by Wole Soyinka
“An impressive exposition, if I may comment. But can I ask one question?”
Menka hesitated, squinted, tried to make out the features. “What exposition? In any case, who are you?”
“All of it—I’ve listened all evening. But especially your final allocution to the old man—I was riveted. Doctor, just take it from me, we are acquainted. I’m referring to your revelation over the supermarket. The human meat mall, to use your own expression. It has been a most informative evening. And as I said, your final argument with Old Man Baftau. The issue of merchandizing the rewards of punitive extraction, such as amputations. I admired your style, Doctor.”
Menka’s immediate instinct was to walk away from the intruder—he was certain the man was not a club member. A mixture of irritation and curiosity, however, made him linger. He decided to challenge him instead. “You don’t strike me as being a club member.”
The man’s arms spread in agreement. “Quite right, Doctor. I am not. You may consider me a club follower, though. I’m one of those who hang around places like this, where all the problems of the world are solved. And I really would like to ask a question. In the public interest, if that makes it easier. Very much in the public interest. I know the media, and especially the social media, would be most interested in your answer.”
Menka felt a sudden queasiness, a near-premonition, but his face showed no sign of it. “Go on.”
“A simple one, Doctor. How does it feel to cut off a man’s arm?”
If there was silence before, the lounge now felt as if it had turned into a tomb. For the longest minute he had ever experienced, even during the most critical moments of surgical intervention in a human form that lay helpless on the operating table, Menka found his tongue turned leaden in his head, motionless as in that nightmare that he always prayed would never leave his hands paralyzed in a life-and-death moment of incision. Then he sensed a slow, creeping wave of anger, but he pushed that away quite abruptly and braced himself. The ordeal of the day was clearly not yet over, not by a long stretch. He sensed it, felt quietly enveloped in a cloud of resentment. Why this persecution? Wherever it might lead, he would at least put this intruder in his place.
Menka put on on his best clinical voice. “A very simple operation, as a matter of fact.” He spoke clearly in an even, expository tone, one that had contributed to his earning the title Dr. Bedside Manners. “How does it feel? There is no feeling involved when we operate. A surgeon is trained to permit none. It’s all technical. You’ve eaten stewed or grilled goat knuckles before, haven’t you? Or pig knuckles, if you happen not to be Muslim. Our people in the U.S. call it soul food. It’s gourmet cuisine even in some European restaurants. The Chinese, of course, specialize in the delicacy. Same process, separating bone from tissue and gristle. The only difference is that in one case you use your teeth and fingers, in the other forceps, scalpel, etc.”
The figure appeared to grin. The face could be mistaken for a death mask, except for the elongated chin, the effect of the beard. “Take a seat,” his voice invited. “Join me for a final drink.”
“The bar is closed,” Menka pointed out matter-of-factly.
“So it is. You’re quite right. Well, simply for a few minutes’ exchange. I know you’ve exhausted everyone with your disclosures—except of course that you chose not to credit personal experience. All objectivization. Once or twice you came close. I thought, Ah, at last, but no, you slipped away. Still, they all appeared to have been fully satisfied. Most. More or less.”
“But not you. You had a question to ask.”
“Actually, some of the members know me quite well.” He pulled out a chair and gestured. “Are you sure? This could be an illuminating exchange.”
Menka hesitated. “What is your interest? Are you a medical doctor? Or human rights activist?”
Somehow Menka sensed another death-mask grimace within the dark patch. “No—my vocation is not unrelated, but no, there is no Doctor before my name. And I do not belong among those noisy agitators on human rights.” He pushed the chair forward, his palm upturned in a repeat gesture.
Menka declined. “No, thank you, I believe I’ve said all I wished to say for the night.”
“Are we quite sure about that, Dr. Menka? I read all about that affair at the time—how the years fly past! Over twenty now, I think. I was left suspended, have remained curious ever since over many aspects. I not only kept asking myself what the patient felt, but attempted to run through the thoughts, the state of mind of the surgeon himself, the one who took off the arm. Most fortunate for me being here tonight. Meeting you. Listening to the toast of the nation. But please…” Again he gestured to the chair, again Menka declined with a curt head gesture. The shadow capitulated.
“Of course. Perhaps inconsiderate of me. It has been a heavy day for you—the suicide bombing. You must be dying to get home. Oh, that reminds me, at least your work has been recognized by everyone, and I have yet to add my congratulations. Please accept my small contribution.”
Menka nodded thanks, turned to leave. The voice remained quite polite, clinging. “Mind you, I still wish you could have indulged me. What was that like? I’ve been asking myself that. The Hippocratic oath, etc.—after all, any school pupil knows all about Hippocrates.”
For the first time that evening, Menka actually smiled. The gloves were off, and he preferred it that way. “Well, to begin with, the Hippocratic oath never envisaged a society where you would cut off a man’s arm for stealing a goat, so the oath is silent on that score. For me it was just a medical procedure. You looked at it like a gangrenous arm that had to be removed. You followed your training. Standard practice. It was painless. No cruelty involved.”
“I am sure there wasn’t. He would be under anaesthesia.”
“Full anaesthetic, quite right.”
A sigh emerged from the shadow. “Vastly different, far more humane than those civil war atrocities along our west coast—short sleeves or long sleeves? I’m sure you’ve heard the expression.”
“Heard of it? It haunts me. Merely listening to you makes me shiver.”
Despite the blur, Menka could almost see the man’s theatrical grimace. “Ugh! Sadists. And children are involved. Child soldiers. Their commanders make them carry out such butchery, and worse. They drug them. Imagine what that does to a child. They overrun a village, and out come the machetes. They give their captives a choice—do you want short or long sleeves? Meaning at the wrist or at the elbow. Plain sadism.”
“Part of our task as doctors is to rehabilitate such children. It’s an endless task.”
“Joseph Kony—that so-called Lord’s Resistance Army chieftain—he handled his own mutilations personally, from all reports. Slit nostrils, sliced lips—he seemed to think up new refinements every day.”
“The type proliferates throughout the continent. It’s a real tragedy for us in Africa.” As he spoke, Menka remained undecided—to move closer to the man so as to scrutinize him openly or continue to pretend disinterest in whoever he was? Moving closer would only encourage him, and he wanted to bring the encounter to an end. In any case, he had become quite certain that it was the same vanishing figure he had earlier seen in the billiards room—something about the man’s posture—again, familiar yet estranged. And the voice joined to give off the same feeling of someone he had encountered before. Unlike the actual provocative questions, the tone appeared to labour not to sound aggressive, not to convey any tinge of disapproval or implied judgment. It was all highly theatrical, affected a clinical enquiry embarked upon in full sobriety, as if the questioner were propelled by nothing beyond average human curiosity. Menka shrugged—none of that made a difference to him. The stranger’s mission was to place him on the defensive, place him on notice for one purpose or the other. Then something struck the surgeon.
“Oh. Were you the one who went missing? The one supposed
to pass on a message.”
“A message?”
Menka was not sure, but he sensed a hesitation. “Yes, I had a visitation from your business partners. You were supposed to have delivered a message ahead of them. What happened? Lost your nerve?”
“Dr. Menka, I assure you I do not know what you’re talking about.”
“Well, whoever you are, I do not believe you. Everything tells me you are the same person.”
“We’ll leave it that way,” the stranger said. “Perhaps when we become further acquainted?”
“I doubt very much that that will ever happen,” Menka said firmly.
“There I must disagree with you. But let’s see what the future brings. Can I ask you just one more question?”
Again Kighare Menka was pulled both ways—leave or stay? He felt certain that if he kept up the exchange long enough, the penny would drop. He would unravel this shadow and end the advantage of the stranger’s anonymity. It was too one-sided an exchange, and this made him seethe. The tug of war was short-lived, resolved in favour of curiosity.
“All right. Your question?”
“What about the thief? Do you have the same objection to talking about him?”
“What about him?” Voice as level as he could, but hard.
“Well, his feelings? Did he hold it against you? I used to ask myself that question. I mean, how did he feel? One assumes that even goat thieves have feelings. I imagine him finally waking up, discovering that his arm was gone. How did he feel?” The speaker’s arms again emerged from the shadow, sweeping the dark. “Man goes to sleep with two arms, wakes up with just one.”
Menka turned thoughtful, as if intent on recapturing moments of his first encounter with the felon the morning after.
“A strange society, ours. I was born in this region, in the Plateau, not far from Jos itself, but even here, quite distant from the Quranic equivalent of what is known elsewhere as the Bible Belt, I often find things very strange. I mean, improbable. Fulfilled my youth service in Kano—but you know that already, I am sure—which is where it all happened. Now, your question, I believe I can answer that. Naturally I saw my patient the following morning, with the full hospital team. That’s routine. Now, this may surprise you. I don’t know how it is with others, but by the time we began the rounds, the man had already been visited by the village head, the community worthies, mullah, even the emir. The village was under one of the junior emirates, I’m sure you recall. They brought all kinds of items to enable him to start a new life with one arm only—I mean, useful presents, including foodstuffs.”
“Any goat?” With the laughter of one in control.
Menka managed a modest semblance of mirth. “No, nothing alive and bleating. Fresh clothing. Seeds for planting. A machete and a hoe. Requirements of that nature. The basic principle was, we mustn’t let his becoming one-armed now push him deeper into a career of crime. But you know what? Let me tell you what outsiders—like yourself, I think—would find most unsettling. Me too, but then I schooled in the south and finished my studies abroad. So you could claim I had become…deculturized?”
“But you still carried out the sentence.”
“Do I have to remind you I was on my youth service? Compulsory youth service. The thief was convicted under Sharia law. I received a directive to amputate.”
The man gestured dismissal. “Oh, come on, you were a trained doctor. Full-fledged. Graduated from Bristol University, United Kingdom. The Nigerian Medical Association took a position—”
“And found they had no choice but to drop the matter. Different laws operate, and not only on medical matters.”
“Weren’t you struck off the register?” Again the man affected a neutral, disinterested voice. “Yet here you are, still practicing. Receiving national plaudits.”
“Struck off?” Menka laughed out loud. “I don’t know who you are or what you’re up to. I know you’re not the press, or your approach would be different. Whatever or whoever you represent, you should know—it’s quite elementary—you have to put an offender on trial. Otherwise you lose when you’re sued in court—the principle of fair hearing. Basic. I made myself unavailable, on orders. I was ready to stand trial. Things are different up here—and not merely in the north, by the way. Remember we are speaking also of that north, the north of that time, both pre-Independence and even till now for quite a few states which have yet to cross that regional or religious barrier. You want me to remind you of the boastful paedophiles whose victims we treat all the time. Some of them damaged for life. Never one prosecuted. On the contrary, the criminals shuttle between governorship and senatorial immunity. So which law exactly are you talking about?”
“Your own personal self-regulatory laws, Doctor. That’s what I’m talking about. What do your ethics preach, Dr. Menka? What did your professional ethics dictate?”
Menka remained unruffled. “Law and ethics often clash. That comes to all of us, sooner or later, and in the medical profession most often. And some have that dilemma thrust on them much too early, under unjust circumstances. But we do make choices—there you are quite right. And sometimes those choices are not the most elevating. Doctors are not supposed to chop off a healthy, serviceable part of the human anatomy. Yet it happens. It’s happened here, and the law prescribes it. Experience counts. And maturity. What is known as human development. Reviewing one’s early givens. Asking who pronounced the givens in the first place. And under what state of human development? I hope you do not think so little of me as to imagine I have not given it any thought. Don’t doctors supervise the execution of the condemned where capital punishment still obtains? Yet capital punishment is considered primitive in other nations. In the U.S. doctors administer the lethal injection to the wretches. And then priests. Those who minister to the condemned before execution—what do you have to say about them? Have you tried to reason it out in that context? Is there any difference? Regarding what views I personally hold today, that is my own affair. I am not willing to share that with a stranger.”
“Be so kind as to indulge me with just one very last question, Doctor. As you have surely decided, I am not here by accident.”
“Quite right. I’ve been waiting for you to disclose just what this is all about.”
“Of course. So now the man himself—how did he take it afterwards? You’re right, sir, I have nothing to do with the media. My curiosity is quite genuine. Personal. But also related to my occupation. In good time, as we become further acquainted, perhaps you will understand. Right now I suppose I must sound presumptuous.”
Menka’s face was squeezed in a puzzled frown, but he had resolved to see it through, wherever it might lead. I opened the can, he reminded himself, so I shall also be the one to close it. He felt unusually relaxed.
“How did the man take it? That was what baffled me the most. I expected him to be bitter, angry, or self-pitying. Not he! That amputee remained one of the most cheerful of the human species I had encountered throughout my student course. He was beaming from ear to ear, slurping down his akamu—it was breakfast time, and there he was breaking his fast like a chieftain, as if he had not a care in the world.”
“Well, maybe surrounded by all those gifts…”
“No. Only partly to do with his new cotton smock, rough sandals, kerosene lamp, and sorghum seeds, plus a little cash. It was he, he himself, his demeanour. He felt nothing adverse about the loss of his arm. I remember his words—It’s the will of Allah that this should happen. I am glad the arm was cut off. It will remind me not to steal anymore, and that is what Allah wishes for me.” Menka again shook his head as if to free it from decades of disbelief. “That’s right. He was not in the least distressed. I’ll stake my profession on that.”
“Amazing.”
“Isn’t it? Ah well, goodnight.” And then, as if he now felt that he had been shortchanged in the exchange, Menka turn
ed and waved a hand in the direction of his interlocutor. “My turn to be curious. You haven’t really told me what you do. You’re not a club member. You are not the media. Your curiosity is…let me just say, it strikes a different tone from the exchanges I’ve been having. I think I have earned the right to be inquisitive.”
The blur appeared to hesitate, then drawled, “I did give some kind of a hint. You could say I am also a doctor, but only of the spirit.”
“Ah, a churchman? Preacher?”
“Sort of. Same business. Maybe I am closer to being a farmer, though not what I would call a rounded one. I am at the parasitic end of that vocation. I harvest. Harvest souls. Others do the planting, I harvest. I try to be honest.”
A pause hung between them. Then the stranger said, “Goodnight, Doctor.” He detached himself from the window, walked towards the service door. He made no attempt to hide the fact that he hugged the wall, avoiding the light pools to frustrate recognition. And then he vanished into the night.
Menka stood for a while longer, his eyes roving round the recumbent figures still littering the lounge. Not one of them appeared to have moved or showed evidence of having been conscious of a single moment of the strange encounter. The doctor shook his head to clear it, or perhaps simply to force the exchange into rational pockets of his brain.
All accumulated highs dissipated as he finally gained the familiar seat of his Nissan Patrol in the parking lot. He remained there a few moments without moving, running through the reel of the weird coda to an already strange evening out. He could make neither head nor tail of it all. The most unsettling part was, he could not even begin to seize upon any remarkable feature of the stranger, yet he felt reasonably certain that it was someone he did know, someone he had encountered before. A vague outline, yes. Beyond that, no features. He could not begin to guess whether the man was swarthy, light-skinned, bald, walked straight or stooped, was short, tall, or average. It seemed it was only a silhouette that spoke, walked, questioned, and dodged questions. Ah well, he would enquire from Baba Baftau when they met the following morning—he seemed to know Hilltop denizens inside out. And with that dismissive thought, he turned the ignition key.