Читать книгу Welcome to Lagos - Chibundu Onuzo - Страница 12

5

WHENEVER CHIKE DESCRIBED WHAT happened next, he began by saying it was mythical. Not like the silvery European myths of winged men and wood sprites but like the denser African myths of living trees that devoured human sacrifice.

He saw a girl appearing as if from the tree itself, her legs sprouting from the bole, her arms from the branches, her hair a compost of twigs and leaves. He heard Yẹmi release the safety on his rifle.

“Hold fire!”

She was running, upon them and past them, straight into Fineboy, plowing him to the ground. She struck him, with her elbows, with her hands, straddling him like a wrestler, her trousers fitted to slim legs, too thin surely to keep a man pinned under her weight. Fineboy cried out in a tangled stream that was rising in pitch. It would not do for them to be discovered.

“Cover me,” he said to Yẹmi.

Chike dropped his rifle by the private. Then he approached and took the girl by the elbow, dragging her halfway to her feet. Fineboy lunged, catching her on the right side of her face, and in a grotesque reversal, she fell to the ground. Chike held him back but it was too late. The strange girl had fainted.

“SHE DON WAKE O,” Yẹmi said. “Oya make we dey go.”

They had lost time waiting for the girl to come around. Even now she was conscious, she seemed too weak to stand. Chike stood over her, looking down on her face. She was very dark, black as crude. Her lips were dry, whitened strips of skin standing out on them.

“Are you all right? Bring the bottle,” he said to Yẹmi.

“Don’t give my water to that bitch.”

She flinched at the rebel’s voice.

“That’s enough from you.”

The girl took the bottle from Yẹmi and poured the water down her throat without pause for breath, slurping until the empty bottle contracted from the pressure. Chike was standing over her, he realized, in a way that she might find threatening, a gun slung over his shoulder, his hand resting on the stock. He stepped back.

“What’s your name?”

“Isoken.”

“Where’s your home?”

“I’m lost.”

“But your village. Where are you from?”

“I came from Lagos with my parents. To my mother’s village. It’s somewhere in this bush.”

“Where are they now?”

“I don’t know. There was fighting near our village. We ran but my mum was too slow. She’s ill. That’s why she came back home. For the local medicine.”

“Is that how you got separated? When you were running?”

“I left them. My dad said I should go. That he would stay with my mum. My dad is a hairdresser. He does his work in Lagos but none of the women in the village would let him do their hair. They said they can’t put their head between a man’s laps. He taught me how to do hair. Any style you want.”

“How long ago was—”

“While you’re asking twenty-one questions,” the rebel said, “find out why she attacked me.”

“You.” She gathered saliva in her mouth and spat in a clean arc. “If I hadn’t been wearing jeans.”

“If you hadn’t been wearing jeans what?”

“You would have raped me.”

The revelation slipped easily from her mouth.

“Are you crazy? Do I look like somebody that needs to rape girls? Me. Fineboy.”

“Hold him back,” Chike said to Yẹmi.

“I was in a tree yesterday evening,” the girl said, turning to him. “I had been walking the whole day, trying to get back to the village, but I was tired. I dozed off. When I fell, I hurt my back and I couldn’t move. There was a group and he was in the group. They attacked me. They beat me, see my face, but they couldn’t get what they wanted because of my trousers. He said I offered myself to them. It’s a lie. I’m still a virgin.”

The rebel was stepping forward again despite Yẹmi’s gun aimed at his chest.

“Who dash you virgin? See this prostitute.”

“Your mother is a prostitute.”

The boy charged past Yẹmi. Chike fired in the air, a single clear shot that resounded in the bush.

“You. Stand back and put your hands behind your head. That’s how you’re walking from now on. Hands behind your head, I said. Yẹmi, if he lowers them, shoot him. Isoken,” he said, turning to her last, “we must go. We just waited to see that you’re all right.”

“You have to arrest him. Are you not a soldier?”

“Soldiers don’t arrest people. That’s for the police. We must be leaving. Anyone could have heard that shot.”

“They’ll find me, then. Let me come with you. Where are you going?”

“Yenagoa.”

“I have an uncle in Yenagoa.”

“She go slow us down,” Yẹmi said.

Chike gave Isoken his hand and helped her to her feet. “You’ll walk between me and Private Ọkẹ.”