Changer's Daughter (18 page)

At one end of the main corridor there is a staircase going down, presumably the same one they had mounted the night before. After the landing, it extends up to another story. At the other end of the hallway is a large bright room from which comes the scent of coffee. Deciding that exploration can wait until she finds out who else is awake, Aduke trots toward the coffee.

The room she enters is as long as the entire building and about thirty feet wide. At one end a makeshift kitchen has been set up. Oya sits at a long table talking softly with Taiwo’s mother.

“We can keep goats downstairs,” the mother is saying, “and some chickens, too. I have missed such things. Is there any place we might plant a garden?”

“Quite possibly out back,” Oya answers, then she hears Aduke enter. “Good morning, Aduke Idowu.”

“
E karo.
Good morning, Oya. Good morning, Iya Taiwo.” Aduke twirls, relishing the feeling of open space around her. “What a wonderful place this is!”

Oya smiles. “I am glad you like it. It was once a factory for the assembly of widgets for a Belgian firm. Downstairs is what was the garage and warehouse. This floor held some of the workrooms. This”— she gestures broadly with one arm—“was the cafeteria and rest area so that the workers would not have to go outside during the rainy season.”

“Very thoughtful,” the old mother says.

“For both them and their workers,” Oya agrees. “The widget, I understand, would have been harmed by too much dirt. That is why there are large washrooms both near the workrooms and at the other end of this room. The Belgians wanted their laborers clean.”

The mother shrugs. “Good for us, though.”

“And what’s upstairs?” Aduke asks, crossing to the coffeepot. She pours herself some in a plain white-ceramic mug that has words written in some language rather like French on the outside.

Oya looks stern. “That is off-limits. As I was telling your mother, strange things have happened in this building. These same strange things chased the Belgians away. I have consulted a
babalawo
and the indications are that the source of the disturbance is located on the upper floor. No one but me is to go there. I can set some charms to prevent the ghosts from harming you, but these must not be disturbed.”

“Oh!” Aduke gasps softly, uncertain whether to be frightened or amused. Her good mood at finding herself in this well-lit, open place is such that she decides not to question Oya’s ruling.

“I will warn the children,” the old mother says, “and tell them that they are never to go upstairs.”

“Good,” Oya says. “And I will get a lock for it and keep the key.”

“We are fortunate,” Aduke says, to show that she also supports the edict, “that this factory has such a strange reputation. Without that, it would certainly be in use, if not as a factory, then as an apartment building.”

“True,” Taiwo’s mother agrees. “Oya says that the rent is just about what we were paying for the apartment. Water and electricity are included.”

Aduke smiles. “That’s wonderful! Maybe the
orisha
did accept our offerings, and now our luck is changing.”

Later, after the children have been fed, washed, and sent to play in the empty warehouse below, Aduke helps set up housekeeping. One room is to be the sleeping room for the children. Another is set up as sleeping areas for those who are without partners, with curtains between sections. The remaining two rooms are given to Yetunde and her husband and Koko and hers. “There will be new babies soon enough,” Taiwo’s mother cackles happily. “That follows as the rains will follow the winds.”

Aduke feels a sudden pang, wondering how with Taiwo in Lagos will she ever start another baby. The old mother sees her expression and pats her gently on the arm.

“I think that we do not want our married couples to get too fond of having so much space for themselves,” she says. “In the daytime, one room can be a workroom for those who need quiet, like Kehinde or you when you are writing to the government for us. The other will be a schoolroom for the older children. The little ones will take their lessons in the nursery.

Aduke nods agreement, though such care seems hardly necessary. Surely there is space and to spare.

Looking around the open room, she feels a weight of gloom lift from her, for the first time since her son died. Certainly the
babalawo
had been wrong. The family cannot be cursed. Or certainly the gods have accepted the many sacrifices, and this relocation is their first gift.

Either way, Aduke is certain that things are improving for the better. She smiles and goes to write Taiwo about their good fortune.

They let Katsuhiro Oba rot in his cell for an entire day before they bring him out into the light again.

Sitting on the damp dirt floor does nothing good for his suit, nor has the enforced waiting done anything good for his temper. His captors’ infantile belief that forbidding him food will break him makes him furious. Like most athanor, Katsuhiro possesses a high metabolism, but he is no shapeshifter, dependent on regular meals. Only reminding himself that getting out of his cellmate is the least part of escaping keeps Katsuhiro from breaking down the door.

With the arrogance of a trained samurai, he has no doubt that he could overwhelm the guards. He fantasizes plans of escape until, if the opportunity presents itself, he will be ready to take advantage of it. Then he slips into meditations of forgetfulness.

Thus the hours pass. His cellmate awakens occasionally. During one of these periods of wakefulness, Katsuhiro washes his wounds, binding the worst—a terrible slash across the forehead—with cloth torn from his own dress shirt.

He tells himself that he does so from boredom or that the man is a source of information. In reality, he does it from pity—and to retain some feeling that he is in control.

When he hears the bolt on the cell door shoot back, Katsuhiro gets to his feet. His pride will not let him play the role of defeated and frightened prisoner, even though it might be to his advantage.

Three men wait for him without, all armed with handguns of impressive size, all wearing khaki trousers bloused into boots and clean white shirts. The outfit has something of the uniform about its cut, but is not overtly so.

One grunts a command and Katsuhiro steps forward without a backward glance at his cellmate, though he hears the other man whimper. No wonder. Katsuhiro has seen the bruises on the man’s sides, bruises that correspond quite neatly with the rounded toes of the guards’ boots.

Nodding to the men as if they are his escort rather than guards, Katsuhiro walks briskly down the corridor in the direction from which he had come the day before. The guards are so startled that they actually let him go about ten paces before two hasten after him, leaving the third to relock the cell.

Fools,
Katsuhiro thinks.
I could have been away in that time.

In his heart of hearts, he is not certain that this is true, but it comforts him to think so, and in playing the role he becomes it. By the time he has been taken to an office on the second story of the prison building, he is as coolly confident as if he were about to conduct a class at his
dojo
.

Apparently following orders, his guards say nothing to him as they move through the corridors, but when they bring him into the office, the chief of the three reports to the man seated behind a solid American-style executive’s desk.

“No problem with him, Chief,” he says. “He came as quiet as a lamb. Maybe these Japanese are crazy. He acts like this is a normal way to treat a visiting businessman.”

The man behind the desk replies, “Perhaps he is. They say his kind commit suicide at the smallest slight. If that isn’t madness, what is? Leave us now. Set two armed guards at my door. Send someone down to question his cellmate. I want to know everything they talked about.”

“Yes, sir!”

As they are speaking Yoruban, the Africans have every reason to believe that Katsuhiro will understand nothing of their conversation; nor does Katsuhiro give them any reason to believe otherwise.

The truth is that he learned to speak Yoruban many years ago when first his rivalry with Ogun, now Dakar Agadez, blossomed. He had learned that nothing drove Ogun into an uncontrollable rage faster than being taunted in his natal tongue by his adversary. It amused Susano to speculate on Ogun’s ancestry, sexual habits, and hygienic practices in fluent Yoruban, complete with colloquial slang phrases and insults, then watch the results. The fact that Dakar had only learned to speak Japanese poorly and so couldn’t respond in kind only made the exercise sweeter.

Now, Katsuhiro schools his expression to polite neutrality, a faint smile, such as an embarrassed
sariman
might wear, on his lips, and waits to be addressed in a language he can claim to understand.

After the guards depart, his host studies him without rising from his chair, as if reviewing a cadet or a naughty child. Katsuhiro returns the gaze with the same embarrassed smile, all the while fuming beneath his unthreatening exterior. At last, the man speaks in good English, marked, however, with the vaguely British intonations of the native Nigerian.

“So, you are Katsuhiro Oba.”

Katsuhiro gives a brief bow, hardly more than a movement of his head. It signals acknowledgment of himself, rather than respect to the other. He doubts the Nigerian has studied enough Japanese etiquette to be aware of the slight, and it makes him feel better.

“You may call me Chief General Doctor Regis,” the man says. Katsuhiro doesn’t respond, not even to sneer at this typically African accumulation of titles. He is studying this Chief General Doctor Regis, trying to decide what it is about the man that makes his skin crawl.

Regis is not a tall man, nor particularly threatening physically. His skin is not as dark as that of many of his countrymen, indicating an admixture of white blood—perhaps as much as half. His close-cropped hair is kinky, shaded that peculiar ocher-red often found in mulattoes. Skin and hair color are the only indications of his white parent. Otherwise, his nose is flat, his lips broad, and his eyes brown. These latter are bloodshot, though whether naturally or from exhaustion Katsuhiro cannot be certain.

When Regis rolls his desk chair back slightly, perhaps a nervous gesture, perhaps to return Katsuhiro’s gaze with the minimum of effort, Katsuhiro sees that he is clad western style in shirt, tie, and tailored trousers. Instead of a suit jacket, he wears a white lab coat.

“You are very calm, Mr. Oba,” Regis says. “Do you realize that you are in great danger to your life?”

Katsuhiro lets his nervous
sariman
smile broaden a touch but says nothing more. Regis seems nonplussed but not really angry. He touches a buzzer beneath his desk and in a moment a woman’s voice speaks over the intercom.

“Yes, Chief General Doctor, sir!”

“Ice water. And a sandwich. Ham and cheese.” Regis speaks slowly, as if dispensing great wisdom.

“Immediately, sir!”

Regis says nothing more and within thirty seconds (Katsuhiro counts them to distract himself from the involuntary salivation that even the mention of food had triggered) a pretty young Nigerian woman bustles into the office carrying a tray.

She wears a bright red dress with a short skirt that shows off good legs. Her hair has been straightened and arrayed in an elaborate coiffure that spills curls down from the top of her head. When she sets the tray on Regis’s desk, his hand slides possessively along the curve of her bottom.

Watching without appearing to do so, Katsuhiro sees the woman’s lips stiffen, but she does not protest. Clearly this attention is not welcome, nor is it unexpected, but she does not care to protest.

“That will be all, Teresa,” Regis says, squeezing her bottom so hard that she cannot conceal a flinch of pain. “For now.”

Teresa exits and Regis studies the tray. His office is but poorly air-conditioned and the ice water in the pitcher sweats droplets of water that bead down the sides.

Katsuhiro’s mouth, despite the salivation triggered by the sight and scent of the food, feels as dry as cotton. He could easily knock this man unconscious and then satisfy his hunger and thirst. Yet he stands there, bland and obedient.

In a few minutes, as Katsuhiro had expected, Regis begins his meal, savoring each bite, smacking his lips after each long swallow of water, setting the sandwich aside from time to time as if he is finished, then starting to eat again. It is an elegant, terrible torture. Katsuhiro appreciates the man’s skill even as he hates him more and more with every passing moment.

When at last the sandwich is eaten and the pitcher emptied, Regis returns his attention to Katsuhiro.

“You’re a strange one, Mr. Oba,” he says conversationally. “Most people would have protested when they were kidnapped. You accepted it quite quietly. Are you involved in something to which you would rather not draw attention?”

Katsuhiro shakes his head.

“You say not,” Regis continues. “Still, it’s a captivating thought. I have had my men search your clothing and your luggage. Perhaps a more thorough search is in order... one that delves into the body cavities.”