Chris Abani - GraceLand

Elvis lit a cigarette and took a deep drag. Part of him knew his father was speaking from fear. Everybody around him was afraid of change, of rocking the boat, in case they disappeared. Yet part of him had begun to doubt the motives of everyone around him, so he could not totally dismiss his father’s concerns.

“The King does good work. I support him.”

“Den you are a bigger fool dan I thought. Don’t you know dat when de King is next arrested you can be implicated by association? Elvis, try and understand. I am doing dis as your father, not as a stranger. I am trying to help you.”

“The way you helped Godfrey?”

Sunday’s wince was audible and Elvis immediately felt a pang of guilt. Maybe his father was trying to help him. But it seemed too convenient. He had alternated between ignoring and bullying him all these years; yet now, hours after being confronted with the murder of his nephew, he was suddenly concerned for Elvis.

“You have a bad mouth,” Sunday said. “You get dat from your mother.”

Elvis said nothing, lighting another cigarette instead.

“Dis is why I don’t talk to you. Every time I try, you shut me out with your rude comments,” Sunday went on.

“I think you should go and sleep off your guilt instead of putting it on me. It’s not working,” Elvis said, tossing his half-smoked cigarette into the street and getting up.

“Elvis … I …”

“Goodnight,” Elvis said. On impulse, he bent down and kissed the top of his father’s head before walking briskly to the door of his room.

As he went inside, he looked back. Sunday had not moved from his seat, except to run his finger meditatively over his bald spot where Elvis had kissed him.

ROAST VENISON

(Igbo: Ele Ahurahu)

INGREDIENTS

Venison

Vegetable oil

Apples

Allspice

Fresh bonnet peppers

Diced onions

Salt

PREPARATION

Dig a hole about two feet square and build spit support from two forked tree branches. Fill the hole with coals, wood and kindling. Light the fire and hang the venison over the flames to burn off the fur. Scrape hide regularly with a knife to clear the fur.

Spread large banana leaves out on the floor and lay the venison on them. Wash the soot off with water, then cut the shin of the animal in several places and stuff with a mix of the ingredients above.

By now the fire should have died down to a steady heat with low flames. Hoist the venison over the fire using a length of metal guided through the animal and suspended from the spit supports. Turn and roast slowly for about seven hours. Best served communally on trays with salad, palm wine, music and dancing.

This is the journey the kola must make. The eldest man, in presenting the kola nut to the gathered guests, must say, “This is the King’s kola.” The youngest boy in the gathering then takes the bowl and passes it to the eldest guest and says, “Will you break the King’s kola?”

The complexity of the kola-nut ritual comes from the peculiar way that age and lineage are traced among the Igbo. Certain Igbo groups trace lineage along matrilineal lines, though others are unapologetically patriarchal. The kola-nut ritual provides a ritual space for the affirmation of brotherhood and mutual harmony while also functioning as a complicated mnemonic device.

Afikpo, 1980

The call, though soft when it came, terrified him. Panting and sweating, he struggled to see through the darkness. Familiar objects took on a different life. There it was again, insistent.

“Elvis … Elvis.”

“Who is it?”

“Innocent.”

Muttering curses under his breath, Elvis got up and felt his way to a candle and a box of matches. He lit the candle and opened the door. Innocent stood shivering outside. His tortured look caused Elvis to gasp.

“Innocent?” he said, the name loaded with questions too hard to articulate.

“It is me … I am hungry,” Innocent replied.

Nodding, Elvis led the way to the kitchen out back. On tiptoe, he reached for the key that was always above the door, on the lintel. Carefully, so as not to wake anyone, he reheated some rice and stew for Innocent. Watching him eat, Elvis felt a strange mix of revulsion and pity, yet did not know why. There was something else too — something that had to do with the terrified looks Innocent shot around the room.

“What is wrong?”

“Nothing.”

“You seem upset.”

Innocent paused in his eating, empty spoon midway between the plate and his mouth. He looked at Elvis as though he were seeing him for the first time. He put the plate of rice down, although he kept hold of the spoon. He held it in midair as if it were a baton and he the conductor of some orchestra. He seemed to be deliberating within himself whether to tell Elvis something. After a while he sighed.

“I used to be a soldier in de Biafran war.”

Elvis was a little surprised by that. It just seemed to come out of nowhere.

“I know.”

“Yes. Well, dat time na rough time. I was only a child, you know.”

Elvis nodded.

The alabaster Madonna wept bullet holes. They traced a jagged pattern down her face and robes to collect in a pool of spent shell casings at her feet. She trampled a serpent underfoot, which seemed to be drowning in the brass waves. Her arms, folded over her Immaculate Heart, kept it from flying out of her chest. Her face, cast lovingly toward heaven, wore a sad smile. Sitting among the shell casings at her feet, a thirteen-year-old Innocent sucked on a battered harmonica. The sound whispered out of the honeycombed back, floating up, past the Madonna to an askew Christ on the cross. It went in through the wound in his side, worming around and out the nails in his feet, condensing on the walls of the pockmarked church in a dew of hope.

In the burned-out skeleton of the church, in the reluctant shadows cast by the walls, a group of soldiers, rifles in arms, bristled. They were young, most no more than fifteen. The sweet smell of marijuana floated past them, mixing with the smell of stale sex, warm blood, burned wood and flesh, rising in an incense offering to God. Cicadas hummed and the very air, hot and humid, crackled with the electric sigh of restless spirits. The smoker, seventeen, the oldest person in the platoon, was known simply as Captain. He stubbed out the spliff he was smoking, grinding it into the dry, crumbly earth. It was 1969 and they were part of the Biafran army’s Boys’ Brigade.

The harmonica sang breathily as Innocent teased a hymn from it. The notes fluttered hopefully, hesitantly, a fragile thing. But as the sun warmed them, they rose steadily. Some of the soldiers in the shade who were familiar with the Catholic hymn hummed along. The hymn brought back memories of a different time, a different place.

“Hey, Music Boy! Play me another song,” Captain shouted.

Innocent stopped sucking on his harmonica.

“Like what?” he asked.

“You know de Beach Boys? Play dat.” Captain laughed loudly.

Innocent turned away and went back to playing the hymn. There was no love lost between him and Captain — mostly because out of everyone in the platoon, Innocent was the one he usually chose to bully. Across from him, tied to a tree, were the corpses of the Catholic priests who used to run this parish. Their white soutanes were caped in crimson. On the floor near them, one dead, one whimpering in shock, were two nuns who had been raped by Captain. The dead one had tried to struggle. Innocent had watched, afraid to intercede, afraid of what Captain would do to him. He had stared into the nun’s eyes that were as grey as a fading blackboard, watched her implore him as the life ebbed away, steeling himself. Like Captain said, “War is war.”