You Must Set Forth at Dawn (35 page)

Well, I wanted badly to see the original—or its mysterious “twin.”

IT WAS INDEED on display in a glass case at the Burlington museum, its jagged hole conspicuously in view. I was overcome with an irrational feeling that the normal, viewing world was seeing
Ori Olokun
for the very last time, that this “twin” would vanish as the next logical stage in a half century saga. I threaded my way through the museum visitors, mildly disguised in case my picture had been circulated through Interpol as an art thief to be watched at all costs. I walked past it only twice or thrice, always making sure that the attention I paid to it was less than the amount of time I spent viewing other items on display.

My fears were soon grounded in factual developments. The moment I arrived in London, I called Barbara and asked her to bring me up to date. Through her deft sleuthing, she had found that the director of the National Museum in Lagos, Ekpo Eyo, was on his way to London. I phoned Burlington, provisioned with a formal but phony title, and asked directly for the director of the Nigerian National Museum—had he arrived? Not yet, but he was expected; the museum had received notice that he was on his way.

Eyo's visit could not be a coincidence. The police had undoubtedly contacted him for an opinion during their clumsy intervention, and he had begun to conduct his own research; which had led him unerringly to Burlington. How many other roads, and taken by whom, I wondered, now led to the Burlington museum?

That conviction of a multiple convergence on that Piccadilly warehouse of treasures bred a renewed urgency and made me throw all caution to the wind. I returned the following day—to do what, precisely, I was not sure, especially as I did not bother any longer with any form of disguise. I was overwhelmed by the certitude of shrinking time, of an accelerated and definitive resolution, albeit unwanted, of this conundrum. I think I wanted to see the head again, knowing that it might be for the last time. If necessary, I would seek out the curator, declare my interest in this object, and speak frankly but not in great detail of the efforts of Ife University to establish the truth of its identity. Burlington, after all, was a public institution; it admitted paying visitors and should not be shy of answering questions. I would ask him how Burlington had acquired it, ask to see records. I think I had become reconciled to the mere satisfaction of holding it in my hands and letting it speak to me through some secret, ancestral vibrations, just so I could know—and share with others—the knowledge of the present existence of
Ori Olokun.

My craving would be assuaged by no less. With it went a mental restlessness and fitful bouts of sleep, pocked by the strangest dreams. I greeted dawn with great relief, waited impatiently until opening time, and set off for the museum, a creature under possession, and by the most confused of impulses. I raced up the steps, excited at the prospect of seeing the head again, and headed straight for the hall.

ORI OLOKUN HAD VANISHED! On the podium where it had stood in proud display less than twenty-four hours before, there was—nothing. Not even a replacement. Not a label. Just—nothing. The case was empty.

For what was probably no longer than a few seconds but seemed hours, I remained in still confrontation with that glass case, willing its erstwhile occupant to levitate, demonstrate its pristine potency, and astonish all viewers. What did levitate instead was a member of the staff, a black girl who was simply going about her normal duties. There was no longer need for reticence and I approached her and pointed to the case. “What happened to this one?”

Speaking quite artlessly, she informed me that it had been “taken downstairs.” Any particular reason? I asked. None that she knew of, she replied. It was quite normal for the items on display to be changed from time to time. Rotation of themes was common in that section of the gallery—not throughout the museum but in the sections that were dedicated to special exhibitions. Where was she from? I asked, and she replied that she was from Sierra Leone.

I hesitated only a moment. Was it possible that I could see the head, even outside the display? It was obvious to me that if there was any conspiracy at all afoot, this girl was not part of it. Her guilelessness could not have been faked, and when she said, “Sure, follow me,” I nearly catapulted her downstairs, fearful that some superior officer “in the know” might interrupt this totally unexpected visitation. We descended into the netherworld where art pieces were cleaned, catalogued, and stored until their next emergence to baffle, frustrate, or enlighten the world.

Yes, finally there did come the belated reward, a long moment of rapture. There on the table with other pieces was the unmistakable head at last—
Ori
Olokun
!

I did not wait for it to vanish. Outwardly calm, I simply leaped on it inwardly and lifted this exquisite bronze head in my hands. The weight was just what I had anticipated when I had climbed the makeshift ladder in Carybe's studio and lifted its copy off the shelf. The gash in the missing cheek was exactly where it had been on the copy. Reverently, I turned it around and around in my hands, peered shortsightedly into the cavity beneath the neck, and sought to guess just how old it was. I laughed out aloud.

The girl looked at me, puzzled. Quickly, I improvised, explained that I was simply thinking of how surprised Frobenius must have been when the British district officer ambushed him at the border and deprived him of his catch. It was a lie. I had just experienced one of those flashes—W.S. taking suddenly to his heels, up the stairs, weaving balletically through the display cases, dodging pillars and visitors, out through the door, onto Burlington Arcade, and into a long stretch heading nowhere in particular, alarms jangling, pursued by the white-coated museum staff shouting “Stop, thief!”—a scene straight out of
Oliver Twist,
only in this case augmented by the phlegmatic London bobbies on the beat blowing their whistles, motorcycle police, Scotland Yard, the Fire Brigade, Boy Scouts, and St. John's Ambulance....

However, the race was over—I knew that!—and I remained rooted to the concrete floor of the chilly semibasement of this outpost of the British Museum, in my hands the authentic
Ori Olokun,
no matter what the Western pundits said. I sighed, looked around at the other treasures looted by the imperial forays of European powers. I think it was in that process that I noticed, for the first time, that the museum worker was quite pretty, indeed more than merely pretty; she had a solicitous charm, just the kind that tended to set off vibrations for a different kind of pursuit. For a few brief moments I wondered: Should I make a pass, turn her into an ally, and commence slow, meticulous planning for an inside heist? It seemed worth thinking about. Take her out, cultivate her slowly, gently, wait until the madcap escapade in Bahia was forgotten, the follow-up by the director of Nigerian antiquities, and—certainly— my own visit, which, I did not need to be told, would have raised a few eyebrows. It did not matter if it took an entire year from planning to execution. At the very least, here was a chance to keep an eye on the movements of
Ori
Olokun.
No matter where it went, this girl would take note and pass on the news.

I laid down the bronze head gently, returned the girl's smile. Her charm drew me, in its own right, and I was more than certain that there was a reciprocal tug. Yet, unusually, even that consolation was not one of which I was prepared to avail myself—it carried with it the certain risk that I would draw her into a renewed web of conspiracy. If I had felt that a resumption would stand any chance of success, I probably would have persisted, but—I
knew.
The moment I held that bronze weight in my hands, I knew, with every strand of intuition, that we had reached the end of the trail. Too many cooks now had their ladles in this broth. Best to withdraw and abandon the lord of the seas to his overseas retreat.

ON MY RETURN, I called on Oje Aboyade in his Ibadan home. He had traveled, it turned out, not to Benin but in the other direction—outside the country to escape the hullabaloo generated by the death of the Edo monarch. His first question was—had I briefed Obasanjo since my return? Negative; and I recounted the efforts I had already made. Right, let's do it now, he proposed. No way, I said to him. As far as I was concerned, his man no longer existed.

Oje could not believe that “our friend” had blocked his phone against my calls, so I called him again from Oje's house, announced myself, then split the earpiece between us so that he could listen to every word. It was the same voice, and his answer was, if anything, more curt, rudely dismissive. I hung up. Oje said, All right, let's wait fifteen minutes, and then
I
will call. I did not doubt what the result would be and remained indifferent. Oje put his call through and as soon as he announced himself received the kind of genial response that I had last received before the fateful trip to Bahia. He made an appointment to see Obasanjo.

Then he turned to me, and never had I seen Oje so woebegone. “Someone has been feeding him lies,” he announced.

“And what is that to me?” I replied. “There is only one word for this— treachery! Beginning from him and transmitted all the way down the official ladder. Not only had Pierre been released, he was told the entire truth and put on a plane to go there and—confront us. On his own territory! From then on we were dead meat to this Dodan devil! We were not met on our return, and then, for days, there was no contact. Listen, Oje, if you haven't worked this out by now, the truth is—we were not meant to return.”

Oje protested vehemently. I shouted him down. “I tell you, we were not meant to return! These people were getting rid of a problem. We've worked out movements on both sides, and we found that Pierre nearly caught us flat-footed in Brazil. One more night! That devilish den did not expect us back.”

Oje was nothing if not persistent. He went for his appointment and had a long heart-to-heart talk with Obasanjo. On his return he announced that he had made an appointment for us both to go and see him. I laughed. No, I never wanted to set foot in Dodan Barracks again or see the face of that head of state. Oje piled on the pressure—“At least listen to what he has to say.” I remained adamant; I had had enough. I wanted nothing but the solitude of my bush, nothing more.

Eventually, he prevailed. He had recruited Femi Johnson to his side, yet it was not so much the combined pressure that wore me down but my own curiosity. I wanted to confront the man, study the expression on his Owu cicatriced face, follow those eyes as he tried to wriggle out of this one, then give him a piece of my mind and leave. Even so, I nearly backed out at the last moment. I had developed a visceral revulsion toward not only the seat of government but anyone associated with it. Even Oje had not escaped this guilt by association, I realized. It had, after all, been several days after my return from London before I could bring myself to stop at his house, and then it was only because I had been staying in Ibadan that weekend, nursing back my self-esteem in the congenial setting of Femi's home.

Still, I ended up accompanying him to Lagos and into Dodan Barracks, grim of countenance. As we walked through the deserted complex and passed by the sparse allotment of officers on duty, I scowled at each in turn in case he was the miscreant who had given himself the pleasure of telling me to book an appointment for a telephone call. We entered the familiar space of Obasanjo's private lounge. I braced myself for the diatribe that was coiled at the root of my tongue, untended, but capable, I was certain, of atomizing the heads of a dozen heads of state. We had hardly settled down before Obasanjo himself entered the room and plunged into what must have been a well-rehearsed and difficult text.

“The police messed up,” he announced. “But they are my men. The ultimate responsibility rests with me, and so—I accept responsibility for their actions and I apologize. I apologize on their behalf.” Before I could open my mouth to reply, he added, “Look, Wole, if I wanted to get rid of you, I would put you against a wall and shoot you. But I could never send you to a strange country to be killed or injured. I would never send a fellow Nigerian to another country to be killed. I could never do that. It is against my soldierly training.”

I had too much piled up within me and was not about to let him off easily. I plunged into a bitter reprise of the succession of betrayals Labiyi and I, as well as the others at Ife, had undergone. I was particularly galled at the ignorant intervention of the police—if the police had had to be brought into play, was there no police section better qualified for such a role? What had happened to the Antiquities Squad, specially created to stem the illegal flow of national treasures overseas? Oje interrupted, imploring me to accept the man's regrets and draw a curtain over the entire episode. And then, suddenly, the devil himself was chuckling. I was taken aback—was it all a joke to him, and did this include his apology?

“Look, I've already said—heap it all on my head. I have accepted full responsibility—abi?” And, his rotund frontage virtually heaving with—in my reckoning—sadistic mirth, he continued, “But you know, it is also your fault. It doesn't matter what you do, the police have a chronic distrust of you. If they see you walking south, they think it must be a trick and that you're really headed north. That's the problem. For them you represent a permanent headache. Anyway, please, let's forget it. I apologize.”

From testimonies among his closest circle, this must have been one of the half dozen times that Obasanjo ever apologized for any action in his life. I had been a recipient twice. I wondered, wryly, how soon there would be a third and if I would have to receive it, like Pierre Verger's from me, posthumously.

Epilogue

Now, what was the real story? How had Olabiyi Yai come to believe that the authentic head had somehow landed, after unrecorded vicissitudes, in Carybe's studio?