9

CROSSING THE THRESHOLD

AGBARADIKE, the great fathers in their discreet wisdom say

that seeds sown in secret always yield the most vibrant

fruit. So my host, in the days following his meeting with his

old schoolmate, shielded from the world the inflorescence of

joy that grew along the edges of his heart. In secret, his

plans grew, unbeknownst to Ndali, who returned from her

week-long trip to Lagos three days after he met Jamike. He

hid his father’s old briefcase, in which he stored the

documents he collected, under the bed. He attached his

heart to the bag as if it contained everything he owned, his

very life.

As the contents of the bag increased, so did other joyful

developments. He did not have to persuade Ndali to go back

home after she returned. She went back by herself,

deceived by Chuka’s lies that their mother had taken ill. This

resolved his fear that something else might happen if he

was not able to persuade her to return as Chuka had

warned, an encounter which – not wanting her to escalate

issues with her family – he kept from her. When she came to

see him exactly two weeks after he began his plans with

Jamike, her mood was wholly changed. She had come from

church that day, lighthearted.

‘I can’t even believe it, Obim,

’ she said, clapping her

hands playfully. She sat on his legs.

‘Can you guess what

Daddy said?’

‘What, Mommy?’‘I told them that you bought JAMB forms to go back to

school. So they said that if you register at a school, that

would be a good first step. It would show your seriousness

to become somebody.

Egbunu, he was stunned by this. It seemed to him that

something he could not see had peered over his shoulder

and looked into the pot of his secrets. For having resolved all

along not to tell her about his plans, as Jamike had advised,

not wanting her to stop him, he’d only told her about the

form he’d bought. Yet he knew he could not hide it from her

for too long. So as he took more steps in this direction each

day, he’d assure himself that he would tell her about it. But

by the end of the day, he would push it like a thing with

wheels into the future and say not today but tomorrow. But

if tomorrow Ndali came home with a fever after a long day

at school, he’d say T omorrow, she will be home all day and it

will be easier then . But alas, that tomorrow would come

with a phone call first thing in the morning that her uncle
had suffered a stroke. Over the week end , the voice in his

head would resolve, perhaps on Sunday after church. And as

if by some alchemic manipulation, today was that Sunday.

Now that she had said something that touched the core of

the very thing he’d been keeping secret, he resolved to tell.

‘Mommy, consider it done!’ he said.

‘Er, Obim?’

‘I say, consider it done,

’ he said even louder. He made her

stand, and he rose, too, swaggering slightly.

‘I have gone to

school and come back.

She laughed.

‘How? Abi in spirit or in your dreams?’

‘Just watch, er.

He went into the room and retrieved the bag from under

the bed in what was once his sister’s room. He blew away a

spider that lay on the fading coat of arms inscribed on the

bag’s leather skin and carried it with him back to the sitting

room. He put the bag on the centre of the table.

‘What is in the bag?’ she said.‘Abracadabra – you will see.

’ He waved his hands over the

bag while she bobbed with laughter. Then he opened it and

handed her the documents. He’d arranged the documents in

the order of lowest cost, so when she began from the last

one, he said,

‘No, no, Mommy, begin here, first.

‘Here?’

‘Yes, that one.

He sat down to watch her peruse the documents, his

heart sounding a nervous beat.

She read the header on the paper aloud: ‘Admission

letter.

’ She raised her head.

‘Wow, Nonso, you got an

admission!’ She rose to her feet.

He nodded.

‘Just read on.

She returned her eyes to the paper.

‘Cyprus International University, Lef-lef-ko-sa?’

‘Lefkosa.

‘Lefkosa. Wow. Where is this place? How did you get it?’
‘It is surprise, Mommy. So just look, just look.

She read through.

‘Oh God! Business Administration? That is very good!’

‘Thank you.

‘I can’t believe it,

’ Ndali said. She threw her hands into the

air, swirled into a half circle and faced him again, and kissed

him.

‘Read all first, Mommy,

’ he said, detaching himself.

‘Then

you can kiss me after. Read.

‘Okay,

’ she said, and looked at the book between the files.

‘Your passport?’

He nodded, and she looked through it, with her face filled

with light.

‘Where’s the visa?’

‘Next week,

’ he said.

‘You will go to where – Abuja?’

‘Abuja.

He saw a shade begin to grow over her face, and he

stiffened.

‘Read it all, Mommy, please.

’‘Okay,

’ she said.

‘Letter of accommodation,

’ she said, and

glanced up at him.

‘You have accommodation already?’

‘Yes. It is so. Read, see, Mommy?’

But she dropped the documents back on the table.

‘Nonso, you are planning to leave Nigeria and you are just

telling me?’

‘I wanted it to be surprise. Look, Mommy, your brother

came here after you go to Lagos. No, no, listen first. He

came with thugs to frighten me. Actually, I have no choice. I

have to do something. Listen godunu first. Look, I luckily

saw my former classmate who schools in this beautiful

country, Cyprus. And he told me everything. How everything

is cheap, school fees, and jobs easy to get. Degree, I can get

within three years, if I do what he called summer schools.

That is why I did this.

’

‘Who is this person you met?’

‘His name? Jamike Nwaorji. He just went back to Cyprus –

actually four days ago. He was my classmate in primary

school and also secondary school.

She took up the documents again, as he’d hoped, and

went through the course curriculum, then returned her gaze

back to the inscriptions on the softer foolscap.

‘Wait oh, I still don’t understand.

‘Okay, Mommy.

‘You are leaving Nigeria when you said you want to marry

me?’

‘It is not so, Mommy.

’ He opened his mouth to say more,

but he could not form words, as the confidence that had

been painstakingly constructed over the days and weeks

prior, the confidence derived from the result of weighing

everything on the scale and deciding he could give up

everything for her, had suddenly flattened. To shore it back

up, he moved closer to her and sat on the arm of the couch.

‘How is it not so? This is a school abroad.

’

He took her hand.

‘I know it is abroad, but it is actually the

best way. Imagine in two and a half years, I have a real,

authentic degree? Imagine, Mommy? Even, you can alwaysvisit me. You graduate next year
June, and by then I would

actually also be going to my second year. You can come and

stay with me.

‘Jesus! Nonso, are you saying …

’ She clasped her palms

over her head.

‘Forget it, just forget it.

‘No, Mommy, no. Why don’t you tell it to me, why?’

‘Forget it.

‘Nne, look, I am doing this because of you, only because

of you. Actually, I never even wanted to go back to school,

but that is the only way I can be with you. The only way,

Mommy?’

He put his hand on her shoulder and gently pulled her

towards him.

‘You know I love you. I love you very much, but

see what they are doing to me. See how they disgraced me.
They really disgrace me, Mommy. And who knows, maybe it

is just the beginning. Just the beginning, and, you don’t

know, I don’t know. I’m coming, Mommy …

All evening, they had been hearing loud, excessive caws,

but now it grew too distracting for him. He went to the

kitchen, drew his catapult and a stone from the window sill,

and ran out. All his chickens were in their coops, and just as

he got close to one of them, a reddish cock leapt to the bars

noisily, squawking in distress. It was fighting with one of the

newest roosters, the one with a serrated comb and an

abundance of wattles. The rooster had shown unusual

belligerence even from the day he bought it. He unbarred

the coop’s net door and tried to catch it. But it hopped

against the wall and tried to find something to hang on, but

couldn’t. He tripped and landed with his hands on the floor

as the roosters leapt up and ran out of the coop with two

others from the group of six cocks and cockerels. He

pursued it, and it jumped on to the bench under the guava

tree, and when he tried to catch it, it mounted the water

drum, crowing aggressively. He was furious. He circled the

well and then, moving as fast as he could, grabbed the

[Link] was binding the bird to the tree with hempen twine

when Ndali stepped into the yard. The low evening sun cast
a shadow of her against the wall, a shadow so large that

only half of it could be seen.

‘Nonso,

’ she said, startling him.

‘Yes, Mommy.

‘What have you done?’

‘Nothing,

’ he said.

He turned and held her, his chest still pounding, but

pressed against her chest, he felt that her pounding was far

worse.

AGBATTA-ALUMALU, sometimes a man cannot fully

understand what he has done until he has told another

person about it. Then his own action becomes clearer even

to himself. I have seen it many times. Although my host had

spent the past hour explaining his rationale for selling the

compound, and poultry, when he was done, he began to see

the flaws in the decisions he had made. Again, Chukwu, you

have established that the main roles of the guardian spirit

are to watch over our hosts and make sure that preventable

calamities do not befall them, so they can more easily fulfil

their destinies, the reason for which you created them. We

must never try to compel our hosts against their will. So

even though I had worried that he was selling most of what

he had, I had let him do this without interference. I did this

also because I believed that the man who had come to him

to help him had been a product of his gift of good luck, the

bone from the garden of Chiokike.

But now, when he heard the gasps and saw the fright on

Ndali’s face, he became afraid that he had made hasty

decisions. A coldness came upon his heart which, for the

weeks past, had been warm with the joy birthed by hope.

After he’d finished revealing everything he had done in

secret, Ndali said,

‘I have not words, Nonso. I am

speechless.

’She went into his old room and closed the door while he

sat in the sitting room, staring at the documents. He reread

the agreement about the sale of the compound, and fear

welled up in his mind. When his father bought the house, he

was barely nine, and his mother was pregnant. His father

had said they needed a bigger house as more children

came. He thought he’d forgotten this bit of memory, but

now he found it as fresh as yesterday. His mother holding

him, he’d stopped in the empty room while his father and

the seller went around the place. Then he’d broken free

from his mother and ran to the backyard and stood under
the guava tree, greatly fascinated by it. He tried to climb it,

but his mother, although heavy with child, came running

and calling him down. He heard her voice with startling

clarity, as if she were behind him in the room.

‘No, Bobo, no.

Don’t, I don’t like people who climb trees.

’ ‘Why?’ he’d

asked, turning his back to his mother, as he did when he

wanted to disobey her.

‘Nothing,

’ she said, and he heard her

sigh, as she had begun doing as her belly bulged. Then, with

the kind of resignation that he’d come to understand as a

marker of finality, she said,

‘If you do, I won’t like you.

He was thinking of this when Ndali emerged from the

room and said,

‘Nonso, let us go to Tantalizers, I’m hungry.

At first, he could not distinguish between the voices of the

two women, but Ndali stepped further into the sitting room

and stamped her feet on the floor.

‘Nonso, I’m talking to

you!’

‘Er, Mommy, yes, yes, let us go.

They walked slowly, a quietness between them, as if some

authority beyond the will of man had ordered that words not

be spoken. They went through the narrow street, between

greying and moulding fences and street gutters clogged

with waste. On the other side, separated by a potholed road,

birds sat in chambers of an unfinished multi-storey building

fettered by wooden scaffolding. He was gazing at the birds

when, in a voice a little above a whisper, Ndali said that if

she knew it would come to this, she would have left him.‘Why do you say that, Mommy?’

‘Because I am not worth this sacrifice. All this – it is too

much.

He did not speak until they entered the restaurant, for he

was disturbed by what she had said. The restaurant was

alive with the chatter of people – a group of men in plain

shirts, some office workers and two women – and a song

was playing at a low tune on the speaker. He wanted to

contest what she’d said vehemently and insist that she was

worth it. But he didn’t. For even though he now mostly

regretted it and agreed that he had acted in haste, he knew,

too, that he’d gone too far to turn back now. He had sold his
compound, which he inherited from his father. Two

semesters of school fees had been paid, along with the fees

for a year’s accommodation. And Jamike, who had now

returned to Cyprus, had two thousand more euros which he

had given Jamike to keep in an account for him for

‘maintenance’

, so he wouldn’t have to carry much money

while travelling. In the bag was another six hundred euros,

the last of the hard currency. Only the forty-two thousand

naira he had in the bank was to remain, in addition to

however much they would get from selling all the fowls.

When they sat down in a corner of the restaurant, she

repeated her words again.

‘Why do you say this?’ he said.

‘Because, Nonso, you have destroyed yourself because of

me!’ she said with what my host thought was anger. After

she said this, she turned about to look around the place, for

it seemed as though she realised that she’d spoken in a

burst of emotion, and her words had been loud, so she

whispered,

‘You have destroyed yourself, Nonso.

Chukwu, the effect of this unexpected proclamation on my

host was severe. It felt as though something had riven

through the landscape of his soul and split it in two. It was in

an effort to hold himself together that he said,

‘I didn’t

destroy myself anything, I didn’t destroy myself.

‘You have,

’ she said.

‘I gbu o le onwe gi.

’Surprised by her switch to Igbo, he did not speak.

‘How can you sell everything, Nonso?’

‘I did it because I don’t want them to separate us.

‘Yes, but you sold everything you have, Nonso,

’ she said

again and turned to him, and he saw that she had again

begun to cry.

‘For me, for me, why, Nonso?’

He swallowed hard, for he saw now that the reality of

what he had done, when expressed in words, bore a grave,

crushing enormity.

‘No, I will recover it all—

’ he said, but saw that she was

shaking her head, her eyes diluted with tears. He stopped.

He looked about, afraid that people around them would see

her crying.

‘I sold it to go to school, and to go overseas

where I can make it. I will get it all back ten times. I will get

a job there …

The food arrived: jollof rice for him and fried rice for her,

with meat pie on the side. And in the lull, I flashed in his

mind to assure her in stronger words. I reminded him of all

the things he’d considered to arrive at the decision. I

reminded him of the man who sold his land to send his son

to school. I reminded him, Ezeuwa, that he had reckoned

that if he got the degree, and returned and married her, he

could get a job by her father’s influence and could buy new

poultry and build a new coop. And the house? What was it

even worth? He had not considered that it may be big but

that Amauzunku was one of the worst places in Umuahia. So

he could not wait for the waiter to go, and once the waiter

was gone, he said,

‘I will be paying for my life also, and for

the woman I love. If I get the degree and I get a good job, I

can buy a house ten times better, Mommy. Look at this dirty

street. Maybe we can even go to another place, or even, in

fact, even maybe Enugu. It is better, Mommy. Actually, it is

better. It is better than me allow them to separate us.

’

But Ndali simply shook her head in a way that he would

remember for a very long time. She said nothing more. She

ate little and wiped the steady tears that ran down her

cheeks. Her sorrow troubled him, for he had not expectedthat she would react this strongly to
his decision. He held

her hand as they walked home, but as they drew near the

house, she removed her hand.

‘Your hand is sweating

again,

’ she said. He wiped his palms on his trousers and

spat into the gutter on the side of the road.

She began to walk alone, a distance from him. He was

watching her walk, the swinging of her buttocks with every

lithe step visible through the fabric of her tight skirt, when a

man on a motorcycle raced past and called at her,

‘Asa-nwa,

how are you?’ She hissed at the man and, laughing, the man

took off, his vehicle whining. My host, his heart now cleaved,

hastened to her. She turned and looked at him, but without

a word. He glanced at the disappearing man, at the empty

street behind him, as if the world had itself suddenly

become empty. For it occurred to him that this might be

what she most feared: if he left, other men would come to

her. And he wished, then, that this had happened a few days
before, when he had not yet sold his house.

As he began to reach for her clothes after they got home

later that night, she thrust the camera into his hand,

stripped bare, and asked him to take photos of her. His hand

shook as he snapped the first photo, which instantly

emerged printed from the top of the camera. It was a full

image of her erect body, with her supple breasts staring at

the camera, and the nipples taut and hard. The pictures

were for him, she said.

‘So that any time you feel like you

want to do it, you can look at the pictures.

’ After he lay

down by her side, he wondered if she had done it because

of the man who had called to her. And a strange fear came

upon him, one that possessed him through the night.

CHUKWU, the old fathers say that the god who created the

itch also gave man the finger to scratch it. Although his joy

had sprung leaks in response to Ndali’s sorrow, once they

returned home that evening and she asked him to make

love to her, he felt better. She told him she was sad mostly

because she would miss him, and he assured her that hewould return frequently until she could
join him. He said, the

degree will be quick, and then he will be done. And he said

these things so fervently because he was now afraid of

leaving her alone in the interim, exposed to the prying eyes

of other men. By the time he was to travel to Abuja the

following week, his words had worked and she was no

longer steeped in sorrow. She drove him to the bus station

and returned to her parents.

It rained heavily the night before his trip to Abuja for his

visa, and by morning the storm had caused the main road to

close. A great pothole that formed in the centre of the road

would have drowned every vehicle the size of the Abia Line

luxurious bus. The route the driver took was longer, and by

the time he got to Abuja, it was almost nightfall. He took a

taxi to the cheap hotel where Jamike had suggested he stay,

near Kubwa. They knew Jamike, too. They called him T urk ey

Man .

‘He is a good man, nice guy,

’ the cashier, whose

mouth smelt of something like vomit, told him. So taken by

the man’s words was he that as he took his travelling bag

into the room, it occurred to him that he had not yet given

Jamike anything in appreciation for his goodness. He’d only

bought him beer during the four times they ran around to

cyber cafes, the immigration office, the high court to swear

an affidavit in lieu of a birth certificate, and to find a buyer

for his house.

He became worried by this. He cursed himself inwardly for

such an oversight, which may have been interpreted as

ingratitude, and decided to call Jamike immediately. He

scratched a Globacom phone card he’d bought from the

vendor’s tent outside the hotel and loaded the phone. After

he dialled Jamike did not pick up, and then a foreign voice

came on, followed by an English translation. He laughed at

the words and the way they had been said. Then he tried

again, and this time, Jamike picked up.

‘Na who be the fool wey dey call me at this time of the

night?’He was struck as if with a rod to his back. He thought to

remain silent so Jamike would not find out it was he who was

foolish enough not to have remembered they were in

different time zones, but he was too embarrassed to control

himself in the way he wanted.

‘I say who be that?’

‘Am sorry, my brother,

’ he said.

‘It is me.

‘Ah, ah, Bobo Solo!’

‘Yes, me. I am sorry—

‘No, no, no, mehn. Na me suppose dey sorry. I just came

in today. I was in—

’

Jamike’s voice disappeared behind a wall of

indecipherable sounds, then emerged again with a

discordant echo of ‘ebi’

, then ‘ommm’

, and then it went

blank again.

‘Jami, are you there? Are you there?’ he said.

‘Yes, Bobo Solo, you dey hear me?’

The talk was interrupted by a warning that the call would

soon be disconnected. When it cleared, Jamike was saying,

‘That’s why I neva call you yet. But Solo, you don get the

visa?’

‘I am in Abuja now. Just today.

‘Oh boy! Bobo Solo, the main man!’

‘That is—

The ping went off again, and the call died. He put the

phone on the only table in the room – on which sat the TV, a

Bible, a laminated card listing the channels on the TV and,

on the back, a menu from the hotel restaurant. At one

corner of the room, near the closed curtain, a small

cockroach clung to the wall, its antennae curved backwards.

As he disrobed, the phone rang. When he looked at the

screen, it was Ndali.

‘I just wanted to see if you had a safe journey,

’ she said.

‘Yes, Obim. But the road was very bad. Too bad.

‘Blame Orji Kalu, your governor.

‘He is a madman.

She laughed, and as she did, he heard the voice of a

rooster from some distance in the background.‘Where are you?’

‘At your house.

He hesitated.

‘Why, Mommy? What are you doing there? I

said you should go home after feeding them.

‘Nonso, I can’t leave them here alone because you

travelled. What am I, Oyibo or egg?’

Her words cut to his heart.

‘I love you, Mommy,

’ he said. Words pooled together in his

head, but he hesitated, overcome by the surprise of what

she had done.

‘You are feeding them yourself alone?’

‘Yes,

’ she said.

‘And I picked the eggs.

‘How many?’

‘Seven.

‘Mommy,

’ he said, and when she said ‘Eh?’ he fell silent.

For he could not tell why suddenly he’d become moved to

tears.

‘If you don’t want me to actually leave home, I will

come back tomorrow. I will return the money for the house

and not sell it again. I will ask Jamike to send me back my

school fees. Everything, Mommy. After all, actually I have

not started school, you see?’

The words had come out with such rapidity that it

surprised him to think he uttered them. For even as he

spoke, a strange silence formed an integral part of his

speech. He knew, once he’d said all that, that he had simply

spoken for her sake. He waited for her to respond, his mind

light as the feather of a pipit.

‘I don’t know what to say, Obim,

’ she said after a while.

‘You are a good man, a very good man. I love you, too. I

support your decision – because God has given me a good

man.

’ He heard her deep sigh.

‘Go.

‘I should go, Mommy? If you say no, I swear to God who

made me, I won’t go.

‘Yes. Go.

‘Okay, Mommy.

‘Do you know that the breeder laid pink egg again?’ she

said.

‘Ah, Obiageli?’‘Yes. I fried the egg. Very sweet.

They laughed, and later, long after the call, he wished he

had not made the decision to leave. For the rest of that day,

the joy that had filled my host’s heart was sealed off from

him by the partial veil of regret. I, his chi, felt he had made a

good decision, and I was convinced that this sacrifice would

further solidify Ndali’s love for him rather than destroy it.

Chukwu, if only I, too, could see the future; if only I could

see that which was to come, I would not have thought this

foolish thing!

By dusk the following day, when he got to the embassy,

the joy returned again and filled his heart so much that, in

the taxi back to the hotel, he wept as he looked at the visa

in his passport and the Turkish Airlines ticket he’d bought

from the place Jamike had suggested. As he returned to the

hotel, it seemed to him that something divine had happened

to him. Before he died, his father had once said he was sure

that his wife, the mother of my host, was watching over her

children. He remembered now that his father had said this

after my host escaped what would have been a ghastly

accident. It was four years ago when he’d boarded a bus to

Aba to visit his uncle but had removed himself at the last

minute. Just as the bus was about to set off, a passenger

arrived carrying bush meat in a jute sack. My host had

complained that he could not endure the smell for the

duration of the journey. He left the bus and went to another.

He would see the bus on the evening news later that day,

damaged beyond recognition. Only two people, of all the

nine occupants, had survived the crash. Something he did

not know, and which even I could not discern, had brought
the meat-carrying man and forced my host to leave the bus

and escape an untimely death. He resolved now that the

same thing may have brought Jamike to him – the hand of

some benevolent god, to help him in this time of need. As I

have mentioned before, I, his chi, thought it was a result of

the good-luck gift he obtained at the garden of [Link] journey back to the hotel was long,
clogged with

traffic in various places. He closed his eyes and imagined

the future. There were Ndali and he, together in a beautiful

house overseas. With much effort, he imagined them with a

child, a boy, carrying a big soccer ball. Inchoate and

indistinct as these imaginations were, they soothed his

spirit. For a long time he had been a lost man riffling

through the crammed quarters of life, but now he had found

fertile hope, in which anything could grow. At the hotel, he

rang Ndali, but she did not answer. While he lay waiting for

her to return the call, he dozed off.

ONYEKERUUWA, after he returned to Umuahia with the visa,

his journey became more certain, and so, too, did the

anxiety and fear that it engendered. The last week before

his final trip passed at the pace of a leopard in pursuit of its

prey. On the evening before he was to leave for Lagos,

where he was to board the flying vessel, he found himself

fighting hard to comfort Ndali. For her sorrow had grown in

those last days with a fecundity that amazed him, like a

cocoyam in the wet season. By that time they had loaded

the van with the remaining things he’d not been able to sell.

Most were things that had once belonged to his parents.

Elochukwu, who had joined them, took the red Binatone

rechargeable lantern for his possession. My host let him take

it for free. Ndali would have nothing for herself. She’d fought

against his selling his things. Since he was taking the van to

keep in his uncle’s garage in Aba, she asked, why not keep

his things with his uncle? Now, as they began packing the

contents of the last room, the living room, into his van, she

broke down.

‘It is not easy for her,

’ Elochukwu said.

‘You must realise

this. That’s why she is feeling like this.

‘I understand,

’ my host said.

‘But I am not going to

Eluigwe. I am not leaving this world.

’ He pulled her to

himself and kissed her.‘I am not saying that,

’ she sobbed.

‘It is not that. It is just,

the dreams I have been having in these past few days. They

are not good. You have sold everything, because of me and

my family.

‘So you don’t want me to go again, Mommy?’

‘No, no,

’ she said.

‘I said you should go.

‘You see?’ Elochukwu said, splaying his hands open.

‘I will come back soon, and we will be together again,

Mommy.

At this, she nodded and forced a smile.

‘That is it!’ Elochukwu said, pointing at her face.

‘She is

happy now.

My host laughed, then, holding her, locked mouths with

her.

In such moments as this, Egbunu, when a person is about

to leave a companion for a length of time, they do

everything with haste and heightened intensity. The mind

ingests these things and stores them in a special vial

because these are the moments it will always remember.

This is why the way she held his head and spoke into his

face after they finished packing was one of the things he’d

always recall of her, time and time again.

After he disengaged from her, he ran into the house in

tears. Nothing remained of it but the walls. For a moment,

he could almost not recognise any of the rooms. Even the

yard looked nothing like it had ever been before. A red-

headed lizard stood where his poultry had been only five

days before, a crumpled piece of feather stuck to its digits.

He’d realised, as they loaded the first things into the van,

that in some way, a man’s life could be measured by the

things he possessed. And he’d paused to take stock. There

was the large compound, with its age and its history, and

with the poultry in it, that had all belonged to him till then.

The small farm, with all its crops and yields, which all

belonged to him. So did all the furniture in it, the old

photographs – black-and-white daguerreotypes. All the vinyl

record albums his father had owned, which almost filled ajute sack, the old radios, bags, kites,
and many things. He’d

even inherited strange things like the rusting door of his

father’s first car (the one that had crashed near the Oji

River), from 1978. There was his father’s hunting rifle, the

one with which his father had shot the mother of his gosling;

two kerosene stoves; the refrigerator; the small bookshelf

near the dining table; the big Oxford dictionary seated on

the stool near his father’s bed; the ikoro drum that hung on

the wall in his father’s bedroom; his grandfather’s metal

briefcase containing the bloodstained Biafran army uniform,

with its multiple stitches and missing buttons; the curved

knives; his father’s box of tools; his sister’s remaining

clothes, still arranged in her cupboard; dozens of pieces of

chinaware; wooden spoons; a cooking mortar and pestle;

plastic water jugs; old coffee cans filled with spiders and

their eggs; and even the van that bore the name of the farm

which, for many years, had been his father’s lone car. He’d

owned the length and breadth of the land on which he’d

grown up. But he’d owned immaterial things, too: the way

the leaves on the guava tree created a shower when it

rained, dripping in a hundred places; the memory of the

thief who once scaled their fence and ran into their

compound for safety from the hands of an angry mob

threatening to lynch him; the fear of riots; the dreams his

father had had for him; the many Christmas celebrations;

the memory of numerous holiday travels around the

country; the dumbstruck hope that will not speak; the rage

that will not unleash itself; the accretion of time; the joy of

living; the sorrow of death – all these had all, for a long time,

been his.
He looked around, about him, on the fence, at the well, at

the guava tree, and everything, and it occurred to him that

this compound had been part of him. He would live on from

this moment like a living animal of the present whose tail is

stretched permanently into the past. It was this thought that

broke him the most and which caused him to weep asElochukwu, who would be handing over
the keys of the

house to the new owners, locked it all up.

GAGANAOGWU, my host also wept because the young child

of a man is born with no knowledge of what he once was in

his past life. He is born – reborn, rather – as blank as the

surface of the sea. But once he begins to grow, he acquires

memories. A person lives because of the accumulation of

what he has come to know. This is why, when he is alone,

when all else has peeled away from him, a man delves into

the world within himself. When he is alone, all of it folds and

comes together into this whole. The true state of a man is

what he is when he is alone. For when he is alone some of

all that has come to constitute his being – the profound

emotions, and the profound motives of his heart – rises from

deep within him up to the surface of his being. This is why

when a man is alone, his face wears a look that is distinct

from anything there is. This is a face no one else will ever

see or encounter. For when another comes to him, that face

retracts like a tentacle and presents the other with

something else, something akin to a new face. So thus,

alone, throughout the night-time bus journey to Lagos, my

host dwelt in memories, with a countenance no one else will

ever see.

Although the odour of the man who flanked him on the

right troubled him through the night, he fell asleep many

times, his head resting against one of the bags that

stretched from the booth up to the back of the seat. He had

vivid dreams. In one, he and Ndali are walking down the

aisle in a church. There are lights everywhere, even above

the images of the saints, Jisos Kraist, and Madonna on the

wall behind the altar. This was her church which she often

told him about. The priest, Father Samson, is standing with

his hands clasped together, a rosary dangling from them.

The deep-throated bass drums, played by the altar boy with

the big scar on his head, are beating near the small office of

the priest. He can see, smiling and dancing, as they precedehim, her mother, in exquisite
dressing. There is her father,

too, and Chuka, his beard even longer now, pronounced

against his bright, fair skin. Both of them are smiling, too,

both dressed in suits. And he looks down on himself with

glee now: the suit he is wearing is the same as theirs! All

three, plus the one Elochukwu has on. But who’s the third

man, fat-cheeked, a rounded head, hair the shape of an

island – bare skin all around, then hair shaped conically

around it? Jamike, it’s Jamike, the man who has come to his

aid! He, too, is wearing the same blue suit and a black tie.

He is dancing, the very last in the procession behind my

host’s back, sweating to the beat of the wedding song.

M y wife is given to me b y God

M y husband is given to me b y God

Because God gave to me

It will last till the end of time.

He woke and saw that the bus was riding on a section of

the highway flanked by forests, the headlights and those of

the cars and trucks and semis that rushed by them the only

illuminations in the darkness. He sat up and thought of the

previous night, a night that had been tough for Ndali and

whose darkness had slowly thickened, like rainwater slowly

trickling into a bottle. He could see how she’d struggled

through the day, trying hard to conceal her sadness, and

he’d had to tell her repeatedly not to cry. But when night

came, although she had taken ill and the smell of her sweat

had become malarial, she’d asked him to do it because it

was their last day. So slowly he’d slid her underpants down

her legs, his heart beating feverishly. Once she was bare

again, her place ready, her eyes closed, a pleasured smirk

on her face, drops of tears on both eyelids, he unbuttoned

his shorts. Then, slowly, gently, holding her hand and she
hanging her hands around his neck, he’d made love to her.

And she’d held him tightly all through, so tight he’dejaculated in her and the semen slid down
from inside her,

down his legs.

When he fell asleep again, I floated out of him, as I often

do while he is in slumber. But I saw that the bus was

crowded with guardian spirits and vagrant creatures, and

the din was deafening. One, a ghost, an akaliogoli, who

appeared in so thin a mist that it looked like a small stain in

the cloth of darkness, sat by a young woman who was

asleep in the front seat, her head on the shoulder of another

man beside her. The ghost stood there before her, sobbing

and saying,

‘Don’t marry Okoli, please, don’t marry him. He

is evil, the one who killed me. He is lying. Don’t, don’t,

Ngozi, or my spirit will never rest. He killed me so he could

have you. Ngozi, please don’t.

’ After saying those words, it

would wail at the top of its lungs in a shattering, funereal

voice. Then it would repeat its entreaties all over again, and

again. I watched this creature for a while, and it struck me

that it may have been doing this for a long time, probably

many moons. I felt sad for it – an onyeuwa abandoned by

both its body and its guardian spirit, unable to ascend to

Alandiichie, unable to reincarnate. This was a terrible thing!

My host slept through the rest of the journey, and when

he woke, it was because the bus had coasted into Ojota

Park, and the chaos, the large potholes in the park, had

suddenly become a nightmare in daylight. Rain was lightly

falling, and the vendors – of bread, oranges, wristwatches,

water – were taking cover under a shade, roofed with sheets

of zinc and supported by iron pillars, on whose visage the

name of the park was engraved in red paint. Some of the

women covered their heads with black polythene bags.

Braving the rain was a seller of bottled drinks who raced to

the bus as it pulled up, squinting. My host disembarked

swiftly, worrying about the state of his unwashed mouth. He

remembered Ndali had told him to wash it at the airport

before his flight. Else he would arrive in Cyprus with bad

[Link] he could take his two big travelling bags out of the

bus, two men, taxi drivers, hurtled forward to take them

from him. He let the first, a short, gaunt man with bulging

eyes, take them. The man, who lifted the bag with a

swiftness that shocked him, was already well on his way out

of the bus park before my host realised what the man was

doing. He followed the man, carrying his other bag with both

hands against his stomach. The rain dropped down slowly

on him as he followed the man across the congested traffic,

traipsing between honking cars and buses, the air filled with
noise. In the distance, a bridge rose, and beyond it, a body

of water. Everywhere there seemed to be birds, many of

them. The man stopped in front of an unfinished building

with bricks filled with holes and on whose veranda a few

men sat. His was one of two taxis, badly run down. It was

severely dented at the rear, and one of the side mirrors was

gone, with only half of the plastic handle still attached. The

man tossed his bag into the boot, then took the one my host

had in his hand and dropped it, too, on top of the spare tyre

in the dusty trunk. Then, banging the lid till it closed, he

signalled my host to get in.

‘Airport!’ he heard the driver say

to one of the men on the veranda. Then he, too, entered the car