Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth

by Wole Soyinka

  “Who tells you he’ll still be in office when we get back? Even ignoring rumours of a fallout between him and the president.”

  “Duyo, they never leave. They merely substitute themselves.”

  “Well, this consultant has left. Completed his assignment twenty-one months ahead of time, and that was nearly two years ago. Got to the bottom of the mess and left him a sizzling folder. He never asked to see me. Never a word of acknowledgement. So what business do I now have with him?”

  Bisoye threw up her hands. “Form, Duyo. Or protocol, if you prefer. The way these things are done. I never said it was anything else. You did your job…”

  “I haven’t even received the rest of my payment!”

  “Well, suppose that’s why he wants to see you? Someone may have reminded him that you were leaving the country soon and that the government still owed you. Maybe he’s not to blame.”

  “Someone is.”

  “No one is asking you to visit that someone, and you don’t know who it is. Look at it this way—I mean, you yourself showed me that report. Wage-earners who haven’t received their salaries in ten months. It’s the same system. Just think what’s happening to them and their dependents. How are they coping?”

  She was rewarded with a grunt. The engineer sensed that the argument was slipping away from him. “Serves me bloody right anyway. I should have stuck to my earlier policy. No dealing with any government.”

  “Or cash before delivery. Except that the man simply hates parting with money in any case. Before or after makes no difference.”

  “Heads you lose, tails he wins. Maybe I should send Pop after him. They’re both Rosicrucians, after all. That should embarrass him into paying up.”

  Bisoye stopped. “Now why hadn’t we thought of that? Shall I ask him?”

  “No way! That is what is known as an expensive joke. Don’t even think of it. To borrow his favourite line, I’ll go quietly.”

  At the beginning—yes, that much he could assert—a policy of keeping governments at arm’s length—private, business, institutional clientele only. Right decision? It proved too limiting; worse, unfair to his workers and partners. In the end, albeit warily, always with a rapid exit plan ready to be activated on the instant, he succumbed to “testing the waters.” State governments to begin with, and finally, inevitably, the centre itself and its hydra-headed ministries and parastatals, those indefinable quantities that were never quite meat nor fish. Nor vegetable. But ravenously omnivorous. Degree and duration of the breakdown were unprecedented even for a nation accustomed to a culture of total blackouts. Rural areas or urban centres, it made no difference. Yet the dedicated billions kept vaporizing, to be annually replenished at budget time, not forgetting supplementary budgets. Factories died, small industries folded up. Each new government blamed the last, then appropriated even heavier funds. His partners fretted. Finally it became a personal challenge—it was time for the Brand of the Land to make a bid, he half hoping, guiltily, that they would lose. They won. Abuja, here we come. It did not take too long to discover—with some chagrin, he would reveal to his “twin,” the surgeon Kighare Menka, that there was a strong work ethic in control, indeed a pervasive hands-on ethic, near identical to both theirs, with unintended literalism, just a slight slant—a prime ministerial finger in every pie!

  Only the twenty-million-dollar question remained: How long would he last? Thus came the pact with Bisoye—first three months, I’ll stick it out, no matter what. Agreed? After that, a choice of his single-malt whisky, always a different brand, for every month survived, plus a night out followed by a bed in, no holds barred. The nation never knew how much it owed to the blissful athleticism of the couple, and Duyole did come close to earning a full case of Islay malt, Collector’s Reserve—just one bottle short of a full case. In the display cabinet he conspicuously left a gap in the row of twelve, a silent accusation of Bisoye’s ungenerous spirit. Was it his fault he completed the task so far ahead of time?

  “So, that report—foolish question—but did you name names?” she asked one day.

  “Of course.”

  “How high up?”

  Duyole chuckled. “The trouble with you, girl, is that you think I am suicidal. The inferences are there—all clear. The buck stops somewhere—left it like that. What more could one do? Beyond taking my quiet leave, of course!”

  “Quiet? A full-day street party?”

  “Needed something to do with the excess talent. A thirty-six-month assignment rounded up in fourteen. That’s a lot of bottled-up, unused talent. Dangerous. If it didn’t find release, you would have put me away in some institution.”

  “And what did you think they would make of that in the villa?”

  Never was parting more mutual. Pitan-Payne heaved a sigh of relief as he withdrew fully into his more congenial zone of private manufacture. His blood pressure, attested by his doctor, promptly dropped to survival levels, and flesh returned to the hollows of his face. Bisoye was always quick to insist that this had nothing to do with her cooking, in which—as the entire household could testify—the engineer often took more than perfunctory interest, becoming more insufferable after leaving Abuja. He suddenly found more time on his hands, time formerly spent shuttling to and fro, increasingly overnighting in Abuja to slay elusive, invisible, yet incendiary dragons and trouble the sleep of smiling, regretful, and deferential bureaucrats. They were so schooled in procedural stagnation, bowing, scraping, solicitous Uriah Heeps—“with all due respects, sir,” “if I may make so bold, sir,” “but perhaps you would like to take this up personally with Mr. Prime Minister,” ad infinitum. Uriah was everywhere, somehow ensured the disappearance of crucial files, the evaporation of pages in contractual agreements, and often the prolonged to permanent absence of crucial facilitators—those simply posted medical certificates of a sick leave to silence any heartless complainants. Did they ever claim to be anything but human, Mr. Pitan-Payne? They fall sick, just like you and me. Their turn today, it may be mine tomorrow. Or yours, Mr. Payne. None of us is superhuman! Please exercise patience.

  All good things come to an end, as did this. The engineer signaled the termination of his association by hanging up a banner to proclaim the deed of severance—Fourteen Months, One Week, Nine Days, Seven Hours—Still Breathing! Always one to look on the bright side of experience, using his operatic voice, he decanted his gratitude for the opportunity that departure provided to scale new heights in dissolution rites: a mini-Oktoberfest—he had trained in Austria but mostly wassailed next door in Bavaria, and never let any opportunity pass to evoke it. The truth was, he had missed that year’s Oktoberfest, with his 24/7/12 schedule, had chosen not to step out of the country until the assignment was complete. It would be a waste of time and money, he swore, since his mind would be elsewhere, even a day’s absence being sufficient to unravel all the gains he had made and set the clock back several years. And so Engineer Duyole rewarded his long abstinence with a street party with cooks, waiters, and usherettes dressed in Bavarian costume, hastily constructed beer barrels that were rolled into Badagry from the Students’ Union of Lagos University, situated on the road halfway between Lagos and Badagry, escorted by the union’s Palm Wine Drinkers Club in regalia and the mincing androgynous gelede masquerades of Badagry. The severance party spawned at least two musical additions to the repertoire of Lagosian social praise compositions—unfortunately not assigned to posterity as recorded performance. Duyole heard of the plans, bought up the master tapes, and promptly destroyed them. Personal laudatory art conflicted with Pitan-Payne’s “terms of enjoyment” as captured in yet another family motto: “Eat, drink, but be wary!”

  That severance spectacular should have been the end of the association, but parting was fated to endure a slight extension, the terminal act of which—a mere courtesy call—was now taking all afternoon and extending into the evening. The prime minister was no
t part of this call-up, so why the courtesy call? Unknown to either Sir Goddie or to the engineer was a “discovery note” dropped on the desk of the under-secretary for science by a complete stranger from UNESCO two years earlier. The collector had returned from an artifact hunt in Badagry and Benin that had led to Pitan-Payne’s factory. Two years later the United Nations was recruiting, member states nominating, lobbying, and backstabbing. The note surfaced. Pitan-Payne was contacted. Then began the fun. His own embassy had other ideas. Other preferences. Eager nominations. And then, surprises, and—horror of horrors to some!—from the least expected quarters, the People’s Steward himself! Sir Goddie was body and soul for his recruitment!

  The bitter pill was passed from mouth to mouth and swallowed. The culprit consented to a visitation tuned to minimal protocol. He would return to the lion’s den on the requested date, after which all agreed to accept that he thereafter became body and soul property of the international clan—their servant, as in serving their agenda and none other, with no obligation to any government. He would do whatever peace of departure demanded—after all, he was bound to work with the embassy on some level from time to time, and he did agree with his spouse that there was no need to make enemies. He swore to her that he would give credit to the Presence for the privilege of serving the nation on the international stage. Now he was here, and he was not sure whether he was in Villa Potencia, Nigeria, or in Wonderland—his intermediary hosts all kept appearing and dissolving in thin air, including his own Mr. Equivalent of the energy world. Said he would be back shortly, and that shortness had already stretched into one hour forty-seven minutes.

  Where in the world of Uriah Heep was he, anyway?

  6.

  Father, Is That You?

  Uriah Heep Junior? Actually, prosecuting the very business that had brought the engineer into Abuja to meet the prime minister in person. The Equivalent was seated opposite the Presence, primed to execute a collective mission with which he had been saddled. It fell neatly into his portfolio, as adviser on energy, and he was not especially averse to demonstrating that he was now installed in a position of influence, a new arrival admittedly, yet he had cornered the good ear of oga patapata.*

  “Your Stewardship, sir, yes, we think that this involves national security. And with all due humility, sir, I would like to phrase it in the form of a question. It’s a question, sir, that is agitating many minds among your loyalists.”

  The Steward perked up at the word loyalist. Taken in tandem with the earlier-evoked national security, this was clearly not a session to be rushed. “Are you sure you don’t need more time? If you prefer to wait till later, when I’m done with other matters. Today is a lighter day, but for instance, I still have to see your man—the engineer.”

  “Exactly, Your Stewardship! That’s why it cannot wait. It has to do with him. It’s probably too late, but at least, sir, before you receive him, which will be like the final endorsement…”

  “And what’s wrong with a final endorsement?”

  “Ranka dede, sir, it’s this way. We know you must have your reasons, but we cannot work it out. The question on our minds is, why him? Why this man? That is the question, PS. A well-known saboteur. Everyone around here celebrated his departure, and just as well we did, Your Stewardship. Because what he did in Badagry was to celebrate it himself, noisily and disparagingly to the office of the prime minister itself. The man is a walking insult to this government.”

  The insult would have rankled even deeper had they known that Pitan-Payne had refused to even consider the offer until he was assured, by a letter from the secretary-general over his signature, that the choice had been made on merit, after in-depth enquiries into his outfit and operations, that it owed nothing to any government nomination or intervention. However—the response also carefully explained—international relationships benefited from protocols of consent, and better still, whenever possible, reinforced by national endorsement. The UN had routinely requested these of the government, and—wonder of wonders!—a response had been provided, and with a sizzling seasoning of alacrity that frankly confounded the secretary-general’s office. Usually internal wrangles on the home front of the nominee delayed the process. Sometimes it even resulted in the nation’s loss of a prestigious slot. Thus it was that, on the Pitan nomination home ground, heads were shaken, chins wagged, as expectations were shattered in debates on the reasoning behind such an incongruous official endorsement. The party, it seemed, was especially incensed.

  The People’s Steward studied his ward closely. “Wait a minute. Are you suggesting that the party has other candidates in mind?”

  The Equivalent’s pulse quickened with optimism. Other candidates in mind? What a question! His hand closed on the sheaf of papers—CVs and references—burning a hole in the pocket of his kaftan. “We have made a small compilation, Your Stewardship, sir. Perhaps you will like to see…”

  There was no need for Garuba to reassure Goddie that most of these, boasting not the sheerest connection with the world of science, or their nominators, were ready to contribute generously to party coffers. They would blow up one another and engage local herbalists, Muslim marabouts, Indian fakirs, Jerusalem pilgrims, etc., for supernatural influence to ensure their selection, so why should the government support a basically disinterested, unappreciative, marginal, purely business bird of passage—no party obligation, indeed no obligation to anyone except his egotistical self—who had proved impossible to work with, had poked his nose where others had sworn affidavits to a clean bill of health, a busybody who insisted that files be dug up that had been consigned to oblivion? Pursuit of the nation’s energy needs had undergone at least several dozen master plans, empowered two generations of generator billionaires. And had it not also spurred consumers into the solar age, bringing the nation, no matter the spotty minority, into the ultimate world of modern, clean energy supply? The last atrocity of this rank outsider, they protested, was his attempt to reopen closed files, such as the mystery of an explosion at the nation’s major electricity distribution station, which threw at least five-sixths of the nation into three days of total darkness. Unprecedented, admittedly, but was it worse than what had happened in New York City—the city of lights—some years ago? Hundreds were trapped in lifts—called elevators over there; even hospital surgeries were immobilized right in the midst of operations. They were unprepared. They had never experienced such a breakdown. Which side was better off? They didn’t know what to do; we had standby generators. People say the explosion blew up a handful of workers—three of them top-level engineers—terminally. Who can confirm that? What does his report say? We know that part of it. Sabotage was not merely suspected, it generously voided any alternative theory—not simply the thumbprints of guilt but the palm, sole, facial, and faecal imprints were on full forensic display, and so on and so forth. How do we know? Some of the report had been leaked. Why? For what purpose? Who leaked it? I ask you, People’s Steward, sir, what is your own candid opinion? Why did he send a copy to the president? Exactly. So as to make sure it leaked. Was it the president who commissioned his firm? No. It was merely to make sure it got leaked to the press. We found the trail. The man from Badagry claimed he had uncovered several million-dollar turbines, transformers, and distributor units abandoned at the wharf, mothballed for over three years, shrouded in tarpaulin, some cannibalized, even as invoices had been issued for a further batch, shipped but diverted on the high seas—not by gun-toting Somali or Bakassi pirates—to an ECOWAS partner, a nation that had paid for that same consignment. No one had missed the turbines, so no one was complaining. Their eventual destination did not appear to exist in any installation blueprint. What is our business with that? The Central Bank did not express the slightest interest in the fate of the purchase—CBN, the ultimate authority, authenticated the receipts. Those receipts had been tendered, vetted, and audited. That account was thus legitimately closed, so what exactly was the p
roblem of Engineer Pitan-Payne? He had been brought on board to solve the problem of an epileptic power-supply affliction, not dig into moribund issues that offered no practical value to the living. And now that individual, providentially excluded even from the elastic “ruling family,” a misfit who publicly celebrated his dissociation with a street fiesta of hoodlums and student cultists, had successfully lobbied, no, bribed his way, unquestionably bribed, we all know about his family wealth and connections—they bought him a position that amounts to the nation’s energy ambassador, he is being made emissary to the prestigious club of experts on the United Nations Energy Commission! The nation had only that one slot, and it had to go to some Pitan-Payne-in-the-neck? Sir, our people are asking questions.

  Primaries were close, to be followed by elections. A substitution from the right constituency—all it needed was to view and present the profit margin in the voter calculations…It was not as if they were not all versed in what was lightheartedly known as “administrative adjustments.” Under his kaftan, the Equivalent continued to caress the folded sheets of paper, ready for presentation to the Steward if he betrayed just the right amount of inclination to reconsider. He liked people to have done their homework. They had, even overabundantly. The CoS had provided him all the facts, most of which he had easily regurgitated—he had, after all, the proficiency of memory from his training in the Quranic system. The affair had to be settled that very night, the pesky engineer sent back where he belonged, empty-handed…

  “Your Stewardship, sir, the consensus is that it was a mistake to have nominated him in the first place. It’s never too late to revert, sir.”

  Sir Goddie’s mood changed dramatically. He leapt up from his chair and snarled, “Who told you I nominated him?”

  Hastily the special adviser rephrased, also rising out of respect. “No, sir, no, sir, I never said you did. We know those people in the UN, how they like to dictate. But why did you allow it, PS, sir? That’s what is worrisome. We have people even more qualified, and more dependable…” Again he fingered the list—was this a good time to flash it?