Tropic of Night (35 page)

10/24 Lagos

Can’t believe this happened, even as I write it down words seem unreal, as if writing down in a dream journal something that didn’t really happen. Seem compelled to, tho, habit of keeping a record of everything that happens, discipline of fieldwork. This actually happened, I was there.

Evening of the fifth, the day I got back from the field, W. came in late, pounded on my door, yelling, should have told him to get lost, but polite me, ashamed, not wanting to wake the whole house. W. a mess, stank of beer, smoke & something stinky sweet, like cheap deodorizer. Talking grandiose, not like him at all: he was imbibing the true spirit of Guineé, African night, the music, alive as never before,
etc.
I told him he was full of it, said it was parroted horseshit, Soronmu’s negritude line, besides it was late, I was tired, & he stank. He said that I was the one parroting the hegemonic line, bloodless, overintellectualized yawp of the dying white civilization, & that I knew he was right, which was why I had attached myself to him, sucking his black energy to keep myself inflated the way American culture sucked energy out of blacks & turned it into money. So he jumped on me and I got raped.

Thinking now, why didn’t I break his fucking neck? Can’t recall, only how exhausted I was, so startled that I just lay there and let him. ?? Exhausted by love, ground down, sorrow, never understood this before, you hear about it, obviously common in male-dominant cultures, like here, recall thinking o fuck it all, he wants to rape me, fine, I’ve tried everything else. And I had thought he was coming around. After which he left, without 1 word, like I was a whore. Funny, I was totally silent during, but after wailed like a crazy woman, didn’t care who heard me.

Everyone had, clearly, because the next morning the group treated me extra nice, like I was terminally ill with loathsome disease. W. gone too. Unbearable, so scrammed out, got Tunji to take me to the U.

Worked on Gelede until I saw Mr. O. and his staff were hanging around waiting to close the place down, but were embarrassed to interrupt the great scholar at her work, or maybe they’d heard about the night before like everyone else in this fucking city of dreadful night. Snuck back to my room, locked myself in and worked some more, loading reading notes into laptop, crying in spurts, drinking rum on top of Xanax, and passed out.

Crashing sounds, singing, loud music woke me up. Total darkness, generator off. Got dressed, followed the sound of music to the hotel bar.

There were ten or so people there, all drunk, two of them women, tight bright dresses & lacquered hairstyles: ashawos, low-end Lagos whores. The boys were gboyegas, street boys, kind that hung around Lagos Island and Victoria, ripping off tourists and people just in from the bush. Tricked out like American gangstas, baggies, faked designer labels, big sneakers, the backward ball caps. The girls were late teens, the men ranged from that to midthirties. When I came in they were milling around uneasily; Lary’s was not their sort of place, bar was approximation of a British pub?dark paneling, cozy nooks, a dartboard, etc., not a plank on a couple of crates under a kerosene lamp. One had a boom box, some hip-hop shit at top volume. The stranger living in W.’s body approached me and grabbed me and exhibited me to his pals like a trophy. My white bitch. She loves black cock, don’t you? A lot more, too, about me and Dave Berne, how I was screwing the white man, and how we knew how to take care of a bitch like that. The men were nervous, excited, a fear there, too, but dulled by booze. They came closer, I was touched, mauled. They were speaking, joking, in dialect too fast for me to follow. Tap current tap current, slang for feeling up a girl, yes, he was staging the lynch mob’s fantasy, the niggers and the white woman.

I hit him, with my fist, in the nose. Someone grabbed me from behind, pawing at my shorts. I grabbed his wrist. Uki-waza, the floating techniques. Mae-otoshi, the front drop. You’re supposed to let go of the guy’s wrist when he floats away from you, but I didn’t, and he bellowed when it snapped.

Hard to recall this next part. I was in a circle of them, eyes and teeth, W. on the floor, blood gushing from his nose, stain on his white shirt. Shouting at me, all of them, waving fists & someone hit me on the head with a bottle, heard the crash, felt the beer run down my back, then Boom, deafening noise, ringing in ears. Screams. And the stink of gunpowder. A woman’s outraged voice. Mrs. B. The sound of more screams, the flop of sandals, the stomp of shoes, a door slamming. Des was there, holding me, asking if I was all right, me bleeding all over him. No, as a matter of fact.

The boom was Mrs. Bassey’s shotgun. She was leaning over me, too, propped on the smoking weapon. Everyone was there, gaping, amazed.

Mrs. Bassey sewed up my head gash. A nurse, too, in her early years, it turned out. You are well rid of that one, my girl, she kept saying, sewing away. Yes, but I wanted him back. Not that creature. I wanted my husband .

I woke up late when the dope wore off and descended to the library. Everyone was very polite, and kind. Dave Berne asked me if I wanted to go to Esale-Eko, which is a district of Lagos where the Gelede tradition is strong, he had a contact there, Akinkuoto, a babalase, meaning priest
stage manager of dances.p>

I escaped into Africa-time then, for twelve days, during which I didn’t write in my journal, or anywhere else, just wandered with a camcorder, talking with anyone who would talk with me.

One interview with Olaiya, the iyalase, the shrine mother. She had heard about me and told Akinkuoto to bring me by.

She was sitting on cushions in a dim low-ceilinged room, and at first all I could see of her was her clothing, a large headcloth folded in a wide roll across the top of her head and a billow of white robe, with a fold thrown over one shoulder, toga-style. Closer, I could feel the ashe pour from her face like a fountain. “Aristocratic” doesn’t begin to describe her face. Someone like that looks into your eyes, you feel the shock in your chest and belly, like a blow. I thought of Puniekka in Chenka and was afraid, & I bowed spontaneously, like you do crossing the altar in church. Akinkuoto made the introductions, which were elaborate. I could feel his tension, and he was probably easier with her than any man in the community. He treated her like a carload of nitroglycerine, but she didn’t look at him, only at me. We did the ritual greetings, also lengthy, as always in Yorubaland. When in the course of these she asked after my children I said that Olarun had not blessed me yet. At this she increased the intensity of her stare, & frowned. Then she made a shooing gesture, and Akinkuoto withdrew, rather more quickly than he was accustomed to move.

Then we sat in silence some more. The camcorder lay dormant in my hand, as if a mere ceremonial object, like her silver-mounted horsehair whisk. African time. An iyalase is the shadow on earth of Iya Nla, the Great Mother. This figure is extinct in our culture, for the few powerful women we have are imitation men; it is the only form of power we recognize. Among the Yoruba, though, a ferociously male-dominated society, the specifically female kind of power remains intact, and enormously potent. The whole Gelede ritual is a thing devised by men to keep it placated. Every male in Yorubaland knew that Olaiya, or her sisters, could shrivel a man’s penis (so that he would, as their saying has it, have to go to bed with his pants on) or insure that no wife ever bore him a son. The deity she represents is also the patroness of all art and culture and agriculture. She loves to be amused, entranced. At all costs she must be kept from irascibility. We used to have her in Europe, too, but we got rid of her, substituting the Virgin, whose power is not at all the same.

She broke the long silence by asking me why I had come to her place. I started with the usual anthro excuse, we wanted to know the ways of her people, we had heard of her wisdom and the beauty of her celebrations, and so on, but she cut me off with a gesture. No, the real reason, she said. The heart reason. She added, I don’t usually see eebo women. I find them disturbing. They are either men in costumes they can’t take off, or crushed things like beetles. You are different, and interesting. Yemaya of the sea was in you once, but you cast her off by fear. Ashe is waiting to flow through you in great quantity, but you block it. The orishas wish to give you gifts, but you refuse them. Why is that?

I said I didn’t know. She said, You do. There is an alujonnu in you. You should have it removed. You know this. I agreed that I did. She shrugged, and said, We will have palm wine and kola now. She clapped her hands twice and called something over her shoulder. Two young women dressed in white hurried in and placed a low table before her loaded with prepared nuts and bowls of wine. We ate and drank. Then she said, Your husband beats you. I said no and touched my bandaged head. An accident only. She said, Yes, he beats you. Why? Are you unpleasing to him at night? Is his supper not ready when he wants it? Or is it because you have given him no sons? All of the above, I thought, but said, We have different customs. She gave me that look, I said, I’m afraid that he has an evil spirit in him, too. No idea why I said that, but she said, Of course, because you didn’t purify yourselves before your marriage. You should be purified together, or else, someday, you will kill him or he will kill you. But you are the stronger, I think. I saw her hand go out and select a colored stone from a jar. She stared at it for a minute and then enveloped it in a fold of her robe. She said, This has been interesting. I will remember it. I felt a little shiver. I had heard about memory stones but never seen it done. It’s what they use in traditional societies instead of notebooks and tape. She would be able to play back our interview in her memory about as accurately as I might have, had I got it all on the Sony, which was not running.

More silence then, and I was able to turn the subject to anthro, gratefully. She taught me some hymns. Here is one:

Homage my mother, the Osoronga

Mother with the beautiful eyes

Who has a thick bunch of hair in her private parts

The mother who owns a brass tray

And a brass fan

The famous bird of the night that flies gracefully.

Not exactly “Lead, Kindly Light,” but we have different customs. One of the things she said was, You are ugly, true, but your character is good at the root. Iwa l’ewa. Meaning character is beauty; Dad hinted at this all the time, but never actually came out and said it. I left her in a daze, to find that night had fallen.

Three days later there was a Gelede odun, a festival, and I saw my first dances. Dance is not quite the word. Gelede is a combination of grand opera, ballet, the circus, a tabloid newspaper, and a psychotherapy session. There is nothing else like it in the world, because other people tend to put all those aspects of culture in different boxes. Not the Yoruba. No one knows exactly what the word Gelede means, but one etymology suggests it stands for “a thing that relaxes and indulges carefully.” It jollies up the most awesome thing on earth, Earth herself.

Dance lasted three days, I have it all on tape, meaningless, you had to be there. What glory!

Morning of the third day, Berne drove up with Tunji, told me that W. had been arrested for narcotics trafficking, and was in Lagos Jail. I went to where Olaiya was sitting on her stool of honor and took my leave, on my knees. She told me not to go, but I did. On the way back, he filled me in. Early that morning, the cops had burst into the Palm Court and searched it. They said they were looking for drugs, said that W. had been arrested as a major American gangster drug lord. Dave said that the idiots W. was hanging with figured that since they had an American contact, they didn’t have to pay off the cops anymore. Maybe W. had actually told them he was an American drug lord. It’s not beyond him at all.

Back in Lagos, I got on our satellite phone and pulled the red handle again, and this morning a sweating, nervous oil company guy, accompanied by two refrigerator-sized Nigerians carrying submachine guns, walked into Lary’s Palm Court with an aluminum suitcase containing fifty thousand dollars.

Have to stop writing and go see Colonel Musa.

Barlow laid out what they had. Paz thought he was good at this, a man who spoke with the Almighty often, and was thus not likely to be cowed by a gaggle of police brass. The room was crowded to capacity, with Neville D. Horton up at the head of the table, flanked by his gofers and assistant chiefs, then Captain Mendés, then the relevant captains and lieutenants who supervised the people who actually knew what was going on.

Barlow covered both cases, stressing the similarities: the precise duplication of the cuts in all four victims, mothers and unborn babies, the type and quantity of the drugs found in the bodies at autopsy, the fact that there was no forced entry, the fact that the crimes had been accomplished in complete silence, with the victims unbound, yet not struggling while they were cut into butcher’s meat.

His words emerged in stately periods; he paused dramatically at the right places; he asked rhetorical questions (“Did we find other similarities? Yes, we did”) and his delivery was free of the usual verbal tics. It was very much like a sermon, but one lacking a moral point at the end. Paz was glad that Barlow omitted the material about Tanzi Franklin, because it was embarrassing, and it led nowhere. Nor did Barlow try to cover the sorry truth?that they had no leads at all, no suspects, nothing to look for, no real evidence at all except for the bizarre nature of the crimes themselves; a tropical nut used in divination; a cloudy description by a piss-bum of a fellow he had seen talking to Deandra Wallace in a park; a partial bike tire track; and a tiny piece of what had turned out to be obsidian. When he got to that part, Barlow nodded to Paz. “My partner there, Detective Paz, has found out a little something about that fragment from the Vargas murder scene. Jimmy?”

Paz stood and went to the front of the room. They had planned this so that Paz would be on his feet, standing next to Barlow and ready to field questions, if any, about what Cletis called the spooky stuff. Paz cleared his throat and said, in a voice that sounded too loud in his own ears, “Yes, I showed the sample to a geologist at the university. He says it’s a volcanic glass called obsidian. He examined it under a microscope and concluded that it showed marks of pressure flaking. We’re thinking that the chip came from a stone knife.”