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CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

“I take it you want your salary early then?” So Taju was leaving.

“Any financial assistance would be greatly appreciated, sir.”

They say when one god is aggrieved he invites other gods to join him in seeking vengeance.

Baba Segi felt as if ten winds were whirling in his head. He felt the force of wrath and wondered what he had done to make the gods smite him. “Just take me to Teacher. I will pay you when we get there, if you want.”

“Thank you, sir.” There was no gratitude in his voice, just disquiet. He mulled over Iya Segi’s confession. Only a fool asks who struck a match when he sees billows of smoke on his rooftop. Iya Segi had brought an end to an eighteen-year companionship. He glanced at his boss, sitting there, stinking of vomit, but he did not feel any guilt. There was fear but no guilt. Baba Segi was twice his height and thrice his weight. He had seen him handle Bolanle; they didn’t call him a leopard because he had spots.

In silence, they drove. Baba Segi ignored the flies that were drawn to the stench of his garments.

Ordinarily, he would have slapped them off, but today he sat still and let them feed on him. Baba Segi was practicing being dead. He took intermittent deep breaths and wondered if life could drain from him if he drew one deep enough.

When Baba Segi put the money in Taju’s hand, he clutched his driver’s small fingers and looked deep into his face. Taju flinched and pulled away but Baba Segi didn’t relinquish his fingertips. “Will you not give me my keys before you go?” He was completely unaware that Taju’s bladder was

brimming. He took the keys and gave Taju his hand back. “Go well,” he urged.

“Thank you, sir.” Taju did not look back but marched across the road with long, swift strides.

Baba Segi returned to Teacher’s shack, wishing that his thick legs would buckle under him. He saw the ugliness of his surroundings: the bowed buildings; the shattered planks held together by moisture rising from festering gutters; the uneven roads that sighed dust clouds every time a car upset their calm. “No! This is not the place,” he repeated to himself.

There was a woman outside Teacher’s shack. Her thighs were bandaged in a micromini denim skirt and her breasts bound in a fuchsia boob tube that matched her lipstick. Any other day, Baba Segi would have made a snide comment about the rigidity with which she paced. “Can you breathe all right?” he might have asked, feigning concern. Or he might have said, “If I didn’t have a home full of wives and children, I would make you my bride.” It would have been said with a trivial, superior air, of course. To this, the woman would have replied, “Is it the way I walk you are interested in or the way I fuck?” Or she might have responded to his condescension with a loud hiss that would pursue him all the way to his destination. Ayikara women were desperate but they spat in the face of

insolence. Today, Baba Segi’s eyes were dim with melancholy; his wit would not be roused. He sniffed past the woman and bowed into Teacher’s shack.

The small space was full of men eager to drink the afternoon away. Many of them were already well on their way. The night guards defied sleep. They leaned their staffs on the wooden walls and dipped their fingers into their glasses to remove dead insects. Some had made guzzling whiskey their purpose for the day, as it had been the day before, and the day before that. They were all huddled together on low stools playing checkers and laughing at unrelated anecdotes. Baba Segi was irritated by their disregard for life’s many tragedies. Angry beads of sweat collected at his brow, careered through the furrows and formed tears at the tip of his nose. Teacher rose and beckoned to him.

“My life is ruined.” Baba Segi wiped his forehead with his palm. “I feel like I am in a pit of quicksand. All is dark, Teacher. All is dark.”

“Where there is hope, there is life.” Teacher absorbed his tale with compassion and

contentment. A sense of comradeship brewed within him; it was comforting to hear that another man had been stripped of his manhood. If he could live in the knowledge that his penis would never prise apart a woman’s lips, why couldn’t Baba Segi live with his predicament? At least he could soften a woman with his hardness.

“Where is the hope?”

“There is a rainbow at the mouth of every tunnel.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Hmm.” Teacher got up and refilled the glass that Baba Segi had emptied. “What I will say to you will seem like the words of a madman, but you must consider them.” He cast his shimmering eyes on Baba Segi’s face and murmured, “It is time for you to let the deceivers who have brought bastards into your home return to their father’s homes.”

Baba Segi clasped his hands together and bunched them under his chin. His head became heavy quite suddenly. “Just send them away like one shoos chickens?”

“It is the only honorable thing to do.” Teacher continued, his eyes widening at the thought of Baba Segi frequenting his shack and spending his money there. “As you spread your mat in this life, so you must lie on it.” He paused. “Unless”—he pointed at Baba Segi until his fingertip was within an inch of his nose—“you want a home full of children that are yours in name alone.”

“A curse! That would be a curse!” The thought disturbed Baba Segi greatly.

Teacher raised his hands in triumph. “Listen to me. When the missionaries left me behind, the thing that made me bitterest was that I had taken them to be my fathers. They plucked me from my father’s home when I was a young boy and made me feel like I was their own. But when the time came for them to return to their country, they abandoned me here, like a cockerel casts the shells of groundnuts aside.” He sipped his whiskey and looked dismally at the clouds of smoke that blew upward from half-parted lips and partly extinguished cigarette butts. “For three years I despaired, unable to accept my lot. Orphans are miserable people, you know?” The rooftop of the next building caught his eye. “It was not until I returned to my blood father that my misery was washed away. What I am trying to say is that your father will always be your father, even when life forces you to find a father in strangers.”

“Are you saying that my children will one day seek their true fathers? That all I have been is a temporary caretaker?” Baba Segi spat the last few words out as if they’d burned his tongue.

“Indeed, my friend. You have been no more than a doorkeeper. The day those children can open doors themselves, they will depart and you will be left with nothing but your loss.”

Baba Segi nodded. “Teacher, your wisdom humbles me.”

“Don’t say that, Baba…er…my friend. Pride makes men tumble before they fall.” Mission accomplished, Teacher took a satisfying slug of his brew and scratched his chin.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX