And After Many Days Read online

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2016 by Jowhor Ile

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Tim Duggan Books, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  www.crownpublishing.com

  TIM DUGGAN BOOKS and the Crown colophon are trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  is available upon request.

  ISBN 9781101903148

  eBook ISBN 9781101903155

  Cover design by Michael Morris

  v4.1

  ep

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Part I

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Part II

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Part III

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Part IV

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Acknowledgments

  For my mother and my father, Nma ya Pagem

  Mercy Ebere and Edwin James Ile,

  stars in my firmament.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Paul turned away from the window and said he needed to go out at once to the next compound to see his friend. It was a Monday afternoon in the rainy season of 1995. Outside, the morning shower had stopped and the sun was gathering strength, but water still clung to the grass on the lawn. “I’m going to Fola’s house,” he said again to his brother, Ajie, who was lying on the couch, eyes closed, legs hooked up the back of the chair. If Ajie heard, he gave no sign.

  Ajie sighed as a woman presenter’s voice came on the radio, cutting through the choral music. “Why do they always interrupt at the best part?”

  Paul floundered by the door as though he had changed his mind; then he bent to buckle his sandals, slung on his backpack, left the house, and did not return.

  At least that is one way to begin to tell this story.

  Things happen in clusters. They would remember it as the year the Mile Three ultramodern market burned down in the middle of the night. The year the trade fair came to town and the Port Harcourt city council, in preparation for the major event, commissioned long brightly painted buses that ran for cheap all the way from Obigbo to Borokiri (a full hour’s journey for a mere two naira!). It was the year of the poor. Of rumors, radio announcements, student riots, and sudden disappearances. It was also the year news reached them of their home village, Ogibah, that five young men had been shot dead by the square in broad daylight. The sequence of events that led to this remained open to argument.

  Ajie stretched out and yawned, then dropped his arm and let it dangle from where he lay on the couch. He heard the gate creak as Paul let himself out, and the house fell back to the radio music and the sound of Bibi, their middle sister, blow-drying her hair in the bathroom.

  Ajie and Bibi were due back in school that weekend. Their tin trunks were packed, school day uniforms already ironed and hanging, waiting in wardrobes. Ma went through the school lists, as she always did before the start of each term, checking to see that everything had been bought. Paul had finished his final school certificate exams in June, so he stayed at home while Ajie and Bibi spent hot afternoons at Mile One Market with Ma, buying school supplies for the term: textbooks, notebooks, buckets, mosquito nets, provisions, T-squares, drawing boards, four figure tables, cutlasses, brooms, and jerricans.

  Their father, Bendic, had decided that since Bibi’s school was on the outskirts of town, she would be dropped off on Saturday evening. Ajie’s school was four hours away, so they had reserved all of Sunday for his journey. The blue Peugeot 504 station wagon was sent to the mechanic for servicing. For a whole afternoon their driver, Marcus, sat under the guava tree and read a paper and fanned himself, and when the cloud changed face, he carried his seat into the gatehouse, where Ismaila had a little pot set on the stove. The pot boiled and the lid clattered against the rim, letting go a fold of steam that escaped through the windows into the trees outside, and the sharp scent of dadawa sauce reached toward the main house.

  —

  The day before, Bendic had called Ajie and Bibi into his study as he prepared letters to their guardians. Bibi’s guardian was an agile, muscular woman whom Ajie had seen once during a visit to Bibi’s school; he had assumed from the woman’s air of personal authority and wide, relentless hips that she was the school’s matron. Bibi later told him she was a mere agriculture teacher and nothing more. Ajie’s guardian, Mr. Onabanjo—school bursar, head of accounts—was far too busy, thankfully, to nose about, as some guardians did their wards. Bendic’s pen scratched noisily across the smooth lineless paper—curved generous loops, downward slants, and furious dots at the end of sentences. For a moment, Ajie imagined himself one of his father’s clients as he stood by the large teak table, taking in the heavy green of the damask curtain, the black buff leather chair, the scattering of papers held down by paper holders, and imposingly behind Bendic, the hard shelves with rows of thick volumes. Their father often brought his work home, but he rarely discussed the cases. Ajie imagined how Bendic would speak to his clients: courteously, with a measured tone and lawyerly understanding.

  Bendic’s pen finally stopped moving. He handed them the letters and leaned back in his chair as they proofread. He often told them it was foolish and dangerous to carry a letter without knowing its content. “You might be carrying a document instructing that you be sold, and you wouldn’t know it. Won’t read and can’t read land you at the same place.” Bibi always laughed about this when their father wasn’t there. She would yelp like someone from the TV. “How ridiculous!” she would say, shaking her head. “Who buys people, anyway? Who hands someone a letter saying that the mail carrier should be sold?”

  —

  By the evening of the day Paul disappeared, there was some concern regarding where he might be, but everyone believed he was on his way back, that he would show up at any minute. The creak from the gate each time was him. Bendic didn’t go into his study to work for an hour or so, as he often did. He came out to the parlor and stood by the room dividers, buttoning his shirt, though his eyes were fixed on Ma. “I’m just going to walk to the gate,” he said, and Ma nodded, murmuring a response but never looking away from the pile of papers she was marking on the dining table. She shuffled some and then set them aside. “Bibi, please see that the phone receiver is properly placed.” Bibi picked up the receiver and dropped it gently. A click escaped, and then she picked it up again and replaced it, just to make sure.

  Bendic came back a few minutes after. Ma looked up at the door hopefully as he walked in. “Nothing,” Bendic said, “but there’s still time.”

  They sat in the parlor until long after midnight. Twice the lights went out, but no one moved or even muttered “NEPA!”
with the usual irritation. The lantern stationed in the passage stayed trimmed low, casting a yellow light beside the eddying shadow of the curtain hem. Generator engines started up in nearby compounds, one after another, and then together became a steady roar for several minutes until power was restored and ordinary quiet returned as the engines were killed off. The silence was so sudden and pure, it seemed as if the clock on the parlor wall had come to life, the slender second hand scratching its halting way around like a cripple.

  Bendic looked up at the clock. “It’s way past your bedtime,” he said to Bibi and Ajie. He took off his glasses and wiped the lenses slowly with the edge of his wrapper. “Wherever your brother is, he has probably decided to sleep there tonight. It’s too late for him to be on the road. We will see him in the morning.” Bendic said the last sentence with conviction, as if he had kept Paul somewhere safe for the night and would make sure to call him out in the morning.

  Ajie found it easy to fold himself into Bendic’s confidence: The calmness in his father’s voice, the certainty, felt much better than the roar of noises in his own head. Bibi was standing behind the sofa where Ma sat, her hand on the headrest beside Ma’s dark, straightened hair, and Ajie could tell Bibi didn’t want to go to bed, either.

  “But sleep where?” Ma’s voice rose sharply. “Where could he have gone that he cannot return home tonight? I don’t understand the meaning of this nonsense.”

  Bendic put his glasses back on. Ma looked at her wristwatch and then up at the clock on the parlor wall. “Paul knows how dangerous the roads can be at night, he knows,” she muttered.

  Ajie and Bibi shuffled off to their rooms, leaving their parents in the parlor. Ajie climbed into bed but was unable to sleep. He saw for the first time how high the bedroom ceiling was, and how long the curtains were, nearly grazing the floor beside Paul’s bed. In the morning, Paul will be home, he thought as his eyes scanned the half-lit space between his bed and Paul’s. The fluorescent light was on in the parlor; he didn’t hear his parents speaking but for a long time kept his eyes on the white light that fell through the gap underneath his door, straining his ears, willing his parents to say something he could hear, or at least get up, turn off the light, and go to their room.

  When he woke up in the morning, Ajie looked around the room, his gaze sweeping the corners. He got up and checked the foot of Paul’s bed to see if his sandals or backpack had returned to their usual place, but there was nothing. Bendic was getting ready to go to the police station when Ajie came out of his room. He heard Bendic’s voice and walked into his parents’ bedroom, where Bendic was combing his hair before a standing mirror. His long-sleeved white shirt was tucked into his white underpants, sticking out above his hefty thighs. His black pin-striped suit was laid out on the bed.

  “Mbani-o,” Ajie greeted him. “Good morning.”

  Bendic held the comb away from his head as he responded. “How was your sleep?” he asked, and waited for Ajie to speak before he added, “I’m going to make a report at the police station.” He picked up his trousers from the bed. “Mere formality.” He put his legs into the trousers quickly and then reached for his shoes. “Maybe Paul will be home before I even get to the station.” He told Ajie that Ma had driven to work to drop off keys and that she would return home as soon as she could.

  “Once Paul returns,” Bendic instructed Ajie, peering at his son’s reflection in the mirror, “ring my office immediately—tell Bibi this, too—and if I’m not there, leave a message with my secretary. You hear me?”

  Ma came in from work just before lunchtime. She stopped by the gate as she drove in and wound down the car window to speak to Ismaila. Ajie and Bibi stood from where they sat on the veranda steps and walked toward the driveway. Ajie knew she was asking Ismaila if Paul had returned. When she got into the house, she dropped her bag beside her on the sofa and slipped off her shoes. “Your brother has not returned,” she said. Ajie shook his head. Bibi said no. Ma gave a light shrug and turned her lips downward the way people do when they don’t know what to make of something.

  They sensed something had gone wrong, but it was new, whatever it was, so no one knew how to hold it properly. Not Paul, everyone thought. It was not like Paul to get into trouble or give anyone reason to worry. He was the least scolded of the children, the most commended by teachers. Even Bibi, with her excellent grades, had been scolded once or twice by her teachers. One teacher explained to Bendic that although Bibi was a sensible girl, her occasional impulse to fall in with the wrong crowd had to be watched for and curtailed. Ajie made up for his siblings’ good behavior: frequently fighting, reading novels during lessons, perpetually making noise. Teachers’ remarks in his report card ranged from subtle complaints to terse rebukes: “A little careless in his work,” “If he talks less, he will do better,” “Lack of respect for school property and property of others,” “Rude.”

  Paul, on the other hand, was always the exemplary firstborn; the letters from school to his parents were usually consent to let him travel to another state as part of the school debate team or for some intercollegiate sporting event. In JS3 he was appointed the school bell ringer, a position generally viewed as grooming for a future head-boy position.

  Bendic stopped by the police station again on his way from work. Ma followed him into his room when he got home; Ajie couldn’t hear more than a murmur from what he was saying to Ma. Ajie and Bibi hovered about the corridor, but in no time, the door handle rattled and Bendic came out of the bedroom. He went over to the dining table, where his food was laid out, and washed his hands. He molded the eba in his palm, but instead of dipping it in the soup, he rested his hand on the table, then returned the eba to the plate.

  “Bibi,” he said, and Bibi got up from where she had just gone to sit on the arm of a chair, “take the food back. Cover it, I will eat later.”

  That night Ma began making calls to friends. She spoke with caution, wording her questions carefully: Had they seen Paul? Had they heard anything about him? Had he come around to their place? He hadn’t come home in nearly two days. Some people kept her longer on the phone, and Ma would respond, “I don’t know. About twelve-thirty. We have reported it, but we are looking everywhere.”

  They sent word to family friends. Like the pendulum on their parlor wall, they swung to either end, dread and hope, but generally stayed in balance: no hysterical outbursts, no screaming and pounding the walls for answers, no silent bitter tears that soaked the pillow when you lifted your head in the morning. There was just stillness. Something quiet crept about the house, made you feel a sudden chill, and sprayed your arms and neck with unexpected goose bumps.

  It was Auntie Julie’s coming that in some way shook them all awake.

  CHAPTER TWO

  If you’d ever lived in Port Harcourt, you would know what a wet, tiring month September could be. June and July are heavy rain months. The rains stomp through the city, throwing punches, felling trees, striking down electric poles overnight across roads so that early-bird motorists get stranded, their headlights trapped in the predawn wetness, counting on the help of passersby to move a fallen tree off the road, to pry out tires stuck in loam. By early August everyone, even the TV stations, celebrates the onset of “August break”: two dry weeks of sharp sunlight, more or less. Wedding planners gauge and take advantage. On Saturday mornings, Trans Amadi Road clogs up with traffic. A tangle of cars, buses, trucks, and taxi motorbikes storms out from Garrison Junction to Nwaja Bridge, all the way to Elekahia. Various wedding parties run late for the service, hurrying the other way across town toward their reception venue.

  Ajie once saw a bride, her dress blindingly white in the sunlight, her pineapple hairstyle tightly gelled and held down with a tiara, alight from a black Benz with visible encouragement from her cohort. They had flagged down an okada for her while she snaked her way through the traffic with her maid of honor on her tail. She hoisted up her satin dress (the maid of honor holding on to the chapel train) and then hea
ved herself onto the pillion of the motorbike to make her own wedding ceremony in time. There was the early gleam of sweat on her neck and forehead, and the bouquet of flowers in the grip of her left hand was pink and yellow and plastic.

  Evening air swells from blaring microphones as churches set up camps in open fields for crusades and miracle revivals. The crowds spill out on the field; parked cars litter the adjacent roads. The congregation amasses before a makeshift stage with a wooden lectern mounted at the center, banners tied up and billowing behind it and all around. Voices rise in praise and worship; clap-hand choruses with keyboard accompaniment suffuse the cool evening air.

  The heavy rains return soon after, but only briefly. By September they mellow. The skies open and drop water all day—drizzle this time, but the streets get flooded, drainages overflow, okada men in rain capes hang about under the eaves of roadside shops, shielding their motorcycles from the water, ignoring prospective passengers. Auntie Julie came in the drizzling rain when she heard Paul had disappeared. She banged on the gate, and when Ismaila let her in, she walked right past, her slippers in her hand, her wrapper dripping water all over the floor of the veranda as she made her way into the house.

  She wasn’t the first person to visit after hearing about Paul. Mr. Pepple, an integrated science teacher from Ma’s school, was the first. He was a quiet-looking man with veins running sideways on his face from forehead to temple. He lived somewhere near Ordinance, not too far from the house, and Ma occasionally gave him lifts to Garrison Junction after work. He placed his sandals neatly beside the doormat and Ma protested. “Ah-ah! Please come inside with your shoes, I beg you.” Mr. Pepple still left his sandals by the door, came inside, and took a seat.