by Wole Soyinka
Before he had time to dredge up episodes in the eccentric career of their madcap foursome, Badetona found himself ushered into a special audience chamber reserved for just such as he, the rare ones whose life trajectory had raised the limits of the possible, spread the carpet of hope to accommodate even the most callused and often undeserving feet. On the right side of the entrance he saw a small altar-table. He placed his stuffed envelope on the altar, muttering inaudibly but with evident resentment.
News spread from tongue to tongue of those who had been admitted, however briefly, into the Prescience—a different order from the Inviolate Presence. Truly awestruck, they spoke of what they had seen or imagined, what transformation they had witnessed or conjured up in their minds, what profound revelations had emerged from divine discourse and the wisdom of the ancients, transmitted in modern modes and ingenious formulations. The word infiltrated all and sundry, but only the few were chosen for the ascent. The testifying parades at Davina’s all-comer worship stadia nationwide were already more than follower-generative; when added to marvels that were reported by those who had been privileged to step within the peak of Ekumenika itself, followership could be accounted phenomenal. It became a gold rush that left behind multitudes. Badetona began to understand why. He found himself surrounded by a splendour that snapped his mind straight back to his primary-school introduction to the oriental fables of the Arabian Nights and the wonders of Aladdin and his magic lamp. An uncomfortable feeling, however, also crept up his leg, leaving him cold between his shoulder blades. He felt there were hidden eyes watching his reaction.
No sooner sensed than a man entered the room so quietly that he was nearly seated before the Scoffer was aware of his presence. A well-oiled baldness on a blunt cone, such as could be glimpsed in the centre of his open-top turban, was amply compensated for by a flowing beard that terminated in greased curls. In between was no more than a two-centimetre width of visible flesh. The eyes were protected behind a large pair of reflective sunglasses. The rest of the face was wreathed in camouflage that could have belonged to any of the cultures of sand dunes or simply that of a Muslim itinerant preacher. His main frame, however, was mannequin-sharp in a three-piece suit of grey-striped black but with an embroidered waistcoat that glittered with gemstones. He carried a gold-topped walking stick that seemed to have been tailored with his suit, and its orb carried clear football serrations.
“Please sit down, Prince. I hope the climb was not too arduous. You have come on the day of Arjunava, an Indian god, not much known even in his own land. Here we honour all religions. We join hearts in spiritual embrace on the holy days of others. Our mission is to celebrate the ecumenical spirit.”
Badetona made what he considered the right noises, still overwhelmed by the contrast of this chamber with the squalour through which he had just struggled up the hill called Oke Konran-Imoran. His wife had not prepared him for anything remotely close. All he knew, like tens of thousands, was of the open-air venue adjoining the foot of the hill, the heaving, unassuming concourse of ecumenism that catered for everything that walked on two legs and sometimes four, including chickens and goats that wandered in from the neighbourhood.
The prince took the seat to which he was waved by his gracious host. The latter settled in the opposite chair, an imitation Roman consul chair, a design that Bade felt he recognized from Cecil DeMille’s cinema annunciation of The Ten Commandments—or was it The Gladiator? Or The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire? No matter, one of those lavish cinema renditions of the ancient scriptural or history classics.
“Needless to say”—the man spoke quietly, his voice assuming a near-spectral timbre, obviously cultivated through a long career of trial and error, testing and practicing, but never discarding its basic flavour of an American accent—“the purpose of your visit has been revealed to me. But I would like you to say it in your own words. Be as detailed as you wish. My mission is to listen, pray, and counsel. Also to transmit any message, if any, now or later, from our Perfect Listener, for whom I am a mere intermediary.”
Badetona needed no further urging. He was not one for wasting time on incidentals. Facts. Figures. Moreover, the startling contrasts in the day’s itinerary had begun to fray his nerves. He was already regretting the visit, reflecting on how most of those hours could have been deployed far more usefully in organizing his new office. Crashing lizards and computers, even cars, he would leave to his wife if he succeeded in surviving the session. However, Ikorodu bus stop had shaken him to the core of his skeptical being. The assault had even succeeded in appropriating the national headlines for three days before melting into the staple pottage of a nation’s daily feed. He made a point of putting the apostle on notice—internally of course. The herculean effort that had been exerted by his wife to bring him to that point of an unwanted encounter had better be worth his while, though in what way, he had no idea.
He plunged into his narrative, crisply, essential details extracted in advance. Papa Divina listened intently, nodding occasionally like one who knew it all already. Ikorodu had admittedly pushed Badetona’s absorption quotient to the limit, but nothing, absolutely nothing in the entire gamut of his projections had led him to anticipate anything close to the effect his news had on the apostle, the dapper Afro-Asian Saville Row–attired figure who confronted him, both hands laid on the orb of his walking stick. Bade was startled. He could not believe what his hearing so clearly reported. Unfortunately, there was no way of affirmation by facial expression of the speaker, since his head was all swathed in the day’s religious attire. Despite that, however, the prince was ready to swear on his statistical honour that behind the neutralizing turban and sunglasses, the voice exuded…rapture. A quiescent but most emphatic dissemination of rapture. Badetona felt a chill down his spine. He felt that the apostle’s face became surreally transfigured; perhaps it was on account of his mummified head, which rotated slowly, just like an owl interrogating a night rustle. Then the slow drawl, and a voice that clearly said, “That was indeed a sign. A heaven-sent sign. You could not have asked for a more auspicious sign from beyond. I almost envy you, Prince Badetona.”
Bade blinked, swallowed, shook his head free of the improbability of any lingering fumes from the rounds of the weeklong celebrations. It was, in any case, morning, and even the previous day he had had nothing beyond a glass of tepid white wine with his dinner. He stared into the apostle’s glasses, leant forward to ensure that his pronouncement was clear, incapable of being misunderstood.
“I don’t think you heard me, Papa Davina. I said I witnessed, right before me, a man decapitate another, at Ikorodu bus stop, just before Maryland junction.”
But the man’s comportment remained unchanged, and he returned Bade’s boring eyes with the utmost calm. The words he had just uttered rang clear, with no possibility of distortion in that near-soundless chamber. Badetona shook his head and spoke, picking his words even more distinctly, ensuring that his own response in turn was not misheard.
“Apostle Davina, sir, I still do not believe that you quite understood what I have just narrated. I said, I stood at a bus stop. A man squeezed himself between me and the commuter in front of me—pushed me aside, more accurately. He whipped out a machete and before my very eyes slashed off the head of this stranger. It has nearly lost me my mind.”
Davina sat back in his chair, nodded gently. “Yes, I heard you. A good augury, I repeat. A divine gift to you from the one and only, the Perfect Listener. You are indeed a man most blessed.”
A pause followed, during which Apostle Davina threw back his head, eyes shut—Badetona could see that much through the reflective glasses—as if communing with some absent presence. Both retained their postures for what seemed minutes, then Davina snapped himself back to life, stood up, and gestured.
“Come with me, Mr. Badetona. I have something to show you. It is nothing you have not seen before now. Indeed, you came through i
t all in your ascent—yes, remember that—your ascent. From now on everything is on the rise. But I would like you to view the present with a completely new insight. You see, dear Seeker, it all has to do with one’s perspective…”
Less than two minutes afterwards, a middle-aged man, eyes still distended in the effort to ward off demonic presences, was seen to crash through the gates of Ekumenika and commence a race down the steps he had earlier climbed so fastidiously. As he had passed through the doors to the main building, the same as his point of entry, his eye caught the envelope he had deposited at the offertory on arrival. Scooping it up, he fled Ekumenika. On arrival home, he threw down the envelope, poured himself a drink. Downing it, he announced to the emptiness:
“Fulfilled my part of the bargain. Brought back the consultation fee. There’s enough in there to hire a brace of the finest lawyers in the nation and/or to corrupt the entire judiciary. Sooner those than that ghoul of Ekumenika!”
When the detective squad came for him the following morning, they found him dressed in his finest three-piece suit, resigned and waiting.
5.
Villa Potencia
Duyole Pitan-Payne, engineer and business entrepreneur, a compulsive glutton for “inside stuffing,” would have wished that his assignation at Villa Potencia had been set for the previous day. That, of course, was out of the question. As it was, the villa had regained its normal placidity as he was effusively received at the first security checkpoint by a sprightly young ministerial aide who introduced himself as Shekere Garuba, “your equivalent at the presidency.” A most inauspicious beginning, and Pitan instinctively dubbed him Uriah Heep, one of his perversely favourite Dickensian characters. Garuba was a stagestruck overgrown juvenile who had once described the mass funeral of slaughtered farmers by rampaging herdsmen of his Fulani clan as a media show orchestrated by the governor of that bereaved state. He mocked the Ebola epidemic as a creative opportunity for Nollywood video sitcoms, even as his fellow aide attempted to upstage him, wondering why widows, widowers, and orphans did not simply lick their wounds and adopt appeasing attitudes towards their violators for the privilege of staying alive. The fault was all theirs, the duo proclaimed. Their intransigence was responsible for any breach in their happy state, provoking renewed assaults on the survivors and the burgeoning culture of mass infanticide.
The political aide—official title special adviser on alternative energy, as luridly emblazoned on his calling card—escorted Pitan-Payne through patrolling peacocks whose abrupt, raucous cries belied their floral preening. He was swept through a corridor of archways designed to pay lip service to the reality of two dueling faiths professed by a religion-saturated nation. Pitan was a churchgoer by habit and imprecise conviction, but he bristled, wishing government should simply mind its real business and leave religions alone. Still, his engineering eyes instinctively evaluated the security turnstiles, electronic scanning frames, and other strategically positioned sentinels of the prelude rites of audience, including state-of-the-art camouflaged cameras. He mildly wondered who was at the monitoring end. More vetting security? Or Sir Goddie in person, also known as the Presence, assessing each approaching visitor ahead of their encounter? The peacock cries pursued him into the waiting room, short, sharp shrieks that grated on his preferences in the musical mode, more like the abbreviated bray of donkeys in heat. He marveled—not for the first time—how Nature could have been so cynical as to unleash on humanity such disparate creations as donkey and peacock in any associative vocal register, surprised that no one appeared to have considered inventing a modulator. Hung around the peacocks’ necks—of course it would have to be decorative or the vain creatures would reject it—it would at least muffle the horrendous emissions from their vocal cords. Hmm, something to think about.
The special adviser spoke ceaselessly, but lost in thought of how else he might improve the approach to the main prime ministerial block if anyone were sufficiently reckless as to let him loose on the sprawling real estate, Pitan-Payne did not even have to make an effort to close his ears to the effusive welcome, the congratulations on his UN appointment, beaming enquiries about the health of his wife, children, and the rest of his extended family. His acknowledgements emerged from what he referred to as the auto-dispenser, all the way across the yard, through the halls and vast spaces of emptiness, caucuses, and conspiracies. Somewhere along the way, a white-overalled figure in a half-mask aimed the thermometer gun at his forehead, then pointed him towards the sink, where the regulation hand sanitizer invited. He readily complied. Another door slid open automatically at their approach; Mr. Garuba stood aside to let him enter, invited him to take his choice of seats. Only then did Pitan-Payne absorb his first intelligible communication from the effusive adviser. The latter bent low, winked as if in affirmation of a secret pact between them, and said, “It won’t be long. The People’s Steward will see you soon.”
Pitan-Payne knew about him—the son of a local village head, he enjoyed the reputation of garnering privileges beyond his dues and was known to be under special grooming for greater things. One of a brood of twenty-three children, he had simply been handed over to Sir Goddie by his father during a political rally—This is the smart one I told you about. Do what you like with him, I dash you. The youth was entrusted with ensuring that the prime ministerial kola nut bowl was steadily replenished with that stimulant from a special plantation not far from Abuja. Trust the uncharitable national rumour mill—having tried and failed to find in his background any training in or knowledge of energy matters, the mill churned out a claim that this in effect was the real field of competence for his advisory portfolio—to ensure that the desk knickknack bowl of the People’s Steward was filled with an adequate supply of that source of energy, the kola nut.
Whatever obvious deficiencies he was universally charged with, however, the lack of an instinct for mood assessment, specifically of his master, was not among them. Garuba had become adept at computing the “right moment to bring this up, sir, if I may presume,” learnt to assess Sir Goddie’s mercurial moods with near-pinpoint accuracy. That talent had now earned him a delicate mission from his colleagues and superiors, prompted by the Pitan-Payne visitation. As if on cue, a languid, bored figure entered, who was introduced to the engineer as the chief of staff. The sole interest of the new entrant seemed to be to give him a leisurely once-over. He shimmered into the room clutching a pile of files, nodded what could be read as acknowledgement of his existence, leant against a wall, then stood watching, without a word. The normally sharp-eyed Pitan-Payne totally missed out on a glance between the chief of staff and the fidgety adviser: there was a slot, and that slot was now, just before the invasion of a new set of party bigwigs. As if the adviser could hardly wait for his guest to be seated, he fussed over him for a few token seconds, stammered his intent to inform the Presence of the presence of the expected, promised to be back very soon, and dashed out of the room. That silent message acted upon, the languid officer turned, melted through the open door, and vanished. The engineer found himself alone, enveloped by a silence that was sibilant with power, whispers, and intrigues.
Outside, the special adviser, remarkably nimble in motion despite the traditional leather flip-flops that occasionally lunged out from under his long kaftan, traversed the lengthy corridor, reached the massive, padded double doors of the prime ministerial office at the double, and applied invisible brakes to his propulsion. He hesitated, knuckle poised for a soft tap, and then, somewhat strangely, his demeanour changed. He had just recalled his recently published chart buster in the shape of the monograph The Making of a People’s Steward. The in-house launching of that learned paper—departmental heads, ministers, party stalwarts, and a brace of diplomatic clerical staff—had earned him the unspoken right to ferret out the prime minister wherever he was, even if on the toilet seat—from which location the Steward had in any case answered a dozen or so questions to validate the adviser’
s narrative in the compilation of The Making. A follow-up—Behind the Enigma—was promised in a matter of months. Recollecting that he was now the albeit ungazetted house chronicler, another twenty-five percent hesitation melted away. Finally he recalled that today was today, not yesterday, when they had all moved gingerly about their duties, praying not to be summoned into the Presence even for the most routine chores. Yesterday was when it had taken only the bravest of the brave to cross the Steward in any manner of thought, how much more speech. The day had started out hectic but ended on a note of total mastery of a shaken political field. A new identity handle, formerly stolen, had been effectively deactivated by a robust substitution, now under trial throughout the villa. The chief of staff was right to nod the adviser on his way. The question must be posed, and the answers conveyed to his bewildered and resentful colleagues. What his superiors, more seasoned, more battle-scarred, did not dare, he would do. His earlier poised diffident tap was transformed into a confident rap.
“Who is it!” bellowed a voice that could only belong to the Presence.
“Ranka dede,” the Equivalent responded, and entered without further protocol. He trotted confidently towards the mammoth desk, shaped oval. A former incumbent, having heard of the world-famous Oval Office, had ordered all possible furniture and interior decor designed to conform as closely as possible to the oviform motif.