by Okey Ndibe
We had reached the superintendent’s office. Dr. Mandi tapped on the door and without waiting for an answer twisted the knob and walked in. The superintendent’s assistant gave us an indifferent look. Long thin strands of her braided hair fell over her eyes, which seemed dull with boredom. Her skin was sallow, daubed with black splotches, and a smell like that of rotten onion gave her away as a skin bleacher.
“Is your oga in?” asked Dr. Mandi.
“Yes, sir.”
“Tell him Doctors Mandi and Tijani are here to see him.”
“I remember you from yesterday, sir,” she said, indicating Dr. Mandi. “Take a seat, gentlemen.” As she ran off to the inner office to announce us, Dr. Mandi turned to me and flashed a wide satisfied smile.
As we talked, the superintendent shifted in his seat, his eyes darting from Dr. Mandi to me, back and forth. His office was clean, uncluttered. A grey filing cabinet. A standing fan that blew hot air across the room. A large bookshelf bearing only a copy of The Prison Manual. A dust-coated vase that held a bunch of plastic roses. Two desk trays marked by somebody in a fit of bad spelling, Pennding and Addrest.
After listening to Dr. Mandi’s account of the reasons for my presence the superintendent complained that he had not received any direct communication about me from His Excellency’s office. Dr. Mandi interrupted him with a high spurt of laughter.
“You should know the way of authority. The powers-that-be hardly deign to communicate their will directly to lower servants.”
The superintendent seemed about to say something in reply, but Dr. Mandi’s derisory laughter had wilted his confidence. He rammed his fist on a desk ringer and the assistant poked her head into the room, the rest of her body tucked safely behind the door. He asked her to run, quick quick, and fetch Corporal Felix. Moments later the warder sprang into the room, looking guilty, like a miscreant child.
“Bloody malingerer, what took you so long?” the superintendent bore down on him. Corporal Felix began to explain that he had come right away, but the superintendent raised his large, powerful arm. The warder hushed up in mid-sentence.
“Take these gentlemen to 1646. Immediately, with double quick march!”
Corporal Felix jumped at the command—a show of obedience that brought a small smile to his boss’s face.
The prison compound was deadly quiet, bare and barren. Grass lay about the surface like sun-dried algae churned out by the sea. A crisscross of concrete paths led to small detached buildings, each containing ten cell units. The cells were sunk in darkness. A horrible stench flowed out of each door we passed, the stink of unwashed bodies mingled with the foulness of things that come from within them: feces, urine, vomit, blood.
My bladder was bursting. I asked Corporal Felix where the toilet was. He shook his head and told me there was no running water. He pointed me to a spot on the wall.
“Na there we warders dey pee. Even superintendent, na there him too dey pee.”
A swarm of flies buzzed around the greyish spot.
“Thanks, but I’d rather not,” I said.
We stopped outside the cell marked 1646. Corporal Felix unlocked the iron-barred door, then stepped aside to let us into the cell.
Bukuru stood, his back propped against the wall that faced the door. His eyes gazed vacantly, hard.
“Thank you, corporal,” Dr. Mandi said to the warder. “You must leave now. Evaluations are conducted in private.”
The warder slunk away.
Bukuru’s hard eyes seemed to soften, but he remained silent.
“Meet Mr. Adero,” Dr. Mandi said to Bukuru. “But he’s known within these walls as Dr. A. F. Tijani.”
Bukuru steered his eyes to me. “Thank you for accepting my invitation. I liked the reports you wrote on my arrest and the trial.”
“Thank you.”
“You must wonder why I wanted to see you. It’s simple. I wanted to ask you to be the voice for my story.”
Voice. Voice?
“I don’t know the meaning of what you ask,” I said.
“My life’s in grave danger. For what I said in court, a decision was made to poison me.” He glanced at Dr. Mandi, who gave an absent-minded nod. “The plan has been shelved for now, because somebody leaked the information to the foreign press. But I don’t know what might happen in the future. Isa Palat Bello could become desperate.”
Mandi, without looking at us, nodded again.
“The doctor has been very kind. He’s given me sheets of paper to write my story—to describe my journey to this terrible place. I wanted to entrust the story to your hands. You never know, one day it may become possible to make it public.”
He sought my eyes. “Like you, I started out as a young man working for a newspaper. But I was weak: I never wanted to be touched by anything that quickened the heart or made the soul sweat. Now, when I wish to speak out, I have no way of making my voice heard—unless you will help me.”
I bore the weight of the two men’s eyes in silence, unable to fasten on any response. Why carry another man’s load? Especially under the circumstances, when I could not tell how profusely it would make my own soul sweat.
“I know I have asked a difficult thing,” he said, reading my thoughts. “But put yourself in my place. What choice do I have? This is a vicious fight, and I’m the underdog.”
Under the beseeching pressure of his gaze, I broke out shrilly, “I, too, know how it feels to be an underdog.”
I fought back the temptation to sketch for them the dreary facts of my own life. The day the mask I took for my true face was tom away, making me a mystery to myself. The terrible way I found out, at twelve, that I was an adopted child. The fruitless search for my biological parents. How, only a year ago, my girlfriend had deserted me, giving as her reason her parents’ discomfort with a suitor who was unaware of the source of his genes.
Bukuru and Dr. Mandi waited in silence. Would I extend a helping hand to one of the losers in the brutal game of life? I had to: I could not turn my back on him.
Bukuru said he would finish writing in a matter of days, at most a week. We agreed that Dr. Mandi would deliver the story to my home. In the guise of Dr. A. F. Tijani, psychiatrist, I could come back to see Bukuru if I had any questions.
“Why have you become involved in this dangerous scheme?” I asked Dr. Mandi as we walked to our cars.
He halted and raised his head to scan the sky. Then he sighed and his gaze came down, revealing eyes that had misted over.
“You and Bukuru both spoke of yourselves as underdogs. Well, I have known my share of troubles too. If you knew what they were, you might say that I have been the greatest underdog of all. But that’s another story.”
I extended my hand. “Here’s to the adventure of three underdogs, then. Goodbye.”
PART TWO
Memories
Dear Femi,
Your visit in the doctor’s company lifted my spirits more than I can express in words. In this grim cell where I spend my days and nights, I count my blessings in the coin of such moments.
In your hands now lies the possibility of my salvation or damnation. I live an unprotected life, with nothing to deflect what the world throws at me. No shock absorbers. Everything hits me in the raw, leaves a sore.
It hardly matters that yesterday, through the peep hole in my cell, I saw the sun rise and saw it set. Whether I will again behold this simple magic of nature today and tomorrow is a question other men will decide.
I send you this, my story, neither with joy nor triumph but with a sense of relief. There were times, writing it, when I was racked by doubt. How could I make sense of things happening to me today by speaking of things that happened so long ago? How could I prod my tongue to uncoil and learn to speak again?
I can’t even say I fully understand my own motives in writing this story. Is it a desp
erate way of clinging on to a life that lost its salt many years ago? Or a way of confessing my sins to myself, forgiving myself? Once upon a time I would not have been able to tell this story without first being at peace with my motives. I would have agonized endlessly, the narrative dead in my hand. Alas, I no longer have that luxury. Even if my motives are self serving I think there is still some good in relating these events. I am not afraid to admit it: the story is flawed, as I am flawed. But it is the story I have to tell.
And yet, I’d like to believe that I have written these words for worthier reasons. I hope I have written not just to save myself, not just to raise my finger and point it at another man (for how could a sinner like me accuse another?), but to examine where my life has intersected with our wider history, how I have touched larger events and been touched in return. I want to reckon up my journey and Madia’s, to calculate the cost of things done and things left undone.
Against the power of the state, I can only throw this story. I know: it is a feeble weapon. But it is the only weapon I have. A time shall come when those who today sit on the heads of others will themselves be called to account.
Chapter Six
Their eyes burrowed into mine, six eyes pretending to seek the truth. The voices I had collected over the many years of solitude crowded my head. They filled me with suspicion and distrust. Then one voice echoed clearly across space and time. “Remember,” it warned, “a story never forgives silence. Speech is the mouth’s debt to a story.”
My grandmother had first spoken those words to me, days after we buried my father. A shame I did not understand her then, for I would not today be in this tragic puzzle that becomes messier the harder I try to disentangle its knots.
The trouble began the moment I told the detectives I knew who raped the dead woman. Okoro fished out his notebook and held a pen to it with eager readiness.
“She was raped, you said,” he said. “How did you know that?”
He began to scribble even before I spoke.
I spoke without reluctance. I narrated the vivid details of the two-hour assault, the woman’s screams that had started just after 4 a.m., the male voices that tried to hush her up, the kicking and slapping that, finally, silenced her. I told the detectives how the men gathered themselves and went away, leaving the woman behind. How, a short while later, I searched for her through the dawn mist, following her sounds until I discovered where she lay. I told them about her low disgusted groans, her deathly panting. Then how, as I knelt beside her and spoke, she panicked.
“How were you able to determine the time of the assault?” Okoro asked.
“The bell at St. Gregory’s. It had just rung four times before I heard the screams. It rang six times just as her attackers were leaving.”
“You said earlier that you attempted to save her. How did she come to drown?”
“She panicked when she heard my voice. Then she bolted up and ran into the waves, shrieking all the way.”
“And what was she saying as she ran?”
“I couldn’t catch her exact words, but she seemed to be pleading and cursing at the same time.”
“Can you tell with certainty how many men raped her?” Lati asked.
“Not exactly. It was too dark when it all started. But the street lights illuminated the figures as they left. I certainly counted as many as six men. There may have been more, I can’t be certain. The mist was quite thick and I was at a distance. They left in a truck.”
“What kind?”
“A military truck.”
A shocked consternation came over the detectives’ faces. “What does that mean?” Musa snapped.
“The men were soldiers,” I said. “Members of the vice task force. They wore military fatigues.”
“What madness!” Lati blurted out.
“What are you suggesting?” Musa asked.
“The rapists were soldiers,” I said. “As I told you, men of the vice task force.”
“You can’t accuse soldiers falsely!” Lati said sternly.
“You can be shot dead for that!” chimed Okoro.
In as defiant a tone as I could muster, I asked, “Are you saying that the rapists were not soldiers? I saw them. And it was not the first time they raped women here. I even talked to one of their victims. Tay Tay is her name.”
The detectives glowered at me. Suddenly, Lati gave a laugh that was more a menacing flash of his teeth.
“Let me tell you something, my friend. We are not here to joke around with you. This is New Year’s Day. I would rather be at home with my wife and kids. Or with friends eating and drinking. Instead, I am at work because a woman is dead. Death is our business and we don’t joke with it. You just admitted you were the last person to see the woman alive. That’s a serious issue. If I were you, I would not be joking around. Or making ludicrous statements.”
“Let me restate the point,” I said. “The men who assaulted this woman were soldiers. I saw their uniforms and their truck. Last night was not the first time they raped women here. As I said, I actually . . .”
“Shut your mouth or I’ll shut it for you!” growled Okoro. He took a step towards me, as though ready to strike me. I cast him a quick look and said, “Isa Palat Bello is also a rapist and murderer.” The detectives shook with nervous rage.
“Who are you talking about?” asked Okoro.
“The Head of State. He raped a woman I knew. Her name was Iyese. Later he killed her. She, too, was a prostitute.”
Lati’s hand went to the gun secured on his waist. For a moment, my body stiffened. Then it relaxed again, ready for anything. Lati looked about him. The crowd’s presence seemed to irritate him. Slowly, he unclenched his fist.
“You cannot besmirch His Excellency’s name. We can summarily execute you. Enough of your nonsense. We’re here to do a very serious investigation. Would you describe the drowning as suicide?”
“No. She probably thought I was one of the soldiers who raped her.”
“Did you know the deceased by name?”
“No.”
“Did the deceased know your name?”
“No, she was a total stranger.”
“Describe for us in full how she died.”
“I have already told you. It began with a scream. Then she ran into the waves.”
“She ran,” echoed Musa. “Would you say you chased her?”
“Only to save her. I stopped when I realized she was too scared to be saved.”
“Would you say you aided her death?” he asked.
“No. The soldiers did.”
“Did you hinder it?”
“Her death?”
“Yes.”
“How could I? There wasn’t much I could do. I tried to save her. And now I’m helping you to discover what happened to her. That’s all I can do.”
“I wish to inform you that you’re a suspect in this death. In the name of the state I demand your name.” A hardness had crept into John Lati’s voice and face.
I said, “Secret. Exile. Bubble. Void. I have many names.”
“Book him as Mr. X,” Lati ordered his subordinates.
“That’s used only for unidentified male corpses,” Musa reminded him.
“Do as I ask you!” Lati thundered. His anger was now on the surface, thick.
“Okoro.”
“Yes sir?”
“Handcuff the suspect.”
“Yes sir!”
Okoro approached with metal manacles. I then offered up my hands. The handcuffs clanged shut around my wrists. Their steely iciness made me wince.
Until I found myself in an unmarked police car, handcuffed, I had never really examined the disheveled life I led as an exile. Indeed, as my years on B. Beach stretched out, it had come to seem as if the most important detour in my life had taken place in a vast vacuum, o
utside the regimen of time and space.
The stink of my body filled the car, repellent even to my nostrils. I remembered a favorite saying of my grandmother’s: “The odor that makes a man want to run away from himself carries death.”
The detectives drew up their noses, their lips zipped tight. Gazing at the manacles around my wrists, I suppressed the urge to laugh. What use was there in startling the detectives with the cry of a soul that, looking inward, saw much that was rotten and dead? Would they make sense of the journey that had taken me from the editorial board of a newspaper to their car? Was there a way in the world, or a language, to make them understand that my body had not always given off this repugnant smell?
The voice of my grandmother seemed to rise from deep within me. It again urged me to open up to the detectives, to unburden everything to them. Everything about my past and my present, about Iyese and Tay Tay and the common thread that linked them. Speak to them, her voice persuaded, about the shrieks that rent the air night after night. But they won’t listen, I argued back to this voice. Even so, the voice insisted, describe everything in a way that will defeat their doubts.
Five detectives joined Lati’s team at the interrogation unit, a wide, high-ceilinged room, bare save for a circle of seats round an uncushioned swivel stool that was fixed to the concrete floor. I was made to sit on this stool. The eight officers formed a ring around me, like a pack of famished hyenas entrapping a prey.
“We want nothing but the truth,” one of them said as the interrogation began. It was a high-pitched male voice, from behind me. “No beating about the bush. No rigmaroles. Now, how did you get the woman to the beach?”
I swung around on the chair, but saw, not one, but three stony faces.
“I didn’t get her to the beach. The soldiers did.”
“Did she come on her own?” the same voice asked. This time I saw him, a dark big man.