You Must Set Forth at Dawn (40 page)

His enthusiasm was infectious. We would pool our resources. I would not only make the call but would co-opt Ojetunji Aboyade to follow up the case after our visit. Chinua Achebe, J.P. revealed, was already awaiting us in Lagos.

Our arrival at Dodan Barracks the following day was a much-anticipated event, covered by the media corps that was permanently encamped at the presidency. It was clear that the civil servant who attended us was no hawk. He welcomed the initiative with more than a functionary's disinterest, took pains to impress on us our chances of success, and offered opinions on what arguments would have the greatest effect, how to stand our ground against any counter-arguments, and so on. Babangida was in a meeting when we arrived, but as we were ushered into his wing of the sprawling complex, he came to meet us outside, beaming his famous, later notorious, gap-toothed smile. Once we were seated, he thanked us profusely for the visit, assuring us in advance that he understood that our intervention had been motivated by the highest humane principles.

Chinua Achebe spoke, I followed, and J.P. added his plea, each using the precious minutes we had extorted from Babangida's schedule as forcefully as we knew how. It was a somber, intense half hour, and we were all conscious of—no other way to put it—the near sanctity of our mission. I think both Chinua and I were somewhat startled to hear J.P. introduce a rather arcane dimension that he had remarked upon briefly during our earlier exchanges: he had traced the blood pattern of such challenges to power backward and observed that a cycle of violence appeared to emerge every four years. Babangida was uniquely placed, he argued, to break the four-year jinx. Not for one moment did I imagine that such a basically superstitious argument would impress those hardheaded soldiers, but then, one never knew, and soldiers are notorious for their superstitious outlook anyway. Babangida, the consummate listener, gave equal attentiveness to all the arguments, nodding gently.

We were done. Babangida hung his head for a few moments before speaking.

“Gentlemen, I wish to thank you, believe me, with all sincerity. I don't know if you're aware that Vatsa and I were very close, very close indeed. His wife and mine—they are like sisters. So you see, for me, this is not just a military affair, it is a heartrending situation, a family tragedy. And I am sure you can see how sincerely I welcome your intervention. I suspended a meeting the moment I heard you were here. In fact, I was annoyed that I hadn't been informed earlier. Since when has Dodan Barracks been honored by the presence of the three leading writers of this nation?”

He gave one of his broad smiles, then turned solemn once again. “We need more of this kind of exchange, I mean that seriously. And not just when there is a crisis of this nature. You must feel free to call on me anytime. We could do with your advice on affairs of the nation.”

The general took a deep breath, then raised his head to give emphasis to his next words. “Regarding what brought you here, I wish to give you my word of honor—I shall go into the crucial meeting determined to do everything in my power to save them. I assure you, I shall not be party to their execution. That I can promise you. You have no idea how much your visit here has helped me. Again, I give you my word, I shall do my utmost to see that the lives of those men are spared.”

How we maintained a semblance of dignity, and refrained from letting out a loud “Whoopee,” launching into cartwheels, or breaking into an
atilogwu
⁴³
dance, I shall never know, but we all admitted that our lungs were dying to burst into a victory song as soon as we heard that pledge: “my word of honor.”

The secretary was waiting nervously to debrief us; it was as if he had a personal intererest in the result, and sure enough, he admitted it. A very close relative of his was among the condemned, and, it would appear, he did not believe that there had been as serious an attempt to overthrow the regime as was claimed. When we gave him a quick summary of the meeting, the uplift in his mood could be weighed. He thanked us profusely. We had done a world of good. We had given Babangida all the moral support he needed to deal with the hawks and bring the waverers over to his side. The principal hawk, whom he named, would now find himself isolated, and in any case, now that the commander in chief had set his mind against the executions, that was the end of the matter. The press had picked up news of our visit and were waiting outside. We revealed nothing, gave no interviews, but our presence and purpose at Dodan Barracks went out over radio and television within the hour. The nation, equally sick of the incessant bloodletting, had already begun to breathe some air of hope.

The secretary saw us to our car. I drove. We managed to hold down our euphoria until we had driven around the first corner and then burst into yells— J.P.'s being the most manic. I drove off as if on a triumphal lap on a race circuit. Mission accomplished, and with an affirmation that we had hardly dared expect. We badly needed to celebrate, so we repaired to Bintu's restaurant. We ordered the worthy proprietress to “shake up her kitchen double quick” for a special workout and extract whatever wines she kept in reserve for her brother, my friend OBJ, who came there sometimes to lunch or dine. We kept our secret but did not disguise our euphoric condition, raised glasses to one another and to bemused customers, who must have concluded that the “elder statesmen” of Nigerian literature had gone collectively out of their minds. We knew we were celebrating more than the mere reprieve of our fellow writer and his companions, we were celebrating a reunion—the three of us together and bound in a common purpose—after nearly two decades!

For J.P., it was a personal vindication that brought a very special reward. “My circle of friends,” he had admitted in Abeokuta when he bemoaned our prolonged estrangement—and he had made a tight circle with his thumb and forefinger—“my circle of friends has contracted to a mere—dot.” I had never known any human being to make such a humble confession, nor heard one ever since. We were thus celebrating J.P.'s renewed embrace of a loosely defined community of literary pioneers, and he, the main celebrant, had engineered it himself, and in such style—saving the life of a footloose member of the wider artistic community. It was a moment to savor.

J.P. wanted us to make a night of it, but I needed my retreat, and the thought of Lagos traffic at closing hours finally pried me from the table and into my car, with the thought that the next Sunday night would definitely be spent at Femi's in Ibadan, since no celebration was complete until Femi and I pronounced it so—through a consummatory, summative celebration. He would be waiting anxiously, insisting on a verbatim account—nothing less ever satisfied him:
Wait, wait, wait, stop! Oh, you know, you really are very
irritating—don't jump, don't jump. You don't know how to knack gen,
⁴⁴
that's your
trouble, it's not the same as writing. Go back. So he came out of his o fice to meet
you. Right. Begin from there. What did he say? All right. Does he go around with bodyguards? What of Chinua Achebe? All right, in what order did you speak? What do you mean—didn't Achebe come to Abeokuta? He didn't? You mean J.P. sought you out alone, all by himself ? What! You see, you have to go back. I keep
telling you, you gave me the impression that all three of you made the decision in
Abeokuta. See? See what I keep telling you? Now you have to start all over again.
Don't leave anything out. So J.P. came to Abeokuta, you were coming in from the
bush
—
which reminds me, where is my share of the
aparo
?

Driving to Abeokuta, smiling by myself like a lunatic as I anticipated my “debriefing” at Femi's table in Ibadan in another day or two, I knew that I still needed something to bring me down from the clouds before I could do any work that night—or maybe it was best simply to drink some more wine, go to sleep, and then wake up in the middle of the night to work? I was undecided. There was, however, a good half hour of daylight when I arrived, enough time to go into the walled-in overgrown courtyard just behind my house where a few
aparo
families had made their home. I hunted that patch of land with extreme parsimoniousness, just those times when my body needed to be decompressed or I was confronted by the specter of an empty larder and the rare unexpected—and hungry—visitor.

I rushed upstairs, grabbed my gun, rushed out again, and dashed into the bush. I heard Seyi, my landlady's son, hailing me from the window of their half of the house, but this was no occasion for one of his hunting lessons. I needed my own exulting company, not shared with anyone, least of all an eager young pupil. So I shouted back that I would see him later, feeling a little guilty. Twenty minutes later, I outwaited a bird and forced it to fly.

Seyi came running in after the shot to assist me in finding the victim—so I thought. But no, he was merely waiting until he had heard me fire so he would not alert the quarry, and of course also to make sure that he could safely approach. I heard him coming, and soon enough he appeared. I stood still as usual, with my eye affixed to the landing spot, then signaled to him. Normally Seyi would be leaping and thrashing toward the indicated spot, but now he remained in a kind of apologetic stance, watching me, I later surmised, with a kind of pity.

“It's over there!” I shouted. “Go where my arm is pointing.”

All he said was “The TV covered your meeting with Babangida.”

“Already? It went quite well. Move.” The light was fading fast. “It's over there by the tree.”

“They've shot them,” he said.

I heard only the word “shot,” so I nodded and moved forward, not taking my eye from the spot. “Oh yes, it landed over there. Let's go find it.”

“Vatsa and the others. It was on the six o'clock news, just as you were driving in.”

The world froze before my eyes. “Shot who? What are you talking about?”

“This afternoon. About an hour ago.”

I said, stupidly, “But the Council . . . they were not to meet until late this afternoon. That's when the final appeal would be decided.”

“They met earlier. At three-thirty. They confirmed the sentence, and the accused were taken straight from their cells and shot.”

My mind unwound itself like a clock, timing our activities. We had left Dodan Barracks around a quarter to twelve. The Council was not even supposed to meet until five o'clock; the secretary had spelled that out in specific terms when he had made the appointment. Their comprehensive agenda would probably take them late into the night, even beyond midnight. Who had moved the meeting forward? Why? My mind was in complete rout, asking questions haphazardly. Where was Chinua? And J.P.? Had they learned of the disastrous end to our intervention? What part had Babangida played in all this? Had it all been a game to him?

And then—horror of horrors!—could our intervention have accelerated the process that led to these executions?

Seyi had been standing in front of me, but I did not know when he left. I next saw him holding out the dead bird. I shook my head, waved him away, and walked back to the house.

My sense of isolation was overwhelming. Too depressed to work or sleep, too depressed even to think, I dragged myself to Ibadan the following day. It was the only spot on earth from which I could search for a sliver of light to relieve the futility that appeared to lie in ambush for any endeavor in a humane cause. I developed an allergy toward the very sight of a military uniform for a long while after, including even photographs in the news media. I began to think that maybe I was on the wrong planet, certainly in the wrong part of it.
This man had given his word!
If it had all been a game, I really did not want to know these people. For another week, I considered leaving the country, going into voluntary exile for a year, maybe longer, maybe going away altogether and making my reasons public, returning only when the country had returned to democracy.

ABOUT TWO MONTHS LATER, I ran into the secretary whose “brother,” or close relation, had been among the casualties of that military justice. “Oh, Prof, I had been hoping I would run into you. IBB wanted me to pass on a message.”

“I don't wish to hear it.” And I turned away brusquely.

“But you should, you should.”

“No, thank you, I do not know IBB. I do not wish to know him.”

He smiled, somewhat ruefully. “I can understand. But then I also had a message of my own for you. In fact, I already asked J.P. to pass it on to the rest of you.”

I stopped, and he continued, “That Council meeting—you should know what transpired at the meeting.”

I shook my head. “It doesn't matter. I really am not interested.”

“Prof, listen, you know I was affected. I lost a brother, he was virtually a brother to me. But I know you'll be interested in the truth. Babangida put up a fight, a really good fight for the lives of those men.”

“Yeah?”

“He did, Prof. You see, these soldiers, they have their way of doing things. There was a point when the chairman of the judicial panel said to IBB, ‘Look,
oga,
we are all agreed on what needs to be done. If you cannot put your hand to it, then please step aside.' ”

“What do you mean? Were they asking him to resign?”

“Prof, all I can do is give you a report of how that meeting went. I think it's only fair that you know that IBB kept his word. He has been most anxious that you know it. He begged me to find you and let you know. And I swear, that decision really broke him up, it really did.”

I emitted a sound that hopefully translated as a rasp of skepticism, indifference, and disgust. Even as the man spoke, I had already decided to use my own sources to check on the various roles played by the members of the death-dealing Council. I wanted to know if these men of iron wore two faces or more. And then I checked myself in midstride—what did it matter in the end whose voice had steamrolled the accused into their graves? Were they not all an indissoluble part of the collective machinery of killing? I recalled who had cast the deciding vote that had sent General Ilya Bisalla to the stake after the panel had deadlocked over verdicts on the Dimka coup mayhem that had overseen the assassination of General Murtala Mohammed in 1976. It had been none other than my erstwhile military collaborator—and adversary, and friend of sorts— General Obasanjo. And there was the purported role of the affable General Ike Nwachukwu, who had also chaired a panel on yet another coup attempt that had sent several soldiers to the execution stake. I had not known him then, but some years later, it would prove to be the same Nwachukwu, as Babangida's foreign minister, who would provide a support base when I came to engage in secret diplomacy—an attempt to bring South Africa's Mangosuthu Buthelezi and Nelson Mandela together in an effort to terminate an even more brutal cycle of revenge killings.