Chigozie Obioma - The Fishermen

The destruction of that newspaper shook Boja greatly; he could not eat. Again and again he said to Obembe and me that Ikenna had to be stopped.

“This cannot continue,” he repeated many times over. “Ikenna has lost his mind; he has gone mad.” The following Tuesday morning, after a clear sky had bared its teeth, Obembe and I had slept late, having told stories into the rump of the night. Our door forcefully jerked open, rousing us to a swift awakening. It was Boja. He’d slept in the sitting room where he’d been sleeping since his first struggle with Ikenna. He came in looking sullen and cold, scratching every part of his body and grinding his teeth as he did.

“Mosquitoes nearly killed me last night,” he said. “I’m tired of what Ikenna is doing to me. I’m really tired!”

He’d said it so loudly I feared Ikenna might have heard it from his room. My heart raced. I looked at Obembe, but his eyes were on the door. I sensed that, like me, he was looking to see what might come next through that door.

“I hate that he doesn’t allow me into my own room,” Boja went on. “Can you imagine? He doesn’t let me into my own room.” He beat his hand on his chest in a gesture of possession. “The room Daddy and Mama gave both of us.”

He removed his shirt and pointed at places on his skin where he felt he’d been bitten. Although shorter than Ikenna, he closely followed him in maturity. Signs of hair growth had appeared on his chest, and actual hair now webbed his armpit. A dark shade trailed from under his navel down into his pants.

“Is the parlour so bad?” I asked in an effort to calm him, I did not want him to continue because I feared that Ikenna could hear it.

“It is!” he cried even louder. “I hate him for this, I hate him! No one can sleep there!”

Obembe cast a wary glance at me and I noticed that, like me, he was consumed with fear. Boja’s words had dropped like a piece of chinaware, its pieces scattered about. Obembe and I knew something was coming, and it seemed Boja knew, too, for he sat down and placed his hand on his head. Within minutes, a door opened from within the house, creaking aloud, followed by footsteps. Ikenna entered the room.

“Did you say you hate me?” Ikenna said softly.

Boja did not reply, but kept his eyes fixed on the window. Ikenna, visibly stung (for I saw tears in his eyes), gently closed the door and moved further into the room. Then, casting a spear of a scornful glance at Boja, he took off his shirt, in the custom of the boys in the town when about to fight.

“Did you say it or not?” Ikenna shouted, but did not wait for a reply. He pushed Boja off the chair.

Boja let out a cry and rose to his feet almost immediately, panting furiously, shouting: “Yes, yes I hate you, Ike, I do.”

Most times when I recall this event, I plead frantically for my memory to pity me and stop at this point, but it is always futile. I’d always see Ikenna stand still for a moment after Boja uttered those words, his lips moving for a long time before the words “You hate me, Boja” finally formed. But Ikenna uttered the words with so much power that his face seemed to lighten with relief. He smiled, nodded and blinked a tear.

“I knew it, I knew it; I have only been foolish all this while.” He shook his head. “That was why you threw my passport into the well.” A look of horror had appeared on Boja’s face at those words, and he made to speak, but Ikenna spoke on in a louder voice, switching from Yoruba to Igbo. “Wait! Were it not for that malicious act, I would have been in Canada by now, living a better life.” And as if every word Ikenna said — every complete sentence — struck him, Boja would gasp, mouth agape, and words would begin to form, but Ikenna’s “Wait!” or “Listen!” would drown it out. And some strange dreams, Ikenna continued, had further confirmed his suspicions; in one of them, he’d seen Boja chasing him with a gun. Boja’s face twitched at this, his face flushed with a mixture of shock and helplessness as Ikenna spoke. “So, I know, my spirit attests, to how much you hate me.”

Boja walked springily to the door wanting to leave, but stopped when Ikenna spoke. “I knew,” Ikenna was saying, “the moment Abulu saw that vision that you were the Fisherman he talked about. Nobody else.”

Boja stood still and listened with his head bent, as if ashamed.

“That is why I’m not surprised when you now confess that you hate me; you always have. But you will not succeed,” Ikenna said suddenly now, fiercely.

He made towards Boja and struck him on the face. Boja fell and hit his head on Obembe’s iron box on the floor with a loud clang. He let out a jolting cry of pain, stamping his feet on the floor and screaming. Ikenna, shaken, took a step back as if teetering on the mouth of a chasm, and when he reached the door, he turned and ran out.

Obembe stepped forward towards Boja once Ikenna left the room. Then he halted suddenly and shouted, “Jesus!” At first, I did not see what Ikenna and Obembe had seen, but did that instant: the pool of blood that was filling the top of the box and trickling down to the floor.

In distress, Obembe ran out of the room and I followed. We found Mother at her garden in the backyard where, hoe in hand and a few tomatoes in her raffia basket, she was talking with Iya Iyabo, the neighbour who had reported our fishing, and we called out to them. When Mother came into our room with the woman, they were horrified by what they saw. Boja had stopped wailing, and now his body lay still, his face hidden in his bloodied hands, his body in a strange state of tranquillity as if he were dead. Beholding him lying there, Mother broke down and wept.

“Quickly, let us take him to Kunle’s Clinic,” Mama Iyabo called out to her.

Mother, agitated beyond measure, hurriedly changed into a blouse and a long skirt. With the help of the woman, she lifted Boja onto her shoulder. Boja remained calm, his eyes gazing vacantly, as he wept noiselessly.

“If anything happens to him now,” Mother said to the woman, “what will Ikenna say? Will he say that he killed his own brother?”

“ Olohun maje! — God forbid!” Iya Iyabo spat. “Mama Ike, how can you let such a thing into your head just because of this? They are growing boys and this is common with boys their age. Stop this; let’s take him to a hospital.”

Once they were gone, I became conscious of the steady sound of something trickling to the floor. I looked and saw it was the pool of blood. I sat in my bed, shaken by what my eyes had seen, but it was the memory Ikenna had conjured up that disturbed me. I remember that incident, although I was only about four at that time. Mr Bayo, Father’s friend in Canada, was returning to Nigeria. Having promised to take Ikenna to Canada to live with him whenever he returned, Mr Bayo had got Ikenna a passport and a Canadian visa. Then the morning Ikenna was to leave with Father to Lagos, where he was to board the plane with Mr Bayo, Ikenna could not find his passport. He’d kept the passport in the breast pocket of his travelling jacket and hung it in the wardrobe he shared with Boja. But it was no longer in that jacket. They were running late and Father, furious, began a frantic search for the passport, but they could not find it. Afraid the plane would leave without Ikenna, as he would need to go through a new process to get the passport and travelling documents all over again, Father’s anger escalated. He was about to smack Ikenna for his carelessness, when Boja, hiding behind Mother so Father wouldn’t beat him, confessed he’d stolen the passport. Why, Father asked, and where was it? Boja, visibly shaken, said: “In the well.” Then he confessed to having thrown it there the previous night because he didn’t want Ikenna to leave him.