‘Epithets, like pepper, give zest to what you write; And, if you strew them sparely,
They whet the appetite: But if you lay them on too thick, you spoil the matter quite.”
Lewis Carroll
Our departure from the Yap airstrip had been de-lei’d, but not by all the Christmas presents which, because of the gift-wrapping, had sailed around rather than through security.
If the color of Yap had been money, the color of Pohnpei was black. The pepper was black, the palisades were black, and the pearls were black. Darker still was the intrigue that swirled around them, in one of the rainiest places on the planet. And the center of the intrigue was The Village people.
‘Together we will go our way, together we will leave some day.
Together your hand in my hand, together we will make the plans.
Together we will fly so high, together tell our friends goodbye.
Together we will start life new, together this is what we’ll do.’
No, not Village People, the gay fantasy disco variety, The Village people, the owners of The Village, the treetop eco-resort that Robyn and I had booked into. Eight years before Go West was released, as a single in 1979, Bob and Patti already had, as a young couple with four children. From Southern California, they pulled up stakes and went further west, leasing a steep-sided spit of land pointing out into the lagoon, and building the largest thatched structure in Micronesia. Bob had been an industrial designer, and retaught the locals how to do thatching, from what he had learned while living in Honduras. He imported mahogany from the Philippines for the floor of the Long House, and then, between the breadfruit and banana trees, built twenty more cottages.
‘I know that there are many ways to live there in the sun or shade.
Together we will find a place to settle down and live with the space
without the busy pace back east, the hustling, rustling of the feet,
I know I’m ready to leave too, so this is what we’re going to do.’
Robyn and I were driven across the Deketik causeway, through the capital of Kolonia (blacker than the Colonia we had left on Yap), past a burnt-out Japanese tank with the wrong sort of camouflage for where, and probably why, it was destroyed, another twenty minutes east to The Village. Up the stairs of the mangrove poles and expansive thatch was a bar called the Tattooed Irishman and beyond that, the restaurant, both open to spectacular views across the reef, the smaller islands that dotted the lagoon and, on the distant horizon, the profile of Sokeh’s Rock. Patti welcomed us with two cold coconuts and straws, and we took them out along a walkway that led to a thatched gazebo overlooking their tropical paradise. Sea breezes blew gently through the palms, and the space we were perched on. It was a damn fine coconut. We were shown to our cottage. Under the mosquito net was a waterbed. You can take the boy out of California. I hoped the floor would hold,
But small cracks began to appear in the Garden of Eden around dinnertime. Patti’s friendliness had disappeared, and she snapped at me for trying to compliment her on what she and Bob had accomplished, with time and thatch. I didn’t know then, about how it was all unraveling around them, and I wouldn’t for another ten years. The food was adequate for where we landed, but quesadillas were not what I had expected for a New Year’s Eve dinner. The huge spiders above us in the rusting ceiling fans were also a novelty. I should have learned from the ecoexperience on Yap, but The Village would take that several notches higher. Two young boys uncorked the bottle of Tokay we had brought to celebrate the New Year and poured it to the brim of our glasses. The path back to our shack was unilluminated, but I had my headlamp. The absence of water pressure in the shower was more than adequately supplemented by the mosquitoes, and the rats. In 1991 the US government bestowed Bob and Patti with the first eco-tourism award, for constructing a hotel‘in tune with nature, with a low impact on the environment and the culture.’ We slept somewhere between the howling of the dogs and the crowing of the roosters.
“Paradise.” Robyn whispered, into my twilight sleep.
“Paradise is exactly like where you are right now.” I said. “Only much better.”
She ordered a platter of Pohnpei hotcakes for breakfast next morning. It came with a maraschino cherry on top, like the ham and cheese sandwiches, on our flight to Juan Fernández. Outside the veranda, the rain was hosing down, trying to reach its annual quota of 300 inches in a single monsoon. Robyn and I did the only thing we could do on a New Year’s Day, in a torrential deluge, on a remote island in the Southern Sea. We rented a car.
It arrived as a silver Mitsubishi sedan, with windows so severely tinted, I wasn’t sure how we would navigate in the downpour. It was an endemic problem, as we were to discover. Everywhere we drove was littered with dead cars- eviscerated cars, cars upended on their side and braced up at strange angles with bamboo poles, perhaps to allow access to their innards, for most were missing parts, and all were missing their tires, for whatever reason. We sunk into potholes that should have drowned us, but thankfully the sun came out, before we reached the 300 inches.
It got positively wonderful at Kepirohi Falls, a seventy-foot cascade a fifteen-minute hike from the far end of the village of Sapwehrek. We swam deliciously in the bottom pools, paradise regained, until a freak gust of wind blew half the cataract through my Fuji camera. Maybe it was some form of retribution for what the Japanese had done to the Pohnpeians during the war, but all my photos would henceforth look like the burnt out camouflage tank we had passed in getting here.
Robyn and I stopped to visit the Catholic church in Awak village, with a simple but moving interior, backlit by open blockwork in the shape of two crosses. The exterior could have been Balinese,if rusted corrugated tin had been the construction material of choice in Bali.
We continued to the southern part of the island, where the dark intrigue began, with a soft-spoken Japanese farmer. Mr. Sei owned a cafeteria in Kolonia, but he also had the only remaining operating pepper plantation and processing facility. Only five of his hundred acres were planted in Indonesian and Sri Lankan pepper, on eight-foot balabala fern support posts. Among the long strings of green beaded pepper vines, were magnificent orchids, acting as coalmine canaries, like roses do for grapes in Burgundy.
To hear the way that Bob and Patti would tell it, the pepper business in Pohnpei was nearly dead, when they formed the AHPW Corporation, to produce black pepper and buttons, in 1985. No one had apparently told Mr. Sei that it was nearly dead, and no one can really explain what a black pepper enterprise has to do with manufacturing buttons from trochus shells. But that was what Bob and Patti did, when they borrowed more than $620,000 from the Federated States of Micronesia Development Bank. Bob and Patti assumed that the loan was made to their corporation. The bank assumed they were lending to Bob and Patti.
The following year a moratorium was placed on harvesting trochus shells, because of concerns about sustainability. The buttons went bye-bye, and all the button factory machinery that Bob and Patti had imported, went the way of the cars with the overly tinted windows. The year after that, in response to complaints by pepper farmers that Bob and Patti were being too fussy in purchasing only high-quality pepper, the State of Pohnpei got into the pepper processing business, and put Bob and Patti out of it, in 1998. When the bank called in their loan, for which they now learned they were personally responsible, paradise found became paradise lost.
A year before Robyn and I met The Village people, Bob and Patti filed a lawsuit, Civil Action 1999-053, against the governments of Pohnpei and the Federated States of Micronesia, alleging that ‘In buying pepper from Pohnpei’s pepper farmers at a price greater than market price, Pohnpei prevented competition in the manufacture of a commodity, in this case processed pepper,’ they had essentially driven AHPW into bankruptcy. The lawsuit also alleged that the State of Pohnpei had failed to hold the annual trochus harvest, even though AHPW had been repeatedly assured that there would be one, and that sixty metric tons would be available. Bob and Patti asked for $225,448 in damages. The FSM Supreme Court, to their initial delight, not only found in their favor, but tripled the amount of the damages to $676,344, which would have been enough to pay back the bank loan. When the State of Pohnpei appealed to vacate the trebling of damages, the Court not only refused, but also awarded Bob and Patti an additional $37,422, under the theory of detrimental reliance, for the loss of their button business. Time and thatch, however, unravel at different rates. The two bills that the Governor submitted to the Pohnpei State Legislature to pay Bob and Patti, failed to pass, even though there were sufficient funds to do so. While the State of Pohnpei was getting its head around having to pay damages to Bob and Patti, the FSM Development Bank was wasting no time in calling in its loan. It could have explained Patti’s black mood, and why she might have thought I was pushing her buttons.
‘Together we will love the beach, together we will learn and teach.
Together change our pace of life, together we will work and strive.
I love you, I know you love me; I want you happy and carefree.
So that’s why I have no protest when you say you want to go west.’
Our Pohnpei circumnavigation turned north, and the high volcanic cone formation of Pwusehn Malek, in Palikir. The local legend relates a story of the defeated ruler of the Saudeleur dynasty, who changed himself into a giant rooster, to fly to Nan Madol, leaving an enormous pile of his droppings. At the foot of Chickenshit Mountain, Robyn and I met a group of inebriated women, celebrating New Year’s Day, all flip-flops and Santa hats, carrying green plantains, and banging their bottles and big square tin cans with sticks, and laughter. We posed in front of an old panel van, with so much vegetation growing so fast out of its cockpit, we made a mental note to close our tinted windows, later. Kolonia was empty, but the signs were still there- Do not spit betel juice on the premises. Pigs for sale 50 lbs to 75 lbs Call and ask for Welson Nedlic… Must be sold during Xmas. Back in The Village’s restaurant that evening, I had the chicken salad. The disparity between the price and food quality had risen in direct proportion to the size of the pepper mill. It was gigantic, and I had an awful black feeling that Patti and Bob had known exactly where we had been.
‘I may not know much, but I know the difference between chicken shit and chicken salad.’
Lyndon Johnson
* * *
‘What breadth, what beauty and power of human nature and development there must be
in a woman to get over all the palisades, all the fences, within which she is held captive!’
They had been constructed from long prismatic columns of hexagonal black basalt almost 20 feet in length, piled log-cabin style, some sixty feet high, forming 92 artificial islands over an area of 200 acres. Robyn was barely visible in the deluge, held captive in the kayak next to mine, navigating the mangroves, and the palisades between them.
Two days before, we had found the poverty of Pohnpei, in the Kirinese carvers of Porakied, transplanted by the Japanese in 1919 from Kapingamaranga atoll, 35 inches above sea level and 740 kilometers south of their old new village of thatch and corrugated iron. Hanging banana bunches and full rain barrels, rigged from commercial food containers, projected off rooftops, and car wrecks rusted languidly under the coconut palms in the front yards. On the day of our visit, their settlement, like their origins, was mostly water. The concrete graves in the cemetery glistened silver in the rain, and even their connected crosses were of cement, a cementery, the only color coming from scattered bouquets of plastic flowers extruded from more temperate climates. We bought a handmade turtle carving, flippers woven from light natural coconut and darker pandanus fibers, from an old Kapingamarangan lady, whose smile betrayed how much more her people had lost than gained, in the move onto higher ground. She was still perhaps more fortunate than the other Pohnepeian immigrants from Pingelap, Oliver Sack’s Island of the Colorblind. My camera, meanwhile, was afflicted with the opposite problem, and was adding colors not found in nature, to the washed-out pig roast celebration, congregating in a clearing back towards the center of Kolonia. Japanese flatbed trucks arrived on masse, each with monster pigs, legs already tied around the poles that four men would be needed to huff and puff them down from, into the waiting firesmoke. Other smoulderings hung around mirrored sunglasses, from cigarettes on lower lips, as breadfruit and yams suspended on similar staves, were portaged bouncing, towards plastic tarps and waiting knives. Perhaps it might have been more festive if there had been fewer Japanese and American ghosts in the vaporized psychedelic images on my memory card.
Robyn and I passed into the main part of town, and the signage that announced its urbanity. Welcome to Good Luck Bingo. Said one. Site Bingo $500 cashpot. Good Luck. On Pohnpei, apparently, luck was easier to come by than justice. Outside the Dollar-Up-Enterprises shop, Growing with Pohnpei, and the Island Soda Headquarters, a big yellow smiley face, surrounded by pennants and Chinese lanterns, tried to provide both. Please try and park straight…so everyone can have a parking place. An Israeli flag, lurking behind a large Santa Claus decal, carrying a bagful of toys, seemed to promise neither. And another sign, STD’s: The Quiet Epidemic Gonorrhea Syphilis Hepatitis B HIV/AIDS etc. offered a hybrid of the good and the bad. I wondered what the etcetera was.
Robyn and I posed for photos on the wrong camouflage of the old Japanese tank, and under the arch of the Spanish wall fort remnant, near the Pohnpei Ladies Club, halfway between Honolulu and Manila. A flame tree posed more brightly near the clock tower. A philodendron was making a nest in the cab of another dead truck, near the spot that we picked up our ride, hitchhiking back to The Village. The views of the lush bay behind us, from our open truck bed, were idyllic, and left the heat and humidity with our exhaust, until we stopped.
The next day, Robyn and I climbed up Sokeh’s Ridge. We were warned at the bottom. Danger- Steep road. Hazardous for both motor vehicle and pedestrian traffic Travel at your own risk!! The hike was arduous in the midday heat, but the panorama of Kolonia harbor from the top, and the ocean expanse beyond, was just that breathtaking. There were nesting tropicbirds and fruit bats on the way up, WWII Japanese antiaircraft battery, pillboxes, and tunnels at the top, and strange bracket fungus, like cuneiform commas, on the way down. Robyn and I continued by coconut-oil coiffed women in an open boat among the sailboats mooring below, giant hibiscus, and an old guy with a backwards New York baseball cap, jeans, and miraculously white T-shirt, barbequing chicken in an open kettle on the street. It was brilliant. I may not know much…We returned to The Village to collect shells and snorkel, and to float asleep on the waterbed later, until the mosquitoes found the hole in our net before dawn.
‘Once upon a time, a man named Sapkini built a large canoe. He knew that the sky is a roof that touches the sea at its edges. His people, sailing in their fine canoe to the place where the sky meets the sea, would find land there. On the way, they met an octopus who showed them a shallow reef in the ocean. The people brought rocks and stones from faraway lands to make the reef higher. But the waves broke up the stones. So they planted mangrove trees to protect the island. But the ocean was still too close. So they built a fringing reef around the island. Two women brought soil and the island grew larger. On its top the people built a shrine to the spirits and named their new land- Pohn-Pei, Upon-the-Altar.’
Upon the altar of too many soft consonants of Mandolenihmw district, were the palisades on the other side of dawn, where the sky met the sea, beyond the kayaks that had come off our hour-long speedboat trip to the southeast coast of the island. Robyn and I had been dropped onto the mangrove-covered coral shore flats in a torrential downpour. Even with the protection of our ponchos, it was going to be an elemental day. We had the place to ourselves, wherever it was. The rain and the wind, washing over the thick green jungle and slate grey ocean chop beyond, made the unadorned black architecture even more intimidating.
It had originally been called Soun Nan-leng, the ‘Reef of Heaven.’ But we were paddling the Venice of the Pacific, named for the ‘spaces between’ the canals that crisscrossed Nan Madol.
“Rubble.” Said Robyn, summing up every megalithic ruin on the planet. Instead of an enlightening verifiable historical record to marvel at, rubble was always buried into even deeper confusion, by voluminous academic speculation. The rubble expert, so as not to appear ignorant, in the absence of knowledge and meaning, would describe and invent and publish what he thinks he should be seeing.
According to legend, Nan Madol had been founded by two brothers, Olisihpa and Olosohpa, twin sorcerers from the mythical Western Katau. They had arrived in a slightly larger canoe than ours, seeking to build an altar and religious community, focused on the adoration of the sea, and dedicated to the god of soft consonant agriculture, Nahnisohn Sahpw. On their third attempt, the brothers levitated huge stones with the aid of a flying dragon. After Olisipha had died of old age, Olosohpa became the first Saudeleur, the first ruler of the Dipwilap Deleur dynasty. From about 1200 AD, over the next five hundred years, the clan chronicle emerged from legend to lineage with each subsequent saudeleur.
A few were benign rulers. Inenen Mwehi established an aristocracy, and Raipwenlang was a skilled magician. Others were cruel. Raipwenlake used his magic to locate the fattest Pohnpeians, and ate them. Another, Ketiparelong, is remembered for his gluttonous wife who was fed her own father’s liver by suffering commoners at a banquet. Perhaps that worst was Sakon Mwehi, who taxed his people ruthlessly, requiring frequent tributes of seafood and breadfruit during rak, the season of plenty, and yams, taro, and fermented breadfruit during isol, the season of scarcity. Over time, the initial seasonal demand became much more demanding of labor and material, leaving a wake of starving slaves in the tidal canals. Each time that public dissatisfaction broke to assassination, another Saudeleur simply rose in place of the last.
The Saudeleur derived his legitimacy from the central cult of the Thunder God, Nahn Sapwe, who used the sakeu ceremony, the kava of Fiji and Vanuatu, as an elaborate affirmation of dominance and dedication. Sakau was first made through magic, also by two brothers, Widen-ngar and Luhk. Widen-ngar was the ghost of thunder, and Luhk, the ghost of the underground. Luhk had hurt his foot on the way to the Pohnpei, and his injured skin was pounded it into small pieces and, using hibusicus bark, squeezed out the liquid, using Widen-ngar’s kneecap to catch it.
The meat of the ‘Life-Giving’ Turtles and the ‘Watchmen of the Land’ dogs was reserved especially for the Saudeleur. He controlled potential rivals by requiring them to live in Nan Madol, rather than their home districts, in the same way that Louis XIV controlled his nobles at Versailles. He controlled his population with the food and water supply, which needed to come across in boats from the mainland.
All of Nan Madol, itself, in fact, had to have come over from the mainland. Prisms of black basalt were dislodged from their main island quarries by building large fires at their bases, and cooling them suddenly with sea water, to cause them to fracture. The stones were manoeuvred onto rafts, floated within the fringing reef across to the building site and, with inclined planes of coconut palm trunks and strong hibiscus fiber rope, slid into orthogonal islets of headers and stretchers, and filled with local coral. Pole and thatch structures were erected on top of the platforms, residences, and meeting houses for all the black intrigue that would follow. For a people that had no pulleys, no levers, and no metal, the 750,000 metric tons of black rocks moved into place at Nan Madol, averaging almost two thousand tons a year for four centuries, represented a much larger per capita effort than had taken place during the construction of the Egyptian pyramids.
In 1628, the last Saudeleur was overthrown by an outsider named Isohkelekel, who divided Pohnpei into the multiple nahnmwarkichiefdoms that still endure. Hidden weapons had suddenly appeared.
Robyn and I kayaked down the Nan Madol main street, the central waterway separating Life and Death. To the southwest was Madol Pah, the lower town administrative sector where royal dwellings and ceremonial areas had been located. We pulled up onto the high-walled complex islet of Pahankadira, the residence of the Saudeleur, a basalt battleship almost three footballs fields in area, the ‘place of announcement,’ surrounded by prismatic palisades over sixteen feet high. A bathing pool had been excavated inside. On the islet of Idehd was the place where turtle entrails had been offered to the sacred eel, kept in a sacred tunnel-like channel, constructed of carefully cut coral laid between basaltic prisms. We passed a row of sakau pounding stones, where two conch shells trumpets had been excavated. Nearby was Durong, where clams had been cultivated. The largest walls rose almost sixty feet high, on the south corner of Pahnwi.
It began to teem down, as we paddled towards the 58 islets northwest mortuary sector of Madol Powe, the upper town where the priests lived, and the tombs. Some islets served a special purpose- food preparation, canoe construction on Dapahu, and coconut oil preparation, for anointing the dead, on Peinering, the most beautifully proportioned islet on Nan Madol. Students of Western architecture familiar with the Golden Section of 1:1.618, would hear the arias of stacked prismatic basalt headers tilting markedly upward, projecting beyond the exterior wall faces to form a crafted cornice of some of the most sensitive skilled masonry in the world. The sun came out.
The crowning achievement of Nan Madol was the elaborate royal mortuary of Nandauwas, a 25 foot massive sea-walled palisade surrounding a central moss-encrusted tomb enclosure within the main courtyard. One of the cornerstones weighs 50 tons. Here were entombed the Saudeleurs, before being buried elsewhere. Powerfully conceived, sensitively sited, and skillfully executed, we approached it by kayak from the open lagoon, and moved along the jungle-covered islets on both sides of the canal, ascending steps that led to the interior courts, enclosures, and tombs. The breaking waves were deafening. Here were found adzes, circular heads, bracelets, needles, breast pendants, necklaces, pearl-shell fishhook shanks, and other valuable shell artifacts. Even a gold crucifix and silver-handled dirk were found by visiting ships’ captains between 1834 and 1840, suggesting possible Spanish contact before the 1820s.
Robyn and I arrived on a beach with hermit crabs and button shells and returned for dinner out in a café under thatch along the river, tortured by a cute young girl with two red orchids in her hair. The food arrived under aluminum foil, from the main island.
‘Go west, life is peaceful there.
Go west, lots of open air.
Go west to begin life new.
Go west, this is what we’ll do.
Go west, sun in wintertime.
Go west, we will do just fine.
Go west where the skies are blue.
Go west, this and more we’ll do.’
The Village People, Go West
* * *
‘Even pearls are dark before the whiteness of his teeth.’
Black clouds swirled over the remaining intrigue on Pohnpei. In 1886, the Spaniards, as part of their claim to the Caroline Islands, as part of the Manila-based Spanish East Indies, founded Santiago de la Ascensión, in a place that the Pohnpeians had known as Mesenieng, the Face of the Wind. The Germans had renamed it Kolonia.
Robyn and I visited the Pohnpei Visitors Bureau, admiring the old thatched buildings and the soft curves and consonants of Miss Madolenihmw, on a poster inside.
Outside we met Johnny, one of the hosts, who showed us the botanical gardens.
“These trees are very, very old.” He said. “Like you.” According to the signpost, we were standing18127 miles from Berlin.
It hadn’t made any difference to the German colonial administration how far they were from Berlin. They had brought all their ideas, and toys. One of their ideas was to force the Pohnpeians to labor 15 days a year on public works projects. One day in October of 1910, a young man from Sokeh Island refused the instructions of his overseer and was flogged for his transgression. The following morning, all the Sokehs refused further labor, and returned to their island. The district commissioner, Gustav Boeder, with his assistant Rudolf Brauckmann and two translators, was rowed to Sokeh by six Mortlock Island boatmen, to ‘reason’ with the laborers. Riflefire rang out from a concealed position, and only the two translators and one oarsman escaped. It took two months for the news to reach the Colonial Office in Berlin. A month after that, the light cruisers SMS Emden and SMS Nürnberg, joining the gunboat SMS Cormoran and the survey ship Planet, fired their main batteries on the rebel fortification on Sokeh’s ridge, and then launched an assault team of sailors and Melanesian police up the mountain. The rebels gave as good as they got, but couldn’t hold out, and surrendered on February 22, 1911. Two days later, fifteen of them were executed by firing squad, and the 426 remaining souls of Sokeh’s tribe were banished to Palau.
The Styrofoam crosses in the storefront window, behind all the left footed shoes on display, were decorated with colored ribbons, and bouquets of artificial flowers, that flowed into the patterns of the material shop next door. We passed the Touch ‘N Go Windward Mart, and a handpainted poster of a pregnant woman, smoking. Simoke sika karehda serihkan ipwidi paun tikitik.
The burned-out ruin of the State Department of Education, with the Japanese Kanji script below, had stopped smoking after the American delivery of 118 tons of bombs, 600 incendiaries and their own naval artillery bombardment had destroyed Kolonia during WWII. A newer sign underneath the ruin, was buckled and soiled. Pohnpei Sarawi Our Home Our Pride.
Another, at the library posted its ‘standing rules.’ Keep quiet at all times. The following are not allowed: No food, pets, smoking, betel-nuts and fighting.
The Japanese had brought thousands of Okinawans to Ponhpei, during their occupation. Visitors to Kolonia in the 1930s reported that they had been able to walk the length of Namiki Street under shopkeepers’ canopies without getting wet in the rain. The Americans had bombed out the canopies, and Robyn and I enjoyed no such protection. We were drenched by the time we found Joy’s Restaurant, and a table for one of Joy’s black and red lacquer tray tuna sashimi lunches. Two men with dark faces and white teeth joined us, after Joy had made a phone call, after we had seen the brochure on her counter. They were Polynesians from Nukuoro atoll, a remote island 450 kilometers southwest of Pohnpei, with 300 residents, no airstrip, a sea charter connection that called only every few months, and cost ten thousand dollars per visit. George had been the Chief Magistrate for Nukuoro. He pulled out a case of what he had brought, each one nestled in a little round plastic box with a white foam bed. They were charcoal, with iridescent hues in blues and greens and violets. They were gorgeous.
George’s cooperative had seven employees who harvested about 6000 black pearls a year, enough to find enough round ones to make a single necklace.
“It takes eighteen months to produce a pearl.” Said George. “We must bring in a ‘seeding technician’ from Tahiti to seed them, and that costs about three dollars an oyster.” In the photo, George held up his brochure, his assistant held up the traveler’s cheques, and Robyn held up her new pearls. She was the pretty one with the jewels. A thing of Joy is a beauty forever.
A quarter of a century earlier, Laurie Anderson, the experimental performance artist and wife of Lou Reed, had arrived in Pohnpei to work on her new album, The Ugly one with the Jewels. It got very ugly, and the joy ran out, as she eventually related in her track, Word of Mouth.
‘In 1980, as part of a project called Word of Mouth, I was invited, along with a living other artists, to go to Panape, a tiny island in the middle of the Pacific. The idea was that we’d sit around talking for a few days and that the conversations would be made into a talking record. The first night we were all really jet-lagged but as soon as we sat down the organizers set up all these mikes and switched on thousand white light bulbs. And we tried our best to seem as intelligent as possible. Television had just come to Panape a week before we arrived and there was a strong excitement around the island as people crowded around the few sets. Then the day after we arrived, in a bizarre replay of the first TV show ever broadcast to Panape, prisoners escaped from a jail, broke into the radio station and murdered the DJ. Then they went off on a rampage through the jungle, armed with lawnmower blades. In all, four people were murdered in cold blood. Detectives, flown in from Guam to investigate, swarmed everywhere. At night we stayed around in our cottages, listening out into the jungle. Finally the local chief decided to hold a ceremony for the murder victims. The artist Marina Brownovich and I went, as representatives of our group to film it. The ceremony was held in a large thatched lean-to and most of the ceremony involved cooking beans in pits and brewing a dark drink from roots. The smell was overwhelming. Dogs careened around barking. And everybody seemed to be having a fairly good time… as funerals go. After a few hours Marina and I were presented to the chief, who was sitting on a raised platform above the pits. We’d been told we couldn’t turn our backs on the chief at any time or ever be higher than he was. So we scrambled up onto the platform with our film equipment and sort of duck-waddled up backwards to the chief. As a present I brought one of those Fred Flintstone cameras, the kind where the film canister is also the body of the camera, and I presented it to the chief. He seemed delighted and began to click off pictures. He wasn’t advancing the film between shots, but since we were told we shouldn’t speak unless spoken to, I wasn’t able to inform him that he wasn’t going to get twelve pictures, but only one, very, very complicated one.After a couple more hours the chief lifted his hand, and there was absolute silence. All the dogs had suddenly stopped barking. We looked around and saw the dogs. All their throats had been simultaneously cut and their bodies, still breathing, pierced with rods, were turning on those pits. The chief insisted we join in the meal but Marina had turned green and I asked if we could just have ours to go. They carefully wrapped the dogs in leaves and we carried their bodies away.’
A thing of Joy is a beauty forever. For Bob and Patti and black pepper, as well, joy was about to run out. In December of 2008, the FSM court issued an order finding them in contempt for non-repayment of their loan and filed a lawsuit for default. After they refused to sell their shares in Apple Computer, they were found guilty of contempt of court, placed under house arrest, and their US passports were confiscated. On June 10, 2009, Bob and Patti fought back, and filed their own suit against The State of Pohnpei, the Federated States of Micronesia Development Bank, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and US Secretary of the Department of the Interior Ken Salazar, for breach of contract, breach of Compact, and unjust enrichment. Two years later, the US Court of Appeals dismissed their case because of non-jurisdiction ‘over the foreign state.’ At the same time several different long-term land leases came due, and some landowners refused to renew. In 2013, Laurie Anderson’s husband got a new liver, and The Village people, after 40 years of operation, shut down their dream.
One of the word-of-mouth rumors that came out of the sakau bars was that Bob and Patti were relocating on Yap, to take advantage of the Deng Hong’s big money investment, coming in from China. But like the pepper and the palisades and the pearls, it’s the dark matter of dark intrigue.
‘And the colored girls say
Doo do doo do doo do do doo …’
Lou Reed, Walk on the Wild Side
Lawrence Winkler is a retired physician, traveler, and natural philosopher. His métier has morphed from medicine to manuscript. He lives with Robyn on Vancouver Island and in New Zealand, tending their gardens and vineyards, and dreams. His writings have previously been published in The Montreal Review and many other literary journals. His books can be found online at www.lawrencewinkler.com.
Grant Guy is a Winnipeg, Canada, theatre maker and poet. He has 6 books published and his poems and satories have been published internationally online and as hard copy. He was the 2004 recipient of the Manitoba Arts Council’s Award of Distinction and the 2015 Winnipeg Arts Council’s Making A Difference Reward.
Today’s poems are very reductive. They reflect more of the micro theatre pieces I began during the time of COVID. In the micro theatre pieces the object or the gesture was the event. In today’s poems the words are the event. Each word and/or line can be connected as pieces of shards by the reader.
I remember when my last kid left without so much as a goodbye kiss, only the gift of a radio to keep me company. One morning, fighting with the static, I heard a deer bawl in the breeze full of musk, and saw the buck I’d rescued as a fawn. He must have still been hungry, twitching his tail like there was a message in it, because he came right up to me and nuzzled my breasts. So I fed him from his old baby bottle. He was so tame I barely noticed the antlers growing out of his head.
Celebration
This is the time when winter sunsets illuminate a trick of the dust. The dust floats in a tangle of rays and confuses the cat on the leather chair. The leather chair is too slick for cat claws. Those claws can’t stop the cat from sliding across the seat as if sliding across a waxed floor. The waxed floor is where the baby sits, watching the cat dance, clapping his hands and giggling. Giggles are like champagne bubbles ready to pop. Pop them, why don’t you–there must always be something to celebrate.
Dinner with Lady & the Tramp
The lady fights with sticks of spaghetti rising above the saucepan. Only those submerged in water bend to her will. The stiff bits hold themselves above the boil and she has to break them off to get them to drown properly. She’d wanted to serve him long strands, each of them eating from opposite ends until their lips met; but now the pasta has been demoted to pastina, and all those wet noodles, no longer long enough for twirling, slip off the plate onto his lap. Across the room, the garbage disposal turns on remotely. It sounds like a chainsaw.
Cheryl Snell’s books include several poetry collections and the novels of her Bombay Trilogy, and her most recent writing has been nominated for Best Microfiction, Best Small Fictions, and Best of the Net awards this year. She lives in Maryland with her husband, a mathematical engineer.
To all my readers, lovers of Literature and especially all those who strive to survive during hard times.
Ikenna would continuously scratch his left leg as if to erase the itch sustained from the insect bite; and gradually, he would watch his skin swell in response. It did not bother him, for all he wanted at that period was to be at ease. The daylight slowly left the atmosphere and except for the fire his father, Udezue had made at a corner, their hideout would have been covered with darkness. Ikenna knew the fire might not last, for his father would put it off once they hear footsteps approaching. It happened countless times, making them change hideouts day after day, sometimes in three to four days to avoid been traced by people his father said were unusual persons. The last time he put it off, two days before, he re-ignited it because it was one of his friends who lived in their neighbourhood, Odinka. He hardly recognized his face in the darkness but his voice reaffirmed it,
“Udezue, its me Odinka”.
Odinka was a bachelor, though Udezue’s age mate. He joined the troops to fight in the war but stayed back for some days after sustaining a serious leg injury. He would tell Udezue,
“I’m not in the military but I’ve got absolutely nothing to lose. My parents died in the beginning of the war, three years ago. I’m fighting to the finish”.
Ikenna could sense the painful strength in his tone even as he limped when he came to their hideout. Udezue had joined also, fighting throughout the second year of the war but stopped abruptly because Ikenna told him how their mother always cried all through the night whenever he visited them. The son would always narrate how their second and last child, Kaira, would not stop behaving weirdly until she saw him again, also when two random gunshots broke down the loosely fixed doors of their hideout. The last story shook Udezue terribly, more so when his wife Ndidi had told him,
“I do not ask you to stop fighting but I do not want to lose you. I’ve not imagined myself in the painful club of widowhood. Kaira talks about you from dawn till dusk. We know she is just thirteen but she knows there is war and people are lost in it. Ikenna fully understands what is happening but his seventeen years of age doesn’t make him an adult. He doesn’t know everything about you and the…”
“ozugo. I understand. A ghotago m. I’ll consider staying back”. He ran his palm over her cheeks. Kaira rushed to him, “Papa, you’ve been fighting for a whole year!” Udezue hugged her immediately so she would not see the tears that welled up in his eyes. But Ikenna saw it anyway, and wondered if the war was ever going to end. Then he consciously closed his eyes and thought about his friends at college. He wondered where they would be and how they survived.
“I feel them so much in my heart”, Udezue told Odinka, pointing to his family, “I can’t concentrate fully in the warfare, especially when I remember them. I’ll lose myself if anything happens to them”.
“Don’t you have any siblings?” Ndidi asked Odinka. She wondered how he actually said he had nothing to lose.
“No. I’m the only child. My paternal uncles had always been envious of my father’s lands. We were not in good terms with them. My aunts are with their husbands. They can take care of them”.
“Your maternal side nko?”
“They are from a far place. A very far place. And I don’t relate with them especially as my mother told me they didn’t want her to marry the man she loved”.
Ndidi pitied him. The fatal wound on his leg; the quick, painful way in which he became an orphan, how his entire being was a picture of misery. She lamented, “I can feel the plights of thousands of war orphans”.
Odinka wiped the tears that welled up in his eyes. Udezue held him firmly, assuredly. The tears came out even more.
Ndidi nursed the hope that they would win the war, at least things would begin to get better especially for the Southerners. Odinka’s passionate commitment was what she thought, was needed in their forces.
———————————–
Udezue was not with the family when Odinka came to give them news that the war had ended. He said it was announced the previous day.
“Where is Udezue?”
“He went to see a close friend. He’ll be back before tomorrow runs out”.
“We surrendered. I can’t even imagine myself making this statement. It’s finished”.
“It isn’t, Odinka. You still have a life to live”.
“What value has a meaningless life?”
“Life is meaningful. It gives you opportunity to prepare and come back stronger”.
He sighed. He knew there was nowhere to start from. No family.
“Would y’all wait for your husband?”
“No. I spoke with him when we were perceiving the end of the war, about a month or so. We’ll leave immediately. Aba isn’t far from here. He’ll catch up with us or even meet us at home”.
And it was true. Aba wasn’t far from Umuahia. Though the roads seemed some sort of damaged, they would join others who went the same dimension.
“Okay,” Odinka said, “Go well. I’ll see if I can return”
“Please return. This isn’t the end. I hope to see you in the neighbourhood”.
“Thank you. Take care. I’ll also tell your husband when I see him on the way”. He left.
Ndidi turned to look at the other two, they were still seated, looking at her like they demanded an explanation. The loose condition of Kaira’s braids exposed her natural hair. Ikenna sat as though he didn’t know whether to sit or stand. She still looked at them. What did these children expect her to say? Anyway, whatever.
“It’s alright now, the war is over”, she told Kaira, lifting her up to embrace her, “We can now go home”.
“But we lost Mama”, said Ikenna, “We did not get the sovereign nation”. He stood up. Kaira simply stood without talking.
“I know, but there are no more pain or suffering”. Ndidi answered. She knew the pain went nowhere, that it was just the beginning. And then Odinka, whose pain would be unimaginable, not only for losing his parents or sustaining a fatal leg injury, but for losing the
War that robbed him of his family.
“But I heard people lost their loved ones”.
“I know. That’s what you see whenever there’s a war”.
“And you say there is no pain?”
She could no longer answer the questions and went to pack the little things they evacuated with. Kaira helped her. He still stood there. She looked at him at intervals to see if the question had cleared from his mind. He still looked like a confused person. Whatever.
When they arrived home, they were surprised to meet Udezue who was already arranging some scattered items. Kaira hugged him first. Ndidi imagined how much of an eyesore the house would have become. She knew it. She expected it. These cruel Northern soldiers must’ve turned her home to ruins. Ikenna stood. And as he looked around the neighbourhood, he saw people disposing spoilt properties.
“They destroyed a lot”.
“I know”. Ndidi replied, throwing out the torn clothes as he disposed the radiogram.
“They even broke the door of our middle sized refrigerator”. He sighed.
“We can’t dispose that. We’ll find a way to fix it”.
Ikenna could not bear the sight of his elementary school result booklet torn almost to shreds, drenched in liquid that smelled like urine, dumped in the backyard. A booklet he had promised himself to show his children in time to come, in which he came first twelve times in a row, then traces of second and third. Ndidi came over to the backyard to check her little farm. It was a total mess. The Orange tree lay lifeless on the ground, also were the vegetables and flowers, the neatly made ridges were now some scattered unequal lumps of sand. It was so much that she couldn’t even weep. She turned and saw him as he bent over those torn sheets. He was not packing them neither did he stand to leave them. He was just there, quiet. She came close,
“Nna m, dispose them”.
“Eh?” He felt like one whose certificate was burnt , “They’ll dry. I’ll tie them in a nylon”.
“No you can’t do that”. She raised him up and looked intently at the papers as if to check for something. Oh! It was his result booklet. She also got confused. Should the boy pack the papers or just go inside? Well, whatever. She left him, some things still needed to be arranged. He still stood there looking at the papers, wondering. What kind of people would’ve done this to such valuable document? ‘They probably didn’t go to school and don’t know what this is. They must be illiterates’ he concluded.
Their neighbour, Ifejirika had come over to greet them in the evening. He had returned with his family the day before. His fine, smooth, chocolate skin had darkened and become less shiny; a firmly tied bandage was on his right hand. He had slimmed down noticeably, but still had the tall physique, the broad shoulders and fine white eyes. He came in smilingly, shook hands with Udezue, lifted Kaira playfully and tapped Ndidi on the shoulders. He did not see Ikenna.
“Where’s my boy?” He looked at Udezue.
“He should be in the study room. Hope you all returned, unu ncha?” They sat down.
“Yes, we did. Anyi niile. Just that my wife’s colleague at the post office lost her two sons”.
“What?”
“Yes. Two of them”.
“Did they fight? Fa anulu ogu?”
“Probably”.
“They might have gone missing”.
“No. They returned to her this year. But they were badly shot. They died few days later”.
“Chai” Udezue looked at his hand, “Your hand, they shot you?”
“Yes. I initially evacuated with my family to Cameroun in the beginning of the war. In the third year, we were losing terribly, I returned and fought briefly before the war ended. That was when I sustained this. It bled seriously. I narrowly survived. My family returned by themselves. How they managed to meet me is history”.
Udezue smiled. The story was similar to his.
Ikenna wasn’t in the study room as Udezue predicted. He was in the kitchen, staring at their large kitchen wallpaper now torn to some large and small pieces, effortlessly scattered on the floor. Ndidi had assigned him to pack them up in a sac bag and dispose. It was the picture of an African woman, culturally dressed, a large pot on her head, holding her children as they walked along a beautiful sandy path. He had always imagined to be the boy in the picture while Ndidi took them along and Kaira was one of the girls. The others could be their neighbour’s children, whatever. He so much liked the picture that whenever he looked at it, he imagined a nice looking and sometimes communal life. He had hoped to get to that life in time to come and this hope was nurtured and preserved by the intent, regular looking of the picture. Hence, he would always clean it with a neat dry rag whenever it got dusty; he would also make sure the stove was reasonably far from it to prevent the kitchen smoke from denting its brightly coloured nature. And sometimes, he would run his hands over the images gradually, intently, as if to get in touch with the future. Then swiftly, he would return to the present and continue his duties. But it was no longer that way. It was now scattered pieces of sheets. He felt like his hopes were dashing, crumbling like buildings in the face of violent storms. For him, things were clearly no longer the same. He bent down and began arranging the pieces carefully on the floor like he was answering some sort of puzzle. He tried, but it wasn’t possible because some vital parts were lost. It would be that the Northern soldiers who invaded their house must’ve used them as tissue papers. But didn’t they see the rolls and rolls of tissue that lined up in the passage? Or perhaps they did not know what they were. He debunked the thought. It must have been wickedness, sheer wickedness. He pushed them together and carefully stuffed them in the sac bag. But he did not dispose them else he felt a complete loss. He stood looking at them for a while before hurriedly taking them to a neighbour’s child who lived in the opposite building. The child had attended the same college with him before the war. In fact, the child was his classmate, also one of his closest friends and playmate. Having known each other for years, they confided a lot in themselves and even planned the same academic moves in college. Their mothers were also very close. The child’s mother taught them English in the Senior section while Ikenna’s mother worked as deputy secretary in the education ministry. The connection was that Ikenna’s mother taught in the same college when Ikenna was still in the elementary school. The child, just like Ikenna knew, enjoyed making paper mache, even when it was not given to them as project in Entrepreneurship studies, he would make lots of them in neat, beautiful forms of animals and objects. Ikenna wondered if he actually sold them for money. He would ask him that. But anyway, anyhow, it was better if his friend used them to make something meaningful. He believed that by doing so, it would keep his hopes indirectly alive. That was preferable. Of course the child was a boy. His name was Chukwuma. They were about the same age. Ikenna and other close friends shortened it to Chuks. To them, the name presented him as the funny teaser he was while to the female classmates who admired him, it put him forth as some sort of iconic lover boy.
Ikenna knocked. The bag was beside him. He wondered if they had returned from the war. He planned to conclude that if the door wasn’t opened at the second knock, then it would be that they hadn’t returned. It could even be that they flew outside the country just before the war, afterall his mother’s rich co-worker travelled to America with her family. He knocked the second time. The door was opened. It was Chukwuma. He was noticeably slim but his colour had not changed; his skin still exuded that smooth gleaming chocolate complexion. Ikenna concluded that they might not have travelled but he was in some sort of good condition.
“Ah, Ikenna”. They shook hands and hugged in that boyish, playful manner.
“Kedu? How far?” Ikenna asked.
“I’m good. Long time”.
“Did you people fly out?” Ikenna still asked even as he had almost concluded the thought.
“N’ebee kwanu? For where? We were in Umuahia”.
“Me too. My family was also in Umuahia”. Ikenna said, kept quiet and said again, “But how come you still look unchanged?” He looked at his new pair of brown shirt and shorts.
“How?”
“You don’t look like a refugee. Aren’t you coming back from the War?”
Chukwuma understood and both broke into laughter.
“This boy”, Chukwuma playfully beat his chest with the back of his palm, “Who told you? I suffered oh. It’s just that I didn’t go hungry for a whole day”.
Ikenna too did not go hungry for a whole day. People, though not all, also ate daily; at least once. It was not what they ate that truly mattered. It was the quality; the quality of what they ate. But at least they ate.
“You must have been eating Chicken and rice non stop”.
“o sikwa Chicken? There was no such thing oh. I can only remember eating it once a year. We sometimes ate rice and cooked soup and a few other things, but it was mostly ‘Win the war”.
“What? Ikenna broke into laughter, “So your mother also cooked Win the War?” Chukwuma laughed and nodded in the affirmative.
Ikenna knew the foods that fell under that category. Strictly speaking, he knew they were foods that were poorly prepared, soups that barely contained fish or meat, or enough oil, or salt, or the right vegetables, soups that were watery, so watery that a baby would think it wise to drink them in cups. Garri was usually used to eat soups, but it was too scarce and expensive that they could barely afford it for the whole family. Even if they did, it wasn’t everyday. The prices of cups of garri grew more frightening. And they had to eat the soups with garri for there was no other cheaper substitute; and the satisfying heaviness they felt in their stomachs when they ate lots of it, hunger would be blocked throughout the day. But there were no lots of garri; hence most people would get a few cups and mix it with lots of maize chaff and submerge it in fairly boiled water and ate it with the soup. This way, they had a lot to eat, quality or no quality. The maize chaffs were usually used to feed the chickens when things were not that bad, but it did not matter during those perilously hard times. Who even reared chicken during the war? That was then. The war had ended after all. He hoped things would get better and at the same time feared the reality of his hopes. And it pained him that even after eating the foods of Win the War, they did not win.
“Nna eh, we ate lots of it oh. Thank God we survived. Many didn’t” Ikenna said again. He still looked at Chukwuma intently like there was something in him that needed to be discovered but at the same time talked along. It was his skin. How did he retain such kind of skin?
Chukwuma noticed, even if not by observing the way he stared at him, at least from the way he was not fast enough in replying the conversations. He chuckled and said, “I know you’re still wondering how my skin survived”.
It surprised Ikenna but he still wanted to ask the question anyway, “Yes oh. And you’re telling me you suffered. Are you joking?”
“I did actually. Yours is not bad too. It’s just that my mother’s friend who’s into cosmetics regularly supplied us creams at very cheap prices”.
“What?” Ikenna felt surprisingly amused, “You mean y’all did not rub Udeaki?”
“Not really”. Chukwuma smiled.
“Inukwa? Are you serious?”
The slight depreciation in Ikenna’s standard of skin was not because he applied Udeaki after bath. In fact, the Udeaki so much suited his black skin and made him somewhat dazzle. The issue was that he didn’t apply it regularly; or couldn’t. Who even constantly made it during that time? Udeaki was an oil made by steaming cracked palm kernels gotten from palm fruits. The palm fruits were not even that rampant during the time. It was usually the ones they bought for preparing ‘ofe akwu’ that they used the kernels for the Udeaki. It was not all the time. But they managed each one they prepared so that it lasted for quite a while.
Chukwuma nodded.
“When did you people return?” Ikenna asked. From the settled condition of their house, they could not have returned that same day.
“Yesterday”.
“We just came back today oh. Nna eh, these people spoilt a lot of things. We’ve been on arrangement”.
“Did you say arrangement?” Chukwuma was amused, “Our house was a total mess. We disposed and disposed. The few things we kept back are still not in sound condition”. He looked at the bag beside Ikenna, “What’s in the bag? You’re going to dispose it too?”
Ikenna sighed and opened the bag, then closed it bag again, “It’s our beautiful kitchen wallpaper, Fa dokara ya, they tore it to pieces. I’m not going to dispose it”.
“What then are you going to do with it? Gum it back?”
“No nah, it’s not possible. I brought it to you”.
“Me?” Chukwuma narrowed his eyes.
“Yes. You can use it for paper mache. It’s better”.
Chukwuma laughed, “You still remember that I do such things?”
Ikenna nodded, “How does it fetch you money?”
“Students and pupils come to buy for already made projects. My mother would also take some to the ministry of arts. It’s not booming, but its helpful”.
“Oh, okay”. Ikenna nodded and handed the bag.
“Thank you” Chukwuma lifted the bag and peered inside it.
“Did you go to school in Umuahia?” Ikenna asked.
“Yes, when the situation wasn’t too bad. I stopped in the third year. The school also stopped functioning. But I heard that other schools in the open areas stopped functioning as early as first and second year, especially Enugu”.
“I heard Enugu was one of the most difficult places to stay. My father said people evacuated as early as the first six months. It was terrible”.
“What of you? Did you go to school?”
“Me? I didn’t oh”. They both laughed.
“Even the one I attended, my mother said she doesn’t like the standard. She taught there”.
“I’ll continue schooling at the College. Are you coming back?”
“Of course, as soon as it resumes”.
“That’s nice to hear. Chuks! We’ll see later”. They smiled, shook hands and hugged.
By the time Ikenna returned to the house, Ifejirika had gone, Kaira was reading the Children’s classics, Udezue read the Weekday Papers. Ndidi was at the verandah with her friend, a co-fellow at the Women Liberation Movement.
Ikenna opened the door,
“Who’s that?” Udezue asked. His eyes were still on the papers.
“It’s me, Ikenna”
“Okay. Come in”.
________________________________________
By the time the federal college resumed, things were beginning to get better, to normalize. People went to work, to businesses; Churches commenced with full swing, inflated prices of items were going down, roads became through for usage, importation of foods especially foreign rice and the free circulation of local food items from local industries made people to gradually cease eating the foods of Win the War.
But even at that, since it was the first day of resumption, they felt the aura; aura of the things that had happened. Ikenna, having luckily found his uniform intact when they returned, had prepared them for school. But it was not the same with Kaira. She searched and searched and couldn’t find a trace of hers in the house. But later, by which time it was already two days to the resumption, she found a large mass of what used to be her uniform submerged in the nearby gutter, a beautiful pinafore she ironed daily, carefully, such that it made her look so slender and attractive. It was there along with her beret. She wept. But she did not feel as bad as that when she went to school on mufti, for many students came to college on mufti too, having one or two stories to tell about their uniforms. The first day of school was quite terrible, a haunting silence overtook the usual lively atmosphere, teachers stammered in class, tribal tension prevailed, bullets were scattered in the field, some buildings would need restructuring. The school assembly did not hold; students prayed in their different classes, silently, fervently. Some looked around to see if their friends had begun school, some asked if others had returned from the war. They did not learn much since the principal had declared more of clean up.
In class, Ikenna was with Chukwuma, Zeruwa, Chidi and Alade, a Yoruba boy. They talked about the recent issues. Zeruwa was solemn; tears dropped down his eyes at short intervals. Originally, he was Ikenna’s seatmate. They pitied him. And without even asking what happened, they knew it was something related with the war.
“Did they destroy your things?” Ikenna asked Zeruwa.
“They destroyed many people’s things oh”, Chidi could not help it, “My mum’s shop was in ruins. We’re almost back to square one”.
“I’m telling you”, Ikenna replied, “My sister’s uniform was found in the gutter”. They broke into laughter, even Zeruwa unknowingly joined in.
Ikenna continued, “My neighbour’s mother’s co-worker lost her two sons. Two!”
That was when Zeruwa spoke, “It’s my senior brother, he has not returned from the war. My family is worried. We are all looking for him”.
“Ah, that’s quite a long time. But don’t worry, y’all will find him, definitely”, Chukwuma patted his shoulders, “Clean your eyes”.
“It’s preferable to have your house in a mess than to look for a loved one”. Chidi commented.
“Whose house wasn’t in a mess? Its double for Zeruwa”. Chukwuma said.
“You say?” Ikenna still replied Chidi, “ Everybody is feeling the heat oh. Our bachelor neighbor lost his parents in the war. He said they died since the first year”. They looked at him. It was obvious that the statement shocked them the most.
“This is very terrible”. said Alade. It was the first time he spoke. Ikenna turned to him, “Your house was in a mess too. Wasn’t it?”
“Not really. We packed most of our things and left when the war was still a rumour”.
“You people flew out?” Chidi asked him.
“Nothing happened to you people at all?” Chukwuma also asked him.
“Fly wetin? We went to my village in Osun. All of us”.
“How did you people manage to cross the roads to that place? They didn’t assault you people? I heard they blocked so many major roads”. Ikenna asked.
“I am not Igbo”. Alade’s statement sounded like some sort of reminder.
“Oh, that’s true” Ikenna nodded.
“We forgot. Yours is better oh”. Chidi playfully ran his hand on Alade’s head. They laughed. But Ikenna wondered if Alade should really be praised for escaping the things they barely survived. In his mind, he didn’t agree. He didn’t know exactly why but he just didn’t agree.
They were still discussing when Chinelo and Obiageri, two girls came by. Everybody knew how opulent Chinelo’s family was; and Obiageri too. Some classmates think it was their parents’ wealth that instigated their friendship. Chinelo’s father owned a big newspaper that operated throughout the country while Obiageri’s father was a powerful merchant in Lagos. Judging by their status, it was obvious that they must’ve flown out. Ikenna wondered. He would still ask them anyway.
“Hey y’all!” Chinelo said when she came closer. She had a long wrapped frame in her hand. They smiled at her in greeting.
“This lady! The conditions of the time don’t bother you. See, you’re on a new set of uniform”. Chidi commented. Others laughed.
“You’re not serious”. She said in between laughter. She playfully ran her palm over Ikenna’s hair, gently. To her, his hair sounded so delicate that she couldn’t afford a strand falling off. She liked him. They knew. Close friends knew. In turn, he held her hand then descended to her palm and held it gently but firmly. Soon, he held it up to playfully pat his cheeks. He also liked her. They knew. But what surprised him was how what he felt remained unchanged even after the three years they didn’t attend college.
“It’s good to have you all back. I heard many people didn’t survive”. Obiageri said.
“Yes,” said Alade, “and we’re not even complete today. There are absentees”.
“What if they started schooling elsewhere?” Chukwuma asked.
“It’s possible”, Alade replied, “but I hope they returned, or survived rather”.
“Some might still start anyway”. said Obiageri. They nodded.
“Can we see for a minute?” Chinelo gestured to Ikenna in a low tone as if they talked privately there in the group. Others heard it anyway.
“Okay”. He agreed and shook hands with the others before they left. They did not go far. It was the college auditorium beside the school square. They sat on one of the long desks.
“Long time”. Ikenna said. His voice was not that loud, as if there were other people in the same row. Chinelo would answer him in the same voice.
“Yes. Long time”.
“You people flew out. Isn’t it?”
“Yes. London”.
“Obiageri too?”
“She went to America”.
He nodded. He knew they would fly out afterall, “Your father’s newspaper was scarce during that time. His company didn’t publish?”
“I think. He temporarily dismissed them before we went to London”.
Ikenna wondered how a prominent newspaper would dismantle because of crises of the time especially as it was owned by one of them. Maybe they couldn’t stand to publish the truth, or they didn’t at all. Well, that’s by the way.
“You’ve noticeably grown”. She noticed the broadness in his shoulders and the enticing deepness of his voice. She held his palm, he held back, and for the second time, they felt the Chemistry.
“You too”, he smiled, “Chukwuma said I snatched you away from him”. He laughed.
“What?” she laughed, “When did he say that?”
“Today, there in our group, when we contemplated if you would come today”.
“It’s obvious he likes Obiageri”.
“He’s just teasing me”.
She looked at his fingers, neatly trimmed and relatively soft, that stood in a nice row and formed a set of perfect uniformity. His skin was dark, but a shiny dark. A dark that radiated handsomeness and subtle brilliance. And he looked at hers too but she didn’t know what he thought about them. It wouldn’t be bad anyway. It shouldn’t.
“I heard you were best in Physics last time we closed”.
“Yeah” He nodded.
“Again?” She slightly pulled his palm, playfully.
“Y’all don’t want to take it from me”. He laughed.
“O sikwa you all? You that is guarding it with your life. Even Issac Newton can’t take it from you”.
“Chukwuma owns Chemistry, we all know. And you, English”.
She smiled coyly, “ That’s what I can do, speak English from morning till night”. They laughed louder.
She raised the frame to the desk.
“What’s this?”
“She gently tore the glued paper cover. It was a professionally drawn picture of him. He was surprised.
“In London, I wondered if you were alright”, she told him, “I told myself that you were. But sometimes uncertainty gripped me. I sent the picture to the person who drew it, and held it, and said you would have it if you survived”. She held it out to him.
“Yes, I survived”. He nodded and collected it. His gaped mouth showed he was still awed, “How did you get the picture?”
“Our previous school magazine”.
“Wow” He nodded.
“Thank you for surviving”. She told him. He nodded, still looking at the picture, “Mm”, then he teased her, “After you left us and ran away”. They broke into laughter. And before they left he hugged her gently.
When they returned, Zeruwa, Chidi and Alade remained in the group, but Chukwuma and Obiageri were seen on the pavement, beside the students reading area. They too started returning. Chukwuma was with a flat brown envelope.
“Ahhh”, Ikenna teased them, “Is that a love letter?”
“Abeg oo”, Chukwuma laughed, “She just showed me the report of a modeling interview she attended in America”.
Chinelo went close to Obiageri and whispered to her, “Did he kiss you?”
“No oh. We did no such thing”. Obiageri defended between laughter.
_____________________________________
Hoover, the white boy, was giving some gist to a large group of the class when Ikenna came by. Those who had been listening sat down and paid attention reverently, not as though it was because Hoover as their classmate told them important, amazing things but because he naturally sounded so special. To them, it was a sort of charisma. The way his accent flowed smoothly and made nice sounds like moving water causing sweet sensation. He did not speak like them who dragged the words in bits that always made him laugh and call some of them village champions. But they did not know that they sounded the same way as Hoover when they spoke their mother tongue, that they spoke it so fluently. How would they even know since Igbo speaking was banned in the school? The Principal did not do them any good, for he limited their local eloquence to just Igbo classes which Hoover didn’t care to offer anyway since it wasn’t made compulsory. Hence, he escaped the complete mess he would have been which they were in English classes. Yes, Hoover’s English was compulsory, and they all had to sit and take it bit by bit while Hoover flowed without hitch. It was worst on the days of oral English or intonation, when they not only had to try and pronounce the words but to handle it swiftly and airily like Hoover did. Yet, it surprised them how Chinelo was always best in English. Yes, Hoover did very well and joined those who topped the list in English, but his intelligence was not enough to lead the subject. Some think Chinelo was always on the spot because she spent most of her holidays in London, even the three years of the War. She was not white anyway, but she could do it. They knew. And Hoover did not feel as though he had a stumbling block. “It’s all about me”, he usually said, “take it or leave it”.
And they clapped for him at intervals because of the remarkable things he said he had done in his life. They also clapped at the comments he made to them since he sounded ‘all knowing’ anyway. Once, he had said that Izuchukwu, a boy, was so dark that he could not be found in the night. They laughed and clapped again, including the boy who was left with mixed feelings if Hoover actually praised or insulted him. He also told them that he hated the South because it was infested with mosquitoes and his family spent a lot of money on insecticides. They also clapped. Ikenna came by. The clapping drew his interest. He did not sit down. He stood with hands akimbo. At that time, Hoover told them a story of how he went to withdraw money in a bank in Lagos and they attended to him first despite the line-up of Lagos indigenes. And at the end of the story, one of them told him openly, “That’s because you’re special!”
“Yes”. He replied him and smiled coyly.
“That’s not right”, Ikenna said, such that they all heard him and looked at him in surprise. Some peered at Hoover to see how he would react.
“What?”
“Yes”, Ikenna said again, “That treatment given to you was a result of their incompetence. They did not recognize human equality”.
“Do you think I am the same as you?”
“Of course. What makes us different?”
“Get out. Dumb ass”.
“What did you call me?” he came closer.
“You heard me”.
Ikenna pushed him. He slapped Ikenna. Ikenna punched him. He fell backwards with a drop of blood trickling down his nostril. Some shouted. Others from different groups gathered to see what happened. Some sided Ikenna, saying that Hoover was becoming saucy these days. The head boy reported to the form teacher.
The form teacher, a dark slim lady who looked in her early forties and was fond of putting on wigs and weavons, so fond of them that the day she made braids they had to look twice and intently to recognize her. She spoke swiftly and dressed smartly. She taught them English years back in the junior section. Ikenna knew she studied English. But one thing about her that amused them was that she ate a lot. From the start of a working day till dismissal, she would’ve eaten about four huge meals in four different times. Even when there was a prayer session that lasted from morning till afternoon, she would quietly leave in between time to have her meal. They knew her name, Azuka, but they preferred calling her ‘Ma’. Once, when she told one of them, “You’re a nuisance”, the child smiled coyly and told her “Thank you, Ma’ and she broke into laughter.
She summoned the two of them for questioning. But the issue was that she did not ask about the cause of the problem, instead she asked what caused the blood on Hoover’s nose.
“Ma, he pushed me”.
“He called me a dumb ass and slapped me first!”
She looked at Ikenna. There were no traces of slap on his face. It might not have happened, or even if it did, she thought, it would not be as much as he exaggerated it. To her, Hoover looked fragile in his being and she couldn’t imagine him doing that. Well, whatever.
But she forgot to realize that Ikenna’s complexion did not expose the pain he felt, that it could actually have happened. He was not like Hoover whose skin exposed every bit of red mark. She did not realize.
“But he did not slap you as much as you punched him”. She told Ikenna.
“Ma?”
“He’s not known for behaving that way”.
The issue escalated when she asked Hoover to come closer so she would examine him. She did not only see the dust on his uniform but the tear of skin on his hand and the little bruises that followed. What? Since she taught them in the junior section till now, she had not imagined him getting wounded. Nobody did anyway.
“He also pushed me Ma”. Hoover said gently. She looked at Ikenna with an angered sight.
“Ma, it was when he called me a dumb ass”.
“Don’t tell me that! What if he slumbed?”
Ikenna was surprised at the way she presented Hoover’s fragility. Weren’t it other classmates who played football under the hot sun and broke their legs and survived? Weren’t it others who fought seriously and sustained injuries and she treated the matter like it was normal and always happened?
She passed verdict immediately. Hoover was safe. Ikenna was suspended from college for three days.
__________________________________________
Ikenna had resumed school. He thought of hope. Silence took over the better part of him; silence not fear. It showed in the things he did that were unlike him; the way he didn’t answer much questions in class, the way he didn’t join any group to discuss at free period, how he went to the cafeteria alone during lunch.
He met Zeruwa at the long que of students who came to buy drinks.
“Ah, Ikenna” They shook hands. And he told him, “My brother has returned!” His face gleamed with genuine happiness.
“Oh! Thank God. That must be a long story”. He smiled, not because he was in the mood anyway, but Zeruwa was not the cause of his condition.
“Yeah. Long indeed”. Zeruwa said and left. Ikenna did not ask him to wait so they would go together or join him to eat inside the cafeteria. He just watched him. Afterwards, he went in and sat down. Chinelo came in and saw him. He was also barely aware of the things that happened around him such that by the time he saw her, she had already bought drinks and dropped them on the table. She sat on the chair that was opposite.
“You decided not to talk to anybody today”. She smiled briefly and pushed one of the drinks to his side.
“I already have one”. He showed her the drink beside his food.
“You can have two anyway”.
“Do you enjoy seeing people drink to stupor?”
“Two can’t get you to that”.
“You can dash it out”.
“If that’s what you want”. She corked the one beside her and poured some into a glass.
He was done eating, but he did not stand to leave. They still sat.
“Zeruwa said his brother has returned”. She looked at him in the eyes. He looked at the drinks.
“Yeah. He told me”.
“That’s quite a miracle”.
He nodded and looked at her. She paused a while, then she spoke, “The test results are out. Did you check the notice board?”
“Yeah, I did”.
“You led in Physics”. She sipped from the glass.
“You’re also with English as usual”.
“Yes, and another three”. She looked at him”.
“What?” It disrupted his usual rhythm of sipping the drink.
She nodded, “Yes. This time around I’m going hook, line and sinker”.
He was quiet. She told him, “You taught Hoover a lesson the other day, almost everybody said it when you were absent. That naughty boy, who does he even think he is? But three days was quite too much. Don’t worry, you’ve started again. And I hope the lesson you taught him can stop his case from giving you sleepless nights”.
“Mba nu, no nah”, he held her palm, “he’s not giving me sleepless nights”.
“I hope oh, because you almost lost Physics to that newcomer, Ifeoma. Just two marks!”
“I know. I’ll definitely do better”.
“Please do”.
They stood up. And as they left the cafeteria, she told him, “Oh, my sister’s birthday party is on Sunday. Have I told you before?”
“Mba, no”, he shook his head.
“It’s true”, she remembered, “I told them when you were absent. You’ll come, won’t you?”
“I’ll try”.
“It’s not just that”, she whispered to him, “You owe me if you don’t come”.
“Are you joking?” They broke into laughter.
School had dismissed. Students crowded the field towards the gate. Wealthy ones went home in cars. Some waited for public transport. Ikenna and Chukwuma walked home together.
“Finally back to school”. Chukwuma smiled and patted his back.
He nodded and said, “I don’t like Hoover. His behaviour annoys me”.
“Not only you, many. He insults them a lot. He even said you’re a piece of bad luck”.
“That stupid little minded boy”. They entered the next street.
“Chinelo’s sister is having a birthday party on Sunday”. Chukwuma said.
“I know. She told me. O gwara m”.
“Who wouldn’t want to go and see their mansion? I heard they even have a swimming pool inside.
“Rest”. They laughed.
“If you’ll go, we can plan ourselves”.
“Of course”
“Deal?”
“Deal!” They shook hands.
“I’ll visit you on Saturday”. Chukwuma said.
At the point they parted, Ikenna whispered, “This week’s lessons were a bit strange”.
“Yeah. You missed; quite a lot. Three days isn’t three hours”, Chukwuma patted his shoulder, “Don’t worry, you’ll catch up. Next week will be better”.
Ikenna nodded, “I hope”.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
The Native Child is the story of a young boy, seventeen years of age, who learns to survive in a post independent Nigeria, just after the civil war. Having passed through a war that threatened to shatter his hopes, he is faced with heavy challenges which he must overcome in order to get back on his feet and continue his life. In this story, we can learn and grow with him, in the face of pain and oppression and the little ways we can stand up to them. The major events in the story which are told through his teenage eyes also tend to capture the plights of the contemporaries of his time.
Candy Bill
Meryl stood with her two sisters, peeping through the display window of the candy shop, and silently observing the striking array of sweets which were perched upon beautiful crystal dishes and vivid red skirting. Meryl licked her pale pink lips. At her side stood Wendy who, at seven, was three years younger. And next to Wendy and leaning with her nose against the window, was Karen, the baby, at four years of age. All three girls' mouths were watering.
On a step ladder next to, but totally ignored by, the girls was Albert Weissmann, AKA Candy Bill, the proprietor for whom the shop was eponymously named. Bill was busily squirting the already shiny glass with glass cleaner and wiping it even cleaner. Meryl fretted that they were creating a nuisance. Her father had told her to steer clear of Mr. Weissmann; he was a cranky old guy. According to her papa, he had lost family in the war, years before. One never knew what might set him off.
"Do you think we'll get some candy for Christmas," Wendy asked, turning to regard her older sibling. Karen hung on Meryl's reply.
"Don't be silly," scolded Meryl. "We're Jewish," she reminded the other two girls. "We don't believe in Christmas."
Little Karen's face puckered up and she looked as if she might cry. "Not fair," she said, pouting. Her faded print dress hung limply from thin shoulders.
"You're forgetting," Meryl reminded them, "that we have Hanukkah."
"Yay!" shrilled Karen happily. "We'll have gelt! Then we can buy candy!"
"But," said Meryl, pointing an admonishing forefinger at her younger sister, "we have to give part of our gelt to charity."
Karen instantly grew sober and nodded. "Yes," she agreed half- heartedly, "to charity."
"Can't we buy some candy now?" implored Wendy, dying to bite into a piece of chocolate.
"We don't have our gelt yet," replied Meryl. "We get it on the fifth day of Hanukkah, remember? This is just December 19th. The fifth day isn't until the 21st."
"But, Ruth gets gelt every night of Hanukkah," protested Wendy, referencing her best friend.
"Ruth's parents are rich," remarked Meryl a little sharply. "Mother and father have to work hard to earn what little we have." Bill glanced surreptitiously at the children.
Wendy remembered that Mr. Kaplan, Ruth's father, owned a string of shoe stores in the city, whereas Wendy's mother and father worked as a tailor and a housekeeper, respectively. Wendy dug the toe of her shoe into the pavement. "Yeah...."
Suddenly, Candy Bill descended from the ladder and nudged the girls back from the window. Spraying where they'd left smudges on the glass, he wiped the surface clean and glared pointedly at the sisters.
"C'mon," murmured Meryl, taking charge as she always did. "We hafta' get home. We have latkes tonight," she said with feigned enthusiasm. Even though she loved them, she knew they were a poor substitute for Candy Bill's home made chocolate, for her sisters. She placed a hand round each of her sisters and began to steer them away.
"Come back here," growled a stern voice over their shoulders. The girls froze and looked back to find Candy Bill standing formidably in the doorway to his candy shop.
"We were just leaving, Mr. Weissmann," squeaked Meryl at the imposing figure before them. Wendy's eyes grew large and Karen actually began to tremble with fear.
"Get in here," he ordered, holding wide the door. Terrified out of their wits, the children complied with the directive and filed timidly through the portal. Once inside, they breathed in the intoxicating aroma of fresh made candy: chocolate-covered caramels, sugar wafers, and Meryl's favorite, enormous bars of pure brown chocolate.
"We...we didn't do anything," murmured Meryl fearfully, wondering what offense the trio had committed.
"You were standing at the display window," charged Bill wrathfully. "Blocking my paying customers from getting into my shop. How am I supposed to make an honest living?" he demanded, and furrowed his silver brows menacingly.
"We...we...I," replied Meryl in bewilderment. Now Karen began to whimper.
Taking notice of her, Candy Bill's face suddenly creased into an enormous smile. "There, there, hertzele, cooed the bear of a man, gently touching her cheek. From a shelf he pulled three bright white bags loaded with candy. He presented the gifts to the little girls and smiled warmly at them. They stood, agape, until Bill, suddenly embarrassed by his own largesse, shooed them out of the shop. The two younger children danced merrily away, but Meryl paused for a moment and glanced back at her benefactor and gave him a dazzling smile of gratitude. He merely flicked his fingers in the opposite direction, and she likewise fled.
Candy Bill, his always busy shop now empty, walked back of the ice cream counter, past the many confectionery displays, and laid his hand on a photo, nearly twenty years old and fading. Across the photo, in the unsteady hand of a child, was written, "Love you, papa. Your sweet hertzele, Miriam."
