I didn’t bother to open the windows or to air out the rooms. There was nothing left to do until we received instructions from the family.
I sat in the darkness of the living room and waited.
When Jorge came, he didn’t bother to knock. He simply came thumping up the stairs, dragging his leg on the floor and leaving scratches behind him.
“Where are they?” He said.
I looked at him and did not answer.
“Well,” he said. “Well. What will I say to them in the capital about this? Tell me that, you thing?”
I took his hand in mine and looked up at him.
Already, I could feel myself slowing down. The project was ended. I had done what I was supposed to do.
“I tried,” I said to him. “But no matter how I tried, I couldn’t capture that light.”
Of course, he didn’t understand.
He’s not like you and I.
But it’s all right. It’s all right. Someday, Fermi and Ana will return and when they do, perhaps it will be my turn to fly.
Budo,
Or The Flying Orchid
By Tade Thompson
“Being desirous, on the other hand, to obviate the misunderstanding and disputes which might in future arise from new acts of occupation (prises de possession) on the coast of Africa; and concerned, at the same time, as to the means of furthering the moral and material well-being of the native populations;"
There is a story told in my village about the man who fell from the sky. The British also tell this tale in their history books, but it is a mere paragraph, and they invert the details.
In October 1884 I was a Yoruba translator for a British trading outpost. This man from the sky, we called him Budo. He was in the custody of the English, who questioned him. They tortured him with heat and with cold and with the blade, but they did not know what answers would satisfy. I know this because I carried their words to him, and his silence back to them. His manner was mild and deferent at all times, but they held him in isolation. For good reason they considered him dangerous. I will explain this later.
One afternoon while most of the English were sleeping a white man arrived at the gate demanding admission. One of the Sikh sentries told me he was a scout, and appeared bruised, half-naked and exhausted. He was too out of breath to speak, although he seemed keen to give his report. Kenton, the NCO of the military contingent, asked one of my brothers to bring water while he soothed the scout. The man took two gulps, splashed some on his face, then looked up at Kenton. He said one word.
“French.”
The scout vomited over the floor.
Kenton ordered the men to revive him, but I saw the fear on his face, though at the time I did not know what “French” meant. He also doubled the guard and conferred with other white men. I remained at the periphery and kept quiet and still. Experience had taught me that they often forgot about my presence when I remained silent.
“Let me tell you about the French,” said one of the enlisted men. “They’re very dirty, you savvy? Never do they wash. Eat frogs, don’t they? Kill their royals with a goolly-tine.”
“What’s this goo-lly-tine?” I asked.
The man made a chopping motion across his own throat, then guffawed. I could not imagine the spilling of royal blood and I thought to myself what curious creatures these French must be.
At that moment Kenton strode out of the Commanding Officer’s office, red faced in that way white men get when they are drunk or angry. His gait was too assured and stable for inebriation, and besides, I had never seen Kenton imbibe. He was sober in all manner of things. He was, as he passed me, muttering to himself.
“Make ready. Make ready. All the fornicating heathen gods! Make ready, he says.” Kenton stopped, swivelled and stabbed me in the chest with his index finger. “You. Get me the Black. Right now. No, wait. Clean him up and give him some water and corn meal. Then bring him to the office.”
Budo sat cross-legged on the ground and ate with his hands, slowly, deliberately, concentrating on each morsel. I tried to speak but he held up his hand. He was one who favoured full attention on any task at hand. I therefore concentrated on his features while waiting. He was darker than most, lanky, with sunken cheekbones. His hair had grown out in captivity, but it was not tangled. He had a Widow’s Peak but large eyes dominated his face. His muscles were flat, like a blanket on his bones. He wore a tattered, filthy loin cloth of indeterminate colour and powerful stench.
I had grown soft in the house of the oppressors and I am ashamed to report that I could not stand the sight of him, used as I was to more genteel surroundings.
He drank water in the same way he ate and I grew impatient. From Budo’s cell I could hear the steady hammer of the brothers securing the fortifications and the regular footfalls indicating the drills of soldiers preparing themselves. The predominant smell in the cell came from the outhouse. This was by design.
When Budo looked my way I felt more naked than he. “Tell me why they want me.”
I did.
He stood. “Take me to Kenton.”
“Change your clothes,” I said, offering him some cotton shorts, but he would not take them.
“There is no time for that.”
At this point I should probably tell you why the English wanted Olufemi Budo when they should have been counting their Enfield rifles and begging their gods for a functioning Maxim.
I have mentioned that Budo fell from the sky. Nobody saw him fall exactly, but some fishermen discovered him in a palm tree one morning, injured, unconscious and wearing a peculiar contraption made of leather and strips of rubber. It was a system of belts and bladders that none of the villagers understood enough to save. When he regained consciousness the first thing Budo asked for was his harness, but nobody understood what he meant. His Yoruba was correct, if stilted and precise. He suffered from malaria and had several fractures which the bone-setter took care of. They also fed him agbo iba until his fever broke.
Our village was a sleepy place about a hundred miles from the west bank of the Niger. We used to be an occasional reservoir for the transatlantic slave trade before it was abolished. Then we became a reservoir for enforced labour without pay, which I could not distinguish from slavery, but the British priest assured me this was the better condition. Honest labour, he called it. They made us build infrastructure—roads, houses, railroads—designed solely for the purpose of taking goods from the interior to the coast where ships waited to sail for Liverpool and Portsmouth.
Before Budo landed on us our weapons were cutlasses, spears, amulets, charms, bows and arrows and leather vests, none of which worked against English steel or gunpowder. The mounted raiders from the Oyo Empire defeated us with ease when they needed slaves.
There were no raids while he recovered. He hobbled around on a thick stick staring at everything from the mud used for mortar to the umbilici of newborn babies. He looked at millet harvests and rubber trees. He sometimes asked if anyone had seen a flying orchid, but we did not understand him.
From the outset he was an object of curiosity in the village. Children followed him about making fun of his shamble or his strange pronunciation of Yoruba words. He garnered a lot of attention from the young ladies as well. It is not hard to intuit why. He was not one of us and hence had mystery. He did not speak much, and one could project celestial intent on his most mundane action. He had preternatural interest in everyone and everything around him. I am unsure if he deflowered any of the admirers, but the smiles and significant looks were suggestive.