Chigozie Obioma - The Fishermen

He grabbed her and shoved her towards the master bedroom. She staggered, her braided hair pouring over her face, and her massive breasts dancing in her ash-coloured sweater.

“Leave me, leave me, let me watch the shiny white cows,” she shouted as they struggled.

“Shut up!” Father cried in response every time she spoke.

Her voice shrieked awkwardly as Father pushed her forwards. Nkem broke into a wail at the sight of their struggle. Obembe reached for her and carried Nkem, but her legs danced against him, as she wailed even louder for Mother. Father dragged Mother to their room and locked the door. They stayed there for a long time, their voices intermittently audible. Finally, Father came out and asked us to go to our room. He asked David and Nkem to stay with us a bit while he went to get us bread. It was about six in the evening. They agreed, but once we locked our door, we heard the prolonged sound of feet shuffling, the door slamming against the wall, the frantic cry of “Eme, leave me alone, leave me, where are you taking me to?” and the sound of Father’s laboured breathing. Then the main door shut with a loud bang.

Mother vanished for two weeks. She was, as I would find out later, in a psychiatric hospital, tucked away as if she were a dangerous explosive material. There had been a cataclysmic explosion of her mind, and her perception of the known world had been blasted into smithereens. Her senses became imbued with extraordinary sensitivity so that to her ears the sound of the clock in her ward became noisier than the din of a drilling machine. The sound of a rat came to her as the peal of many bells.

She developed a destructive nyctophobia, so that every night became a pregnant mother that birthed litters of terrors that haunted her. Big things shrunk to incredible smallness while small things bulged, bloated, and turned monstrous. Animated Achara leaves with long, giant prickly stalks — and with the preternatural power to grow by the minute — suddenly surrounded her, and began to slowly squeeze her out of existence. As visions of this plant — and of the forest she became persuaded she was in — tormented her, she began to see more things. Her father, who was blasted to bits by artillery fire while fighting on the Biafran Front during the civil war in 1969, came frequently to dance in the centre of the hospital room. Most times, he danced with two hands in the air — his before-the-war body. And at other times — the times she screamed the loudest — he came to dance in his during/ after-the-war body, with one movable hand and the other, a stump of bloodied flesh. Sometimes, he lured her, with endearments, to join him. But of all these, the visions of invasive spiders ruled supreme. And by the end of her second week at the institution, every speck of spider web had been removed from the vicinity and every spider smashed to bits. And it seemed that with every spider smashed, by every inky smear on the wall, she drew closer to healing.

The days she was away were difficult. Nkem cried almost perpetually, refusing to be pacified. I tried many times to sing her songs — lullabies that Mother often sang to her, but she would have none of them. My brother’s attempts were also mere Sisyphean rituals. When Father returned one morning and saw Nkem in this state of helpless grief, he announced that he would take us to see Mother. Nkem’s wailing instantly ceased. Before we left, Father, who had been making all the meals since the morning Mother left, made breakfast — bread and fried eggs. After breakfast, Obembe followed him to Igbafe’s compound to fetch buckets of water — our well was still locked up since Boja was dragged out of it. Then one after the other, we bathed and dressed. Father wore a big white T-shirt with a neck that had yellowed from washing. He’d grown an unusual amount of beard, completely changing his appearance. We all followed him to the car, Obembe sat in front with him, and David, Nkem and I, in the back seat. He did not say anything; he merely locked the door, wound down the window and started the ignition.

He drove in silence through the street that was, on that evening, alive and bustling. We took the road around the big stadium from which the floodlights and innumerable Nigerian flags were flying. The great statue of Okwaraji which had always inspired awe in me loomed above this part of the town. As I gazed at it, I noticed a huge slate-black bird resembling a vulture, perched on top of its head. We drove up the right side of the two-way lane leading out of our street until we reached the small open market on the clearing beyond the shoulder of the road. The car slowed down, negotiating the unpaved stretch of road littered with dirt. The carcass of a hen lay on one side of the lane, flattened against the asphalt, its feathers scattered about. A few metres away from there I saw a dog dining on the contents of a split-open bag of trash, its head lost in the bag. From here, the car moved carefully between heavy-duty trucks and semis wedged on both sides of the road. Beggars holding up placards advertising their plights— I am blind, please help me , or, Lawrence Ojo, a burn victim needs your assistance —stood like guards of honour on both sides of the open-market pathway. One of them, a man I recognized by virtue of having seen him everywhere in our street — by the church, around the post office, near my school, and even in the market — crawled by on a small slate with rollers, his hands gloved with shrunken flip-flops. Passing the Ondo State Radio Station, we merged awkwardly into the round traffic circle in the centre of Akure, in the midst of which were statues of three men beating traditional talking drums. Around the concrete platter under the statutes were cacti striving with small weeds.

Father parked in front of the yellow building, and sat a moment in the car as though he’d just realized he had made a mistake. Just then, I noticed why Father had made this diversion. Alighting from a car just in front of us was a group of people surrounding a middle-aged man who was laughing crazily and dangling his large penis that stuck out from between his zippers. This man would have passed for Abulu were he not fairer in complexion and better looking. Once Father saw the man, he turned to us at once and said aloud, “Ngwa, close your eyes and let us pray for Mama — quickly!”

He turned back at once and saw me still gazing at the man.

“All of you close your eyes now!” he barked. He watched to ensure we’d all complied and then said, “Benjamin, lead us in prayer.”

“Yes, Daddy,” I replied, clearing my throat, and began praying in English, the only language in which I knew how to pray. “In Jesus’ name, Lord God, I ask that you help us… bless us, oh God, please heal Mama, you who healed the sick, Lazarus and all, let her stop talking like a madwoman in Jesus’ name we have prayed.”

The rest chorused “Amen!”

By the time we opened our eyes, the group had reached the entrance of the hospital, but still visible was the dust-caked fundament of the deranged man as he was being forced into the hospital. Father came to the back-seat door and opened it from where I sat, Nkem sandwiched between David and me.

“Listen, my friends ,” he began, his bloodshot eyes peering down into our faces. “Number one: your mother is not a madwoman. Listen, all of you, when you enter there, do not look left or right; just face straight ahead of you. Whatever you see within these halls will remain in your mind. I will give anyone who misbehaves a Guerdon once we get home.”

We all nodded in agreement. Then, one after the other, we alighted with Obembe leading, Father beside him, I at the back. We walked through the long line of flowers to the entrance of the big building whose floors were fully tiled and smelt of lavender. We entered a large hall full of people chattering. I tried not to look, so as not to get whipped, but I could not resist. So when I thought Father was not looking, I diverged to the left, my eyes falling on a pale girl with a thin long neck that moved mechanically as though she were a robot. Her tongue stuck halfway almost interminably out of her mouth and her hair was so thin and pale her scalp could be glimpsed. I was horrified. When I turned back to Father, he was taking a blue tag from the white-uniformed woman across the counter and saying: “Yes, they are all her children, they shall come with me.”