Chigozie Obioma - The Fishermen

“Abulu,” she said, as she changed Nkem’s diapers. “They are taking his body away in a truck and they say that soldiers are going about searching for the boys who killed him. I don’t understand these people really,” she said in English. “Why can’t someone kill that useless person? Why shouldn’t the boys kill him? What if he’d put some stark fear in their minds that some evil will befall them? Who should blame them? Anyway, they said the boys fought the soldiers, too.”

“Do the soldiers want to kill them?” I said.

Mother looked up at me and her eyes betrayed surprise at my question. “No, I don’t know if they will kill them.” She shrugged her shoulders. “Anyway, both of you should stay indoors — no going out until this has cooled. You know that already you are connected to that madman in some way, so I don’t want you to witness any of this. None of you is getting involved with that creature again ever, whether in life or in death.”

My brother said: “Yes Mama” and I followed in a broken voice. Then Mother, with David repeating every word of the order, asked that we come and lock up the gate and the main door as they left for work. I rose to go lock the gate.

“Be sure to open the gate for Eme when he returns,” she said. “He will come in the afternoon.”

I nodded and hurriedly locked the gate after them, afraid someone outside might see me.

My brother charged at me when I got back into the house, and pushed me against the storm door, sending my heart out of my body.

“Why did you say that in Mama’s presence, eh? Are you stupid? Do you want her to fall sick again? Do you want to destroy us again?”

I shouted “No!” to every question, shaking my head.

“Listen,” he said, panting. “They must not find out. You hear?”

I nodded, my eyes on the floor, wetting. Then it seemed that he pitied me. He softened and put his hand on my shoulder as he had always done.

“Listen, Ben, I didn’t mean to hurt you,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

I nodded.

“Don’t worry, if they come here, we will not open for them. They will think the house is unoccupied and go away. We will be safe.”

He closed every curtain in the house and locked the doors, and then went into Ikenna and Boja’s now empty room. I followed him and we sat on the new mattress Father had bought — the only thing in the room. Even though it was empty, signs of my brothers were everywhere, like indelible stains. I could see the shinier portion of the wall where the M.K.O. calendar had been yanked off, and the various graffiti and matchstick man portraits. Then I gazed at the ceiling that was full of cobwebs and spiders, indications that time had passed since they died.

I was watching the outline of a gecko climbing up the thin transparent curtain on which the sun was shining while my brother sat as quiet as the dead when we heard loud banging at our gate. My brother dragged me frantically under the bed with him, and we rolled into the dark enclave as the banging continued, attended by cries of “Open the gate! Anyone in there, open the gate!” Obembe pulled the bed sheet so that it sagged downward, covering us up. I accidentally pushed an empty lidless tin close to my side; it was filled with a gossamer film of web through which the tin’s interior — which was black as tar — could be seen. It must have been one of the tins we had gathered for the storage of fish and tadpoles, one that had escaped Father’s eyes when he emptied the room.

The banging at the gate stopped shortly after we got under the bed, but we remained, in the darkness, breathless, my head throbbing.

“They are gone,” I said to my brother after a while.

“Yes,” he replied. “But we must remain here till we are sure they won’t return. What if they are going to climb the fence and come in, or if they—” He discontinued, staring blankly as if he could hear something suspicious. Then, he said: “Let’s wait here.”

We remained there, me holding back an unbearable urge to urinate. I did not want to give him any cause to be afraid or sad.

The next knock on the gate came some hour or so after the first one. It was soft and was followed by the familiar voice of Father calling out our names, asking if we were at home. We emerged from under the bed and began wiping the dust off our clothes and bodies.

“Hurry, hurry, open for him,” my brother said as he ran to the bathroom to wash his eyes.

Father was beaming with smiles when I opened the gate. He wore a cap and his spectacles.

“Were you both asleep?” he asked.

“Yes, Daddy,” I said.

“Oh, good gracious! My boys are now idle men. Well, all that is about to change,” he chattered as he entered.

“Why are you locking it when we are in?”

“There’s been a robbery today,” I said.

“What, in broad daylight?”

“Yes, Daddy.”

He was in the sitting room, his briefcase on a chair beside him, talking with my brother, who stood behind the chairs, while Father removed his shoes. As I entered the house, I heard my brother say “How was your journey?”

“Great, just great,” Father said, smiling, as I had not seen him do in a long time. “Ben said there was a robbery here today?”

My brother shot a look at me before nodding his head.

“Wow,” Father said. “Well, anyway, I have good news for both of you my sons, but first, any idea if your mother left food in the house?”

“She fried yams this morning, and I think some are still left—”

“She left some for you in your chinaware,” my brother said, completing what I’d begun to say.

My voice shook as I spoke because a siren, wailing somewhere in the street, had engulfed me with fresh fear of the soldiers. Father noticed. He glanced from face to face searching for what he did not know. “Are you all right, both of you?”

“We remembered Ike and Boja,” my brother said. He burst into tears.

Father gazed emptily at the wall for a moment, then raising his head, said: “Listen, I want both of you to put all that behind you from now on. It is why I’m doing all this — borrowing, running here and there and doing everything — to get you into a new environment where you’d not see anything that can remind you of them. Look at your mother, look at what happened to her.” He pointed towards the blank wall as if Mother was there. “That woman has suffered a lot. Why? Because of the love she has for her children. The love, I mean, for you — all of you.” Father shook his head rapidly.

“Now, I am telling both of you, henceforth, before you do anything, anything at all, think first of her, of what it might do to her — only and only then should you make your decision. I’m not even asking you to think of me; think of her. Do you hear me?”

We both nodded.

“Good, now, someone should get me the food; I will eat it, even if cold.”

I went into the kitchen with the words he’d said in my head. I carried the plate of food — fried yam and fried eggs — to him, with a fork. The big smile had returned to his face, and as he ate, he told us about how he’d procured our travel passports from the immigration office in Lagos. He did not imagine, even remotely, that his ship had sunk, and his life’s worth of goods — his map of dreams (Ikenna=pilot, Boja=lawyer, Obembe=doctor, I=professor) — was gone.

He brought out cakes wrapped in shiny wrappers and tossed two of them to each of us.

“And you know what is more?” he said, still rummaging in his bag. “Bayo is now in Nigeria. I called Atinuke yesterday, and spoke with him. He will be here next week to take you to Lagos for your visas.”

Next week.

These words brought the possibility of Canada so close again that I was broken by it. The time Father had said—“next week”—seemed too far. I wished that we would make it there. I thought we could pack our things and go to Ibadan to stay away at Mr Bayo’s house, and when our visas were ready, we could go from there. No one would trace us to Ibadan. I yearned to suggest this to Father, but was afraid about how Obembe might take it. But later, after Father had eaten and fallen asleep, I said this idea to my brother.