Making Wolf, page 6
So.
So, maybe they expected me to investigate indefinitely.
They could tell the press or their own people that an independent investigator, truly neutral (from London!), was looking into it. The story would die a natural death, and all involved could go back to casual genocide or whatever the hell it was that rebel factions did for entertainment. All that would be required of me would be to go through the motions of an enquiry. If I could do that and stay alive.
I thought of my life in London. No way would I be in possession of twenty-five thousand dollars, tax-free back in Jand. I’d be stuck in a dank studio flat in Hammersmith, eating baked beans out of the can and watching reality television, wondering which uniform I should wear to work the next day to my impotent job at the supermarket where I’d have to watch crackhead shoplifters walk away with merchandize and do nothing, and take a succession of intoxicated white women to bed or play ambivalence games with pseudo-Christian Nigerian girls looking for husbands or sperm-donors. I’d phone Lynn once a month and pretend that it hadn’t been six months since I last eyeballed her, and I’d take a series of useless courses at the Open University, telling myself it was improving my chances at self-advancement, but knowing deep inside that I was marking time, waiting for my real life to begin. This was my real life.
Jandon la wa yi. This is London we’re in.
I’d need to print business cards, get whatever passed for a permit in Alcacia and organize some kind of identification. Something flashy and official-looking to impress the receptionists of unwilling demigods.
Thus, lying on the downiest pillows I had ever experienced in my life, did I decide to take the job.
Chapter Nine
I worked all morning, sorting through the data on Pa Busi, everything spread out on Nana’s dining table. I had one pile for what was common, freely available knowledge garnered from newspaper clippings and such; one for restricted access information; and a final pile for conjecture and doodles. Not that I intended to solve anything; I just wanted to be convincing in case anyone inquired about my progress.
The ambient noise was disorienting. Faint buzz of mosquitoes trying to escape the flat after a hard night’s bloodsucking, chickens clucking their hunger, two women arguing over conjugal rights with their shared husband, a few traders melodiously calling out their wares—oyin l’adun osan (honey is the sweetness of these oranges) was a personal favorite. At times when my eyes hurt from reading too much, I would look out of the window to see a barely pubescent girl balancing a tray on her head, one source of the advertisements.
What it looked like was this: Pa Busi, elder statesman of Alcacia, had been acting as peacemaker between warring rebel factions and as a conduit between them and the federal government. It was a last-ditch response before the mercenary-reinforced Alcacian army napalmed both rebel sides into barbequed revolutionary choplets. The two major groups had arisen more or less simultaneously a decade ago at a time of particularly harsh economic hardship. The PCA appealed to the largely Christian populace, emphasizing the essential godlessness of the current regime, but having no qualms about alliances with communist foreign powers for weapons and finance. The Liberation Front laid no claim to such lofty ideals. The original leader (revered, but rumored to be HIV-positive and long-since beheaded by federal troops) cited the Baader-Meinhof Gang as inspiration. The Front seemed dedicated to mayhem. The two worked in parallel as steady thorns in the side of the government for years. All three lived in an unsteady equilibrium since no real damage was done. In fact, the extensive property damage served to keep the government in power, if anything. The defense budget tripled each year.
Then there was an incident that some say State Security engineered. PCA troops killed eleven unarmed LFA soldiers. PCA said the LFA had fired first, and, after killing them, the weapons had been stripped by the PCA for the “war effort”. Which is when the rebels began to fight each other.
More recently, the battles and explosions had become bloodier and more sinister, with forced auto-cannibalism, rape, and the ubiquitous ethnocide. One government official was quoted as saying, “The enemy of my enemy in this case is still my enemy, but by God, do I love it when they cancel each other out like this!”
All things must come to an end, and a public and international outcry led the government to start the INTERN-POL initiative, which was basically a death squad that ran seek-and-destroy missions against both rebel sides. Minor rebel groups based on flawed pseudo-Islamic ideologies were quashed within weeks. Both major factions suffered heavy losses. Blood flowed wilder than the rivers of Babylon.
Enter Pa Busi, coming out of retirement to serve his people one last time. As soon as he declared his intentions, Supreme Commander Craig declared an immediate ceasefire pending the conclusion of talks. The Front stopped all hostilities. They talked. They made progress.
Then, in neutral territory during a time of relative peace, Pa Busi was blown up by unknown persons. I went over the police reports and photos. It was dull, intensely dense technical prose that would make sense to an expert in ballistics or forensics. There were summations that came to this: an explosive, possibly a mine, detonated under the jeep carrying Pa Busi and his entourage. He survived long enough to crawl a short distance from the wreckage, burning. And then, over a period of minutes, he died. All other men in the jeep died, too. From shrapnel wounds. I scribbled in my conjecture notes: why was there a mine in a so-called neutral zone? Talk to mortician. See post mortem for all occupants in jeep. Speak to witnesses. Unanswered questions: Who discovered the wreckage? What were the last communications on all the occupants’ mobile phones or Blackberrys?
Next was a file that detailed Pa Busi’s survivors. He had a young wife, his second. She was thirty years old and something of a local celebrity. Active in charities and civil rights right up till the death of her husband, after which she dropped from the public eye. I looked at her photo: exceptionally beautiful in a European way—clear, fair skin, pointed nose, large eyes with light-brown irises, slender-looking, long hair straightened, mouth kept slightly open. She was heavily made-up, but in a good way, like the women we used to watch and lust after in Indian films. I thought she might have some white blood in her a few generations back. Her name was Diane Olubusi.
Interview Diane Olubusi. Trace Pa Busi’s finances. Children? First wife?
Nana announced her return with closing doors and singing. I stopped scribbling and put the pen down; I was fatigued in any case. She fluttered into the dining room and beamed when she saw me.
“How was the exam?”
“Easy. A-minus.”
“So sure?”
“Yes. Done it many times before.” She dropped her bags on the floor, and urgently started unbuttoning her blouse. “Now, come over here and fuck me.”
“I’ve been thinking about communication,” said Nana.
I was seated on the floor of the dining room, against the wall, knees drawn up but parted. Nana was between my legs, back to me, resting her head on my arms which were around her. I grunted, signaling her to continue.
“They say most of our communication is nonverbal, right? People bandy statistics about that range from seventy to ninety percent. I’d like to know how they conducted the studies that yielded those results—”
“You’re drifting.”
“Yes. I am. Are we in a hurry?”
I kissed her hair.
“That’s what I thought. So, anyway, if most of the communication is nonverbal, then certain actions have to be considered the height of communication.”
“Such as?”
“Murder. Sex. Hugging. Spitting. Defenestration. Anything…at crisis point. Critical mass action…” She leapt up and rummaged through her bag until she had a pencil and notepad, then wrote furiously, frowning but completely immersed in the moment. Her backside jiggled softly and she bit her lower lip and dogs fought outside the window and I loved her.
“How is it that you’re this intelligent, yet you keep failing the exam you went for?”
“I have never failed an exam,” said Nana.
“But you said—”
“I said I’d taken it many times, not that I’d ever failed it.”
“You know it’s strange,” I said. “I could have sworn this conversation started out in Yoruba. Now it’s in gibberish.”
“Weston does sarcasm!” She stopped writing and came back to me. “I take examinations for people in the universities. And some of the polytechnics. For money.”
“You impersonate students in exams?”
“Also for theses, essays and miscellaneous assignments, yes.”
“Does it pay well?”
“You have no idea. I’ve been living off this for a while.”
“What courses do you specialize in?”
“Anything at all.”
“Examples?”
“History, literature, physics, advanced math, philosophy, you name it, I’ve done it. I’ve done Premed twice.” She twisted around and looked into my eyes. “I know everything. I have a third eye, and it sees all.”
She did know everything; she always had.
“You have no ethical problems with that?”
“Do you?”
“I’m not sure.”
“It’s Alcacia, Weston. It’s survival.”
“I know. I’ve just never thought about it.”
“It’s hard work. I have a lot of raw information in my head, and I can tell you about the October Revolution or the Treaty of Utrecht, or recite all the monologues of King Lear, but the difficult bit is toning it down, tailoring it to the academic level of the clients. I have to make it look hard. I have to add errors of grammar and syntax. It’s exhausting.” She turned back and continued jotting on the pad.
“Do you ever miss the lack of recognition?”
“In what sense?”
“You’re doing a lot of academic work here, but others get the glory. You’re a ghost writer. Wouldn’t you rather have your own name on an essay or book or…I don’t know, win some prizes or the like? Isn’t this a kind of half-life?”
“The last time I cared about shit like that was my first year of university. I started what I thought would be the first of many degrees. For my term paper I wrote an eight-thousand word essay titled “I, Rastafari” which was an examination of the sociocultural effects of the black African Diaspora on the adopted identity of the individual on the Caribbean Islands. It was brilliant. My professor said it was years ahead of what someone of my experience should be writing. He said I’d easily graduate with a first class. And then he stood up from behind his desk, dropped his trousers, and asked me to fellate him.”
“What?”
“Don’t be shocked, Weston. It’s really quite rampant, and nobody bats an eyelid at these things anymore. Even crusty old academics have to get obo somehow. I never liked formal education anyhow. Too prescriptive; too restrictive.”
Nana had always complained about school when we were young. She read more than anyone I have known before or since, but nothing relevant to school work. When we first met she was reading an astrophysics textbook that she barely understood. She was twelve. I was thirteen and completely fucked up from my family being torn to bits and my mother’s recent death. I was the new boy at school since I had just moved to Aunt Blossom’s house. I remember sitting by myself at lunch for weeks. One day she came, sat next to me holding a book that strained her forearm muscles, and nudged me. “Are you retarded?” she asked. “People say you’re retarded is why you don’t talk to anyone.”
And that is how we began to talk.
Evening.
The unholy ball of fire in the sky had retreated enough to the west that I didn’t feel scorched, sweaty, or scared. Brave, pioneer mosquitoes had started buzzing about, albeit slowly. Nana had made some eba, and we ate on the veranda.
“It can be done,” said Nana. “Just takes cash.”
“I have cash.”
“Okay, but then there are still delays. You can’t just walk into the ministry and ask for a private detective license. There are forms to be filled, procedures to be performed, clearances to be cleared. You must be stamped, triplicated, filed. You must lose your head and get angry at least once. You must experience the bureaucracy, and the bureaucracy must experience you.”
“Can’t I bypass that with more cash?”
“Maybe a whole lot of it, more than your sponsors are willing to pay. It’s better if you know someone.”
The soup was spinach, tomato paste, red peppers, red onions, palm oil, and stock fish (which was sold dry and was so hard you had to cut it with a saw before cooking softened it). I licked my fingers and asked for the washing bowl. When I had cleaned and dried my hands, I phoned Abayomi Abayomi.
“Akara Ogun!” he said into the phone. “How goes the demon slaying? Still feeling lucky?”
I watched Nana clear the dishes. “Very much so. Listen, d’you know anyone up at the ministry of justice?” I explained the problem. He gave me a name but could not talk much afterwards, so we exchanged pleasantries and he was gone.
Nana said, “Do you want to see something cool?”
It was a full moon.
Dogs howled at it, took a break, then howled some more. People came out on raffia mats, deck chairs, and carved stools. Children ran around the central wood-fed fire, squealing their delight and roasting wild mushrooms on unsanitary sticks. Wasps, sand flies, stick insects, confused termites, and other arthropods flew into the flames and burned bright for one shining moment before dying. The mosquitoes cannily reserved their attentions for the human beings around the flame. Chickens roosted on rooftops or low branches of surrounding trees. Sheep clustered together, warily observing everything, chewing regurgitated grass.
An old man told stories of ijapa, the tortoise, considered the most cunning of animals in Yoruba folklore, but often unlucky in his schemes. He wore a soft fila on his head and sat serenely on a black stool, his voice a soft monotone that threatened to send me to sleep. He was skinny, asthenic to the point of being painful to look at, and his face was riddled with wrinkles. Despite the obvious contours, it was impossible to tell his mood as he kept a bland, neutral expression. I wondered how old he was. Life in Alcacia was such that a person could age before his time. His stories were familiar and comforting to the audience. There were no surprise endings; many of his sentences were completed by others and garnished with laughter from all. Nana and I stood at the edge of the people listening to him. Children sat crosslegged on the floor, adults knelt or stood.
I whispered to Nana. “This is nice and quaint. It warms my heart several times over. But I don’t see—”
“Shh. Just wait till the end.”
The old man finished with a tale of Anansi tricking a whole village into staying awake all night by telling them the moon was actually the sun, only very pale and sick. By this time many of the children were asleep, and mothers woke or lifted them away. As the listeners dispersed, Nana and I approached.
“Papa,” said Nana. “Might we see?”
He nodded.
“Put some money in his hand,” Nana said to me. I gave him ten dollars, still wondering what I was paying for.
The old man took off the fila and leaned toward us, showing his bald head.
But that wasn’t it. He was not bald; his crown was one big sheet of scar tissue. There was white hair in what looked like a Bishop’s fringe around the scarred area, but otherwise there was an unnatural smoothness broken only by the wrinkles at the margins.
“Accident,” I asked.
“No,” said Nana, who had obviously seen it before. “No, this man was scalped.”
“Where? How?”
“Papa, tell us your story, please,” said Nana. To me she said, “Give him more money.”
He first took water from a canteen beside his stool, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and exhaled. He had no teeth to speak of, just gums and a glistening tongue. This close, I could see every blood vessel crawling over the whites of his eyes. He began to speak in Yoruba with the same unaffected monotone with which he delivered the moonlight tales.
“I was fifteen years old, an apprentice roof mender, working with my father. The village prospered in those days…after a fashion. The Po-tu-gii developed it because of the gold mine that had served us for centuries. Usually, only about a dozen of them stood around with their guns and slaves, carting the gold to the coast. They were so selfish that they even made slaves shower so that the gold dust would not benefit the families who had lost the right arm of a son. Is that not evil? Does not the Book say ‘Thou shalt not muzzle the ox when he treadeth out the corn?’”
“It does, Papa,” said Nana.
“One day the village was invaded by marauders, the Por-tu-gii were slaughtered and all the gold stolen. A few of the young women were taken, but they left the villagers alone mostly. The slaves were allowed to escape, and they scattered into the forest and neighboring encampments. After seven days new Por-tu-gii arrived, and they scourged us all for allowing it to happen. For the dead white men, they scalped every tenth male in the tribe, as evidence of retribution. They would have killed us all, but they needed the slaves.”
“And you survived this?” I asked.
He looked at me with sad eyes and said, “‘And I only am escaped alone to tell thee.’”
We were mostly silent on the way home, Nana and I. She drove and I thought of the things I heard.
“What a lonely man he must have been,” I said.
“Lonely?”
“Yes, with the scar and all…”
“You’re kidding, right? He’s outlived two wives and has tons of children and grandchildren. He’s thought to be marked by the gods for survival, and people want a piece of that. It’s like the mark of Cain: nobody will kill him, no disease afflicts him. Plus, he makes a lot of money from tourists showing off his absent scalp. I mean, he’s sweet, and it’s a shame what happened to the village men eighty-odd years ago, but the fucking Portuguese did him a favor.”
