Terra Incognita, page 18
No one of age, inclusive of the pubescent, would ever forget the day that Ogbu-Ojah returned from Iton-Kom. For the first time in living memory, the town crier beat his wooden gong in broad daylight, summoning all village elders and Ozo titleholders to an emergency meeting at the home of the oldest living citizen in the village. The outcome of their deliberations was a tightly held secret.
What the rest of the village recalled was that early the next morning, long before the first cock’s crow, roughly at the time the first guinea fowl awakens, a scuffle was heard in Ogbu-Ojah’s compound. Ogbu-Ojah’s proclamations of “kedu ife me?” (What did I do?) rang through the early dawn air, followed by grunts and moans of what appeared to be a struggle between Ogbu-Ojah and several men.
It was later known that Ndi Ichie, the village elders and Ozo titleholders, had decreed that Ogbu-Ojah be ostracised for oso-ochu, manslaughter-related exile, for actions capable of or leading to the death of a brother… a ten-year sojourn in a foreign land or ajo-ofia, the evil forest. His mystical flute was to be hurled into the Ori Ngene, the local river deity, never to be played or touched again by man, for it was believed to be from the spirit world. His name was to be proscribed, and his very existence was to be represented by the name of the foulest of beasts.
It is said that when one of the emissaries sent to carry out Ogbu-Ojah’s sentence threw the flute into Ori Ngene, a hand was thrust forth from the depths of the river just before it could hit the river’s surface. With what sounded like a sonic boom, the flute was caught, and the Ojah was slowly and delicately lowered into the river’s depths. As the flute sank, it let loose one of the most beautiful melodies ever heard by man. The young men stood transfixed by the bank of the river and until today have refused to talk about other eerie activities they observed that night. Two of them were known to have become mad a short while after this mission.
All assumed it was to be the last to be heard of Ogbu-Ojah.
Prior to his death, Ojahdili had four male children, named after the four market days in the igbo commercial calendar: Eke, Afo, Orie, and Nkwo. It was no surprise that none of his children took up wrestling. In fact, the town council proscribed wrestling after Ojahdili’s death, for what other profession could intoxicate a man to the point of challenging his chi? His beautiful wife, Oso-di-eme, was inconsolable. After the death of her husband, she began to take long trips into the forest, abandoning her four children to their fate. Sometimes she spent months on end before returning to her matrimonial home. It was rumoured that she had gone stark raving mad. Others speculated that she constantly journeyed to the borders of Iton-Kom, out of grief and hoping against hope that she would be allowed through to the land of the spirits to bring back her husband.
So, when she became pregnant two years after the death of Ojahdili, the village gossip ecosystem exploded in a flurry of hypothesis. However, nobody was willing to incur the wrath of the spirits, for was it not common knowledge that Oso-di-eme constantly visited the land of the spirits? And, by extension, was it not logical that she had been impregnated by a spirit, or by her dead husband who, by the very fact that he was dead was a spirit as well? So, though the gossips and speculations boiled and bubbled over, no one ever dared challenge Oso-di-eme to her face.
Oso-di-eme had a baby girl and named her Ifesinachi, a child bestowed by a personal god. The villagers were not that accommodating, and preferred the more mundane and vindictive Nwa ajilija, a child born of gravel and dust, of unknown parentage, and in essence a bastard.
It was said that Nwa ajilija grew to be a beautiful young girl with the most melodious voice known to anyone, living or dead. By the time she was three, her voice would be heard by the horde of women doing their laundry at the banks of Ori Ngene, her tunes hummed to by the sweating men working in Oma-agwu (the fertile farms situated far within the forest), and skipped to by her fellow children as they played in the dirt in the village obodo-ezi playground.
All this while, Oso-di-eme continued her regular forays into the forest. This time she was forced to always strap Nwa ajilija to her back, as there was no one with whom to leave her, since her industrious elder children spent the whole day at the farm.
Perhaps Oso-di-eme should have listened to the villagers, who all believed that Nwa ajilija was a child from the spirit world. One day, upon their return from one of the regular forays into the forest, Nwa ajilija asked her mother, “Mama, who is this man that you go to visit in the forest?”
Oso-di-eme stopped dead in her tracks, her hand frozen in mid-air. The raffia fan she was using to whip up the flames in the hearth for the evening meal was suspended like the wing of a bird transfixed by Ogbu-Ojah’s enchanting melody. Oso-di-eme swept the kitchen with her gaze, looking for the source of the adult voice, the source of her query.
Her attention barely rested on Nwa ajilija until the child angrily barked, “What are you looking for? Can’t you see the person talking to you?”
There was an eternity of silence as Oso-di-eme stared at Nwa ajilija, a stare that was returned defiantly. In that moment, Oso-di-eme realised how old Nwa ajilija’s eyes were—far older than her three years, far older than her mother and even older than the oji tree in the village square, that was alleged to be older than the oldest man in the village.
No one knew at what point the idea occurred to Oso-di-eme but what everyone seemed to concur to was that she should have known that the little girl could see through her actions and read her innermost thoughts. Oso-di-eme flung Nwa ajilija on her back and took off in the direction of the Ori Ngene River. What happened next was never heard of or seen in the village, and it was confirmed that it never happened again. From the child strapped to Oso-di-eme’s back emerged the most melodious and sonorous of songs, a call for help to her brothers working in the faraway Oma-agwu farms. It was said that even birds paused in mid-flight upon hearing this tune, several dropping right out of the sky to their utter astonishment:
Oh Ori Ngene!
Eke, my dear brother!
Oh Ori Ngene!
She wants to drown me in Ori Ngene!
Oh Ori Ngene!
A despicable wild beast is dating our mother!
Oh Ori Ngene!
Nwa ajilija kept on singing, drawing on all her strength to call on her siblings. It was said that the birds of the forest took up this song. The trees gustily sang its refrain, the blades of grass, even the grasscutters and guinea fowl were not left out, until the song reached the ears of her brothers in their far away farm.
It was said that upon hearing Nwa ajilija’s plea ferried on the very wind itself, her able-bodied siblings, Eke, Afo, Orie and Nkwo, threw down their hoes and cutlasses, and immediately raced towards the banks of Ori Ngene. They barely made it in time to see a wild-eyed, clearly delirious Oso-di-eme on the verge of throwing Nwa ajilija into the turbulent depths of Ori Ngene.
“She is having an affair with Udene the vulture!” screamed Nwa ajilija. “Ya na Udene na elie enyi,” an allegation that Oso-di-eme did not bother denying, aside from an almost involuntary shaking of her head.
It was also said that given that Ori Ngene, was usually the final arbiter in matters such as this this, Nwa ajilija’s siblings took the unanimous decision to request the river deity to determine whether it was right for their mother to have an affair with the despicable wild beast Udene. As soon as this question was put to the river, Afo cast both Oso-di-eme and Nwa ajilija into the roaring currents of the river. Just before both of them could hit the river’s surface, a hand was thrust forth from Ori Ngene’s depths, pulling down a screaming Oso-di-eme into the bowels of the river and throwing Nwa ajilija back on shore. It was a jubilant Nwa ajilija who was carried home shoulder high by her siblings.
I remember the look on my grandmother’s face when I finally summoned the courage to ask her the question, “Mama, but how could Oso-di-eme have an affair with the despicable Udene the wild beast? How can a human and a vulture have an affair?”
I also remember the look she gave me as if to say, was it not evident? Ndi Ichie decreed that Ogbu-Ojah be ostracised for oso-ochu, his name to never to be mentioned again and his very existence to be represented by the name of the foulest and most despicable of beasts, the vulture. Oso-di-eme’s affair had been with the man who had led her husband to his death and as for Ojahdili, she mused, no man, however strong, can challenge his chi to a wrestling match.
Jekwu Ozoemene holds a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Lagos and a Master of Business Administration in Finance from the University of Leicester. He is currently studying for a Doctorate of Business Administration in Banking and Finance at the University of Zambia / Binary University College, Malaysia. He is the author of Shadows of Existence: An Anthology of Poetry (2009), and a collection of plays, The Anger of Unfulfillment: Three Plays Out of Nigeria (2011). One of his poems appeared in the recently released Poems for a Century: An Anthology on Nigeria, edited by Tope Omoniyi.
APE SHIT
Sylvia Schlettwein
He is waiting for you, not just anywhere. He is seated on your chair on the veranda. You have named him Jonny, despite your intention to shoot him. He is the leader of the pack, he is fearless, and he deserves a name. You suppress the urge to wave a fist at him out of the car window as you pull into your parking spot under the big bush willow next to the veranda. You will not ridicule yourself in front of a baboon. Opapi is watching from his room—the curtain was pushed aside with a bony finger as you drove onto the yard. You get out of the bakkie and, as you slam the door, Jonny leaps from the chair to the table, onto the bonnet of the car, then flies past you, so close you catch a whiff of him: faeces meets the scent of scorched hair. Is that Opapi’s chuckle you hear or the bloody baboon’s?
You walk around the house to see where the rest of Jonny’s pack is—all gone, just the high-pitched silence of midday heat reflecting from the walls and roof of your house. As you walk around the corner, you fumble in your pocket for the key to the kitchen door. You always enter here when you come home from a trip to town. Urea stench lets your hand stall a few millimetres before the keyhole. Your eyes try to follow your sense of smell in first an upward then a sideways movement. The wall around the kitchen door is not whitewashed anymore. It is streaky brown; it is smeared with shit—baboon shit. They have taken over. No, how can you think like that? They have not. You will not let them. You are the human and they are the animals. It is your house, your yard, your farm, and your decision when and how you will put an end to the harassment by a horde of obnoxious baboons. You will have to show them.
In the beginning, their antics outside your garden fence were entertaining. You still thought it was funny when they one day clambered over into your garden. They climbed the deserted anthill next to your scrap yard. You were impressed by their agility and their interest in the rusty car parts and tools. You sniggered when one of the females got her hand stuck in an empty can and sent it flying against another’s head as she shook it off in frenzied panic. Watching them pick nits from each other’s hairy backs made you feel a sense of companionship with them. It reminded you of yourself wiping the flakes of dry skin off the coarsely knitted jumper that covered Opapi’s bony shoulders.
When they ventured too close to where you sat at your plastic table under the corrugated iron roof of the veranda, you threw your empty Tafel Lager can at them. You laughed as they scrambled in all directions and fled over the fence. They eventually assembled under the big ana tree next to the gate, from where Jonny bellowed to his troop.
“General Jonny, get your soldiers off my land,” you screamed in mock declaration of war. “I have cannons. You don’t!”
“Bohum, hu-hu-hu-hu!” Jonny answered and hammered his heaving chest with his bristly, dark grey fists. His troops scrambled around him. You could have sworn he had flashed you a triumphant look before he gave orders to his mostly female and child army to follow him into the veld.
“Bohu-hu-hu-hum! I have an army, you don’t!”
This is not funny anymore. You push the key into the keyhole, you turn the key, and put it back into the pocket of your cut-off jeans. You open the door and stare into Opapi’s rifle barrel, shaking in skeletal hands. How has the old man with his gun reached the kitchen so quickly? Does your own father want to kill you? Is he finally going crazy? Does he want to show you that he is still the man he used to be—the hunter, who could hold a gun with his steady hand and shoot straight to kill a trophy animal, no matter whether he was sitting on a nervous horse or on a shaky stance. You don’t know what you find more repulsive. Is it the trembling, mottled hands of death that must have once touched your mother’s breasts in the act of planting the seed that became you? Or is it the mental image of hairy primate hands smearing your wall with the brown stink from a bright red anus embedded in swollen grey bulges of flesh? Sweet-sour vomit clogs your oesophagus.
“There you are. I have guarded the door. The baboons are coming. In fact, they’re not coming. They were here. No joke, my son, no joke. You must take action, otherwise they’ll take over. I might be an old man in a wheelchair, but I know when a baboon wants to take over.”
“Opapi, put down the gun, and don’t lie to me. You were in your room when I came. I saw you pushing aside the curtain.”
Opapi obediently rests the gun in his lap. He grins like a schoolboy caught reading Playboy under his desk.
“Observant you are, my son, indeed. Yes, I was frightened and hid in my room ’til you came. I wouldn’t want that baboon to take my rifle.”
“Which baboon?”
“The one you call Jonny.”
“How do you know his name?”
“I heard you calling ‘You’re dead meat, Jonny, you’re dead meat!’ the other day.”
Your ears burn. He can still humiliate you—the residue of skin and bones that was once your muscular father, who made you take cold showers to “toughen you up”; who made you gorge on oatmeal slime for two weeks to “purge your spoilt intestines”. The problem is his able mind that refuses to follow suit to bodily decay. Sometimes you fear he will survive you, just because his brain refuses to die. He has always thought for you and beyond you. Grey matter swallows your every move, producing the soft-spoken porridge sentences of an elder, who has one foot in the grave and the other firmly rooted in the here and now.
You make him take a cold shower, and you put him to bed without dinner.
He smiles as he says: “Good night, my boy. Pray that they don’t return tonight.”
You don’t pray, and they don’t return during the night. They don’t need to. They are present in their stink that creeps from the smeared wall through the kitchen, into the empty dining room, past Opapi’s room and through the slit under the door of your bedroom into your bed. You turn the duvet. You shake your pillow. You open the windows. You close them again. You even try not to breathe. It doesn’t help; it is like somebody painted a moustache on your upper lip with baboon shit. Not somebody—Jonny himself.
You try to shave off the smell the next morning. It only vanishes when your upper lip starts bleeding because you’ve shaved off the skin. You try to lick away the blood, but it only becomes more. At first it tastes sweet, then salty, then bitter. After frantic searching, you find a plaster hidden in a dusty washbag. You don’t really overnight in the city anymore. You retrenched all your workers, whom you were not able to pay anymore. You cannot leave the farm and Opapi alone for too long. Your sisters say you got the farm for nothing and they have husbands and children to look after, so you can look after the old man for nothing. You stick the plaster on your lip. It at least stops the blood from flowing into your mouth. When you bring Opapi his morning tea, he cannot stop his whooping cough laugh and spurts tea all over his bedding.
“Stop behaving like a child!” you scream.
“I can’t help it. You look like Hitler. That should scare Jonny all right.”
You have to get the shit off the wall. You know they are watching you while you stand on a wobbly ladder and scrub at their anal graffiti with a wire brush and Sunlight soap. The sweet-sour vomit of yesterday returns. You swallow it. You will not give them the satisfaction of seeing you throw up. You scrub the whole day, and your sweat dissolves the stickiness of the plaster, which falls off. A crust forms on your upper lip; you feel it crack, but resist the temptation to lick it, even when the salt of your sweat stings through the cracks. By sunset, you are ready to wash away the vile taste of it all with a Tafel Lager.
With the swish and plop of the cap of the beer bottle, they appear from where they were hiding under bushes, behind stones and tree trunks. They clamber over the fence and settle on the patch of lawn you have managed to cultivate. The females and children start grooming and teasing each other. Jonny sits aside with his favourite female and lets her pick nits from his matted mantle. When she pinches him too hard, he gives a yellow-toothed bark and pushes her aside. She squeaks and starts picking herself. Jonny jumps onto a dead tree trunk and fixates on you.
“Wifeless, childless, you are, alone with the sack of bone and flesh that you have to call a father. Jealous, that’s what you are. You’d swap lives with me anytime, hairy enough you are, ha-ha-hum bohum!”
“Al dra ’n aap ’n goue ring, hy is en bly ’n lelike ding!” you retort with an Afrikaans proverb.
“What? Thing is, I don’t need a golden ring to be what I am—an ugly thing that has what you don’t have. Wives, children, power, the power to irritate the shit out of you on your own land that can be repossessed any minute. Then I will still be here, while you have to look for a place to eke out an existence, with your father attached to your apron strings. Here, you want her? Just once? To relieve you? You can have her. Right here and now. Like this!”
