You Must Set Forth at Dawn (32 page)

BACK ON CAMPUS, I plunged into the surrounding bush for the routine of sorting out my thoughts. It was clear that for the recovery of
Ori Olokun,
I was prepared to dine with the lord of the satanic kingdom himself, even without the aid of the long spoon. I was more than ready to make a Faustian pact—to sell my soul in return for that hollow but weighty mass, hallowed by my history!

I would have preferred to spend a full weekend in one of my deepest hunting grounds, day and night, but that indulgence had to make way for the urgency of further preparations. An afternoon around the campus had to suffice. Calmly, sheltered from all human disturbance, I considered what we were about to do. Why was I plunging—at forty-four—into these melodramatic waters with both feet, and fully clothed? I had never been to Brazil and knew that country only for its large population of Yoruba descendants, mostly mestizized from the slave era, and their preservation of the world of the
orisha,
whose faithful looked toward Ile-Ife as their origin. It was in Brazil that the Yoruba world had most penetratingly captured the soul of the Americas to the south and the Caribbean islands: Cuba, Haiti, Dominica, Jamaica. The
orisha
are still alive in Brazil—their rites, their liturgy, their sacral calendar, their suffusion of popular consciousness—how much more in the pristine forests of the continent that spawned these deities!

It is not everywhere that one feels the pulse of the
orisha,
nor are all their pulsations the same. Away from human habitation, for instance, in the moist forests, one experiences their emanations largely in a serene mode, osmotic and intimate; in other places, they are far more abrasive, intrusive, even querulous. The microclimates of the western part of Nigeria often astonish with their quiltwork variety of growth. Tropical vegetation, home to pristine groves, sheers abruptly away into savannah and next into brushland that is brittle with movement, albeit restrained. There, the slightest wind is a prelude to raspy motions, and one can almost hear the scurrying of ants, inviting dialogue with the intruder or launching questions—in such terrain, one is almost prepared to see the contumacious deity Esu metamorphose from an anthill and perch atop its mud spire, full of impish designs against the world. Within tropical lushness, my preferred haven for meandering, time stands still, consciousness is muted. One is enfolded in the amplitude of Nature, where the incongruities of existence are dissolved or absorbed into numinous forces of which each deity stands as a wordless medium. In these close forests, intuition reigns supreme.

No worshiper at any shrine, I do not hesitate to extract from those moments in the forest—after an internal review of events—either an admonishment and urge to desist from a course of action or an end to all vacillation, buttressed with a pledge of absolution. I feel welcomed by and integrated with forces that sit in silent contemplation over the acts of men, judging or merely marveling. In the lair of deities I reminded myself that we were about to embark on a mission of restitution. In the compressed time at my disposal, there was no indulgence in prolonged contemplation, much less meditation— whatever measures we would take in good faith would have the blessing of all the
orisha
and would readily answer the laws of humanity. I had taken the precaution of leaving my night lamp behind, so there was no temptation to spend the night roaming the woods. There was time left only for practical tasks, and these included hours of collective research in the university library, looking into whatever else had been written since Frobenius's encounter with the
Ori
Olokun.

FOUR DAYS LATER, Olabiyi Yai and I left for Rio de Janeiro, then traveled straight on to Brasilia. A message had gone ahead of us, and we were met by a representative from the embassy. Between Yai and myself, I do not recall that we had any cash that amounted to much. I had taken all the foreign currency in Femi's possession—it was not much, unfortunately. There was my credit card, which, thank goodness, was not too severely depleted. Nevertheless, we would have to conserve its credit as tightly as possible, leaving as much as we could for emergencies. The embassy in Brasilia would pay our hotel bill, but that was all. From then on, we were on our own.

I had barely time to observe what an artificial city Brasilia was and stroll through the authentic “people's quarters”—the humanized space—for about an hour before our flight was due to leave for Bahia. I was not interested in sightseeing anyway, my mind being focused on the distant gallery of an unsuspecting architect and the squatters on its shelves, as described by Labiyi. From one of those shelves,
Ori Olokun
beckoned, awaiting rescue and a rapturous welcome home. Nothing else had much reality.

We needed as much independence of movement as possible, and so, in Bahia, I rented a Volkswagen Beetle, mentally adding up the debit on that card with unaccustomed meticulousness. The story we had decided upon was that we were on an official mission to find a local architect who would collaborate in the redesigning of the Nigerian Embassy. I bought a camera, insisting on a bag that was designed more for a large film camera than a still version. We would take photos of the buildings that had been designed by Carybe—it all lent seriousness and genuineness to the cover of the mission.

With Yai reading the map, I drove into town, marveling at the interminable stretch of beaches, packed with humanity. It was the first time I had seen such a continuous stretch of sand, every square inch of it populated by a throng of sun worshipers, a chocolate gradation of skin tones that virtually ate up the white sands. Gradually we discovered that we had arrived on a holiday. It would appear that, at every drop of a work-free hour, the Brazilians repair to the beaches like lemmings. We drove into Bahia—it was virtually empty.

Rooms had been booked ahead of our arrival by the embassy. The moment we deposited our bags, we headed for Carybe's home to do some reconnoitering. There was no one at home—he had joined the rest of Brazil in their weekend homes, certainly somewhere along the beaches. The residential area where the house was situated was almost uniformly deserted. We drove up and down, I with my camera taking pictures of the neighborhood, for all the world like students of architecture or selective tourists. The residential part of Carybe's home was a low bungalow next to the road. Set far back was the gallery, its top floor visible over the wall of the compound. I could see the stairs leading up to it, the upper flight, and its landing, starkly exposed.

“You're sure that sculpture is up there, beyond that door we're looking at?”

“Oh, yes.”

I sighed. It had to be! I thought, if the gallery had been on terra firma, not suspended above the walls between earth and sky, tantalizing two criminals from the African continent, we would have returned at night, scaled the wall, broken in, and retrieved our property. Labiyi had assured me that there were no burglar alarm systems. It was a quiet, middle-class area, crime-free—well, that was about to change. Nevertheless, we returned at night, hoping that maybe, just maybe...

No, there was no maybe. The stairs and landing were floodlit, so brightly that I felt certain that they could be seen all the way from Brasilia. We consoled ourselves with a Brazilian dinner, my first. It was a Saturday. We were obliged to cool our heels all through Sunday, waiting for Carybe to return and open his house to hostile guests.

It was the longest Sunday I had ever known, but that made me absorb what Bahia had to offer even more intensely, especially the visit to the
candomble,
where the
iyalorixa
—priestess of the
candomble
—took one look at us and concluded right away that we were from the original land of the
orisha.
Clusters of phrases in the liturgy were familiar, despite some changes here and there in articulation and tonality, and of course there were elisions that had taken place over time. Even so, much of the Yoruba in that worship was still recognizable. Despite time and distance, the lyrics of the chants were especially faithful to the original. Indeed, some scholars go so far as to suggest that the purest forms of these liturgies may be found among the slave descendants of Bahia, not in Yorubaland itself, but that is typical of scholastic conceit. What mattered to us was that these worshipers had no doubts about the authenticity of their beliefs, their dances, their invocations, the jealously guarded usages and values that defined their unique identity as the
anago,
proud descendants of the Yoruba in Brazil, generations that had never abandoned their roots or let them wither. They danced. There was a possession. The
iyalorixa
prayed for us. I felt uplifted.

Out in the streets, it felt strange, most unreal, eating
akaraje,
the Brazilian identical twin of our very own
akara,
thousands of miles away from its original home, a delicacy—sometimes heavy, doughy cake—made from the paste of black-eyed peas, fried in huge pans, just as one might encounter on a street corner of Abeokuta or Ilesa, where making
akara
remains the domain of women. We cruised the streets, Labiyi showing me landmarks of interest, especially places that narrated the history of the slaves and their struggle for emancipation. There was a poignancy about that day, made all the more troubling by underlying thoughts of what had brought us to this vibrant outpost of the Yoruba people—a marked contrast to Bekuta. Frankly, I would have given anything to avoid such a day; it tended to make the mind somewhat mellow, the will flabby from nostalgic thoughts, a tendency to transcend space and history and merge with long-estranged relations. Perhaps it was the Sunday quiet of the streets, but I felt transported to a space of empathy with this living shard of a scattered past, indulging vicariously in the resilience that appeared to be the one consoling extract of a people's displacement. It was all very well for the innocent locals; the nefarious—or soon to be—needed to have both their feet on the ground, focused and honed to a simple, unambiguous goal that went by just one name: burglary! I still preferred to think of it as a kind of unilateral act of restitution, but—burglary by any other name was still burglary.

We left messages for Carybe on his doorstep, and he was not slow to contact us on his return. We met the following morning; he was an affable, relaxed professional who did not attempt to disguise his pleasure at our visit. We spun him the story of our mission. Was this architect the guilty one? Millionaires are notorious for hiring robbery gangs to break into the best-guarded art galleries and snatch a canvas, not just a miniature but the full tapestry-sized object of lust. Rolled up and transported in furniture stuffing or a dustbin, the artwork arrives at the den of the collector and the bemused felons are paid off, leaving the obsessed recluse to contemplate his captive mistress in solitude for the rest of his life. The fact that he dares not exhibit her to anyone—sometimes not even to close family—merely adds piquancy to his salivation! Was Carybe one of these? He did not appear to belong in the millionaire class, but the collector's lust never did discriminate between tycoon and impecunious artist.

Carybe invited us to dinner, just as expected. As we sat in his living room awaiting dinner, I silently swore that before I left Bahia, I would eat more than
akaraje
from his home! I would swallow an entire head, uncooked, yet simmering in his gallery! He served drinks. I sipped but tasted nothing. Though I was outwardly calm, my inner being was quivering. The evening proceeded as expected. While we were waiting, Carybe offered, quite logically, to show us his gallery. I had unslung my camera bag when we arrived; now I picked it up again as we carried our drinks and climbed the suspended stairs into his lair. The door was locked. With difficulty, I tamped down my anxiety as I watched our host fumble with a bunch of keys. What would we find? An empty space where once
Ori Olokun
had reigned? It had been years, after all, since Labiyi had last set eyes on this bronze piece. Suppose Carybe had disposed of it in the meantime?

THE MOMENT WE ENTERED, I received a shock—but what a most delectable shock this was, taunting yet bracing! There, right across the work desk and canvases piled against the wall, seated on the topmost shelf among a number of sculptural odds and ends in a magnificent indifference to the history-laden voyage that had brought it to an alien yet native land, was the long-sought masterpiece:
Ori Olokun.
The difference between this and the
thing
in the museum gallery of Ile-Ife was instantly obvious; in any case, I had seen photo plates of the authentic piece. This face belonged to those photographs— longer, refined, and anatomically well proportioned. It had the seriated lines with which I had become familiar through illustrations in numerous books, nearly all commentaries directing the reader to accept that the original had vanished mysteriously—and forever.

And then—was it a trick of the light? Or was there really a dark patch on its right cheek, just where Frobenius had written it would be, from that careless moment of “Eureka!” when one of the diggers had indeed “struck gold” and a piece had come off the bronze head before the searchers had even caught a glimpse of it? What Frobenius felt as they proceeded to probe the earth more reverently with their bare hands, bringing out their treasure trove to light, I tried my hardest to imagine. More critical, however, was the need to snatch my eyes away before a fire of lust lit up my innermost wish. I exchanged looks with Olabiyi, after which I ensured that the fevered eyes in my head did not again stray toward that spot of attraction. As for emotions, I concentrated on bending all shafts of hate—no, not on its present custodian but on the usurper far away in Ife Museum, whose image lorded over a national stamp, the university crest, and at least a half dozen other public symbols and logos.

Our host gave us a tour of his canvases, opened up his portfolio of designs, and promised to take us around the physical structures to which they had given birth—that would be the following day. My mind was a philistine blank. We descended for dinner. My heart beat more insanely than an erratic water pump. Some disembodied voice, however, did emerge from within me. It announced that I would like to return the following day and browse among his canvases at a more leisurely pace. I also wanted to take photos of some of his sketches—would that be all right with our host? He was agreeable but regretted that he might have to leave us for some time, since he had an appointment. That's all right, I said, just tell your house help to let us in. Biyi and I again exchanged quick glances. Would we really carry this off?