Irregular Verbs (20 page)

Paul sighed. “And the other girls? Will they help pay?” Safrat shook her head. “So why should we do it? Let one of the rich ones do it.” By rich he meant someone like Victoria: rich enough to have her own room, to live in a neighbourhood with running water, to take the
danfo
to work.

“I think something is wrong here, very wrong,” Safrat said. “I’m afraid to wait.”

After a moment Paul nodded, said “I’ll ask Tinubu to find us a
babalawo
.”

“No. Tinubu can’t think I’m causing trouble at my job. Didn’t our uncle Olisa have a cousin in the city who was a
babalawo
?”

“Yes, I think,” Paul said. “I’ll see if I can find him tonight. Is that all right?”

Safrat nodded. “I hope so.”

Adegoke watched the women go, looked down at the torn piece of newspaper on his desk. He had been puzzling over it all day, trying to understand what the girl Safrat had written there. Her writing was very poor, but he could make out the numbers: very large numbers, it seemed, and what he thought was the word dollars. A treasure, he thought, she had been speaking in her sleep of a treasure: he had heard stories like this, when he had been a boy in his grandfather’s village east of Uyo. Men who had died over money might live on as
eggun
, unable to rest until the treasure was found. He thought that was what the message was saying, that the spirit was inviting him to find the fortune, but at the end it turned into nonsense, just a string of numbers. He picked up a pen and copied what he could read of the writing onto a clean piece of paper, hoping it might make more sense.

His hand slowed as he wrote the last sequence of numbers. As he copied them he recognized the first three as the area code for Lagos. Adegoke counted out the remaining numbers, nodded.

He took a deep breath, picked up the phone and began dialling.

“Sit down,” the
babalawo
said.

Safrat looked around the room: it was scattered with scraps of paper and stubs of candles, wooden bowls and drums and shells of kola nuts. To her surprise the
babalawo
did not live much better than she did; in his own room, it was true, but still in Isale Eko. She brushed a spot on the floor bare of nut shells and sat down cross-legged.

“My brother says you fear sorcery,” the
babalawo
said. By brother he meant Paul: in the country there were no aunts or uncles, just mothers and fathers.

“Yes,” Safrat said. “For the last few nights, I’ve been—”

The
babalawo
held up a finger. “Shh,” he said, then nodded twice, slowly. He unslung the bag from his shoulder and drew out a broad, shallow wooden tray and a small plastic bag full of grey powder. He put the bowl on the floor, opened the bag and emptied the powder into the tray, smoothing it with the back of his hand until it was perfectly flat and featureless. Then he reached into the bag again and drew out eight palm nuts, each with tiny holes drilled into one side. He closed his hands together, shook the palm nuts inside and then tossed them into the tray; some fell with the blank side up, some with the drilled, and he drew lines from one to another in the powder, following some pattern or procedure she could not follow.

“Elegua and Ogunn are present,” the
babalawo
said. “A road has been opened, or a door. Something that should not have been opened. Does this mean anything to you?”

Safrat frowned. “I don’t know.”

The
babalawo
shook his head quickly. “Iron is involved. A car, a bridge—”

“A machine?” Safrat asked.

Frowning, the
babalawo
ran his finger along the path he had drawn between the nuts. “Perhaps,” he said. “Yes, I think so, yes. Oggun is concerned with a machine.”

“Is that what’s wrong with me?” Safrat said. “Is the machine broken?”

“Broken? No.” The
babalawo
scratched his head, squinting at the palm nuts before him. “There is sorcery in the machine. An
eggun
, or the work of another
babalawo
.”

“Can you help?”

“Perhaps.” The
babalawo
scooped up the palm nuts, put them back in his shoulder bag and then emptied the grey powder back into its bag. Finally he put the wooden tray back into his shoulder bag and stood up. “I will need to see the machine.”

Safrat sighed as she got to her feet. “How much will that cost?”

The
babalawo
shrugged. “We will see,” he said.

Adegoke looked down at the piece of paper, then up at the building in front of him. He had the right address, but he was puzzled: this was a government building, not the sort of place he’d expect to find a fortune. He had been just as surprised, of course, when the number Safrat had written down had been a real phone number. He went into the air-conditioned lobby, suddenly aware of the sweat under his striped shirt, made his way quickly to the building directory. Number thirty-four, he’d been told: he buzzed for it and waited.

“Who is it?” a voice said. It sounded like the same one as on the phone.

“We spoke this evening,” Adegoke said. He cleared his throat. “I brought what you asked.”

“Already?” There was a moment’s silence. “You have it with you?”

“Yes.”

“All right. Come up to the fifth floor.”

Adegoke looked over his shoulder, then made his way to the elevator. His palms were sweaty despite the cool air, and he felt like everyone could see his wallet bulging in his back pocket. He should have worn his money belt instead. He had bought it when he first came to Lagos, having heard so many stories about how dangerous the city was, but had not worn it long: it was too inconvenient, and he liked having his money easy at hand.

Finally the elevator doors re-opened and he stepped out onto the fifth floor. He was in a waiting room, with a sofa and chairs, a receptionist’s desk. “Hello?” he called. He heard no response, so he sat down on the sofa.

A few minutes passed before he heard footsteps coming down from the hallway behind the receptionist’s desk. He got to his feet, swallowed, and patted the bulge in his back pocket. A well-dressed man with glasses, Igbo or maybe Yoruba, appeared behind the desk. “Hello,” he said in BBC-accented English, extending a hand to Adegoke. “We spoke on the phone?”

Adegoke nodded, took the man’s hand. “Yes,” he said.

“Good. You have the money? A thousand dollars US?”

“Yes.”

“Very good. With that I can get the account unfrozen—it should take about a week. When that’s done I’ll call you and—”

“What do you mean, a week?” Adegoke said. “Do you think I’m going to give you a thousand dollars and just walk away?”

“These things take time,” the man said. “But I promise you, your investment will be amply—”

Adegoke reached out and seized the man’s wrist, glaring at him. “Are you trying to scam me?” he asked. “Do you know who I am? I am Adegoke Omojoro. My uncle is Michael Oyelolo.” The man’s face went pale at the mention of his uncle’s name, and Adegoke nodded. “That’s right. So I want to see my share today, or I take my money and I walk.”

The man pulled his hand away, reached up to pull at the knot of his tie. “Stay here just a minute, please,” he said.

Crossing his arms, Adegoke watched the man go. He was glad he had thought to mention his uncle: Michael was the reason he had come to Lagos, the man who had gotten him his job, and his name opened doors. Adegoke smiled to himself, waiting for the man to return.

He didn’t. Instead a taller man came down the hall, perfectly dressed in a dark suit. Adegoke’s eyes widened, his arms dropping to his side.

“Hello, nephew,” his uncle said.

Safrat had thought she would need to find a way to sneak Paul and the
babalawo
into the station, but the foreman was not there: only the night shift women were in their booths, and they saw nothing.

“What are you going to do?” Paul asked the
babalawo
.

“She needs to confront the spirit that is tormenting her,” the
babalawo
said. “If it is coming through the machine, then that is how she must face it.”

Leading the others down the station, Safrat found an empty booth. “I can do it from here,” she said, “but once I’m in the booth I don’t have any control over what job they give me.”

The
babalawo
unshouldered his bag, started to root around in it. After a minute he drew out a small plastic pouch filled with a coarse brown-and-white powder. “This is a medicine we use to face the
eggun
,” he said. “If you swallow this and drink palm wine you will be half-sober and half-drunk, half-dreaming and half-awake. That is the only way to see the spirits directly.”

Safrat took the bag, settled into the booth. “I won’t need the wine, I think,” she said. She hooked herself up and opened the pouch, felt the acrid tang of the powder burning her nostrils. “How much do I have to take?”

“Wet your fingertip, then touch the powder and run it over your gums,” the
babalawo
said. She did as he had instructed, feeling a tingle run through her and then a buzz as the medicine started its work; just then the drugs started to flow into her from the hookup and she went limp.

At first it appeared the medicine had not changed anything: the vision feed of a sewer-snake faded into her view, twitching as she flexed the feedback motors. After a few moments, though, she noticed a strange double vision, both the sensory feed she was getting from the snake and something like a chain or a rope running down to it. With a prayer to Elegua, opener of paths, she willed herself up the chain.

The sewer-snake’s vision faded from view as she rose, and after a moment she found herself in a space like a cattle pen. She saw herself there, or rather a thing that was labelled
SAFRAT
: it did not look like a person but a bundle of organs, a beating heart and lungs breathing in and out, hanging in the air. The chain led back down to the snake from it, and all around her were other bundles like it, labelled with the names of all the night shift women. Each had chains leading down from them to their jobs, vacuums or forklifts or dishwashers, but Safrat saw they had other chains leading into and out of them as well. Those leading out went in all directions, but the ones leading in all came from above. She tried to focus on one of the chains that ran down to the women, but instead moved herself into its path.

G01D R0LEX W@TCHES ONLY $30 We represent a w@tch distributor that has overstocked on g01d R0lexes. They have authorized us to offer

Safrat pulled herself away. Paul had mentioned her talking about watches; this chain had to be how the
eggun
was possessing her—possessing them all. She felt her heart racing, saw it echoed in the pulsing heart within the floating bundle labelled SAFRAT. The drugs normally kept her heart even, no matter how hard she had been working, but the
babalawo
’s medicine had interfered with that. She made herself rest until she saw it slowing and then focused on the chain once more, following it upward.

She rose until she struck a wall of fire, and then she burned.

Adegoke’s uncle led him back to his office, sat him down in a plush leather chair, then went to his desk and picked up a dark green bottle. He opened it, poured two glasses and held one out to Adegoke. “Scotch?”

Nodding gratefully, Adegoke took the glass and drank. It had a very different taste from palm wine, burning his throat like fire, and he coughed.

“Gently,” Michael said. “Good scotch is to be savoured.”

“Thank you, uncle,” Adegoke said. He took a much smaller sip, found it went down more easily this time. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”

“Nor did I think I would see you.” His uncle held his glass under his nose and breathed deeply, then smiled and nodded. “I should hate to tell your mother you were so foolish.”

“But uncle—” Adegoke’s uncle threw him a look, and he let his head drop in shame. A vacuum cleaner sat on the floor nearby, idle.

“How did you get the number, anyway?” his uncle asked.

“One of the women at my station,” Adegoke said. “She said she had been talking in her sleep. She wrote down what she had said, brought it to me—it talked about a fortune to be claimed, I thought—”

His uncle held up a hand. “Talking in her sleep?” he said. “That is unforeseen. It may be we need more time before we can roll out fully.”

“I’m sorry, uncle. I don’t know what you mean.”

“Talking to myself,” his uncle said. “Your girls—they have value as workers, of course, but what is much more valuable is the space in their heads. We can use each one of them to send a million messages every day.”

“Messages?” Adegoke asked.

His uncle nodded. “Some are for ourselves, like the one that brought you here, but that is only a sideline. The world is a market, nephew, a million times bigger than the Mile Twelve, and people will pay us to be their hawkers—sell watches, drugs, anything or nothing. We feed the messages to your workers and the lines that let them run their machines carry the messages as well. When the rest of the World Bank money comes in, we can build stations all over Africa.”

“But, uncle—” Adegoke felt a pain in his stomach, as though invisible fingers were squeezing him hard. “Uncle, this is black magic.”

“What’s happening to her?” Paul asked. For the first few minutes Safrat’s body had been limp, as though she had been in the deepest sleep, but now she was twitching, writhing.

“She is burning,” the
babalawo
said. He opened his shoulder bag again, started digging around in it.

“I should call the foreman,” Paul said. “Disconnect the machine.”

“Get water. Try to cool her.” The
babalawo
pulled out his wooden tray and a wooden rattle with a brass head. He shook it in the air, then tapped it against the tray. “Elegua, open our sister’s path. Clear the way for her.”

Paul opened one of his water bottles, poured a stream onto his sister’s forehead. She jerked her head away as it made contact, but her twitching eased slightly. “Isn’t there any other way we can help her?”

“Elegua must open the path, and Safrat must pass through,” the
babalawo
said. “But the
orishas
never make it easy.”