Irenosen Okojie - Butterfly Fish

I am sharing this room with Obi and Emanuel, also new to the army and both of whom snore so loudly, it is a wonder this room is not vibrating. Lazy boys! They still have their party clothes on, Obi on his back with his arm carelessly flung over his forehead and Emmanuel nearly off his creaking mattress face down into the floor.

Right now the kerosene lamp is burning a steady, low flame of light as the night sounds of the city become fainter. I am leaning this journal against a short stool that wobbles initially before stabilising. It is only a stool but I like this flaw in it, so applicable to human beings and the new situations we often find ourselves in. There is something about being here and seeing how the rich live that makes you yearn for more. Here, everybody “wan chop”, so I want my piece as well! I cannot sleep; it is my excitement over what is to come that has me reaching for this journal, a parting gift from my father along with his letters. And his neat handwriting seeming to say: “ Be careful! Say your prayers, God is watching.”

This writing and reflection is giving me an appetite, I wish I could go down into the kitchen to help myself but since I am only a guest, I will have to bear the stomach rumblings till morning. To the left of our room is a stiff wooden door and hanging on a nail is my uniform, a dark green tunic with patrol collar, light coloured khaki-style trousers and a peaked, jaunty cap with gold braid. Something strange happens every time someone comes through that door. As logic would have it, I don’t expect it to make my uniform fall in a heap on the floor. Instead, I see the yanked door handle lift my uniform off the nail so it stands to attention before me. One sleeve of the green tunic raises to the cap in a salute. I actually want to try my uniform again right now, it fits very well, but if Obi and Emmanuel wake up and find me dressed in it at this time, I will be the butt of their jokes for days.

Somebody else is awake; I can hear their feet shuffling downstairs, the creak of a window sliding open. By the time that sound ceases, it has become a different window from the past. My mother is leaning out, reliable shoulders hunched up, bits of springy hair sticking to her sweaty forehead, screaming for me to come in from the streets. Usually, I would be loitering on a corner somewhere when I heard it, swapping marbles with boys who bore neighbourhood war wounds of freshly scraped knees and healed cuts. Or I’d be testing catapults from a safe enough distance on strangers who crossed my eagle-eyed view.

Whoever was moving downstairs must be trying to get back to sleep. I am admiring the round buttons on my tunic. They are spotless and a coppery colour, I polished them yesterday. They could be coins, like the ones my father used to give me to buy white Tom Tom American candy from the sweet seller that were so sweet your teeth hurt and gave your mouth a zingy coolness. Inside the copper buttons another memory is moulding itself to them. This time I am twelve or thirteen, my head is buried in a book as my father points out the inconsistencies in my arithmetic, teaching me the way good missionaries do. This lesson would then be followed by English. Then later on, sitting in a church pew wriggling my bottom in anticipation of the ending, of the clapping and singing out of tune. Obi has now turned onto his front, dishevelled, doing a very good impression of a tortoise. He sleeps too deeply; this is a weakness for an officer. I will make a good officer; I am controlled and swift to react in most situations. There is no way I could have failed the recruitment process. Tests, endurance exercises but more importantly, who is open to bribes.

I watch people because human beings are fascinating. A person’s body language can tell you what you need to know, even shows when they are weaker than you. Look at an unsteady arm and you will see a lie reflected there, a sweaty upper lip in a tight situation and sooner or later that person will crack from fried nerves. My most useful skill is my ability to adapt, something I learned early having been the child of Christian missionaries, a child with no real interest in faith whatsoever. Since it was clear that you couldn’t escape God because he was either watching you, having plans for you, or making a way (God will always make a way!), I decided to have a talk with him. When I was nine, I took him aside right by the guava tree that dipped its branches into our small compound. I warned him, don’t give me any wahala and you and me will be okay. Of course, I did not tell my father this. I believed he would have had a heart attack, his thin-rimmed, round spectacles steaming up, his body keeling over right there on our black and white squared linoleum floor.

I have made friends with Obi and Emmanuel, not because they are my sort of people but because you have to have team spirit in the army. You cannot be seen to be a loner or an outsider looking in. In fact I am not a team player, never have been and never will be.

Recently, I have taken to smoking cigarettes. I think too much as some form of a release. I like taking long, slow puffs of sin. I see myself at the army barracks in Epoma. The wide grounds with dark, unevenly, shaped buildings popping out of it like teeth. The identical hard beds set in rows and dressed in flat green sheets with thinly stuffed pillowcases. The thud of feet pounding in unison on the concrete during training exercises. The officers with bags containing stuffed, squashed versions of their lives spilling onto their beds and the floors. The black truncheons flashing in warning, tucked under the stiff arms of officers who look as if they’ve been swabbed in liquid discipline. The high wire fence surrounding the building that surely had the scrutiny of superior officers welded into it, and the taut, shrill, piercing sound of whistles that sent your socks rolling down your legs. The green and white Nigerian flag raised on a high, white pole flailing like a ship’s mast as if the grounds could set sail at any moment.

I am going back to all of that in a few days, to this new life I find hard to switch off from. But even within the confines of the barracks, there are signs of something wrong. The caretaker whose name nobody knows, his hair is grey with secrets. Every day he marches around the grounds dressed in full regalia making sure the buildings are as they should be. Yet he appears to be searching for something, bending to study the dirty bottoms of walls where there is nothing to see, sliding his hands under filthy, corroding pipes and boring his eyes into the front of the building. And when I greet him, “Mr Caretaker man, what are you looking for?” he responds in kind, “Just making sure everything is in order sir.”

There is the officer three rooms away from mine, who writes letters to himself every week before ripping them to shreds. People have been known to walk in on him attempting to stick those torn shreds of paper together with shaky hands. Besides, I am convinced worms are trying to take over the barracks. It began with seeing one some weeks ago crawling in a leisurely fashion on a windowpane, its pink body wriggling a slimy path. Since then I have seen more, crawling up the table leg in our eating area, slipping between the laces of an officer’s heavy black boot, curling and uncurling itself near a small puddle on the training base.

There is a small prayer room tucked away in the gut of the main barracks. It is sparsely decorated with thin, pristine white curtains and worn Bibles gathering dust on the wooden table. The few greying chairs croak when we sit down and the walls are a muted cream colour. Next to a high, square, stand, three fat white candles sit in silver holders. At the front of the chapel a robed, blue-eyed Jesus, arms outstretched, counts your guilty steps as you walk on. The officers, crass, loud, young men unaware of their ignorance, go in there, kiss the crosses dangling from their chains and feverishly voice their longings.