You Must Set Forth at Dawn (31 page)

The question that surfaced decades later, however, was this: Just what artifact was it that the British civil servant snatched from Frobenius? The real
Ori
Olokun
? Or a substitute by the wily German explorer and collector?

AN ORI OLOKUN WAS on display at the Ife Museum, but any serious art or archaeology student knew it to be a travesty. The whereabouts of the real head had long remained the subject of much speculation, with no real agreement emerging, but its loss continued to rankle in a few knowledgeable minds. As if to place one in a state of permanent annoyance, the image that had been adopted for a national stamp had been taken from the fake head in the Ife Museum. Across the waters from the West African coast, a piece that was either the original or its identical twin had been reproduced on postcards, which are still on sale at the British Museum.

More intimately galling to the university community at Ile-Ife—at least, those whose disciplines touched upon such matters—was that it was the Ife Museum simulacrum, a piece of unparalleled ugliness, that was used—just as on the postage stamp—as the icon of the university crest. To this peeved community also belonged the ancients of Ife, who had known the real
Ori Olokun
and were subjected to the indignity of occasionally seeing the fake piece proudly displayed in its glass case in the museum at Ile-Ife. Compared to the classical proportions of the real head—color plates of which appear in a number of books under speculative, indeed sometimes deliberately obscurantist, notes—the museum piece is squat, amateurish, and misproportioned. Among our circle, it earned only contempt, captured in a nickname bestowed on it in a fit of disgust:
Ipako Elede, “
the Back of a Pig's Head.” And now these three dons—one of whom was the author of that apt nickname—were seated in my office, facing me across the desk, quietly informing me that they not only knew where the real
Ori Olokun
was hidden but also who had taken it away!

Brecht, Genet, Cheik N'dao, or whoever it was that had occupied my last hour or two vanished into nothingness or irrelevance. The university itself ceased to exist, or, perhaps more accurately, it shed its ivory-tower pretensions and finally justified its existence. The walls of my office dissolved in mists of ancient legend, turning my three interlocutors briefly into three sons of Oduduwa. From across time, I heard only their plea for the restoration of their being,
my
being, to its original repleteness. I could already see that usurper,
Ogbeni Ipako Elede,
being finally thrown on the dung heap where it belonged and a triumphal procession along the ancient route, accompanied by all the purification rituals, ending with the setting of the authentic representation on the minipodium of the museum. What a feast would fittingly accompany this return! I was outwardly impassive—an instinctive freeze, I have since learned, takes over at such moments—so impassive that my visitors thought that they had failed to arouse my interest. Inwardly, however—if only they had known!—I was dancing to some music, a sublime music of the spheres into which their words were absorbed as lyrics even as they were uttered, for what the threesome were actually suggesting was that
Ori Olokun
could, and should, be brought home!

“... you see? We recalled that you expressed a very strong opinion about the way the problem of the FESTAC mask was handled.” The reminder brought me back to the present. “We were wondering—and the dean of faculty agrees, we discussed it with him and he urged us to speak with you—well, considering your closeness to the head of state... maybe some way could be found to bring back
Ori Olokun.
”

I found my voice somehow. “And where exactly is it now?”

I could not believe our luck!
Ori Olokun,
these colleagues were telling me, was not locked up in a national museum with fortifications, guards, electronic monitoring devices, crisscrossing laser beams, robotic strangler guards, and all the rest, but was displayed in a private gallery, not even a public one but a kind of studio-gallery, owned by a famous artist cum architect! They had known this for a year, and they claimed to know who had spirited the bust out of the country. There were some pertinent questions to be asked, however, such as: “If you knew this a year ago, why are you coming out with it only now?”

“Well, we were keeping a kind of watch. We didn't quite know what to do after Labiyi brought the news. We thought of confronting Pierre—since he admitted taking it out—but decided that might result in his alerting the possessor, who is a very close friend of his. And the head would disappear once again, maybe this time forever—at least in our lifetime. But now he's leaving the university, and that link will be lost....”

Olabiyi had been teaching in an exchange program at the University of São Paulo. Pierre Verger, a respected ethnologist—indeed, perhaps the pioneer of Yoruba ethnological studies in South America, with
Dieux d'Afrique
and others—had been a visiting scholar in the Congos, France, Brazil, and West Africa while we were still padding toward primary school in bare feet with snotty noses. Yai had met Pierre at a party given by the alleged possessor, the architect Carybe, in Bahia. Let Biyi—Olabiyi—take up the narrative.

“The party was held in the gallery, which is actually at the back of the main house but detached from it. You gain entrance to it by a separate external staircase, quite high up. The gallery contained not merely Carybe's works, finished or in various stages of completion—canvases, designs, as well as sculptures— but art pieces from all over the world. Seated on one of the shelves was—my eyes were simply tugged there, directly—
Ori Olokun
! The
real
thing! You noticed the difference at once. This was nothing like that abortion sitting in Ife Museum. Beautiful! The proportions were unmistakable. I could only gasp with disbelief—but I said nothing.

“All evening, my mind was in turmoil. How on earth did it get there? We all continued to make small talk, but I had only the one thing on my mind. Who had spirited it out? How long had it been stored away on that shelf? Well, as the evening wore on, I found myself seated on the stair landing, just outside the gallery. I was joined there by Baba—Pierre—and then I simply could not keep it to myself any longer. I asked him if he had noticed the bronze head, and he said he had. I asked, ‘Is that not
Ori Olokun
?' and he nodded. So I said, ‘What of the head sitting in a glass case in Ife?' Pierre snorted. ‘But everyone knows that's a fake. What you see on that shelf is the authentic head.' Well, I decided that, since he was so forthcoming, I might as well ask the next question: ‘How did Carybe get hold of it?'

“That was when he put his finger to his lips—exactly like this—and said, ‘Shh. Don't tell anyone, but—I brought it here.' ”

I was numbed. Pierre? Biyi continued, “At that moment, I decided that I had already betrayed too much curiosity. So I mumbled something like ‘Really?' And he reaffirmed it. I tried my best to look as if it was really no concern of mine, looked for some way to change the subject, and we both continued with our drinks on the landing.”

My other two visitors nodded to confirm that the story was as they had heard it already. Abimbola added, “He kept it to himself until he returned to the country, and then he confided in us.”

“Over the past year we've kept returning to the subject, tossing around one course of action after the other,” Isola said.

“But it could have disappeared from there in the meantime,” I interjected, pointing out the obvious.

“Ye-es,” conceded Labiyi. “But I don't think so. Carybe struck me as one of those collectors who simply enjoy the thrill of having something like that in their possession. You know, just having it there. Think how long we've had that
Ipako Elede
in the museum—that tells you roughly how long he and Pierre have had the real thing in their possession. If they'd wanted to sell it or dispose of it somehow, they'd have done so before now.”

That made sense. And in any case, what mattered was that we now had a lead. We had a sighting that was less than two years old, we had a physical location, we had a live witness and a confession, and the transporter of stolen goods was right on campus. The trail, in comparison to past chases, could be held to be unseasonably warm.

“It's a delicate situation,” I commented. “Pierre has a formidable reputation all over the world, including right here, within our own academia. We are all friends of his.”

“It is tricky,” Akin admitted.

“And he's a foreign national,” Olabiyi added.

“That's why we think it should be handled from the very top. Somehow we must get the head of state involved.”

Here followed a long silence, generated mostly from my side. What was going through my mind was, needless to say, my earlier, hardly edifying encounters with this very head of state. Against the universal wisdom that cautioned “Once bitten, twice shy” stood the summons of the ancient head of a mythical ancestor:
Ori Olokun
!

WE HAD MENDED fences since the civil war, had achieved a large measure of reconciliation, thanks to our mutual friend, Ojetunji Aboyade, and my role in the 1977 Festival of Black and African Arts. First, in response to his plea, I had saved the festival from collapse by a successful appeal to President Léopold Senghor to bring his country, Senegal, back into the festival after a difference of opinion—it all had to do with the ideological ordering of the central event, the Colloquium, and it resulted in Senegal's withdrawal and a threatened boycott by the Francophone countries. Next, I myself withdrew on a different matter of principle: the chairman of the festival, Admiral Fingesi, had insisted on overriding decisions of experts, from his position of military authority and cultural ignorance. Finally, however, with the actual festival having proved a debacle, I was prevailed upon to return and stage a closing event. Fortunately, it proved successful, wiped out some of the sour taste in the mouths of most of the visitors, and sent them to their various homes with a much-tempered memory of their overall experience. Obasanjo had been very moved by the farewell event and grateful for the unexpected reprieve of the national image—indeed, his childlike appreciation had been quite touching, revealing an unexpected aspect of the soldier.

All that did not mean, however, that I was prepared to put my life in the hands of this erratic being, and thinking of what—I knew immediately—we had to do, there could be no room for a dubious ally to the rear. The four of us in that room shared the same thought: this was not a situation that could go the diplomatic route; the lesson from FESTAC had made that clear. Someone would have to go over to Brazil and take back what was ours. If anything went wrong, we would need the full weight of a government behind us.

I saw my colleagues to the door, promising to let them know within a day or two what course I had decided upon. The first step did not require much thinking. I called up our intermediary, Aboyade—who was always equipped with Obasanjo's latest secret number—and asked him to arrange an urgent meeting with our awkward friend, adding that it was nothing I could discuss over the telephone. He arranged a meeting for that weekend. For me, work was over for the day, possibly for the rest of the week. My mind had begun to oversee details of an unorthodox mission, and I knew it would not admit any other thought until every step—with all likely variations—was clearly laid out.

We met in his Dodan Barracks residence. For once, this was a brainstorming dinner that could accommodate only one topic. Obasanjo's Owu eyes twinkled with mischief and glowed with the ardor of a race warrior. By the following morning, a task force had emerged: his foreign minister, Henry Adefowope, and an Ambassador Fagbenle, nicknamed “Docky.” We agreed that Olabiyi Yai and I should travel to Brazil, locate the quarry if it was still in Bahia, and, if possible, bring it back.
If
possible? I had already resolved that if
Ori Olokun
would simply do its own part and manifest itself before me, it would end its exile almost immediately, journeying back in the diplomatic bag to its home on that usurped podium in Ife Museum!

I did not allow the feast of love with this uncertain ally to smother my instincts. Matters could go awry, and we would find the ruler of a hundred million people losing no sleep over the loss of two citizens. Obasanjo, I knew, was capable of ordering his foreign minister to negotiate with Brazil to keep us in one of its jails for a few years until the scandal blew over, maybe as a condition for continuing trading relations between the two nations. That knowledge was sufficient safety; it was left to me to negotiate our own insurance policy in advance. I insisted not only that we would travel only on diplomatic passports but that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs must issue a letter to our embassy in Brasilia, instructing its diplomats to lend all necessary assistance to bearers who would be arriving there on a confidential mission. I would copy and store those letters before departure. In the meantime, the university should take on the responsibility of “administratively” delaying Pierre Verger's departure, ensuring that he did not arrive in Brazil while we were present. How that was done, Docky shrugged, was up to us.