Chigozie Obioma - The Fishermen

“We trail behind our hooks, lines and sinkers.”

We repeated, but he heard someone say “tail” instead of “trail,” so he made us pronounce the word in isolation before continuing. Before he did that, he bemoaned that we did not know the word because we spoke Yoruba all the time instead of English — the language of “Western education.”

“We are unstoppable,” he continued, and we repeated after him.

“We are menacing.”

“We are juggernauts.”

“We will never fail.”

“That’s my boys,” he said, our voices settling like sediment. “Can I have the new fishermen embrace me?”

Feeling robbed by Father’s magical overturn of what had been a deep revulsion to appreciation, we rose to our feet one after the other and placed our heads between the flaps of his unbuttoned coat. We embraced him for seconds during which he patted and kissed our heads, and the next person in line repeated the ritual. Afterwards, he took up his briefcase and brought out clean twenty-naira notes, bound by a paper tape with the stamp of the Central Bank of Nigeria. He gave Ikenna and Boja four pieces each, Obembe and me, two apiece. He gave one piece each for David, who was asleep in the room, and Nkem.

“Don’t forget anything I’ve told you.”

We all nodded and he began to leave, but as if called back by something, he turned and walked to Ikenna. He put his hands on Ikenna’s shoulders and said, “Ike, do you know why I flogged you the most?”

Ikenna, whose face was fixed on the floor as if there was a movie screen on it, mumbled “Yes.”

“Why?” Father asked.

“Because I’m the first born, their leader.”

“Good, bear that in mind. From now on, before you take any action, look at them; they do whatever you do and go wherever you go. That’s to their credit, the way all of you follow each other. So, Ikenna, don’t lead your brothers astray.”

“Yes, Daddy,” Ikenna replied.

“Guide them well.”

“Yes, Daddy.”

“Lead them well.”

Ikenna hesitated a bit, then mumbled: “Yes, Daddy.”

“Always remember that a coconut that falls into a cistern will need a good washing before it can be eaten. What I mean is if you do wrong, you will have to be corrected.”

Our parents often found the need to explain such expressions containing concealed meanings because we sometimes took them literally, but it was the way they learned to speak; the way our language — Igbo — was structured. For although the vocabulary for literal construction for cautionary expressions such as “be careful” was available, they said “ Jiri eze gi ghuo onu gi onu —Count your teeth with your tongue.” To which, once, while scolding Obembe for a wrong act, Father had burst out laughing when he saw Obembe moving his tongue over the ridge of his mouth, his cheeks furrowed, saliva drooling down his jaws as he attempted to take a census of his dentition. It was why our parents most often reverted to English when angry, because being angry, they didn’t want to have to explain whatever they said. Yet even in English, Father often transgressed in both the use of heavy vocabularies and English idioms. For Ikenna once told us how as a child, before I was born, Father asked him in a very serious tone to “take time,” and in obedience, he’d climbed the dining table and removed the wall clock from its hook.

“I hear, sir,” Ikenna said.

“And you have been corrected,” Father said.

Ikenna nodded and Father — in a moment unlike any I’d ever witnessed — asked him to promise. I could tell that even Ikenna was surprised. For Father demanded obedience to his words from his children; he did not ask for mutual agreements or promises. When Ikenna said “I promise,” Father turned and stepped out and we followed to watch his car steer down the dusty road, feeling sore that he was leaving yet again.

THE PYTHON

Ikenna was a python:

A wild snake that became a monstrous serpent living on trees, on plains above other snakes. Ikenna turned into a python after the whipping. It changed him. The Ikenna I knew became a different one: a mercurial and hot-tempered person constantly on the prowl. This transformation had started much earlier, gradually, internally, long before the whipping. But it was after the punishment that the manifestations first began, causing him to do the things that we didn’t think he was capable of doing, the first of which was to harm an adult.

About an hour after Father left for Yola that morning, Ikenna gathered Boja, Obembe and me in his room just after Mother went to church with our younger siblings, and declared that we must punish Iya Iyabo, the woman who told on us. We had not gone to church that day because we claimed we were ill from the beating, so we sat on the bed in his room to listen to him.

“I must have my pound of flesh and you must all join me in this because you caused it,” he said. “Had you listened to me, she would not have caused Father to beat me so much. Look, just look—”

He turned and pulled down his shorts. Although Obembe closed his eyes, I didn’t. I saw red stripes on the plump cheeks of his buttocks. They appeared as those on the back of Jesus of Nazareth — some long, some short, some crossed each other to make a red X, while some stood out from the rest like lines on the palms of an ill-fortuned individual.

“That was what you and that idiotic woman caused me. So, you all should come up with ideas on how to punish her.” Ikenna snapped his fingers. “We must do that today. That way, she will come to know that she cannot mess with us and go scot-free.”

While he was speaking, a goat bleated from behind the window. Mmbreeeheheeeh!

This riled Boja. “That crazy goat again, that goat!” he cried, rising to his feet.

“Sit down,” Ikenna yelled. “Let it alone now, and give me ideas on that woman before Mama returns from church.”

“Okay,” Boja said, sitting back. “You know Iya Iyabo has lots of hens?” For a while Boja sat, his face turned in the direction of the window where the goat’s bleating could still be heard. Even though it was clear his mind was fixed on the bleating goat, he said: “Yes, she keeps a whole lot.”

“Mostly roosters,” I put in, wanting to make him know that it was roosters, not hens that crowed.

Boja cast a sneery look at me, sighed, and said, “Yes, but must you tell us the gender of the hen? I have told you many times to stop bringing this stupid animal fascination into important—”

Ikenna chewed him out. “Ooh, Boja, when will you learn to face what is important, which is telling us what your ideas are. You are wasting time getting angry at the bleating of a foolish goat, and rebuking Ben for something as trivial as the difference between a rooster and a hen.”

“Okay, I suggest we get one of them and kill and fry it.”

“That is fatal!” Ikenna exclaimed, making an irritated face, as if on the cusp of vomiting. “But I don’t think it’s proper to eat that woman’s chicken. How are we even going to fry it? Mama will know we fried something here; she will smell it. She will suspect we stole it, and stealing will earn us even more severe strokes of the whip. None of us wants that.”

Ikenna never dismissed Boja’s ideas without giving them a proper thought. They had a mutual respect for each other. I hardly ever saw them argue, unlike the way they would answer my questions with an outright “no” or “wrong” or “incorrect.” Boja agreed that it was true, nodding repeatedly. Next, Obembe suggested we throw stones into the woman’s compound and pray they hit either her or one of her sons, and then take to our heels before anyone comes out of the compound.