Indigo (5 page)

Nurudeen's father slowed and turned. “Something is truly wrong,” he said. “Everyone is going where we are.” He found a traffic policeman and asked him what had happened.

“Nigeria's disgrace,” said the cop. “Another someone has started a fire.”

They edged their way into the crowd, respect for Nurudeen's father making people lenient and allowing them to get up to where the police had cordoned off the area immediately in front of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Jerry was surprised to understand that everyone seemed to know Nurudeen's dad. When he looked behind him he could see that the crowd stretched all the way back to the road. He saw the ironing-board boy in a nearby group, following along.

They were pressing up against the cordon when Nurudeen's father found another policeman and told him they had business with the minister. They could see the building plainly now, flames coming from a set of windows up high. Workers were milling about, craning their necks upward on the other side of the cordon.

When the policeman went off to find his commanding officer, Nurudeen's father turned to Jerry and said something Jerry couldn't understand. The mood of the crowd was bad and Jerry really did hope that they would soon be able to get past the cordon, where, if nothing else, there was a little more room to stand. Only a few months before someone had set fire to another big building, and ordinary citizens were beginning to lose patience.

When the commanding policeman came over he greeted Nurudeen's father formally, lifting the cordon and allowing them inside.

“Where did the fire start?” Nurudeen's father asked. “I hope this time it was an accident.”

“The fire is contained, sir,” said the policeman, “but it was not accidental. We already have our evidence.”

The man said that the floor on which the fire had started housed the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and Jerry began to feel a little strange. “Were there injuries?” he asked the police captain. “Was anyone hurt?”

The policeman looked at him, but directed his answer to Nurudeen's dad. “One hurt badly, two more suffering from the smoke,” he said.

“I trust the minister is safe?” Nurudeen's father said, and when the policeman pointed to a group of automobiles parked at the side of the building they walked that way.

From where they had been standing the area that they now approached appeared to be crowded with police and fire vehicles, but as they got closer they saw that there was an ambulance as well. Nurudeen's father asked for the minister again and was directed toward a black Mercedes-Benz, its doors opened, a small crowd forming a crescent around its near side.

“Excuse please,” he said, edging in among the people. Jerry was right behind him but he was not at all prepared for what he saw. The minister of internal affairs was sitting in the back of the Mercedes-Benz, turned sideways with his feet down on the ground. He cradled his head in his hands and his robes were filthy, covered with soot and pulled around so roughly that he looked like he had just been in a battle for his life.

“Alhaji,” said Nurudeen's dad. “Minister, are you not fine?”

The minister looked slowly up, but when he saw Jerry standing there he reacted violently, jerking to his feet and staggering forward.

“Why are you all so evil!” he screamed. “Whenever there is tragedy, whenever a truly loathsome act occurs, there is always a white man involved!”

It was clear that the minister was in shock but Jerry, nevertheless, had no idea what to do. The minister nearly lost his balance, and then to everyone's surprise he came at Jerry wildly, actually scratching his face with one of his out-of-control hands.

“Hey!” Jerry yelled. “Ouch! Stop it!” The minister's blind thrust had hit him just above his left eye, tearing the flesh somewhere around his eyebrow. Jerry dropped the teachers' files, both hands shooting up to his face. He arched forward so that wayward drops of blood would not come down on his clothing, and at the same time he tried to find the teachers' files, kneeling and feeling around for them on the ground. Though he couldn't see, he could sense that everyone had been stunned by what had happened, and once he had the files again he stood up.

“Surely there must be medical help nearby,” he said. He meant for the minister but Nurudeen's father thought he meant for himself, and when he went off to bring a medic back, the minister struck again, grabbing Jerry's arm and shaking him. “Here he is!” he screamed. “This is the man who started the fire!”

The minister spun Jerry around so hard that Jerry nearly dropped the files again. “Why do you despise us so?” he shouted.

Jerry's eye was burning but he could see out of it again, and he tried to stop himself from going in the direction that the minister wanted him to go.

“Come!” screamed the minister. “Cast your eyes on what your evil has wrought!”

The minister pushed Jerry back toward the side of the building and pointed at a spot on the shady ground. Mindless of the blood now, Jerry jerked his arm free and wiped a sleeve across his eye. He then looked down at the spot where the minister's finger led.

“My God,” he said.

The minister's secretary was there, the lazy one from the outer office. A piece of torn cardboard partially covered her oddly angled body, but she was wearing the same yellow dress she'd worn the day before, and her face held that same bored look.

Jerry wanted to ask if she was alive, but by then Nurudeen's father was back, not with a doctor but with the same police captain who had opened the cordon to let them in. The minister seemed, to have calmed by then but the policeman poked a stiff finger up against Jerry's shirt. “Do not speak,” he commanded. He then pulled Jerry hard, jerking him away from the secretary and back along the shady side of the building to where another group stood.

“Look,” said the policeman, “and explain, please, what it is that you see.”

Jerry's eye still throbbed, and when he looked at the ground he expected to see someone else hideously hurt. This time, however, there was nobody. Rather, on another piece of cardboard stood five one-gallon cans of copy-machine toner. And on top of one of the cans was Jerry's plastic sandwich box, his name written on a piece of masking tape and stuck across its lid.

For a moment Jerry was unable to take in the meaning of what he saw. He remembered turning in the direction of the captain of police once more, but then someone struck him and he was on the ground.

“Keep back!” he heard the captain yell. “I want a car here now. Keep those people back, do you hear what I say?”

Though someone was kicking at him, hard unopposed kicks to his arms and side, someone else, perhaps two or three someone elses, was soon pulling him from the ground and shoving him into the backseat of a just-arrived automobile. He tried to speak but his mouth contained blood and there was a piece of something that might have been a tooth, which fell into the hand that he used to support his chin.

There was a roaring in Jerry's ears, but he wasn't clear about its source. He wasn't alone in the back of the car, but he had been pressed against the far door, and it occurred to him that he might simply open it and run. When he looked up, however, he saw a thousand angry faces just on the other side of that fragile thickness of glass. The young ironing-board boy was there again, his eyes oddly hurt-looking, his mouth shouting with the voice of the crowd, his head bent toward the sky.

As soon as the car began to move Jerry Neal spoke. And he surprised himself by hearing that his voice was normal and clear. “I'm not guilty of anything,” he said, and though the policemen around him had been as focused on the crowd as he was, they were shaken by the sound of his voice, by the breach of prisoner etiquette that it entailed. Had a Nigerian spoken thusly, during the dangerous ride from arrest to jail, he might have been beaten beyond words.

Once Jerry spoke, though, some of his confusion left him and the pain began to set in. His mouth hurt more than his ribs or his arm, but he could not remember having been struck in the mouth. And now that his head was clear, he began to understand that someone had actually taken the toner with the idea of using it to start the fire. Miraculously, he still had the teachers' files, and when he thought of the teachers he thought of the minister, and when he thought of the minister he thought of Nurudeen's dad, and then he thought of Nurudeen and of his own little sandwich box, sitting up on top of the toner cans, complete with an imprint of his name. Good Christ, Nurudeen had taken the toner. Nurudeen, an eighth-grade boy, was involved in some kind of plot to bring him down.

Jerry looked at the policemen sitting around him. These guys weren't speaking, but he knew that Nigerians responded far more quickly to friendship than to threats, so when he spoke again his words were calculated and his face was calm. “This will all be cleared up shortly,” he said. “After that we can all go out for a beer.”

He smiled and turned in the seat when he spoke, but the man next to him stared straight ahead. It was the officer in the front seat, the one next to the far door, who would tell the others what they should think, and this man did turn slowly around. He was not the police captain who had treated Jerry badly before, but was an older man with a kinder face.

“Indeed,” the man finally said.

“I am a guest here,” said Jerry. “But I understand how mistakes like this can happen, believe me.”

The police officer gave him another look, seemed about to respond, but then turned silently forward again. Jerry had not been paying attention to what part of town they were in, but just as he was beginning to believe they had been on the road too long, the car pulled in somewhere and stopped.

“Where are we?” he asked. “What police station is this?”

Again there was no response, but when the ranking officer came around and opened his door there was also no sign that he would again be treated roughly. The man held his arm, but gently, telling him with a slight pressure that he was to walk inside.

“If I could just call the school. We have our own solicitor who could begin to set things straight.” It was unlike Jerry to be so free with words and he was slightly ashamed of it. He knew that sooner or later he'd get home, and once this was over he understood that he would know how best to take advantage of the horrible mistake.

The policemen surrounded him and marched him down a narrow hallway to a dismal room. There was a table in the room, and there was a chair.

“Empty pocket, take off shoe and belt,” said one of the younger men. His entry into the station had caused a stir and he could not now be sure whether this young man had been in the car with him or not. But he did as he was told, moving slowly and trying to remember how much money he had. He usually carried one hundred naira or so but he didn't think he had that much today. He remembered, however, that there was a one-hundred-dollar bill tucked inside the photo section of his wallet, behind a favorite photograph of Charlotte. He kept it for emergencies, though it alone was illegal enough to keep him here. He took his wallet out and counted the money before placing it on the table.

“Watch,” said the young policeman.

Jerry unstrapped his wristwatch and buckled it around his wallet, which was inside the circle made by his belt. The young policeman held out a detergent box, and when Jerry moved his belongings from the table to the box, the policeman told him to hold out his hands.

“Ah,” he said. “Ring also.”

Jerry's only ring was his wedding ring, which he never removed. “My wife gave it to me,” he said, but the young policeman shook the box, so he took the ring off, then reached back into the box and picked out his wallet once again, unstrapping the watch and placing his wedding ring down into the wallet's pocket, among the worthless coins.

“I want these things back,” he said, but the young man left the room without speaking, closing the heavy door and locking it from the outside.

Once Jerry was alone fatigue hit him and he sat down hard. He was injured and filthy and no one knew where he was. And the reality of what had happened, that someone had actually gone to the trouble of setting him up, still seemed dreamlike and completely impossible. He was beaten and broken-toothed and waiting in the dismal back room of a police station. It was too much to believe and he wanted to get to a phone.

Jerry went to the door and spoke. “I want my phone call,” he said, but the sound of his voice made him feel pitiful so he sat back down. Now was not the time to show fear. He concentrated on his belief that he would be home before nightfall, and that thought calmed him.

An hour passed and Jerry used it to assess the physical damage done to him and then to stretch out on the table and try to nap. The table wasn't long enough to hold him, but with his knees up he could just catch his heels on the edge of it. He was surprised to find that whatever he had spit from his mouth had apparently not been a piece of tooth, and when he pressed his palms against the places on his body that ached he thought he was discovering that there was no serious damage done, nothing broken anyway, and probably no blood seeping quietly into him and sapping his strength.

Though Jerry did not actually sleep, he was able to breath evenly and keep his eyes closed, and by the time he heard the key in the door he had regained some of the buoyancy of his spirit, his naturally optimistic mood.

When the door opened the captain of police came into the room. He was carrying a clipboard, and Jerry thought of Nurudeen again.

“Mr. Jerry Neal?” asked the captain of police.

“Yes,” Jerry said.

“It is my duty to inform you that you are being held pending charges by the Republic of Nigeria for the crime of arson in the first degree.” The captain paused, watching for the power of his words to register on Jerry's face, but Jerry had prepared himself, and all he did was nod.