You Must Set Forth at Dawn (26 page)

I was puzzled. What were they talking about? Had they really failed to fasten on the one conclusion that occupied my mind? Yes, of course, there was the sense of betrayal, but it went further. The collection had been my life, so I felt as if I had been murdered. It was quite simple: anyone who was capable of doing this could only have done it out of one conviction—that I would not emerge from prison alive. I looked at their faces, surprised that this obvious awareness had eluded them—
he had wished me dead, he had assumed me dead,
he was stealing from a dead man!
Could they not see this as clearly as I did? I heard one of them say,
We've told him to stay away for now.
No, no, you tell him to stay away for good. For good! It's no longer a family matter, because I no longer consider him family. So tell him to keep away. I don't wish to see him ever. I don't wish to know him. In fact, I do not know him.

That evening, after they had left, I went into the garage and packed my books and papers. I did not bestow so much as a glance of regret at my silent companions, feeling only an expanse of deep violation, of betrayal and deep distrust—not focused on any being, since I had truly wiped out my assailant's existence from my mind. All I had left was a void, the loss of a vital organ. But it also triggered off a process of self-chastisement:
See? That's what comes of
becoming attached to material things. Now see how devastated you are. Were
these really anything but props? Crutches! Deprived of your crutches, you are
crushed! Yes, crushed! So much for those phases of self-dissolution in which you in
dulged in prison confinement, when even your physical self vanished and you found
peace in the abode of nothingness. So much for your claims of companionship with
the hermit priest Malarepa: “I need nothing. I seek nothing. I desire nothing.” Does
it require the barrenness of a prison cell to induce such wisdom in the mind, and is
such wisdom so soon dissipated on emerging from confinement?

Still, no one could deny that it was my right to remain attached to my books and papers, or at least to need them for my living, so I piled them into the car and drove to my office behind the theater. I tumbled them into a corner and, in that deadened state of mind, chloroformed by loss and repudiation, proceeded to set up a new work space. The gods remained in their own abode, abandoned, but this was a condition to which they had been accustomed for the past two years anyway, and even since eternity. They were free to seek their own remedies; all I asked for was my peace of mind. My reinstallation in this neutral space completed, I drove furiously to Femi's house, late as it was. He was expecting me. We drank late into the night.

IT TOOK YEARS before I would again acknowledge the right of this rump collection to a place in my existence or move to replenish it. The healing came gradually; Kayoos underwent a virtual transfiguration, becoming almost one with the playful, even sometimes watchful presences in his own inner sanctuary. At the time, however, the void in my private space only augmented the hollowness that beset me whenever I was thrust into the public arena, from which I had become even more viscerally alienated. It left me craving distance, a tactile and sensory severance. I slipped out fusslessly and, into my first—and only—spell of voluntary exile.

PART III

Interlude to
a Friendship

Interlude to a Friendship

LOOKING BACK, IT STRIKES ME WITH SOME ASTONISHMENT THAT, UNTIL his death in 1987, one constant, a large presence in the “extracurricular” undertakings of my adult existence, was Olufemi Babington Johnson. Just who was this being?

I have often wondered what he would have made of Sani Abacha. What role would he have played in our struggle? I know that he would not have hesitated one moment to place resources at my disposal, most especially for Radio Kudirat, the opposition radio that drove Sani Abacha to distraction. Femi once paid me an unusual compliment, an invaluable gift, if only he had known it! He confided it to his second wife, Folake, who passed it to mine, her namesake. This man said of me, “You can leave your heart with Wole and travel to Hong Kong. When you come back, it would still be beating.” I must confess that I have never ceased to ponder and be moved by this tribute. The views of women with whom I have had disastrous relationships will probably differ, but—best to stay away from that literal track!

This, of course, was a tribute that was infinitely appropriate for him, and I wondered if he ever thought about himself that way or made it a guiding principle of his existence. I only know that his words hovered around my head like a talisman long after his death, as if in silent exhortation. To a degree, we do aspire to live up to the view of others, no matter how stoutly we deny it. During the fight against Sani Abacha's tyranny, I could hardly deny myself the echo of Femi's words urging me on in that obsessive mission: to keep the heart of a nation, of a people, beating, even after a demented dictator had ripped it out and squeezed its lifeblood down his throat.

Femi's generosity was not limited to tributes to a friend. As one frustrated year succeeded the last, I would imagine scenes of clandestine meetings—in London, Kampala, Paris, Lisbon, Dakar, Vineroz, and other venues—where his first question would most certainly have been: How can I contribute? Then would follow a self-deprecating catechism of his lack of physical courage. The cloak-and-dagger arrangements that would have preceded such a meeting— for his own protection—would have set his eyes dancing with relish. We would meet for lunch or dinner. Straight from the first course, I would spring the surprise, letting him realize for the first time that I knew and had been moved by his tribute. Femi, you want the heart of that nation of ours to continue beating,
not so? Well, help me fund a clandestine opposition radio.
A double take, the inimitable laughter boom, a threat to “hammer that woman's head”—his wife's, for betraying his confidence—and his next question would be: What do you need, and how soon?

Difficult now to imagine that once we did not speak to each other for nearly seven months and I pronounced our friendship at an end. It was absurd, a falling-out that made little sense, but it did happen. I declared it all dead: the years of intense bonding, of arguments, risks, of political and other—far more delectable—exploits, both the casual encounters and others that demanded elaborate organizational skills and complex logistics, covering up for each other as needed. Or the theater and other performance ventures, the hunting expeditions, and of course the hours at his generous table, or at my skimpier one, which gave up, very early, all attempts to rival his sybaritic largeness. A compulsive performer, with artistic sensibilities and a sonorous baritone singing voice, Femi could have shaped his life in a different direction, in a different environment, but he chose to become an insurance broker and entrepreneur, and became an immensely successful one. Perhaps what drew me to him was partly recognition of that road not taken, the repressed artist within the nattily suited businessman, a keen political animal that yet fled politics, one who did not hesitate to take the hearts of others into his hands for safekeeping—or resuscitation.

THE KENYAN WRITER Ngugi wa Thingo never met Femi Johnson, but his wife did. So did Ngugi's comrade in arms Micere Mugo, one of the dissidents of Kenya's intelligentsia, resolutely opposed to the corrupt and repressive government of Daniel arap Moi. At the height of arap Moi's paranoid and draconian rule in the 1970s, I became desperate to make contact with Ngugi, about whose condition in prison we were receiving only disquieting news. I had not yet developed any of the multiple identities that I was later obliged to adopt and owned only one passport. A personal appearance in Nairobi would have been short-lived—a press conference, perhaps, and I would have been back on the next plane under police escort—assuming that I was even allowed into Kenya in the first place. In any case, Ngugi's associates—Micere Mugo and others—had advised against a personal visit by me.

As if by a miracle, the African Association of Insurance Brokers decided to hold its annual conference in Nairobi. I had letters and money to deliver to Ngugi's wife—I was then secretary-general of the Union of Writers of the African Peoples, an organization that I initiated in Ghana in 1972 and that was formally inaugurated in Dakar the following year under Léopold Sédar Senghor's patronage. I had squeezed a little money together from our members' contributions, and this was to go to Ngugi's aid. Even more important than the immediate monetary relief was the need to establish contact, to get a message to Ngugi that we were not simply sitting on our hands, indifferent to his predicament. Never—I am certain—has a meeting of insurance brokers been so conveniently timed in the cause of the arts—but it would happen for Femi and me! My friend readily agreed to carry out the mission.

“If they catch you,” I joked, “you're on your own. Only if I learn that you are actually about to be executed will I come for you personally.”

“Don't worry. Before anyone lays a hand on me, I'll spill the beans.”

“Good. That's exactly what I want you to promise. No heroics. Begin with Micere—either she'll be at the university or someone will know where she is. Micere will take you to Ngugi's wife—it may require a long journey by road.”

“I'll find her.”

“That's most important. We want to know what she wants us to do, how she wants us to react to what is going on. Who else needs help. Be sure to have a long conversation with her. I want news about Ngugi—when she saw him last, how he is, how he's being treated, et cetera, et cetera.”

He gave a mock salute. “Yes, Commandant!”

“And don't forget to insure yourself... I volunteer to be your beneficiary.”

Femi's trepidation at such assignments was genuine. Equally genuine, however, was his relish of them! He reveled in the business of flattening letters and cash into false compartments of his suitcase, making clandestine phone calls from the public phone in the lobby of his hotel rather than from his room, trying out different verbal codes to disclose his identity and that of the person whose intermediary he was. Our insurance broker carried out his mission to the letter, and then some! He undertook a long, roundabout journey by road to meet Ngugi's wife, delivered the funds—to which, needless to say, he had added his own generous contribution, unasked. Instead of joining the organized safari tours with his colleagues, Femi spent two days in Kenya awaiting the contact that had been sent to penetrate through to Ngugi in prison. He met other contacts, wrapped up his mission, and landed in Lagos still wreathed in the high state of euphoria that only commenced—on his admission—once his plane had left Kenyan airspace. Then he eased himself into his accustomed role as the life and soul of the returning delegation for the rest of the journey, they little suspecting what their extrovert colleague had been up to while they were indulging in the fleshpots of Nairobi. Micere wrote a long, glowing report of his performance. They continued to correspond for a while after his return.

ORLANDO MARTINS, a famous Nigerian film actor who could boast of having had Paul Robeson and Ronald Reagan as his screen companions in the 1950s, had retired home to Nigeria. Now he was old, alone, and incontinent. Femi moved him to his sumptuous home in Iyaganku, the setting of many gourmandizing soirées, set him up permanently in his guest chalet, paid all his medical bills, and ministered to every want, whim, and caprice—and Pa Orlando, as he was fondly known, was more than a trial for Job and all the saints. There Pa Orlando stayed, bullied the cooks if his food was too salty or under-salted or ... Take it away, I've told you I don't want it swimming in oil . . . and this
time don't forget the ow-nions!
There he remained, Femi's terminal guest, and Femi paid all the funeral expenses....

. . . O R THE CHILDREN of the villagers where we sometimes went to hunt, victims of all kinds of diseases that defied treatment. Femi would arrange for them to come into town and be examined by doctors. Sometimes he would assign a car and a driver to ensure that they came regularly for treatment until cured....

“AJOJE L'ODUN” — “The joy is in the sharing”—was his favorite refrain. And he lived it! Many experienced this only in those summational occasions that he particularly relished, such as his Christmas parties. Even now, nearly two decades later, at Christmastime, the city of Ibadan still undergoes the pangs of bereavement—and this extends beyond the middle class to which he belonged, since his festive hand extended to stewards, drivers, and his acquired hunting families, who were mostly farmers or working-class. No, he did not invite Ibadan's ten million population to his home, but to listen to complete strangers speak in awe of the famed parties, they must have believed he did. Both for those who shared his bounty and for thousands of Ibadan's inhabitants who never ate from his table, Femi Johnson was synonymous with the transformation of Christmas/New Year's into one huge feast that could only have been dreamed up in pagan Rome. It became a recognized institution—no one gave a party on the last Saturday before Christmas, that was OBJ's day. You did not give a party because you expected to be invited, and if you were not on his guest list, some of your likely guests might be, and between the two, you did not stand a chance with a rival party. All likely guests were headed for
the
party at Iyaganku, where two or three live bands played till early morning and a film might be screened. At least three roasts, over which the host had personally sweated all day, were now ready for their piecemeal internment.

Literally, the table groaned under the weight and variety. The Lebanese section was standard. He had visited Lebanon quite early in his career—then as an employee in the insurance business—when Lebanon was still Lebanon and the business center of the East. He never tired of narrating the experience, and it was mostly—food! A whole roast sheep—and, as a special mark of honor, he had been served the eyes. Then the creamy dips—hummus, tahini, taramasalata, and labneh—and on to the spiced, scented pine nut rice, grilled eggplant, and—oh yes, what had constituted for him the most hilarious delicacy when he discovered what they were—sweetbreads! He had many Lebanese friends in Ibadan, and there was one Lebanese restaurant that later became his Sunday-dinner haunt. It was owned by the Haddad family, and there Femi would be found religiously with his family, armed with a couple of bottles of wine. It was this restaurant that mostly catered his Christmas parties.

Long before the array of food dazzled his guests, however, Femi would have already entered the festive mode. He supervised every aspect of preparation— except the autonomous Lebanese department, which had become adept at ignoring his constant emendations once his main list had been accepted. And so, apart from his own assignment, which was to turn the pink cadaver of a pig or ram into a work of art, pleasing to the eye and glorious on the palate, Femi busied himself with supervising—that is, choreographing the field of consumption. He was especially delighted with the traditional-food department: the women and their young assistants (usually their children) among huge clay pots and pans, plucking, stoking, kneading, pounding, turning farina, boiled yam, and cassava flour into
eba, iyan, amala,
and
fufu,
Femi among the bubbling vats of seafood, venison, beef, mutton, and vegetable stew, the cracking noises of giant snails being separated from their shells, and the numerous chickens browning on the spit.

“Awon iya ndi aro”
³³
—and his eyes would sparkle, surveying the field of the busy women—“just the sight of them all over the compound, bent over the fires and cooking pots, vegetables being washed and sliced, meats being cut up and slapped into the huge basia
³⁴
of oil all day long—yes, that's the best part of it. The festive atmosphere of preparation, even more than the result.”

But this was not always part of him, not at the start of the sixties, when we first became really acquainted. It was not part of him, and he wanted no part of it. Later, he would become quite candid—but perhaps only with me—and mock himself over that phase of his choice of a lifestyle, when, in his own words, he must have cut the appearance of a displaced Englishman.