Читать книгу Welcome to Lagos - Chibundu Onuzo - Страница 13

6

“THANK YOU,” CHIKE SAID to Fineboy when they got to the road. It was narrow, barely wide enough for two cars, but it would take them to Yenagoa.

He flagged down the first bus he saw. It listed to one side from the weight of yams strapped to its roof. The other passengers were thin and hard-looking, their clothes threadbare and ill-fitting. There was a smell of toil in the bus, of sweat and labor in fields whose yields had decreased since the oil companies arrived. A woman with withered lips stared at Yẹmi’s camouflage trousers. She looked away when she caught Chike’s eye.

The four of them squeezed into a backseat designed for two, Fineboy suddenly deciding that he wanted to see his mother in Yenagoa.

“Don’t let him sit next to me,” Isoken said when the militant started to climb in after her. Chike placed himself between the two of them. Isoken’s body was warm, almost febrile in its heat. Chike could feel her knee against his thigh. Once he shifted in his seat and his hand brushed her arm. She shrank, her elbows contracting onto her stomach, and there they remained until they reached Bayelsa’s capital. Yenagoa was more town than city, a settlement of dwarf houses, roofs level with the raised road. Billboards were particularly effective in this stunted landscape, malaria drugs, Alomo Bitters, Coca-Cola, Durex, Indomie, Winners School, and churches, plenty of them. Evangelists, pastors, apostles, prophets, and bishops beamed down, inviting Chike to Amazing Grace Ministry, Fire Fall Down Tabernacle, Jehovah Always on Time Assembly. The air above Yenagoa must be thick with prayer, petitions flying and colliding on their way to heaven.

At the bus park Isoken stood blinking in the sun. She was just about a woman. It would not have been long since she was asking “Mother, may I?” in a backyard. There was still something of the child about her cheeks and the way she balled her fists into her eyes when Chike asked, “Can you get to your uncle’s house from here?”

“I only know the address. Plot Sixteen, Dongaro Road. We went just once. We stopped there on the way to the village.”

“Please tell her how to get there,” Chike said to Fineboy.

“Or what? You’ll shoot me?”

They had abandoned their guns in the bush, taking out the cartridges.

“I can have you arrested for your time spent in the creeks.”

“I’ll deny it.”

“The word of a Nigerian officer against yours.”

He expected the boy to see through him. Two soldiers deserting were in no position to threaten arrest. Instead, he kicked his foot in the soil.

“The place is not far,” Fineboy said in words shorn of every trace of an accent.

THE BUILDINGS ON DONGARO Road had not seen fresh paint in years. The road was worn in many places, the thin asphalt stripped to the red earth beneath.

“This is the place. His flat is on the ground floor,” Isoken said, in front of a house streaked brown with rain tracks.

“Should we come with you?” Chike asked.

“Please.”

THERE WERE CHICKENS IN the yard, a mother hen with a troop of grey chicks marching in line behind her. A car stood rotting in the sun, propped on four cement blocks, its tires, mirrors, and fenders long gone to a younger model. The uncle was sitting outside on a bench, fat with adolescent breasts that showed through his worn singlet, a raffia fan idle in his hand.

“Isoken, is that you?”

“Yes, Uncle.”

“What are you doing with these soldiers? Have you brought trouble to my house?”

“No, Uncle.”

Briefly Isoken told what had happened to her hometown, saying nothing of the attempted rape. Hers could not be the village Colonel Benatari had torched. That had been in the evening.

“Wonders shall never cease,” the uncle kept saying, as if his niece had come from the bush to thrill him with anecdotes.

“Come and sit next to me.”

She sat at the end of the bench, but the uncle moved towards her and put an arm around her, his hand resting on her stomach where her shirt stopped and her jeans began.

“Officers, how can I thank you for bringing back my daughter to me?”

Isoken remained rigid in his embrace.

“No thanks are necessary,” Chike said. “We’re just doing our job.”

“At least tell me your names so that I can remember you in my prayers.”

“Chike.”

“Yẹmi.”

“And you?” Isoken’s uncle said, looking at the militant. Why had Fineboy come into the compound? He had seen this kind of fatuous curiosity in the lower ranks. Before the boy could give his absurd name, a man appeared in the door of the flat, addressing the uncle in a language Chike did not understand, the words locking into each other without space, like pieces in a jigsaw. Their exchange was short. It seemed heated until the uncle laughed and the man returned into the flat. “Officers, don’t mind my business partner. Will you take something to drink?”

“No, we must be on our way,” Chike said.

“Goodbye, Brother Chike,” Isoken said to him. “Thank you.”

Chike had never had a sibling and the filial title pleased him. Outside the gate, he noticed the smirk on the rebel’s face.

“What are you smiling at?”

“From frying pan to fire.”

“What do you mean?”

“Something her uncle said.”

“What?”

“I’m not sure. He was speaking Kalabari.”

“Tell me what you heard.”

“He said she was ripe.”

“For what?”

“I think sex.”

THE UNCLE’S HAND STILL rested on Isoken’s stomach when they returned to the compound. Chike swung his arms stiffly as he walked towards them, a reminder of his military status. The chickens scattered at their second entrance, darting behind the old car in a streak of clucking feathers.

“Please, sir, will you allow your niece to escort us to the end of the road?”

They could take the girl by force but he preferred to try a ruse first. He did not know how many “business partners” this uncle might have.

“Officer, my niece is tired.”

“Please, Uncle, my parents would want me to see off these people that helped me.”

“It would only be to the end of the road,” Chike added.

“OK. But don’t be too long. You need to rest.”

Isoken glanced at Fineboy, who was still standing outside the compound.

“Pay him no attention. Just walk with me,” Chike said.

They moved in silence, her head drooping on the slim stalk of her neck. Yẹmi and the militant walked a few paces behind. At the top of the road they stopped.

“How well do you know your uncle?”

“I— When we were going to my mother’s village we stayed here overnight from Lagos. That was my first time of meeting him.”

“Fineboy. He heard something your uncle said to his business partner. Something like what happened to you in the bush. Is there any way you can reach your parents?”

“They have one GSM they are using but I don’t know the number. It’s new. Uncle Festus has it.”

“Is there anyone else who would have the number?” Chike asked.

“They live in Lagos.”

“Don’t cry. We’ll go there and drop you.”

“Say wetin? Who tell you I wan’ go Lagos?” Yẹmi said.

“We can go our separate ways, then.”

“Na who tell you I no wan’ go?”

“You,” Chike said to Fineboy, “the drama is over. You can be on your way once you give us directions to a motor park that will get us to Lagos.”