Doing Dangerously Well (26 page)

Her words jolted Femi out of a hypnotic state, and he blinked rapidly to dry his eyes. “Our Mau Mau warrior wants to start her revolution.” Barbara thought she could detect a hint of derision in his tone. “Our colonial master wants to take us to war.” Yes, on closer inspection, his delivery did contain a nuance of sarcasm.

Barbara understood Femi’s contempt. The mayhem of death had an appetite for the spirits of the living. It had not only reduced all mankind to one station, it had also released its wounds to those still animate. She felt this keenly; it found its seat within her.

Too embarrassed to admit to her former designs for heroic carnage, she retired into denial. “I am a pacifist.” She put her hand up in an exonerating stop sign. “Thus, I do not support armed struggle. I follow the path of non-violence.” She looked out the window in contemplation. “I’m sorry. It’s part of my belief system.”

Femi and Aminah actually broke into giggles.

“Is there nothing I can say to persuade you otherwise?” Femi finally asked, wiping away tears as he snickered. “I cannot see how we can work together if our views are so different.”

“I am sorry,” Barbara whispered, clicking her pen closed. “I cannot be persuaded to act against my conscience.”

“That is a great pity. You have taught us so much. Is that not so, Aminah?”

Aminah’s mighty form was positioned in the front seat. She turned around, her headdress deleting all view of the approaching landscape. “True-true, my friend. I have learnt more than I thought necessary in a few days alone.”

“Something you said struck me particularly,” Femi continued. “You taught me that I am you and you are me. Is that not so?”

“Yes. That is so.”

“That is such an interesting idea.” His voice assumed a tone that calmed Barbara’s jangled nerves. “Sometimes I feel that I am one with others. For example, sometimes I feel like I died with my family in the flood and that I do not exist if I am not connected to them. I am dead. In that village, I felt like I had died there, too. But I also felt a deep sadness, like I had survived and was looking for my relatives there. And yet I also felt that I
was me, looking at the people looking for their relatives, distant from them. We were all one, no be so?”

“Wise words, wise words.” Barbara nodded, listening to Femi, this philosopher with links to a mystical past. Through him, she would find the strength to cope with images rooted too deeply to extract.

“Could you explain that idea once more to me?” Femi asked, as a boy to a schoolteacher.

It seemed the sage needed her guiding spirit as much as she needed his. Barbara cleared her throat, then looked around like a missionary at her flock. Meanwhile, Aminah flung a mistrustful glance at Femi.

“I am more than my physical body. I am energy. I am, I be, I flow. Thus, I am you and you,” Barbara stressed one last time, “are me.”

“Really?” Aminah barked with disdain. “You don’t look like us at all.”

“So,” Femi intervened, “according to you, if I support violent struggle, because you are me, you can support it too—because I am just a different facet of you,
abi
?”

Barbara hesitated. “Well, uh, I wouldn’t—”

“We are born, we live and we die,” he continued, looking out his window, as if meditating. “We are like leaves—no more or less important in the great flow of history.” He turned to face Barbara again. “Correct?”

“Yes. You’ve got it.” She flushed with an embarrassed pleasure, patting Femi’s hand.

“So what
you
think has little importance in the greater scheme, true?”

She realized how difficult missionary work might be. “It’s a bit more complicated than that. I can send you some—”

“I’m glad we’re in agreement. We must fight force with force.
So please, take this down.” He snapped his fingers and pointed to Barbara’s notebook.

“But …” Aminah’s brows knitted across a wrinkle-free forehead.

“What other solution is there? This is worse than anything I imagined.”

“Worse,” Aminah agreed. “Much, much worse.” She wiped her eyes with a rough rub of her handkerchief.

Their expressions reminded Barbara of many of the faces she had encountered in Nigeria. She now recognized the grief that lay behind the Nigerians’ rambunctious behaviour, under all the laughter and beneath the banter. She could not understand how she had missed it in the first place.

“Our group will attack infrastructure only.” Femi tapped Barbara’s notepad imperiously. “We’ll need explosives, detonators …”

Satisfied with this approach, Barbara clicked her pen open again. Her head wiggled as she scribbled down his instructions, her writing containing some swirls at the end. Once finished, she surveyed the list. “I’ve got the finances for you to start your activities right now. But Femi—your group,” Barbara struggled to find the most tactful phrasing, “can barely even strike a match, let alone light a stick of dynamite.” She blinked, waiting for Femi’s solution to this dilemma.

Flicking his bottom lip with a forefinger, Femi kept quiet. Finally, his voice rigidly controlled, he replied, “They are in mourning. But this will give purpose to their lives. And we’ll care for the ones who are not able to function.”

“Ah, yes, it takes a village,” Barbara nodded. “The African way. I should have remembered.”

Femi sighed audibly.

And so the trio laid out a plan to sabotage the efforts of Kolo and TransAqua.

A
s April began its final bow, Barbara made her way to the airport a more prepared woman than the naive maiden who had first set foot on the rust-coloured soil of Nigeria. She started for the airport an hour late and on the way shouted in agreement with the taxi driver about the deplorable state of the country.

“Na
waa oh,”
she yelled. “Who knows when things will improve,
sha?”

In the terminal, she fought her way to the front of the queue and bribed the counter staff, flapping money above everyone’s heads. In customs, she again “dashed” an officer with money. He waved her through. On the plane, she unpacked her food and spoke at full volume to her neighbour about the lamentable political environment and the sham election of Kolo. She scratched her crotch when it itched and widened out her personal space as she sat.

When she landed in Washington, DC, her spirits flagged and she began to suffer from a crushing sense of boredom. Shining through this gloom, one face—Astro, eyes radiant, limbs trembling with excitement, face infused with passion. Barbara sped through the crowds towards him, swift and light, and threw herself into his open arms.

After an hour of passionate kissing near Baggage Claims, Barbara delivered the bad news.

“I have to go to Santa Fe next week,
sha.”
She hitched up her
adire
wrapper to prevent it from unfurling to the ground and exposing her. “Business before pleasure.”

“But I thought you’d come back for good, Bing-Bong!”

“Soon, my friend.” Her American vowels widened into their Nigerian counterparts. “A cheetah is not a spider.”

“What?”

“A cheetah must sprint to stalk its prey-oh!”

“That’s pretty obvious. You didn’t know that? Are you sure you’re the right person for—”

“It’s metaphorical!” Barbara yelled in her usual East Coast drawl. ’Jeez!”

Mary smoothed her blouse across the angles of her body and played with her cuffs as she waited for the president to come to the phone. In her innocuous passive-aggressive style, she had made him wait for the list of names that threatened his very life, as punishment for an act that could jeopardize her job: his delay in signing a fresh contract.

“President Kolo?”

“To whom do I have the pleasure of speaking?” Kolo oozed an unconvincing confidence.

She took heart from the fact that his apparent poise would be short-lived. “Glass. Mary Glass, sir. I have some bad news.”

Kolo’s breath grew louder and more erratic.

Suffused with pleasure, Mary recited the news in a neutral monotone. “I’ve got three names for you. The ministers of Information, Women’s Affairs and Justice.”

“These people are planning coups! But this can’t be. These are my closest allies! They are all from my home state, Ms. Glass. The minister of information is my personal confidant!”

Kolo’s voice edged into panic. However, Mary had no interest in soothing his fears. She needed the contract signed. Using another tool from childhood, she paid no attention to the rise in dramatic tension, communicating instead a bland indifference to his fate. “So, where do you wish to meet, sir, to sign the contract?” she asked.

“The contract? Ah, yes. Let’s discuss the terms again. You want political control of this country through its water and energy resources, correct?”

The thin trickle of blood that coursed through Mary’s tight veins almost ceased its pilgrimage around her body. “Well, Mr. President, I am just eager to get the original contract re-signed.”

Kolo left a silence. A silence that he, without question, expected Mary to fill.

Knowing that rival bids offered the most logical explanation of his conduct, Mary had no choice: she suggested a 40-percent guaranteed return on profits from water rights.

“Interesting,” he replied. The sucking started.

“President Kolo,” Mary finally broke the silence, “what is it you want?”

“Fifty-five-percent return.” He announced this without apology.

“But our initial outlay alone, the cost of the dam …”

“Ah, thank you for reminding me. The World Bank will only lend 60 percent of the financing requested. So, I’m afraid you will have to assume the extra burden.”

“Pardon? But that’s not poss—”

“You don’t know this country,” Kolo sighed. “It’s a mathematician’s paradise. One dollar earned is two dollars bribed. Consider them tariffs. As president, I am expected to offer enticements to my people—well, I suppose the anglo tribe would call it my ethnic group—and my political supporters. I am, if you like, the chief of the village, the head of the family.”

Mary could hardly believe it. In one move, he had managed to transform his government’s position from victim to victor, with a majority share in profits for less outlay. He had used the distorted mindset of the corporation to his full advantage. She studied the contours of this new deal. Finally, desperate to keep her job, Mary agreed.

“Thank you so much, Ms. Glass,” Kolo rasped. “It’s such a joy working with you.”

After she hung up, Mary flopped back in her chair, wondering what else could go wrong with her week. It took only a few days for her to find out.

Astro had specially decorated his apartment for Barbara’s return, dotting small sparkles of twinkling white lights on the living-room ceiling, like stars in the night sky.

After ten days of solo activity, Barbara could hardly wait to substitute the plastic and batteries for flesh and blood.

They stretched out on Astro’s makeshift bed: Arabian rugs, on top of which lay odd-shaped cushions and clashing styles of bedding. He put his arms around her and kissed her forehead, looking down on her like a cherished child. She stroked his lips, now engorged. A quick image of a body bloated by the sun flashed into her mind. She pushed it away.

“I missed you, man,” Astro said. “I couldn’t stop thinking about you. It was as if you’d died, buddy.”

An image of birds eating human flesh whizzed past.

“Oh, man, I was so worried.”

“I missed you too,
sha.”
She ran her finger down his cheekbone. “Sometimes I’d just touch your picture to make sure everything would be all right.”

His penis, much more pleasing in appearance than her vibrator, more realistic, was erect, its purple tip welcoming her home. Barbara could feel her pelvis aching. He licked her belly button and then moved down, licking her clitoris.

Astro grasped her wrist with his hand.

She froze.

It reminded her of the hand in the mud. She shuddered.

“Already, man?” His head popped up.

She stared into his eyes—as bright, as huge, as yellow as sunflowers. She wondered how those eyes would darken as a wall of water crashed down. She pictured the innocence in them changing to horror.

“No, no, don’t worry. I haven’t come yet.” Barbara settled back into the sheets. “Please continue,” she instructed.

He frowned at her then dived back down to finish his work.

She squeezed her eyes together, trying hard to concentrate. She looked down at him. He reminded her of a bloated body lying face down in the mire. She began to weep. How could she enjoy herself like this in a world of such brutality?

“It’s okay, bud. You’ve been through a lot. You need some sleep.” He stroked her hair, cradled her in his arms and rocked her, as if she were a child awakened from a terrifying dream.

In their shared bed, the one space where all troubles were usually resolved, the blood of the nightmare soaked into their sheets.

The room that had become the effervescent epicentre of office fun, jokes and passing welcomes—Beano’s tiny glass cabinet—uncharacteristically
featured a shut door.