Chigozie Obioma - The Fishermen

But on that day of my brothers’ valediction service, he took everyone by surprise. He’d slipped in when no one was watching, and was already inside when they noticed him. And because of the sensitive nature of the service, the officials let him stay. Later, after the church had closed and he’d left, the woman beside whom he’d sat recalled how he cried during the service. She said he asked her if she knew the boy, and went on to say he knew him. The woman, with a shake of her head in the manner of one who had seen a ghost in broad daylight, said Abulu had repeatedly mentioned Ikenna’s name.

I did not know what my parents made of Abulu’s attendance at the valediction service of their sons, whose deaths he caused, but I could tell, from the grave silence that enshrouded us all the way home, that they’d been shaken by it. No one said a word except for David who, enthralled by one of the songs we’d sung in the service, hummed or tried to sing it. It was about midday and most churches in this predominantly Christian town now closed, vehicles filled the roads. As we motored through the clogging traffic, David’s soulful song — a miraculous creation rendered in palatal babble and mispronunciations, half-slit words, upturned connotations, and strangled meanings — filled the car with a sedating atmosphere, so that the silence became palpable, as if two more persons — who could not be seen by mere eyes — were seated there with us, and were, like all of us, sedated.

Whe pis lak’ a rifa ateent ma so

Whe so ow lak sea billows roooooo

What eefa my Lord, if at cos me to say

It is weh, (it is weh) with ma so

It is weh, (it is weh) with ma so, (with ma so)

It is weh, (it is weh) with ma so.

Shortly after we got home, Father went out and did not return for the rest of the day. As time slipped past midnight, Mother’s fear was piqued to curious levels. She darted like a frenzied cat about the house, then to the neighbours, raising alarm that she did not know the whereabouts of her husband. Her anxiety was such that a sizeable number of our neighbours gathered at our house, counselling her to be patient, to wait a bit more — till the next day at least — before going to the police. Although Mother took counsel, she was in a delirious state of anxiety when Father returned. The rest of the children, even Obembe, had slept at that time except me. He did not answer Mother’s pleas to give an account of where he’d been and why he had a bandage on one of his eyes. He merely dragged his feet into his room. When Obembe asked him the next morning, he merely said: “I had a cataract operation. No more questions.”

I swallowed saliva that had formed a lump in my throat as I tried to restrain more questions from pouring out.

“You couldn’t see?” I asked, after a while.

“I said. No. More. Questions!” he barked.

But I could tell, from the mere fact that neither he nor Mother had gone to work that something was truly wrong with him. Father, who’d been greatly changed by the tragedies and his job, was never the same again. Even after the bandage was removed — the lid of that one eye could no longer close completely like the other.

Obembe and I did not go out to hunt Abulu that entire week, because Father stayed home throughout, listening to the radio, watching television or reading. My brother repeatedly cursed the sickness, the “cataract” that caused Father to stay at home. Once, when Father was watching television, his eyes fixed on the prime-time news being read by Cyril Stober, Obembe asked him when we were to go to Canada. “Early next year,” Father replied phlegmatically. On the screen before him was a scene of fire, frantic pandemonium, and then blackened bodies in different shades of cremation, lying about in a scorched field from where black smoke was rising. Obembe was about to say something else, but Father raised his five splayed fingers to stop him as the TV said: “Due to this unfortunate sabotage, the nation’s daily output has now been cut by fifteen thousand barrels a day. Hence, the government of General Sani Abacha urges the citizenry to express caution even as the queues at the petrol stations return, knowing that it will be temporary. However, the government will duly punish any miscreants.”

We waited patiently, so as not to distract him until a man brushing his teeth from up-to-down came on the screen.

“In January?” My brother quickly said once the man came on the screen.

“I said ‘early next year,’ ” Father mumbled, lowering his eyes, the affected one half-closed. I wondered what truly was wrong with Father’s eyes. I’d overheard him arguing with Mother who’d accused him of lying, that he had no “katacat.” Perhaps, I thought some insect had got into his eyes. It pained me that I could come up with nothing, and I came down with the feeling that were Ikenna and Boja still alive they could — by virtue of their superior wisdom — have provided an answer.

“Early next year,” Obembe mumbled when we returned to our room. Then, his voice lowering like a camel reclining, repeated it: “Early. Next. Year.”

“It must be in January?” I suggested, inwardly delighted.

“Yes, January, but that means we don’t have much time — in fact, we don’t have time at all. We don’t have much time.” He shook his head. “I won’t be happy in Canada, or wherever, if that madman still walks about freely.”

Although I was very wary of inflaming my brother’s ire, I could not help but say: “But, we have tried, he just isn’t dying. You said it; he is like the whale—”

“Lie!” he cried, a single tear rolling down his reddened eye. “He is a human being; he too can die. We’ve only made one attempt, just one attempt for Ike and Boja. But I swear, I will avenge my brothers.”

Father called out at that time and asked us to go clean his car.

“I will do it,” my brother whispered again.

He wiped his eyes with a cloth until they were dry. Later, after he’d cleaned the car with a towel he soaked in a bucket of water, he told me we should try “The Knife Plan”. This was how it should go: we should steal out of the room in the dead of the night and find the madman in his truck, then stab him to death and run away. What he described frightened me, but my brother, this small man of sorrow, having locked the door, lit a cigarette for the first time in a long time. Even though there was electricity he’d turned off the light so our parents could think we were asleep. And although the night was a little cold, he left the window open as he blew out the smoke. Then when he was done, he turned to me, and whispered: “It shall be this night.”

My heart skipped. I heard a familiar Christmas carol playing from somewhere in the neighbourhood. It dawned on me, suddenly, that that night was December 23rd, and the next day would be Christmas Eve. I was struck by how different that Christmas season had been: bleak and uneventful compared to the others. It came as always with befogged mornings that when cleared, left sagging clouds of dust in the air. People filled their houses with decorations, with the radio and television stations rolling out carols after carols. Sometimes, the statue of the Madonna at the gate of the big cathedral, the new one they erected after Abulu desecrated the first, shone with colourful decorations, attracting many as the highlight of the Yuletide celebrations in our district. People’s faces would beam with smiles even as prices of commodities — predominantly of live cocks, turkey, rice, and all the fancy Christmas recipes — soared beyond the reach of the common man. None of these things had happened — at least not in our house. No decorations. No preparations. Whatever we had in the natural way of living, it seemed, had been mauled by the monstrous termite of grief that had attacked us. And our family had become a shadow of what we once were.