Nnedi Okorafor - Lagoon

My plan was genius. Seriously, the woman was an idiot. She really believed her Caucasian blood and money made her irresistible to one of Nollywood’s top film directors. She’d even told me these things in those exact words. She had no clue that she sounded like a racist condescending asshole. There was a very pure strain of White Privilege running through her. So why not capitalize on her idiocy?

There were many of us in the cyber café, despite the madness outside and the strange woman appearing on our computer screens and mobile phones earlier. We were all up to the same shit, manipulating the same weaknesses. Classic 419. To those with mediocre skills, it is like playing the lottery. To masters like me, it is like being a superstar gymnast on a very narrow balance beam – risky but sure. The payoff is only a matter of time. In my case, the payoff was every few days. We were all in there trying to finish up our last bits of business before the power went out. No one could say we were not dedicated people.

I’d just sent one of my well-crafted love-letter emails to the lady to ensure that she’d send the money ASAP. I told her that I was in Lagos and needed the money immediately to get to Accra; I’d return the money to her as soon as I got back to Lagos. I really could have been a writer. I could make a woman think and do anything with a few well-chosen words.

“Now we wait,” I said to Afam, leaning back in my chair. They were the cheap metal folding kind, but I felt like a king on a throne.

Afam grinned and we slapped hands and shook and snapped each other’s fingers. I did the same to Uche. Afam brought out a cigarette and lit it. His hands were shaking. Beside his head the sign read, “Not Allowed: 419, Pornography, Spam or Smoking.” I looked over his shoulder and could see the café owner at his front desk turn our way, a sour look on his face. He was a squat dark-skinned Yoruba man who wore cheap clothes and no wedding ring. I chuckled when he didn’t get up.

There was a crash outside and, I kid you not, through the window I could see a group of youths jumping on an SUV like it was a trampoline. This was on the road right outside the café. They were shouting and laughing at the terrified passengers in the car. The SUV sped off, the guys on the car tumbling to the street. Most of them got up laughing. One of them was grimacing with pain as he held his knee. Everyone in the café looked worried, but most still turned back to what they were doing. It was scary, but I had a job to do, too.

“We should get the hell out of here,” Afam said.

“Relax, dude,” I told him. “We need to get a response first.”

“How do you know the woman is even awake?”

“She’s in the US. It’s 8 p.m. here, so it’s afternoon there. Trust me, I know her. She’s just sitting down at her computer.”

Uche looked ready to piss his pants. I’d never have admitted it but I felt the same way. I wasn’t sure if people were just wilding out or if it was murder-rioting like they occasionally did in the north when a Christian looked at a Muslim the wrong way. Uche bit his nails as he spoke, “But what if—”

“Afam, whatever the fuck is going on, we better wait it out here because some crazy shit’s going down. Who knows, this may be our last chance to get online for a while.”

“But what if…”

Ping! The white woman had responded. I could see the preview of the email in my inbox.

“The money is on the way. Sent it to the same address. When we meet, we can…”

As I was reaching for the mouse to click the message open, the room shook and the computer screens flickered.

“Shit,” Uche said, looking around. “Not that woman again. Please not again. What was that?”

“Don’t know, sha ,” Afam said, his cigarette hanging between his lips.

We all froze. Not a good time for NEPA to take the power. Just stay on long enough to let me read my email , I thought, my heart beating fast with excitement. But I already knew it was good news. The money was on the way.

An old man walked into the café and stood in the middle of the room with his hands on his hips. He was wearing a long black caftan. With the door open, the noise of the riots was loud. Several people ran out, cautiously moving past the old man. The room rumbled again and I looked out the café window. A large truck passed by and people in the streets leaped out of its way.

Keeping one eye on the man standing in the middle of the café, I clicked the message open. Before I could even start reading, the room began to shake like crazy! We all fell to the floor. The lights went out. Monitors crashed down around us. You couldn’t hear anything but breaking, cracking, falling and yelling. Pieces of the cement ceiling began to collapse onto us. The old yellowed floor tiles buckled.

I was going to die.

The lights flickered. The door had fallen off and the doorway was now lopsided. A table had fallen on the three of us and we peeked out from beneath it. People coughed and moaned and lay sprawled on the floor or beneath chunks of ceiling or wall. A woman shoved a computer off her and it crashed to the floor. The owner slowly stood up from behind his counter. Those of us who could turned to look at whatever the fuck was entering the gaping hole that used to be a doorway.

It was massive. Taller than the room. But there was no longer a ceiling. So it could fit. It did not touch the ground, so the rubble, glass and bodies made no difference to it. Everything was still shaky and I’d been whacked on the head pretty hard by the table but I know what I saw.

It was a masquerade.

This was not some guys dressed up in an elaborate costume to perform Nigerian theatrics to celebrate the spirits and ancestors, this was the real thing . You’d have to truly see what I saw to understand. Its tiers of wooden platforms could have been twelve or fifteen feet in diameter. And it stood over thirty feet high. Bamboo sticks and canes stuck out of the top half and it was covered in ceremonial cloth decorated with colorful geometric shapes and magical designs… and the designs were spinning and moving. Alive.

There were forty, maybe fifty brown-skinned human figurines on it. I could see them running around it like fleas, no, like fairies or little people. I could see the mother, father, the one in police uniform, the horses, the trees, the palm-wine tapper. I knew all the characters because since I was a kid I’d enjoyed the performance of masquerades. The theater of them. But never could I have imagined something like this. The upper and lower parts were even divided by the giant yellow serpent, the sign of Igbo pride and mightiness. And it was looking around curiously.

The creature was every color of the rainbow, glowing deep and powerful in the night. And it made music. The creature’s cloth quivered with the beat it sent into the ground. The sound was impossible, I swear. The sound of life, the beginning.

Holy shit, this was Ijele. The Chief of all Masquerades, Igbo royalty. Ijele does not ask the small or big masquerades to leave the Village Square when it wants to enter. They have to. Ijele is the climax and it performs alone. If this thing wasn’t Ijele then I’d gone mad. It shook, hovering over the ground and began to move toward the one computer that was still standing. Oddly enough, this computer had a lit screen… and the old man in the black caftan was standing in front of it.

Nobody dared to move as Ijele, the grand masquerade of masquerades, one of the greatest spirits of Nigeria, slowly danced toward the man in black. And the man in black didn’t move. All this under the dark night sky, for the power in the area was completely out, even in the places that had generators.