by Wole Soyinka
It did not take long for an itinerant mechanic to appear—this tribe seemed to know just when disaster struck, or perhaps they operated a roving network, an urbanized bush telegraph. As always, they beat the state’s tow truck to the involuntary traffic obstruction. A quick inspection, and the expert confirmed what he had already sensed—the engine was “knocked,” the affliction terminal. The private-enterprise, locally constructed tow truck was already in place even before the professional verdict was delivered. Bade emptied the car of briefcase and other contents, surrendered the car keys, crossed the road to the sleek bus stop, one of a series of implants whose sprouting had begun visibly to lift the body tone and morale of daily commuters. He took his place at the end of the queue, silently relishing his brief, voluntary demotion in social status.
His sigh exuded relief that this was the last week in his old office. He was in a relaxed, all-accommodating frame of mind when an event played out right in front of him, one that knocked out all mental rehearsals for a domestic playful interlude from the compulsive operations of his statistical mind. As he settled into position at the tail end of that long queue, a man came up with a flattish object under his armpit, muttered an “Excuse me,” but simultaneously shoved him aside. He whipped off the brown paper wrapping and out flashed a machete. Badetona heard him utter a violent curse in some unfamiliar language, he heard a swish, and with that single stroke the man lopped off the head of the commuter next in line. The head fell against the reinforced plastic rain guard that curved halfway from the roof of the bus shelter. It bounced off the ground, while the trunk sprayed him as it fell with a red, thick, viscous fluid, just like an errant lawn sprinkler. Ignoring the pandemonium that ensued, the assailant fastidiously wiped the machete on the clothing of the prostrate trunk, calmly restored it to its improvised paper scabbard. A car drew up, again as if on a signal; the rear door flew open. In what some transfixed witnesses experienced as a coordinated slow and accelerated motion all at the same time, the vehicle swallowed the killer and zoomed off, weaving sleekly through the Ikorodu road traffic, heading east towards the town of that name.
A few moments for the prince to absorb what he had just witnessed and then, without further thought, he shook off his paralysis like the other commuters, took irrationally to his heels, and stopped only when he had rounded the first corner and felt safe from the immediate rampage of indiscriminate head cropping which all involuntary witnesses felt certain would logically follow. Such a blatant flash of lunacy did not seem destined to be a one-off act. Even those who had no idea what had happened did not wait to be enlightened. The screams carried their own unambiguous message—Run! They galvanized even the slow-witted into one concerted response—follow the trail of panic wherever it led, with a few variations to throw off the contaminating scent of blood. Badetona launched his limbs at full stretch, heading for nowhere, everywhere, simply as far as his reasonably athletic legs could take him; he was an irregular weekend jogger, and never was the state-sponsored jog-for-your-life campaign, and in accelerated tempo, more patriotically vindicated. He stopped only at the entry of the new supermarket just after Charley Boy’s domain, stopped to look back for only the second time that morning. Still unsure of what he should do, he ran inside, vaulted the exit turnstile, and disappeared into a room whose half-open door was marked Staff Only. He inhaled, exhaled, and inhaled to some inner-dictated rhythm.
Safely ensconced in the safety of his home that evening, the event shared in all blood-soaked detail through a still shaky voice, wife and neighbours in attendance, the conclusion was inevitable, based on the unanswerable question Why you? Ask yourself, why you? Of all the millions of people in Lagos, why you? Why did you have to be the one standing behind that victim, a total stranger? Normally you would be with your driver—how come you happened to be driving yourself today, of all days? Why did you decide to take a bus when you could afford a taxi? What brought you there at that very moment of his decapitation—you think it simply happened to happen? It was plain reading. The untoward had become too frequent of recent. All voices counseled a visit to the healing ministries—any one would do, but the clamour was near uniformly for Apostle Davina. When Jaiyesola summoned the maid to recount to sympathizing visitors—for the tenth time at least—the lizard episode, all alternative or oppositional theories crumbled, the sequential logic was unanswerable. The garage lizard! It had landed on his princely head. A head had been cut off in front of him. Whose head did he think was primed to follow? No, no, no, did he have to be so literal? No one was suggesting it was a sign that he would also lose his head, but definitely someone was after his, Bade’s, head, in some form or another. That was the message. If he failed to see that, to understand the generous warnings of Providence, it was pride, false pride, and what do they say goeth before a fall? Pride. And who was the proud one? Answer: the stiff-necked Scoffer.
If there had been an invasion of clan and long-forgotten family branches after his promotion, news of his “narrow escape” unleashed even more powerful waves of prayer counterattacks. The palace sent a delegation, headed by a babalawo. Long-forgotten relations who had recently surfaced to share in the bounty of service elevation returned in force, and they came with a supplementary canticle: It happened because you failed to see the divine intervention in your life! Worse still, how do you know there isn’t an even more glorious future ahead, one that, however, requires you to do this or that to consolidate present preferment? There are deadlines in these matters. You miss the deadline and everything is reversed—it’s downward from then on. Only a few among the blessed few can pierce through the mystic veil and reveal all this to you. If Badetona’s nerves had been shattered by the event itself, instigating nightmares that terrified his wife, then moved to infect her to a degree that she even began to have them in her own right, the swarms of intercessors soon completed the rout. Could there possibly be something in what they preached? Reconsiderations of allied experiences that he had once instinctively waved off as comic incidents began to nibble at the edges of cause and effect or, worse, chain reaction.
And there was something else that even the wife did not know—the chickens were coming home to roost. Behind the calm, reassuring façade, Badetona was a much troubled man. Vague hints of storms ahead had accumulated lately, and these were not psychic storms. His pragmatic mind continued to string the seemingly mismatched pieces together—it all seemed extravagant, but he had begun to consider a grim possibility: the beheading, the time, the place, his presence, the victim—that none of these was an accident.
It mattered little from whichever direction it came, the prince admitted, he needed help. The saying among his people came to mind: That the man is first to see the snake but the woman kills it—who cares, as long as the snake is killed! So who was this man Davina anyway? What powers did he exert to hold so many in thrall? No disaster, no exceptional event, no routine happening, but he had predicted it in his end-of-year prophecy, an annual ritual that laid out all divinely premeditated events destined for fulfillment during the year ahead. Whatever was not fulfilled had some rational explanation—including fulfillment itself, but not quite in the literal way the uninitiated could understand.
Outside pressure could be shut out, ignored. When complemented by the silent protest and muffled sighs of a spouse across the breakfast, lunch, or dinner table, it became a burden. Each long-suffering sigh spoke daggers of rebuke—there were malignant, diabolical forces at work, it was evidently time for spiritual delivery. I know you have nothing against psychiatrists, so why don’t you look at it as that kind of therapy? Every day millions of your peers wake up across the world, look at their calendar to see when next they are due for a turn on the couch, even when they feel absolutely on top of the world. So take the plunge. Treat the visit as merely marking a watershed in your career—anything wrong with that? It all fitted in neatly, a statistical punctuation mark on the wobbly spreadsheet. Finally the beleaguered man
decided that he needed badly to be delivered from delivery. If that was guaranteed by a call on the devil in his lordly lair, maybe it was time he donned the cloak of veneration. He threw up his hands in surrender. All right, dear, I shall go. The man intrigues me.
* * *
—
Prince Badetona may have been the wizard mathematician he was reputed to be, but Jaiyesola in certain regards vied with or complemented him in logic. Thus, when she followed him to the prophet’s Oke Konran on the eventual day of consultation, it was not out of mistrust; no, it was because she wanted to cover him in her aura until the last possible moment, thus ensuring that the spiritual incense that emerged from her accompanied him all the way.
The rules were strict. Only the actual supplicant could climb the hill. So she chaperoned him to the base of the hill, her presence replenishing his deficiency from her abundance. Hopefully, this would last until he actually stood before the gate of the temple of Ekumenika, where, obviously, the overwhelming emanations from the holy man himself would take over, enwrap, and waft him into his presence, where he would again be topped up, like the fuel tank of a motorcar, for the return journey and for some days, weeks, and months afterwards. She redoubled her prayers as her eyes pursued him all the way up, even where a few scattered trees obscured her sight from time to time. She continued to wreathe him in this potency as palpably as she experienced the force of the choric “Alleluia, Blood of Jesus,” a force that she knew was transmitted through upraised, quivering arms at those sessions of her prayer warriors when even the roof of the church seemed to be raised in ecstasy, albeit invisible to minds with depleted fuel tanks of faith. And hers was true partnership, so that wherever and however and in whatever one lacked, the other provided. Her husband, she did not doubt, was well primed for his meeting with the apostle, despite himself. No one could claim that he had defaulted in any way. She had followed him with eyes and spirit; her mind was at peace. He was playing his part, following instructions conscientiously up the steps to the temple of Ekumenika, the palace of piety perched atop the very peak of Oke Konran-Imoran. She turned back only when she had seen him execute the prescribed moves every step of the way—saw him stand beneath the neon-framed archway of the preacher’s prophesite as, without turning round, he raised his arm in a wave that spelt a loving Here we go, my dear.
Halfway up Oke Konran-Imoran—though a few irreverent locals, spirited infidels of the prince’s truthful cast of mind, soon renamed it Gethsemane—was a shoe depository, a cemented ledge. This was where the paved and pebbled steps began. From the base, where Jaiyesola parted from her husband, to that halfway stop, seekers simply picked and occasionally slithered their way up as best as they could, among pebbles and screed, garbage that sometimes featured both human and animal faeces. Quite a few eminent figures went to ingenious lengths to avoid recognition by both transient and resident scavengers; these would eventually qualify through sheer swell in numbers and resilience for a local government of their own. At the end of that hazardous lower half of the hill, away from the human soldier ants who prodded, turned over mounds, and bore their luck in sacks slung over shoulders, the chief executive director of a newly minted petroleum parastatal, rumoured to have been specially created to reward his past and ensure continuing “cooperation,” arrived at the cemented ledge with a token enclosure of fencing wire. It had been created as a shoe depository, complete with disposable footgear for the finicky or simply tender of sole.
It was not unusual for a supplicant to find his or her consultation rewarded with a prescription that called for the partial consumption of such disposables after returning home. This required stuffing the used footgear into a gourd of palm wine or jar of millet beer, where it turned into an infusion—one spoonful three times a day as a general spiritual prophylactic, or a one-time liquid breakfast, downed in one gulp, to follow seven days and seven nights of fasting. Such gourmet variant was reserved as a permanent cure for severe body ailments or symptoms of malevolent spiritual forces. There were suggestions that this was a derivative from the superstitious awe in which the needle injection was once held by the former generation or two in the nation’s then rudimentary Western medical practice. Those old-generation patients would arrive at their rural clinic, and later at modern teaching hospitals, not with a clear expression of where the health problem lay but with a mind set on their favourite curative—an injection. Pills or liquid agents were mere placebos or procrastinations—injection was the key, no matter the ailment. Badetona could recall the dismissive pronouncements of some of his elderly relations, on both sides of the family—Oh, that doctor, he’s useless, he doesn’t give injections. And they followed up by transferring their problems elsewhere. Or simply abandoned the modern clinic altogether, took their health issues to the local “dispenser.” That could be a moonlighting nurse, a midwife, or the nearest patent medicine store owner with an eye-catching signboard, as long as such alternatives were equipped with an obliging needle and coloured fluid. Apostle Davina’s injection—for high-maintenance cases mostly—was infusion from the plastic jerky, but only when it had absorbed spiritual healing potency from treading the pebbly twenty-one steps uphill. Many were those who went home crestfallen because the prophet had denied them the plastic prescription. The very thought brought the CED close to retching—not all the riches of the world would make him so much as sip the stuff. Any plastic-obsessed relation, his dear wife included, was free to drink it on his behalf, not he! Submit to the blatant emotional blackmail, yes, but further than that, the prince drew the line.
With no other than that modest demurral, the fugitive shook his head clear and brought himself back to his duties. He took off his shoes, his face twisted anew into a defiant grimace as he substituted a pair of disposables for them, as if that very motion yet again dared the apostle to prescribe any plastic discard or liquefied needle therapy. Then he changed his mind altogether. If he did not arrive wearing the disposables, there would be none to prescribe by the apostle. So he proceeded barefoot. When he emerged, Jaiyesola’s keen eyes were swift to see her husband’s unshod feet—it completed her sense of triumph; this was humility over and beyond the call of spiritual duty! It was certain to augment the store of redemption coupons she had accumulated on his behalf. The battle was three-quarters won.
She accompanied every remaining step with silent intoning of hymns of praise—this bonus self-abasement could not fail to contribute to the routing of those envious ill-wishers who prayed daily for her husband’s downfall. After a further fourth or fifth step, the pilgrim himself, unaware of his wife’s inner upliftment, began to lament his decision, discovering that the soles of his feet had become quite tender over the years from normal shoe addiction. It was too late to return for those protective aids—just in time he recalled that he was not permitted to return or look back. He gave silent thanks for not rewarding his wife with a day of wasted labour and lamentation after such a relentless campaign. Having come so far, he would never have forgiven himself. He completed the remaining sixteen steps up the pebbled slope, glossed by myriad feet in the quest for a cure, fulfillment, search for or celebration of a preferment, a simple remedy for any of the catalogue of human woes, cravings, and inadequacies. Or threats.
And the wife could now relax. She had been a little, just a little, concerned that he might turn back to wave, but no, he did not look back, did not risk being turned into a pillar of salt. Time was when, yes, the Scoffer would have looked back deliberately, just to prove to her that no force on earth or heaven could turn him into a pillar of anything, least of all salt. It brought a glow to her face that even in that final, no-looking-back moment of temperamental temptation, Bade stuck to the bargain and resisted the urge. It gladdened her heart, generated a renewed wave of affection. She waved, left her arm raised for the duration of a brief prayer as the gate was thrown open and the interior courtyard swallowed him. Her face was wreathed in contentment. She lingered for a few m
ore moments in silent prayer, then turned reluctantly away from Oke Konran-Imoran.
Barefooted and only slightly winded, the prince had completed the ascent, arrived at his destination. Perched on the tip of Oke Konran-Imoran, the eyrie looked from the outside totally unimpressive. His mood was resigned, yet also expectant. For a few moments he merely stood and stared at the ponderous brass-studded gate, topped by an unlit neon archway inscribed
Welcome to the One and Only True Prophesite
EKUMENIKA HEALING MINISTRY
Oke Konran-Imoran
(Nothing on Our Living Earth Is Beyond Faith)
He indulged himself with a huge breath intake, expelled it slowly, braced his shoulders, seized the heavy brass ring, and slammed it against the entry. Motions from within nearly instantly produced two beefy security guards, girded in what seemed to be thick black protective armour. Their appearance seemed guaranteed to intimidate any humanity below mercenaries of Africa’s civil wars. He was obviously expected. They took no more than a perfunctory glance up and down the full length of him, then beyond him, as if to ensure that he had not been escorted on the ascent by a hidden force of invasion, waiting only for the gates to open to crash past and overwhelm the apostle’s sanctuary. Satisfied, they guided him across a well-manicured lawn, a geometric composition that instantly sent his mind flashing to where he had last seen such a landscaped garden in the country with that very design, only miniaturized here—yes, of course, Jos Plateau, an ancient British colonial residence and clubhouse named Hilltop Mansion. His ancient buddy Kighare Menka, one of a close foursome, last recorded cutting up bodies in Jos, had once wined and dined him in its staid dining room and oak-paneled lounge, so many forgotten years ago. Grimly he wondered what that surgeon would have made of the clean decapitation whose lingering effects had brought him to Oke Konran-Imoran, seeking help from the man named Papa Davina.