Chigozie Obioma - The Fishermen

The song was a variation of the well-known ditty performed by the adulterous wife of Pastor Ishawuru, the main character of the most popular Christian soap in Akure at the time, The Ultimate Power , during her recall to church after she was banished for her sin. Although Solomon came up with the idea, most of the suggestions that eventually made up the lyrics came from nearly every one of us. It was Boja’s suggestion, for instance, that we put “the fishermen have caught you” in place of “we have caught you.” We replaced her testimony to God’s ability to hold her up against the power of Satan’s temptations with our ability to hold the fish firm once caught and not let it escape. We so greatly delighted in this song that we sometimes hummed it at home or in school.

Bi otiwu o ki o Jo, ki o ja, Dance all you want, fight all you will, Ati mu o, o male lo mo. We’ve caught you, you cannot escape. She bi ati mu o? O male le lo mo o. Haven’t we caught you? You certainly can’t escape. Awa, Apeja, ti mu o. We, the fishermen, have caught you. Awa, Apeja, ti mu o, o ma le lo mo o We, the fishermen, have caught you, you can’t escape!

We sang the song so loudly after Solomon’s catch that evening that an elderly man, a priest of the Celestial Church, came to the river barefoot, his feet as noiseless as a phantom’s. When we began visiting the river and found this church within our ambit, we immediately included it in our adventures. We’d peek at the worshippers through the open mahogany windows of the small church hall with peeling blue paint, and mimic their frenzied actions and dances. Only Ikenna deemed it insensitive to the sacred practice of a religious body. I was closest to the path from which the old man came, and was the first to see him. Boja was on the other side of the river, and when he spotted the man, he dropped his line and hurried ashore. The part of the river where we fished was hidden from the rest of the street by long stretches of bushes on both sides and you could not see the waters until you took the rutted path carved out of the bush from the adjoining street. After the old man had entered the path and drawn near, he stopped, having noticed two of our beverage cans sitting in shallow holes we’d dug with our hands. He peered down to see the contents of the cans, around which flies were hovering, and turned away, shaking his head.

“What is this?” he asked in a Yoruba whose accent was foreign to me. “Why were you shouting like a pack of drunks? Don’t you know that the house of God is just on the other side?” He pointed in the direction of the church, turning his body fully to the pathway. “Don’t you have any respect for God, eh?”

We’d all been taught that it was rude to answer an older person’s question meant to indict us, even if we could readily provide an answer. So instead of replying, Solomon apologized.

“We are sorry, baba,” he said, rubbing his palms together. “We will refrain from shouting.”

“What are you fishing from these waters?” asked the old man, ignoring Solomon and pointing to the river whose waters had now become a bed of darkening grey. “Tadpoles, smelts, what? Why don’t you all go home?” He blinked his eyes, his gaze roving from one person to the other. Igbafe stifled laughter, but Ikenna chewed him out by mumbling “Idiot” under his breath; too late.

“You think it’s funny?” the man said, staring at Igbafe. “Well, it’s your parents I pity. I’m sure they do not know you come here and will be sorry if they ever find out. Haven’t you heard the government has banned people from coming here? Oh, kids of this generation.” He glanced around again with a look of astonishment and then said: “Whether you leave or not, do not raise your voices like that again. You hear?”

With a long-drawn sigh and shaking of the head, the priest turned and walked away. We burst into laughter, mocking the white robe flapping against his thin frame, which had given him the appearance of a child in an oversized coat. We laughed at the fearful man who could not stand the sight of fish and tadpoles (because he peered at the fish with terror in his eyes), and at the imagined odour of his mouth (even though none of us had been close enough to smell his breath).

“This man is just like Iya Olode, the madwoman who people say is even worse,” Kayode said. He’d carried a tin of fish and tadpoles and it tilted in his hand now, so he covered its top to prevent it from spilling over. His nose was running but he seemed not to be conscious of it, so that the milky white secretion hung just beneath his nostrils. “She is always dancing around the town — mostly dancing Makosa. The other day, she was chased out of the big open-market bazaar at Oja-Oba because they said she crouched at the very centre of the market, just beside a meat seller’s shed and shat.”

We laughed at this. Boja quivered as he laughed, and then as if the laughter had drained him of all energy, he dropped his hands on both knees, panting. We were still laughing when we noticed that Ikenna, who had not uttered a single word since the priest interrupted our fishing, had emerged from the water on the far side of the banks where wilted esan grass prostrated into the river. He’d started to unbuckle his wet shorts when our attention was drawn to him. We watched as he removed his dripping fishing clothes, too, and began drying himself.

“Ike, what are you doing?” Solomon said.

“I’m going home,” Ikenna replied curtly as if he’d been impatiently waiting to be asked. “I want to go and study. I’m a student, not a fisherman.”

“Now?” said Solomon. “Isn’t it too early and we have—”

Solomon did not complete his sentence; he’d understood. For the seed of what Ikenna had now begun to act out — a lack of interest in fishing — was sown the previous week. He’d had to be persuaded to come with us to the river that day. So, when he said: “I want to go and study. I’m a student, not a fisherman,” no one questioned him any further. Boja, Obembe and I — left with no choice but to follow him since we never did anything Ikenna did not approve of — began dressing for home, too. Obembe was packing up the lines into the worn-out wrappas we had stolen from one of Mother’s old boxes. I picked up the cans and small polythene bag in which the rest of the unused worms wriggled, struggled and slowly died.

“Are you all really leaving?” Kayode asked as we followed Ikenna, who did not seem keen on waiting for us, his brothers.

“Why are you all going now?” Solomon said. “Is it because of the priest or because of that day you met Abulu? Did I not ask you not to wait? Did I not tell you not to listen to him? Did I not tell you that he was just an evil, crazy, madman?”

But none of us said a word in reply, nor did we turn to him. We simply walked on, Ikenna ahead, holding only the black polythene bag in which he kept his fishing shorts. He had left his hooked fishing line at the bank, but Boja had picked it up and carried it in his own wrappa .

“Let them go,” I heard Igbafe say behind us. “We don’t need them; we can fish by ourselves.”

They started to mock us, but the distance soon cut them off, and we began to walk through the tracks in silence. As we went I wondered what had come over Ikenna. There were times when I could not understand his actions, or his decisions. I depended mostly on Obembe to help me clarify things. After the encounter with Abulu the previous week, which Solomon had just referred to, Obembe had told me a story he said was responsible for Ikenna’s sudden change. I was pondering this story when Boja cried: “My God, Ikenna, look, Mama Iyabo!” He’d seen one of our neighbours, who hawked groundnuts about on foot, seated on the bench in front of the church with the priest who’d come to the river earlier. By the time Boja raised the alarm, it was already too late; the woman had seen us.