“Haba, Elvis!” Redemption exploded. “It is not like I am asking you to hawk dis stuff, okay? I am just asking you to help me wrap it. Ten naira per wrap — now are you in or out?”
Elvis picked up the sample wrap. It was about an inch and a half long and as thick. He could probably wrap a few hundred in a night, and at ten naira per wrap, it came to a lot of money.
“I’m in.”
“Good. Now see how I do it. You take dis small spoon and you measure one — not full, okay? Den you empty it into de fingers of dis glove. One by one, one by one. Dat is one spoonful per finger. Okay, see?”
Elvis watched Redemption measure and deposit five spoonfuls into the five fingers of the glove.
“Next you cut it like dis, one inch above the powder, and only one at a time. Den you tie each packet closed, tight, tight like dis. Make sure you finish one packet before you cut de next, okay?”
Elvis nodded as Redemption tied a series of knots that would have made Baden-Powell happy to know that his work in bringing the Boy Scouts to Africa had not been wasted.
“Den you take each tied packet and roll it like dis, hitting it with dis small hammer like dis, so dat de powder is packed tight, okay? Den you put it inside dis condom like dis and tie it closed, cut, and again use de hammer like dis, see? Den you put it inside dis small plastic bag like so, den again use de hammer, see? Den take dis black electrician’s tape, cut it like dis and wrap it around and around and around at least twelve times, see? Den use the hammer again, see?”
Elvis could hardly believe it; the packet looked like a small pellet, no bigger than the sample. Redemption bounced it a few times on the coffee table.
“See? It is strong. Next you put de five packets inside de fingers of another glove and cut and tie, den it is ready. You see dat de glove is de kind used by doctor? Dat’s because it is strong but light, you see?”
Elvis picked up the five packets that Redemption had made in what seemed like ten minutes.
“You work fast.”
“And good,” Redemption said. “Don’t worry, you go learn quick. See, Elvis, dis is new business for me, and if it go well and I get plenty job, den you don’t have to work in dat club again, eh? When we go to de club we go go as rich men.”
Elvis rolled the packets contemplatively between his palms as though he were a psychic trying to guess at their contents.
“Okay,” he sighed, and hunched over the coffee table. He reached for a glove and began to make packets like Redemption. It was slow and tedious work and he felt himself getting lightheaded. Noticing the glazed expression beginning to drop over Elvis’s face, Redemption sent him out for some fresh air and to buy beer.
They worked all night long, and by the time the city was waking up they had finished the last of the powder in the bowl. In a small black leather bag were the tied packets. By Elvis’s count there were at least five hundred. He had not worked as fast as Redemption and had made only about one hundred and fifty of them. Without saying anything, Redemption took a wad of money from his pocket and counted out fifteen hundred naira. He secured the money with a rubber band and handed it to Elvis, who took it and sat there in a daze, weighing the money in his hand. He had never made this much money for less than a month’s work. Now, in one night, here it was.
“Next time I go deduct money as per my cut, but dis time is beginner’s dash,” Redemption said.
Elvis nodded and sat back.
“Put dat money away.”
Without a word, Elvis shoved the wad into his pocket. He lit a cigarette and stared at the naked lightbulb in the ceiling. Insects were buzzing around it even though it was losing its power in the face of the sun stabbing its way through the slats of the window louvers.
“Can I ask you something?”
“You can ask, I might not answer.”
“How do the people who own the cocaine know that you won’t fill the packets with sugar and keep the real stuff for yourself?”
“Elvis? What is dis? Don’t go getting funny ideas,” Redemption replied sternly.
“Me? What do I know about cocaine? But why do they trust you?”
“So you are saying I am a thief?”
Elvis laughed. “Of course not. Just wondering.”
“Listen, Elvis, don’t wonder. Don’t even joke about dis. Dese people, dey can kill you like dis.” Redemption snapped his fingers for emphasis. “Dey don’t have to trust me. Dey know I know what will happen if I cheat dem. So please don’t even joke about it.”
Elvis smoked in silence, while Redemption sat staring into space. Finding a sudden spurt of energy, Redemption stood up. He cracked his knuckles, complaining about how sore the work made his hands. Picking up the bag, he headed for the door. He stopped when Elvis did not seem to be moving.
“Listen, Elvis, I have to go and deliver dis stuff.”
“Okay,” Elvis replied, still not moving.
“And you need to leave.”
Elvis got up reluctantly. He was tired and did not want to battle the buses to get back home, but he had no choice.
Outside, Redemption hailed a taxi.
“You better get a cab too,” he warned. “You are carrying a lot of money.”
“Sure,” Elvis replied. “Redemption?”
“Yes?”
“Why did we have to tie those packets so securely? How will people who buy them open them?”
“Dey are for export; to States. A courier will swallow dem. Depend on de person capacity dey fit to swallow like between two hundred and four hundred. Dat’s around two to four kilos. Dat’s why we packed dem like dat. So dey don’t burst in de stomach, and de last glove make it easy to swallow. Ah, here’s my cab.”
Redemption opened the door, then hesitated.
“Do I need to tell you not to tell anyone of dis?”
Elvis shook his head.
“Good.”
Then he was gone. Elvis stood for a while watching the taillights of the cab disappear in the early-morning Lagos fog. He then turned and headed for Maroko on foot. He needed to think.
The molue did not come to a complete stop, but Elvis jumped off anyway, running for a short distance with the momentum. The huge sprawling area in front of him, full of the cry of commerce, was Tejuosho Market, one of the biggest in Lagos. Armed with a few hundred naira from the fifteen hundred Redemption had given him, he was on his way to buy some new clothes, as the ones he had were falling apart and not really suitable for his nightclub gig. He paused and lit a cigarette before entering the crush.
The market was for the most part comprised of open-air stalls. Everywhere, traders squatted or sat on floor mats. The closed stalls further into the market, housing the electronics and clothes shops, were known in local parlance as imported side.
He navigated the colors — yellow gari, red tomatoes and chilies, purple aubergines, brown and even orange bread, dun groundnuts, yellow-green guavas and red-yellow mangoes. Stalls with children calling in husky voices “Coca-Cola! Is a cold!” while hunkered over wooden boxes housing chunks of ice nestling bottles of Coca-Cola, Fanta, Sprite and plastic bags of cold water under wet blankets of jute sacking.
Pausing by a cart selling secondhand books, he rifled though, looking for something to buy. There was a set of dog-eared Penguin Classics. Elvis pulled a Dickens out, A Tale of Two Cities, his favorite, and read the first line: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” Smiling, he closed the book. That was the perfect description of life in Lagos, he thought. There were also novels by West African authors: Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart; Mongo Beti’s The Poor Christ of Bomba; Elechi Amadi’s The Concubine; Camara Laye’s The Radiance of the King; Mariama Ba’s So Long a Letter; and thrillers like Kalu Okpi’s The Road and Valentine Alily’s The Cobra. He’d read them all and ran his fingers along their spines nostalgically. He settled for a torn copy of Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment and a near-pristine copy of James Baldwin’s Another Country. He paid the asked price without haggling. Books, he felt, were sacred and should therefore not be bartered over.