The Carnivorous City Read online

  ‘Did he really make a call?’ Abel asked

  ‘We checked his call logs; he did. Anyway, we are keeping them for attempted fraud. You want to see them?’

  Abel thought about it. ‘Yes.’

  The men looked like they had received serious ‘encouragement’ to talk. They had been beaten and two of them had black eyes.

  It was the woman who made Abel freeze. She was tall and pretty, and even in her jeans and T-shirt she looked out of place in that dingy cell.

  ‘That’s the lady banker who assisted them,’ Umannah said.

  Abel’s mouth was hanging open. It was Dr Nicole.

  —

  Tormented by his feelings and oppressed by the delinquency of his thoughts, Abel locked himself in the room the whole day, refusing to go outside. He berated himself as he wondered what had gone wrong. When had the sea change happened? When had he moved from brother-in-law to this thing he did not recognise?

  Two short months ago he was happy enough to be a teacher, to exist in his little room in Asaba, go to school, read his novels, drink a stout or two and go to bed each night, alone or with a partner when the opportunity presented itself. He was happy to be well and alive and living the life he had wished for himself since he was a mere boy. But all that now seemed like some millennia ago. He had been sucked in, as if by sorcery, by Lagos and the quicksand of comfort and luxury and he was beginning to struggle to keep his head clear.

  A friend had told him once: ‘You know, living a life of luxury is one thing you don’t need to be trained for.’

  How true, he thought, as he lay in his brother’s huge, luxurious bed, his mind filled with lust as he wondered whether Ada, who was singing and pottering about next door, was naked, half-naked or fully clothed.

  She was constantly in his head, like the strains of a bad song that takes up residence in your brain and refuses to be exorcised. He had wet dreams and huge arousals just thinking about her and it surprised him because he was a man who generally preferred monogamy. Usually, with Calista satisfying his needs, he would not bother with another woman. But with Ada, it was different.

  He continually tried to catch lewd glimpses: her breasts when she bent to pick up her son, her panties when, in a careless moment, she forgot to keep her legs together – something, always. Around her, Abel was, in many ways, like a teenager hungry for pleasures. He knew that if that door suddenly opened, the one that separated his room from hers, only God would save them.

  It was made more difficult by the fact that he did not fully understand his sister in-law. He knew she felt something but it was difficult to decipher. One minute, she was lying in his bed; the next she was treating him like what he was – a not-well-liked brother-in-law. She was a woman adept at masking her feelings, allowing you to see only that which she felt you ought to see.

  Occasionally, Abel caught a glimmer of the steel in her. He would hear it inflected in her voice when she spoke to a driver, the guard or even Philo. It was there in moments when, like all humans, she dropped her guard and lowered that mask he felt she wore so well.

  She could play the grieving wife searching for her husband or the loving mother tending her young child. She could play the loving sister-in-law, especially when Auntie Ekwi was around, but something in her actions, her words, the way she took control of things and situations told him that she was not a woman to be trifled with.

  Abel had always taken pride in his ability to read people, to see beneath the veneer of affability that sometimes masked nastiness, but with Ada he was unsure, even though he was clear in his mind, since he started living under the same roof as her, that she was a woman who you handled with caution. He knew that deep beneath the beauty and cultivated airs was a woman who would not forgive or forget or let go when she needed to sink her teeth into you and lock her jaw tight.

  He was sure, for instance, that if the tables were turned and she had the purse strings, life would not be so easy for someone who, to paraphrase Marcus Aurelius, ate her bread but did not do her will. And he shivered at the thought that he would not be exempt.

  Thinking about Ada also made him think about Soni. Who had sold him out? What had he done wrong? Was it about money, a woman, a careless word or a refusal to be cheated? Soni could be stubborn when he felt he was being had.

  Abel wondered what thoughts were on his mind when he realised that he was riding with Judases who had played thirty shekels with his life. How had Soni been taken? At gunpoint, with a threat, a mean hand across his neck, pinning him to the seat, cutting off air, causing him to veer off the road? Had he cried? Did he call for him or for their mum? Did he struggle or had he tried to run? As a child Soni had been a good runner but athletics had been no more than a means for him to attract girls. Was he scared and did he go with his abductors knowing that it was over and that his sins had finally caught up with him?

  If he was dead, how did it happen? Had he been tortured? Was it a drawn-out process intended to give the most pain? He thought of all the movies he watched and books he read where family members would be told of their recently departed: ‘It was quick. There was, thankfully, no pain.’ And he wondered, as he did all the time, did it matter? The person was dead anyway and whether quick or drawn out, did the dead care? Or were these things we told ourselves to ameliorate the pain, to dull the ache of loss?

  If, as many people insisted, there was no heaven or hell, no afterlife, if this life ended the moment the last breath was drawn, what did it matter how one died – happy, sad or in torturous pain? He hid under the duvet, his thoughts burning holes in his brain, wishing, without conviction, that the darkness would eclipse all, hide him from the man he was becoming, one he was finding tough to come to terms with.

  He remembered Dr Nicole at Panti and his consternation.

  ‘Why?’ he had asked her.

  ‘Did you ever ask your brother why?’ she fired back with a hiss.

  Abel had staggered out, the blood pounding in his ears. What demons drove the people in Lagos to do the things they did? He had read, the previous weekend, about two brothers who killed their older brother and sold bits and pieces of his body parts to ritualists. Luck ran out on them when neighbours got worried about the smell and alerted the authorities.

  After he left the station, Abel sat in the car for a few minutes to calm his nerves. In there, under the blazing noon sun, he shuddered and wondered whether that same demon was already taking possession of him too.

  Sleep claimed him in the darkness under the duvet and he dreamt, transported to when they were kids. They were on their way home and it was threatening to rain, so Soni suggested taking a shortcut through an orchard.

  ‘You can’t pass through here,’ three boys told them.

  ‘Soni, let’s go,’ Abel called but Soni was adamant.

  Every time he made to pass, the boys would block his path and push him back. Then Soni threw a punch and the next moment fists and legs were flying.

  Abel froze, watching as the boys knocked his brother to the ground. It started to rain and Abel was shivering and screaming but the legs and fists kept pounding until Soni disappeared into the ground.

  Abel woke with a start. Ada was in the room.

  ‘I have been knocking,’ she said, parting the blinds.

  Abel pushed aside the duvet and got off the bed. He passed water in the bathroom and then returned to bed.

  Ada, who had settled on the couch, got up and uncovered a dish she had brought in on a tray. It was his favourite meal – jollof rice and smoked fish.

  ‘Eat, Mr Dike,’ she teased. ‘You need a beer, or will water do?’ She tapped against the wall to reveal a refrigerator Abel hadn’t realised was there.

  ‘What else is hidden in these walls?’ He stood to check out the wall-recessed refrigerator.

  He shut it and tapped the wall, but it didn’t open.

  ‘You need to say the password,’ Ada said, her eyes smiling.

  ‘What’s the password?’

&nb
sp; ‘A-B-E-L.’ She laughed. ‘Just tap three times; it will swing open.’

  Abel tapped three times and the door swung open.

  ‘I never noticed.’ He took a can of beer from the fridge.

  ‘Some German guy fixed it up for Soni. He was very proud of it.’ She sat down.

  ‘It’s quite impressive,’ Abel said, still marvelling. He tucked into the rice. ‘Have you eaten?’

  ‘Yes, a little. When I cook, I lose my appetite.’

  ‘Well, I didn’t cook. I am freaking hungry.’ The rice was good: tasty and piping hot. The kind of food that made you sweat by the second spoon. ‘You cook very well.’

  She took a mock bow. ‘Daalu,’ she said in Igbo. ‘You like listening to the news but you never watch the TV in here.’ She picked up the remote control.

  ‘I know. Blame it on my father. He always said the bedroom was for rest. He never even listened to his radio in bed. I got it from him.’

  ‘Hmm, Soni always tuned in to CNN once we woke up. But this TV was mostly for bad things. He has a stack of naughty movies at the back there.’ She pointed. ‘You like?’

  ‘No. I would feel inadequate. I am not 9 inches.’ They both laughed.

  ‘Your brother, eh. You know I didn’t know about the 9 inches thing for a long time except that we would be out somewhere and a guy or girl would pass by and hail him, “9 Inches, long time!”, “9 Inches, what’s up?” And they always gave me this look, you know, like I was the latest victim. So, finally I asked him and the idiot worked up an erection and then brought a ruler. See, he said.’

  ‘Was it 9 inches long?’ Abel asked.

  ‘Of course, it wasn’t. The foolish man had been cheating all the while. “The missing inch only appears inside the, you know,” he told me and I wacked his pecker with the ruler. He was in pain for almost one week.’

  Abel choked on his food from laughing so hard. ‘I always knew he was making it up. Foolish boy.’

  Abel’s phone rang; it was Nnamdi calling to confirm whether they were still good for Friday night. Abel told him it was OK.

  ‘You know Nnamdi?’ Abel asked, and Ada nodded.

  ‘The contractor guy?’ she said.

  ‘Contractor?’ Abel asked. ‘I thought he was a “guy man”,’ he said, using the codename for 419 scammers.

  ‘He stopped; went clean years back. Then he hit this billionnaira deal with MTN or Airtel and became large.’

  ‘Really … He is grown very big too. He used to be a skinny boy.’

  ‘I haven’t seen him in a while. You know Soni never visited anyone even though we always had guests. But I see him in the papers and stuff.’

  When Ada took the dishes out, Abel undressed and got in the shower.

  He walked out naked to find Ada sitting there, leafing through a magazine.

  ‘Wow, cover yourself,’ she told him without lowering her gaze. ‘That’s almost 3 inches,’ she laughed.

  Abel pulled on his discarded boxers, shaking his head, and settled in the bed. ‘You are something else, you know.’

  ‘I try. Let’s go see a movie. I need to breathe before I get cabin fever cooped up in this house.’

  They saw a Nigerian movie, Tango with Me, produced and directed by Mahmood Ali-Balogun and argued about the ending on their way to Bar Beach, where Ada said they should spend the rest of the evening before going home.

  ‘What kind of ending is that?’ Abel asked. ‘No Nigerian man would accept that child. Every time you see her you will remember what happened. Tufiakwa!’

  ‘Think about it carefully. When you love someone you can make exceptions. And remember, the idiot who caused it was dead, shot. So, it’s not as if he will come back and claim the child.’

  ‘You don’t get it Ada. On your wedding day, before you even had a chance. Haba, which Nigerian man would do that? Abeg, no way.’

  They parked by the concrete embankment opposite the ageing but still imposing glass-and-steel IMB bank building, and after parting with one thousand each, they went looking for a tent and chairs. The concrete wall had been built to stem the seasonal floods that ravaged Victoria Island. Locals, and those who believed such things, said the flooding was caused by the mermaid who was upset with the bank building. They said the glass panels that covered the walls of the bank caught her reflection when she had her bath and whenever she got angry the beach would overflow and wreak havoc. The stretch of prime real estate from Bar Beach to the television studios right before Silverbird cinema had become a promenade filled with abandoned, rotting houses on account of her rage.

  The perennial flooding had also cost Bar Beach dearly; once the weekend destination for families, back when there were no multiplexes, Bar Beach had since lost out to newer, more clement beaches like Elegushi, Lekki, Alfa and Elekan. In the years since the embankment was built however, business had started booming again and the abandoned buildings were being reclaimed.

  The beach was also a place of dark history where armed robbers and coup plotters were publicly executed in the seventies. The people of Lagos used to call it ‘The Bar Beach Show’. Now, all that was on show were cheap prostitutes hawking diseased triangles, drug dealers peddling Indian hemp, skinny young boys leading skinny horses for hire, white-robed prophets selling prayers, and Olokun worshippers telling auguries while hawkers announced the availability of every item imaginable.

  ‘Tent na five thousand naira,’ the skinny young man who led them said.

  ‘Say who die?’ Ada asked switching to street-level pidgin. ‘We be like oyibo people for your eye? Go bring one big stout, coke and Smirnoff ice jor.’

  The young man opened his mouth to speak but Ada’s unwavering gaze unnerved him. He laughed nervously. ‘Madam na 2K una go pay o.’

  They ordered suya, and while they were waiting a young woman came by with a tray laden with stuff: herbs soaked in hot drinks, kolanut, snuff, cigarettes, and things Abel couldn’t even identify.

  ‘Oga I get Alamo bitters. If you take am, my sista go happy when you reach house,’ she said winking at Abel, who took the small plastic bottle with the green label from her.

  ‘What’s Alamo bitters?’ he asked Ada, but the young woman piped up.

  ‘It is for waist pain and man power,’ she informed him with another wink.

  ‘Oh, an aphrodisiac?’ He turned to Ada who had a smile on her face. ‘What do I need it for?’ Abel asked, reaching out to return the bottle.

  ‘Maybe you will get lucky tonight,’ Ada said.

  ‘With who?’

  She smiled and opened her palms wide on her lap as if to say, Search me.

  After the girl left, a tall, thin man in a white soutane approached them, his palms raised in greeting. He had stooped shoulders and a goatee and his huge feet were bare and dusty from pounding the shore.

  ‘Greetings from Jehovah,’ he intoned as he came close but Ada waved him away. ‘Blessings from Jehovah,’ he said, turning away and evincing no iota of disappointment.

  He was not gone for two minutes when a dreadlocked Rasta ambled over, a guitar slung across his chest. He was speaking before Abel realised that Ada did not even attempt to shoo him away.

  ‘It is not my express intention to segregate your ambient party but I would like to serenade you both with a song or two in return for some shekels,’ he told them, baring nicotine-stained dentition and sounding like a butler from a period movie.

  His accent was posh, but he looked like he had just woken up from under some mean bridge in the sadder precincts of Lagos.

  ‘Play me Sting’s “Every Step You Take”,’ Ada said looking over at a perplexed Abel.

  The Rasta played the song on cue, the original version, twanging away like he was playing a sold-out stadium, his sweet voice carrying on the cool evening air. When he was done he turned to Abel and said; ‘Make a request, dear sir.’

  To humour him, Abel said, ‘Play me Clarence Carter’s “I Got Caught Making Love”.’

  Abel thought there was no way
he would know that song or even sing it but he watched, stupefied, as the guy leaned back, cleared his throat and began to sing, his eyes shut tight. Super impressed, Abel gave him five thousand naira when he was done and the guy bowed and kept bowing until he was gone from sight.

  ‘That was something,’ Abel said.

  ‘They call him “Human Jukebox”,’ Ada explained as their drinks and suya arrived. ‘Someone said he used to be big in the US. He came back to Nigeria and opened a club but drink and drugs left him washed up on this beach like so many things and people in Lagos.’

  They sat there alone yet surrounded by people, in the waning light of the day, the sound of tyres on tar raging behind them as bankers and sundry corporate types closed for the day and headed out of the island for their homes on the mainland.

  It was the daily grind of Lagos. Most people left home as early as 4am from far-flung locales on the mainland in order to beat the morning traffic leading into the island. They would get into the island, then snatch an hour or two of sleep in the car park before work started. At night they would wait till 9pm before they headed home. Lagos was a city of men and women who had forgotten how to sleep and lived out their insomnia in gridlocked traffic.

  Abel felt like a decadent impostor as he sat there, drinking his stout, eating suya and enjoying the company of a beautiful woman. Never in his life had he thought this would be his reality. Lagos had been a place in which he never thought he would belong but somehow, on this trip, with its background of pain and anxiety, he’d found a city that welcomed him and made him one of its princes.

  His phone rang; it was Calista.

  ‘Are you avoiding me?’ she charged, but there was laughter in her voice.