CHRISTMAS IS APPROACHING. I CAN’T WAIT TO VISIT home and see my family again. It’s always a wonderful time of year in my village. Carols play on the radio, stirring mixed feelings in the dusty winds of Harmattan. The songs always make me smile to myself in reminiscence, and in anticipation of Christmas clothes. The season throws my father into a grouchy mood. New clothes are luxuries he cannot afford.
But I am elated every time I hear carols playing from Joe’s radio, because I have enough savings already not only to buy Christmas clothes for my siblings but also to finally build Okike’s tomb, pay back Machebe, and regain my pride of place in my family. When I come back here after Christmas, I will work even harder and save even more money for the future.
I dream of convoys, and sirens, and wake up late full of hopes as I walk to Ogbo-Mmanu. The square is deserted. Most of the labourers are off to work already. Two men approach me minutes after my arrival. They are flustered and out of breath. One is in a bright blue shirt, the other in a mango-juice-yellow shirt. They come hurriedly towards me.
“We want you to catch someone who is sick,” Blue Shirt speaks, touching his head to indicate that the “someone” is mentally sick and has probably escaped from a psychiatric hospital.
I jump at the offer. It sounds like the kind of job that pays well. I might even expand my Christmas budget to include funding a petty trade for my mother at Ogige market to stop her from foraging.
“You will need a partner,” says Yellow Shirt.
I throw a look around Ogbo-Mmanu. It’s pretty empty, so I settle for the only boy within sight, a small fellow named Uba, with an elongated head and a funny face.
We haggle with the men and finally arrive at a favourable price, but it is not only about the money; it is also about the excitement of capturing an escaped madman, one who is dangerous and perhaps wields a machete. It is risky, but it is the risk that makes it exciting, like something in a film.
“Show us where he is.” I want to impress our hirers with my confident tone. I would have preferred to do the job with someone stronger than this boy with a head shaped like sweet mango, but I can’t rob him of his luck now.
The men lead us towards a house not far from Ogbo-Mmanu. On our way they explain that the lunatic strolled home and, indeed, grabbed a machete after his escape and chased everyone away.
“We will get him,” I assure them. I am thinking of what else I could do with my share of the six thousand naira. I could erect a statue for Okike after entombing her.
“He goes on and on about his nunchaku,” Blue Shirt says as we approach a black gate.
“What’s that?” I say.
“He used to be an expert in karate,” Yellow Shirt explains. “He almost killed a man with his nunchaku. They sent him to jail, and from there to a psychiatric hospital, but he escaped. He’s been asking after his nunchaku since he showed up.”
A cold shiver of fear knocks me sideways.
“Are you scared?” Blue Shirt squints at me.
“I am not scared,” I say, and sneak Uba an impotent smile.
“We are not afraid.” He returns a tight smile as we walk through the black gate into a compound that feels like a trap.
The sight of the madman stops me dead in my tracks. The compound is large. He is standing in the sit-out of a cream bungalow. He is a big fellow, bigger than either of us, naked down to a pair of greasy boxers. He looks wild, with knotted hair, which tells me that it must have been a while since he escaped. A machete with a glancing blade is leaning on the wall next to him. He is muttering incoherent words. My heart nearly jumps out of my body.
“Be careful,” one of the men whispers from behind.
It looks like the house is empty. I imagine the chaotic scene upon his arrival, the madman bursting through the gate and grabbing a machete lying about, the first person to see him raising the alarm, the house emptying of women and children who fall over one another as they scamper to safety.
I take a few steps closer and crane to hear him better. I see more details. In the hollow where his eyes are supposed to be, what I see are smouldering embers. They dilate with violence at the sight of us. He seems to sense danger by the way the embers keep shifting to the machete leaning against the wall. I know he will get to it in a few steps if we try to grab him. That would be suicidal.
Blue Shirt and Yellow Shirt have withdrawn to a safe distance. Uba is cowering behind me. The impulse to turn and bolt becomes tempting. Six thousand naira, a voice says within me. And then an idea flashes through my mind as I make out something of what the madman is saying. The best thing to do is to try to lure him away from the machete and then grab him from the back. I quickly cook up a story.
“We are friends, and we come in peace,” I begin to explain.
His ember eyes shift from me to Uba to the machete.
“It’s about your nunchaku.”
The word has a magical effect on him. He stiffens to attention, the wild combative look fleeing from him.
“Why not take us into your room,” I say, “so we can talk about your nunchaku?”
He begins to move away from the wall into a long passage. We follow at a safe distance, Uba cowering behind me. The madman stops again, probably sensing danger, maybe realizing he is walking into a trap. We stop, too. The madman throws another glance at the machete, and then at us, and mumbles, “Nunchaku.” I make sure to keep a safe distance. I will be out the gate like lightning before he gets to the machete. I used to be a good sprinter back in primary school. I am sure Uba is also sharpening his feet, but then the madman continues walking down the passage again, all the time mumbling “Nunchaku.”
Everything suddenly looks easy and smooth. Now is the time to swing into action, as the madman’s back is facing us. My heart beats fast. I exchange glances with Uba. I can see fear in those small eyes of his, which resemble the black dots on a dice. Fear seems to have chased his ugliness to the surface. We wait for who will make the first move. The men who hired us are nowhere within sight. The house is quiet, ominous. I signal Uba to move first, but he returns the favour. I wonder if we are the only people in the courtyard as I begin closing in on the madman. The air stills as I braze up to lunge at him.
Maybe I should have waited for him to go inside or even become tired and lie down before grabbing him. The madman is quicker than I could ever have imagined. He reacts the moment I grab him from behind, pivoting on his heels and lunging at me. I feel the rush of sticky liquid down my side as he sinks his teeth into my left ear. Pain sears through my body, drawing a wince from me. It all happens with electric speed. We heave and sway, but his strength is bewildering. Already I can feel one half of my ear gone, probably down his throat. I have to fight to stop him from eating up the rest. I try to hold on for as long as it will take Uba to look around for a weapon, but I can feel the madman’s strength bearing down on me, overpowering me, and I can hear the stamp of feet. I know then that Uba is fleeing the compound, leaving me at the mercy of the madman.
With my remaining strength, summoned from the instinct of self-survival, I kick out at him, targeting his groin. I hear a thunk, a howl of pain, and then I feel his grip on me relaxing. I make my escape, tearing through the gate and down the road, making a trail of my own blood.
I am told that I was found in a pool of blood by the roadside. I must have passed out. I wake up at St. Anthony’s Hospital, my eyes bulging with panic. St. Anthony’s is a hospital in the neighbourhood people avoid for its expensiveness. I managed to escape with half of my ear bitten off, the tissue barely hanging, but Dr. Onodugo says it cannot be stitched back. I was brought to the hospital too late. I have lost half an ear to a madman, and all the money I’d saved to the hospital bill.
I take some time off work after my discharge. I spend the days alone lying on my mat after Eke and others head to work, mourning my misfortune, my lost half ear and my savings, wishing I weren’t so greedy. We didn’t get a kobo from Blue Shirt and Yellow Shirt, and I haven’t seen them again since the incident. I wonder what became of the madman, if my kick was hard enough to cause damage to his groin.
With my savings gone, I resume work just under a week after I am discharged from the hospital, with a bandage still wound around my ear, my emotions heavy.
“Don’t you think you need a little more time to recover fully?” Eke says.
Eke had spent days at the hospital looking after me. He has been of great support. I am still frail, but Christmas is fast approaching, and I have to pay my weekly MASSOB dues, which Abada has introduced. “They are needed to quicken the release of our leader,” he says. “We want to hire the best lawyers, so you see why you have to be consistent in paying the dues. Up-to-date members will be given priority.” He will be travelling to Okwe from time to time to remit the dues at the headquarters of MASSOB, and they will be used in funding the lawsuit.
“You have to be more careful,” Eke says when I insist on resuming work.
“It’s the fault of that mango-head, that coward, Uba. He ran away.”
“I have heard that many times from you. Just be more careful about what work you do. That madman could have slaughtered you with a machete. What would I have told your family?”
Sometimes Biafra seems like a ripe fruit that I could pluck with a mere stretch of the arm. Sometimes I wonder if I am wasting my time with politics. I tell myself I must learn how not to give up so easily. I don’t want what happened in Lagos to happen again. Often I wish I had stayed to slug it out with Ejiro rather than coming here to face this harder life. At least I ate good food in the mansion.
The months of September and October are dry, so dry one considers himself lucky to be hired twice in a week. I wonder if I’ll be able to save enough to return home for Christmas. It will be my first Christmas since coming to Anukwu, and I don’t want to spend it in a foreign land. I want to spend it with my family. But the work drought seems to worsen as we enter the first week of November.