Nigerians in Space Read online

  “Snow! Snow!”

  “What is that toy?”

  “It’s nothing, Tinuke.”

  “If it’s nothing, then I am not going with you. Because I will not leave over ‘nothing’. Not again.”

  She returned to the bathroom and began sloshing the laundry in the sink, suds spilling over the sides of the basin.

  “It is Brain Gain,” he muttered.

  “Brain Drain?”

  “No, Brain Gain. Bello is the director. I’d hoped that it would be a surprise to you but it has become—well, it has become this.”

  She rinsed the clothes and pulled a drying string across the bathtub. She began draping the soggy clothing, and Wale groaned, thinking they would never dry in time. “What did Bello promise you?”

  “He promised to take me back to the country to steer it to a better future. I am going to head the Lunar Department.”

  “Nigeria wants to go to the moon?”

  How would Ferguson have told his wife? Everything had been so simple for him, even planned, yet Wale felt like he was groping blindly.

  “It’s not the moon that’s important: it’s what that trip to the moon will produce. We’ll have communications satellites, improved crop yields, accurate population censuses. Nigeria doesn’t need weapons. We need innovation.” He was growing excited now, triumphant. “And it will all trickle down to help the impoverished! I always intended to return home and Bello is my passage back. All I have to do is share the knowledge that I gained abroad.”

  “Abroad?” Tinuke said. “Abroad is our home. We weren’t living abroad, Wale. We were living in America. We’ve been citizens for years. Dayo was born there! There was never any work for you in Nigeria—no job. You left because Nigeria has no meteorites. You followed your dream and I am proud of you for that.”

  An image flashed before his eyes of Ferguson’s bloodied jaw. He had allowed himself to be drawn into an argument, when action was required. Tinuke was now emptying Wale’s suitcase again and pulling out more of his soiled clothes.

  “You hate going back to Nigeria, Wale. I beg you to go all the time and you complain about the graft.”

  “That’s right,” Wale admitted. “I do find certain aspects of my homeland to be distasteful. That’s what Brain Gain is for! Brain Gain will change that. America would never send an immigrant like me to the moon. You remember Rilker. He was an asshole! He wore cufflinks to McDonald’s.”

  “Language!”

  “Nigeria needs me. I wanted to tell you everything but Bello made me swear secrecy. He wanted a last minute surprise. He called it the ‘Unveiling’—he’s Muslim, you see, and likes to play with words. He’s very good with words, actually.”

  “I see that he is,” Tinuke said, pointing to the suitcases on the floor, “because he has done this to us. He has made my husband believe he is going to save Nigeria all by himself. And you still want to find him, this Bello. This man I have never met.”

  “Don’t you see, Tinuke? It’s real. Bello is real!”

  “Contact him. Tell him what happened to us.”

  “I can’t. Ferguson has been—incapacitated. I don’t have his number.”

  She began frowning at him. “Who’s Ferguson?”

  “Ferguson is an old friend.”

  “You never mentioned him before.”

  “It doesn’t matter anymore. Someone shot him.”

  “Shot?”

  Tinuke looked him straight in the eye this time, and it wasn’t fear, but anger that he saw there. She immediately called out for Dayo and hugged him close until he squirmed and ran away.

  “I need you to trust me, Tinuke. Just this once. Can I ask you to trust me?”

  “Did you put us in danger?” she whispered. “Did you put my child in danger?”

  “No—not me. I didn’t shoot Ferguson. It was someone else. Someone I’ve never seen before.”

  “Is it because of what is in that glass toy?”

  He ran to the balcony. There were still only two police cars outside the hotel, but a third car had joined it, a Volvo. It could be unmarked.

  “I will tell you in Basel,” Wale said. “For your own protection.”

  Tinuke turned suddenly from the sink. She scooped Dayo in her arms, her face full of tears. “Dayo, do you want to stay with me or go with Papa?”

  Dayo had gotten the globe now from his backpack. More than the rubber vampire, the snowglobe was enough to keep him mesmerized for hours. “Dayo, look at me,” Tinuke repeated. “Would you like to stay with Mama or Papa?”

  Dayo kept on grasping at the globe as Wale tried to understand what his wife was doing. “Come on, Tinuke, don’t be silly! We’re going together!”

  “Dayo, Mama or Papa?”

  “Papa!” the boy said. “Papa!”

  Good answer, Dayo, he thought, good answer. He knew Tinuke would never leave the child.

  The bell of the elevator began ringing. The police might be there in seconds. Wale could practically see the bulbous jackboots already, feel the scrape of the handcuffs. “Come, Tinuke!” he hissed, pushing open the door to the stairwell. A blast of summer air tunneled up to meet him. But she was shaking her head. “Come, Tinuke! Meet us outside! We’ll go to Basel. I’ll tell you about the toy there. I’ll tell you everything—I promise. We’ll all go together.”

  Georgie

  Present Day

  Hermanus Bay, South Africa

  Through the pine boughs, a whitewashed midliner with a blue underbelly could be seen chugging towards the docks of New Hermanus. Piet Cilliers stood behind the helm, guiding the ship through the gunmetal waters with a rolled cigarette dangling from his lips and a turtleneck sweater. He’d once let Thursday steer that same ship, years before, as a child, when Cilliers had pulled in catch after catch of yellowfin as the pilchards were running, when captaining a ship meant a large home and a stable income. Like most of the captains in Hermanus, Cilliers never bought a trawler because of the cost and because he loved the artfulness of line fishing: the rush from seeing the pole bend on its staunchions; reading the currents and following the seafowl. He’d once had a full crew of eager seamen and now he had just one lazy deckhand and a Humminbird fishfinder. Thursday knew it had been a poor catch as the deckhand threw the ropes onto the moorings. No one on the docks scrambled to offload their fish; only the Angolans would stoop low enough to scrape together a living as a stevedore, but they knew when to conserve their energy.

  Thursday had been sitting on the cooler of abalone for over an hour, hitchhiking on the main thoroughfare of Hermanus, with the morning sun burning his neck through a pine grove. Old Hermanus was just a ten minute walk away. The police station was five, but no one had come to arrest him yet.

  After a stream of mistrustful glares from tourists in rental cars, a red hatchback pulled over to the shoulder. Thursday made his way towards the car as a curvy young black girl stepped out. It was Leon’s girl Thembisa and the look on her face told him she wasn’t about to offer him a ride.

  “I didn’t shoot the dog,” he said.

  She scrunched up her nose. “What dog?”

  “I meant I didn’t do anything.”

  Thembisa ignored him. “Thursday, you tell Leon that I’m not waiting around for him any more. Monday night is our night. I look the other way most of the time, but not on Mondays. I’m finished with his disrespect!” She headed back to the car, also finished, it seemed, with her speech, putting one foot in the car before turning around again: “For Fadanaz! I waited all night for him and he went to that bitch. Monday is our night.”

  Thursday didn’t say that Leon had been in jail on Monday night because he thought it wouldn’t help the situation. “Can you lift me to Cape Town?”

  “Tell him he’d better be there next time, Thursday!” She slammed the door, gunning the engine so pebbles spat in his direction, and drove off.

  Thursday felt obligated to take the next car that stopped, a beat up Opel Rekord, thinking he should at least ge
t moving, even if he had to transfer somewhere along the way. There were two Rastafarians inside, one with a dreadlock so fat that he mistook it for a ferret slithering up his shoulder, and the other man short and brooding. In the back seat a fawn-colored shar pei panted lazily.

  “You going to Cape Town?” Thursday asked.

  “Salt River.”

  “That in Cape Town?”

  “Ja. Next to Observatory.”

  Thursday couldn’t believe his luck—his meeting with Ip was in Observatory. The short Rasta walked around to the boot and popped the trunk. Inside were two garbage bags the exact same size as Thursday’s. Thursday smelled dagga and tried to pretend he hadn’t noticed.

  “Are you Nigerians?” he asked, nervously.

  The driver laughed. “No mon, we don’t deal with them lekwerekwere fucks. What’s in your bag?”

  “I can’t show you.”

  “You show or you walk. What’s your name? We don’t want no cops.”

  “Hampton,” Thursday lied.

  Thursday opened the bag and, after the Rasta insisted, the cooler, where the live abalone were stacked high in the sea water. He had placed them with their shells facing down, but some of the mollusks had flipped themselves over. One had glued its foot onto the bottom of the lid.

  “Look at that! I’n’I gon have us a mighty clam suppa!”

  “They’re not clams, they’re mollusks.”

  “Mollux? Give I’n’I a couple for the ride.”

  “Maybe when we get there.”

  The Rasta shut the boot, nodding and smiling. “A mighty clam suppa!”

  They were driving now, with the radio set to an oldies station. It was eight thirty. Ip had said ten o’clock, and if they kept up a good pace Thursday should arrive with time to make the delivery. If things went really well, he could get the cash from the sale to Ip, take a cab home, and bail Leon out of jail by dinner time. He spent the ride figuring out how he could avoid giving the Rasta any abalone which were worth a hundred times the cost of a taxi. The shar pei kept poking its maize-colored nose into his arm so he petted its oddly sticky fur.

  “Nigerians, mon, we won’t touch ’em. We picked up a Nigerian once, drove ’im all the way to Bloemfontein. We get there, ’ee says, let’s go get mah friend. So we’re good Rastamen, we go and take ’em to his friend. He got a cooler just like yours. Small, like for fish. I ask to look inside. He like you, he don’ want to show me. I say we won’ go nowhere unless he show me. He open it up and what’s inside?”

  “A liver,” the driver chimed in.

  “A liver, mon. A human liver. We ’ont touch ’em no more.”

  “Never, mon.”

  “Never.”

  He saw Thursday caressing the small dog. “Careful touchin’ Georgie, Hampton. He cute but he get you full o’ lanolin.”

  Thursday expected them to take the N2 highway into town, but they followed the mountains by the sea, taking their time on the slow curves. After forty-five minutes, they rounded a corner onto False Bay and there was a long strip of white sand below them on the left side, with Table Mountain visible across the water, the thin clouds above it slightly askance like a toupé. The driver pulled off onto a small dirt driveway that led down to the beach, motoring along low concrete buildings until they reached a cord of wire strung across the road. A white kid with a deep tan, about eight maybe, untied the wire, and they drove behind a long building. The two Rastafarians got out of the car and popped the boot. Thursday stepped out as well.

  “How long will you be?”

  “Five minutes, brotha. Then I’n’I have our clam suppa.”

  “I’d like to take my bag,” Thursday said, pulling the cooler from the boot.

  “Watch Georgie for us, Hampton. Don’t let him get into the water or he stink.”

  The Rastas followed the kid with their garbage bags into the long building. Thursday grabbed Georgie by the collar, but he was a strong dog and dragged Thursday through the sand to some driftwood. He wagged his curled tail with the stick in his jaws. Georgie didn’t watch the driftwood when Thursday threw it, relying on his hearing, so before long the dog was rooting in the dunes for another stick. Thursday decided to make the best of his time. Carrying his load to the water, he unwrapped the plastic, opened the cooler, and rinsed the abalone in the sea. The fresh cold water would do them good.

  After cleaning the abalone, he found another stick for Georgie and the dog didn’t watch the trajectory again and for some reason got riled up and charged into the water. He trotted back to Thursday smelling like sheep dung.

  All this time the Rastafarians hadn’t come out of the long building. He heard them arguing with someone inside the building, not the kid, but an older man from the sound of it. He knocked on the door.

  “Who is it?”

  “Hampton.”

  “Who the hell are you?”

  “I want to go to Cape Town.”

  A white man with a beard and long hair opened the door a few inches, maybe the little kid’s father. Thursday could smell chlorine and realized that the building held an indoor pool. Behind the man, one of the Rastas was wearing a swim cap and frog-kicking towards the far end. “Come back later.”

  “Could you tell them I have to go to Cape Town? They said five minutes.”

  The man pulled a knife from his swim trunks. “I said come back later.”

  “Okay, my broer. Calm down. I’ll come back later.”

  He knew Leon would never have let a man shut a door in his face like that, but Thursday had a fear of blades, and he didn’t want to get mixed up with their dagga smuggling. It was nine thirty already. Ip had said ten o’clock and Thursday was still forty minutes from Cape Town. If he didn’t make the sale, Leon would never make bail. He climbed back to the road and stuck out his thumb again. Some surfers were paddling into the water now, invigorated by the rhythm of the waves, and Georgie was running to them, a wet orange mop with a stick in his mouth and a wagging tail.

  Tea with Bello

  1993

  Bulawayo, Zimbabwe

  Six months before Wale arrived in Stockholm, Melissa Tebogo turned over a honey-colored, horse-sized pill in her fingers and decided that her two doctors were secretly trying to kill her. A mug steamed on the kitchen table with a concoction that smelled of bucha and wild African garlic, a root a hundred times the strength of the European variety. Her herb doctor had placed a sprig of pelargonium on the rim of the mug like a garnish and left the room uttering mouthfuls of prayers. She was supposed to drink this foul potion and swallow the pill, just wash it down like a bottle of Fanta. All for the cure.

  “You’ve spent too much time beneath your niqab,” her doctor had said, the Western one. “You’re not receiving enough Vitamin D from the sun. If you keep this up, your legs will buckle with rickets.” He had handed her a bottle full of pills. “Take one of these each morning.”

  “But they’re so big,” Melissa had protested.

  “I can prescribe smaller doses, but you’ll have to take more of them.”

  She reluctantly held out her hand.

  “Your father tells me that your family isn’t religious,” her doctor went on. “You could take it off, you know. The sun is better for you than a supplement.”

  “No ways.”

  “Hiding your skin won’t help, young lady. It makes you stand out here in Bulawayo. Sooner or later you’ll have to embrace who you are.”

  “You mean what I have.”

  “If you like.”

  Her herb doctor hadn’t bothered to convince Melissa of the logic of taking his concoction; she was just fifteen years old, the doctor’s expertise was assumed, and her father would make her drink the potion in front of him so she wouldn’t empty it down the drain, which she had done several times before. But why should she drink it? What had the potions ever done, anyway, other than make her gag? Her skin was still as marbled as a slice of beef, her body covered in a grotesque swirl of sienna and a ghostly white, in a city o
f beautiful dark skin, of shea butter, oils, and lotions designed for maximum shine.

  But tonight her father was unusually nervous, agitated, and merely ushered the herb doctor out the door as quickly as possible.

  “Melissa, tonight is an important night,” he said.

  “You told me already, Daddy. The raid will be at two. I’m packed and ready to go.”

  “No, not for the raid, for Mr. Bello. He can help us.”

  “You mean he’s a doctor.”

  “No, he can make things happen. He’s a powerful man.”

  Her stomach already swirled in the cool evening, the moon perched high and full in the sky, and she knew she wouldn’t be able to keep the potion down. As soon as her father left the room, she dumped it into the sink and washed away the evidence. She found him in the living room giving orders to his bodyguards.

  She peered through the window curtains, wondering if she could catch a glimpse of the man before he arrived. The street lamps winked in and out, drained by illegal tapping from the grid, their sepia light mingling with the curdled moonbeams between the shanties. But she saw nothing. She sat down at her desk in her room and ambled through some math problems her tutor had left her to while away the time. Her father’s personal guard, Rufus, knocked on her door once to ask if she was ready, and she could hear him pacing around the house, opening doors, closets, and eventually clinking about in the kitchen.

  The Tebogo home was simply arranged and dimly lit. Her father covered the furniture with clear vinyl plastic and hung a few pictures of soccer stars and famous singers on the wall, the kind of wall furnishings you might find at a corner shop. There was a large screen television with a rabbit ear antenna and a VCR blinking twelve a.m., again and again and again, which her father had never learned how to program. But it was a sizeable home, large enough for Melissa to sequester herself in one of the bedrooms as her father entertained guests or attended to the Freedom Fighters, who would arrive unannounced in the middle of the night with blood weeping from their wounds, begging for refuge. The plastic, as ugly as it was, kept the stains off the couches and made it easy to wipe away prints before the SADF raided the place. This had happened less often now that the ANC was holding talks with the Nats in South Africa, and her father would sometimes go weeks without visitors.