A day after the coup Major James Rada returned on Radio Madia and announced that Major Isa Palat Bello, just selected as the new head of state and commander-in-chief of the Madian armed forces, was about to address the nation. Hearing Bello’s name, I had the fleeting urge to laugh. Certainly, I thought, someone at Radio Madia had decided to make a ghastly joke at my expense.
The national anthem came on, dispelling my doubts. Then I heard Bello’s familiar hoarse voice.
Beloved fellow countrymen and women. Today marks an important epoch in the checkered history of our great nation . . .
My throat tightened and my head seemed to spin. “Murderer!” I cried.
The moral turpitude of the deposed government . . . their unbridled rape of the Madian people . . . financial recklessness and social anarchy . . . We now have a great opportunity for national economic and moral renewal . . .
For a while, my mind tuned in and out, dimly grasping Bello’s words. Then a cold fear crept up inside me and I was transported to the past, to the fount of terrible memories. I remembered Iyese pinned against the wall with Bello’s hand at her throat. The two pillows basted with her blood. The grotesque tranquility of her final posture, stretched out with her baby on her breast.
Bello’s voice broke in again. The government is firmly determined to deal summarily with any trouble makers . . . Terrors I could neither name nor disentangle dinned in my head. This man whose cruelty I knew so intimately now personified absolute power. And I was his enemy!
Throughout the night my body twitched, my teeth chattered. I slept only in short spurts, my rest haunted by bad dreams. The next morning there were pictures of Bello everywhere: on billboards and in shop windows, on every newspaper’s front page. Soldiers milled around the city, guns strung across their chests. Their gaze seemed to single me out and follow me. I began to avoid the streets.
One morning I woke up after a nightmarish sleep and called my office. The receptionist told me that two men had been in to see me. They had not left their names, only the message that they would return. No, she had never seen the men before. “Thank you,” I said in a voice choked with dread. “Put me through to the editor.”
I told the editor that I was very sick, that when I stood up the world seemed to spin around me. I had no need to see a doctor, I assured him; this thing had happened to me twice before. It was a sort of psychic exhaustion triggered by a rare chemical imbalance that could not be controlled with drugs. The doctor who diagnosed it several years ago had said that all I needed was to stay in bed for a few days, listen to soothing music, eat once a day (and only vegetables) and drink lots of water—nothing carbonated.
I talked without pausing, afraid that the editor might ask a question that would expose my lies, or say that he knew such and such a doctor I ought to see. Then I came to my point.
“I was wondering if I could take a week off. To rest in bed. I was told that if I didn’t get proper rest I could easily have seizures. Bad ones, or even a stroke.”
He was silent for a moment. Had he found a hole in my story? I waited, tense.
“Bloody hell,” he finally said, in his accustomed fashion. “Take two weeks.”
I gripped the handset of the phone, hardly believing my luck. For two weeks, I thought, I would be out of circulation, hidden away from the soldiers’ stabbing eyes. In my relief I did not consider the possibility that the new solitude could birth its own monsters.
At midnight I got into bed to sleep. The instant I shut my eyes the image of Major Bello stood over me, his gun aimed at the ridge of my nose. Lying on my back, I peered straight into the gun’s muzzle, dark and small. I struggled hard to erase this image from my mind. In its place came a fluttering sound and a ghost draped in a mauve veil, hovering over me. Slowly, the veil turned a dark red, became a cloud of blood, then dripped all over my bed. I watched with dread as the ghost’s form became clearer and more familiar.
“Iyese!” I shouted, jerking myself upright with a nervous impetus. The ghost was gone, merged into the opaque fabric of the night. I was alone, a heaving, terrified man.
“Iyese,” I whispered. The room was eerily quiet. I touched my bed, a pool of sweat. I turned on the light. The time was 1:03 a.m. I reached for the phone and dialed. Ola Jones, a friend from my university days, answered after seven rings. His speech was slurred with sleep. I told him who it was.
“This better be important,” he warned, “or I’ll kill somebody!”
“My life’s in danger. I must come over to your house. Immediately.”
“Can’t you wait till the morning?”
“No. I don’t know what might happen. It may be too late.”
“Have you called the police?”
“No.”
“Do.”
“I can’t.”
“You can’t? Why not?”
“I’ll tell you when I get there.”
“There’s a curfew in effect, you know. What if you get arrested for breaking it?”
“Your home is only two miles away. I can manage.”
“Tell me, you’re not running from the law, are you?”
“I’ll tell you when I get there . . .”
“Because I don’t want to harbor a fugitive.”
“When I get there.”
The streets were empty. In the days before the coup, a few cars would have been about. There would be a number of Hausa retailers at their suya stands, selling a variety of peppered meat to an unending procession of nocturnal customers. But that night Langa was a dead city, its residents confined indoors.
I took a back street and walked stealthily, ready to duck at the slightest suggestion of danger. It was not long before I reached Ola’s house. There were lights on in his living room. I tapped lightly on the door. A woman I did not know let me in. I was not surprised: at university Ola was nicknamed uchichi agba aka because there was no night when he did not sleep with some woman. Stepping into the room, I saw Ola on the couch, his face covered with a magazine. He had no doubt asked his woman to open the door so that I would get the message that I had disturbed more than his sleep. Such an unsubtle bastard, I thought. He got up when I walked into the room, smiling radiantly, charming as ever.
“Young man!” he bellowed, hugging me. He always addressed me that way even though I was a full two years older than he. “Sit down. Guinness stout or will it be brandy?” He stopped short, narrowed his eyes with intensity, and inspected my face.
“Young man, you’ve grown old on me. What are these stress marks doing around your eyes? Are you sick? Has the job been too demanding? Are you getting enough sleep? Tell me, what’s really going on?”
I glanced briefly in the direction of his girlfriend.
“Go on to bed, Angela,” he said to her. “We’ll be fine.”
“I’m not sleepy.”
“That’s okay. Just wait in bed then. I’ll join you.”
“When?”
“Soon as I finish talking with this young man here.”
“What if the talk takes all night?”
“Then it takes all night!” Ola snapped.
“I don’t even know why you woke me up in the first place,” she grumbled. Presently she slammed shut the bedroom door. “Yes, young man. Who’s threatening your life?”
“Isa Palat Bello.”
“The new head of state?”
I nodded.
“Did you write anything against his regime?”
I shook my head.
“I didn’t think so. So why do you think he’s after you?”
“He’s a rapist and a murderer.”
“Wait a minute now! The man has been in power for what?—a few days. And already you accuse him of rape and murder. I didn’t suspect you were one of those idealists who think a corrupt elected government is better than a corrective military regime. Major Bello intervened to save this country from Amin and his cabal of thieves. Idealists like you must face reality. Let’s give the military a chance to clean up the mess.”
“You don’t understand,” I said.
“No, you don’t understand. This is a clear case of wrong headed idealism. Who could this man have raped in one week?”
“He really did rape a woman. And killed her. Not since becoming head of state; before. Two years ago.”
“Who found out that he did this?”
“I.”
“Did you report this to the police or write about it?”
“No.”
“You don’t expect me to take you seriously, do you?”
“I knew the victim. She was his girlfriend. Well, sort of.”
“His girlfriend? How does one rape one’s girlfriend?”
“In his case quite savagely. Then when she had a baby son and refused to acknowledge him as the father, he murdered her too. Viciously.”
Ola mulled this over for a moment. “Don’t think I make light of your story,” he said. “But look at things this way. According to you, Bello raped and murdered this woman you knew. You didn’t take the story to the police nor did you write about it. Why then would Bello want to harm you?”
“Because I know how he looks when he isn’t wearing a mask.”
“You’re the least of Bello’s problems. He’s now a head of state.”
“And a commander in chief,” I added. “That’s precisely my point. He always had a motive to silence me. Now he has the power, too. Besides, two strangers went to the newspaper looking for me. Tell me they’re not Bello’s security operatives.”
“I can tell you that. I’m sure this was not the first time strangers called in at the office to see you. The head of state isn’t going to lose sleep thinking how to deal with—don’t take this the wrong way—a common journalist. He’s got a country to run.”
He yawned and looked at his watch, then popped open his eyes in alarm.
“Four Ten! It’s the first time I’ve been up this late without a beautiful woman having something to do with it. Young man, let’s resume our talks later today. It’s Angela’s first visit, so I must make a good impression. Good night.”
I spent four days in Ola’s house. My second day in hiding Radio Madia announced that the new regime had lifted the curfew. All air and sea ports were reopened; telephone services, which had been restored locally two days after the coup, were now restored for international calls. The station also announced the promotion of several members of the junta. Major Bello was made a major general by special “accelerated promotion.”
I stayed awake each night, holed up in the dingy room where Ola dumped his dirty clothes. I read books and drank brandy and had wide-eyed dreams in which terror appeared in all guises. In my solitude I began to hold conversations with myself. On the third day Ola eased open the door and entered the room, intruding on one such session.
“Why is your voice so high?” he asked. I froze and gazed at him. His face had an expression of puzzlement and mild fright.
“I’m meeting some of the gang for drinks at the Metropolitan Club this evening. Eze will be there. And Ahmed, Tunde, and, of course, Ada. Probably George too. I’m sure they’d all like to see you. “
“No,” I said.
“No what?”
“I’m not coming.”
He turned sharply and left the room.
Later that night, while I lay in bed reading, Ola returned, all four friends in tow. They barged into my room, nattering, their faces overspread with drunken smiles.
“How was the evening?” I asked.
“Splendid, in spite of you!” said Ada, the only woman in the group. She came over to see what I was reading. It was Albert Camus’s The Plague. “So reading a sick book is more important than drinking with the gang?”
At the university we had all belonged to a group called PFD, for Politician, Fish, Dog. Our pledge was to throw parties without just cause like politicians, to drink at every opportunity like fish and to have sex with the shamelessness of dogs. After we left the university, I had wandered away from the group and its frivolities, inventing excuses to avoid their wild parties and weekend binges.
Ada was the gang’s most enthusiastic member. Her father was a wealthy lawyer who enjoyed huge perks from the numerous multinational corporations on whose boards he sat. She was a tall woman, not pretty but attractive. Some of her comeliness smacked of something paid for with her father’s cash: the expensive clothes she wore, the soft sheen of her make-up, the waft of perfume her body gave off. She was complacent when it came to sex, a woman who seized the slightest opportunity to slip into a man’s bed. She drank with abandon (but never became drunk), and she spared no expense when she threw parties.
“I’ve not been feeling well,” I said. “My stomach is a little disturbed.”
“That’s not what we heard,” said Eze the Loud Mouth. “We hear you’re a man on the run.”
“Yes, but that had nothing to do with it,” I insisted.
“Tell me,” he asked. “Is it true that General Bello is looking for you to kill?”
“I’m certain of it.” The response shocked them into a momentary silence.
Then Eze, finding his voice, asked, “Why? Did you sleep with his wife? Or his mother?” They all burst into throaty laughs. I glared at them: the freedom of their laughter was insufferable. I buried my face in The Plague.
“We’re now too foolish for you to talk to?” asked Ada.
“Your fears are baseless,” Eze said in a strident tone. “Bello hasn’t done one wrong thing. Not one! You should come out of hiding and go back to work.” In a lower voice he went on, “Listen to me, my friend.” I stopped reading and set my eyes on him. “Bello is not a murderer. He’s a redeemer. All this fear is within you. If you want to see a psychiatrist, we’ll help find one. A very good one.”
“You think I’m crazy, then?” I asked.
They made no answer in words, but I read it on their faces, in their eyes.
“Think about Ola’s situation,” Eze added. “He’s inconvenienced himself to put you up for a few days. Imagine what would happen to him if—God forbid—General Bello were really out to get you and Ola was caught sheltering you.” He paused to let his point sink in. “You really should see a psychiatrist. And go back to your home. Nobody is going to harm you.”
Very early the next morning I gathered my clothes into a bundle wrapped in a blanket, then slipped out of the house before Ola woke up. The streets wore a dull, indistinct face, the houses obscured by the morning mist. I had no destination in mind when I began my journey. But as the mist lifted and the sun broke through, the clouds in my mind cleared away and I saw where I was going. I had a vision of sand, sea, sunshine, and endless sky. My path was leading me into exile on the outer edges of life, in the haven of B. Beach.