Afikpo, 1979
He fetched water from the tap in the yard for his evening bath, whistling the theme song from Casablanca. Aunt Felicia cleared her throat loudly and, when he didn’t stop whistling, spoke.
“Elvis, stop dat! You know it is taboo to whistle at night. You will attract a spirit.”
“Sorry,” he said.
Afraid that the gathering shadows were now full of spirits and ghosts, he washed hurriedly, out in the yard, as close as possible to where she polished storm lanterns, soaking the air with the scent of kerosene.
“Wash behind your ears and scrub dose muddy feet,” she called out without looking up from her work.
“I have,” he replied.
But a stern look from her soon had him doing as he was told. Drying quickly, he scampered toward the house.
“Bucket!”
How did she always know? And without even looking, he mumbled to himself. Retracing his steps, he noticed a movement in the bush and his breath caught in his throat. There it was again, a ghostly movement from behind the outhouse, where the generator was kept. He willed the scream to erupt, but just before it did, the generator thumped crankily into life. The shadow waved. It was Macaulay, the electrician.
Back inside, Elvis began to shiver in the slight chill of Harmattan. Aunt Felicia, not knocking, marched in on his nakedness, and he hastily stuffed a towel in front of him.
“A thimble would have sufficed. Here, let me help you rub lotion,” she said, grabbing the jar of yellow pomade and pulling the unresisting Elvis toward her.
He watched her unscrew the lid slowly, the sickly smell of the cheap pomade making him lightheaded. Deliberately, she scooped the thick yellow goop into her palm, fixing him with a look that made him catch his breath sharply. The chirping cicadas outside seemed to shrink the room around them. She rubbed the pomade between her palms, smiling when she saw him lick his lower lip.
“Why are you licking your lips? Are you hungry?”
He shook his head, not taking his eyes off her nipples, which had hardened through the thin fabric of her blouse.
“Come closer,” she said, parting her legs, skirt riding up her thighs.
He shuffled toward her.
“Closer.”
He was standing in the V between her thighs — so close, her knees brushed the sides of his legs slightly. He shivered: the way he did when he had gone for an inoculation and the nurse brushed his buttock with a sterile swab before pushing the needle home. Even the sharp jab of it had not made the tightness go away. He felt the same now.
She ran her hands over his arms, torso, head and legs, leaving a thin film of grease and goose bumps rashing across his body. Somewhere in the night, a bird called loudly. As he turned to the sound, his towel slipped off and his erection stood swaying between them with the weight of its wrong and the need of it. She ignored it until his whole body was gleaming like a gladiator ready for battle, then, with a gentle stroke, oiled his penis from root to tip.
“Naughty boy,” she chided with her breathy laugh, and left him to the sweetness of his agony.
AGERATUM CONYZOIDES L.
(Igbo: Akwukwo-nwosinaka)
This branched herb is hairy, scented and very common to old farmlands and open spots in the forest. Its oval leaves have sawtoothed edges that grow from the hairy stalk. When it does have flowers, they are violet and crowded in cluster heads at the end of the stem.
A decoction of this plant is used as a lotion for scabies and drunk as a remedy for fever. The leaves are juiced and the juice used to cure eye inflammations. The leaves, crushed and mixed with water, are used as an emetic for poison.
Every dibia knows that with the right words, the purpose of any medicine can be changed, so when the right words are spoken over the emetic solution, it causes one to vomit up bad luck and other things such as charms implanted deep inside the body by evil sorcerers and enemies. These charms take many shapes: odd coins, nails, pins, razor blades, small bottles with murky decoctions, even locked padlocks.
The right words spoken over the juice before it is dropped into the eyes will open one’s psychic sight. This is to be used with care, for if one sees things others do not and speaks carelessly, or without the office of the dibia, he or she may be considered insane.
THIRTEEN
They are sorcerers beyond power. They are the star’s end; the star’s beginning.
Great care is taken not to provoke these children, because their angry words have real consequences. There is a ritual to circumscribe this power, called the clipping of the tongue, and parents of these children are advised to perform it as soon as possible, preferably hours after birth.
Lagos, 1983
Sunday looked up suspiciously as Elvis set a small keg of palm wine down at his feet. Elvis had slept in and had only left Redemption’s place an hour before. It had given him plenty of time to consider the incident with the Colonel the night before. He was still a little surprised that he had not known about the Colonel’s existence, even as a rumor. Redemption explained that there were many things about Lagos, and in fact Nigeria, that most of the people who lived here were blithely ignorant about. Still, Elvis argued, it was odd.
The two things that stayed with him most about the night before were the fact that he could have died and that Redemption had risked his life to help him. “For friendship, dat’s all,” Redemption explained this morning. Armed with this new sense of mortality, Elvis decided he should try and talk to his father, mend things, before it was too late. By the time he set off for home, however, it was already late afternoon and night was not far off. Just outside Redemption’s house he saw a palm wine seller who had fresh palm wine, so he bought some as a gift for his father.
“What is dis?” Sunday demanded.
“A son can’t buy his own father a drink?”
“Since when?”
Elvis did not reply. Instead he reached for his father’s empty glass tankard. He filled it and passed it to him without saying a word. Blowing specks of tree sediment off, Sunday took a deep draught and sighed happily.
“It is fresh,” he said, surprised.
“I bought it straight from the tapper an hour ago,” Elvis replied, lighting a cigarette.
“Must you?” Sunday asked, nodding toward the cigarette.
“I must.”
Sunday emptied his tankard and filled it up again. Without a word he passed it to Elvis, who took it, blew the head off and took a deep drink. The alcohol tasted cool and sweet, like a yeast drink. He could see how easy it was to become hooked on this wine.
He remembered how, when he was a child, his father would send him to buy wine fresh from the tappers. He would scamper into the forest of palm trees, the money clutched tightly in his sweating palm, feeling important. He would watch the wine tappers climb trees three, sometimes four stories high with nothing more than a creaky vine harness, to fill their gallon jugs from clay pots tied to the trees’ jugulars, where they collected the wine slowly. It was a dangerous job, and when the tappers fell, as they invariably did, they sometimes died.
Waiting at the bottom of the trees with his jug, Elvis would watch the tappers come down, choosing whom to buy from by playing rock, paper, scissors with himself. Having chosen, he would give them the money and wait for them to fill up his jug from theirs. But they would always pour a little wine into the drinking gourds they carried tied to their waistbands first.