Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth

by Wole Soyinka

  With a recall of the pact came a renewed chill in his bones as he awaited Godsown in that unrelenting darkness, found himself assailed by a wave of vertigo. It was as if the world was dissolving around him, a near-identical sensation to one he had once had in Duyole’s workshop. Then Menka had had more time on his hands—Boko Haram was yet unheard of—and he would visit Badagry on a whim and watch Duyole at work, curious to see what latest contraption was under his ministrations. That day something happened and he felt lightheaded, perhaps from inhaling too many fumes. He sat on a bench to avoid fainting in the converted garage, littered with clogged motor engines, singed gaskets, coils and tubes, normal discards which became a personal challenge to Duyole’s restless mechanical fingers. A floating scrim now emerged from total darkness, superimposing Duyole all bloodied on the operating table, with a steel array on a surgical tray, gloved arms probing his body for foreign metallic pieces that threatened to put a stop to the smooth functioning of a damaged engine. Perched on a narrow space of the workbench among tools and spare parts, Menka began to feel somewhat dizzy. He shook his head and moved nearer a vent lodged high up in the wall. Duyole saw the change of position and accurately assessed why. Menka heard that voice all over again, his irrepressible chortle—Serve you right, you knock out your patients with that anaesthetic stuff, now you can’t stand a little whiff of my own garage equivalent. And then Duyole stopped abruptly. He stopped speaking for so long that Menka felt compelled to ask him what suddenly was eating him.

  “I’ve just thought of something. I saw a documentary yesterday, and I didn’t like it one bit.”

  “Well?”

  “Not one bit. So here comes another pact.”

  Kighare sighed. “All right, spell it out.”

  They had several pacts, mostly ridiculous, sprung from negotiating the final drops from a wine bottle. A number were, however, far from trivial, such as those that involved business or family, dependents, both close and in extension. Nothing was ever written down, but no sooner agreed than they took to reminding each other of details from time to time, whenever the theme accidentally surfaced or individuals involved crossed their sight lines, however tangentially. Menka shuddered. Suppose he had been in Salzburg! Duyole’s voice returned to haunt him:

  “No. Didn’t fancy it one bit. I mean, to end like that man, dragging it out for so long…What’s the point?”

  Menka waited patiently. “Let me know when you’re ready.”

  “Sorry, nothing complicated. Let’s do it this way. If ever it comes to a situation where someone has to pull the plug, it must be you. Right? You’ll take the decision, no one else.”

  “No big deal,” Menka agreed. “We encourage that in our trade. It frees our hand and we can concentrate on what matters.”

  “I suppose this is one I’d better put down in writing, get it notarized. Give you a copy. That documentary, I didn’t like the way it went. It was an eye-opener. The family tussle? Never seen anything remotely like it.”

  Menka nodded. “Any way you decide. And of course you’ll do the same for me if I go first.”

  Duyole’s rejection was vehement. “Me? You must be joking. It doesn’t cut both ways—not in this instance. You are a doctor, not just a buddy. You are used to it, I am not.”

  “Stop trying to cheat,” Menka admonished.

  “No. I’m not trying to cheat. This is one instance when there cannot be reciprocity. It’s elementary.”

  Menka shook off the fog of apparition and gulped down a lungful of the night air, now perfumed by the fumes from a hundred generators.

  He attuned his thoughts to practical decisions. Godsown’s resurfacing had startled him, and yet, what else could he have expected? The phone calls, beginning so soon after the burial; the persistence, even desperation. He could virtually see him, his moustache bristling, the ever-faithful steward in a seamless sensibility of loyalty, seeking him out after leaving the stricken household without notice. He had simply packed his bags and quit, first ensuring that the megadi—watchman—at the gate clawed through the shiny, indeed polished, suitcase that held all his belongings. And he made sure that the rest of the house staff were present—cook, gardener, resident laundry man, and even the next-door security staff, switching as usual to their common fragmented delivery of the white man’s language.

  “My resign notice is dey for dere dining table,” he announced grandly. He had waited until the home was virtually empty, regretful only that he had to do this to the widow, quitting in her absence and when she was most vulnerable. “I done get new job, but I no want any trouble. I just wan’ commot peaceable. Make nobody come follow harass me for anything wey miss. Before God and man, as I come, so I go. Wetin I take come, na in I take go.” And he offered to pay the gardener’s taxi fare back to the house if he would agree to follow him to his new employer’s home and verify his new job and possessions.

  Menka wondered whether, despite his protestations, Godsown had actually left his old employer without even one item, at least a memento to which he had become perhaps no more than sentimentally attached. It was an unfair thought, and he rebuked himself, slanting it to mean whether or not Godsown would miss the cut-glass bell that he, Menka, had found so embarrassing. It had been one of the minor irritations he tried hard to manage in that second home. An attractive bell with a penetrating tinkle, guaranteed to be the trigger for routine ideological umbrage, with minor variations, all depending on the state of their lubrication. It always struck Menka as incongruous between Duyole’s quite fleshy fingers, but that was how he chose to summon the kitchen staff to the table, Godsown most frequently, since he did most of the waiting. That glass bell, to tell the truth, was quite musical to the ear—Duyole had picked it up in Salzburg in one of the souvenir shops. It was, however, one item to which Menka never adjusted, and he found it feudal that anyone should use a bell to summon another being. “Why don’t you just call him?” he once snapped. “Use your blasted baritone bellow!” Duyole’s riposte was instant—“I prefer sopranos, Comrade Gentry”—guaranteed to plunge the evening into the same contumacious waters—crystal bell equaled the bourgeoisie, the human bellow was a leveler, still, both were unable to escape master-servant relationships, to which Menka had yet to find a solution. And the only ponderous question left to them to solve was which advocate would be first to be thrown into the revolutionary furnace when it was eventually lit and stoked. Or it could be the opera—did they admit guilt for that pastime of the middle class and affluent, a mark of decadence? What undiluted full-blooded product of Senghorian negritude would go and hear an opera? They both did, even the tone-impaired Menka. So, might as well be damned through and through, one growled, while the other nodded agreement—Pass the malt, capitalist ogre. Shame on you, proletariat butcher, you should drink only ogogoro, ideally spiked with motor battery acid. Duyole pushed the crystal decanter towards him…and so it went. Now Menka interrogated the darkness: Was this the friend he was supposed to have murdered or assisted in murdering? Damien did casually mention to his uncles that his father had sent him one late night to fetch a package that had been brought by Dr. Menka. He did not find one, but his father was sure it had been left on his work desk. Damien no longer recalled all the details, but it did become a central ingredient at the lunch that followed the reading of the will. The police had yet to reveal the exact point and means of detonation, but the package provided solemn exchanges of looks—among other dire significances.

  At first Menka thought he would simply listen to Godsown, make a summary, and have him sign it. At the last moment, just before leaving his new residence, he recalled seeing the ancient Walkman among his junk. Tested it, and it was still running—and of course he meant to buy new packs of batteries on the way to Lekki, where they had agreed to meet at a petrol station, then proceed to Godsown’s new home. Instinctively his finger went to the rewind button. It whirred, so he pushed Play to listen t
o the recording so far. There seemed to be a fair amount of juice left. His voice was first to emerge.

  “Well, Godsown, we have to do this properly. First you will introduce yourself. A brief background, you know—the police will want to know all about you, your previous place of work before you joined the Pitan-Payne household, present employment. Then we’ll get down to the real thing, Godsown. What made you leave the Pitan-Paynes and so on. In your own words, so I wouldn’t appear to be prompting you or anything like that. Just in your own words, why you decided to find me and ask for this meeting. You understand why all that is important?”

  Godsown was eager to go. “Oga, everything is between me and my conscience. It is ziggurat or death.”

  “Sorry, what did you say?”

  “Ah, don’t worry, sir, you will know what that is when I tell you my life story. First let me finish with this lunch when they discuss the matter.”

  “All right, do it your way. It’s all yours. The recorder is already running.”

  “My name is Godsown Porkari. I am now forty-six years old and I used to work for the engineer Mr. Duyole Pitan-Payne of blessed memory who built Millennium Towers. I want to say what I know of these people in the family of the engineer and what they say about who killed my master. I have no children yet, but it is not for nothing that my parents called me Godsown, because God does not forget his own and we all know that God’s time is the best.

  “Before, I was in the north, in Kabba. How I ended up in the north does not matter, but that was how I met my wife, the daughter of a kola nut trader. May I just say that she was like the blending of the kola nuts in the tray she balanced on her head. I mean, Mr. Menka, sir, the way she walk, balancing that pretty tray on her head, and that head balance on her delicate neck. I look that skin, and is like God take the red kola and mix it a little with the yellow-white kola nut, and you get a complexion for which even an angel will sell one of his wings, I swear. My pastor once warn me that it was the Devil that had get inside my mouth to talk such blasphemy, but I can’t help it. Anyway, that was nothing to the curse that shoot out of his mouth when I tell him that this blended walking kola nut breast, the one on which I want to lay my head, was a Muslim! He curse me, so I leave his church and marry her in her own village, where they admit me as son. I move to Kabba with my then master, whom they transfer from Yenagoa to become the railway station master. I never go north before, but I know say it is Destiny that take me there, to meet Zainab, who hawk her father’s kola nut at the railway station. So much for my family. She still stay with her father, come to visit me from time to time at Master Pitan-Payne place, but I now bringing her to Lagos with this new job.

  “Now, to this matter of my master and his friend, the doctor. It happen at lunch which the family had after the reading of Mr. Pitan’s will. That was in the sitting room of my master’s house. I am the one serving all the people who come for the reading, then later waiting on them at table. The two brothers and the sister are there, and some relatives. After they finish reading the will, they say a small prayer. Many of the family people leave, but two brothers and the sister stay. In fact, the two brothers have been more or less living in the house since the funeral. I am the one still serving them. The son also, Damien, and one of the daughters, Katia, and I think three other people. I know one of the others because he is the lawyer to the two brothers and he has been coming to the house now even more than before. But he is not my oga’s lawyer. My oga’s lawyer is Cardoso, and he leave immediately after they read the will. So, on that day, as they were talking, the young brother even bring out a newspaper which he showed the others. It was an old newspaper, not the whole of the paper but just two pages which he had been keeping, and it carried a story of my master and the doctor, Dr. Menka. I see the headline while serving them, and it read Rivalry of the Inseparables. It was a special story. It had their photos, and I know it was writing about how they have been rivals from schooldays, even overseas, and then they come back here and begin to win medals. I remember very well because the paper even call them korikosun—which means, if they don’t see each other, then they can’t sleep. And now those people, they begin to laugh. They say all the time Dr. Menka was a false friend because he jealous his friend too much. They say he know about the bomb. And when that doesn’t work, he put something inside him when they perform operation on him at university hospital in Badagry.

  “I have to say that this pain me too much. The people were laughing and talking very bad things, and I know is all because the friend bring his brother back to Badagry, and the matter annoy the father very much. In fact, while they were eating, the father call them. I don’t hear what the old man say, but of course it was about this putting of something inside Master’s body because I can tell from how the brother Kikanmi is answering and saying things to the others at the table. He even give the phone to the younger brother, Timi, and the same thing happen all over again. It all make me feel very bad, all this only a week after they have buried the engineer. As if this was a crime, when it was what everyone has been wanting since he died overseas. One thing which I remember very well is that after Mr. Timi finish speaking to the Otunba, he turn to the others and say something like, You see, I am always telling you, Pop-of-Ages is deep, just deep. He sees farther than the rest of us. Something like that.

  “Thank God, since the day my master die, I decide I must leave that home, so I begin looking for a new job. I get offers from Mr. Pitan’s friends. I tell them the truth, why I want to leave, and after that lunch I think I reach the breaking point. I know say, I have to choose. In fact that is not really a matter of choice. It is a terrible feeling, sir, that moment when a man looks right and left, up and down, inside and outside, and knows you have only one way to go. But that is the same as saying you have no choice at all, because if you have only one choice, then what are you choosing? I mean, what from what? If you have not been through it, you can never understand it. My master’s people can talk all the grammar they want—their mission in life seems to be to argue over everything, after which everything is exactly as before—but I don’t think they have ever come face-to-face with that moment when they find they must choose, really choose. Or perhaps they do that after all the argument, then tell no one about it. I am talking about that moment which I can only compare with sitting on an anthill during a flood. I won’t say I am talking about myself, but let us just say as it happened in the village near Kabba when the smaller river which flow into the Niger overflowed during the night and there was nothing dry left to sit upon. Even the few baobab and neem trees disappeared, leaving only the top branches, which cannot support the weight of a newly hatched chicken. Everyone had fled their huts. The ladders of the silos had been washed away, so there was no way to climb up to the top for safety. The only place left until the waters dried was on top of the anthills, hoping that those mud hills themselves would not dissolve in the rising waters and suck you under. But then all the ants—soldier ants, workers, foragers, all of which had remained in hiding for all these years, making one think they had long abandoned their upstairs if you like also began to desert their underground bedrooms and climb higher as the waters flooded their secret tunnels. The waters did not cool their appetite for giving you terrible bites and stings, so one had to make a choice—endure their stings or take the risk of wading through water that is now rising above the shoulders, hoping to find something higher and more friendly before you were swept away. Your mind turned to a church tower or a mosque or minarets, ziggurats, or whatever—we had one of each in the next village, which is much older than ours. For once they could do what they were built for—saving souls. But of course you had to get there first. Now that is what I call a bad matter of choice—you can abandon the fiery ants and go and look for safety on the rooftop of church or mosque, or share their home with them and be stung to death, So there I was my mind is on one of my favourite ziggurats—no one called it that in the village, of co
urse, neither did I at the time. But when I started work in the Pitan-Payne family and relax with the heavy picture books in his sitting room, I see the name and I say, Ah, so that one is a ziggurat. And whenever I came to a moment of danger or any problem where I must choose, I would say to myself, Godsown, it’s ziggurat or death. So that is what I was saying when I first begin, the matter of ziggurat.

  “You see, you are sitting on top of this mud hill, and they are swarming all over you, crawling, rushing, racing with one another, columns and columns of them, getting more and more disturbed. When you disturb them, they begin to sting. You climb higher and higher, and finally there is nowhere else to go. And could they sting! The soldier ants, and the ones we call fire ants, who not only sting and bite but leave a painful red blister behind—yes, they begin their work. All that so-called man courage is gone. The fire ants, you didn’t know, they had already traveled up your trouser legs…

  “So what choice you get? Nuttin’ at all. First you take off your trousers, but it is already too late. The soldier ants are already entangled with the hairs of your blockos! You simply must take off your trousers, then the underpants. This is not in one corner-corner place where you can hide yourself, it is in public of other people, men and women, even children. But you must take off those trousers and all these people are looking at you from their own place in the flood, some on treetop, so you begin to pick out those fire ants already lodged inside that bush you hide from the neighbour. So much for the neighbour you once slap for poking her nose in your family affairs! She’s looking at your real family affair and there is nothing you can do about it. Unless you jump inside water and swim to the next tree or anthill or church tower wey still dey above water. Or ziggurat.

  “So, sir, is like that. To remain in that house one day longer, it was simply not a matter of choice. Those people be like fire ants. They enter your nostril and mouth, sting your blockos. If you no dey for dere side, you done become enemy. A friend find me this place quick-time, because I tell him is urgent. I cannot stay for dat house one more day…”