You Must Set Forth at Dawn (28 page)

The university itself was a water-lapped oasis despite the choice of a ponderous boathouse architecture for its main buildings. The design was not at fault; it simply puzzled untutored minds like mine why anyone would wish to build huge sampans from concrete rather than from a wide choice of alternative light material better suited to the tropics and the specific locality. Even if the cement had been donated or dug directly from the shore, such an extravagant dominance of concrete was an oppressive waste, a contradiction also of the maritime environment. It gave the institution the character of an open fortress. Still, it appeared to perch convincingly, almost gracefully, on its watery bed, and one could hardly cavil at the overall houseboat motif of the central block. The surroundings were still wild enough to attract migrating birds, which made the vast wetlands behind the university a favorite stopover and a private repose, a mere minute's walk from my office, the campus obliterated from sight and mind.

But the lagoon, regularly fished by the scantily clad fishermen with their flashing nets, was the answer to the suffocation of the rest of the two sections that made up Lagos: the mainland and the island. Whenever I found myself obliged to go into Lagos on a weekday, I drove to campus, entered a canoe with an outboard engine, and was at Broadcasting House in Ikoyi some ten minutes later. There, I commandeered a car from any one of my friends, conducted my business, returned the car, and was back in the canoe and into the sanity of Akoka, then Igbobi, all within one, two, or three hours. To make that same journey through the Yaba, then Lagos, traffic, as I was obliged to do a few times, was the ultimate torture—it could last half the day.

Remorselessly, to the rhythm of pile drivers, the lagoon vanished, was “reclaimed,” and traffic only succeeded in hiccupping through the streets. Lagos, after all, is essentially an island. Even the mainland part of it, Yaba, is still bordered by water, so it remained a mystery why even the rudimentary water transportation that existed from colonial times should have been gradually choked off. The regular ferry between Apapa and Lagos, which discharged workers and traders by the hundreds at fixed hours of the day, had been allowed to sink into decrepitude, operating in fits and starts, sometimes breaking down in the midst of the lagoon, endangering and even taking the lives of its passengers. Perhaps the military rulers had a phobia of water; certainly it would be years after the first military rule—under the civilian governorship of 1979—before an attempt was made to resuscitate the obvious, generous, and effective form of moving humanity and goods.

FEMI'S CAR INCHED and coughed on our way through virtually motionless traffic as we attempted to view as many properties as possible on a list of available ones obtained from an estate agent. He was like a man being dragged to his execution. As we approached each prospective house, his shoulders sagged. They would lift only when he saw, or persuaded himself that he had seen, some feature or another that made the house unsuitable—then he would become really jaunty. The environment was unfriendly, the ceiling was too low, the elevation of the stairs was for kangaroos, not humans, the interior finish was sloppy, it was too far from the offices, and so forth. I followed him, totally indifferent to these masterpieces of Lagosian fortress architecture. Already, when you looked a house over, you began with its fortifications—armed robbery was yet to attain its full season of rage, but its tentative reaches were being felt by many. The coarsening of human sensibilities that accompanied the civil war, both on the battlefront and behind the lines, was being foisted on the general populace. Violence was palpable in the streets, hung over the bars across the windows, the chains and heavy padlocks from Hong Kong, a predatoriness that embraced the self-advertising rabble and “area boys” who hung around the motor parks and the oily business types who stepped out of the luxurious interiors of the latest car models.

“It's no good turning to me for an opinion,” I kept insisting. “I'm not the one who's going to live here. The bush is where I'm at home, so don't bother to ask me.”

Finally Femi gave up, refused to tackle the remaining offers on his list. “You know, I think I'll let Barbara come and take a look at these others.”

Driving out of Lagos, I felt I had been released from prison a second time.

IT WAS LATE into the night when my telephone rang. Femi, of course. He could not sleep. “I've been talking to Barbara” were the first words I could make out, “and you know, she seems to agree with me.”

“Agrees with you over what? And what bloody time of the night is this supposed to be anyway?”

“Since when did time matter to you? I thought you ascetic professors didn't sleep.”

“All right, all right, just tell me what you've woken me up for!”

“I don't want to go to Lagos.”

“All right. Don't go.”

“No, you haven't heard anything I've said. I'm thinking of leaving the company. You know, resign. Set up my own firm.”

Now I was wide awake. “Leave Law, Union and Rock?”

“Yes. What do you think? Hey, ascetic professor, have you fallen asleep again?”

“I'm thinking, damn it.”

“So. What d'you think?”

“Listen, Femi, if I had a choice at all, I would never work for anybody. So I'm the wrong person to ask for an opinion. I am biased.”

“So you agree I should leave Law, Union?”

“I already know you're leaving.” And I put down the telephone and went back to sleep.

THUS WAS THE impulsive beginning of Femi Johnson and Company, the brokerage firm that would, less than ten years later, blaze skyward in panels of bronze-tinted mirrors to attain consummation in the “Golden Pillar.” That day in 1983, OBJ altered the landscape of Ibadan forever. It was not that it was the first “skyscraper”—that privilege belonged to Cocoa House, raised as the cooperative headquarters of the Western Nigerian farmers. The Cocoa House and the new skyscraper were separated by less than four hundred yards and virtually stared each other in the face, as if waiting to see which would blink first. Cocoa House was of the old architectural style, with concrete blocks and traditional windows. Femi's achievement was a pillar of gold, all thin steel and blind glass. It reflected the slums through whose intestines it had thrust itself, rising high above them in its dissociated glory. The Golden Pillar became an instant controversy: Did such a statement of opulence belong in such a distressed environment? No matter, Broking House, as it was christened by its owner, transformed the face of Ibadan's commercial center.

Rightly suspecting that I would disapprove of both the scale of the project and the compromises that he had had to make with the Ibadan politicians and city councillors to obtain approval—not to mention the garish architectural style—he kept me deliberately in the dark. On his travels he had encountered this new trend in the urban commercial landscape and had dreamed of bringing the city of Ibadan into the late twentieth century in one single, iconic gesture. He was, however, motivated by much more. Lament at the decay of public services was a constant refrain in most of our exchanges—the curse of Lagos had spread inland and affected vital commercial cities such as Ibadan. The oil boom, now in full rampage, had meant, ironically, a deterioration in, and even total abandonment of, the most elementary standards in the provision and maintenance of public amenities. Electricity was at best epileptic. For water, even government offices relied on delivery by motorized tankers. Often those tankers had no hoses or pumps to reach the auxiliary tanks mounted on the tops of buildings, so the staff would come down and collect water in buckets, which they then carried up flights of stairs—the elevators hardly ever worked—to be left in toilets for flushing. Femi's business required that he visit government secretariats, commercial centers, hospitals, universities, airports, harbors, and so on to assess insurance claims, and facilities seeking insurance coverage. After such visits he would return dispirited, appalled by the decay in infrastructure. A new building would spring up and be declared open amid glitz and fanfare by the latest dignitaries and with increasingly extravagant social rituals. For about a month it would remain a shining star in a mottled firmament, and then gradually, inevitably, it would become a slum. The walls would acquire grime overnight, the pipes would leak and form rust patterns everywhere, and a familiar smell would begin to percolate through the environment: the smell of humanity dying on its feet.

For my friend, this failure was an affront! Annually, he attended conferences of insurance brokers—in London, Cairo, Nairobi, Rome, Cannes—somehow they came to settle in Cannes, year after year. Returning home to an economy that swam in oil revenue, generating vaster resources than its overseas counterparts, OBJ could not accept that not even a fraction of this resource was being pumped back into the physical structures to make them as efficient as the businesses they conducted. Privately, he resolved to demonstrate that the run of this malaise could be interrupted. He would create a model that countered the stereotype, but he revealed nothing to me.

I watched his ventures grow. The world of business has always been for me an exotic planet, and I was fascinated by his meticulousness, his capacity for following up claims. I accompanied him a few times, even while he worked with Law, Union and Rock, to inspect scenes of disaster that had resulted in claims. Once it was a school on the remote outskirts of Ibadan, in a village I had never heard of. It had been demolished in a thunderstorm, but fortunately, the enlightened headmaster had insured it some ten years before. We asked our way and lost it again and again. Finally we came to the final stretch, which had become impassable, thanks to floods. We could see the school at a distance, with perhaps only one wall still standing. The corrugated iron sheets were stretched crazily over debris that looked more like wooden crates and mud excavations. Immaculate in his white shirt, tie, and black brogues, the insurance broker cum agent cum inspector rolled up his trousers and waded through mud and torrent. I followed, wondering why he had to make a jungle voyage dressed in such inappropriate clothing. Until then, I had never imagined the insurance business as extending beyond sitting behind a desk of papers and negotiating claims.

LIKE A VICARIOUS ACHIEVEMENT of my own, I followed the expansion of Femi's business from its modest, living-and-dining-room beginnings, watching his credit with the banks and clientele soar through his meticulous handling of their claims and his knack for sniffing out shady propositions. Once he trapped a Lebanese businessman into admitting that he had driven his car onto the Lagos–Ibadan road and deliberately set fire to it. Another time, it was a police commissioner, who, forever after, would be referred to as
“Ma a grate
ful si e”
³⁷
or “Ogun re e!”
³⁸
During the Western uprising, his houses had been targeted and razed to the ground. He quickly rushed to a crooked insurance broker and obtained a backdated policy. Femi easily detected the forgery and asked the police commissioner to drop by his office. A very civilized encounter followed; in the end the police commissioner was forced—with all cordiality— to admit that the policy had been issued after the event. Even so, the lawkeeper failed to accept that this created any problem. Only Femi stood between his application and approval by headquarters, and of course, if Femi played his part . . . The man removed his pistol from his holster, took the barrel between his teeth—no, not pointing down his throat, simply across his mouth—bit into it, and called on the god of iron and oaths to witness an unbreakable pact if Femi chose to play ball.

“Ogun re e! Ma a grateful si e.”

Poor man, he had only supplied the incorrigible raconteur with yet another music box, to be wound up—with exaggerated gestures and mimic variations— in both appropriate and only remotely relevant situations. Those who already knew the story were convulsed in laughter, but strangers to the story sometimes took fright. For, given the slightest excuse—perhaps in order to buttress a promise, in affirmation of some declaration, or simply to illustrate a story— Femi would dive, virtually dive, at a convenient metal object and seize it between his teeth. It could be a letter opener, a piece of piping, a fork, a knife, even a lamp stand—and this in the most staid of gatherings, from Venezuela to Campostela—and suddenly my friend would leap up, sink his teeth into the metallic juror as if he were suffering from a brainstorm, and shout,
“Ogun re e!
Ma a grateful si e!”

MI O RI IKU L'OJU E.
³⁹
No, I did not. Not until that overcast day on the tarmac in Lagos, in 1987. Only then, as he was laid out on the stretcher awaiting his transfer into the ambulance plane, was I suddenly seized with a premonition that Femi was taking his final leave of a world that often appeared to take its very vitality from his existence.