AFTER SEVERAL WEEKS OF CONFINING MYSELF TO THE house, I stroll to Uwakwe’s shop one afternoon only to find the place deserted. The gamblers are no longer there. The whole place looks dry. Uwakwe is sitting on the same bench the gamblers used to sit on in front of the shop in a frayed singlet and worn-out boxers.
“I have not seen you for years.” He smiles broadly at me. He is so dark you could bump into him in a corridor, mistaking him for darkness. A broken fragment of solid darkness.
“I have not been around, but I don’t think it has been that long.” Truthfully, I have been away for nearly three years if I add up all the time I wasted in the mansion in Lagos and working in Anukwu.
“You have changed a lot.” His eyes wander to my left ear. “What happened there?”
“It was an accident.” I wonder what Uwakwe will say when he realizes that, besides missing half an ear, I now smoke Benson & Hedges and drink Premier beer.
“Oh. I am sorry,” he says. “Speaking of accidents, I didn’t see you at Eke’s burial. I heard you were living with him when it happened.”
I figure he is only feigning ignorance. He would have heard that I was banished from the funeral. Oregwu is a small village. People are known to each other. They know what the next household is having for supper.
“I was there when it happened.”
After I finish the tragic story, Uwakwe stares at me with arms folded across his broad chest.
“Poor boy. It is a terrible thing to be buried alive,” he says with a gesture of revulsion. “Surviving such a close shave with death is a sign that you will live to become the custodian of the village patriar . . .” His voice trails off, his thick, soupy face draining of colour.
I feel sorry for Uwakwe after his slip of tongue. He looks so guilty, so pathetic, like a boy caught stealing meat from his mother’s soup.
“I was bored at home, so I came to watch the gamblers.” I change the subject to save him further embarrassment.
“They no longer come here to play draughts,” Uwakwe says in a whispering voice. “Patty Onah and Oluoha are still in detention. The police come here every once in a while to sniff around. Everyone is afraid of being arrested.”
I am surprised they are still detained even after the release of the MASSOB leader. I heard of his acquittal from BBC Igbo Live on my radio.
“The man has been silent,” Uwakwe hisses. “He is doing nothing to help those who were detained alongside him. Some say he has backed down from the struggle out of fear for his life. Others say he collected a large sum of money from the government, a payoff.”
“Too bad, if what they say about him is true. How could he abandon his supporters for money?”
“His silence is like the silence of a mother duck whose ducklings are snatched by the hawk,” says Uwakwe. “The land is shaky with uncertainty. There are even rumours of a new group called the Biafra Zionist Movement, which will pick up where MASSOB has failed, but people in this village are only talking about it in undertones.”
I ponder this new movement. “I would like to know more about this group.”
“It’s still being talked about in whispers,” he says. “I know that it’s a pro-Biafran group, that’s all. But I have my ears to the ground. I will let you know as soon as I hear of a meeting or anything.”
I wonder what will become of Abada’s group if the MASSOB leader abandons the struggle. Eke’s death and my relocation to the village cut short my membership, the dues I paid now wasted. I walk away to allow Uwakwe to attend to his customers.
It’s twilight when I arrive home. I eat an early dinner and lie on the tomb. When I tire of this, I wander off again to the cave, climb down rock ledges, and yell like a madman to wake echoes and set off cascades. But nothing happens. I walk away, disappointed, angry that the cave refuses to yield to me. My father is probably wrong about Ezenwanyi’s powers.
Then, soft, beguiling woodwind rhythms of Ikorodo dance wafting in with a mild wind lure me to a bustling village square in a neighbouring community. The dance is performed by beautiful girls my age and younger in a V-dance formation at the centre of the crowded square: lean, swarthy, brown, bare sweaty shoulders, slender arms, and smooth thighs. Breasts like spears.
“What’s the celebration?” I ask a boy in the crowd in a loud voice.
“It’s a reception ceremony for the first university graduate this village has produced.” He whoops with excitement.
Presently the celebrant arrives. He alights from a big black car, a man of impressive height and panache, in a well-tailored suit. His tie is a startling red, his skin the dark brown sheen of a guanabana seed. He smells of education, walks with dignified steps, and speaks English in a low and refined voice. The crowd applauds his arrival. The dancers pounce on the music, dancing with a measured sway of their ample hips, their bodies gracefully suspended above bended knees, their feet clasping the ground at the toes while they wriggle their waists. The vocalist’s well-oiled voice is raised in eulogy above the percussion, a dapper little man dignified by his talent. He praises the educated man, calling him the fluted pumpkin that reaches its vines afar to claim ownership of the farmland. He calls him the migrating swallow that returns an eagle. After a few delicate dance steps, the educated man raises a big wristwatched hand to call for silence. The music and the voices peter out. He speaks in a voice full of power. His laughter resonates, punctuating his speech. And then he reenters the car and is whisked off, but the dancing and celebration continue.
A man, quick and lithe, breaks into the circle of spectators and positions himself in front of the dancers. I can see the man’s talent is legendary from the way the crowd reacts to his appearance. He is a man who wins beautiful women with his dance steps, says the vocalist. The dancer glances from the tamarind tree standing nearby to a swift-flying red-crested woodpecker cruising across a stainless blue deregulated space. He scans every happy face in the crowd and pushes the air this way and that way, to the delight of the crowd. He is being careful with his prelims. The prelims are the kernel of any dance if well handled, the rest is a matter of energy, asserts the vocalist. The crowd roars in wonderment as the dancer begins to wriggle to the pulsing drumming in agreement with the feline, female dancers. The whole arena is set alight as more people from the spectators break into the circle to wiggle, hop, and twist to the dance. An old man tries to scratch something out of a hip-bone injury probably sustained from a palm tree fall. He reminds me of my father. But my father has healed, enough to stroll to any of the drinking spots in the village if a little money enters his hand, although apparently not enough to return to his work.
Silence screams at me when I open my eyes to find that I never left the tomb, never went to Ezenwanyi’s cave again or to the celebration. The cold slab of the tomb digs into my ribs as I muse over this dream and the educated man: his aura, his panache, and his rhetoric skill. I want to be educated like him, rich, impressive, and polished. I see myself returning to the village as an important man, celebrated by pretty dancers, my success drowning our hardship. I rise from the tomb and grope my way inside. But the dream is waiting for me in the room. It forms a beam of light as I lie awake on my mattress and wait for sleep to claim me again.
Growing up, I dreamt a lot about food and hunger. And then I would see myself flying over mountains and canyons and rivers, sailing smoothly and effortlessly. When I told my mother about it she hushed me up, saying, “Don’t mention it again or people will think you are a wizard.” But I had a dream about my father, where he slumped and died on his coronation day, and it came to pass when he lost the crown to another man. I dream of Okike still, my protectoress, and every time I watch her drown, I see myself cheating death.
This new dream ushers me into a new day with a new thought, a fresh idea that soon ferments like my mother’s manioc as the emptiness of the days stretches out before me, filling me with boredom. Hot-hot days filled with flies and sunshine and dust. I can’t sit on the tomb because the sun heats it. I resign myself to the company of the Tree of Life and Death in the loneliness of the creek, and to sitting under the umbrella tree in our housefront, just sitting and staring. Every morning, I watch students of the Community Secondary School in their white-and-indigo uniforms as they cross ways with Queen of the Rosary girls looking like cerulean angels. I stare at them with envy, pondering my wasted years. I watch them as they come back from school on afternoons that are colour-washed white and sky blue, feet dusty, and tiredness blooming on their foreheads. The youngest amongst them are between twelve and thirteen, the oldest and the ones wearing trousers or braids are anything from sixteen to seventeen. I will be eighteen in a matter of weeks, with a wisp of unfamiliar beard. I would have been one of those blue-trousered boys had my father not lost his throne.
The educated man is everywhere in my head again. I can feel his presence, strong like a well-brewed burukutu. My dream comes back to haunt me again and again. Oregwu doesn’t have a university graduate. When most girls finish primary or secondary school, they get married; others learn braiding or sewing at Ogige market. The boys learn motor mechanics or carpentry or masonry. Others go to Onitsha or Kano or Lagos to get apprenticed to big traders. I want to fill that empty space. I know it is a tall ambition to achieve, but I want to become the first graduate ever to come out of my little village, Oregwu.