An African Affair (16 page)

“What happened?” she shouted.

“Gastroenteritis,” the doctor said.

“But you don’t die of gastroenteritis, do you? Not so fast.”

“But he had no blood,” the nurse said.

“No blood? What do you mean ‘no blood’?”

“He was anemic,” the doctor said, walking off in Martin’s direction. Pauline, seeing the doctor, followed nervously, still not realizing what had happened.

As soon as Martin saw the doctor he jumped up and waited meekly for her to speak.

“How long was he sick?” she barked.

“Since yesterday,” Martin answered.

“There, you see. You should have brought him earlier,” the doctor said. “It’s your fault. You can come tomorrow to take him away.”

Martin was confused. “What? Where is he?”

“He’s dead.” The doctor turned and walked away.

Pauline fell into Martin’s arms. Martin pounded the wall just once, hard, with both his fists. Then he walked behind the screen to see his son, followed by his wife. Lindsay could hear Pauline’s loud keening and Martin’s soft sobbing. Then Martin collected himself, led Pauline from behind the screen, and headed straight for the door. But before he got there, he collapsed onto the floor. Lindsay rushed to help him up. He could barely walk. His cousin supported him, and Lindsay ran back inside and found the doctor.

“Excuse me,” she said, “I heard you say you had no morphine.” The doctor stopped in her tracks. “Would that have saved him?” Lindsay persisted.

The doctor looked tired and wary. “Maybe.”

“But how could you not have morphine? How is that possible?”

“We ordered it. We paid for it. It didn’t arrive. That’s all I know.” The doctor turned and walked away.

Lindsay stood for a moment, trying to understand. An orderly who was wiping the beds with disinfectant watched her.

“Dey go for steal it, madam,” he said softly.

“Who? Who steals it?”

But the orderly just shrugged.

All morning, Lindsay couldn’t think of anything but Eduke. His three-year-old smile, the shy way he thanked her when she gave him a piece of chocolate, the big wondering brown eyes as he followed his brothers and sisters around the courtyard, his curious questions when she read him books. She remembered taking his family’s picture with a Polaroid shortly after she arrived and how he had stared, fascinated, as the image magically took shape. And now he was dead. Why was this country so goddamn cruel?

Every day was hotter than the one before. The humidity was so high it was hard to breathe. But there were worse things than the weather to deal with. She drove Martin and an elder from his home village back to the hospital to retrieve—and bury—Eduke’s body. Pauline stayed at home preparing the mourning ceremony.

When they arrived at the hospital, they were directed to the morgue out back. Built of cinder blocks, it was nothing more than a big cold room with a metal table on one wall and a dirty white tiled floor centering on a drain. Lying face-up on the tile, unprotected and uncovered, was Eduke, still wearing his gray cotton pants and blue T-shirt.

Lindsay sucked in her breath. She looked at Martin, who seemed about to faint. As Lindsay reached out to steady him, an orderly entered, blocking the exit. Martin said he had come to collect his child’s body for burial. The orderly shrugged and said he didn’t know about that. Lindsay stared at him in disbelief. Then she knew. She could hardly believe it, despite everything she had seen in this country, but when she reached into her bag and pulled out a twenty-naira bill, the orderly grabbed it and disappeared. A moment later, he returned carrying a small wooden box that looked like an orange crate. He picked Eduke up and tried to force his body into the too-small crate. Martin turned abruptly and left the room. Outside, he pounded his fists helplessly against the wall, not once, this time, but over and over till his hands were bleeding. Then he walked back into the morgue and collected his son.

At the nearby graveyard, they were denied entry until they handed over another twenty naira. When the grave digger ignored them, Lindsay simply pulled out another twenty, after which he strolled over to dig the shallow grave.

There was no time for the Catholic family to get a priest. Martin and the village elder lowered the small crate into the ground. Martin said something in Igbo that Lindsay didn’t understand. He looked at Lindsay, gesturing that it was her turn to speak.

“Sleep well, sweet baby,” she mumbled, fighting tears. And so it was over.

They were silent on the way home. When they arrived, Lindsay went inside, turned on the fan, and lay on her bed, watching it turn slowly. She was waiting for James. When he arrived about fifteen minutes later, she poured gin and tonics and told him the story.

“I’m going to write about this,” she said. “I want people to know how corrosive corruption can be, how much harder it makes every aspect of life, how much worse the pain is when the system consistently turns against you.”

James put his arm around her. “That’s always your reaction, write the story, as if telling the story has some healing power. But the medicine only heals you, Lindsay. You feel better once you write it. You even have the illusion that you’ve done something good. But that’s bullshit. It’s self-indulgent. What difference will telling this story make to Martin or Pauline or Eduke? Readers will sigh and turn the page.”

It was as if he’d hit her. She tried to shield herself and strike back at the same time.

“No, you’re wrong, James. I have to believe that people are capable of reacting, of helping, of trying to create change.”

She thought of telling him about her terrifying run-in with Olumide’s thugs, to show him how strongly she believed in the power of telling the truth. But she decided against it. It wouldn’t help and it might complicate things. She sighed and said softly, “You’re so cynical. That’s the easy way. Your attitude is ‘life is terrible, nothing changes.’ That’s just one more excuse for doing nothing. If people don’t know what’s going on, they can’t protest. Change is prevented by ignorance, not inertia. People do what they can. I try to end the ignorance. It’s just a small, not very important kind of help, I know that, but I can do it, and I do it well, and that’s better than doing nothing.”

“I’m sorry, Lindsay. But I’m afraid I don’t believe in changing the world. I don’t think it can be done. I want to take care of myself and the people I love. That’s hard enough. And I try to be of some help to whoever crosses my path. We should go to the ceremony for Eduke. We should reimburse Martin for any expenses he had. We should help him educate his other children. I don’t believe in anything grander than that.”

They could hear Martin and Pauline’s many friends and relatives arriving at the compound, crowding Martin’s quarters and spilling into the garden. The scent of the simmering cassavas and spices was already starting to permeate the air.

“I’m afraid we are going to have to agree to disagree on this for now,” Lindsay said, peeking out the window.

Preparations for the gathering in honor of Eduke were well under way. One of Martin’s cousins brought a goat to be sacrificed. Others carried crates of beer. Lindsay knew that the party would be given to appease Eduke’s ghost so he wouldn’t come back to strike down his family. Pauline, Martin, and many guests had rubbed white powder on their faces and marked the doors of their quarters with white paint. It saddened Lindsay to think that little Eduke, having joined the dead, was transformed from a beloved child into a fearsome spirit.

She told James she was exhausted and needed to sleep. She did not add that she wanted to be rested enough to write Eduke’s story before going to his mourning ceremony the following night.

By the next morning, Lindsay recognized that her first impulse to file a scorching story about Eduke’s death was rash. She would write it now while the details were still sharp and her outrage white hot, but she wouldn’t send it until she was safely out of the country. She sat at her computer and made a couple of false starts. By the time she finished it was 12:30, the time the foreign press gathered at the Ikoyi Club for a weekly session of drinks and gossip. Maureen had left a few days earlier to do a story about oil production and Lindsay hoped she might come back in time to join her there.

Unsubstantiated gossip in Lagos often turned out to be useful. Brian Randolph, the London
Times
man, was due back in town after a week’s leave in London. He may have picked up some information from British government sources at home.

Lindsay pulled the Peugeot into the circular driveway of the genteel, pink stucco Ikoyi Club, a run-down vestige of colonial Africa, comforting somehow in its shabby familiarity. The paint was peeling, the chintz awning slightly frayed, but out back you could see the swimming pool, the squash and tennis courts, and the field for polo. Such an African sport, she had thought snidely when she first saw it. Members of the club were expatriates or wealthy Nigerians who somehow had managed to remain anglophiles—so brainwashed that even now, more than three decades after independence, they thought anything British was the height of sophistication.

Lindsay walked past the bulletin board that listed upcoming events—a bingo game, a billiards championship, a table tennis tournament—into the bar. There, at the usual table, she saw Ken Abbot, the
Telegraph
man, the
Guardian
’s Ed Courvet, Brian Randolph, and Mike Vale. Evan Peterson of Reuters, a regular, was nowhere to be seen. Neither was Maureen. A bottle of scotch and several bottles of beer sat on the table

Ken Abbot called, “Hey, Lindsay, I was just wondering when you’d turn up. And here you are. Have you heard what happened to Evan?”

She frowned. “No. What?”

“Kicked out. Probably on his way to the border right now. Picked up in a Black Maria and driven up-country. Orders were to drop him over the border.”

Lindsay pulled up a chair and sat down. She was shaken. If they threw Evan out, did that mean she was vulnerable too?

“I don’t get it. What’d he do?”

“The stupid bastard wrote there were reports of ‘tribal violence’ up north. That’s a no-no ever since the Biafran war. You never report ‘tribal violence’ here.”

“Especially if it’s not true,” added Mike Vale.

“Are you sure it’s not true?” Lindsay asked. “He’s usually pretty careful.”

“He believed what he heard,” Mike said. “But it was wrong to go with it.” He drained his scotch. “Look, there are plenty of other things to worry about. The rumor is there will be a coup. Olumide will make it look like Fakai supporters are rioting and use that as an excuse to arrest him.”

“Sounds like there might be a fair chance of tribal and religious violence after all,” Lindsay said.

“It all makes sense,” Ken agreed. “But it didn’t happen—not yet, anyway—and Evan Peterson is in a hot sweaty van on his way to the border. No one ever said it was easy being a hack.”

Of course, Lindsay thought, she wasn’t the only one on to the Olumide rumor. The hyenas all got there at the same time after all.

Mike Vale, already a little drunk, weighed in again.

“Who the fuck cares? The lucky bastard’s out of this shit hole. If he’s really out. Remember Colin Packman, who was thrown out a few years ago? The same deal. They drove him to the border, him and his wife and eight-year-old kid. But while they were on the road, there was a coup, so while one group had the order to throw him out, the group at the border was ordered to close it off. Big impasse. Packman and his family are left to sweat in the goddamn car while the Nigerians slug it out. They sleep on it overnight. Next morning, same problem. Finally, the Nigerians drive them way up-country to the river, put them in a canoe and push them toward Benin. No papers, no visas, no local money. Of course, the Packmans know when they get there they’ll be arrested for illegal entry, but they don’t care. They’re so happy to be the hell out of Nigeria. The wife and kid are laughing and waving as the boat drifts away. The wife told me later it took them days to straighten it all out, but it was the highlight of their two years here. Getting out.”

Lindsay was only half listening. She’d heard different versions of this story before.

“Any news about Olumide?” she asked. “Is everything quiet?”

“Not sure,” Brian Randolph said. “There are rumors that Olumide has started to move against some group called The Next Step, which is a new one to me. Have you heard of it?”

“Yes,” Lindsay said. “They support Fakai. I don’t know too much about them but I think they’re mostly young and poor.”

“That’s a lethal combination,” Ken said. “They say Olumide’s men have arrested rural leaders in some of the villages. But it’s not confirmed. I’m about to check it out.”

“In the villages?” Lindsay asked. “I was under the impression The Next Step was mostly disgruntled city kids.”