Oil on Water (8 page)

—This will be your quarters for the night. We apologize for any discomfort, but this is all we can provide at such short notice.

And before we could ask him any more questions he left us, stepping out into the night as soon as he uttered his last word. We left the door and the single window open to trap whatever passing breeze we could, but despite the stifling heat in the room, Zaq, seated next to me, was shaking violently, his arms wrapped around him, trying to keep warm. He was lying on his side, his head almost touching the floor. I hoped he’d simply fall asleep and wake up tomorrow when it was time to go. I felt as if I were being made solely responsible for him, and I wanted to say to the others, Don’t you know who Zaq is? Surely they knew about him, especially the Lagos reporters. After all, he had once been one of them. But these haughty faces looked young, ignorant—one looked even younger than me—and I saw how their puzzled eyes traveled around the room, landing on face after face, trying to gauge if we were in real trouble, or if this was a brief discomfort that would disappear with the coming of day. No, they’d be too young to know Zaq.

Zaq’s Lagos days ended almost five years ago, and in this business that was a whole generation. A generation of papers, his generation, had died out, its place taken by another generation, my generation. Broader, glossier, racier, cockier.

Not long after the priest had gone, a woman came in carrying a large bowl of water and placed it by the door. Then smilingly she invited us to wash our hands, and as we washed, two more smiling matrons came in, one with a bowl filled with steaming bean porridge, the other with a tray bearing chunks of lumpy home-baked bread. Not a three-course gourmet meal, but at this moment it tasted like the best meal I’d ever had. The priest, Naman, did not return; only the women did, to remove the dishes. We drank water from a plastic pitcher and before long we were all drowsy. Some of us were already sprawled out and snoring, having arranged our limbs around each other’s as best we could. All night I kept an eye on Zaq, who had a rough time of it, burning with fever and sweating till early morning, when his temperature dropped and he fell asleep.

I WAS THE FIRST
to wake up, or maybe I hadn’t slept at all, and when I opened my eyes it was dark in the room, and outside I could hear the faraway call of roosters accompanied by insects ushering in the day. It was six a.m. It’d be at least another hour before the others woke up. I carefully made my way past the sprawled-out, intertwined limbs and emerged outside to sea air and birdsong. Nostalgia settled on my shoulders like the arm of a long-lost friend, urging me to look back and listen; it had been years since I’d heard such morning sounds, such silence. I walked for a while in the sculpture garden, studying the decaying clay figures, then I climbed a hillock overlooking the water and stared at its rippling, glittering surface. I saw a flock of morning birds emerge from a leafy cove on the opposite bank, and then I returned to the hut. All the men were outside already, except for Zaq, who was lying on his back on the mud floor, his eyes fixed to the concave thatch roof. When I stood over him I saw his forehead covered in sweat, his lips parched and bleeding. He tried a smile, but couldn’t make it.

I helped him outside and sat him on a log under a acacia tree. A man in a long white robe came and told us a pickup truck would be here any minute to take us to the pier, where we’d get the ferry back to Port Harcourt. Some of the men stood under the leafy gardenias and acacias that grew all over the yard; some walked in the sculpture garden taking pictures of the statues, asking the tall priest questions. In the daylight the still figures didn’t look as menacing as they had the night before. All their faces were carefully aligned to face east or west. The ones facing east had a happy, ecstatic, worshipful expression, their clumpy, broken-fingered hands open, raised as though to receive the morning sun, while the figures facing west had their heads bowed, their lips turned down. There was a contorted and tortuous quality to the figures that made them appear grotesquely lifelike, elemental, like seedlings that had just now sprouted from the earth, still learning how to stand straight. There were dozens of them, some old and decaying, some looking newer.

—We believe the sun rising brings a renewal. All of creation is born anew with the new day. Whatever goes wrong in the night has a chance for redemption after a cycle.

—Who made the figures?

—The worshippers, that’s what we call ourselves. Some of these figures go back almost a hundred years to the founding of the shrine. The sculpture garden is the shrine to which this whole island is dedicated.

The priest stood a little detached from the journalists, maintaining his smile, his hands clasped behind him; the blanket from yesterday was gone and in its place was a white cotton robe that shook and sparkled in the morning breeze. He turned when he heard the truck approaching.

—Ah, here’s your transportation to the ferry.

I turned to Zaq, who was seated with his back against the tree; his head was bowed, and his eyes when he raised them looked dull.

—The truck is here, Zaq.

—I can see that.

—Time to go.

—I can’t stand up.

—I’ll help you, come on. Take my hand.

—I think I’ll stay here.

—What? But you can’t stay here.

I looked around, trying to involve the others in our exchange, but most of them were scrambling for the truck.

—We have to get you to a doctor.

—I’ll stay another day, if they’ll have me.

—Well . . . that is no problem.

The urbane priest was just behind me, a smile on his infinitely kind face.

—Are you sure? He needs a doctor.

—We have a nurse here and she will attend to you. But perhaps you won’t need her. The air alone will heal you. I have seen it happen. But I must warn you that it will be several days before the ferry is back this way.

—I don’t mind.

—Listen, Zaq . . . are you sure?

He slumped, all the effort leaving his shoulders.

—Will you take a message for me, Rufus? It’s for my editor, Beke Johnson. Here’s his card. Call him and tell him I’ll be back in a few days.

I took the card. For the first time since our arrival at the destroyed militant camp, he had a smile on his face. He motioned for me to come closer, and when I leaned forward I could smell stale drink on his breath and see clearly into his watery and red and yellow eyes.

—I like the air here. It’s pure. Who knows, I might even get some sort of religion.

I nodded, unsure if he was serious or joking. The truck honked twice and the journalists waved impatiently for me to hurry up.

—Have a safe trip.

The priest walked me to the truck.

—Your friend will be fine with us. Don’t worry.

I gave him my office number, and Zaq’s editor’s number, just in case Zaq became seriously ill.

—But we don’t have phones here.

—Just keep it. In case of emergency.

As the truck bumped its way through the dew-soaked morning vegetation toward the pier at the other end of the island, my mind kept returning to Zaq. I had an image of him in that hut, alone, sweating, pining for a drink, haunted by whatever memories were pursuing him. As we got to the village center the landscape changed: the huts disappeared, and gray brick houses with rusty zinc roofs lined the single dirt road. The houses were grouped into compounds by walls of mud and straw, and behind every compound was a little field of vegetables and cassava, their climbers circling over one another, aspiring upward, using slender sticks stuck into the earth as crutches. Children came out, wiping the sleep from their eyes, and women with long-handled brooms cleaned the house fronts. Here, time seemed suspended and inconsequential, and for a moment I felt Zaq had chosen the better option by remaining and not hurrying to return to Port Harcourt.

8

B
oma was alone, and I could tell she had been crying, when I got
home in the evening. I had gone straight to the office to write my piece for the next day’s paper as soon as I arrived in Port Harcourt in the afternoon; my legs were still wobbly from standing for almost the entire length of the journey. The ferry had made so many stops on the way, I began to think we were never going to reach Port Harcourt that day. We had picked up women carrying chickens in baskets and crabs in buckets and squealing goats led by ropes around their necks on their way to the market. The air in the ferry’s central lounge soon grew foul, forcing me to abandon my seat next to a fat, laughing, gesticulating woman and her two children to stand outside by the rail, my eyes focused on the receding coastline, my mind contemplating what awaited me in Port Harcourt.

She was seated on my wicker armchair, facing the TV, but in such a way that her profile showed the undamaged side of her face, and even when she looked up at my entrance she still managed to keep the burned, badly healed side of her face hidden. She did it unconsciously, but the scar always dictated how she stood, how she sat. It made me sad when she did that, especially with me. How could I tell her that she really needn’t do that with me? Only with John, her husband, was she ever able to sit without regard to where the light fell, but two months ago John had left her, and now she had taken to stopping by more often, even when I wasn’t around. She’d wash the dishes and cook and sweep the room, but sometimes, though I had never caught her at it, she just sat and cried.

Today her bags and crockery and TV and other household things were heaped in a corner of my tiny living room.

—The landlord kicked me out.

She lived in a tenement house similar to mine, in a room and parlor, owned by the same hard-faced, unsmiling landlord. The landlord had started hanging around outside their door soon after John, who worked for a courier company as a mail sorter, lost his job six months ago. Since Boma was only a trainee typist and didn’t get paid, I had shared my monthly pay with them, knowing that they had only me to turn to, as I had only them. I went to the bathroom to urinate and to wash my face, and when I came back she stood up, went to the cooker in the corner and dished out some rice for me.

—You must be hungry.

—Thank you.

When the silence grew too heavy, even with the TV on, I told her of the kidnapping, and the devastated island. When I got to the dead bodies, she burst into tears.

—The poor people, they could be anyone, just anyone.

I knew she was thinking of John. He had become very political, hanging out in backstreet barrooms with other unemployed youths to play cards and drink all day, always complaining about the government. He had been full of anger before he left, the kind of anger that often pushed one to blaspheme, or to rob a bank, or to join the militants. I had seen that kind of anger before in many of my friends, people I went to school with; some of them were now in the forests with the fighters, some of them had made millions from ransom money, but a lot of them were dead.

—Boma, John has more sense than that.

John had married her when others had cringed and recoiled at the sight of her red, constantly watery eyes and curdled cheeks. We had grown up together, the three of us; fought the bullies together in primary and secondary school, parting only when I left home. At first I thought John had stuck to Boma out of pity, and I resented him for it; I really truly believed only when I saw the exchange of rings, and the joy on my sister’s damaged face.

She slept on the bed and I spread a blanket on my old and tattered carpet in the living room after moving some of her things into the bedroom. Boma went to sleep immediately, but I couldn’t sleep, and when I got sore from endlessly tossing and turning, I switched on the TV and watched a science fiction movie about a submerged world. The polar ice cap has melted and land has sunk underwater and is now talked about only in legends. The star, Kevin Costner, is a hated mutant, with gills and webbed feet, and he is clever with contraptions and devices. In one scene he takes the heroine underwater in a bell jar and shows her an inundated city. This is it, he tells her; there is no dry land, so quit hoping. There is only water. There are long and beautiful shots of endless ocean, with only Kevin Costner’s frail boat on it, dwarfed by the liquid blue vastness. I fell asleep with the movie still playing, thinking there was something sad about a people who were born and lived and died on water, on rusty ships and boats and fantastic balloons, their days and nights filled with the hope of someday finding dry earth, their wars and industries and relationships and culture all driven by the myth of dry land.

9

T
he
Reporter
was a moderate, middle-brow daily occupying the two
bottom floors in a five-floor building in central Port Harcourt. Across the street from our offices was a private elementary school that came awake at eight a.m. and remained awake till four p.m.; next to it was a nightclub that came awake at eight p.m. and remained awake till four a.m.; and farther down the street in a row were a mechanic’s garage, a restaurant, and a car wash. The
Reporter
had been in existence for more than seven years now, and in that time the staff strength had grown from twenty to two hundred, and the print run from one thousand to over ten thousand. It was owned by Godwin Amaechi, “the Chairman” to his employees, a seventy-year-old veteran journalist who still came to the office earlier than everyone else, and stayed till ten p.m. after the next day’s issue had been put to bed. He controlled every aspect of the paper, from its accounts to its editorials, with a dictator’s hand, albeit a benevolent one. I had seen colleagues who were currently out of favor duck into a doorway at his approach; I had seen subeditors make a sign of the cross before going into his office for a meeting. At midday, every day, except Sundays when he stayed home, he’d carry out what we privately called the “ceremonial inspection of the guards,” starting from the long, rectangular newsroom, where he’d chastise a poor reporter or praise a deserving one, and ending up at the dining room on the ground floor an hour later. For the next hour he’d sit at the head of the table, surrounded by editors and other senior staff, each doing his best to outshine the other in suggesting ingenious story ideas. The day’s favorite reporter usually sat to the Chairman’s right at those grim lunches—an honor that was as painful as torture, said those who had experienced it.

Today I was experiencing it. For over an hour I answered the Chairman’s questions, giving as much detail as I could, hardly blinking, hardly breathing, mostly swallowing without chewing, gulping down mouthfuls of water to stop myself from choking on my pounded yam. Now I understood why some colleagues called these lunches “The Last Supper.”

—You’ve done a great job. Good pictures.

—Thank you, sir.

—Have some banana.

—Thanks.

—And tell me about Zaq. I understand you were there with him?

He waved the morning paper, which carried my article.

—Yes. He was very helpful. He’s still out there, on Irikefe Island. He said he needed the break.

—I knew him, once. We used to work for the same paper. But that was a long time ago.

The kidnapping, which had receded to the inside pages the previous couple of days, had vaulted back to the front page once again, mainly because of the violent gun battle on the island. Some of the men, like Nkem at the Globe, speculated in their reports that Mrs. Floode might be dead, using garish pictures of dead bodies and burning huts to support this. My story, which my paper brought out in a special edition, had captured more attention than the other reports, perhaps because I had referenced and quoted Zaq a lot in my piece, and also because, due to my training, I knew how to use pictures more effectively than the other reporters. My close-ups conveyed the shrill urgency and tragedy, which my text tactfully refrained from mentioning, with twice the impact. This morning two Reuters reporters, after reading my story, had come to the newsroom to chat with me.

After the meal, which I could still feel suspended in a hard lump between my chest and my stomach, I sat in the deserted newsroom to recover from my ordeal. Most of the reporters were out on their beats and would start to trickle in only in the late afternoon, when they wrote their pieces for the next day. When I felt the strength return to my legs, I stood up and crossed over to the editor’s office. I found him seated behind his desk, the fan in the corner focused directly at his face, a toothpick stuck between his lips, his tie loosened, exposing his lumpy neck.

—Ah, here comes our star reporter. When are you going to see the husband?

—Right now. He’s expecting me. I just came in to let you know—

—Go, go. Make sure you get a good interview.

—Well, he said no interviews, till after everything is over.

—Once it’s over, it’s over, isn’t it? Anyway, go get whatever you can out of him, then take the rest of the day off. And take the day after that. We’ll find a nice exciting assignment for you when you come back.

He stood up and shook my hand. His behavior toward me had dramatically changed since I’d returned from Irikefe.

—The Chairman is really pleased with you. He thinks you’ll make a good reporter. We shall see.

THE FLOODES’ HOUSE
was one of the many colonial-style buildings on the Port Harcourt waterfront, where most of the wealthy expatriate oil workers lived. It was hidden behind a tall, barbed-wire-topped wall, and I passed through two gates and about half a dozen security men talking to each other on radios.

I was led in by a uniformed guard. We crossed a huge lawn to the front door, which the guard pushed open without pressing the bell. I followed him into a spacious living room dimly lit by shaded wall lights; an ornamental fan turned slowly in the center of the ceiling. We went out through a back door that led to the patio, where Floode was waiting, seated on a wicker chair, a cocktail on a glass table in front of him. He waved the guard away, then he stood up and took my hand.

—Thank you for coming, Mr. . . .

—Rufus.

—That’s a good name. Is that a common name around here?

—I know a few.

He waved me to sit.

—I haven’t been here long, you know. This is my second year in the country and I’m still trying to understand the place and the people. I think Nigerians are very nice and hospitable.

—You still think so, even after the kidnapping?

James Floode looked momentarily surprised at my directness, but I wanted to get to the point as quickly as possible. I wasn’t used to talking to people like him, and I was nervous. He sighed and his eyes turned dark as he reached forward and picked up his drink. He must have had a few before my arrival: his movements were slow and deliberate, just like his speech. So far he had refused to talk to the media, including his country’s media, apart from a few prepared comments about missing his wife and his hopes that the kidnappers would release her soon. I’d be the first reporter he had agreed to speak to—I was aware how important this moment was, even though I was here by default.

—Tell me, are you married, Mr. Rufus?

—No. Please call me Rufus: it’s also my first name. No, Mr. Floode. I’m not married. I’m only twenty-five.

—Call me James. Well, a lot of you chaps do marry rather early, isn’t that so? A few of the workers I know, very young, but they always talk about their families. Children and all.

—Yes, there are a lot who marry early.

He sighed again and went quiet, as if he had lost interest in that thread of talk. He stood up.

—Let’s go inside. I’ll show you something.

Drink in hand, he led the way into the living room. He picked up the remote and flicked on the TV and there, on the BBC channel, they were talking about the kidnapping. Isabel Floode, a British woman, had been kidnapped by rebels in the Niger Delta, an attempt to make contact was spoiled by an unplanned military intervention, and now it was doubtful if Isabel was still alive. Some oil companies had already stopped sending expatriate workers to the region, and were even thinking of shutting down their operations because the cost was becoming higher than they could bear, and this possibility was already causing a tension in the oil market, with prices expected to rise in response.

He turned off the TV.

—It’s like a circus. I can’t go out, not even to the office, reporters stalk me everywhere, and the funny thing is I don’t even know what to tell them, I don’t know what’s happened to her. That’s why I wanted Zaq to go in there and find out. And now you say he’s not well. What’s wrong with him? Is it serious?

—He needs rest. The air out there is good for him.

James scratched his stubbled chin, again looking at me strangely, waiting for me to say more, but I returned his look and kept quiet.

—But we had a deal, he agreed to go out there and be my eyes and ears.

—Mr. Floode—

—Call me James.

—James, there really isn’t anything more to report than what we’ve put in the paper.

—But what do you think? Is she alive or not? You said you have some pictures for me. Did Zaq give you any message for me?

I showed him the pictures, the ones that hadn’t been published in the papers: the burning boat, the houses, the sculptures on Irikefe, and finally a picture of myself with Zaq under a tree. Zaq had suggested the last just for proof. Floode put them back into the envelope and placed them beside his drink on the table.

—Let’s get you a drink.

He picked up a bell from a side table and rang it loudly. Then, as if unable to keep away from the news, he turned on the TV again. The screen was filled by a blown-up photo of a smiling Isabel, and behind her was a crowded street, a bridge, and far in the distance the iconic Big Ben clock tower. Next, there was a shot of picketing youths holding placards in front of an oil-company building in Port Harcourt. This segment was accompanied by a long, rote-like voice-over about poverty in Nigeria, and how corruption sustained that poverty, and how oil was the main source of revenue, and how because the country was so corrupt, only a few had access to that wealth.

Floode turned off the TV and turned to me. —Such great potential. You people could easily become the Japan of Africa, the USA of Africa, but the corruption is incredible.

I said nothing, I looked to the door to see if the maid was coming in answer to Floode’s ring. He warmed to this topic, scratching his chin vigorously as he spoke.

—Our pipelines are vandalized daily, losing us millions . . . and millions for the country as well. The people don’t understand what they do to themselves . . .

—But they do understand.

—What?

—Have you ever heard of a town called Junction?

—No. I don’t think so . . .

—I’m from there. Almost five years ago I came home from Lagos after graduating from journalism school and found half the town burned down. The newspapers said the villagers brought it upon themselves by drilling into the pipelines to steal oil . . .

—Yes, I have heard of that, isn’t that a place called Jesse?

—That is a different place. There are countless villages going up in smoke daily. Well, this place, Junction, went up in smoke because of an accident associated with this vandalism, as you call it. But I don’t blame them for wanting to get some benefit out of the pipelines that have brought nothing but suffering to their lives, leaking into the rivers and wells, killing the fish and poisoning the farmlands. And all they are told by the oil companies and the government is that the pipelines are there for their own good, that they hold great potential for their country, their future. These people endure the worst conditions of any oil-producing community on earth, the government knows it but doesn’t have the will to stop it, the oil companies know it, but because the government doesn’t care, they also don’t care. And you think the people are corrupt? No. They are just hungry, and tired.

—Hmm, well, I’ve read about it before. A tragedy. But it does illustrate my point—

—No, actually, it illustrates my point.

—Ha ha! You argue rather well, I must give you that . . . Now, where’s that . . .

He picked up the bell and rang it again, impatiently. After a while the door to the patio opened and a maid entered. She was dressed in a blue uniform that reached just below her knees, with a white apron around her waist. She stood next to the TV and stared at Floode, her head inclined, not saying a word.

—Get my guest here a drink, Koko. What can she get you?

—A beer will do . . . Star.

—And a refill for me.

She turned and disappeared into the kitchen. I watched the movement of her full waist beneath the close-fitting uniform. She returned a moment later with a tray bearing my bottle of Star and a glass of whatever Floode was drinking. She set the bottle on the side table next to me. She was young and plump, not fat, but very heavy around the hips. She looked more like a student than a maid, and though she was not conventionally pretty there was a compelling sexuality about her. I was sitting across from Floode, watching her as she bent forward to place his drink next to him, and I saw his left hand almost absently but gently brush against her thigh, and if she hadn’t turned and flashed him a quick smile I would have dismissed the gesture as an innocent accident.

—Thanks, Koko. That will be all.

He saw me staring at him and he shifted his gaze to his drink. I cleared my throat.

—Mr. Floode, Zaq said I should ask if everything was okay between you and Mrs. Floode. Was there a fight, or . . . ?

He looked long at me, sipping his drink. I stared back at him. I loved the way his face turned meat-red, and the way he used his glass to cover his mouth, which had suddenly tightened, I loved the debate in his eyes: to kick out this nosy African or to tolerate him. He smiled.