Prince of Monkeys

by Nnamdi Ehirim

  The major general’s office was filled with a large number of tatafos, both to our cause and to my story, so I would not delve into their details. It is necessary to know only that there was a table in each corner of the room, occupied by the ignorant, the lazy, the big-breasted, and the gluttonous. And as they were all unoccupied almost every day, it was quite obvious that they were all retailers of idle chatter, connoisseurs of high-society gossip, each taking pride in their own collection. It baffled me that the major general suffered to have them around, much less pay them. But as a titled chief in his village, he was expected to do something for the village youths. So, the tatafos massaged his Igbo man ego.

  If there was one thing that could publicly subdue his Igbo man ego, it would be his Igbo man religiosity. He swore to God at the slightest doubt of his integrity, was a patron of the Anglican Boys’ Secondary School, and had severe financial commitments to the building of the diocese’s new cathedral, never minding the fact that he bought Rolls-Royces for the last two bishops of the diocese. It was quite impossible to estimate how much his spending on God translated into his love for God if you were not aware that above and beyond all things, even God, the major general esteemed cash. He regularly espoused that cash made up for all shortcomings, and so whenever he disappointed any of his three hallows—God, Madame Messalina, or his wife—he made up for that by doling out cash. It is easy to come to terms with his strong belief that cash was the solution to Nigeria’s problems; if his cash seemed to appease God, what were a few millions of petty Nigerians? This is why I traveled to Lagos, with a suitcase of clothes for a week and another full of naira notes, and planned to speak with Mendaus in person for the first time in about five years.

  I had been back home to Omole in the past year, but there was still a disconnect between my mother and me. I had read all of the letters she had written to me when I was in Enugu but replied not once. She had accepted me with open arms anyway. My silence did not stem from anger or revocation of love. It was because I had spent all of the time, until my departure, believing we were symbiotic, each able to survive on the other’s love regardless of the challenges posed by the habitat. Sending me away was her declaration of independence, and keeping away was my equivalent. Simple! My father had also left for good a long time before, and she hid the pain well. Even though there were a few lines on her forehead and streaks of white in her hair, and her arms were more flab than firm, it was nothing unusual for a gracefully aging woman.

  This visit was different because Effy was around to bridge the chasm of words and thoughts. Effy had received admission into Queens College, Lagos, exactly two years before. Her school headmistress in Enugu had come to deliver the news personally to Uncle Adol and Aunt Kosi on a Saturday afternoon; they usually had a few students make it into Queens College and Kings College every year, but Effy had been the lone admission that year. Effy was ecstatic; she had never been among the best students in class and managed to write the entrance examination in Lagos only because she had lied to her parents that the trip was compulsory for every student in her year. Uncle Adol was satisfied because the fees were affordable, while the admission provided the luxury of bragging to all who bothered to pay attention that his child was schooling in Lagos. Aunt Kosi was miffed. How could it be that she had fasted and prayed for her youngest daughter’s future as diligently as she had, and God had fashioned His will for her to be cast into the midst of the Yorubas?

  Aunt Kosi could not fight Effy going to school in Lagos—Uncle Adol would be convinced the witches from Udi had possessed her soul to torment him—but she could fight Effy living in a boardinghouse with Yoruba strangers. And so Effy lived with my mother in Omole and left for school from there every morning, because the devil you know is better than the angel you do not know. She had grown as tall as Tessy in the last few years, only skinnier and darker-skinned; she was still as witty but less talkative. I imagined the latter was my mother’s effect on her.

  “When are you going to come to Enugu to see my place?” I asked my mother as Effy served dinner for everyone seated around the table.

  “Okporoko.” She picked up the dried stock fish Effy had just dropped in her egusi soup. “You will turn into this okporoko if you are waiting for me to start entering airplanes at my age. My heart cannot take it.” Effy stifled her laughter, and I could tell she had been rubbing off on my mother, too.

  I took a stroll out of the house after dinner to pick up wraps of smoke from the street vendor’s son. Before I’d left for Enugu, he’d been too little to be allowed to wander away from his mother’s kiosk, and so he’d watched us play football from across the street. Since then, his mother had built a proper shop of concrete and aluminum. And as she was not literate, he was in charge of writing out receipts and supplying the neighborhood smoke. In that same vein, everything else in Omole had changed. Within ten years, young aspiring couples had transformed into upper-middle-class families, empty plots where children played into duplexes, and dirt roads into tarred streets. I walked down to the end of the street, where a gully served as the boundary between Omole and the rest of the world, and I could hear pigeonholes on the recently erected metal gates clang open as I walked past them, allowing cautious night watchmen to observe the unknown stroller. Far away in the distance, yellow headlights of vehicles on the expressway descended slowly on each lane like angels on Jacob’s stairs. The heaven beyond the horizon was on the other side of the Third Mainland Bridge that lay at the foot of the expressway: Lagos Island, Victoria Island, Ikoyi, and Lekki—their big banks, finance firms, headquarters of oil companies servicing the Niger Delta fields, local branches of international corporations, and thousands of smokescreen businesses for nameless crooks. By the next morning, these angels would be summoned again to worship and praise the world’s unified deity—capitalism. And in a few nights, I would be worshipping the deity’s nemesis at its revered temple—the Afrika Shrine.

  I’d heard things had not changed much, but the nostalgia still choked me because I had not been there since the night Zeenat died. It was a Sunday afternoon, and the sun hung oppressively low over the Shrine, streaks of sweat held back by my brows like a river dam as I waited outside. Music had not begun playing inside, and so there was barely any activity. Mendaus and I had agreed to meet early in the afternoon to get all of the discussions out of the way before the evening groove. There was no crowd yet, and the vanity vendors were just setting up their stalls; under one such I was seated when Mendaus’s slender figure approached in a checkered blazer and plain trousers, trailed closely by a woman and none of the usual entourage that would accompany anyone who had mustered a bit of wealth or fame in this part of the world.

  “I never thought I’d see you put on a suit,” I said as he came closer; to judge by the look of surprise on his face, I suspected he had not recognized me until I had spoken.

  But he covered up well as I stood to embrace him. I went on, “And this your hair, still as tight and tacky as ever. Not even the limelight could trim or straighten it.”

  “I have to flaunt it if I was born with it. I mean, if Cindy Crawford can flaunt her body, I can flaunt my hair. Yes? It’s almost as if we have to wear trim hair to be recognized as sane nowadays. By the time we have children, we’ll need to be stinking rich to be validated as human beings.”

  “You haven’t changed a cell, always making a civil rights movement out of everything.”

  “My hair is a lifestyle choice; you’re the one making a movement of straightening it.” He stared me in the eye. “Unfortunately, I’m still the same guy. I still read a lot and drink as much as I read. I still fall in love instead of fucking and moving on, like you did with Zeenat.” I flinched, and he smiled coyly at the girl by his side. “I still eat pussy.”

  “But you . . .”

  “No wahala. I was just teasing about Zeenat.” The ice thawed as we made small talk, and when the conversation was warm enough, I unveiled my agenda.

  “I must admit you�
�ve made a lot of friends in the media. I follow your articles and speeches. They give you a lot of credit, and deservingly so,” I said. His attention was firmly knotted to my string of words despite the girl by his side toying with his sleeve. “But the one being carried never knows how far away the town really is.”

  “Ihechi, you’re confusing me. We’re not gray enough to be using proverbs yet. So right now am I the carrier or the carried?”

  “The carried.”

  “Why can’t I be a carrier? You still think I’m a weakling, don’t you? I do fifty push-ups a day now.”

  “You’re the carried because you’re trying to wage a war you don’t have the resources to win. The media have you looking like the messiah of the Jews, but which of them are going to stick their necks out for you when Pontius Pilate sentences you to death? Which of them are going to give you guns and spears? And by the way, I used to do fifty push-ups a day when I was in secondary school.”

  “I don’t need guns and spears to win this battle. And I do a hundred sit-ups apart from the push-ups.”

  “For crissake, I don’t mean actual guns and spears. I mean, you can’t face the system without any money. And even if you did two hundred sit-ups and push-ups a day, I wouldn’t bet on you going toe to toe with a teenager.”

  “Oh, I know teenagers who would knock you out. Who says I needed any money, though?”

  “A revolution has to be financed.”

  “Our revolution is of the mind, not material.”

  “And that’s fine with me, but is your mind bulletproof?”

  He chuckled; this was the first time I’d ever been in the position of winning a debate with him. About a dozen people ran out of the Shrine, and for a moment, Mendaus and I were distracted, but then he continued, “I know you didn’t come here to offer me guns and bulletproof vests, you know better. So what is it you’re offering, really?”

  “I know people who are willing to work with you if you’re ready, people who can expand the spread of your propaganda, people who can stir up grassroots support for your cause all over the country in regions where your name has never been heard, strong people with influence in the present government who could ensure your protection from government reprisals and turn your popularity into political clout.”

  “Who are these people now?”

  “You know I can’t tell you that just yet.”

  The people who’d run out of the Shrine had clustered together, and some of the vanity vendors were being sucked into the black hole of tittle-tattle. Mendaus continued still: “I understand, but no harm in asking, right? You could at least tell me why me, out of all the pricks in the government’s yansh.”

  “You’re a man of words, so I’ll borrow an idea from Aristotle: Every great curiosity begins from wonder. These people have seen, and are very amazed by, I must say, what you can muster on your own. It’s only natural that they wonder what more you could do with the right investment, especially because they are capable of providing such investments.”

  “Aristotle can take a seat. We’ve had wise men in Egypt who argued that every great curiosity begins from frustration, and I agree with them because a content man never wonders what could be better; that’s what frustrated men do. So, now, Ihechi, why are your people frustrated? They already have influence in the government, so it’s safe to say they dine with the military, but what is it they really want that they cannot have despite all their power and influence?”

  “The same thing you want. We are all trying to make this country better in whatever way we can. And sometimes whatever way means doing things together.”

  “I don’t buy that. They have money and protection and influence, they don’t need a figurehead to make whatever change they have the capacity to make. Unless a figurehead is actually what they need. They don’t necessarily need a revolution, just the revolutionary, a puppet, a poseur.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Mendaus.”

  “Are you part of this scheme or are you really ignorant to what’s going on? I don’t know who these people are, but they want a civilian coup, not a revolution. It’s the power that’s driving them.”

  “But it’s power that makes the decisions,” I said. “Good intentions never changed the world. For all you know, you still have a lot to learn. And these individuals can teach you a lot.”

  “I’m tired of their type, all these teachers teaching me nonsense. All along they have taught us about the power of the individual—fill ‘my’ wallet, feed ‘my’ family, teach ‘my’ children. The only time these individuals remember the community is when they can benefit from the community and never vice versa. This lie they taught has chained us to the floor. And the only truth is that when the upper class is pushed to the wall, it is not individuals but our community that is hassled, our community that is murdered—and if God tarries, our community that is delivered in the end.”

  There was a loud shriek from the cluster of vanity vendors, and then everybody dispersed in a wailing frenzy, some with hands above their heads and others sprawled on the floor with limbs akimbo. Mendaus and I turned simultaneously. The girl beside him stood up and I followed, but Mendaus was the first to walk toward the cluster, and ultimately, we all followed, hoping and gliding to catch up with his lanky strides. None of the wailers answered our “What’s happening?” and “What’s going on?”

  At the center of them all was a radio on a stool, loud enough to be heard over the wails. Just as we got close enough for the blaring noise from the radio to become audible, we heard: “The immediate cause of death of Fela was heart failure, but there were many complications arising from the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome.”

  One of the vanity vendors, palms plastered to his cheeks, gave the first of a million eulogies: “It’s not true. Fela will live forever. He can’t die.”

  There were not many people who believed in Fela’s efforts to progress the harmony of the world more than Mendaus, and the fall of the iroko tree crushed the little grains of sand that carried the tree atop their shoulders. Mendaus was devastated, and so the news ended our conversation that Sunday, and I left the Shrine looking to reorganize my proposition and come back stronger whenever we spoke again. But I had one more job to do before leaving Lagos, a package to deliver to an Indian at a beach resort in Lekki. This was my umpteenth delivery to him and we had grown cordial with time, so he insisted I stay around to share a bottle of wine as he complained about his problems with the local boys. They had barricaded his new construction site and beat up his engineers, demanding he give jobs to five of their colleagues-in-arms and pay a monthly stipend to their boss before work could be resumed. And all this after he had given the traditional chieftain, local government chairman, and ministry of works representative “money to buy fuel.” The problem was very much beyond my comprehension; those were things he should have done from the very beginning, without the need for coercion, but I could not say that out loud. I went on to blame the government for everything and then fabricated an experience similar to his but more gruesome, so he did not go to bed convinced that he was in the predicament because he was seen as a white man, a maga. But my greatest feat of the night was urging him to drink away his sorrow and subtly refilling his cup until he passed out and I could slip away.

  It was about 8:45 p.m. that Friday when I left his resort at Lekki. The major roads were still congested with endless traffic of the tired working class streaming down clumsy lanes like ants marching toward the anthill. There was an accident on a side street that had brought the service lane to a standstill, so those who usually traversed the route had to wait till the gathering ants uncertainly dispersed or drove farther down, searching for an equally uncertain alternative. Most drivers chose to wait it out. But the last thing I wanted was to be stuck in traffic on a side street too obscure for traffic vendors with their polythene packaged snacks or iced drinks in trays and coolers firmly balanced on their heads like an extra appendage, no matter how fast they ran. I drove past t
he side street and kept to the service lane, driving slower so I would not miss the turn my memory suggested was somewhere close by. Impatient horns began sounding behind me as bright headlights blinded the rearview mirror, causing the crystal pendant of Yemoja hanging from it to sparkle. The events leading to the pendant being hung from the mirror crept into my head, and I smirked.

  It was about five months back, during one of my trips to see my mother. I had barely arrived from the airport and was anticipating the pounded yams being prepared as my mother jammed pestle against mortar when the doorbell rang. I knew it was the neighbor who lived in the large new duplex opposite the house, who had been so keen to remind me on my first trip home in years that the estate they lived in was intended for middle-to-high-income earners. And that the pounding of yams, grinding of pepper, and other low-income habits practiced regularly by my mother behind her wide-open gate and low fence were an inconvenience to all other residents, an eyesore that reduced the value of their property.

  But on that occasion, some other demon sibling of arrogance had possessed my neighbor.

  “Ihechi, my fren!” my neighbor exclaimed in his Ogbomosho accent, thrusting his arm into the doorway and pulling me out by the neck. “Do you know what a V6 engine is?”

  I was quiet and unsteady in my steps, feeling my body growing weaker with each step as I moved farther away from the pounded yams being served on my plate at that moment.

  “I guessed as much, my fren,” continued the neighbor, who had correctly taken my silence for ignorance and was now pointing outside the gate to the front of his house. “Well, each of these engines in those two cars, which I just shipped in from Germany, by the way, are state-of-the-art specimens of the latest automobile technology. Do you understand what I’m saying, my fren?” We then pretended to inspect the shiny metals and tubes beneath the hoods of the two new cars.

  “But all this is not exactly why I called you out of your house, my fren. You see, with all that has been going on, I’ve taken the liberty to recruit a night watch to be overlooking our street and all our property we leave out here when we go to bed at night. So, since we are civil gentlemen, and it is all our property being secured, I believe it is logical that we should split the night watch’s salary.”