I did not return that evening.
At the day’s editorial meeting, my eyes blinked uncontrollably as I struggled against sleep, exhausted by the repeated love making of the previous night. Eventually I nodded off, waking only when my head dropped sharply sideways. Some time must have passed, for my colleagues were gathering their papers and rising from their seats. I picked up my own papers and left, wondering whether I had snored.
I barely stayed awake in the taxi that drove me home. I ran up the stairs to my second-floor flat, kicked off my shoes, and slumped into bed. As I geared into deep sleep my room seemed to rotate in a whirling motion.
A rumbling in my stomach woke me up. It was past midnight. Too hungry to sleep, but too tired to get up and prepare food, I lay in bed and thought about Iyese, which soon became a way of thinking about myself, and about my mother, my grandmother and my father. What would they have thought about my relationship with Iyese? Would they have seen her primarily as a prostitute, and our friendship as therefore profane? Or would they have been moved by her spirit, her struggle for a dignified existence in circumstances so dire and inhuman? Weighing these questions, I lost myself, once again, to sleep.
The next day, on my way to work, I stopped to see Iyese. There was no response to my first knock. I knocked again, harder. Silence still answered me. I gripped the doorknob and turned it. Much to my surprise the door opened.
“Iyese,” I called out, walking in. Hearing no answer, I shifted the partition that led to her bedroom. The room reeked of sweat. She was in bed, naked, spread-eagled, a pillow lodged between her thighs.
“Ah, you’re home,” I said, with relief.
She looked at me with tired eyes, silent.
“I hope you haven’t been in bed ever since I left yesterday.”
Silence.
“I made a total fool of myself at the office. I slept through the editorial meeting. I went home after the meeting for a quick nap, planning to return here refreshed. You can imagine the rest of the story.”
Silence.
“You left your door open. Don’t you think you should be more careful?”
Tears rolled off the side of her face. Speechless, I watched her cry. After a few minutes she wiped the tears with the back of her hand.
“He came back,” she said.
“Isa?” I said in dread.
“He came with three men. They had daggers.”
My blood ran cold. “What happened?”
“The men pinned me to the bed. Then Isa stabbed my vagina with a dagger. I started bleeding. That’s when he entered me with his penis.”
A sensation of horror swelled inside my head. “Oh!” I cried.
“It was like the stab of the knife, but more painful.” “Despicable cretins!”
She lifted the pillow from between her legs. I flinched from the sight of wet blood.
“When did this happen?”
“Yesterday, about six in the evening. I heard their knock and thought it was you. As soon as I opened the door one of them grabbed me and covered my mouth. They pushed me down on the bed and forced apart my legs. Isa brought out his dagger and said he wanted to teach my vagina a lesson.”
“What did you do?”
“What could I do? I refused to cry or beg. But I silently begged death to come and take me away.”
“No,” I said. “It’s those bloody beasts who deserve to die.”
“Good thing you didn’t walk in. Isa said he and his men were going to cut off your penis.”
“Cowards! I wish I had run into them!”
“I have been bleeding since they left. This is the second pillow.”
She pointed to the floor beside her bed, where a pillow lay, dark-red with blood.
“You’ve lost too much blood. I must take you to a hospital.”
“No,” she said, sobbing. “I’m ready to die today. This kind of life has no meaning.”
“Iyese, this is no time to be fatalistic. Let me help you to get dressed.”
I reached for her hand and tried to help her up onto her feet, but she fell back on the bed, crying, “Let me die! Let me die today!”
In the commotion I did not hear the door open. I started when a female voice asked, “Emilia, which kind madness be this?” Turning sharply, I saw Violet.
“For two days you never come to Good Life. Everybody dey ask me, ‘Your friend, Emilia, she well so?’ So I say make I come find out. Wetin be your problem?”
Iyese kept up her wailing, calling on death to come immediately.
Violet fixed me with half-accusing eyes, seeking some explanation.
“They attacked her,” I said, not knowing what details to add.
“Who be they?” Violet asked.
“Four brutes.”
Iyese had now calmed down, sobbing quietly.
“Emilia, who attacked you?”
“Isa,” Iyese answered.
“Isa. That man again?”
“He came with three men. They beat me with a knife.” She lifted the blood-soiled pillow. Violet recoiled.
“Na blood be this?” she asked. Iyese’s tear-drenched eyes confirmed her fears.
“Forbid bad thing!” exclaimed Violet.
“I tried to persuade her to see a doctor,” I said to Violet.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “That one be my work.” She turned to Iyese and began to give instructions. “You must go to hospital quick quick. But first I must boil hot water to wash you. Then I go escort you to hospital.”
The water boiled in a short time. Violet soaked a hand towel in the hot water, squeezed off the water, then dabbed the bleeding wound while Iyese screamed. When the cleaning was done, Violet fetched a loose-fitting blouse from the closet and handed it to Iyese.
“Oya,” Violet ordered when Iyese was dressed. “Get up and make we begin go.”
Iyese tried to stand but winced. She tried again, her eyes tightly shut, teeth gritted, but again crumpled in bed. Violet and I each took one of her arms and heaved her up. Supported, she stood, her legs drawn apart, as if a wedge were lodged between them.
“It burns,” she cried, trying to throw herself back on the bed.
Violet and I held on to her. She began to walk with us, each step preceded by an agonized contortion of her face and followed by a moment of rest, to rein in the pain, to gather the strength for the next one.
At last we got her out on to the street. A taxi drove up and stopped. Iyese grimaced as we helped her into the back seat.
I directed the driver to the hospital and thanked Violet for taking Iyese. I said to Iyese that I would see her soon. The taxi zoomed off. I stood at the spot to wait for another taxi to take me to my office.
The sight and smell of Iyese’s blood stayed with me as I rode to work. I felt as if I were choking. I wound down the car’s window and shut my eyes, trying to conjure up other images. Gore infected every picture I saw in my mind’s eye. In the end, unable to escape the memory of what I had seen, I let my mind return to what it dreaded, to the sight of the pillows drenched with Iyese’s blood, her grimaces and groans, the despairing anguish in her voice when she told me what Isa and his thugs had done to her.
Beads of perspiration sprouted on my forehead. My teeth chattered. The driver, watching me through his rearview mirror, asked, “Are you all right, sir?”
“Yes,” I said. “Don’t mind about me.”
But I was not at all sure that I really was all right. In spite of myself, I was beginning to see the situation in the light of my own interest and safety. My anger at Isa Palat Bello and his minions was becoming mixed with fear for myself, lest I, too, fall victim to their butchery. Slowly, the fear encircled the anger, nibbling away at it. In the end the outrage was in the belly of the fear, the anger was eclipsed.
Something told me that Iyese would count on me to avenge her. But how? With what tools could I stand up to her violators? A pen? Against men who had daggers? Moral indignation? Against men with guns?
Then I pictured my colleagues on the editorial board having a laugh at my expense. Boy, you were asked to tell the story, not to taste it! The test of the story is in the doing! Exhaustive exploration of all the issues! Fellows, our friend found ways and means of probing. Now we know the meaning of in-depth reporting!
“No!”
The word escaped my mouth of its own accord. The driver looked sharply in the mirror. “No what, sir?”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to think aloud.”
Once at the office I headed to see the editor. He was on the phone when I entered. He ignored me, shouting into the mouth piece as though to a deaf person. As I turned to leave, in no mood to wait, he rang off and turned to address me. “Yes?”
“I’m not doing the prostitute’s story,” I said tightly.
“Bloody nice to hear that. May I ask why you changed your mind?”
“The story is flat.”
“What do you mean flat? I recall you said there was some bloody important human angle there. To speak nothing of the prospect of getting tidbits on Stramulous. What has changed?”
“Well, I interviewed the woman. There’s nothing to her story.”
He considered this, then shrugged. “Bloody hell, if you say so. I was uncertain of the story from the beginning.”
I left his office with a heavy heart. My mouth felt gummy and sour as I pictured Iyese in her hospital bed, sewn up, still sore, her slightest movement accompanied by excruciating pain. I entered her head and glimpsed her dreams of a new life, her hopes that darkness would yield to light, that the sun was certain to break through the clouds to warm her world.
Perhaps she imagined that I could be that sun. Perhaps I was her faith: Nke iru ka. The future is vaster and greater than the past. Echi di ime. The future is pregnant. Did she nurse the hope that I would help her to build a tranquil, happy life out of her ruins? That I would save her and help her to start over again?
Her dreams crushed me with their weight. Better to make her understand who I really was. That my fears outweighed her needs. That I would never take on a man with a gun. That, while I enjoyed the moments when our two bodies were fused, I was afraid of the scandal into which her name and history might drag me. That for the two of us there was no future, only a few feeble memories. That I was not her sun but something altogether damp and clammy. That the besotting power of her sex and all the shame that came with it had rendered me nerveless.
That, finally, I could not bear to see her again.