This House Is Not for Sale (3 page)

Ibe said put your right hand on the left part of your chest and swear that you'll keep our secret secret. I do as Ibe says.

I say to myself,
What if I do not reveal the secret and Ibe dies?

Ibe's mom said the Aladura prophetess who wears a white soutane and walks by the family house every early morning chanting
Jehovah El morija yaba sha sha sha
and clanging away on her little silver bell told her Ibe was going to live but she needed to buy a white cow and go with her to the Atlantic Ocean to drown the cow in the center of the ocean. This way the cow's soul would be taken in exchange for Ibe's.

Ibe's mom said she knew who was responsible for Ibe's sickness. She said it was not an
ordinary
sickness. She said it was the evil
karuwa
that her husband had brought into their marriage bed to stain her marriage bed that wanted to kill
her first and only son so that she would leave her marriage empty-handed.

She said when Ibe was born a prophet had told her that Ibe's star was so bright its brightness was blinding. She said star destroyers had seen how great her son was going to be and were planning to kill him to stop his star from shining.

Ibe's mom said she was going to consult Nurse Eliza. Nobody knew if Nurse Eliza ever attended a nursing school. People said when she was growing up someone had told her that she looked and walked like a nurse and she had taken those words to heart and had started out without any training by prescribing Panadol for every illness. Now she had graduated to administering injections.

Nurse Eliza said that Ibe's blood was poisoned. She said Ibe's blood required
flushing
. She said Ibe would need to drain all the blood in his body because it was contaminated and it needed to be flushed out and replaced with fresh blood. She said she would need to buy blood from healthy donors, not the hepatitis-contaminated blood sold by junkies and prostitutes who hung around the General Hospital. She asked for a large amount of money. She said blood was expensive because
blood is life
.

I am a married widow, Ibe's mother said. I have no money.

In that case I will just place the boy on a drip, Nurse Eliza said, and hooked Ibe up on a drip. The rusty metal pole of the drip set one's teeth on edge as it was dragged across the concrete floor of the Family House.

Grandfather said Ibe's mom was a stupid woman. He said she was playing with her son's life. He said it was her stupidity
that had made her run away from her husband's house because her husband had a concubine. He said if Ibe died because of her carelessness then she had truly left the marriage empty-handed.

Grandfather said if Ibe's mom knew what was good for her, she should carry Ibe and start running to Faith Hospital.

Ibe's mom said that nobody goes to Faith Hospital anymore, that the owner belonged to a blood-sucking secret cult and that people went into his hospital alive and came back dead.

Grandfather said in that case call my friend Doctor Williams.

Doctor Williams said he was no longer practicing. He said his hands shook but that he would come and take a look at the boy.

Doctor Williams said Ibe had appendicitis and that it was liable to burst any moment from now if the boy was not rushed to the hospital to get that thing cut off. Doctor Williams said cutting off an appendix was as easy as cutting off the neck of a chicken, any doctor could do it.

Ibe said he was proud of the little pink scar under his belly. Ibe said appendicitis was caused by swallowing orange and guava seeds instead of spitting them out. If one didn't spit them out they accumulated and after some time one's appendix began to swell.

Ibe said he had told the doctor that he wanted to watch while they cut his stomach open to remove the appendix. Ibe said he told the doctor he was not afraid of pain and had refused
to be sedated. He said first he had pretended to close his eyes, then he had opened both eyes and had watched the doctor open up his stomach and cut out the appendix with a surgical blade and tie up the loose ends. Ibe said the doctor had placed multicolored threads inside the different parts of his intestine as he cut. He said he had asked the doctor why he did this and the doctor had said so that I will not be confused by your internal organs and cut your big intestine instead of your appendix.

Ibe said that while he was lying in bed sick he had gone to heaven and had seen God face-to-face. Ibe said God had a long white beard that reached down to God's feet and swept the ground as God floated around in cream-colored bell-bottom pants.

Ibe said he now had the secret of death in his pocket. Ibe said he was never going to die because he had died once and that was the way it was because it was written that
you can only die once and after that eternal life.

Ibe said before he died he saw people carrying his corpse inside a small coffin. Ibe said he was both inside the coffin and yet outside of the coffin. He said he could still remember snatches from the song the people carrying his corpse were singing:

Ibe said God was really angry when he was brought to the throne of judgment. Ibe said God asked the people who
had brought him why they had brought before his throne this young boy who still had a lot of work to do on God's good earth and was destined to live until the evening of his days. God told them to send Ibe back to the world because it wasn't yet Ibe's time to die. Ibe said when he opened his eyes he was in the hospital wearing a white gown.

Ibe said that everything in heaven was white with the exception of God's cream-colored trousers. The cloud through which God walked was white. God's long beard, which touched God's feet, was white, the angels were all white in color and the trumpets through which they blew the hymn
Hosanna in the Highest
also gleamed white.

I said to Ibe, I know what caused your sickness, what made your belly swell. It was the sweets and money we took from the shrine of the goddess when we went on the
mission
.

Ibe told me to shut my mouth. Ibe said God had sent him back from the dead because he was not afraid of idols. He believed in only one God. Do you think God would have allowed me to come back from the dead if God didn't like the work I was doing here on earth?

Ibe's mom had a new spring in her footsteps. She said the
foolish man
has written, referring to Ibe's dad. The foolish man is now begging. The foolish man has carried both oil and water and now knows which is heavier.

Grandfather said she should shut up and stop making a fool of herself and start packing her things so she could return quietly to her husband's house.

W
henever the uncle we all called Gramophone, behind his back, walked into any room with a radio on or some music playing, it was immediately turned down or turned off. He would sometimes use two fingers to block both ears when loud music from the record store down the road wafted into the Family House. He was called Gramophone because he would clean and dust every part of the sitting room but would not go near or touch Grandfather's four-in-one Sanyo stereo. When this was pointed out to him once, he shrank back and said he could dust and clean everything in the sitting room but not
that Gramophone
, he said, pointing to the Sanyo stereo. We were warned not to whistle songs around him. Whistling was not encouraged in
the Family House at any rate, whistling in the daytime was said to attract snakes while whistling at night attracted evil spirits.

He sought refuge in the Family House many years ago, having killed a man or, as we were told, he had not actually killed the man but the man had died from their encounter and he had had to flee from the village at night. He knew that there was only one place on this earth where no arm no matter how long could reach him, and that was the Family House.

Anytime someone sang any popular song around him, he would cover both ears with his hands like a little child that did not want to hear or listen to an instruction. On days that Grandpa was happy, he hung the loudspeaker of his Sanyo stereo on the outside wall of the house facing the street so that passersby could hear the music playing. Many would stand and listen to the music for a while. Grandpa usually did this when a new LP was released by any of the popular musicians. When a new LP was released, Grandpa bought the record and played it over and over again while a small crowd stood outside enjoying the music. Some in the crowd whispered that this was what it meant to be a rich man. They praised Grandpa for not being selfish. He actually spreads his wealth, so that even those who have no music system can stand in front of his house and enjoy the music, they said.

On such days Gramophone would go to his room and plug his ears with cotton wool and would not emerge until late at night, when the hubbub had died down and the music turned off. When he emerged his eyes would be red and would appear as if he had just finished crying. Those who knew in
the Family House would shake their heads. They were the ones who told us his story in bits and pieces, but at the heart of the story was a gramophone record player.

He used to live in the village and was the first man to buy a gramophone record player. His nickname back then was Cash. He was also the owner of I Sold in Cash Provision Store.

In the evenings when people were back from the farms and had finished the day's business, they would sit outside their homes to take in the cool night breeze. Cash would tie his gramophone to the passenger seat of his bicycle and would pedal slowly through the village. As he pedaled past homes, people would call out Cash, Cash. If it was their lucky day, he would gently alight from his bicycle, untie his gramophone. A table would be produced and a piece of antimacassar spread on top of the table on which he would then gently place the gramophone like the special guest that it was. His hosts for the evening would request whatever record they wanted played. A favorite was a play featuring Mama Jigida and Papa Jigida, a bickering couple who quarreled all the time because Papa Jigida was always broke. Sometimes people requested some local musical star. Cash would search through his collection and say,
I don't have the record by that particular musician but I have this one and they both play their guitar in the same way. Listen to it, you'll like it.

Cash was always a welcome guest and people would bring out their best drinks and kola nuts to entertain him. A few would even put some money by the record changer for him to buy batteries. For many, just having the gramophone sitting there was enough. For first-timers Cash would flip through
his pack of LPs arranged in a carton and pick out something. He would bring out the LP, dust it with an orange cotton handkerchief, and gingerly place the record in the changer. First there was a little crackle as the pin scratched the record and then the voices would begin to sing or talk and would float into the surrounding inky darkness.

Whoever thought of putting people in that box must indeed be a wizard, one of the householders would remark.

That is what I keep telling our people, the white people have their own witchcraft but they don't kill their brothers and sisters with it, they invent things like the airplane and the car and this gramophone.

At this point a bottle of half-drunk aromatic schnapps still in its original carton would appear, and drinking would commence while the gramophone made music. Cash would occasionally bring out a record to play. He would begin by introducing the musician. Some of the artists were from the Congo and sang in Lingala. Even though Cash had never been to the Congo he would sometimes translate these songs, especially after a few shots of schnapps:

Rotate Provision and Fancy Store was everything Cash Provision Store wasn't. Take the word
Fancy
that was a part
of its name. People wondered what the word
Fancy
meant at first, but were not left to wonder for long. Not only did Rotate stock and sell provisions, but he also sold baby clothes, and women's hats and gowns and shoes—these were the fancy goods, according to him.

Cash prided himself on the fact that he sold in cash, hence his nickname, as opposed to credit. Rotate did not mind offering credit and would quickly write down the customer's name and how much was owed in a blue-ruled Olympic Exercise notebook. The only proviso was that customers had to pay a little against what they owed before he could offer more credit.

Rotate installed his own gramophone in his store and hung both loudspeakers from the door. His gramophone was always playing music. He played not only highlife, but also some Western music by KC and the Sunshine Band and Sonya Spence and Don Williams and Skeeter Davis and Bobby Bare.

A bottle of watered-down gin filled with anti-malaria herbs was placed on a table in the store. Customers who had no money could have a free shot of watered-down gin, listen to music, and chat. Some ended up buying an item even if it was just a cigarette.

While Cash closed his store as soon as darkness came, Rotate lived in his store and encouraged people to knock on his window at any time if they needed to buy something. Rotate also had a medicine box out of which he sold tablets.
Just tell him what ails you and he'll mix some tablets that'll cure you
, people said about Rotate.

People no longer talked in whispers about how Rotate got his name or made the money with which he opened his Provision and Fancy Store. They all knew he had made his money from a marijuana farm. When news of the farm reached the ears of the police, a detachment of policemen was sent to arrest him. According to people who were there, the police inspector who led the team had asked Rotate if he did not know that it was illegal to plant marijuana.

“No, sir, I did nothing wrong. I was only practicing crop rotation.”

“What do you mean by crop rotation?”

“Well, sir, in school we were taught in agricultural science that it was not good for the soil to plant only one kind of crop from year to year so I decided to rotate the crops. Yam last year, marijuana this year, and corn next year,” he shot back.

He was arrested and detained at the police headquarters, but he bribed the police and was released.

When Gramophone heard that another store had opened he went to congratulate the new owner and even sat down ready to share drinks. He knew Rotate's story. Unlike Rotate, he had made his own money by using his bicycle to ferry items to distant markets for female traders. But he believed in live and let live. Rotate did not offer Cash any drinks. According to Cash, the man had rejected his extended hand of fellowship.

Cash began to worry when he noticed that items on his shelf were beginning to expire without being sold. Biscuits,
tea bags, tins of milk all sat on the shelves until they expired. He stopped moving around with his gramophone in the evenings to people's homes, preferring to stay in his store instead and play the records in the hope that customers would come in to buy. Rotate's store on the other hand was attracting the younger crowd, who had money to spend and spent it quickly, unlike the older people who counted every penny and loved to haggle.

Cash began to introduce new things. He now sold
chin-chin
and
puff-puff
and buns in a glass-sided display box glass, but Rotate had
beer-beef
—chunky pieces of beef spiced up and fried until they were really dry and filled the mouth—when chewed they were said to enhance the taste of beer on the tongue. Rotate sold sausage rolls, which had the advantage of never going bad. Rotate only bought and sold certain items during certain seasons. Schoolbooks and exercise books when school resumed in September, machetes and hoes at the start of the farming season, raincoats and boots at the start of the rainy season, and Robb, Mentholatum, and Vicks inhaler when the harmattan season set in. Whereas Cash used to pile up all the items in his store even when they were out of season and sometimes even sold brown and faded exercise books to pupils at the beginning of the school year, the stuff from Rotate's store always smelled fresh and new.

And then Rotate bought a Yamaha motorcycle, an Electric 125. It was electric blue in color and flew through the dusty village footpaths like a bird. It made Cash's Whitehorse Raleigh bicycle look shabby and prehistoric.

People began to talk about the fall of Cash and the rise of Rotate. Cash had a framed picture in his store that showed two men. In one half of the picture, the man who sold in cash was smiling and looking prosperous in a green jacket and a fine waistcoat with a gold watch dangling from a chain and gold coins all around him. The other man who sold on credit was dressed in rags and looked haggard. All around him were the signs of his poverty; a rat nibbled at a piece of dry cheese in a corner of the store. A wag suggested that Cash should change his name to Mr. Credit.

Someone came and whispered to Cash that the reason his former customers were running away from his store was that Rotate had been spreading terrible rumors about him. He said that Rotate told people that he opened the soft drinks he sold and mixed them with water in order to get more drinks, that he duplicated keys to padlocks before he sold them.

Cash was angry when he heard these stories and decided to confront Rotate. His plan was to tell Rotate that the sky was wide enough for every manner and specie of bird to fly without running into each other or knocking each other down with their wings. His plan was to tell Rotate that they could indeed practice
rotation
in their business by taking turns to sell certain items so that they didn't create a glut. But Cash's visit was unsuccessful. Rotate rebuffed him, telling Cash—
There is no paddy in the jungle, you mind your business, I mind my own. Every man for himself, God for us all.

One day there was an early-morning police raid on Rotate. They knew exactly where to look and they found wraps of
marijuana in empty giant tins of cocoa beverage. According to some people, the leader of the team had told Rotate to give out everything in his store because this time he was not coming back.

But Rotate did come back after three weeks and he promptly declared total war on Cash, claiming that Cash had ratted him out. Rotate returned from detention red-eyed. He said he was going to wipe out his enemies once and for all.
When you kill a snake, there is no need to leave the head lying around, you must sever the head and bury it in a deep pit
, he boasted. He told his customers to buy only from him; even if there was something they needed and he didn't have it, he would buy it for them the next time he went to the market.

According to Rotate, there were only two kinds of people in this world, those who were for Rotate and those who were against him. He said that there was no way the police would have known where he kept his marijuana cache if someone had not worked as an
informant
. He said if his enemies were jealous because he was the owner of an ordinary motorcycle, then what were they going to do when he bought the fully air-conditioned Peugeot 504 station wagon that he was going to buy soon. Though Rotate had dropped out of school early in form three in secondary school, he still threw around terms from the various subjects he had studied in school and justified his nefarious trade in marijuana by quoting the law of demand and supply. He said having only one store in the village was the equivalent of creating a monopoly. He said he believed in democracy, which was why he played his gramophone for all,
unlike Cash, who only played for his favorites. He said he was planning on expanding his business and bringing democracy to the village. He planned to expand his business and open a full-fledged boutique selling ladies' and children's clothes and would also open a chemist shop that would sell medications. He said he was practicing what he had learned in his business methods class in school.

Cash did his best to reach out to Rotate. He sent a couple of individuals who were close to Rotate, the people who bought marijuana from him. Rotate said to them, “The police told me that the person who told them about me and my business told them to lock me up for good, that he did not want them to ever release me from detention. Think of what would have happened if I was never released. Who else could possibly tell them that?”

Soon after his release, Rotate bought an electric generator and a fridge and began to sell cold drinks. Cash had a gas lamp in his store and this was considered a major boost in a village where darkness descended without warning and was impenetrable and dense. But people also told Rotate that the two records Cash played over and over again were songs in which the musicians talked about enemies. One of the songs had the refrain: