You Must Set Forth at Dawn (25 page)

Perhaps if my marriage—briefly resuscitated by shared tribulations and the emotions of reunion—had held out, the throb of alienation would have been muted. However, the differences that had turned that marriage into a mere effort before my imprisonment resurfaced in no time at all, increasing a daily, prolonged craving for a handy escape, a familiar, welcoming lair. I still entered the converted garage from time to time, but it had lost its deep, self-absorbing aura.

I threw myself into the filming of Kongi's Harvest, under the direction of Ossie Davis, the black American actor, with the possessed cineaste Francis Oladele as the producer. Day after day, the designated lead, Gaius Anoka, expected from the Biafran territory, failed to turn up—we later found out that he had been denied a clean bill of health by the debriefing team of the victorious federal side and thus was not permitted to leave the subdued enclave. Ossie Davis filmed around and around his absence, but in the end there was not one scene left that could be shot without the figure of the dictator, Kongi.

All eyes turned to me. Till then, I had contented myself with adjusting the script and tackling Ossie's queries but mostly working with the music. Now— enter the star!—I stepped into the role of the dictator for one of my least memorable performances. Still, the frenzied and intense pace of that preoccupation helped. As I was on location most of the time, a shifting environment succeeded in blunting the need of the animal for his lair. In between shoots, however, on returning home, there was no congenial space into which I could withdraw. Not until I had lost this sanctuary did I discover how deeply dyed I was in that “deadly sin” from which I had so blithely excepted myself: attachment! It was a surprise—and something of a discomfiture—to find that I did own something that I deeply valued. It did not help matters that the blow that routed my assumptions had been struck from within my family.

Ironically, the transgressor, my junior brother—who narrowly escaped decapitation or worse at my hands—would provide for me, as for both family and acquaintances, proof of the redemptive potential of any human being. Kayoos—his favorite nickname—became a born-again Christian. Yes, the real thing, I testify to that! As authentic a born-again Christian and evangelist as you would hope to meet on this side of sin. Kayoos was transformed into an actively caring asset to the whole family with all its extensions, and to friends. At the time, however...!

As I emerged from prison and was reinstalled in my campus home, it was not difficult to observe that among the endless tumult—family, colleagues, friends, and even total strangers—who invaded the house, one face, with its wide, guileless smile and a booming baritone voice, was conspicuous by its absence. This absence was made all the more noticeable by the fact that the face had made a very brief early appearance on my arrival at Ibadan airport, when its owner had held me in a powerful and emotional embrace. And then it had disappeared altogether!

That was strange. Kayoos's natural place was at the heart of celebrations, and this was an occasion especially tailored to his expansive, adventurous, and outgoing nature. Kayoos was very affectionate. I knew that he had remained fond of me even when I had totally given up on him, having fully taken my turn at the rehabilitation roulette in which he engaged the rest of the family and gotten thoroughly burned for my pains. I had indeed begun to remark openly that only a prison spell would make him confront the realities of life; thus the ironic fact that my mother and I did have a meeting point—in prayer. I prayed that his prison experience would not scar him for life but would be very short, sharp, and painful, thus achieving what all our efforts in the family had failed to do. Wild Christian, needless to say, harbored no such thoughts. She simply importuned God to change him—in His own good time of course, she hastened to reassure Him—but really tomorrow, preferably.

Even before my prison detention, I was undoubtedly the most severe on him. I forbade him not only my home and office but my presence. That did not stop him occupying one of the rooms in the tiny annex to the official residence, intended for the house help but often converted into a colorful student pad. I knew that my wife—another of the rehabilitation team—had let him stay there, but I pretended not to know. He kept out of my way and never entered the main house while I was around. Once I was out of the way, however, Kayoos would come in and help himself to whatever he needed, run errands for my wife, and play with his nephews, nieces, and cousins—in short, everyone behaved like a true Yoruba, or indeed the average African: you snarl at the stray sheep but pretend that you never noticed that the side door was left open for it to sneak in at night.

The garage was home to my modest collection of—mostly traditional— artworks. I lavished all my spare resources in acquiring them, and they were indeed a main source of marital friction. It had become my habit to turn the garage in whatever house I occupied into a gallery cum study, and this was where I spent most of my time, working among the ancestral masks, the gods, their caryatids, shrine posts, and vessels, basking in their aura. It provided a working ambiance that suited my temperament, rather like being within a web of emanations from multiple existences. But the gallery also served a less exalted purpose. Along its backyard, separated by a heavy copse that was home— we would discover much later—to a nest of pythons, ran one half of the dual carriageway that led to the university campus. This meant that a car could stop or be parked behind the house, its passenger walking through the copse directly to the garage without disturbing the household. As my marriage disintegrated, this sanctum sanctorum would serve as a venue for desperate assignations, usually in the dead of night. The snakes, fortunately, did not appear to have been unduly disturbed by these nocturnal intrusions.

Nor were the gods under whose watchful eyes they took place. It was my very private world. Within it, I experienced no sense of betrayal; guilt did not obtrude, did not exist. Marriage, now a mere formality, remained equally protected in its own continually expansive world of responsibilities, emotional impositions, and domestic bargaining, but this arena of deities and ancestors remained impervious to its moralities. Heavy wood sculptures, bronzes, caryatids and votive vessels, ceremonial drums and metallic gongs—they provided relief for the mind when inspiration flagged and my fingers fluttered aimlessly over the typewriter. Most times, however, they proved an additional impetus for those stretches when the fingers tapped a productive rhythm on the keys. While I was locked away in prison, family and visitors found it most touching to see Kayoos turning up from time to time to dust my collection, take out the cobwebs, and spruce up the appearance of his big brother's prized sanctum.

Then one day, my wife visited a colleague of hers. A friend from the United States had been staying with that lady, and now he was getting ready to leave. Strewn all over the floor, in various stages of wrapping and packing, were souvenirs he was taking with him. Quite innocently, she sensed a familiarity in some of the artifacts and observed that her friend's visitor appeared to have similar tastes to mine. Then she picked up another piece. Interesting, that also looked familiar... and then another, even more familiar. Suddenly, she felt dead certain. The coincidence was too much. There could not be such consistency; the pieces were not merely familiar, they looked identical, and there were far too many of them. One piece in particular belonged in the living room, so she had grown accustomed to it. She excused herself and returned home. Yes, it was gone; so were a number of other pieces within the house and a lot more from the garage-museum.

The collector had no misgivings whatsoever. He had bought them, and legitimately. He knew to whom they belonged but had been made to believe that Kayoos had been given the authority to dispose of them. This was easy enough to believe, as Kayoos was well known in expatriate circles as a dealer in traditional items, though not necessarily antiquities. And what was more logical than to assume that the family of an imprisoned man, incommunicado, might need to dispose of some personal items to take care of their immediate financial needs?

What items that could be retrieved from the hapless visitor were taken back, but of course he was not the only buyer from Kayoos's limitless source. A number of coveted objects had disappeared forever.

While I sojourned in prison, oblivious to my bereavement, a series of family meetings and consultations with friends began. Bola Ige, lawyer and combative politician, undertook the task of extricating Kayoos from the criminal consequences of his enterprise, since the effort to recover other items had necessarily involved the police. Femi Johnson was at hand to give advice and exert his influence in other vital directions. As the day approached for my release, the meetings were resumed with one agenda: how to break the news to me and what to do about this near-unhealable breach. The first decision was predictable, being based on what even those outside the immediate family had instinctively grasped, or had been told, about my attachment to these works of art: Kayoos was ordered to keep his distance from me. He could come and join in the welcome on the very first day, but that was all. And so he seized the earliest chance to break out from the crowd and give me that most expressive hug, disappeared into the crowd, and swiftly left town.

The moment I could escape the throng of visitors, my first visit was to this private den. I had been absent twenty-eight months, but I had a total recall of my collection: how they had been stored, how one related to another across the room or jostled for shelf space with a third. I knew in which direction I turned at my desk to rest tired or questing eyes on an Ogun here, an Esu there; I knew which corner Osanyin reposed in with his skeletal birds, cowrie beads, and train of leather thongs, where the divination tray was propped against the bamboo support, and where, I would joke, a field of force was generated between a phallus-burdened monkey and a caryatid with a split vulva. And there were the bronze miniatures whose patina I caressed as I strolled between the bamboo shelves that I had constructed myself, the uprights festooned with ancestral masks or elaborately carved hunter's fly whisks. Now all I saw were gaps, clamorous absences.

I asked questions, obtained vague answers from my wife. . . . Oh, some of the items had been sent for restoration and then kept for their own safety . . . anyway, Professor This or That would speak to me about them later. Something was wrong, I knew, but I chose to be patient. There were, in any case, more pressing concerns that had been created by my absence.

They came like a mournful delegation to break the news of a family bereavement—an uncle, a cousin-in-law, a mother-in-law, an elderly family dependent; and of course, lurking in the background, ready to interject some balm or whisk me away to some place of recovery was—OBJ. They judged that the moment was right, having allowed me a few days to settle back into domesticity, be reabsorbed into a living community, but also to recover from the overpowering waves of well-wishers. Now there was this family matter to be settled, a breach to be healed. I listened to voices of entreaty, numbed . . .
You
have to remember, whatever it takes, he is still your brother. The important thing is
that we are able to give thanks to God for your safe return. Add this to the list of
the trials that you underwent; even though you did not know it at the time, this loss
is part of those trials nonetheless. Only God knows what he has in store as compensation, but certainly he means to make restitution a hundredfold. You have
your family, your children; your standing in the world is a thing of envy in the
minds of thousands you've never heard of. . . . Family is family, no matter what . . .
and on and on and on.... The case was still with the police. They were waiting for me to return before they could close the files. As the owner of the stolen or missing goods, only I could give them instructions to do so. If I could find my way to doing this as soon as possible, then we could all get over the nightmare and put it behind us.

They had done their duty. I thanked them. I replied that I had listened carefully to what they had to say and assured them that I had taken the disaster stoically. I had no interest whatever in exacting the appropriate penalty from the scoundrel. As far as I was concerned, there was no case, there was to be no criminal pursuit, and the case should simply be allowed to lapse. None of them should, however, expect that I would go to the police station or write a letter asking that the case be discontinued. Just let it lapse. If they wanted me to get over this blow as quickly as possible, it would be the only way—that it be dropped like a stone into a pond.
Finis!

They remained worried. It seemed to them a kind of closure but one that lacked an impermeable casing. Yes, they were in full agreement. It would be asking too much of me to take the active step of approaching the police. But suppose they brought the officer in charge of the case to me and I gave him instructions? I considered this, then thought up an even better idea for my peace of mind—I wanted so desperately to be alone. Look, I proposed, why don't you write the letter? Make it short and to the point:
I, Wole Soyinka, complainant in
the matter of the stolen antiquities, hereby declare that I do not wish to pursue any
criminal charges and hereby authorize you to close the case.
Something along those lines. Just write it and I'll sign it. I don't even wish to read it. Write it now, right now. I want the matter closed.

They all turned to my friend Femi Johnson. He had been part of the conspiracy from the beginning, though he had said nothing so far, since this was basically a family matter. Quickly, he wrote the short one-paragraph letter. I signed it. Then there was some hemming and hawing. I looked around at the faces; obviously they were not done.... Well, there is still the family matter. Family matter? What family?
Well, your brother . . . when can he come to see you? He
has to know that you've forgiven him.