Graceland (40 page)

There was a brief flash like a bolt of lightning and then, scarcely disturbing the heavy air, its fragrance alluding to death, a choking smell filled the nostrils as only the smell of burning flesh can. Elvis watched the boy’s body float away in the deluge, while another took his place and took the full bucket of water to whatever destination would pay for it.

Elvis shut his eyes and went back to sleep. He was woken by the smell of cigarette smoke and the slap of checker tiles on a wooden board. He sat up and stared uncomprehendingly at the sight of Redemption and Okon playing a game of checkers. He thought he might still be asleep and dreaming.

“Redemption?”

Redemption looked up, saw Elvis and sprang to his feet, scattering the checkers everywhere, the board falling to the floor with a thump.

“Elvis!” he said, giving Elvis a hug. Standing back, he pulled Elvis to his feet. “Make I see you.” Redemption continued, examining Elvis critically. “Well, you done lose weight but not too much.”

Elvis was still confused and a little lightheaded, so he sat down, leaning back against a bridge support.

“Redemption. How? When?”

“I find him,” Okon said from the floor, where he was picking up the checkers.

Just then the young girl rushed up to Elvis from where she was buying some food, with a cup of strong eucalyptus-flavored tea. He took it with a smile and sipped it slowly.

“You sleep well?”

He nodded, embarrassed by her attentions and the smile on Redemption’s face.

“How long did I sleep this time?” he asked the girl.

“Two days.”

“Two days?”

“Yes.”

The rain had stopped, though the sky was a troubled grey. Elvis realized that his fever had abated. As the young girl fussed around Elvis, Redemption was busy sending another child off to buy them beer and some more cigarettes from Madam Caro’s.

“What is your name?” Elvis asked the young girl.

“Blessing,” she replied.

He smiled. He finished the tea and watched her take the cup back. She reminded him so much of Efua, and he wondered why all the women in his life had to take care of him—even those he should have been taking care of.

Blessing came back quickly and tried to make him lie down again.

“Aren’t you losing money by staying to take care of me?” Elvis asked her.

“Sleep, you never strong,” Blessing said.

Yes, he thought, dozing off, sleep.

He woke up to someone slapping him gently.

“Redemption,” he said as his eyes focused.

“Yes, how you go sleep again. Two days sleep never do?”

Elvis yawned and sat up again, back against the same bridge support.

“Beer?”

Elvis nodded and took the offered drink from Redemption. He took a cautious sip and let out his breath in a satisfied sigh.

“I see you done better. You want food?” Redemption asked.

“No.”

“So, Okon told me of your deal here. I see dat I teach you well.”

“Whatever.”

“Elvis, your words dey cut me.”

“Sorry.”

“So, what’s making you sick?”

Elvis shrugged.

“Well, even though I am not a doctor, make I guess. Dis life you are living?”

“Ah, Redemption, no mock our life,” Okon protested.

“I hear you. But not de life I dey talk of. Na Elvis here. He is not able for dis type of living. Abi?”

Elvis nodded.

“So what do you want to do?”

Again Elvis shrugged.

“De sickness affect your tongue?” Redemption asked angrily.

“No, but I don’t have answers for you.”

“I see you never change. Always big grammar for lie.”

“I am still trying to understand what happened to you. How you managed to escape the Colonel. Why you disappeared for so long. What you are doing back here. So forgive me if I am a little tongue-tied.”

“Make I tell you what happened. After you and de King leave, de Colonel begin chase me bad, bad. People begin talk say I cheek him and him no fit to do anything about it. De Colonel vex well, well. But I manage join some traders to Cotonu in Benin Republic.”

“You left the country?”

“Yes.”

“No take am brag. Benin Republic is next door. It is not like say you go overseas,” Okon said.

“Shut up!” Redemption said.

“So when did you come back?” Elvis asked.

“When I hear three days ago say dat de King killed de Colonel. I wish dat I hear sooner. I would have been back since.”

The three of them were silent, sipping from their beers.

“Why did you agree to come back here with Okon?”

“Ah, Elvis. You get suspicious mind O!”

“Experience has taught me that you always want something.”

“Elvis, your words dey wound me because I come here with gift for you.”

“Gift?”

“Here, take my passport.”

Elvis took the proffered passport.

“What is this?”

“My gift to you. Use it to go to America, go join your auntie.”

“But I cannot—it’s your passport, Redemption.”

“Dose white people no go know de difference in de photo.”

“Why not use it yourself? Why would you give it to me?”

“Elvis, take de passport. You know I myself no go ever go America,” Redemption said.

“Why?”

“Because dis na my home. I be area boy, alaye. I no go fit for States.”

“I’m not sure I want to go, either.”

“Take it. If I was going to use it, I for done use it by now.”

“I don’t understand,” Elvis said.

“Sometime you just hold something like dat for dream. For believe. No worry, I go find anoder thing!”

“I don’t want to go!”

“It is America, Elvis! Take it. You know how many people are planning for dis and can’t get it?” Okon said.

“When did we start thinking of America as a life plan?” Elvis asked.

“When things spoil here. Don’t blame me. I no spoil am,” Okon said.

“Even during your father’s time we dey plan for abroad. Dat time it was London, now it is America,” Redemption said.

“But remember all the things the King said about America?”

“You never believe dat. It is your fear talking. America is better dan here. For you. Your type no fit survive here long,” Redemption said.

“But this country is just as good as America.”

Redemption shook his head. “Not for you. Go.”

“I promised Blessing that I would never leave her.”

“Go,” Blessing said. “Go, den you send for me.”

Elvis stared from Redemption to Okon and then to Blessing. He knew they were right, but the thought of leaving for America frightened him. Even though it had become painfully clear to him that there was no way he could survive in Lagos, there was no guarantee he would survive in America.

“Fine. I’ll go. But I am not well.”

“You well enough to travel. It is plane, you no go take leg,” Okon said.

“Okay, Elvis done leave de country,” Redemption announced with a laugh.

Elvis stood at the floor-to-ceiling glass windows of Murtala Mohammed International Airport, staring down at the runway. He wasn’t sure how to feel. On the one hand, he had the opportunity to get away from his life. On the other, he felt like he was abandoning everything that meant anything to him. Oye, Efua, his father, the King, Redemption, Okon, Blessing, even Comfort. It wasn’t like he couldn’t make it in Lagos. Plenty of people did it every day, and they lived full and happy lives. But Redemption had been right: not him. He knew that what he thought he was leaving behind wasn’t that much, and after all, his aunt Felicia was in America. No, what he was leaving had nothing to do with quantity; nor, in spite of Redemption’s protestations, did it have to do with quality. This was something else, something essential.

He sucked on his cigarette, blowing meditative smoke rings. Wiping his brow, he silently cursed the broken-down air-conditioning system. Soldiers, armed for battle, crawled everywhere like an ant infestation, and Elvis watched them nervously, still haunted by the specter of the Colonel. Putting as much distance as he could between him and them, Elvis found a row of seats in a corner. They were flush against the wall and offered a view of the entire departure lounge. The ashtray next to him was stained with tobacco-colored spit; and gum, half melted from the heat, dripped down the side like wax. He stubbed out his cigarette delicately, trying not to make contact with the ashtray.

Efua. He had tried not to think about her. Tried to pretend that the things Redemption had said to him that day when he thought he had spotted her with the Maharaji’s devotees weren’t true. But Redemption had been right. Elvis was selfish, or self-centered, or self-obsessed. Efua had been as much his victim as she was Uncle Joseph’s, even if he hadn’t raped her. Elvis had never known her, at least no more than he wanted to. Perhaps that was what Redemption had meant.

Not wanting to think about it anymore, he reached into his bag and pulled out a book, one of the only luxuries he’d allowed himself before leaving. All the naira he had left after buying three hundred dollars on the black market, and his ticket, he had given to Blessing. Thirty pieces of silver, Redemption had called it. He touched the shiny paperback cover: James Baldwin’s
Going to Meet the Man.
Opening it at the turned-down page that marked his place, he began to read. Jesse had just come on the lynching scene with his father. As he read, Elvis began to see a lot of parallels between himself and the description of a dying black man slowly being engulfed by flame. The man’s hands using the chains that bound him as leverage to pull himself up and out of the torture. He flinched at the part where the unnamed white man in the story cut off the lynched black man’s genitalia. He closed the book and imagined what kind of scar that would leave. It would be a thing alive that reached up to the sky in supplication, descending to root itself in the lowest chakra, our basest nature. Until the dead man became the sky, the tree, the earth and the full immeasurable sorrow of it all. He knew that scar, that pain, that shame, that degradation that no metaphor could contain, inscribing it on his body. And yet beyond that, he was that scar, carved by hate and smallness and fear onto the world’s face. He and everyone like him, until the earth was aflame with scarred black men dying in trees of fire.

A soldier came up to him. “What are you doing here?”

“Waiting for my plane,” Elvis said.

“Ticket?”

Elvis handed it over, even though this soldier had no legal right to do this, to demand anything of a man sitting by himself in a corner reading.

“Passport?”

Elvis obliged. The soldier inspected both documents for a long time. He passed them back to Elvis. Everything was in order, but he was clearly not satisfied.

“Staying here is suspicious,” the soldier said. “Move.”

“To where?”

“I don’t bloody care! Just move,” he insisted, poking Elvis in the chest with the ugly snout of his rifle’s barrel.

Elvis shoved the passport and ticket into his bag and got up. Under the soldier’s supervising gaze, he sauntered over to the café in the middle of the departure lounge. He bought a Coke and found an empty table. The match he dragged across the raspy box edge to light another cigarette illuminated his face as he watched the soldier move on to other victims. Reaching instinctively for the Fulani pouch around his neck, Elvis felt a momentary panic when he realized it wasn’t there. Remembering that Redemption had made him take it off, he relaxed. It was bound to attract unwelcome attention in both Nigerian and American customs. It was good advice, and he had ditched it, after transferring his mother’s Bible and journal to his bag. Reaching into the bag, he pulled out the journal and flipped through it. It had never revealed his mother to him. Never helped him understand her, or his life, or why anything had happened the way it had. What was the point? Nothing is ever resolved, he thought. It just changes.

In the manner of all garbled airport announcements, he heard his flight called and, finishing his Coke, he got up and walked toward the boarding gate. He stood in the line of passengers waiting for his name to be called. He thought about his father and felt guilt wash over him. Nearly every night, in his dreams, he saw Sunday’s ghost wandering aimlessly, searching for his house and Madam Caro’s buka, long gone under the tyrannical wheels of the bulldozers. He mused at how the King, with all his imperfections, had become the icon for freedom and spiritual truth.

“Redemption,” the airline clerk called.

Elvis, still unfamiliar with his new name, did not respond.

“Redemption!” the clerk called louder.

Elvis stepped forward and spoke.

“Yes, this is Redemption.”

These are the words of lovers, of dancers, of dynamite singers. These are songs if you have the music.

—AMIRI BARAKA,
BLUES PEOPLE

Delphine, Stella and Daphne
whenever, wherever, whatever

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Percival Everett, who read every draft and without whom this novel would still be a vague idea. Ron Gottesman, Carol Muske-Dukes, T. C. Boyle, Steve Isoardi, Jeanette Lindsey, Viet Nguyen and PB Rippey for reading, feedback, support, friendship and satsang. Sandy Dijkstra for believing and for brokering the best deals, and everyone at The Agency. My family always—Daphne, Mark, Charles, Greg, Stella, Nnenna, Simone, Philomena, Bruno and Delphine. Friends every writer needs—Titi Osu, Helena Igwebuike, Jennifer Dobbs, Wendy Belcher, Elias Wondimu, Amy Schroeder, Ava Chin, Sholeh Wolpe, Kim Burwick, Sylvester Ogbechie, Musa Farhi, Tanya Heflin and Bridget Hoida. Ayesha Pande—my friend and a wonderful editor. Stacey Barney, Cary Goldstein, Jeff Seroy and everyone at Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

R. C. Agoha’s book
Medicinal Plants of Nigeria
was an invaluable resource, as were:

Beware of Harlots and Many Friends,
J. Nnadozie (Onitsha: J.C. Brothers Bookshop, rev. ed., 1965).

Mabel the Sweet Honey That Poured Away,
Speedy Eric (Onitsha: A. Onwudiwe & Sons, 1960).