Graceland (26 page)
Night filled with the screeching of bats streaming out of the roof. Still he sat, staring impassively at the painting, willing Jesus to reach out of the sun and heal him. Inside the chapel, darkness became denser, the only source of light a dim bulb on the porch. Becoming aware of a presence at the door, he turned to look but could only make out the vague outlines of a body. Not too tall.
“Elvis.”
“Yes?”
The figure was still fuzzy as it approached, but soon his eyes came into focus.
“Elvis,” Efua called again.
“Yes,” he replied softly, glad that it was she who had come looking for him.
Efua sat down beside him and held his hand. For a long time neither spoke.
“What happened?” Efua asked, her voice so soft it was almost inaudible. He told her. In the darkness he felt her tense up and wince.
“He’s done dat to me too,” she whispered, afraid to speak too loudly.
“I tried to tell my father about you,” he began, and paused.
“And … ?”
“He didn’t believe me.”
“Grown-ups do not believe children. Are you cold?”
He shook his head in the dark and felt her smile, and the warm saltiness of his tears surprised him.
JOLLOF RICE WITH DRIED FISH
INGREDIENTS
Rice
Palm oil
Salt
Hot peppers
Dry powdered crayfish
Onions
Maggi cubes
Dried fish
PREPARATION
Wash the rice several times in warm water, then put it on to boil for about fifteen minutes. Wash it again and then put it back on to boil. Pour in some palm oil (only a little, because though palm oil soothes the interior like an inner poultice, too much can also clog the veins and cause fevers). Add salt, hot peppers, the powdered crayfish, onions and a couple of Maggi cubes. Add the dried fish, previously softened in hot water. Fried meat is optional, but dried or smoked antelope goes particularly well in this dish. Top up with water to keep from burning. After about thirty minutes, turn the heat down and wait for all the liquid to dry up. Serve. For the best taste, cook in an earthenware pot over a wood fire.
He does this by arranging the kola nuts on the wooden kola bowl, and saying “Honored guests, kola is here.”
This is to determine two things, the person’s clan and whether they come in peace. If they come in peace, they rub the chalk across their left wrist. The reverse applies if they do not come in peace. Then with the residual piece of chalk, they draw their family and clan marking on the floor, usually a symbol of eight lines: four for the personal, four for the clan.
Sunday Oke woke with a start. It was not a noise that woke him. Nor was it the silence. It was something moving between, deep inside him. Strains of classical music reached him from a radio somewhere in the night. Sunday couldn’t place the song, but he knew the program well. It was called
Music of the Masters.
The music rode on an undercurrent of static, as though the radio playing it wasn’t tuned properly. In the distance, the early-morning cargo train screamed past. For some reason he thought of the image of a bullet-ridden corpse lying across train tracks. Was that what had woken him? No, he muttered under his breath, remembering that the image came from last night’s news.
It seemed that a lot of bodies were turning up dead on the train tracks in the early-morning hours, riddled with bullets. There must have been a lot of bodies found that way for one to finally make the news, Sunday thought at the time. He remembered laughing when the reporter said the police maintained that the cause of death, in each case, was “the impact of early-morning trains hitting the bodies.”
He got up, swinging skinny legs out of bed, flesh wrinkled and sagging. He yawned and stretched. Beside him, Comfort snored loudly. Her youngest child slept on a mat in the corner of the room. The things that child must see, he thought.
He slept naked, and his sex swung pendulous and full, heavy with regret for a life of too much sex and not enough love. Yawning, he pulled on a pair of babanriga pants and a loose jumper. Unlocking the door, he felt his way down the dark corridor to the backyards and the toilet. He peed, staring at the amber liquid collecting in the bowl as though he expected to divine what had woken him. As he poured the bucket of water in to flush it, he felt like his life was going down the drain.
He felt his way back to the door and stepped into the living room, standing there confused for a moment. Elvis, that was it—he wanted to talk to Elvis. He let himself out again and knocked on Elvis’s door, which opened straight out onto the veranda. The architecture in Lagos never made any sense; maximizing rent seemed to be the main design consideration. There was no answer. Still not back, he thought. Coming back into the living room, he stared at Comfort’s other two children sleeping on the cushions spread out on the floor. The thought of sitting on bare chair springs did not appeal to him.
Deciding to go back out onto the veranda, he pulled a sweater over the jumper, as he felt the cold a lot more acutely these days, and fetched a beer from the fridge chugging in the corner, giving off heat. He spotted Beatrice’s record player sitting on the sideboard where Elvis kept it. He picked it up, holding it tucked in the crook of one arm, while under the other he held some records. Balancing everything carefully with his beer, he walked out to the veranda.
After he set everything down, he put on Miles’s
Kind of Blue
, sat back on the bench, sipped his beer and let the music wash over him. The sky was oversalted with stars and he traced Orion’s hunt and Pegasus’ winged flight. A shooting star streaked across the sky, stirring an epiphany that disappeared out of reach as quickly as the star, leaving him with only the sense of having imagined it. He reached for his beer and took one more swig.
He played record after record, relaxing until he had no more cares than a rag flapping gently to night’s rhythm. With each record played, he seemed in search of something; the “Blue in Green,” the treads in the shoes of “Giant Steps,” musing about the true meaning of “Epistrophy,” squeezing juice from “Naima.”
That was how Elvis found him when he got home, snoring gently to the Everly Brothers. It was raining.
Elvis rescued the needle from its endless rasp over the inside track of the record. He lifted the vinyl disc off the still-spinning plate and, holding it gingerly between fingertips, blew off imaginary dust. He replaced it in the sleeve that showed the Everly Brothers wearing 1950s coifs. He watched the record player slowly spin to a stop before he shook his father’s shoulder.
“What?” Sunday said groggily.
“Go inside and sleep. You will catch a cold,” Elvis said.
Sunday yawned and stretched, coming awake.
“What time is it?”
“Three a.m.,” Elvis replied, glancing at his watch.
“Where have you been?”
“Out.” Elvis headed for his room, throwing a “Goodnight” over his shoulder.
“Wait.”
Elvis paused, his hand on the doorknob. He didn’t turn around.
“I have been waiting for you.”
Elvis turned around. “For me? For what?”
“Sit down. I need to talk to you.”
“If it is about Godfrey, forget it. There is no need.”
“It’s not about Godfrey. Sit down.”
Elvis walked over and sat on the bench next to his father. They did not look at each other, both choosing a point in the darkness to gaze out at instead.
“Benji just gave me some disturbing news yesterday.”
Elvis didn’t respond.
“He told me you have been hanging around with dat man dey call de King of de Beggars,” Sunday continued.
“Yes, he is a friend of mine.”
“What type of friend? What would make a young, well-brought-up man like you associate with beggars?”
Elvis was silent.
“De company one keeps tells a lot.”
“What does your friendship with Benji tell?”
“Elvis! I am still your father, respect me!”
Elvis looked at his father scornfully but said nothing.
“Look, Benji told me dat de King, or whatever he is, is a dangerous man.”
“How would Benji know?”
“Benji knows things. Just listen. Dey say dat de King was discharged from the army for crazy behavior.”
“When?”
“After de civil war.”
“That was a long time ago. He seems fine to me.”
“But what kind of man begs for a living?”
Elvis looked pointedly at his father.
“I am unemployed, not a beggar!” Sunday nearly shouted.
“He’s just trying to do what he thinks is right.”
“We all are. I’ve always tried to do just dat. I ran in de first free elections in nearly twenty years, as you know. Den dose army boys came back and toppled de new civilian regime. Of course, de good thing about dat was dat Okonkwo never got to enjoy his victory.”
Elvis remembered the military coup that had removed the civilian government two months into power. As always, there was the national radio broadcast, usually by a northern officer: “My pellow kwontrymen, I wish to ashwar you dat dis hasu been a bloodless coup. Dere will be no bloodshed, but we are imposing a dusk-to-dawn kerfew …” Even as the announcement was being made, army platoons would be taking out the corpses from the bloodless coup and burying them in unmarked graves. The thing that baffled Elvis the most was that everyone came out to have parades to welcome the new reigme in, as though this time for sure things would get better. But Sunday was still talking, so he tried to focus.
“It’s not because nobody tries but because de reasons are complicated. And your King, how is he fighting? By begging?”
“No. He is a poet and a regular speaker at Freedom Square. He is also an actor and uses theater to fight the government.”
“Maybe you should have run for office, not me,” Sunday said with a smile. “But de point is, how will staging plays defeat a military government? Bigger men, like Wole Soyinka, have tried, but nothing changes. If he cannot do it, how can a beggar?”
“I don’t know. I think everyone is just trying to find their way.”
“Are dey finding de way, dese people you speak of?”
“I don’t know, but I do know some people are trying very hard and others are not.”
“So?”
“So they will eventually find a way.”
“Who are ‘dey’ dat you speak of? Do you even know?”
Elvis shrugged and looked away. Sunday chuckled.
“What?” Elvis asked.
“You sound grown. Like a man; yet you are not a man, and so dis is only de voice of others speaking through you.”
“What?”
“Elvis, sometimes even good people use us.”
“Who is using us?”
“I am saying dat dis King is using you.”
“To do what?”
“Who knows? But Benji says all dis political agitation is a front, dat it is to help him find and kill de officer dat killed his family during de war. Dis is not for change, but revenge.”
Elvis lit a cigarette and took a deep drag. Part of him knew his father was speaking from fear. Everybody around him was afraid of change, of rocking the boat, in case they disappeared. Yet part of him had begun to doubt the motives of everyone around him, so he could not totally dismiss his father’s concerns.
“The King does good work. I support him.”
“Den you are a bigger fool dan I thought. Don’t you know dat when de King is next arrested you can be implicated by association? Elvis, try and understand. I am doing dis as your father, not as a stranger. I am trying to help you.”
“The way you helped Godfrey?”
Sunday’s wince was audible and Elvis immediately felt a pang of guilt. Maybe his father
was
trying to help him. But it seemed too convenient. He had alternated between ignoring and bullying him all these years; yet now, hours after being confronted with the murder of his nephew, he was suddenly concerned for Elvis.
“You have a bad mouth,” Sunday said. “You get dat from your mother.”
Elvis said nothing, lighting another cigarette instead.
“Dis is why I don’t talk to you. Every time I try, you shut me out with your rude comments,” Sunday went on.
“I think you should go and sleep off your guilt instead of putting it on me. It’s not working,” Elvis said, tossing his half-smoked cigarette into the street and getting up.
“Elvis … I …”
“Goodnight,” Elvis said. On impulse, he bent down and kissed the top of his father’s head before walking briskly to the door of his room.
As he went inside, he looked back. Sunday had not moved from his seat, except to run his finger meditatively over his bald spot where Elvis had kissed him.
ROAST VENISON
(Igbo: Ele Ahurahu)
INGREDIENTS
Venison
Vegetable oil
Apples
Allspice
Fresh bonnet peppers
Diced onions
Salt
PREPARATION
Dig a hole about two feet square and build spit support from two forked tree branches. Fill the hole with coals, wood and kindling. Light the fire and hang the venison over the flames to burn off the fur. Scrape hide regularly with a knife to clear the fur.
Spread large banana leaves out on the floor and lay the venison on them. Wash the soot off with water, then cut the shin of the animal in several places and stuff with a mix of the ingredients above.
By now the fire should have died down to a steady heat with low flames. Hoist the venison over the fire using a length of metal guided through the animal and suspended from the spit supports. Turn and roast slowly for about seven hours. Best served communally on trays with salad, palm wine, music and dancing.