Oil on Water (9 page)

—I should tell you to go tell him it’s none of his business.

—He just wants to know as much as possible about the circumstances of the kidnapping . . .

—She shouldn’t have come to Nigeria.

—Why?

—She came hoping to save our marriage, but we had drifted apart long ago. We met at university, you know. But then, after we married, I got this job. I was posted to all sorts of places and I guess she must have got tired of the constant change. Some people like it, some don’t. We agreed that she should wait in England. And I . . . I was just beginning to discover how good I am at my job. I’m a petroleum engineer, and I’m one of the best. Then the transfer to Nigeria came, I left and she remained in Newcastle, and all the time we were drifting apart. Then six months ago she arrived here, but by then it was too late. There’s another woman, you see . . .

—Does Mrs. Floode know about this woman?

—Yes.

—This woman, is she local?

—Let’s just say she lives here in Port Harcourt. I want to protect her identity as much as I can. She’s expecting our child.

—I see.

—Do you, young man? The irony is that Isabel thought we could save our marriage by having a child. That was her plan. The first day she arrived she said let’s make a baby, and what was I to say?

I opened my mouth to ask another question but I closed it again when I saw what looked like a tear leaving the corner of his eye. Too much emotion, or too much whiskey. He wiped his eyes and looked up.

—So, will Zaq be all right?

—Yes, he’ll be attended to by a nurse at the shrine.

—I wonder if I can prevail upon him to seek a little further, not to hurry back. He’s an excellent reporter, and I’m sure that if anyone can get to the kidnappers, he can. Might he be persuaded, do you think?

—You’ll have to ask him, I guess, and his editor.

—As you can see, my mobility is a bit restricted. May I ask you to find out for me?

—How?

—Go back to this Irikefe place, talk to Zaq, see what he says. I’m willing to pay him, and you, of course, for your trouble. Go tomorrow: you can return that same day, so you’ll lose hardly any time at all from work. I’ll have a boat ready to take you there.

—I can’t . . .

—Why? You’re a reporter: I should think you’d jump at such an opportunity.

—I . . . have a few personal issues to take care of.

I was thinking of Boma in my room, her eyes still red from yesterday’s tears, waiting for me to return with some sort of solution to her housing problem.

He misread my reluctance for bargaining. —Look, dear chap, I’ll pay for your time. I know you’ll need to prepare, buy equipment and so on. How about a hundred thousand naira? All you have to do is go back to the island, give Zaq my message, and come back.

He was offering a lot of money, more money than I had ever seen. My mind flew in many different directions: I thought of the dead bodies covered by bamboo leaves, and I knew anything could happen to me on such a trip. I had been lucky once: I had gone and returned safely, I had published my story, I had been praised by my editor and the Chairman, why push my luck? But, on the other hand, there was the money. I needed it to pay Boma’s rent, and my own rent, for that matter . . .

Of course, I could take the money and not go back to the island. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t think of that possibility. After all, he couldn’t sue me, could he? I could tell him something came up and that was it. A hundred thousand was nothing to a man like him. Besides, I didn’t really think much of Mr. Floode. If he really cared for his wife, shouldn’t he be out there in the jungle with Zaq, instead of here, drinking cocktails, watching TV, sleeping with the maid—if he was sleeping with the maid, that is? I could take his money and walk out and nothing would happen. Wasn’t he in my country, polluting my environment, making millions in the process? Surely I was entitled to some reparation, some rent money from him? But even as I took the money, and an extra hundred thousand that he said was for Zaq, I still wasn’t sure what I’d do when I walked out of his gate.

—Tell Zaq he has my permission to negotiate with the kidnappers. My embassy has warned me against paying ransom just yet, but there’s no reason why we can’t start negotiating. I just want to end this whole thing as quickly as possible. Do you understand?

I took two plain brown envelopes from him and put them in my jacket pocket, feeling the weight in my chest and shoulders.

—I will send you a receipt.

He shook his head and took my hands and looked into my eyes earnestly. —No need for that, Rufus. I have to trust you. You’re my only hope, you and Zaq. My wife’s life is in your hands. I know things aren’t that good between us, but she’s a good person and she doesn’t deserve this.

I avoided his eyes as I left him to his cocktail, his split-unit air-conditioning, his alluring maid, his BBC news, his stubble, his double-gated seafront house, and made my way back to the city.

I FOUND BOMA
seated on a chair in front of the open door. She was staring ahead at nothing, her head bowed. She looked up and smiled when I touched her on the shoulder. I sat beside her and we watched my cotenants come in one by one, back from work, their eyes tired and vacuous, their shoulders bent. They waved or grunted briefly at us as they went into their rooms to take off their shirts and hang them on the nail behind the door, to be picked up again tomorrow morning on the way to work. Today we had electricity, so those with TV would flop into a chair before it and stare into the flickering surface as they ate soaked garri or whatever food there was to be had. Eating and watching mindlessly till they fell asleep. Those without TV, or those who simply couldn’t bear the steaming heat in their rooms, would come out and sit on the veranda to catch whatever breeze was passing by.

—Hey, Rufus, my countryman!

Isaac, my neighbor. He was Ibibio and for some reason he thought I was from his village, and, though I told him I was not, he always laughed and said he recognized my features, and he was sure he knew some of my cousins. And every day he would greet me with his loud, booming call, My countryman! How life? And I had taken to answering back with as much cheer as I could muster after a full day, My countryman! Life de turn man. Family is worth clinging on to wherever one can find it. Which made him feel easier about asking me for a loan when he ran short in the straight and narrow days just before payday. Across the compound Madam Comfort, her husband, Mister John, and their six children were seated on stools in front of their open door, having their evening meal. All along the length of the veranda other families had similarly turned this narrow space into an extension of their living room, eating and calling across to each other or just staring into space.

—I have to go back to Irikefe tomorrow.

—You said it is very dangerous out there.

—I’ll be fine. What of you, what are you going to do?

—I don’t know.

She got up and disappeared into the room and then reappeared with a plate of jollof rice, which she handed to me.

—Thanks.

—More and more I’m thinking of moving to the village to stay with Mother.

We had discussed this many times before. Mother was still unused to Boma’s scarred face—it was as if she expected it to one day disappear, and with it the memory of that tragic day. Whenever they met, Mother always broke down at the sight of her daughter’s once-pretty face, now a total scabrous mess. The last time, she’d run into the room and cried and cried, and eventually Boma had joined her and the two had cried together till their voices went hoarse and they couldn’t cry anymore.

—Is that what you want?

—But what is there to do? I’m beginning to get tired of waiting. Sometimes I’m not sure anymore what I want to do.

I took out some money from the brown envelope and handed it to her.

—Here, use this to pay your landlord . . .

—No. I’m not going back there. I’ll look for another place.

—Of course, you can stay here till you find somewhere suitable, I just want you to be sure about what it is you want.

I moved my chair out of the way as my next-door neighbor came out of her room to go to the kitchen.

—Hello, Rufus. Na your sister be dis?

—How now, Grace. Na my sister.

Boma lowered her face instinctively.

The Lucky One, that was Boma’s name for me, Mr. Lucky. Growing up, I always had a knack for coming out unscathed from the most scary accidents. But in this one case I wish I had been unlucky, I wish I had been there when it happened, to share in her pain, my family’s pain. Instead it was John who had been by her side as she was taken to the hospital screaming and shouting that she was blind, she couldn’t see. When I came home, proudly clutching my journalism certificate, he pulled me aside and told me they were getting married as soon as she was out of the hospital. They had had five very good years of marriage, I could vouch for that, being their neighbor, but it would have been better if he had quietly broken up with her after she had left the hospital, as soon as she was able to look in the mirror without crying, left her to create her own thick skin, her own defenses.

I had never seen Boma so broken, so defeated, as on the day she told me he had gone.

—Maybe if we had children? A nice little boy to make him feel proud. It’s my fault, I kept telling him to wait, wait . . . I know it is this face. He used to run his hand over my face and say he didn’t really care, that as far as he was concerned, I was still the same beautiful girl he’d met when we were kids, when they moved into the house next to ours.

Now that it was dark and cooler, the neighbors got up one by one and took their chairs inside. In one of the rooms a man and his wife were fighting, their words loud and full of hate. In the background their children were crying, there was the loud sound of a slap, the crying stopped, the shouting stopped. Peace reigned.

10

Z
aq was lying on a mat under an acacia tree, and though the air
was hot and humid, he was covered up to his chin in a brown wool blanket. He attempted a smile when he saw me, but the smile was soon overtaken by a grimace.

—I’m cold. I’m so cold.

His face, gaunt and dejected, turned toward the faraway still figures. In the distance I could see a few worshippers in their long white robes, standing in groups before one of the huts. I was shocked by his appearance.

—Maybe you ought to think of returning to Port Harcourt: you don’t look very good.

—I don’t know what you came back to do, but I’m glad to see you.

His voice was so faint I had to ask him to repeat himself.

—See, I brought you a few things.

At the waterfront in Port Harcourt, while waiting for the boat, I had impulsively stepped into one of the many stores facing the sea and grabbed two bottles of Johnnie Walker. I guess I was still haunted by the image of Zaq begging for a drink that day on the beach. He forced himself up and reached greedily for the bottle, his hands shaking. And suddenly I had misgivings.

—I’m not sure this is a good idea . . .

But his hand tightened over the bottle, and I was surprised at how much strength there was in his grip. He leaned his back against the tree trunk and opened the cap; his hands shook and the spirit spilled as the bottle found his mouth. He drank as if he were sucking life and health out of the bottle, but finally he stopped, gasping and coughing, and the spark gradually returned to his eyes. After that greedy, focused exertion, he kicked off the blanket and released a long, blissful sigh.

—Ahhh! You’ve just saved a life, Rufus.

—Has the nurse been to see you?

—Yes. She was quite nice to me.

In the distance I saw a figure in white coming toward us: it was Naman, the officious priest who had welcomed us three days ago. He knelt beside Zaq’s mat and his face momentarily clouded when he saw the open whiskey bottle, but he said nothing.

—Welcome back, Mr. Rufus.

—Thank you.

—I see you’ve returned to see how your colleague is doing? Perhaps take him back with you?

—No, actually, well, yes. If he’s strong enough to go.

—Nurse Gloria said you are making good progress, Mr. Zaq. She said you had a rough time last night, but now that the fever has broken, you will feel better. She will be back this afternoon to take a look at you.

—Where’s the nurse now?

—She has business to attend to in Port Harcourt, but while there she will buy some more medicines for you.

Zaq moaned and held his head. —I think I’m dying. I feel like a ghost already. Do you believe in ghosts, priest?

—Of course we believe in spirits, good and bad. The bad ones are the ones who have sinned against Mother Earth and can’t find rest in her womb. They roam the earth, restless, looking for redemption—

—Okay, okay. I am not interested in your theology.

I put Zaq’s bad temper down to the fever, his truculence to the whiskey. The priest stood up.

—Actually, I came to help you back to your room, but I am sure your friend here will help you. I have to go. It is time now for our evening worship.

He shook my hand.

—Good to see you again. Let me know if you need anything.

—A very busy man, isn’t he?

Zaq stared thoughtfully after the departing priest, belching as he took another sip from the bottle.

—I wonder what he knows about the kidnapping.

Zaq allowed me to lead him back into the hut, still grumbling about ghosts. The shrine, as this section of the island was called, occupied the entire waterfront, with the hillock and the sculpture garden intervening between the huts and the water. The huts were arranged as if to form two lines on a rough isosceles triangle, with the sculptures occupying most of the middle space and the beach forming the third line. The first hut facing the statues was a sort of reception room, which was where we had first been hosted. Now we had been moved to another hut, a smaller one, just behind the reception hut. Not too far from us was the worship room. It was bigger than all the other huts, and a single wooden statue stood like a guard before the entrance. I could see men and women in white robes crowding together near the statue, waiting to go in for the evening service. The other side of the island was the village proper, about a mile away and separated from the shrine by a large buffer area of tall leafy trees. The villagers were all connected to the shrine by religion, and the chief priest had authority over the whole settlement. The villagers were fishermen, mostly, making their living on the river that poured its water into the sea, leading away upstream into a hinterland of marshes and forests and swamps.

As I led Zaq to the hut we would be sharing, we passed close to the worship hut and some of the men and women, now kneeling before the entrance, looked at us briefly as they waited their turn to go in. I wondered idly what religious ritual went on inside the hut, whether the tall impressive priest was seated on a chair before the shrine, handing out Communion wafers or whatever their equivalent of those might be, or whether there were mad orgiastic dances and trances—but I doubted the latter. These people didn’t look like the dance-and-trance type—they appeared remarkably composed and solemn.

Our hut was as spacious inside as the first one had been, even though it looked deceptively narrow from outside. A mat was laid out for me already, and across from it was Zaq’s mat, with his slippers in front of it and a worshipper’s white robe hanging from a nail above. He saw me looking at the robe and shook his head.

—I had to change into something. They were kind enough to wash my things for me.

—What kind of religion is it?

—No idea. The only thing I’m interested in right now is what their connection is to the militants.

My mat had a single sheet spread over it and a pillow where my head should rest. I removed my shoes and sat down. There was nothing else in the hut except for a water pot against the wall and a lamp hanging from a hook over the pot. Zaq lay on his mat, his eyes glittering, a sheen of sweat on his forehead. The whiskey bottle was down to half full.

—So, what news from the city?

I briefed him on my interview with Floode and handed him his money. He opened the envelope and let the money fall out all over his lap, then he looked at me and shook his head, laughing drunkenly.

—That is what I call good journalism.

I TOLD HIM
of my visit to his editor, how I got to the offices of the
Star
very late in the afternoon, confident that no editor would leave the office until the next day’s paper had been put to bed. The office was next to a dump site, and facing it across the road was a police barracks. From the office’s dim and miserable interior one could hear a bugle calling the men to the parade ground, and one could smell the dump site. I found Beke Johnson eating from a lunch box on his desk; the box gave up a strong smell of burned palm oil and onions. A red stain shone brightly in the center of his blue tie. The office was narrow and long, like a corridor, and his desk was at one end, near the window that faced the barracks. On the table were files spilling out papers, an old computer, a stapler and a stone paperweight, all jostling for space with the lunch box. He ate with a loud, wet sound, his mouth open. It was an unremarkable place, with two unremarkable women working in front of two computers at the other end of the corridor.

The editor looked even more undistinguished in his rumpled, oversized suit and tie; he could be an apparatchik in some gray concrete ministry building. All he wanted to know after I had introduced myself was when Zaq would be returning. When I told him Zaq was ill, he looked skeptical.

—Tell him to hurry up and get well, otherwise I’ll stop his salary.

—I don’t think I will be seeing Zaq till he gets back.

The editor thought about that briefly, his mouth moving mechanically like a masticating ruminant’s, his eyes looking at me unhappily.

—Well, you must have a means of communicating with him, surely? By phone?

—No, phones don’t work on the island.

—Well. Did he give you his piece to bring to me? Nothing? What am I going to publish tomorrow? What kind of a reporter is that? Ah, he still thinks he is a star Lagos reporter. But he is lucky to be working for me.

—I can send you a few things—I have some pictures, and a few paragraphs.

—Well, make sure you do that as soon as you can. I have deadlines. I’m conscious of my obligations, unlike some people.

I felt sorry for Zaq, sorry that he had to work for such a dull, sour employer, and it was at that time that I realized how colossal Zaq’s fall from grace had been. When I stood up to go, he waved me back into the seat.

—Where are you going? Sit down. Let me tell you about your friend.

He pushed his lunch box aside and wiped his hands ineffectually with Kleenex. He leaned forward and once more waved me back to my seat, imperiously, impatiently.

—Once, he was the best.

—Yes, I know. He used—

—No. You don’t know anything. Listen. Did he tell you we were rookies together at the
Daily Times
? Oh, he didn’t? Then did he tell you that we shared a flat in Surulere for one year? I was twenty-two, he was twenty-one. Ah, I can see us now. Green, wet behind the ears. Of course, there was nothing like journalism school then, you just finessed your way into things. I bet you went to a journalism school, didn’t you? They are useless. You learn nothing there. All you need is to open your eyes, make the right contacts, and be bold. Well, nothing like journalism school for us. You begin as a cub reporter, and if you survive, you become king of the jungle, or at least something high up on the food chain.

Beke drank from a water bottle, belched, and fished around with his tongue for strings of meat between his teeth. He wiped the sweat from his bald head.

—Well, Zaq and I were assigned to the news desk. In those days there was no specialization, no one cared if you wanted to cover the arts, or business, or news, the editor simply sent you wherever he wanted. We were assigned to news, but Zaq wanted something different. He was full of ideas, restless. At night he never slept. He wanted to do feature stories about everyday things, ordinary lives. But this was a different age, late seventies, early eighties, things were different then. People bought papers for news only, facts, or at least that was how the editor saw it. But Zaq wasn’t the kind of person to sit around waiting for things to change. He quit, just like that. Even I was taken by surprise. I remember the exact day, in 1982, it was a Monday, usually our busiest day, the newsroom was full, most of us were back from our beat and we were rushing to get our copy ready for the subeditors. The editor was there in a corner, berating one of the reporters, waving a piece of paper about, and then I saw Zaq get up from his desk and walk right up to him and call him by his name. Who dared call the editor by his name? It was unheard-of, and right in front of all the junior reporters and interns. He went right up to him and said, Tunde, I quit! And he walked out. Those days you didn’t need a resignation letter, reporters just wandered in and out of newsrooms.

—Ah, anyway. He left. He also moved out of our flat while I was at work, with no forwarding address. Just like that. I asked around among our friends, but no one knew where he had got to. I didn’t see him again till a year later, and you know where he was all that while? At Bar Beach. If you knew Bar Beach in the eighties, which you didn’t, ha ha. You certainly didn’t. Ever heard of the Bar Beach Show? That was in the seventies. The Bar Beach Show. Armed robbers tied to sand-filled tin drums and shot by soldiers right in front of cheering crowds. That was the Bar Beach Show under the military government. In the eighties, it was beer shacks and prostitutes. We had democracy, the dark days of the late sixties and seventies were over, the country was desperate to put the civil war behind it. The victims were just glad the nightmare was over, and the victors—well, what victors? Makeshift barrooms and restaurants were lined up along the beach, and young girls from all over the country went to Lagos looking for opportunity, most of them from respectable backgrounds, but Lagos doesn’t care how respectable you were in your village. Hey, this was Lagos. They ended up as prostitutes on Bar Beach. Some ended up pregnant and homeless on the streets, and they were the lucky ones. The unlucky ones died, their bodies discovered in the water days later, washed up in faraway Lekki. Raped. Brutalized. Strangled. Stabbed. Well, Zaq saw the story in that when the rest of us saw only prostitutes selling sex. Every day he’d be there with those prostitutes, talking to them, and who knows, perhaps sleeping with them, maybe pimping for them. Ha ha. No, just kidding. Come on, young man, lighten up. Some of the girls were really pretty. Regular-looking girls, only they weren’t regular, they were prostitutes. I’d go there when there was no news to chase and I’d sit with him in the shacks and drink beer, and some of the girls would come over and sit with us.

—One of them would later become famous for her involvement with him. I could tell that day, when I first saw her, I could tell there was something special between them. She was younger than the others, about eighteen. And, thinking about it, he wasn’t all that much older than her. We were very young then, young and stupid and full of dreams. In Lagos you can dream, you see. There are no boundaries, no traditions or family to hold you back. It is that kind of place. Anyway, this girl, Anita, she sat right next to him and didn’t leave us even when the others drifted off to hustle men. And when she heard I was a journalist she said to me, Zaq is writing a story about us. Did you know that? She didn’t speak much, but when she did she spoke well. She was pretty, perhaps the prettiest thing I’ve ever seen, and believe me, as a journalist I’ve seen a lot of pretty things. It’s hard to think that way about a prostitute, right? And she had manners, good breeding. I could tell. She had her hands on the table, and they weren’t garishly painted like the other girls’. Her nails were cut short, clean, her makeup was moderate, adequate. She was like a college girl. She seemed lost in that place, out of her element. Yes, I said to her. Zaq told me. Is Anita your real name? She looked at Zaq quickly before she answered, Yes. Why do you want to know? Zaq looked at her and said, Are you sure you don’t want to be going now, Anita? You can’t stay here talking to us all night. He laid a hand on her shoulder as he spoke. I had never seen Zaq like that before, so gentle, so soft and mellow.