Indigo (18 page)

Jerry nodded. He knew he had paid too much. He thought of Sunday and then of Jules, ironing away on a board that was too high. “I don't know what I thought of what I heard last night,” he finally said, looking, again, at Pamela, “but I am going home and take a shower. I want a change of clothes.”

“Good idea,” said Pamela. “With Christmas at hand no one will be around.”

Jerry knew that was true. The flats would be empty and the entire school property would have that quiet feeling that he liked so much. He had changed lanes and was approaching the school cutoff when Pamela said, “But let me direct you to another place first. I have ordered you a Christmas gift but it is too cumbersome for me to Carry, so I left it with its maker.”

Jerry felt stung. If Pamela was lying then nothing had changed since the night before, the catharsis he had had while lodged against her sleeping body had been a totally private one and it had been wrong. He wanted her to have feelings for him as a man, not just as a pawn in Beany's plan. But he also knew, of course, that she was twenty years his junior, so why would she look at him with anything other than a calculating eye? No, he would drive to the school, drive past the security guard, and go into his flat for a shower and a change of clothing. After that he would go to the American ambassador's house, where he would demand an audience with the ambassador himself. But of course it was Christmas Day and likely that the ambassador was out of town. Everyone left Lagos over the holidays. What if there was no one for him to see? Even Lee Logar could be gone.

Pamela said, “I know you don't believe me, you don't think I have a Christmas gift waiting for you, but I do. It is something I had commissioned, and it does not involve Beany or any of these others, but is from me alone. It's a very long drive, but it's safer there than in Lagos. Why not take a chance?”

Jerry knew there would be no gift, didn't he? He knew, of course, that she would only direct him into some further complication, to another obscure hotel, perhaps, or to someone else's underground house. Pamela was a smart and charming woman but she had the disease of the others, she believed that because Nurudeen's father was at its head, this ridiculous coup idea, this wildly improbable scheme, had some chance of success, and Jerry felt she would say anything to keep him tied to it. That was true, wasn't it? She would do that, would she not?

Jerry looked at Bramwell. “What do you think of your father's plan?” he asked. “Do you think a new Nigeria will spring from such a group as his?”

Though there was too much sarcasm in Jerry's tone, Bramwell answered sincerely. “I do believe it, sir,” he said. “My father is a great man. Every Nigerian knows it. Nigeria can be a wonderful place under him and I believe that he will easily succeed.”

The boy spoke softly, moving his hands in front of him in the cooling air, and Jerry looked at Pamela again.

“Is he a great man, Pamela? Most boys think their fathers are great, but do you think so too?”

Pamela gave Jerry a wry smile but then answered just as well as Bramwell had, and with the same calmness, the same quiet tone. “Of course I believe it,” she said. “Why else would I be involved? We took you to the hotel last night because we were all quite sure that you would begin to see it too. That you did not is our biggest surprise so far. That his greatness isn't obvious to everyone, however, is a good lesson for us to have learned.”

Jerry slowed the car as he headed across the Marina toward Victoria Island. He remembered the events of the night before as well as anyone and what he remembered was that he had been in the presence of idle talk and vanity, the kind of weak intellectualisai that he'd always disliked and easily put down. Perhaps Nurudeen's father had spoken well, but Jerry saw him only as a man of words.

Jerry looked at Pamela and slowly said, “What if you are inventing this Christmas gift of mine? What if you are making it up right now, what then?”

“If there is no Christmas gift, that would be the last straw,” she said. “If there is no Christmas gift you will know that I am not sincere, you will know that I am hollow and that my admiration for you is a sham. If there is no Christmas gift you may dismiss me after that.”

Jerry drove on for a while but he was too pleased with the words Pamela had used to continue. He stopped the car and turned to ask Pamela which road would lead him to the place where the gift was waiting.

“It will take some hours,” she said, “and we are going in the wrong direction even now.”

The gift was near Onitsha, a provincial town in the east, and by the time they reached Benin City, three hours had passed and Bramwell was asleep. Though Jerry marveled at the distance they had gone, he thought of the trip as a Christmas cleansing, and he did not begrudge the decision he had made. Pamela had said she had admiration for him, and he had to believe that that was true. Also since he was driving, he was in control and could always turn around.

Onitsha was a market town on the far side of the Niger River. A huge and decrepit bridge took them into the town, but Pamela directed them right back out of it again, along a lonely road at the base of a shallow hill. “It isn't far,” she said. “Everything, now, will be close at hand.”

They had been quiet for most of the trip and were quiet again, until Pamela found the gate she was looking for. This gate was unpainted and orange rust ran down from its top like an orange map of Africa. The number 11 was painted in the orange, but the number was poorly done and looked rather like two trees scorched by fire. The gate had been built against the edge of the road and when Pamela reached over and sounded the horn, Jerry jumped, looking into the rearview mirror for traffic coming from behind.

No one responded to the horn, but Bramwell was awakened by it, so he got out to pound on the gate with his hand. He then reached through a hole and opened the gate from the inside, closing it again after Jerry drove through.

This was an odd estate, with a grim and woodsy yard. When Jerry and Pamela got out of the car, Bramwell stepped back. A thin man was standing at the base of a nearby palm tree. He had a hard and owlish expression on his face, but when Pamela said, “Oh good, LeRoY, come meet Jerry Neal,” the man's demeanor changed. He approached laughing, his right hand way out in front of him.

“Good day, Jerry Neal,” he said. “Good day and welcome!”

The man's exuberance was a pleasant surprise, and his smile transformed him. “I've been working jus' now,” he said. He pointed over the top of the car toward the front door of a highly peaked and whitewashed house. His name was stenciled on both sides of the door. LeRoY BaLoGuN. Every other letter was capitalized, and when Jerry went over to look at it LeRoY said, “I understand the pure affectation of such a thing, but I like it, don't you? It makes my name look like a difficult journey with success at its end.”

Jerry smiled but took a moment to look around before following LeRoY inside. There were rusted farm tools on the porch of this house, with live chickens walking carefully around them. At the side of the yard there was an old car, orange like the gate, and under the palm tree was a card table and two broken chairs.

LeRoY was not only thin, but he was also bald, with only a little white fuzz above his ears. Jerry thought he was perhaps sixty-five, though he seemed to have the energy of a younger man. LeRoY wore dark glasses and he wasn't a very tall man, the top of his head coming just to the area of Jerry's chest.

“Pamela tells me that you are interested in Nigerian art,” LeRoY said. “If that is so then this is a good spot for you to have come.”

“I like masks,” Jerry said. It was the truth, but he was surprised at having said so.

“Ah yes, masks,” said LeRoY BaLoGuN, “Nigeria's great disguise.”

LeRoY led them into the house and then into a large, well-lit room with high ceilings. He said that there were six such rooms in the house, though what could be seen from the hallway was only the mazelike passage between them.

“This is my workshop,” LeRoY said. “Let me show you the work that I do.”

LeRoY BaLoGuN's name was stenciled all around the walls of his workshop, an ostentatious display. Jerry really felt that if a man's name ballooned before others it should be from deeds done, not from its physical presence on walls, but he nevertheless liked the man. He tried to think of his own name written like that—JeRrY NeAl—but it didn't lend itself to the effort the way LeRoY's did. LeRoY's name looked staunch and successful, while JeRrY's was suspicious and squeezed together. It seemed to change him into WrY Al, and he didn't like that at all.

In LeRoY's workshop there were several long tables, with more workbenches lined against the wall.

“I began as a painter,” LeRoY said, “but I soon wandered into sculpture, and then into all these copper panels that I do now. In them I can find the thrill I got from painting, but I get to build things as well. It's the construction of it that I like, for then your work has depth. You can look into its valleys and up at its peaks.”

LeRoY's voice was softer in his workshop than it had been outside, and it somehow made Jerry say, “You speak good English. Did you learn it in the U.S.A.?”

It was a strange thing to have said, and he surprised himself by saying it. Bramwell, however, saved him from embarrassment by asking LeRoY a question about a drawing on the table nearest them.

“I guess this is the beginning,” Bramwell said. “Next must come the depth, is that right?”

“Oh yes,” LeRoY said. “Wen de dep' come den we go understan' more 'bout de serious business o life. Before de dep' dem can know only de shallow aspec', but life be deep, Brammy, das de point o art. Das de point o dep' too.”

Jerry had certainly not meant to offend the man with his comment on the good quality of his English. Now, though, he was beginning to feel offended himself, and he said, “What's wrong with thinking that you studied abroad?” He had assumed that most Nigerians were proud of it and he said so.

“Of course they are,” said LeRoY. “And somehow that is integral to everything we are going through right now. If a man always looks to others, then his eyes will forever be turned away.”

LeRoY paused a moment, but then chuckled and looked hard at Bramwell. “My God, Brammy, das it,” he said. “When you daddy come les tell 'im. Is like pidjin become Nigeria an standard English de outside worl'. Les' make 'im for speak dat point in 'is firs' speech, make 'im speak in pidgin, Brammy, set de proper tone-o.”

LeRoY's face was lively, the energy in his eyes pouring through his glasses and bouncing around the room. “I go fin' paper,” he said. “Make dem sketch while dis be fresh in my min'. Is rich, Brammy. Always don' forget, de simple idea be de bes' idea. I know in art das true.”

LeRoY put a hand on Jerry's arm and squeezed it. Then he was off to the far end of his studio. Jerry watched him go and then looked at Pamela. “Where the hell is my Christmas present?” he said.

Pamela led Jerry and Bramwell down the long corridor of the house, but she didn't stop to visit any of the other artists who might have been working there. Rather, she took them out back where another building stood. This building was low and narrow, with many doors facing out. “Here is where they all sleep,” she said.

The building reminded Jerry of the one Jules lived in in Moroko. He knew from where he stood that these doors led to single rooms, that only a few were connected by internal doorways, forming double rooms for extended families.

“I love it here,” Pamela said. “I love the work they do, the mood of the place when they do it.”

Jerry asked how many artists lived in the house and how she had found them in the first place, but as soon as he asked it he shook himself loose from such a comradely question. He still had to try to contain himself, to be concerned with what to do next. He had agreed to come for his Christmas gift, so far as he could tell, for three good reasons. First, because to discover that there was no gift would, in a bad sort of way, finally set him free, and second because he had suddenly got the idea that the police would be waiting for him in his flat, ready to rush him back to jail before he could take his shower. He was beginning to understand, however, that the third reason had to do with Bramwell, with the shock of seeing the ironing-board boy transformed into a real person before his eyes. When he looked at Bramwell now he could see individual features, a friendly face, intelligent eyes, but had he been asked to, he could not have described the ironing-board boy at all. In his mind's eye the ironing-board boy was featureless, a mask, as much represented by the warped tops of his ironing boards as by eyes and a nose and a mouth.

Jerry was about to grasp it, about to understand something, when Pamela answered his questions, bringing him away again. “I don't quite know how many artists there are,” she said, “and we were brought here first by Beany, of course, by Nurudeen and Bramwell's dad.”

They had walked to the middle of the yard, and as Pamela spoke she pointed to the low bench, suggesting that they sit a while. Jerry, however, was still looking at Bramwell. “If I ask you where you studied will you stop speaking well?” he asked.

“I was first at St. Savior's, then at King's College, then in the U.K.,” said the boy. “Maybe Nurudeen will go there too.”

If Bramwell was that much older than Nurudeen, then he was ready to enter the university, and Jerry pointedly asked if he would do that abroad.

“If my father is successful I will stay here, study in Nigeria, help to make things right,” he said.

Jerry thought he knew that if Bramwell's father's plans were unsuccessful there was little chance that he would study anywhere, but for the moment he wanted to hear Bramwell talk, to better understand how he felt about his father. He was about to speak again when a tall man came out of the main house and walked off to the side where there was a stack of short logs piled under a tree. These logs were thick but the man moved them around easily, choosing one near the stack's middle, then tucking it under his arm and starting back the way he had come. He put the log down in order to open the door again, picking the loose bark from his clothing.