Indigo (25 page)

Jerry certainly had not before been of a mind to offer political advice, but if they were going through with this thing, then he thought they should go through with it properly.

“Beany is in Lagos now,” Smart said, “and that is what he is trying to do. He called this morning with our change of plans.”

“What change of plans?” Jerry asked. “What plans did you have in the first place?”

“Beany feels that if the junior officers took the chance of attacking the car, they might come here,” said Pamela. “He wants us to leave quickly, going back to Lagos slowly by bus. He says we should get lost for a few days, giving him a chance to straighten things out.”

It was December 28 and by nine in the morning everything was decided. Some of them would ride with Jerry on the bus, but in sequence, one from the beginning, another from Onitsha, another from Benin City where the bus made its last intermittent stop. Pamela's Peugeot would follow the bus, dropping his escorts in the towns along the way. LeRoY and the other artists would continue working and if the soldiers came they would say that though the group had visited they didn't know where they had gone. In the end all that was left was to wait until late afternoon, when the bus was expected to depart from the village square.

It wasn't a surprise to anyone when, at the last minute, Sondra ran out to the Peugeot, saying that she too would like to go along.

Two

Before they could take a bus from the village square, two more days had passed and, though the military hadn't come, the idea of going on the bus, though at first unpleasant to Jerry; had taken on an odd sort of appeal. He would use the time to think. From now on he would bring himself to the events that awaited him as a full-fledged player, no longer a pawn.

But the bus that had not arrived at all since Wednesday was late again, and when it came into the square it was full. Smart bought the tickets from a man who stood outside the chemist's shop, and when they got on the bus there was barely any room in the aisle.

Jerry turned around and found that directly above his head was a vent, a place where the ceiling of the bus bent upward into a square eight inches higher than the ordinary ceiling. By putting his head into the vent he could stand straight, but it was then nearly impossible to keep the sides of his head from banging against the vent's walls at each bump in the road. It was intolerable and he ducked quickly down again, kneeling next to Smart, a bundle containing his tree of life and his snapdragon beside him in the aisle.

Jerry still felt shy with Smart, still tentative with the man, and when Smart didn't speak Jerry kept quiet too and began to look around. The bus was packed with market women, their bundles taking up as much space as their bodies. These were big women, and their demeanor was serious. Jerry had seen them on airplanes a time or two, flying up to Abidjan to shop, bringing goods back to sell in markets like the one they were heading for in Onitsha or in Jankara, where this man kneeling next to him lived. When Jerry looked at Smart, Smart said, “I will accompany you for the shortest leg of your journey; from Onitsha I will be returning to my car.”

Jerry wanted to say that it was Pamela's car but he did not. Instead, though it wasn't a place in which one could speak freely, when the bus rhythms had lulled the nearby passengers, he said, “Tell me something more about Beany.” Jerry had been trying to understand the phenomenon of Beany for days, and he knew that Smart was a devotee. When he asked his question, however, it seemed like the whole bus came alive.

“Say again?” asked the nearest market woman.

Smart rolled his eyes, but Jerry looked at the woman evenly and repeated himself. “I was asking why it is that everyone loves Beany Abubakar so? He seems an ordinary man to me.

A moment before the people around him had seemed as inanimate as pieces on a chess board. Jerry was sure that they had been asleep, surer still that he had spoken softly, but now a half-dozen people were looking down on him from the nearby seats.

“Oh, brudder,” one man said, “where you get dat hat? Dat hat tell us sometin'. You dumb question tell us de res'.”

The man, stuffed into a seat with two of the market women, made everyone laugh and Jerry smiled too. He reached up to take the hat off, but Smart stopped him, so he simply said, “I'm not from around here, I'm not even Nigerian,” and they all laughed again. “Tell us sometin' we don' already know,” the first woman said.

Passengers from up toward the front of the bus were craning their necks, smiling back at the conversation, and Jerry felt himself relax. There was a sweetness to the group that made him comfortable even kneeling in the aisle. The thin man had opened a window and a nice breeze came in, increasing his comfort and letting him say, “Since I've been here, though, I've been hearing Beany's name. I just wondered about him, that's all.”

He expected more general comment but it didn't come. Rather, the thin man looked at him seriously. “Where you come from in de firs' place,” he asked, “an' what business Beany of yours?”

“He's none of my business,” Jerry said. “I've just heard his name a lot, that's all.”

The man was about to speak again but the woman put a hand up. “Beany a local man,” she said, “but he live in Lagos now. Beany a man o de people, das all. His own one mudder is a frien' o mine.”

“If Nigeria ever come together Beany be de glue,” the thin man said.

This comment brought a rush of agreeing voices, but then Smart spoke, asking the people, “Is there one anodder man we can trus' like Beany? One anodder man who ain' tribalistic, lookin' to his own folk firs'?”

To Jerry's mind Smart was too obviously a shill, but the people shouted, “No, dare ain't!” and the thin man glared at Jerry. “So don' come here speakin' bad 'bout Beany!” he said.

The man was angry but the woman poked him and said, “You got to listen better, my frien'. He don' say nothin' bad 'bout Beany but only ask 'bout Beany like he don' know 'bout 'im and wan' find out.”

The man glared a second longer, but then nodded. “Das good,” he said.

After that the people settled into the ride again, some looking forward, others closing their eyes. When Jerry looked at Smart, Smart smiled at him, but he didn't want to speak. The bus had been making good time, they were already entering Onitsha, the first stop. Jerry looked forward to standing, to possibly getting one of the seats, but when he glanced up to see who might be leaving, the thin man caught his eye. “So,” the man said, “where do you come from anyhow?”

The man rubbed his hands together as though he were about to make a guess, then he thought for a while, staring into Jerry's face. Out the windows behind the man Jerry could see that the buildings of Onitsha were passing by, he could feel the bus turning and slowing down. The man looked at him for a long while but then sat back and conferred with the two women who were his seat mates. Finally it was one of the women who spoke again. “We have only one idea,” she said. “You are from Ethiopia, are you not?”

The bus was stopping, the people at the front already heading toward the door. Smart stood, then reached down to pull Jerry to his feet.

There had been a clear question in the woman's voice, but just then she picked up her bundle and began bumping the thin man along toward the door, disallowing any chance for Jerry to answer, taking away his chance to make up his mind, to tell them whether he was Ethiopian or was not.

As it turned out the bus they took into Onitsha was not the same bus they would take out of it, so though Jerry had slipped into an unoccupied seat, he soon found himself standing again and following the others out the door, his bulky bundle by his side.

“It is good,” said Smart. “It looks like an ordinary Onitsha day.”

The river was off to their left and closer by, running along its side, were scores of merchants' stalls. Smart took a turn around the area and came back to tell Jerry that the next bus wouldn't leave until ten. That meant Jerry would have nearly a five-hour wait. Smart held out his hand and when Jerry took it Smart passed him a few crumpled bank notes. “We are here but we must not be seen,” he said. “Come back later and you will find your next companion.”

It was only as Smart prepared to leave that Jerry got a little miffed. No one had mentioned the change of bus or the long delay. “What am I supposed to do now?” he asked. “How will I spend my time?”

Smart shrugged and then glanced at the money in Jerry's hand. The other passengers had gone and the driver was coming down, pulling the doors closed behind him, when they saw the front of Pamela's Peugeot edging off the road. “Now,” said Smart, “don't speak to strangers.” He turned and walked back up toward the car, which was parked about fifty meters away.

Jerry looked down at the money in his hand and then toward the river, which was wide and brown and busy. This was the Niger, its slow mass striking through West Africa. He had been intending to see the Niger ever since his arrival all those years before so he sighed and told himself that he would, at least, accomplish that much during his five-hour wait. He would see the river. He'd imagine himself on vacation and try to take some joy from standing along its old and muddy banks.

Jerry walked away from the bus stop, but before he got to the first of the merchants' stalls he came to a store selling glass, and he stepped inside. Unusual for the area, this was a completely closed shop, a four-walled building with windows that were covered by bars. There was no one in the shop, but as he stood there Jerry understood that what had drawn him was a far wall lined entirely with mirrors, which he had dimly seen from the outside. He walked toward the mirrors carefully for he hadn't seen himself in days and the old lady's machinations had made him a little afraid. Before he could look into the mirrors, however, a voice called to him from the far side of the store, forcing him to turn that way. “You are interested in a mirror of quality?” the voice wanted to know, “a nice gilded one perhaps?”

The man was Indian and had been there all along, sitting down low behind a counter. When he stood and came forward, though, his manner changed, his smile falling down. “Ah, but surely not,” he said.

“I only wanted to look into one of them,” Jerry said, but he soon got the idea that if he wanted to do even that much he would have to hurry, for the merchant was pointing toward the door. “My mirrors are not for looking,” he said.

The man placed his body between Jerry and the mirrors so that when Jerry looked over the man he could see only his own face and the proprietor's head and shoulders, a hunched and cancerous-looking gargoyle stuck below his own chin. He could see a pained expression on his face, anger at not being allowed a moment to look at himself in a mirror, but other than that he saw only enough to be pleased at finding that the workmanship of these mirrors was flawed. There was not enough light in them, and the image of both himself and the proprietor's back was gray and grainy-looking, like the image in the window of a car. Only the vision of Jerry's cap was crisp, and as the man shoved him roughly from the door even that seemed in danger of coming off.

Jerry was cast into the street, and when he looked back at the man, half his size and fat to boot, his first impulse was to jump up and strike him, to knock him over the head with his tree of life. But the man had receded into his shop, and when the door closed between them the event was over. Jerry stepped back close to the shop when a truck came too quickly by, and he tried to see himself in the store's windows, hoping to irritate the man, but in the window, too, only the elements of his hat and his filthy shirt were clear. His hands, when he held them up, were easier to see through than they were to see, and when he tried to concentrate on his face he too easily saw what was inside the shop as well.

Jerry sighed and stepped into the dust that was left by the passing truck. Now he would have to wander around this town for hours, waiting for the next bus to leave. His mood was bad, but it improved when he remembered his original idea and left the shop to walk down past the merchants' stalls to the river. This was, after all, the Niger. How many rivers in Africa were as famous as this one?

He found a stump to sit on that let him watch the low boats as they carried passengers around. This river was used for commerce, of course, but Jerry's interest, quite suddenly, was in the low boats, the ones whose sides floated just above the water. In his Lagos flat Jerry had thorn carvings of such boats, boats full of women with babies, of men in short pants sailing off to look for work. In one of his carvings there were prisoners in the boat, and he thought of himself as being transported somewhere in chains.

Jerry stirred on his stump when one of the real boats came ashore just below where he sat. This boat was no more than sixteen feet long, but Jerry counted twenty people getting off, not including the babies. It was the river's version of the bus he had just been on.

Once the passengers were gone/the two boatmen came onto higher ground to stand near Jerry and smoke. These were hard-bodied men, and though their postures and muscle tone did not denote much difference in age, Jerry somehow knew that they were father and son. They were very near him but they didn't acknowledge him, nor did they speak together. Jerry thought of his thorn carvings and quite suddenly decided to hire the men, to ride in their boat across the river, to get to the other side.

“How much to go across?” he asked, and both men jumped. Only after he stood did Jerry notice that a group of people were lined up by the boat, their bundles already placed in the boat's center to keep them dry.

“Naira fifty,” said the younger man, and Jerry took out one of his crumpled bills. “I don't have change,” he said.

The man did not take the money but pointed toward the boat and then hurried off, with Jerry following him down the bank.