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- Herausgeber: AM Book and Team Publishing Limited
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016
Somber City is an evocative novel of the promise, expectation, and disappointment of post-colonial Nigeria. The novel illuminates, through a mix of fact and fiction, a seminal moment in modern history: Nigeria's fervent passage through a period of immense oil wealth in the 1970s to a sudden descent into a cataclysmal debt trap in the early 1980s. This chaotic period, captured within the city of Lagos, is experienced alongside the protagonist Femi Falashe, a young engineer seeking to get his life back in track after a sudden job loss, as well as five other unforgettable characters:
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Somber City
LagosLiterary and Arts Journal Imprint
© 2015Rotimi Ogunjobi
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
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Published byAM Book Publishing Limited
You will find peace of mind
If you look way down in your heart and soul
Don’t hesitate ‘cause the world seems cold
Stay young at heart ‘cause you’re never (never, never ...) old at heart
- Earth Wind & Fire:
Table of Contents
CHAPTER 1
Two kids, green as grass in spring, but both burningup with a thirst for adventure. They were also filled with enormous apprehension for what laid ahead, never having being away from home for longer than a few days. George and Femi had met for the first time when school resumed for first formers at their new secondary school. They had both been assigned to the same dormitory, their bunks separated by only three feet of walking space.
‘My name is Femi Falashe,’ Femi would say to George later in the evening after their parents had finally left.
‘George Obanya is mine; and I am scared,’ George had replied.
‘Why is that?’
‘I don’t know. This is my first time away from home all on my own.’
‘Makes two of us,’ Femi had told George. ‘What school are you from?’
‘Maryhill Convent; and you?’
‘Abadina.’
And so had their long friendship begun.
It was an old school, about forty years old. Their dormitory, one of the nine in the house, seemed just as old with un-tiled concrete floor and creosote blackened window frames and roof trusses. A wider adventure around the school grounds would later reveal about a million acres of lawns and sport fields, miles and miles of planted Casuarina hedges, or so it appeared to the little kids. The school grounds also had within it a wide expanse of forest teeming with reptiles, and through which a monstrous bogey locally known asPaddiman Joewas rumoured to roam in the night. They would also learn that the school,GovernmentCollege,Ibadan, also popularly known as GCI, had been a place where soldiers were garrisoned during WWII. And indeed adventurous students or those serving hard detention chores did sometimes unearth whole human skeletons and caches of buried and quite expired ammunition.
Neither Femi nor George would have initially understood the purpose of some of the items in their kit. The mattress, the pillows, the blanket and bed sheets could speak for themselves. However, Femi and all other first formers had come with metal buckets with their names neatly stencilled on them in black paint. Femi also had a cutlass and a short handle hoe. George had a similar kit, as well as all new first formers. As both would quickly learn within a few days, there were not going to be any more hot showers and there was sometimes no running water and they then had to fetch their bathing water from a tank about a hundred yards away. And when that tank ran out of water, they needed to travel to the school main tank which was about three hundred yards away. It was quite a bit ofinconvenience for children used to having most things done for them at home.
The lawns they would hate for their entire tenure as junior formers in the school - as a provider of house work duties and also of chores to occupy them with when they were booked on detention. And once, after a hot afternoon of swinging a cutlass to trim the lawn and with his hand red, raw and blistered, George had actually broken down and bitterly complained to nobody in particular.
‘Do you know why they admit new students into this school? The only reason is to get a fresh intake of slaves to cut the grass. All they just need to do is employ more gardeners but the principal is too stingy. It’s not fair. I don’t know why our parents stand for this injustice. You know the real meaning of theGCIthat they have on the school logo? No, my friend. I am sure it is notGovernmentCollege,Ibadan. It isGrass Cutting Institute. Do you know that? Yes it is I swear.’
But Femi, his own hands also as badly blistered, had only been able to laugh at it all. The lawns had to be trimmed and this was a task reserved for lower form students.
By a stroke of luck however, both were in the second term at school, given the job of mess boys. The job of mess boys was a lot easier - to get to the dining hall a bit earlier before time, and to share out the food. Mess boys were therefore generally exempted from all house works including sweeping floors and trimming lawns; and if you were lazy enough you could also get yourself exempted from sports – an option which had enormously appealed to George.
While Femi had no doubt that he was in the school because his mother was certain that it was the best school inthe world, he wondered why George had been sent there. This was because George’s older siblings were in the more expensive International School, tucked away deep inside the University of Ibadan and where it was rumoured that they gave you your own personal butler if you could pay for the service, and they gave you a really hard time for speaking your English without the proper phonetics - you would not get ice cream with your lunch. And from what he had seen so far, George’s father could afford to send him there also. Not that things were so much different in this school though. Femi actually did think it quite exciting. It was also mandatory here that all your conversation be in English.
Punishment was a little more physical; like you did your prep at night standing on a table, which could be so very inconvenient especially when you’d spent the evening playing football and all you just wanted to do was to sleep. That, or you trimmed approximately ten thousand acres of grass. Grass. Grass. Femi also did grow to hate the bloody lawns. The dining hall was also another potential obstacle course. Often, when you did arrive at the dining hall a little late for dinner, you went to bed hungry because some mischief had happened to your food and nobody at your table would own up. To Femi this would usually be merely amusing, but not to George.
‘I still think daddy sent me here to punish me, but I can’t figure out why,’ George would sometimes say.
Nevertheless, George would ever tell anyone who cared to know that his father was the most generous and loving person that existed. His father, Fred Obanya, was a successful lawyer who did a lot of business with government and they lived in an expensive estate abutting the state government secretariat. George was the third of three children. His mother had died when George had beenmerely three years old. Many years after, Femi would understand why George was in this school even if George never did. The reason was that George’s father had seen deep into the character of his son and seen how dependent he could become. And therefore he had wisely sent his favourite son to this school to toughen him up against life. Otherwise, George’s father was easier on him on most other fronts, regularly visiting him every fortnight, and keeping him stocked up with a fresh supply of provision and spending money.
Being in the same dormitory and class did much to throw Femi and George together. Both found that they shared mutual hatred for football, hockey, basketball and all other sports that were very physical. And George, plump and flabby George, would have the record of never earning a standard point for his house, Swanston House, in athletics for the entire five years that he spent in the school. George had complete hatred of physical exercise. Nevertheless, both shared a passion for the game of cricket; George as a mostly stationary wicketkeeper and Femi as a quite dozy first slip but definitely dangerous bowler.
Femi and George also discovered that they actually lived a mere quarter mile apart. And thus, during the holidays Femi would sometimes go spend the night over at George’s house and sometimes George did go do the same in Femi’s house. By the time they left school five years later, many would think that they were actually related.
Both Femi and George also shared a common enemy in the dormitory during their first year. He was a bad tempered and poorly raised fourth-former who insisted on being called Dhamendra - real name was Damilola Balogun.
‘Where is your grub?’ Dhamendra would often ask with a lot of menace because he was at least a foot tallerthan any of the two kids. And having got his hands on the keys to their lockers, Dhamendra would proceed to transfer whatever he fancied from there into his own locker.
Dhamendra had the exotic ambition of travelling toIndiato learn how to become a magician. Not that the two kids cared much about this. They were more concerned that he was doing much to make their provision disappear too often. And your provision was your life. It was what you fell back on when you lose your dinner to miscellaneous mischief.
The situation was eventually saved by Lazzo – a short, swarthy, mean faced third former who walked and talked always with the fearful confidence of a troll. Lazzo’s real name was Lasisi, but he preferred Lazzo because to him it sounded better and tougher; it sounded more like him. And when you stretched the last syllable of his nickname when you hailed him (like nicknames were supposed to be stretched), Lazzo’s face would usually light up with a big grin and he would unconsciously do a little dance. Lazzo was big trouble, even though he was just a little bit taller than Femi and George, and most of the seniors wisely left him alone. Big on survival strategies, Lazzo had wisely taken the bunk bed near the dormitory door which he thought was quite important as an escape location since he was perpetually in trouble.
‘Why do you take that nonsense from Dhamendra? Are you out of your senses?’ he had seriously asked the two kids.
‘We really don’t have a choice, do we?’ George had quite honestly replied. ‘He is a senior and if we don’t give him what he wants he’ll find a way to make trouble.’
‘Is that what you think? We will see about that,’ Lazzo had angrily said to them.
They would later understand that Lazzo had a personal score to settle with Dhamendra, who was really just a spoilt kid who did wet his bed every so often; a situation that Lazzo found disgusting given that Dhamendra’s bed was right next to Lazzo’s and the stink of fermenting urine was to Lazzo, not amongst any of his favourite.
Lazzo’s advice to the kids had been quite diabolic.
‘What you’re going to do is split your Bournvita chocolate drink into two portions and top one of the cans up with sand. That’s the one you make most visible in your locker. Also split your orange squash and pee in the bottle to fill it up. Let’s see if he wants your stuff anymore after that.’
Femi and George had been quite horrified at the suggestion.
‘Dhamendra’s going to kill us,’ George had said. But to Femi the solution did sound like a great deal of fun, and anyway the school year was running out. They had just about a couple of months more to go after which they would hopefully be in a different dormitory next school year and far away from Dhamendra’s reach.
Dhamendra’s reaction had been extremely scary. He retched and vomited so much that they thought he was going to die. But Dhamendra didn’t die. With eyes glowering with madness and from far away he assured the kids that they would both need a coffin each very soon. But Lazzo had his own contribution to this big showdown. Confirming George’s prediction that he would end up a hired killer, Lazzo had generously dusted Dhamendra’s blanket with stinging nettle, a scheme which had left Dhamendra weeping in agony all through the night. By morning, Dhamendra’s entire body was covered with hugebumps and bleeding from several places because of the scratching. Dhamendra had to be taken to hospital away from school. They would learn later that he had initially been taken away into isolation at an infectious disease hospital settlement deep inside a forest, before being released to his parents two days later after it had been determined that whatever he had was not contagious.
The two kids did not of course know what Lazzo had done. George had consequently not been able to sleep much for days. He had strongly deliberated giving himself up to the housemaster. George was sure that Dhamendra was going to die, and it would be their fault. They were going to be arrested soon by police detectives, he knew. After an autopsy, the content of Dhamendra’s stomach would be traced to their lockers. Then they would be brought before an angry judge and sentenced to death. And then one day at dawn the hangman would come for them. He’d read somewhere that they went more lenient on you if you confessed before they came for you. Femi didn’t of course think much of that idea. Yankee police hadn’t yet been able to arrest Richard Kimble, had they? Nobody was going to put a noose around his neck. Never.
They would never take him alive.
Dhamendra returned to school two weeks later quite contrite. Not only that, he’d become scarily nice to everyone like he’d been given a new brain transplant. Even Lazzo seemed to feel ashamed of what he had done. The kids were simply suspicious of motives.
A more organised and more informed foe did eventually emerge a few weeks later. George’s father had just again come visiting, leaving his son’s locker full of fresh provisions. But as George padlocked up his locker he felt a hard hand on his shoulder. Looking back he found Lazzostanding behind him, looking as tough and dangerous as possible for a fifty inch tall thug.
‘Give me your grub,’ Lazzo growled.
They had both nevertheless survived Lazzo and Dhamendra. Lazzo had turned out easier to deal with in any case because he seemed perpetually on the run, slipping in into the dormitory after everyone had gone to sleep and vanishing very quickly in the mornings.
‘He’s going to become a criminal, probably an armed robber.’ George had afterwards persistently predicted for Lazzo. Both had been pleased to learn many years later though that Lazzo was a university professor somewhere inAmerica. Dhamendra had also finally settled for a more sensible profession as a lawyer and became a federal judge.
For Femi and George, subsequent years had been a lot easier. They were now seniors, unofficially empowered to extort from younger students, and to seize their stuff if any was foolish enough not to put up resistance. They would in later years laugh as they looked back on it all. It had been an exciting toughening process.
CHAPTER 2
James’ shoes were what had initially brought them together. They were these cool brothel creepers which James seemed to have in two dozen different colours. Femi so much loved the way the turned up cuffs of James’Oxfordbags trousers rested neatly on the shoes, with the toes of the shoes peeking out like the bulbous heads of mutant tortoises. James had the shoes in black, brown, blue, white, yellow, green, pink, and several other colours which should only be legal for guys like Alice Cooper and Gary Glitter to wear.
‘I like your shoes,’ Femi hadn’t been able to keep himself from saying.
‘Hey thank you man,’ James had replied with a cackling sort of laugh, slapping Femi’s palm in a coolHarlemhandshake.
James was the coolest guy Femi had met on campus. James did almost everything in the way Femi would have wished to, especially with the clothes he wore. Afros were in vogue then, only James had his own bigger than any of theJackson Five. Pity he decided to cut it later, first to a perm like Barry White and later scraped clean like Isaac Hayes liked his head. James always looked like he lived inside the latest edition of Ebony magazine.
James Oluwole Peregrino was a Chemical Engineering student, but there were some courses that they shared together, primarily a lot of seemingly purposeless Mathematics and General African Studies otherwise known asJazzor hokey-pokey, if you like. So they had lectures together a few times every week. It also happened that they both lived in the same hostel and just three rooms away from each other. They had naturally connected in the miraculous way teenagers had of connecting.
One Saturday evening, Femi had gone to get himself a can of coke and a pie from the hostel grocery shop. As he crossed the quadrangle within the hall buildings he heard someone plucking at an acoustic guitar, and the purity of the notes had arrested him in a fearsome way. This wasn’t music, he would later think, it was sorcery; and he found himself walking towards the source, surprised eventually to find James bent over a big guitar which was resting in his laps.
‘You play guitar too?’ Femi had needlessly asked.
‘Sure. Do you?’ James also wanted to know.
‘I wish, but musical instruments have never been my forte. I just love listening to music and I think what you just did a moment ago was fantastic. A bit like Wes Montgomery.’
‘No, I am not into Jazz, man. I’d rather go for Hendrix or Santana.’
‘Have you ever played in a band, James? You are really good.’
James had replied with a loud laugh.
‘Are you kidding? I was in the school band at St. Greg’s. In fact, I turned down Ofege and that is why the band isn’t that really good. As far as I can say, they sound just like a hyped up school band. I’ve got greater ambition, man.’
‘You played with Ofege?’ Femi couldn’t believe.
‘No, they asked me to but I turned them down. I had my eyes on Afrika Shrine, but Fela turned me down. They all laughed at me. You know what he called me?Johnny Just Drop - JJD. I did a few jams with Joni Haastrup’s band, Monomono,though.’
Femi found himself staring quite aghast at James, wondering how much of this to believe. Of course he had always had the suspicion that James did drugs. James was too much of a loner not to, and Femi had been right. James did regularly smoke quite more than a bit of weed. But a lot of kids who grew up on the island did anyway, so it hadn’t been like a big issue to Femi. At this moment though, Femi had found himself wondering how much of what James was saying was drug induced fantasy, and how little of it was true.
Thereafter, their friendship had grown - Femi really intrigued by James and James genuinely enjoying this attention of someone who sincerely seemed to share a lot of cerebral interests with him, like Siamese twins joined together by the head.
Contiguous to the old marina onLagosIslandbut now completely erased by civilisation was a place that used to be known as the Quayside. It was wholly a pirate territory really, and there you could buy just about anything, all either stolen from ships berthed mere yards away or smuggled inland through the same route. The locus of the Quaysidewas the area around the Leventis supermarket, and indeed you could actually step out of the doors of the supermarket and onto a ladder leading aboard a berthed ship just ten yards away, thus fuelling the speculation that the old Greek tycoon had himself been a pirate.
Coming toLagoshad initially been a quite upsetting experience for Femi. There was always a pervading tension in the air, which thankfully diminished as soon as you escaped away inside the university. Out there in the city was always like walking in air saturated with combustible gas and all that was needed was for a hothead to lend a spark to cause a violent explosion, or even just a senseless street fight. It was miles apart from the almost lazy and very civil climate where he had been raised inIbadan. The campus was full of lovely chicks, but Femi was not that interested; he already had a girlfriend, even though she was a hundred miles away. Femi had been a lot more interested getting in synch with the fashion of the times and with the music, and therefore for him, James had been a great godsend.
James was the guru of the Quayside, that emporium of sartorial pleasure for the hip generation. And whenever the fancy took them, both James and Femi would go window shopping for smuggled jeans, jackets, shoes, and other most of which could be bought from sailors, smugglers, and dock thieves for a song, or more correctly the price of a vial of heroin. But often, Femi only went looking and wishing that he had the money to buy, being a fresh undergraduate wholly sponsored by state scholarship and bursary.
The Quayside always bustled with life right till just after dark after when it wouldn’t be considered safe to hang around the location. For many, it used to be a real accomplishment to say that you have been able to light yourcigarette in the marina, because the breeze coming in from theAtlanticcould be quite fierce. And in the side roads, the amplified force of the wind barrelling down the narrow lane due to the sudden constriction had been known to dispossess many unwise travellers of their essential items of clothing. Despite the windy environment, you would always find the ambient air thick with the acrid sweet smell of burning marijuana, the obliterated dock walls crammed with exotic merchandise and desperate hustlers attempting to strike ridiculous cut price bargains on items that should normally be unaffordable to anyone who earned their money honestly. It was an enormous and sinful bazaar for greedy eyes.
Speedy was the coolest of the pirates of the Quayside. Speedy had the glitziest of the more organised conventional shops located not too far from the Quayside, and always stocked the newest and ever exciting display of Levi and Wrangler jeans and jackets, velvet trousers and jackets, gabardine trousers and jackets, star-spangled platform shoes, wet look shoes, clothes, funky hats of all description, iron-on decals and embroidered cloth patches, chokers and chains, everything that a dude could want, including cans of Budweiser beer if you felt sufficiently American. He never found out who Speedy actually was but Speedy had the funkiest shop in the world. And it was from Speedy James got his stuff.
The mystery of James’ shoes was very shortly put to rest. Femi found that Speedy also sold cans of shoe spray colour in about a thousand different colours. Femi never had money to make many purchases and was often just content to look and admire, but James always did have money – all he needed to do was go visit his parents less than a mile away.
James’ father was a medical doctor. James wouldn’t tell what his mother did, because as a matter of fact she did seem to trade anything that could sell for money or was in vogue – especially clothing fabrics and jewellery.
‘She’s just a confused woman as far as I can say; but she does make a great deal of money,’ James had said of his mother.
James’ father had a job at the Lagos University Teaching Hospital, but also had his own private clinic at Obalende, not far from where he lived on theLagosIsland. James’ parents had been divorced when he was just eight years old. In fact it was his mother who had absconded from the marriage. Seeking, in her own way, the wisdom of a lifetime of financial security, James’ mother had had three children for three different men, all with reliable financial future - a doctor, a lawyer, and an illiterate businessman with a shipload of money. She would later boast to her friends of her strategic marriage alliances - the doctor for when she becomes ill; a lawyer when she wants to sue someone, or someone sues her which was a more possible scenario; and the money bag with the fat stomach who just needed a pretty face to take somewhere with him in exchange for a generous weekly allowance. Nice and tidy life. Nevertheless, like all the children that his mother had, James had lived with his father, his stepmother, and four other step-siblings whose names were always painful for him to remember because he just hated them without any reason at all other than that he just wanted to hate them.
‘Hypocritical meddlers always looking to foist their own desires on others,’ James would frequently say of his parents, and especially his father. ‘You know he actually wanted me to become a doctor. The old fool wants me to become like him. Why should I want to be like anyone else?’
‘Take it easy, James; most parents are like that,’ Femi had very gently tried to explain to him. But James was not convinced, or more correctly, always wanted to remember his parents as the worst thing that has happened to his life.
‘Why should people have this diabolical plan to continue through their children, those parts of their life in which they have not been able to fulfil, as if children are mere extensions to their selfish lives rather than have our own lives to live? It shouldn’t be legal. I mean, scratch the skin of all these old people and you will find a load of shit underneath.’
James had this time been in one of his rare bad moods, usually brought about by a cannabis hangover and finding himself without an immediately accessible stash. And in those moods Femi had found it more sensible to agree with whatever James said instead of aggravating him with any sort of argument.
‘Well, I’ve got news for them though. As soon as I finish this course I am going off toEuropeto learn and play music. That should give them both a heart attack, but watch if I care. I will not be shedding any tears for those meddling fools, believe me,’ he had quite angrily concluded.
On this occasion, even though Femi hadn’t been quite sure what had caused the outpouring, it resonated with James’ persistent and most prominent view of his life which was that whatever his parents wanted him to like, he had resolved to hate. James was an exceptionally bright child who had got into the university at sixteen. His presence in the Chemical Engineering class had in fact been an angry response to his father’s desire for him to become a medical doctor, and he had further threatened to transfer to the Faculty of Science, graduate with a degree in Chemistry, and become a school teacher. His father had wisely learnt toleave him alone after this. His heavy use of marijuana Femi had subsequently also attributed to James’ simultaneous war of defiance between him, his parents, and the world.
James had attended St. Gregory’s which was less than three hundred yards from where he lived in Ikoyi with his father. His mother still lived in her own parents’ house onMoloney Streetwhich was also about a quarter mile from the school. Consequently, James had never been really in dire need of money which either party doled out on him primarily as a guilt offering; and it was really a miracle that James had grown up so purposeful a child at all and had not become just another spoilt kid. With such a background as he had, Femi could now partially understand the reason for James’ drug habit and the reason he often loved to withdraw into himself, primarily to shut himself away from an irritating environment.
James had a car. It was a brand new sky blue Volkswagen Beetle 1300 which his mother had bought him as a gift for getting into the university. He also always had money to spend and therefore to Femi, James was completely fun to be with.
‘Let’s go talk with the old whore,’ James would say whenever they got broke or needed money for some other stuff. And off they would go to visit James’ mother at Moloney. And after getting them heartily fed on scrumptious Brazilian cookery, James’ mother would send them away with their pockets full of money. She wasn’t anywhere near an old whore in spite of what James had the habit of calling her. She was still less than forty years old and still beautiful despite a few dark blotches on her chemically bleached skin.
On another day it would be: ‘let’s go rob the old fool,’ and off they would go to see James’ father – who alsowas neither that old nor looked anything like a fool. In any case though, to James anyone over thirty was an old fool. Of course it usually was a lot more difficult to get much from Dr. Peregrino with his wife looking on, so the trick always was to go see him when he was working in his private hospital. But even then it always seemed too much of a hassle for James to have to wait in reception until his father had finished talking to the waiting patients. So, asking his father for money was usually never the preferred option for James. The real truth was that James did appear to get quite a lot of sadistic pleasure from making his father uncomfortable by asking him for amounts that made him feel pained, considering that he had four other children to raise. James went asking his father for money mainly to torment him.
Femi also always enjoyed partying with James. While he would put his money onTower of Power Unlimitedas the best mobile disco, James was more inclined towardsFunk Warehouse. Often, they would find themselves arguing over this and often they would both come to agree that the difference was largely due to local preference and the truth was thatFunk Warehousewas more popular with theLagosparty hoppers, whileTower of Power Unlimitedseemed to rule elsewhere. And often they had both come to agree that the two mobile discos were the best thing ever to happen to the partying experience. And whileTower of Powerwas heavier on lighting and percussion effects,Funk Warehouseenjoyed doing much of their magic with fogs and bubbles. In summary, James had turned out more than a close friend to Femi whose general impression had initially been that anywhere outside the campus was not safe at night. But the city was James’ native habitat, and he never felt that there was any part of it out of roaming bounds. And even thoughFemi thought differently, he also did find that it was enormously exciting to voyage along with James Peregrino, his rebel with a funky cross.
One other thing that Femi found an appreciable asset in a friend was that James was never shy with the girls. Often after saying ‘hi’ at an initial introduction, Femi would find himself tongue-tied and not quite knowing what to say next to get a conversation ignited, but not James. James could be a girl killer when he got around to it, and with a single statement he could often reduce the shyest or the most hard-faced girl into a giggling mess. And by the time he got his arm around the poor girl’s waist mere minutes later, she is almost already begging to be taken to bed. But James was just only a player, and had no lasting interest in girls. As far as James was concerned, girls were merely fun to be with once in a while; he had never been able to see himself connecting mentally with them for any reasonable length of time.
James regularly smoked weed. Not prodigiously like Peter Tosh or I-Roy or Bob Marley or some other Jamaican Reggae musician; to James it was like the stuff was a rite of purification – an upending of the vessel of his thoughts to rid it of the poisonous dregs. Thus it had ceased to baffle Femi that the habit never seemed to affect James’ educational performance but rather seemed to enhance it; to the result that even within his first year, James had two scholarships going for him and should really need no money from his parents. James Peregrino was truly in every way an enigma.
But a lot more would finally bring Femi to an almost complete devotion to this pothead genius. For many students, it was the tradition to go get drunk immediatelyyou were done with examinations. And after the session examinations, James and Femi had gone to do just that. It was a Friday night and their destination on this occasion was the bar of Mama Sheri, which was actually just an open space in front of a tiny restaurant in Abule Oja, just outside the university gates, from where she sold pepper soup and every imaginable liquor that you could think of. It was indeed largely rumoured that Mama Sheri did give out some other services, besides pepper soup and beer, to her regulars as thank you gifts; even though Mama Sheri was a commodious woman who could only fit sideways through a doorway. Nevertheless, as anyone knows, drunken university students will screw anything. Femi and James were no hard drinkers and certainly not in the same league as the guys who frequented Mama Sheri, mainly Pi-Kappa Fraternity guys. Therefore, by eleven in the night they knew that they’d had enough and must leave else they would probably have to be carried back home, since James had quite wisely left his car behind on campus.
On the way back they found that there had been an accident on the road. A construction truck had knocked down an electricity pole, leaving a mass of high tension cables wires stretched across the road in a lethal fence. Drunk as he was, Femi had made to climb over the wires but James had so violently shoved him away into a roadside ditch. As Femi confusedly spat rotten debris from his mouth, he watched a dog attempt to do exactly what he had been about to do and summarily reduced to a quivering mass of dead dog meat, teeth grotesquely bared and dribbling frothy saliva. So shaken were both of them that they had taken a long detour back to the hostel. They arrived completely sober. Nevertheless, James had merelyretreated briefly into the darkness to smoke a little weed and then quietly gone up to sleep.
Sleep had come a lot harder for Femi that night. James had saved his life, Femi knew. How does one pay back such a debt? He would for many years after, grow to mentally associate James with escape from disaster. From that night James had become his patron saint of lucky escapes and another shot at life. A future incident would further strengthen that resolution.
CHAPTER 3
There had been another accident, this time even more fearful; and the details of which Femi had no complete recollection. That had been way back in 1978 during the students’ protest.
It had seemed like a quite necessary protest. One of the premises was that the government had increased fees in universities, which was unfair because students had not been given a fair choice. Another had been that there were too few universities in the country. The situation at that time was that the entire country of around a hundred million had only thirteen conventional universities into which a limit had been placed on the number of students that could be admitted yearly; meaning that many thousands of students qualified for university education had to shelve their dreams, often forever. The more desperate escaped away toAmerica, Asia andEuropein search of a university that would accept them. TheAli Must Goprotest had been a struggle for democratisation of education in the country bypermitting the establishment of private universities instead of a government monopoly. However, the Minister of Education at that time, a military man named Col. Ahmadu Ali, had completely declined to hear the students out and in typical military fashion, ordered them to return to their lectures. The students’ leaders were not amused. They’d asked for his head.
Ali Must Go– they demanded. And it was a war cry which echoed all over the country.
A phalanx of students had been proceeding in a convoy to God knows where. Some students had in their resourcefulness hijacked a few municipal buses and taxis and ordered to be taken along in the procession, possibly to Dodan Barracks, from where the military government ruled. Femi and James had joined the procession in James VW Beetle. Femi actually had thought neither he nor James had any business in this demonstration – they had no problems with their own admissions nor with paying their fees. Femi would also tell James that he had smoked too much weed before heading into the procession and had been unusually excited. But all that was now in the past.
It had been around noon on this particular day, with the sun burning fiercely overhead. The road was filled with sweaty people - students and other layabout waving leafy tree branches and chanting war songs, or more exactly a monotonous:Ali Must Go! Ali Must Go! Ali Must Go!
Along the way, an array of illiterate market traders and miscellaneous miscreants had decided to also take the day off from bad business. Together with the students they marched along chanting what was their own understanding of the students’ esoteric request:Ali Mon Go! Ali Mon Go! Ali Mon Go!
Suddenly there had been a burst of gunfire ahead, and a cloud of tear gas rolled down along the length of the procession. In the ensuring fracas, an idiot driving a municipal bus had tried to make a U-turn, a manoeuvre which had somehow keeled the bus over and brought it crashing upon James car, practically flattening it. Femi didn’t know about this detail of course, since he’d only woken up in hospital a few days later and in severe pain. Almost every major bone in his body appeared to have been broken. He would learn later that James’ father had flown him out of the country for surgery as James seemed to have ended up even worse off than he had.
The details were of course more gruesome. What had actually happened was that they had both been miraculously extracted from the VW beetle and taken to a nearby private hospital. The owner of the hospital, a middle aged doctor who was tired of patients absconding without paying their bills, had in his own wisdom refused to take them in, congratulating himself on his business astuteness. You’ve got to be wise in this business, you know. Therefore, with blood trickling out from about every orifice in their bodies, they were taken at full speed to the Lagos University Teaching Hospital, where the rescuers found that the medical personnel - doctor and nurses - were on strike over low wages.
Had James’ father, Dr. Peregrino, been at work instead of at his personal clinic, he could probably had rustled up some emergency treatment for the two luckless lads, but Dr. Peregrino was also on strike along with his colleagues, and was at that moment attending to more profitable matters in his private hospital. Meanwhile, James and Femi had lain barely alive on stretchers in the accident and emergency reception. A kind-hearted nurse had struckthem with intravenous fluid which she had purchased from a pharmacy outside the hospital, with her own money.
A kind-hearted doctor had also appeared hours later, probably bored with staying at home. He’d examined the two kids, and offered to have Femi taken to his own private hospital. As far as he was concerned, James he could not take chances on, having broken his spine at the upper part, and lost too much blood.
The kids’ identity cards had provided the sparse details for his registration. The name Peregrino, being an uncommon name had struck a note with one of the nurses who had subsequently found a way to call Dr. Peregrino as he was taking a short rest on that day. Abandoning the waiting queue, he had rushed down in his car to the University Teaching Hospital and in great grief confirmed that it was indeed his son lying on the hospital stretcher, barely breathing and quite limp. Femi had by this time been moved away to the private hospital of the other doctor, a good Samaritan having signed to pay the bills.
Femi had remained in the hospital bed for four months. He had come out severely disorientated mentally and needed eight months to fully learn how to walk normally again.
What had happened to James? Since Femi returned to University, his main preoccupation had become just to graduate. James as he was told, had been taken abroad, which was okay. There the doctors don’t go on strike and nurses didn’t keep the wards of a government hospital illuminated with candles and lanterns while their government functionaries stole huge amounts of money and stored them up in Swiss, British and American banks.
Some other sad footnotes to this students’ protest, as many would observe years later, had been that the military commissioner for education resolved to arrest the students’ leaders, sent police and soldiers to the campuses to forcefully eject all the students and proscribed the twenty year old students’ unions. The military rolled its tanks out against unarmed students, killing several of them as well as innocent bystanders, including a pregnant housewife. Several students’ leaders were rusticated and several university lecturers, including two vice chancellors, were sacked.
The Federal Commissioner for Education at that time, as well as the military head of state, would in another twenty years again, evolve as important civilian leaders.
CHAPTER4
Laide Leigh had in retrospection always been a smooth girl; smooth and slippery. Laide had always been a tease even since Femi had known her from primary school. Back then, she was small, had this impish feature and this peculiar smile which suggested a love and desire for mischief. Even though they were barely ten years old at that time, she’d still always found a way that got under Femi’s skin in an embarrassing way. Laide had been Femi’s first love ever; or more accurately, his first real crush.
Femi would sometimes unconsciously find himself watching as she played netball with her friends on the school playground. It was a game which Femi had never understood nor was interested in. It was like some funny kind of basketball, only you don’t bounce the ball, you carry it like a girl, run like a dainty girl, carry the damn ball in the funny way that girls have of doing it, or you just tossed it to another dainty girl, and on and on until someone gets to pop it into a basket hung right up there on a pole. Boringgame absolutely, but Laide Leigh was playing, and that made it bearable. But soon Laide would discover that she was being watched and she would laugh and wave. And Femi would turn away his eyes and walk off embarrassed.
Femi was thoroughly obsessed with Laide though he rarely spoke with her - he was too shy to do that. And even though they were in the same class, much of the time all he did was watch her from the distance and in some crazy sleepless night fantasize about...A wedding.
Two three-foot tall lovers walking down the aisle, and the entire school, the entire country, the entire world rising up in applause, with fireworks screaming and streaking across the sky. And birds... birds of every description leading a glorious rendition of the Bridal March. Laide was the greatest, the prettiest girl in the world.
Laide knew that Femi liked her. In retrospection, Femi would see that she did seem to know more than a ten year old girl was supposed to know about affection. But then, girls had a way of being a lot wiser than boys of their own age. And she teased him quite so often. She would catch his stare and blast him with the widest smile ever. She would hike up her dress so that her knees showed; and she did have very attractive knees. In any case, all of Laide was enchanting and whenever he came into her presence, the best Femi had ever been able to do was giggle along with her and slink away thoroughly mortified by her charm.
They were soon to part ways though, and Femi had felt quite thankful that he did not have to go to the same secondary school as Laide Leigh. Otherwise, he would have been completely driven to certain insanity by this child goddess. They did not meet again for another six years.
‘Hey, I know you,’ a quite attractive girl had said to him. They were at this time in the registration office at theSchoolofBasic Studiesof the polytechnic atIbadan. Femi had been initially confused. He had never really been much of a party person nor a girl chaser, so how come did such a stunning beauty come to know him? She did look faintly familiar though.
‘Laide,’ she helped him out. ‘Laide Leigh from primary school, Abadina.’
Femi would be quite surprised that his nervousness had not immediately resurfaced. Yes, he could see that mischievous smile again, though it was now a lot more mature and more seducing. The body had also changed enormously; she had become deliciously curvy, though in a boyish way which somehow made her seem quite more exciting.
‘Good to see you, Laide. Six years ago, wasn’t it?’ Femi had gushed. He had lost his shyness and he was quite pleased about that.
‘Yes, six years. You haven’t changed much; only become much taller.’
‘You aren’t quite three feet tall anymore yourself. You look lovely.’
‘Thank you,’ she said, rather demurely.
They had lunch together at the college dining hall. She was a lively chatter and Femi soon found himself lost in her even as they took a leisurely walk together to get some soft drinks at a nearby kiosk after lunch. She spoke about herself, spoke about her family, spoke about the school she just left and how she had been lucky not to be taking the WASC examination all over again. She spoke about primary school; she spoke about how she’d always found Femi amusing because of his shyness. And Femi had laughed along with her, especially at her humorous description of his awkward shyness.
Those were partying days. They’d met again several times at one party or the other. And soon Femi had found himself seeking her out most days, just to take a walk together with her and listen to her talk.
‘That girl really likes you,’ George had told Femi. And Femi thought that was okay because he also liked Laide, even thought of carving it in six inches high words on the trunk of a tree like a besotted idiot- Femi Loves Laide.
Something though, call it common sense, kept telling him that Laide Leigh wasn’t the sort that kept a serious relationship. She was a fun girl, fun to be with and fun seeking. Any one’s property she didn’t quite look like, but then one could be wrong. Femi enjoyed her companionship nevertheless, and philosophised in a parallel way like, well if it isn’t broken don’t mend it. Laide liked good music, liked good parties, liked to make friends. Femi never tried anything heavy on her though, other than a bit of smooching under the influence at night in a party, whenever George could get to borrow his dad’s car. His well brought-up thoughts and principles were that you simply didn’t try to debauch a lady that you love.Gentlemen didn’t do that nonsense.
Basic Studies school had only lasted two years after which Femi had to leave forUniversityofLagosto study Electrical Engineering. Laide Leigh went off to the nearbyUniversityofIbadanto study French. Nevertheless, during the long summer vacations Femi always regularly sought her out, even though their houses were a good three miles apart - Femi lived in Kongi Layout, and Laide, around Ring Road. No matter the distance however, Femi would remain constantly convinced and persuaded that Laide Leigh would probably be the only love of his life.
The National Youth Service was a year of obligatory service which every graduate from a tertiary institution was required to offer the country. And even though National Service took Femi to Calabar which everyone knew was home to the sexiest Rubenesque beauties in the world and he was more than a thousand miles away from Laide who was at this time in Jos, they communicated by mail, by wishes entrusted into the hands of the winds, and by blown kisses bounced off the moon and the twinkling stars at night. And many times in dreams filled with flagrant flowers, they crept into each other’s heart and arms while plump little cherubs like enormous bumble bees with gossamer wings, fluttered overhead humming passion-filled arias.
Youth Service finally had ended and they both returned again toIbadan, their education completed and a future of greater responsibilities looking them in the face. But really, Laide had enormously changed in that one single year that they had been apart. In any case, they were both now twenty-two; all the teenage roughness shaved off. Femi would think that these days she appeared often very moody. He thought that should be expected though since they were both still job hunting. Not that he had been quite always in the best frame of mind himself. Therefore, Femi went out of his way to accommodate her moods, visited as often as he could, brought her a book to read, lent her some tapes that he had made of recent hit songs.
One Saturday morning though, Femi had visited Laide to remind her about the party that night. One of their friends was having a graduation party and Laide had agreed to go with him two weeks earlier. In fact, she had demanded.
‘I really won’t be able to go, Femi,’ Laide had told him. And she looked rather like she was ill too, so Femi did not press so much. Nevertheless, he had been disappointed that he would have to go to the party alone with George and his girlfriend, Dorothy. Not the end of the world really, plenty more parties to come, he had consoled himself.
It was really a great party.Tower of Powerwas deejaying, cranking out thebaddesthits in the world. The bubble machines were blasting soap globules everywhere; the colour wheels turned the dance floor into a mobile Dali portrait. There were also the smoke machines too – which was strange becauseTower of Powerrarely used smoke effects. But this had been a talk of the town party that weekend and every partying guy and girl in town was expected to be there, and it seemed quite well accounted for at the party as far as Femi could see. Pity Laide couldn’t make it, he sorrowed. So he just drank up his beer, stuck himself to the wallpaper much of the time and for a few minutes danced with Dorothy.
Just after midnight though Laide did come in, and she was not alone. She was hanging onto the arms of a guy. Boogie Dog was his name. Bad reputation with ladies andsexywas oozing out from all over his body like Teddy Pendergrass. He even had the same looks – short trimmed facial hair, shirt ripped open at the top to show a carpet of hair as thick as the Amazon jungle, and over which hung a golden medallion suspended from a huge gold chain hanging from around his neck. Laide was wearing tight satin pants, a bright flowered blouse which revealed a lot more bust than was necessary in civilised gathering, huge bangle earrings, and lots and lots of make-up. Her hair was blown up into a gigantic Afro which encircled the whole of her head like a sinful halo. Femi wasn’t initially sure that he wasseeing right, but he found George looking also at him, George’s eyes asking – ‘I thought you said she was ill?’
But it was Laide alright, and in a few moments she was on the dance floor doing a seriously sexy smooch with the sexy dude. Even though Femi had initially thought he’d had too much to drink for the night he found that he had instantly sobered up. But then what could he do but watch stupefied and helplessly, waiting for her to get off the dance floor. Of course there would be a simple explanation to all this, he knew. Boogie Dog was probably her cousin or something as simple as that, and no point getting worked up for nothing. There definitely was bound to be a simple explanation.
After more than a half hour of pure agony for Femi, both Laide and the guy Boogie Dog had finally come off the dance floor, and Femi found them both sitting on the guy’s car at the car park of the event’s hall.
‘Hello, Laide,’ Femi had said to her in a voice heavy with pain, his mouth and throat feeling dry and rough as sand-paper. Laide indeed looked like she was having so much fun and it troubled him to disturb her.
‘Oh, Femi, there you are,’ she replied without much enthusiasm. The dude’s look was hostile. Femi rested in the knowledge that Boogie Dog was at least not known for violence. Boogie Dog was too good looking and smooth for such banalities. Femi’s heart sank even deeper to find Laide holding tighter to the dude’s arm as if protecting her companion.
‘Excuse me for a minute,’ Femi heard her whisper to the dude. Boogie Dog obediently left, with a very deep sexy chuckle. For a few seconds they stared at each other, Femi waiting for her to explain and she apparently not quite sure how to say what was on her mind.
‘Why are you following me all over the place, Femi?’ Laide finally blurted out. Femi was flabbergasted.
‘I didn’t understand what you mean by that,’ he could only stammer. Laide didn’t appear ready to do anything further to help him out though; only staring away into the darkness.
‘I thought you said you were ill,’ Femi’s voice was soft and caring.
‘So I was, and I got better later in the day,’ she snapped. But Femi chose to ignore the tone, thankful that there was indeed a simple explanation:she had got better later in the day.
‘That is what I thought. How well do you …ummh …know the guy? I mean…Boogie… the guy you came with?’
‘Why do I have to answer that question, Femi?’ she obstinately replied.
‘Of course you don’t have to answer. But you did look rather close while dancing,’ Femi felt quite unnerved. He thought to hold her in his arms but something told him no, not tonight.
‘I know where your question is going, Femi. He, as a matter of fact, is my boyfriend,’ she said to him.
