Chigozie Obioma - The Fishermen

Boja waited restlessly with roiling anger. Then, close to eleven, his patience had all been used up, and he went to the door and knocked, first softly, then desperately. Obembe said Boja, in frustration, pressed his ear to the door as though it was a stranger’s house and turned to him as if struck by lightning, and said: “I can’t hear any sign of life. Are you sure Ikenna is still alive?”

Boja had asked this question, Obembe said, with genuine concern as if he was scared something evil had happened to Ikenna. Boja had then listened afresh for signs of life, before beginning to knock again, this time louder, calling on Ikenna to open the door.

When no response came, Boja began ramming his body against the door desperately. When he stopped, he stepped back, his eyes filled with relief and fresh fear.

“He is inside,” he mumbled to Obembe as he moved away from the door. “I heard movements just now — he is alive.”

“Who is the madman that was disturbing my peace?” Ikenna barked from the room.

Boja didn’t speak at first. Then he shouted, “Ikenna, you are the madman not me. You’d better open the door right now; the room is mine, too.”

A few hastened footfalls, and in a flash, Ikenna was out. He’d come out with such speed that Boja had not even seen the blow coming, he’d simply found himself on the ground.

“I heard all you said about me,” Ikenna said as Boja attempted to rise back to his feet. “I heard it all — how you said I was dead and not alive. You, Boja, with all I’ve done for you, wish me dead, right? And, upon that, you even call me a madman. Me? I will show you today—”

He was still speaking when Boja, in a move as quick as lightning, scissored his legs, and sent him crashing against the door and into the room. Boja sprang up as Ikenna, grimacing in pain, swore and cursed.

“I am ready for you, too,” Boja said from the threshold of the main door. “If this is what you want, come out to the open space in the backyard so we don’t destroy anything in the house, so that Mama will not find out what happened.”

Once he said that, he dashed out to the backyard, where the well and the garden were located, and Ikenna followed him.

The first thing I saw when I got to the backyard with Obembe was Boja trying to duck a blow from Ikenna’s clenched fist, but failing so that the blow landed on his chest and sent him staggering backwards. As Boja tried to steady his feet, Ikenna pushed him down with his leg. He followed him to the ground as they tore at each other like gladiators of fisticuffs. I was gripped with indescribable horror. Obembe and I were transfixed in the doorway, unable to move, pleading with them to stop.

But they paid no heed, and we were soon distracted by the fierceness of the blows and stunned by the feral quickness of their legs as they swirled together. Obembe screamed when a blow hit one of them and gasped when either of them yelped in pain. I could not stand the scene either. I’d sometimes close my eyes when one of them made a violent move and open them when the move had been completed, my heart thumping. Obembe resumed pleading again when Boja started bleeding from a cut above his right eye. But Ikenna chewed him out.

“Shut up,” he snarled, spitting into the dirt. “If you don’t shut up, now, both of you will join him. Idiots. Didn’t you see when he talked to me the way he did? I’m not to be blamed. He started this and—”

Boja cut him off with a ferocious punch to his back, grappling for Ikenna’s waist; they crashed onto the earth, raising a fume of dust. They fought on with fierceness uncommon when boys of that age engage their siblings in a fight. Ikenna punched with a zeal that was far greater than he’d punched the chicken-selling boy at the Isolo market who called Mother an ashewo —a whore, when she refused to buy his chicken one Yuletide season. We’d cheered him and even Mother, who detested every form of violence, had said — after the boy got back on his feet, picked up his portable raffia-plaited poultry cage and took flight — that the boy had deserved the beating. Yet, Ikenna’s blows this time were far harder — far weightier — far stronger than ever before. Boja too kicked and lunged with more daring than he did when he fought the boys who’d threatened to stop us from fishing at Omi-Ala one Saturday. This fight was different. It was as though their hands were controlled by a force that possessed every bit of their beings, even down to the smallest plasma of their blood, and it was perhaps this force — and not their conscious beings — that caused them to deploy such heavy-handed tactics against each other. As I watched them fight, I was seized by the presentiment that things would not remain the same after this. I feared that every blow was imbued with an impregnable power of destruction that cannot be stayed, contained or reverted. As these feelings seized me, my mind — like a whirlwind gathering dirt into its concentric fold — went into a mad spin of frenzied thoughts, the most dominant of which was the strange and unfamiliar thought that overpowered all else: the thought of death.

Ikenna broke Boja’s nose. Blood gushed out in spurts and dripped down from his jaw to the dirt. In visible pain, Boja sank to the ground, weeping and dabbing his bloodied nose with the rags his shirt had become. Obembe and I, at the sight of Boja’s bloodied nose, began to cry. I knew that the fight was long from being over. Boja would avenge this terrible blow, for he was never one to chicken out. When I saw him beginning to creep towards the garden, attempting to rise, an idea came to me. I turned to Obembe and told him we should get a grown-up to separate them.

“Yes,” he agreed, tears trickling down his cheeks.

We dashed off at once into the next house, but there was a padlock on the gate. We’d forgotten that the family had travelled out of town two days before and would not return until later that evening. As we made off from here, we saw Pastor Collins — the pastor of our church — driving past in his van. We waved at him frantically, but he did not see us. He drove on, bobbing his head to some music on the car’s stereo. We hopped an open sewer in which was the mangled body of a dead snake, one that appeared to be growing into a python, smashed dead with stones and pelts.

The man we found at last was Mr Bode, the motor mechanic, who lived three blocks from our house in a chain of unpainted and unvarnished bungalows. It was a half-completed building with pieces of wood and small heaps of sand lying about. Mr Bode had a military appearance: a towering height, heavy biceps, and a face that was as stern as the cavernous bark of an iroko tree. He’d just returned from his workshop to relieve himself at the latrine he shared with the other occupiers of the five rooms of the bungalow when we found him. His trousers were still unbuckled, his boxers pulled up to his waist as he washed his hands at the long-necked tap that sprouted out from the ground near the wall, humming a tune.

“Good afternoon, sir,” Obembe greeted.

“My boys,” he replied and raised his head to look at us. “How are you?”

“We are fine, sir,” we chorused.

“What is it, boys?” he asked, wiping his hand against his trousers, which was black with grime and car oil.

“Yes, sir,” Obembe replied. “Our brothers are fighting and we — we—”

“They are bleeding, eje ti o po —much blood,” I said, seeing that Obembe could not continue. “Please come and help us.”

The man’s face contracted as he gazed on at our tearful faces as if attacked by a sudden stroke. “What kind of thing is this?” he said, waving his wet hands to dry them. “Why are they fighting?”

“We don’t know, sir,” was Obembe’s curt riposte. “Please come help.”