Furo had dreaded this question ever since he saw the newspaper advert announcing a salesperson position with a company that sold business books. He had applied for the job despite his misgivings, after first altering his résumé to add ‘reading’ to his hobbies, and he was ecstatic when he received the email inviting him for an interview. It was only his second invitation in three-plus years of submitting job applications. On the same day he got the email, he decided on the book he would use as his cover. I love
Things Fall Apart
, he’d planned to say, it teaches us about our culture, where we as Africans are coming from. But in fact he chose that book because he was forced to read it in junior secondary and still remembered the storyline. Even the opening line:
Okonkwo was well known throughout the nine villages and even beyond.
And in his head the voice of Mr Zikiye, his English Literature teacher, still droned:
The white man in this book is a symbol of progress. Okonkwo fought against the white man and lost. Progress always wins, that’s why it’s progress. Now tear out a sheet of paper, you have a test.
The test that now faced him was as difficult as any he’d encountered in school. He was almost certain he wouldn’t get the job if he spoke the truth. For how could he, when the last book he’d read was a biochemistry textbook for his BIC 406 exam? But if he told a lie and was caught out by Arinze, forget the almost, he was certain he would lose the job. Suddenly oppressed by a full bladder, Furo wriggled his sweating toes in his shoes, and soon began to think not only of what to answer but also of how to explain why it took him so long to answer. When Arinze’s chair squeaked, Furo looked up, his thoughts in a whirligig, his body tensed for disappointment. He saw Arinze put down his mug, and after rubbing his hands together, he heard him say:
‘But will you read the books we sell?’
‘Oh yes, I will!’ Furo responded, his voice cracking with eagerness. ‘I promise I will.’
‘Good man,’ Arinze said. ‘So let’s get down to details. The position I’m offering you is Marketing Executive. You’ll be my point man, my big gun, the person I send out to bring in important clients. It’s high-level marketing – you’ll have to dress formally for meetings. The company will provide you with an official car and a driver. How does that sound so far?’
Speechless, Furo nodded, and Arinze continued.
‘The marketing office is empty, so you’ll have it to yourself. Do you own a laptop?’
Furo shook his head no.
‘But you know how to use one?’
He nodded yes.
‘It’s company policy that all employees must own their own laptops. We’ll buy you one, but you’ll have to pay back from your salary over six months. Is that OK?’
‘Yes.’
‘Perfect. Now your salary. Executive pay at Haba! starts at eighty thousand a month. That’s what you’ll earn at first. But you’ll also get a percentage on your sales. For sales of up to five hundred books, you get two point five per cent. For sales of five hundred to a thousand, you get …’
While Arinze reeled off percentages, Furo was calculating his good fortune in decimals. This offer of employment was the first he’d ever got, and a salary of eighty thousand naira was eighty thousand times better than nothing. It was also fifty thousand more than he’d expected, as the vacancy he’d applied for, the salesperson job, paid thirty thousand naira. Even better, this position came with a car and driver, free transportation, meaning more money for him. With all that money in his hands he wouldn’t need anyone. He could feed himself, buy new clothes, start his life for real, and still have enough left over to save towards renting an apartment. Eighty thousand naira wasn’t just money, it was freedom. For the first time since waking that morning, Furo had no doubts about the path to take.
Arinze had fallen silent, and now Furo could ask the question burning his tongue.
‘When do I start?’
Arinze reached for his open laptop, then tapped the keypad and stared at the screen, his eyes reflecting the plasma glow. ‘Today’s the eighteenth,’ he said. ‘How about the first Monday in July? That’s July second. You can start then.’
‘I’ll be here,’ Furo said. And in a voice hoarsened by emotion: ‘Thank you.’ On impulse he jumped to his feet and stretched his hand across the desk, and his eyes, catching a movement, swung to the glass below. He was still staring at the white face staring back at him when Arinze took his hand. ‘I like that, a businesslike approach to business,’ he said, nodding with approval. ‘I have a strong feeling I made the right decision. I’m looking forward to you proving me right.’ He walked round the table, placed his hand on Furo’s shoulder, steered him to the door, and threw it open. ‘Go well, Mr Wariboko.’
When the mind is at rest the body shouts its demands. Furo Wariboko, back on the streets of Lagos, now realised how hungry he was. Weak with it, his head aching, stomach juices churning, his breath reeking with it. He considered his choices. He had eight hundred naira left over from the money he’d borrowed from Ekemini, and that amount would just about cover a meal at Mr Biggs, the cheapest of the fast food chains. He was reluctant to spend everything. Thus far he had refused to pop his jubilant mood by thinking about where to go next, where to sleep tonight, but somewhere behind the wall of his mind he knew there was no going back.
No choice then. He had to eat in a roadside buka.
The roadway by which he strolled was jammed with traffic, cars crawled along at a pace that turned the drivers’ faces tight with frustration, okadas tore through gaps that even the bravest hawkers hesitated to enter, and petrol fumes from overheated engines thickened the air. Like oases on a desert caravan route, child vulcanisers and apprentice mechanics loitered in roadside lean-tos that offered scant shelter from today’s sunshine and tomorrow’s rainstorms. Exhausted vehicles dotted the roadside, some with bonnets opened to let out steam from gasping radiators. A riot of honking assailed the ears: short warning honks, long angry honks, continuous harrying honks: a language as universal as a scream. But in Lagos, overused. The clamour was deafening.
‘
Oyibo!
’ a female voice yelled from across the roadway, and Furo, startled out of his fascination with the automotive babel, glanced over. Vivid in her Fanta-bright shirt and white gloves, a traffic warden sat on a tyre under the shade of a neem tree. She was eating a peeled orange that was gripped in her right hand, and when she saw she had Furo’s attention, she grinned and gave him a left-handed wave. Furo moved his gaze along. Beside the neem tree, outside the shadows cast by its leaves, stood a three-legged easel blackboard. Scrawled on its surface in pink chalk were the words FOOD IS READY. Furo reached his decision before he realised he’d reached it, and stepping on to the asphalt, he dodged between trapped bumpers and strode across to the buka, a wood-and-zinc shed backed against a concrete fence and hung on the front and sides with grimy, once-white lace curtains. As he parted the front curtain, he heard the traffic warden exclaim, ‘Where this oyibo man dey go?’ and from the corner of his eye he saw her jump to her feet and fling away her suck-shrivelled orange. He ducked into the buka.
A middle-aged woman with a red hairpiece styled in a bob sat on a bar stool behind a table laden with aluminium pots. Four benches were arranged in front of the table. A man dressed like a construction labourer – blue denim shirt faded grey on the shoulders, mud-spattered jeans scissored off at the knees, and yellow rubber boots – sat astride one of the benches, and in front of him was a sweating bottle of Pepsi, a steaming bowl of okra soup, and three wraps of cold fufu, one opened. The fermented whiff of cassava meal mixed with the aroma of boiled okra and smoked panla fish made Furo lightheaded, and he sat down quickly. After placing his folder on the same bench he straddled, he looked up to catch the food seller staring at him, as was the labourer, his hand stilled in his soup-smeared fufu.
‘Do you have egusi soup?’ Furo said to the food seller, but she stared on in silence. He raised his voice. ‘Madam – do you have egusi soup?’
The labourer recovered first. ‘Answer am, e dey ask you question!’ he said to the food seller in a biting tone. He seemed angered by the reflection he saw in her face.
‘Yes,’ the woman said. She rose from the bar stool and made a clattering show of opening pot lids to check the contents. Then, as if unable to stop herself, she looked up at Furo and said in a rush: ‘Abeg, no vex, but you be albino?’
‘Open your eye, woman,’ the labourer said. ‘No be albino.’
The woman ignored the labourer, she kept her questioning gaze on Furo, and so he shook his head no. ‘I’m not an albino,’ he confirmed.
‘
Ewoo!
’ the woman exclaimed. ‘You be oyibo true-true.’
The woman fell silent, but her thoughts played across her features, changed her expression from wonder one moment to glee the next. The labourer resumed eating, his face soured with scorn. Seeing as the woman made no move to serve him, Furo asked with a touch of asperity, ‘Do you have eba?’ The woman caught the note in his voice, and she beamed a smile at him as if to say,
What can you do, you white man, you barking puppy
, but she said nothing, she nodded yes. ‘Give me three wraps of eba with egusi soup,’ Furo said.
The woman placed the eba on a steel plate, and then picked up a soup bowl and her serving ladle. ‘How many meat?’ she asked, and Furo held up one finger. But when she set the food and a bowlful of water before him, he saw two chunks of meat mixed with the shredded vegetable of his soup. He glanced up in surprise to meet the woman’s wide smile. ‘I give you extra meat,’ she said, her voice lowered, conspiratorial, but still overheard by the labourer. At his loud sniff of derision her smile slipped, she shot him the evil eye, and then returned her gaze to Furo with a smile that shone even brighter.
The stiff smile Furo shot back strained his jaw. He was grateful for the extra piece of meat, but he was also wary of the woman’s reason for giving it; he didn’t want to be drawn into conversation about himself on account of the gift, and so he said nothing. In the silence opened up by the missing thank you, the food seller beat the air with her expectant breath, and then, coming to see the futility of waiting, she shuffled her feet on the hard-packed dirt floor. As she moved from Furo’s side, he bent forwards and rinsed his hands in the bowl of water, then began to eat, his hand moving swiftly from eba to soup to mouth.
‘Hah!’ the woman exclaimed from her new spot behind him. ‘See how oyibo dey chop eba. This one nah full Nigerian o.’
The labourer had had enough. ‘You this olofofo woman, I been think sey you get sense,’ he said. ‘As you old reach, why you dey behave like small pikin? You never see oyibo before?’
‘Why you insult me?’ said the woman. Her voice bubbled with outrage.
‘Who insult you?’
‘So you no insult me?’
The labourer clicked his tongue in irritation. ‘Leave me abeg. Make I finish my food.’
‘I no blame you sha. Nah your mama I blame. She no train you well.’
‘No carry my mama enter this talk o,’ the labourer said. He rose to his feet and pointed his finger at the food seller. Long strings of okra soup dripped from his hand on to the bench.
‘Hah!’ the food seller cried with a sharp clap of her hands. ‘You dey point me finger?’
The labourer’s courage didn’t falter and neither did his rude finger. ‘And so?’ he asked the woman in a taunting tone. ‘Wetin you fit do?’
He shouldn’t have asked. Not of a woman who made a living off dealing with hungry men. And especially not of a woman who wore red hair. Furo steeled himself for the explosion.
‘Dirty Yoruba rat!’
‘Old Igbo mumu.’
‘Bastard son of kobo-kobo ashewo!’
‘Useless illiterate woman.’
‘Thunder fire you! See your flat head like Sapele dodo!’
It was now a roaring quarrel. The woman’s curses were more colourful, her delivery more dramatic, and her well of invention ran deeper. The man’s voice was louder. Their yells vied for supremacy with each other and also with the horn blares of the traffic outside, which muffled their words doubtless for passersby, but not for the person trapped between them. Furo rushed through his meal, eager to make his escape before a crowd collected. After he cleaned out the soup bowl with his fingers, he washed both hands, rubbed them dry on his handkerchief, and drew two hundred naira from his breast pocket. Then he sat waiting for the shouting to subside. From the sound of things, it wouldn’t be long before the man realised he had the lost the fight.
‘Nah because of oyibo you dey talk to me anyhow!’ growled the labourer in a final burst, and before the woman could retort he leapt over the benches, slapped aside the lace curtains with his food-smeared hand, and stalked out.
‘Where you dey go – pay me my money!’ the food seller screamed. She made to rush after the man, but Furo, horrified at the thought of a scuffle breaking out at the entrance of the buka while he was still inside, threw out his arm, grabbed the woman’s wrist, and spoke without thinking. ‘Please, madam, I beg you, let him go. I will pay for his food.’
‘Why you go pay?’ the woman demanded, straining against Furo’s grip. ‘That agbero chop my food finish, curse me on top, and e no get money to pay! Hah, no way o. I go show am today sey I be Okpanam woman. Abeg leave my hand!’ With a heave she yanked her arm free, then spun around and bounded through the curtains.
Furo felt a twinge of relief as he returned the two hundred naira to his pocket. After glancing around the buka in search of an exit plan that didn’t involve wasting good money, he reached for the bottle of Pepsi the labourer had left behind. He wiped the bottle mouth clean and drank down the chilled cola as he sat waiting. When he heard sounds of the fight – shouts of many voices and the stampeding of feet – he set down the emptied bottle, picked up his folder, stood up from the bench, then strode to the side curtain and slipped out of the buka.
Late afternoon, the red-faced sun slinking off west: offices shut and the shops shutting, the traffic hawkers multiplied in the frenzy of the day’s dying, the motorways choked with cars and the sidewalks with crowds, the zombie drag of feet drumming the earth. As Furo wondered where to go, he wandered around Ikeja, caught in this surge, the headlong rush of Lagos at the end of day. Inside and outside, from the pull of his thoughts to the push of his surroundings, nowhere was there respite from the muddle of images, sounds, smells.