Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth

by Wole Soyinka

  The convoy set off for Badagry. Dr. Ekundare had joined the firm’s house doctor, and a pathologist from the Teaching Hospital had been summoned. They were waiting in a room set aside in the basement of Millennium Towers, Duyole’s iconic addition to the Badagry landscape. Kighare hoped, longed to voice a hope, that the patriarch had been duly warned and had locked himself indoors somewhere remote. He, Menka, would refuse to accept responsibility for any accidental encounter with the casket, which might compel Pop-of-Ages to dine on its contents. It was agreed that the three doctors would inspect the body; the undertaker had warned that the flight and other motions were certain to have undone some of the patchwork he had performed. Menka did not accompany them to the makeshift morgue.

  After their inspection, they advised that even the tinted glass should be covered with the wooden slide provided for that eventuality. Damien was eagerly in attendance—usefully, Menka considered. He would testify to his siblings and absent family that it was indeed their father’s corpse, not a substitute. Then again, as the privileged recipient of life’s secret essence from a dying father, he would be at hand to receive any residual emanation that was still trapped in the coffin, perhaps? Whatever went on in the mind of the young lord, the medical trio did their duty and warned him that it was not advisable to view the body. It was his choice, however, and he was allowed into the basement. Perhaps six pairs of eyes viewed the body in that state—the three physicians, Ekete, a board member of Brand of the Land, and of course Damien—a sufficient number to certify that this was indeed a close approximation of the Duyole Pitan-Payne they had all known. Only then did they take him to his home some fifteen kilometres away. They rested him on an improvised catafalque made up of two tables covered in the famous aso oke, the traditional weave of the Yoruba.

  Menka could not wait to take Damien into a corner. Where are your father’s friends? Where are all his friends and colleagues who have been screaming their heads off in frustration? Where are they? Did you notify them? No, Damien had not. The list—what happened to the list, the absolute minimalist list of acquaintances conceded by The Family to lesser humanity? Show me. Who has it? Those who, even the crassest sensibility admitted, must be notified, no matter what—do they know that tonight is his lying-in-state? Damien’s shifty gaze took over and he scuffed the carpet with his feet. It was the uncles again. The uncles had put a stop to everything. Everything? Everything! Does that include the notices in the newspapers, which—again in concession to the delicate sensibilities of The Family—would not be inserted until the day before his arrival so as to minimize the crush, to keep out the prying eyes, the busybodies, the nobodies, the wreath-eating goats, the vulgar horde, the unwashed masses and gossips who would desecrate The Family’s decorum—where were the few, the very select few good enough to scrape their dirt on The Family’s doorstep? Did anything appear in the papers of that morning, as agreed? The announcement that was winnowed down to the very barest essentials, namely, that Duyole was coming home, that notification of the details of his funeral outing and the memorial service would follow, that there would be no more than one day between the appearance of that notice and the day of interment—in other words, tomorrow, this very next day after, the gregarious engineer would be interred in the cemetery of the Chapel of the Apostles? And that other memorial events would take place sometime afterwards, when the gates of Purgatory would be thrown open to the inmates to emerge and belt out songs of remembrance, belch from overeating and drinking, and banalize the rarified image of The Family? Just what happened to this absolute reductio ad absurdum concession?

  Bisoye was in her room throughout, attended by an aunt who had traveled from her hometown to be with her. She had been dispatched from the palace—all part of the family support system. Royalty or peon, the tradition was sacrosanct, and a most efficacious one for the grieving. Bisoye remained oblivious to all that went on around her, however. She had no idea that all notices had been withdrawn, as Damien now mumbled, looking around him like a trapped animal. It was a thoroughgoing blitz. No sooner had Dr. Menka been airborne than the dismantling had begun. The parish priest, invited to conduct a brief service over the casket, was contacted by The Family and told to take his offices of the dead elsewhere. Even those on the shortest of short lists ever drawn up for an oral notification of the burial of a pauper in a nation notorious for joy and celebration of both living and dead had been deactivated. At most, some ten or twelve people, mostly from Millennium Towers, dropped by Duyole’s home that night. It was then discovered, purely by chance, that Ekete’s wife was actually a deacon in their church. She was drafted to conduct a brief service of worship over his coffin. Menka felt increasingly baffled. This went beyond mystery. He felt he had been landed in the middle of a fierce battle whose causes he could not remotely guess at. And now, additionally, his limbs were trembling. He knew that the cause was not from the emotion of rage but physical—hunger. It had been a tense day, largely sustained on caffeine and throat-searing spirits. During flight he had declined even the prelunch snacks. By lunchtime he was fast asleep, waking up just before landing—the night flight of the previous day, during which he had hardly shut his eyes, had taken its toll. His stomach had signaled deprivation, but now it was clamorous. That came in useful. He needed to get away from the house to think, so he went out of that place of abandonment late that evening to look for food. All he had to do was summon the steward, Godsown, but he did not wish to eat within those walls, and there was nothing, he recalled, to eat in his apartment—he had abstained from further provisioning, meaning to remove the last traces of his brief occupation the day after the second funeral. He knew just one place where, at that hour, he would find something for his stomach before retiring—a Lebanese restaurant not too distant, where he was certain to be remembered as an eating foil to Duyole’s gourmandizing. He drove there, praying the kitchen was yet open. It was. He gulped down a meal while the proprietors sang praises, thrilled to learn that Duyole was back in Badagry.

  It was not yet eleven when he returned. As he drove past the main house, he slowed down. It seemed dark inside, with scattered pools of dim light. Everything looked very still, peaceful, and silent. That was strange. A vigil, known as a service of songs, was supposed to be taking place, and it normally would not end till about two in the morning. Tributes, reminiscences, banters, soloists, poetry readings, hymnings, lyric recitals of ancestral history, sedate drinking, even the occasional boisterous outburst….Menka reversed the car, parked, and went into the house. The entire crowd had disappeared; the small swarm of outsiders had retired to their homes. Even The Family was missing. He stepped into the lounge where Duyole lay in state, invisible in his casket. As he entered, he saw a solitary figure bent over a book, seated beside the coffin. There was nobody else, not a soul. No one from Millennium Towers. Neither the small family, staying of course in the Pitan home, nor the relations. No acquaintances. Just the widow. He had been away for under an hour, and it was not even close to midnight. He had expected to find them grouped around, seated in neat rows or haphazardly spaced, indulging in ceremonies of the wake which, Duyole loved to contest, had been purloined from Africa by the Irish.

  Pointless the question, but he nonetheless asked, “Where is everyone?”

  “They’ve gone home.”

  “And Katia? Damien?”

  “They’ve gone up to their rooms. I think they are all exhausted.”

  “But the vigil—the programme says a service of songs?”

  She stared. Then resumed reading her missal—at least he assumed that was the book in her hands.

  “You mean you’ve been sitting here all by yourself?”

  “My aunt from home is upstairs. I made her go up when others left—she hasn’t been enjoying much sleep. But Mrs. Ekete will be back soon. She came straight from work, so she went home to change when Brother K. sent everyone home. She’s coming back.”

  The sil
ence was eerie. Such vigils went sometimes into the early hours, and even, for the more extreme, into morning, when breakfast might be offered. This was a home whose hospitality was notorious, where permanent enmities were made between friends because one had obtained an invitation to Duyole’s shindig and the other had not. The home of a man who sometimes took over the joys and sorrows of others and made them his own. Duyole had crossed half the world in a casket, only to lie abandoned in a world where wake-keeping was a way of life and of death. Where on earth was this land of happiness, even in death?

  Menka was not enamoured of these rituals, but this struck him like an accusation. He had brought Duyole home to Badagry, the sole night remaining to his burial, specifically timed toward a wake, one of the therapies that society had devised for dealing with loss. The irony was not lost on him—he was indifferent, even hostile, to funeral wakes. If Gumchi were not so distant, he would have been content to take the body with him all the way to Gumchi, sleep soundly while Duyole lay at peace in his living room till the following morning, then brought him back to his home for his interment. He felt tricked. He had delivered his friend to those to whom such things mattered, only to have him abandoned? Everything had been timed for this, including the decision on a day flight, to enable arrival just a few hours before the commencement of the wake. He had not bargained on leaving him alone in his own home, abandoned in hate on one hand and unwittingly by those whom hate had kept away.

  He heard footsteps. It was Deacon Ekete returning, as good as her word. Menka pulled up a chair for her, and all three sat by the bier. The two women took turns reading from the Bible, then broke into prayers. He sat with them, then observed the strain, the utter weariness on the widow’s face. Suddenly she was racked with fresh sobs. Both urged her to go to bed, but she resisted—Sorry, sorry, I’ll be all right, I’ll be all right. It went beyond grief; the aberrations that surrounded this death had begun to sap her morale. Finally Menka persuaded the deacon to escort her to bed, then go home herself. There was a brief tussle, then Bisoye agreed to go upstairs when Mrs. Ekete took her leave. No one else came, not even the junior sister, Selina, who had crashed onto the sickbed of her brother, sprinkling holy water and heaping imprecations on whoever might have been responsible for assaulting him. Menka couldn’t help feeling that a sprinkling of holy water was truly required in that household, a full-service exorcism dedicated to getting rid of the demons that plagued it.

  They heard a car draw up. “That would be my husband,” Deacon Ekete said. “He was to come for me after two hours.” There was no further resistance from Bisoye. Menka watched them go upstairs, then heard someone meet them on the first landing—it was the aunt, and she took over. The deacon descended a few moments later and went out the front door. Menka stood for a long while, staring into space. Then he walked slowly towards the bier, placed his hand on the casket. “This,” he announced, “is my second vigil by you, Duyole. But this time I don’t have to worry about falling asleep on the job, and I have no intention of falling off the chair. So if you have no objection…” He picked up a cushion from a chair, adjusted it on the carpet for a pillow, and stretched himself beside the bier, a big yawn already emerging. He sank nearly instantly into his deepest sleep in days. He was awakened by sunlight pouring into the lounge, its beams across his face and splashing across the bier. Duyole and he were still the sole occupiers of the living room. There was no movement in the home.

  Rubbing sleep from his eyes, Menka went into the bathroom to splash water on his face. He then moved to the French windows and pulled aside the curtains to let in a little more of the sunlight. There was a movement outside, and then Menka realized that he had not after all kept Duyole company alone. Seated on the grass, his back against the glass door on the outside, was the figure of Godsown. It was clear that he had also kept vigil all night. Menka was moved. As his eyes swept across the empty lawn with its swimming pool and well-trimmed croton bushes and yellow-red clusters of bougainvillea, devoid of any other sign of life, he was struck with sudden apprehension.

  Could it be that a similar scenario of desertion had been set up for Duyole’s physical reinterment? Had The Family worked to deprive Duyole of company even at his actual burial? It seemed not merely possible but extremely likely. Maybe they would see it as some kind of personal triumph that they needed, to ensure that even though Duyole had returned home to rest, it must prove a nonevent, a hollow victory. No one would know about it, so they could deny that he was ever brought home. What did they want, or, perhaps more accurately, what was it that they dreaded from a farewell tribute that involved the presence of his body? Indeed, from any final tribute? A memorial service afterwards—oh yes, that was also agreed on the programme, but it committed them to nothing. The nation knew that Duyole had already been buried in Austria, and the majority could be made to endorse that as a permanent fact.

  Menka went upstairs, knocked up Damien from his sleep. How far had it gone, he demanded, this blackout on the news of Duyole’s return? Where else was censorship in rampant operation? Damien seemed fated to stand surrogate for his uncle, and Menka wrung the truth out of him. Yes indeed, Uncle Kikanmi had called him at his assigned desk in the office of The Vanguard, where he was carrying out his duties. That call was to check on neither the wording of notices nor any changes or details in the programme. It was to stop all further activities in the media. Other arrangements,” the journalist and his squatter were informed, were being made to get the news across to those who needed to be present. The arrangement with the newspaper was no longer required.

  Now the picture was clear beyond all further subterfuge. Menka rushed to the telephone and called up the homes of the editors of a local Badagry newspaper, then two others in Lagos and Ibadan. Their reaction was, predictably, one of disbelief. Duyole Pitan-Payne, the murdered engineer, Mr. Brand of the Land, had been brought back to Nigeria? So where was he? They had heard nothing. No one had contacted them. And he would be buried that morning, that same morning? Yes, Menka assured them. I am calling from his home, and we plan to go through his gates in one hour from now. We shall proceed in a convoy to the burial grounds of the university chapel, according to his wishes. After a church service? No, no church service, Menka informed them, only prayers and a few hymns by the graveside. It was not an hour when reporters were to be found in their offices, but both editors promised to track down their journalists and dispatch them to the Payne home or else to the graveside. I want photographers, Menka said—be sure to send photographers!

  The battle of restriction was now ripening, it appeared, and all masks were progressively ripped off. There were no more greys, just black and white, starkly delineated. Duyole’s staff at Millennium Towers had been assured by The Family that the remains of their leader would be brought to the house that Duyole had built, the Miracle of Badagry, Brand of the Land, that the coffin would remain there for fifteen minutes, maybe half an hour, while they paid their last respects. They had come to work in suitably sombre attire, and sat in their offices waiting to be summoned. It had taken hours of stiff negotiation for Runjaiye and Ekete to wring that concession out of The Family, but finally Kikanmi had given solemn assurance of this last homage. When Runjaiye came to the house of bereavement, however, simply to ascertain when the cortege would take off from the house, he was confronted with a denial. Kikanmi, now apparently master of ceremonies, funeral conductor, and chief mourner, had arrived early. He informed Runjaiye that the cortege would attract too much attention. They would proceed straight to the burial ground.

  The poor staff representative did not believe he had heard right. Attract too much attention? In his view, their friend and boss was attracting far too little. What, he demanded, could his staff offer their late employer in return for so much but to pay him just those final minutes of homage? No, it was not the homage of the staff that worried Big Brother, it was the noisy, vulgar homage of the crowd, all those busybodies around Millenn
ium Towers who had never learned to mind their own business. There was no escaping them, he moaned.

  Menka had returned to the living room when he overheard the exchanges. He listened for a while, wondering all over again if he had not strayed into yet another nightmare whose outer-space denizens had taken over the bodies of a strange clan that called itself The Family. It was all right to sneak the corpse of Duyole into an improvised morgue close to midnight, in the basement of the house that he had built, but it had become unseemly to have his coffin pass through that building in broad daylight while his colleagues, his staff, yes, even his lovers, walked past and bade him adieu? Into what kind of a warp, he asked himself, had he drifted all the way from Salzburg with Duyole’s corpse, himself as insubstantial an entity as a ghost? Trapped? Well, perhaps, but also possessed of the practical means of pulling the plug on the mad torrent and imposing some semblance of reality on the present. He felt the rise of his Gumchi blood. It all grew weirder by the second. Something was missing, something which, if only he could reveal it, would let the participants in the surreal proceedings know that the world that was being projected onto Duyole’s casket was unreal, its actors deranged. Let them know that it would take only a word from him, a gesture, a look, or a touch, to make them realize that they were victims of some forces beyond their control and that their salvation lay with attuning themselves with the reality that belonged to the world of Duyole Pitan-Payne. Looking for a swift code, a snap code of inducting them into that world, an instant magic key, he went a little berserk.