Changer's Daughter (16 page)

Over and over again during the day and two nights that they spend in the open Aduke has reason to be grateful that this is the dry season. Although the weather is hot and the
harmattan
winds stinging, they do not have to sleep wet and slog through mud.

The lack of rain does make it more difficult for them to get fresh water. Aduke spends much of her spare time fetching water from a public pump and then boiling it over the portable gas stove they had used for cooking in the apartment. Her insistence on boiled water brings mockery from market women camping nearby, but Aduke closes her ears and takes comfort when not one of the children falls ill.

On the morning after the second night spent out of doors, Oya reappears just after the rest of the family has departed, most for the market. Kehinde has gone, he says, to tutor someone in English. Aduke keeps her doubts to herself. She suspects that he will find a quiet corner in a bar where for a few
kobo
spent on drinks he can have peace and quiet.

Oya sails up, her traditional wrapper billowing in the wind, just as Aduke is decanting her first batch of boiled water into containers emptied by breakfast preparations.

“
E karo, e karo.
Good morning, good morning, Aduke Idowu,” Oya says as breezily as if she had not vanished without explanation just when the family had met with a terrible crisis. “I see you are doing well.”

“Well enough,” Aduke answers without offering the traditional greetings and inquiries in return. She knows that she is being rude, but she can’t help it. Oya’s defection had hurt her more deeply than her mere reappearance can mend.

“And your mother and sisters and children?”

“Well enough.”

“And their husbands?”

“Fine. When we see them.”

“Ah, then if everything is so fine, you will not be interested in some news that I have for you.”

Reluctantly, Aduke looks up from her decanting. In any case, she needs to set another pot of water to boil.

“News?” she asks, motioning Oya to a seat on one of the pillows she and her niece had beaten clean earlier that morning. “Will you have some tea?”

“Since you are boiling water and it won’t be an inconvenience,” Oya says, “I will be honored to take tea with you.”

Aduke feels her face growing hot. She is glad that she is so dark that her blush does not show. That had been something for which to pity the female European tourists. When they had visited the college campus and the men had hooted comments about their clothing and their figures, they might have held their heads high and pretended not to hear, but their own skins played traitor.

“There is some
gari foto
left from breakfast,” Aduke says, by way of an apology. “It is still fresh, and my husband’s mother outdid herself in the preparation.”

“Then she is well,” Oya says.

Aduke surrenders to protocol. While the water boils and the tea is brewed she supplies information about the health and well-being of her extended family.

Oya nods and blows on her tea to cool it. From a fold of her wrapper she produces a package of wrapped sweets.

“I brought these for the children, but a few will not be missed, and they will go well with our tea.”

Knowing herself forgiven, Aduke accepts a sweet. It is after the northern style, honey and sesame seeds formed into a solid little square that needs the tea to warm it for chewing.

“You said you had news,” she asks, her question now polite interest, not intrusiveness.

“Although you are doing very well here,” Oya says, gesturing to the tidy camp, “I thought that you would be interested in having more permanent quarters once more.”

“We are,” Aduke says, trying not to seem too eager.

“The place is not a proper apartment building, nor yet a house,” Oya says, “but it does have running water and is wired for electricity.”

“The rent?” Aduke says hesitantly. “We cannot pay much.”

“The rent would be reasonable.” Now Oya hesitates, as if it is her time to feel awkward. “You see, the place has a reputation for...”

She stops, drinks tea, chews her sweet, so manifestly uncomfortable that Aduke finds it easy to be patient. At last Oya recommences, her voice so soft that Aduke must lean forward to hear her.

“...for being haunted.”

Later, Katsuhiro longingly remembered that ride in the limousine as the last time for several days that he was cool. Without wasting words on explanations, his captors drive him into Lagos, transfer him to a van, and then drive the van a long distance over very bad roads. As the van has no windows, Katsuhiro has no idea even what direction they are headed.

Escape proves impossible. In the limousine two guns are always kept pointed at him—three when the man in charge frisks him, taking his money, jewelry, watch, and pocketknife.

The back of the van proves to be completely empty. There is not even a bench or chair that he could cannibalize into a weapon—not that he needs one, but even a club could be useful. Only the fact that the floor is thickly carpeted saves him from a formidable bruising when the roads become rough. Even so, he is far from comfortable.

No guard is placed in the back with him, nor is one necessary. The doors of the van are key-locked and then padlocked on the outside. Katsuhiro hears the lock click shut.

There is no communicating window or panel to the driver’s compartment. The walls, floor, and ceiling are triply reinforced, probably to stop bullets, but the layering of metal over metal ends his slim hope that he might burst out a weak seam.

And his own distinctive appearance is the final bond that holds him. Even if he escaped, for how long could he avoid recapture? A tall Japanese man on Nigerian streets would stand out like a chrysanthemum blossom against a wash of early snow. Moreover, he is reluctant to depart without his sword.

Katsuhiro had arrived in the Lagos air terminal around midday. When he is unloaded from the van inside a cavernous garage the glimpse he catches of the sky outside tells him that it is night. Guns reappear here and, fully respecting the harm they could do him, Katsuhiro permits his captors to escort him into a building adjoining the garage.

Although he maintains a calm, unconcerned attitude ("inscrutable” was doubtless how it would be described when his captors gave their report), Katsuhiro is fast losing hope. The slim hope he had that he was indeed being taken to visit some businessman—albeit one with an overdose of paranoia—begins to beat its wings for a fast escape when he is ushered down a flight of steps and taken into an area that smells of dungeon.

The odor is a mixture of common enough elements: damp, mold, urine, human sweat, dust. There is a tang of blood, too, and of vomit, feces, and tears. Katsuhiro had scented its like hundreds of times before, but only rarely has he been a prisoner. Now, as he is herded into a cell that seems pitch-dark after the light in the corridors, hope flees.

Like most athanor, Katsuhiro has an ingrained fear of being imprisoned. In a prison, under close daily observation, his secret may be revealed. This, added to his perfectly human terror, makes it difficult for him not to fling himself against the closing door or to assault his captors, no matter the end result.

Only many centuries of study in war and tactics reins in Katsuhiro’s panic. Thus far he has not been beaten; he has not been tortured. He has no doubt that if he angers his captors one or both of these things will quickly follow. Injury would reduce his chances for escape—not to mention hurting a lot.

So, no matter how he feels, Katsuhiro puts a good face on his situation and even manages a small bow before the door closes, sealing him in darkness.

Eventually, he learns two things. First, the darkness is not absolute. A small window high in the exterior wall admits both fresh air and a hint of something that cannot be called light but is at least less darkness. Second, he realizes that he is not alone.

A shape, just visible as a blackness against greater blackness, is humped on the floor. Katsuhiro might not have seen it if it had not moved and might have believed he was hallucinating if it had not spoken. It has a male voice, deep yet cracked as if something in it is broken. What it mutters is unintelligible.

“What?” says Katsuhiro, keeping his voice low, for he is certain there is a guard in the hallway. “What did you say?”

The voice speaks again, this time in English so heavily accented that Katsuhiro wonders if he is being mocked. When he sorts the words out from their peculiar pronunciations and grammatical order, they prove to be: “A say, ‘Who are you?’"

“Katsuhiro Oba, a prisoner.”

There is a dry, cracked chuckle. “Na, so we all. A no tink you p’liceman.”

“True.” Katsuhiro swallows hard. “Have you been here long?”

“Dey trow me...” The cracked voice stops and resumes in English that, while still heavily accented is at least more recognizable. “They throw me in this cell for so long dat I tink they forgot me, except that sometimes they remember to feed me.”

“Sometimes?”

“Na, most day A tink.” Again the pause. “For a while I try to keep count by the daylight, but now I don’t see so good. I see lights when it dark, dark when it light. Tha las’ beatin’ broke sometin’ in my head.”

Katsuhiro makes a sympathetic noise. “Maybe I can help you when it’s daylight.”

“You doctor?” The man sounds impressed.

“I know something of medicine.” And so he should after all the battlefields on which he has served. “But I need light.”

“So do we all.”

Katsuhiro starts to ask the man why they have imprisoned him, then bites back the question. The man trusts him, at least somewhat, so far. If he starts asking personal questions, though, then the man might think he’s a stooge sent in by the authorities. He decides on a safer question.

“Do you know where we are?”

“Monamona, A tink. Dat’s p’lice get me. We no go ooo far then.”

Katsuhiro grunts acknowledgment. Monamona is the city where he and Anson were to do business. That his kidnapping is connected somehow to that business seems a reasonable assumption. He puzzles for a while, chewing the bit of beard below his lower lip. Eventually, he falls asleep.

When he awakes, pale daylight is just visible through the narrow window above. After the night’s blackness, it seems like a floodlight, though he can barely make out the color of his shirt.

His cellmate proves to be a lean, moonfaced African, asleep on his side on the packed-earth floor, his knees drawn up to his chest, his head pillowed on his arm. The man’s face and shoulders show evidence of a terrible beating: black blood has scabbed tight in some places; in others the wounds swell with infection or run with pus.

Flies crawl over the man so freely that for a moment Katsuhiro thinks he has passed in the night. Then the ribs rise and slowly fall.

Leaving the man to whatever peace he can get from sleep, Katsuhiro inspects his cell. An open bucket that has not been emptied in some days is the only latrine. The furnishings consist of the ragged blanket on which his cellmate lies and a plastic bucket partially filled with warm, flyblown water. A closed slot in the door near the floor shows how food is delivered. A peephole, just wide enough for a pair of eyes, is set higher in the door.

“Lovely,” Katsuhiro mutters, and takes inventory of himself. He is rested though stiff, hungry but not distractingly so, and thirsty. Drinking the water in the bucket will almost certainly make him sick, so he schools himself to wait as long as possible.

His possessions consist of a now-soiled business jacket and trousers, matching loafers, shirt, socks, and underwear. His captors had taken his belt and tie along with his obvious weapons and money. Turning out his pockets, Katsuhiro finds a small box of aspirin, a handkerchief, a couple of business cards, and three small cubes of gum.

Two of these he substitutes for the lunch and dinner he has missed, reserving the third against need. The cool tranquillity of the mint soothes him as he hunkers down again and waits, though whether in anticipation or in dread he is not completely certain.