by the evil one. They were like archangels in heaven. The Bishop of our Blessed Virgin, Owa Puroguramu, the vicar and the parish priest. The other elders and visionaries, also known as the apostles, twelve in number, sat behind the altar where the statue of the Blessed Mother carrying her
son, and statues of the Holy Family stood. They sat on the only seats in the room, looking reverent, their hands on their laps.
The bishop was rarely seen at these Masses. We only saw him when an exorcism was taking place, and this was mainly when new members joined the Movement. His presence here also meant there had been another vision from the Blessed Mother. We sat in silence and waited. The vicar stood up and conducted the morning Mass as he did each day. This time he moved towards us sprinkling holy water, which fell on our faces, first stinging us with the cold and later rolling down our foreheads. It was a cleansing carried out before the Messenger stood to deliver the message from the Blessed Mother to ensure that the message fell on holy ground. With the sprinkling of holy water completed, the vicar returned and took his seat and waited for the Messenger. Owa Puroguramu had indeed received another message.
When she stood up we bowed in silence before raising our faces.
‘My children, do not despair. These are the last days, and only those who follow my teachings and listen to my message shall survive the terror. Pray and fast unceasingly that you may not be left behind. Pray against the demons of doubt. Pray and fast. Keep yourselves pure at all times. Many will fall but stand firm. You are my chosen ones . . .’ Her voice receded, and she started mumbling to herself as she was rocked by spasms. Then a small murmur started at the back of the gathering and picked up slowly as we all started praying out loud.