EKE MATERIALIZES IN THE MANSION LIKE A NEW MOON in the sky. I look at him with big watermelon eyes as he approaches. He looks well, and so spruce I don’t need anyone to tell me he is now a senior student at the high school. I reach him in one breath, shooting forward like a seed out of an oil bean pod, but I end up catching the air as I try to hold him. The light from the lamp beside my bed dazzles my eyes. I can’t sleep without a light. I open the window to allow the new day to stream in and bring me back to the mansion, away from my sojourn with Eke. I hiss. I am missing his friendship. I climb out of bed, thinking about the dream as I brush my teeth and change into my gym outfit, one of a set I found in my new room. Ejiro says I can use anything I find there.
He is already in the gym when I arrive, working on his forearms. The mansion gym has everything: pully bar, ab roller, kettlebell, battle rope, deep stand, and other equipment the names of which I find it hard to memorize. I am concentrating on my triceps. After more than a month of training I can feel my biceps heavy and bulging even though I still look the same in the mirror. I nearly gave up at the early stage. It was as if my stomach was full of countless needles.
“Who lived in that room before me?” I try to strike up a conversation with Ejiro while we are training.
He is doing a towel pull-up. He lowers himself down slowly, his wiry body bathed in sweat. Throwing the towel around his shoulders, he walks away without a word.
It is maddening not to have anyone to talk to in the mansion, with Mummy busy entertaining her glamorous friends, Ejiro in his sulky mood, and Abdul determined to hate my Igbo guts. Ejiro hardly says a word to me unless he can’t help it. His surly, unapproachable manner makes it impossible for me to dig into his background. But I know he is an Urhobo boy. I know he will wrong me many times to tempt me to smash his head with a bottle. I can sense it. We live like enemies. When I smile at him he answers with a glare. When I greet him in the morning he replies with a swearword. When we bump into each other on the doorway he steps on my toes. The way we are going, we could turn ourselves into those boxers fighting in Mummy’s TV, but he will be the battered one in the red trunks, I assure myself.
After working out, I move to the pool to swim. Ejiro has already finished. He must be eating breakfast, scowling at the empty dining room seats. I remember how Eke and I swam in the Adada River, in the water looking cyan with algae. The mansion pool is shaped like a kidney, a stainless blue in the glorious midmorning sun, with the sky reflected in the water. I climb into the water instead of diving in, feeling like a shrew with a bad smell hanging on it, following it everywhere it goes. I spend a lot time in the water trying to wash off the bad smell.
After breakfast, I pick up Black Moses, deciding to kill time with the novel in the absence of work to do. I was a good reader at primary school, one of the best in my class. The first name of the author of Black Moses is Alain, which I read with ease, but the surname gets stuck like fish bone in my throat. It is one of those names that has three or more consonants and vowels following one another in a confusing syllable. I open the book and read the first sentence, feeling its softness, its ease and spirit. The words are ordinary, but they are full of power. But the names of the characters are so long, it seems one name can fill an entire paragraph. Somehow it makes the book even harder, but more hilarious.
Mummy is in the big sitting room watching the BBC News with interest when I finally come out. She is cursing and swearing in Yoruba. I know she is swearing by the tone and force of her voice. I don’t quite follow the energetic, nasal voice of the olive-skinned, long-haired BBC newscaster, but I am able to make out that the MASSOB leader, a man named Ralph Uwazurike, has been arrested in connection with the planned sit-at-home only a few days away. He has been detained and will be charged. Some people are shown on TV protesting on the streets of Lagos.
“Come here, Dim, Omo Ibo ajeokutamamuomi.” Mummy beckons to me, calling me the derogatory name in Yoruba for someone from my tribe. She has worked herself to frenzy. “Come and see your people protesting.”
I watch the protesters as they are tear-gassed and battered with batons and gun barrels.
“See how the police are beating them like dogs just because they want to go?” Mummy was furious. “Why should they batter and brutalize anyone because they are protesting and asking to be allowed to be on their own? Wo, Omo Ibo ajeokutamamuomi. Do you know what I think? I think this country should be divided. Our leaders are cursed. They are thieves, selfish, and tribalistic; that’s why things are not working for us as a nation. I think the country should be divided into the three major ethnic groups. You Igbo people will go with your brother Ojukwu to Onitsha, we Yoruba will go with our Lagos, and the Hausa and Fulani will have their Kano.”
I don’t know what to say, so I linger in the room for as long as she rails, slipping out when I realize she has lost interest in me. I stroll to the tomb to sit and think about the things she said. They are not all that different from the arguments of the gamblers at Uwakwe’s shopfront. I hadn’t known that the Yoruba people have also lost confidence in a united country.
I hear about similar protests going on in major cities across Igboland in the following days. Women in Umuahia protest Uwazurike’s detention half naked. The TV shows pictures of them as they storm the streets in only bras and shorts, followed by images of the police brutalizing and chasing the protesters, who are carrying placards and chanting the mantra “Enyi mba enyi.”
I suspect from his recent attitude that Abdul has listened to news of the protest in Hausa on his transistor radio. Each time I take his meals to him he says sanu, thanking me, but when I turn my back, I hear him swearing, using strong Hausa words like banza and nyamiri, which are as contemptuous as Omo Ibo ajeokutamamuomi. I feel like talking to Ejiro about the protests. He is from Warri in the Delta, a territory the gamblers had said was mapped into the proposed Biafra nation. I choose a moment when he seems to be in a light mood. He is even whistling one of his Urhobo songs.
“The police shouldn’t have beaten those protesters like animals,” I say to him.
He ignores me and continues whistling.
“They were not violent,” I add.
“I don’t care if their skulls were broken,” he snaps. “I am not an Igbo boy.”
I walk away, realizing how impossible it is to reason with him.