Love Is Power, or Something Like That: Stories

Godspeed and Perpetua

^. 1 ^.

On the day she turned seven months, three weeks, and six days old, the Anabraba child contracted an infection that by nightfall had turned her head the size of a watermelon. Her mother, unable to handle the thought of losing a piece of her soul to the dust-bin of all things flesh, abandoned the fever-wracked infant with the father and fled to the Citadel of Fire and Miracles, a nearby church. The father was a thirty-five-year-old career civil servant and a first-time parent: he was not equipped, by training or experience, for the undertaking.

When the mother returned to the house after three days of fast and prayer, she found the child alive. A lifetime of change had taken place in the time she was away. Now it was only the sound of her husband’s voice that had power to calm the baby’s cries, to lull her to sleep. She ate with no trouble when it was her father’s hand that fed her; she gurgled with delight when it was her father’s hand that bathed her. The father had in the past shown no interest in these motherly duties, but now he volunteered for them, he even altered his work schedule to allow for them. His wife saw through the excuse of affection that he gave as his reason. He was the one who had stayed behind, he believed he had saved the child, so his plan, she was sure, was to take over the role of caregiver and keep for himself all of their daughter’s love.

Godspeed Anabraba, in the ignorance of childhood, made a pledge to himself never to fail at anything. His father, a tall, handsome man who was renowned as a singer and dancer, was a fisherman whose offspring were strewn across the ports of the Niger Delta, so Godspeed had to fend for himself from a young age. His mother — who remained unmarried after the mishap of unexpected pregnancy — did her best to ensure he attended primary school, but he had to put himself through secondary school by the work of his hands. Godspeed was a bright, dedicated student, and by the end of his secondary education he had secured a scholarship from the British colonial government to attend university in the mother country.

On his return eleven years later to become a central member of his young country’s ruling bureaucracy, Godspeed, after erecting a mansion in his late mother’s village, decided to take a wife. He set about this task in a detached, punctilious manner: he considered only the prettiest and most accomplished maidens from the best families. As expected of a man who viewed failure as a sign of bad character, he succeeded in his search. There was no exaggeration when the bulletin board of the oldest church in the village carried the notice:

We publish the banns of marriage between Godspeed Anabraba (senior civil servant and pride of our community) and Perpetua Young-Harry (graduate of the Maryland School of Catering and second daughter of Chief S. K. Young-Harry), both of this Parish. If any of you know cause or just impediment why these persons should not be joined together, ye are to declare it. .

Even defeated suitors of the bride-to-be, astonished by this announcement, agreed it was a match that for convenience couldn’t be faulted.

But the union had more faults than the tectonic plates of Nippon. For one, Godspeed did not love Perpetua, and this lack of feeling was reciprocated. He was the oppressor who appeared from nowhere, the stranger with whom she had exchanged not one word before he won her father’s consent. At eighteen she was hungry for games of love, while he, thirty-four and employed in a stodgy profession, was an old man already. As the day of the wedding approached, Perpetua contemplated running away, embarking on hunger strike, or giving her virginity to Furo Fiberesima, her high school classmate and the youngest of her wooers, the man she would have married if she had a choice. But she pushed off a decision until the big day arrived, then walked up the aisle on the arm of a proud father. (As they approached the altar she thought she felt her courage hardening, but her father, unknowing, whispered to her with a glaze in his eyes that in her gown she looked exactly like her mother, who surely was smiling down from heaven on this happy day. Under her veil Perpetua’s face settled into a mask as stiff as a corpse.) In minutes it was done, they were declared man and wife, and she held up her face for the lifting of the veil, squeezed her eyes shut for their first kiss.

The couple set off on their honeymoon straight from the venue of the wedding reception. The trip to the international airport in Lagos, and the long flight to London, was borne in silence. The fact of her new position was brought home to the bride by the surrealness of having her passport handed back to her with a “Welcome and have a nice stay, Mrs. Anabraba,” and this was followed by the whirl of emotions — relief, anxiety, puzzlement — as she noticed that their luggage was carried into separate hotel rooms. That night, for their first date, her husband took her to the restaurant of their hotel. Dinner was accompanied by candles and soft music, but also by the chatter of the other diners, whose frank stares at the black pair so discomfited the bride that as she bent to eat her soup a teardrop fell into it, rippling the surface.

“Don’t reward these racist pigs with your tears,” her husband said. His voice was calm, and his gaze, when she raised her eyes, was steady. He dabbed his lips with the edge of his napkin, took a sip of wine. “When I remember some of the things I endured when I was in university here, like the time. .”

The drone of his conversation made her feel like a married woman. She straightened her shoulders, removed her elbows from the table, and ignoring everybody except the man who sat before her, dining like a presiding king, she enjoyed her meal.

After dinner, they retired. Her husband walked her to her room, took the key from her to unlock the door, and handed it back. With a kiss on the cheek, he bid her good night.

She was unhooking her dinner gown when she noticed the tightness in her chest, the frantic pace of her heart. “Traitor,” she murmured, tracing the curve of her left breast with a forefinger. As the gown slipped from her shoulders she executed a pirouette and skipped about the room, flinging off her undergarments as she clambered over the chairs, the bed, her scattered luggage. With blood pounding in her ears, she halted before the dressing-table mirror and stared at her nude body, then raised her hands and caressed her face, her arms, her soft belly, imagining his eyes, his fingertips, his lips, her pores blooming with sensation. The strength of this feeling stirred the ashes of another, and she tried to remember what was tugging at her happiness like tissue paper dangling from a shoe heel. She remembered the anxious smile on Furo Fiberesima’s face when he confessed his love on the night of the graduation dance.

“Traitor! Traitor! Traitor!” she hissed at her reflection, and clapping both hands to her mouth, she spun away from the mirror.

A hot shower restored her good sense. As part of preparations for bed, she dabbed perfume behind her ears, on her neck, between her breasts. She slipped on a gauzy pink nightgown that before this night she would not have had the courage to be seen admiring in a shop window. Then she jumped into bed, pulled the covers to her chin, and waited for the knock on the door. She waited for so long that her terror that it would come changed to a foreboding that it wouldn’t, and when it didn’t, she cried herself to sleep.

She woke up alone in bed the next morning, still the same person, joined in marriage and yet not, not yet, her whole life ahead of her, a white heatless sun shining on her face. She sang in the shower, she hummed as she pomaded and powdered and primped, and when he knocked, she danced to the door and threw it open. Her husband reacted to her gaiety with a wide smile, and offering her his arm, he led her downstairs to breakfast.

A week later the honeymoon was over, the newlyweds returned to Nigeria, but Godspeed still did not exert his conjugal rights. By this time Perpetua’s gratefulness had given way to suspicion, which grew fatter every day on a terror she nursed, that instead of the Bluebeard she feared she had married, she’d fallen into the clutches of something less than a man.

In other details, Mrs. Anabraba’s life was perfect. She was mistress of a five-bedroom house in one of the choicest locales of Poteko — a district formerly known as Royal Palm Hills but renamed after independence Ogbunabali Flats, where the colonial bureaucrats had clustered their mansions and recreation clubs connected by a crisscross of palm-lined boulevards. As a child of the village, a nursling of open spaces, Perpetua adored her front garden with its coffee rose and potted poinsettia and stone-lined fishpond, its allamanda hedges and bamboo garden chairs. At the back of the house more plants, a shaded grove of fruit trees; and a kitchen garden in the corner, planted and tended by her. She had a cook, a housemaid, a servants’ bell in every room. Her request to redecorate the house, which was furnished in the taste of a gentleman’s club, was denied, but she was granted permission to shop for as much furniture as needed to remodel her bedroom. There was no end of grumbling from the cook — a Fante man named Yaw Kakari who had worked for the Scottish bachelor who was the previous occupier of the estate — as she set about stamping her authority on the kitchen, the only part of the house where she felt she could disobey her husband’s order. She took an inventory of all the tableware, kitchen utensils, and food provisions. She had the kitchen walls — which were painted colonial white, like the rest of the house — redone in pastel green. She replaced the old gas cooker with one that had an electric hot plate and inbuilt oven. To register his displeasure at the overthrow of the old order, Yaw Kakari burnt the first pot of roast pork he prepared in the new oven.

The final affront for the old cook was when Perpetua, looking into the kitchen one Sunday morning as he prepared spaghetti and meatballs for lunch, asked him to adjust his menu to allow for Kalabari food. She was still speaking when Yaw Kakari threw down his spatula and flung off his apron, then marched to the master’s study to hand in his resignation. Godspeed refused to accept it, and as a compromise, he warned his wife away from the kitchen.

In the first weeks of their marriage, Godspeed came home from work every evening with a present for his wife: a string of coral beads, a length of akwete fabric, a box of American chocolates. After handing over these gifts and observing in silence her expressions of delight, he would retire to his bedroom to freshen up, and from there to his study. Except when Perpetua, feeling like an intruder, went in to interrupt his work, they would not set eyes on each other again until Yaw Kakari rang the bell for dinner. By the third week after their return from their honeymoon the presents had stopped coming, but the domestic pattern was established.

In this trying time, Perpetua discovered that the one true friend she had was the housemaid, Tenemenam. What drew them together at first was the suspicion the young bride harbored that her husband was getting his sexual needs fulfilled in Tene’s bed. This specter was raised when she disclosed her troubles to her committee of friends. That day, a rainy Monday that seemed perfect for such confessions — rain lashed the windowpanes, lightning seared the cold, heavy air — a deep silence fell on the room after the words left her mouth. Then Tene walked in with a tray of refreshments balanced in her arms. When she left, Judith, one of Perpetua’s oldest friends, cleared her throat and spoke.

“Your husband is fucking that girl, you fool.”

The truth of these words struck Perpetua hard. It was obvious, like day after night, this solution to a conundrum that had given her sleepless nights. An answer that had been there all the while, that greeted her with bogus respectfulness every morning, and served her tea and biscuits with a mocking smile tucked behind that obsequious mask — yet she hadn’t seen it. But her eyes were now opened, the truth was revealed, she could see clearly. Outside, the storm raged on.

Against the counsel of her friends, who urged her to dismiss the housemaid without delay, Perpetua decided to get closer to her rival, to know her better in order to uncover her plan. She set about this task with a resolve that surprised her — one would think she was in love with the man! Her opening move was to insinuate herself into Tene’s confidence. On the Friday after her friends’ visit, which was housecleaning day, she picked up a broom and mop and joined Tene in cleaning the house. The housemaid saw her madam’s action as a roundabout way of expressing dissatisfaction with her work, and so Perpetua’s initial attempts at establishing camaraderie — What’s your favourite color? Who do you think is the better singer, Bobby Benson or Cardinal Rex? Major Nzeogwu has fine eyes, don’t you agree? — were like fetching water from a stream with a raffia basket. But, with persistence, Perpetua prevailed. By the time they moved upstairs to clean the master bedroom, Tene, in fulfillment of a long-held desire to be on convivial terms with a mistress she secretly admired, had capitulated to Perpetua’s overtures.

They chatted as they worked. Then Perpetua — who was carrying a stack of newspapers across the room — said in a low, confidential voice: “Do you know my friend Judith? She was here on Monday, the one wearing those ugly camelhair shoes. Anyway,

Judith is seeing a married man.”

“Chei! Poor woman!”

Perpetua stopped abruptly. The newspaper pile swayed in her arms, then crashed to the ground. She turned to face Tene. “What do you mean, poor woman? Judith?”

“No o! The man wife.”

“I see.” Pe rpetua dipped her head, stared at the floor, and then knelt to gather the newspapers. By the time she rose with the load she had recovered the thread of her thoughts. “Anyway, I’ve warned Judith, one day this thing will blow up in her face.”

“Ah auntie, to tell you truth, all this township women like that kind of thing o. E get this one woman I sabe, she dey do am with her sistah husband. Her own blood sistah!”

“Imagine.”

They were making the bed when Perpetua, having laid the groundwork, began her investigation in earnest. “Tene,” she said, as she stooped to take hold of one end of the sheet, “I want to tell you — take that side, oya, shake! — a secret.” The bed sheet billowed between them. They spread it out and tucked in the edges. “You know I see you as a friend,” Perpetua continued, “so this, what I’m about to tell you, is just between me and you. Understand?”

“Yes, auntie.”

The bed was finished. Perpetua straightened up. Then leaning forward, her gaze fixed on Tene’s face, she said, “My husband has never—” her voice caught with emotion, she cleared her throat, “—seen my nakedness.”

“No!” Tene exclaimed. “Auntie!”

“Yes,” Perpetua said, staring at the housemaid with an intensity that frightened the girl, “we have never shared a bed!”

Tene slapped her palms together, puckered her lips, and wondered why her mistress gazed at her with that odd expression of disappointment and relief.

Perpetua was confused. What she sought in the housemaid’s face was not what she saw there. She was looking for signs of contrived emotion, but she found none; she had hoped to find glee, but she saw only pity. Still, she reasoned, her failure to find what she wanted only confirmed that her opponent was wilier than she had expected.

Over the following days, all of Perpetua’s efforts to disprove the housemaid’s innocence (one of which was creeping to the door of her husband’s bedroom in the dead of night and crouching there until sleep forced her to stagger back to bed) worked to the opposite effect. By the time she gave up the motive for which she sought out the housemaid’s company at all times of day and night, she and Tene had become friends.

It was Tenemenam who brought an end to the impasse between husband and wife. With the skill of a woman who had bred goats and chickens all her life, and armed with the knowledge that jealousy is one of the foundation stones of love, Tene took on the task of bringing the couple together. She used her intimacy with Perpetua to arouse Godspeed’s curiosity; she led her into displaying signs of affection in his presence — a quick touching of hands, an exchange of smiles, a whispered conference in an open doorway, all of which Perpetua innocently partook in. Curiosity, with time, turned to suspicion, and the bridge between suspicion and jealousy, in matters of the heart, is the imagination, so Godspeed found himself in the ignominious position of jealous husband.

Godspeed got what he sought from marriage: the respectability that comes with renouncing bachelorhood; a connection with a reputable family; a wife who was as pretty as any of those pampered creatures that at the height of his poverty he had in equal measure been intimidated by and attracted to. “But something. . something’s missing.” He admitted this to himself on the first night of his honeymoon, as he prepared to go in to a woman who wasn’t a stranger only because she had said “I do.” That “something” he refused to give the name love. Not love, that indefinable word, that plaything on the lips of adolescents and roués alike. Godspeed was a self-made man — he knew what was what. It was not love that had picked him from the gutter, no.

“It was hard work,” he muttered, pacing back and forth before his bride’s hotel room door. It was hard work that put him through school and got him his house and his position in polite society, and yes, it was hard work, not love, that would close the gulf between him and the woman who bore his name. Having struck on this resolution, he retired for the night.

On the day of the second coup d’état, the last Friday in July 1966, Godspeed Anabraba, like other civil servants across the country, closed early from work, and returned home to find that his wife and his housemaid had left the house without leaving word of their destination. Faced with his master’s anger, Yaw Kakari forgot his grudge and tried to protect Perpetua, but the truth came out. It was not the first or second time that the two women had gone out together.

Eight minutes before the start of the curfew, Godspeed heard the clang of the gate closing, followed moments later by the excited voices of his wife and housemaid. He was sitting in his study, in his leather swivel chair, and a newspaper lay open, unread, in his lap. He stopped himself from rushing out to confront his wife. He would not give her the satisfaction of seeing how much her betrayal hurt him. He would wait for her to come and explain her guilt. The sounds that entered his study were like pricks to an open wound; his wife’s voice thrummed with a vivacity he had never noticed before. As she approached the study door he raised the newspaper to his face, but the next moment he flung it away.

His wife had passed the study. Her voice, as she hummed a barracks tune under her breath, receded up the stairs.

Godspeed decided that Tenemenam must leave his house, immediately, the next morning, after the curfew; but that was the easy part. He spent hours in the unlit study — without his dinner, as he ordered away everyone who knocked on the door — pacing the floor like a caged hyena, niggled by his fear of failure. When the hallway grandfather clock struck the first chime of eleven, he rose and rushed out of the study.

The eleventh stroke rang through the sleeping house as Godspeed, panting from the dash upstairs, pushed open his wife’s bedroom door. He stood in the doorway, tried to suppress the boiler room tumult of his breath, and then stepped into the darkness of that room, which he hadn’t entered since his wife moved in. Apart from the swish of the ceiling fan, there was no sound. He padded toward the bed, his fury held at the ready, like a poised whip. His shin struck a chair’s edge, and he halted, listening, watching for signs of life. Nothing stirred. He started forward, reached the bed, groped along the headboard, and snapped on the bedside lamp.

Perpetua was curled on her side, one arm slung across the pillow, the other tucked under her cheek, the coverlet gathered about her waist. Her chest heaved and fell with tidal rhythm; her breath warmed the air. She wore a pale yellow nightdress, and her breasts, visible through the sheer fabric, sagged with heaviness.

Godspeed gazed long at the sleeping woman, and felt his anger fade. Her beauty struck him with remorse. Yes, he had wronged her, and yes, he was sure, he was wrong about her. He switched off the light, turned to leave, and then changed his mind, dropped to his knees beside the bed and stroked her cheek, his breath mingling with hers. His hand moved to her neck, caressed her collarbone. When his fingers brushed her breast her sharp intake of breath confirmed what he knew, that she had awoken when the light came on.

“Perpetua.”

“Mm?”

“I’m sorry.”

“Mm.” She stretched her arms wide and arched like a stroked cat.

They kissed with their eyes open. And when Godspeed, sucking her lips like a drowning man, pushed her thighs apart and entered her, Perpetua noticed, over the stab of pain, that his eyes shone in the dark with a soft luster.

True to his pledge, Godspeed Anabraba, faced with the charge of nursing his infant daughter through her illness, did not fail. He drafted a squad of pediatricians and chose which of their recommendations to administer. He sat day and night by the child’s bedside, to monitor who was winning the battle of wills. He was repaid for his alertness on the second day of his vigil, as a coughing bout that seemed harmless at first but revealed its true nature by its persistence almost choked her to death. It was late at night, he was heavy-limbed with sleep, but obeying his suspicions, he rose to turn on the light and saw his daughter’s inflated face scrunched up in a grimace as she choked on a regurgitated mess of food and medicine. She was in the final throes, but fighting, the brave child. Her hands were pressed into tiny fists, which hovered over her face, a parody of rage. Godspeed let out a yell that reverberated through the night (it made Tene assume the worst and begin to howl in mourning, without rising from sleep), and then he rushed to the crib, lifted the child, flipped her upside down and slapped her back until her gasps changed to piercing wails.

After her breathing calmed, he fetched a towel, soaked it in the basin of water that stood on the redwood dresser, and cleaned her down. Her head was as tender as a blister; he discovered the meaning of gentleness as he wiped the vomit from her nostrils and mouth. He held her against his chest and swayed from side to side until she quivered with snores. He found he couldn’t let go of her, this life that he had snatched from the cliff edge of oblivion. Clutching her eggshell frame to his gurgling belly, he settled into his swivel chair and fell asleep.

When he opened his eyes in the morning the first thing he noticed was that the whole world smelled of baby poop. Then he saw that his daughter’s head had returned to normal size. He leaped up from the chair with a shout, which startled the child awake, and he spent the next few minutes soothing her angry wails and parrying the machine-gun questions that Tene and Yaw Kakari shot at him. In the midst of this confusion, he suddenly experienced a moment of calm, an ecstatic lightness of being. In that corner room of his consciousness he came face to face with the knowledge that sometime during the night, when he was at his most defenseless in sleep, love had crept up on him. The third thing he noticed was the leaden feeling that nestled at the bottom of his joy. For it was only now, after she had got past the worst, that Godspeed began to fear for his daughter’s life.

On the morning she departed the Citadel, Perpetua told herself, over and over again on the journey homeward, that her prayer had been answered. But beneath the bombast of belief she still expected the worst. God worked in mysterious ways, and even as she pleaded her case, she was ready to accept that his decision could not be overturned.

When she entered the nursery and saw the baby, cured of her misshapen head and sleeping in her father’s arms, she shouted with surprise and ran to seize her. She pressed her face into the baby’s hair and sniffed in the pure, cleansing smell of infant well being. But even as she cooed with joy the thought ran through her mind: who was responsible for this miracle? Who had fasted and prayed and gone without sleep for three whole days? Who had given her life to Christ so that her child’s might be saved? Perpetua turned to her silent husband, dropped to her knees, raised the howling, squirming baby, Daoju Anabraba, high above her head, and burst into hosannas.

^. 2 ^.

Daoju was two years old when Yaw Kakari, the cook, died in his sleep. Tenemenam found his stiffened body in the morning when she entered his room in the boys’ quarters to ask why the master’s breakfast was not ready. He lay in bed, uncovered, on his back. He wore a green satin pajama suit that was several sizes too large. His eyes were glazed over; his carefully manicured hands were hooked into claws; his yellowed teeth, which had begun to fall out when he turned seventy-four, peeped through his black, pruned lips.

Hearing the housemaid’s shouts, Godspeed came downstairs in his housecoat to see what the matter was. Tene sobbed and snorted phlegm as she blurted the news to him. In astonished silence he hurried to the boys’ quarters. By the time Tene arrived with his sleepy-eyed wife he had covered the corpse with the thin gray blanket he’d found on the bed. He ordered Tene to hush up and go upstairs to keep his daughter in her room, and asked his wife — who was kneeling beside the bed and murmuring into her hands — to shorten her prayer so she could go and telephone the police. While his instructions were carried out, he searched the room for documents that would reveal the addresses of Yaw Kakari’s next of kin, but found none.

Yaw Kakari was buried in College Hospital Cemetery. Wood was in short supply because of the civil war, and his coffin was constructed from doors and broken furniture scavenged from abandoned houses. Apart from two gravediggers who, as they shoveled clods into the hole, chattered in Ikwerre about the Biafran army retreat, Godspeed and Perpetua were the only people who attended the funeral.

With Yaw Kakari’s death, Perpetua took over the kitchen. After she had accepted Jesus Christ as her lord and savior and began devoting two days of the week to church activities, her relationship with the old cook had gotten better. He approved of her sacrifice; he liked that though she was young and married and rich, despite the temptations of her position, she had turned her attention to the afterlife. He was Anglican, but he hadn’t attended service in more than the thirty years that he’d lived in Nigeria, so he wasn’t Anglican anymore, as Perpetua argued each time she asked him to accompany her to the Citadel. He demurred — he wasn’t ready, he was too busy, he was too old to change his ways.

Many afternoons and evenings, while Yaw Kakari prepared lunch or dinner, and Daoju napped or played in the garden under Tene’s care, and Godspeed was at the office or in his study, Perpetua hung about the kitchen, chatting with the cook. She described her church members in detail, discussed the pastor’s homilies, talked about war and weather and what to wear, and yet managed always to retain an undercurrent of sermonizing. Yaw Kakari could not withstand her Bible quoting, and five weeks before he died, he was baptized at the Citadel.

It was Tene that Perpetua first tried to convert, but whenever religion found its way into their conversation, the housemaid would fall silent and hang her head. In response to Perpetua’s invitations to the Citadel, Tene said, every time, “Ah, auntie!” or “I no sure o, auntie,” or “You serious, auntie?” Perpetua did not give up because a Christian cannot lose hope, but after several months of receiving the same rebuffs, she lost the zeal to save Tene’s soul.

Over the years their friendship cooled. Perpetua’s relations with her husband settled into a pattern she could endure, and she was not as needy for an ally in her home. Also, she had a child now, who demanded her attention. Her church activities, too, kept her busy. Three years of marriage had given her the confidence to lower her regard for the housemaid. She accepted that Tene, who had two lovers in the city and a fiancé in the village, was the more experienced woman. But she, Perpetua, was educated; Tene was not. She was married; Tene was not. She had a child; Tene did not. And, most important, she was in touch with God, and Tene, because of her stubbornness, her stealing, her lies, was going to hell.

Perpetua had reason to suspect that Tene was a thief. Since Yaw Kakari’s death, she had begun to notice that foodstuff went missing from the kitchen. One yam, some onions, a few cups of palm oil, a tin of curry powder, little things that added up to a truth she dreaded. Then the matchstick that she set on the rice bucket was moved. After that trap was sprung she challenged Tene in Godspeed’s presence, but the housemaid broke down in tears and swore on her great-grandfather’s grave that she had never stolen a pin from the Anabrabas. Godspeed believed her.

He was the problem. He was not saved, he did not attend church, he forbade Christian conversation in his presence. He refused to allow their daughter to attend the Citadel, which in a moment of anger he called a “congregation of money-grabbers” and a “temple of charlatans.” Their biggest fight was sparked by these insults. Their longest-running was over his shameless hogging of their daughter’s affection.

Instances. He put Daoju to bed every night, because she wouldn’t sleep unless he read her a bedtime story. To break this habit Perpetua had begged her daughter, bribed her with sweets, threatened her with spankings, even put her in prayer. But until her father squeezed into her bed and clasped her to his chest as he described the antics of witches and water spirits and talking animals, the child wouldn’t sleep. Ever since Daoju learned to walk, in the mornings, sometimes before dawn stained the sky, she rose from her bed and tottered across the upstairs hallway into theirs. It was disturbing behavior for a girl, this attachment to her father’s bed, Perpetua thought every time it happened. Whenever she heard the door creak open and felt the mattress sag under her daughter’s weight, she lost her sleep. When she complained that these morning visits ruined her day, her husband told her to move back to her old bedroom, if she preferred. She did not.

It was the same with food: Godspeed had to be there. When he was, the child followed him to the table and fed herself, imitating his actions, hungry for his approval. When he wasn’t, feeding her was an ordeal, a mud fight of tears and spilled food and clashing wills. Weekday lunch was the hardest: the struggle to make her eat always ended in defeat or hard-fought victory, which felt the same.

“Time to eat, Daoju.”

“Where’s daddy?”

“He’s at the office. Come here.”

“No.”

“Come, please.”

“No-no-no-no-NO!”

“Come, now, before I smack your bottom!” Tears, grudging approach, and then trouble. She wanted everything except what she was given. If boiled yam was placed before her, she wanted onunu, the mash of yam, ripe plantain, and palm oil. If her plate held onunu, she wanted dodo. If fried plantain was what she met at the table, she wanted jollof rice. If leftovers were in the fridge and Perpetua asked Tene to warm some up, then her tactics changed, and the food became too hot or too much or too ugly or too full of dead ants. At that point, depending on her mood or her plans for the day, Perpetua handed the problem over to Tene.

Sometimes, when she saw how the child’s eyes lit up whenever her father entered the room, when she sat with her family and felt as if her face was pressed against the glass, stuck on the outside while their love blazed on the other side, Perpetua admitted to herself that she had lost her daughter. She knew when it happened, and she knew why. It was her husband’s fault, he had stolen their daughter’s love; he wanted to punish her because she had found God, who saved her child. But the knowledge brought no comfort.

Like Job, her faith was being tested. Why else — despite all her efforts, which would continue for fifteen years; despite her prayers, her night vigils, her holy water douches, the careful observance of her ovulation periods, when, even if he was tired, she stroked and crooned and kissed her husband into submission, and then, after he collapsed on her, she remained with her legs raised, wrapped around his back, just so nothing would be wasted, every single drop would have a fighting chance of breaking her womb’s defense — could she not get pregnant? A fresh start, another child, would help her endure her husband and daughter’s fondness for each other. Otherwise, she foresaw a future where she would forever be the minority in a vote of three, always the odd one out.

The big fight happened on a Friday in May 1970, four months after the civil war ended. That night, in the dining room, husband and wife traded insults in front of their daughter, in front of their housemaid, and in front of his friends, colleagues from the office who had come to dinner. Above the cries of Daoju and the pleas of their guests, the couple shouted at each other, shot out of their chairs and pointed fingers, then advanced, flinging words like daggers. Then Perpetua grabbed her husband by the shirtfront and screeched in his face, “Kill me now, you demon!” and Godspeed, for the first and last time in their eighteen years together, raised his hand against his wife. He struck her, once, across the mouth.

The day had started well. Perpetua, as usual, rose early to fix breakfast while her husband and daughter prepared for work and school, and then she joined them at the table, which was not her usual practice. Every Friday for the past two months she had played host to Mr. Farasin, a church member who Bible studied with her and exorcised the house; so, on that day, she was in an expectant mood. She snapped at Daoju to stop playing with her fried egg yolk and to drink up her Horlicks or her father would leave her behind, yet when her daughter rose from the table, despite leaving the egg half-eaten and the drink untouched, she smiled at her, happy to see her go. As Daoju tripped to the sitting room to collect her school backpack and lunch box, Godspeed, dangling his car keys in one hand, his Samsonite brown leather briefcase clutched in the other, walked to the front door, followed by his wife. They stopped in the open doorway, stood side by side, their arms touching, both of them silent, lost in thought. Then they drew apart so Daoju could pass between them. Godspeed bent forward to kiss his wife’s cheek, and he told her, “I forgot to mention — I invited four colleagues over for dinner tonight. Three you haven’t met and Goodnews Abrakasa, who might bring along one of his wives. We’ll arrive together, seven-ish.”

Perpetua nodded, her forehead drawn in a frown of concentration, and kept on nodding, her vacant eyes staring at the receding shapes of her husband and daughter. When the car engine vroomed she started awake, and then pulled the front door closed and hurried up the stairs.

Mr. Farasin arrived promptly at ten. Tene let him in, and after she called her mistress, she headed to the boys’ quarters to hide in her room. Perpetua entered the sitting room to find him slouched in an armchair, his long thin thighs splayed, thumbing through her wedding photo album. He swung his legs closed and stood up to greet her. Then he raised the photo album and faced it to her, his fingers gripping the top. With the other hand he pointed out her husband’s photo and said, “This is your husband.”

“Yes,” Perpetua said.

“The Lord Jehofah has planned big things for him. Don’t worry, we will get him.”

“Amen,” said Perpetua.

Tall and skinny, with a shaved head, a skull-like face, roaming yellow eyes, and a feeble mustache, Mr. Farasin only wore dull-colored polyester safari suits. His color today was bottle-green. His feet were tucked in black, cracked leather shoes as long as scuba flippers. His vinyl attaché case, stamped on the flap with the Citadel’s emblem, a cathedral ringed by fire and crowned with a halo, was always by his side, in his hand, on his lap, where it served as a lectern for his bulging, finger-stained Bible. His voice was a vibrant bass. He spoke English with a thick Oyo accent, which meant his vex was pronounced fex, his charm became a sham, and on a sunny day, the “shun sown.”

Perpetua asked him to sit. She walked to the drinks cabinet to fetch a bottle of Lucozade and two glasses. She poured a glass for him and the other for herself, then picked up her Bible from the center table and settled into the armchair beside him. After the usual chitchat, which lasted as long as the energy drink in their glasses, they got down to business.

“Let us pray,” Mr. Farasin said. Perpetua bowed her head, and he began, slowly at first, then faster, angrier. Perpetua’s responses grew louder, matching his rising intensity. His face, which shone with sweat, took on the character of his words — when he slew enemies and collapsed obstacles and taunted the devil, his face grimaced; and when he said, “Our lives are in your hands, O Lord, do with us as you wiss,” his shoulders sagged, his features slackened, became submissive. The prayer ended with the request that God grant his two servants the wisdom to understand the Bible passages that he had chosen for them today. Then Mr. Farasin opened his eyes, Perpetua opened her eyes; Mr. Farasin opened his Bible, Perpetua opened her Bible; Mr. Farasin selected a passage, read, and explained, Perpetua listened.

After Bible study, it was time to rid the house of demons. Perpetua rose from her seat and went into the visitors’ toilet to collect the bucket of tap water she had asked Tene to stand there. She placed the bucket in front of Mr. Farasin, and then picked a bottle of anointed oil from the center table. She had a cache of extra virgin olive oil in the wardrobe of the smaller, unused guest room, whose furniture was from the time of Mr. McGee, the colonial administrator who had lived in the house before them. Every Sunday Perpetua took a new bottle to church for the pastor to consecrate. Once the bottle was opened for her Friday prayer sessions, the leftover content was sent to the kitchen for use as cooking oil.

She approached Mr. Farasin. He stood up, accepted the bottle from her, broke the seal, and uncapped it, and then poured a dollop of oil into the water. Stirring the water, he said in a ringing voice: “By the power of God Jehofah, king of kings and lord of lords, protector of the innocent and destroyer of enemies, I sanctify this water in Jesus’ name!”

“Amen!” Perpetua shrieked, waving her Bible over her head.

Mr. Farasin scooped a handful of water. “Out, out, out — blood of Jesus!” he yelled, as he flung out his arm. Water flew across the room and spattered the wall, the ceiling, the glass door of the drinks cabinet. “In the name of Jesus, get out!” he shouted, and threw water again.

“O yes Jesus, yes Lord!” Perpetua cried.

She trailed Mr. Farasin as he walked through the house. He knew the house well; he had gone over it several times. He threw open the bedroom doors as if he didn’t expect to find anyone there. He burst into the bathrooms and splashed water on the folded towels and drying underwear. He leaned into kitchen cupboards and sprinkled the grain sacks, the empty pots, the drowsing geckos. Five bedrooms, four bathrooms, two sitting rooms, one dining room, one study, one kitchen, one pantry, three balconies, and one verandah — they went everywhere.

They returned to the downstairs sitting room a half hour later, both of them dappled with sweat and holy water. “Thank you, Jesus,” Perpetua said, wiping her brow with her hand. “Thank you, Lord,” Mr. Farasin said. Perpetua’s voice was hoarse; Mr. Farasin’s was unaffected. With a sigh of exhaustion Perpetua dropped into a chair, and Mr. Farasin said, “We hafen’t finished, madam. The Lord has refealed to me that there is a place in this house where the agents of Satan are still hiding.”

Perpetua sat up. “Where?”

“Where does your house girl sleep?”

“Ah, that’s true!” Perpetua exclaimed, and leaped to her feet. “Come, come with me!”

A cobbled path led from the kitchen door to the boys’ quarters. Perpetua walked in front; Mr. Farasin followed at a pace that made her turn her head and throw him impatient looks. It was his first time in this part of the compound. He gazed at the trees, the pawpaw, the mango, the guava, the dwarf coconut, the clump of banana. The largest tree in the yard, a false almond tree, grew in front of the boys’ quarters — its massive branches formed a green canopy over the roof, casting the red brick structure in shadow. The ground under the tree, around the boys’ quarters’ verandah was pebbled with rotting fruit, which scented the air.

Perpetua climbed the verandah and waited for Mr. Farasin. In her haste she had left behind her Bible. Mr. Farasin clutched his in one hand. The bucket, with water sloshing inside, was held in the other.

The boys’ quarters had four doors. The bathroom door had rotted off its hinges; it leaned against the wall. The kitchen door hung open to reveal a soot-blackened ceiling, a coal brazier, a large enamel basin of fermenting tapioca. The third door, which bore a Citadel sticker, was padlocked. The last door was closed. When Mr. Farasin stepped onto the verandah, Perpetua walked to the last door and pushed it open.

The room, though sparsely furnished, was cluttered. A metal bed faced the door, and a row of cartons lay in the thick dust collected under it. Beside the bed stood the old cooker that Perpetua had replaced nearly three years ago; its closed lid was covered with cosmetic bottles and tubes, skeins of glass bead jewelry, combs, hairpins, hairbrushes. In front of the cooker was a straight-backed chair, which was draped with clothes. A raffia bag stood against one wall of the room, and clothes spilled from its mouth. The floor was scattered with high-heel shoes, leather sandals, cloth slippers, candy-colored pom-poms. Perpetua stood in the doorway and stared at the disorder. She recognized many of the clothes and footwear, the heart-shaped jar of face lotion that she had thrown away because it lightened her skin, a chipped crock water jug that was a wedding present from someone she couldn’t remember, the wooden hairbrush that broke in half when she flung it at a cockroach. Tene’s room, to Perpetua’s astonished gaze, was a house of mirrors constructed out of her memories.

Tene lay on her back on the bed, her knees raised and her skirt gathered around her waist. A transistor radio, playing highlife music, sat on her belly. At Perpetua’s entry she turned a surprised face toward the door, and when Mr. Farasin appeared she sat up and arranged her skirt, then swung her legs off the bed. The radio crashed to the floor and fell silent.

“Auntie?” Tene said in an anxious voice. Her eyes watched Mr. Farasin.

“We have come to cleanse your room,” Perpetua said.

“Ehn?”

“You heard her,” Mr. Farasin said. “Your room has evil spirits.”

Gloom settled over Tene’s face. She sighed deeply, then rose from the bed and took a step toward the door, but Mr. Farasin turned and pulled it shut.

“You stay,” he said.

Tene glanced at Perpetua, who dropped her eyes; then she returned her gaze to Mr. Farasin, glared at him. “I be Roman Catholic.”

“God is God anywhere,” Mr. Farasin said.

He held her gaze. She remained silent. Then he stuck his Bible under his arm, raised the bucket, asked the women to kneel and close their eyes. Tene refused with a shake of her head, and sat at the bed’s edge to watch him. He nodded at Perpetua. After Perpetua knelt and bent her head, he began to pray and spray water. His voice rose; it beat the air. He placed his wet hand on Perpetua’s forehead, and she swayed, gasped for breath. He released her and strode toward Tene with his hand outstretched, but she moved her head away from his grasp. He bent down, set the bucket on the floor, then grabbed Tene’s shoulder with his left hand to restrain her, and when she raised her face in protest, he gripped her temples with his right. She struggled, and he held on, chanting prayers. His fingers squeezed until she groaned and beat his arm with her fists. He released her, and she sank to the floor, her legs kicking. Her foot caught the transistor radio. It slid across the floor, struck the wall, and burst into music.

“Amen!” Mr. Farasin shouted.

“Amen!” Perpetua cried, and opened her eyes.

Mr. Farasin removed the Bible from under his arm, touched it to his forehead, left shoulder, then right. He said, “You can get up now, madam. Your house is clean.”

As Tene struggled onto her knees, Perpetua rose to her feet. Mr. Farasin put his arm round her shoulder and led her toward the door. In the doorway, he turned around.

“You,” he said in a stern, booming voice, pointing his Bible at Tene, “if you want to remain in this house, you must change your church.”

Tene’s breath rasped in her throat. “Who you be to tell me—”

“Shut up, thief,” Perpetua said.

With a gift of eighty shillings, Mr. Farasin left. When the gate clanged shut behind him, Perpetua rang the bell for Tene. They had not begun cooking when the school bus honked at the gate. Tene led Daoju upstairs, changed her clothes, then piggybacked her to the dining table and sat with her as Daoju struggled through lunch. The meal finished, she took her to the garden to play for half an hour, and then carried her kicking and screaming to her bedroom for siesta. By the time Tene returned to the kitchen, pots were bubbling on the cooker, the air was thick with the aroma of roasted chicken and groundnut stew and coconut rice, and Perpetua was standing at the sink, skinning a pineapple.

Daoju rose from sleep at twenty-one minutes past three. At two minutes to four, Perpetua sent Tene to Aunty Deborah Store, which was just round the corner, to buy a crate of beer. While Tene discharged the errand, Perpetua set Daoju on her knee and read to her from the Bible, from chapter thirty of Exodus, which was as far as they had gone in two months of daily reading. The plan, undertaken on the advice of Mr. Farasin, was to read the entire Bible to her daughter before her third birthday. It was slow going; Daoju found the stories bewildering, dreary. Before long — as happened whenever her mother insisted on this ritual — she began to scratch her elbows, and pull her Calabar plaits, and swing her legs with impatience. When she interrupted to ask if she could go outside to play, Perpetua lost her temper.

“You’ve started again, you stubborn child! You’re lucky I don’t have time for you today! No more play — go into your room and stay there!”

Daoju climbed the stairs, sobbing.

At seventeen minutes past four, Tene returned. After stacking beer in the refrigerator, she asked Perpetua where Daoju was. A cluck of annoyance was the reply she got. She mumbled an excuse and slipped from the kitchen, but halted on the staircase when Perpetua called out, “Leave her alone. Go and bathe and change into something nice. Our visitors will be here by seven.”

When the grandfather clock struck five, Perpetua went upstairs to prepare herself. At ten minutes to six, she emerged from the bedroom. She wore a cream muslin gown, a string of pearls, and silver sandals. She walked past her daughter’s bedroom, down the stairs, and into the kitchen. She smiled when Tene, who was dozing on a stool, started awake and said, “Ah auntie, your cloth fine o!”

Under Perpetua’s direction, Tene set the table. The tablecloth was changed. Napkins were arranged. The silverware, porcelain plates, and crystal wineglasses were unboxed, cleaned, and laid out. The food, served into lidded dishes, was moved from the kitchen to the dining room sideboard. At fifteen minutes to seven, Perpetua gave Tene last instructions. She reminded her about the refrigerated jugs of drinking water and when to serve dessert, and showed her again how to remove the plates, how to refill the wineglasses, how to walk, to bend forward, to smile.

At two minutes past seven, Godspeed arrived with the guests.

Sam Briggs was a big-voiced, big-bellied man. His round cheeks oozed health and Old Spice aftershave, and he cultivated a regal air, with his arms held away from his body and his neck as stiff as a cockerel’s. He wore a white voile etibo over black gabardine trousers, his dove-gray bowler hat sat at an angle over one eye, and his pointed black leather shoes were polished to a dazzle. He wore gold around his neck and left ring finger, and silver signet rings on the four fingers of his right hand, which clutched the silver knob of his ebony walking stick. Sam Briggs led the group into the house. Perpetua was waiting in the foyer. On sighting her he threw his arms wide as if for an embrace, but when he drew near he brought his hands together with a soft clap. She curtsied and held out her hand.

“Chief Samson Briggs. Enchanted to make your acquaintance, Mrs. Anabraba,” he said, clasping her hand. His thumb stroked the back of her fingers. “Your husband boasts of your beauty, but his words have done you no justice. You are spectacular!”

A giggle rose to Perpetua’s throat, but she fought it back, forced it into a smile. “I’m happy to meet you too, Chief Briggs,” she said.

“Please call me Sam.” He raised his head, sniffed the air, and grinned at Perpetua. “Your cooking skills are also not overstated, I see.”

“Of course not,” said Godspeed, pushing forward to stand beside Perpetua. “Now, Your Highness, may I introduce my wife to the others?”

Sam Briggs laughed, his head thrown back, his shoulders shaking, his walking stick jabbing the floor.

The woman in the group walked forward. She looked older than her male companions. She wore a lion-head-patterned velvet wrapper, a puff-sleeved lilac blouse, and no jewelry. The skin of her face was clean, devoid of makeup, and her thin, brown hair was pulled into a bun. Godspeed said, “This is Mrs. Kenule,” and she reached forward to shake Perpetua’s hand.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Kenule. I am Perpetua.”

“Likewise, my dear,” Mrs. Kenule said. “Your husband has been singing your praises.”

“Stop giving my wife the impression that I speak only of her.” Godspeed smiled down at Perpetua, then draped his right arm around her waist and raised the left in a beckoning gesture. “Boma, my wife. Perpetua, Boma Peterside.”

With a swift sidelong glance at her husband, Perpetua turned to Boma Peterside. “Pleased to meet you,” she said, and smiled at the ginger-haired, sea-eyed albino who came forward, nodding shyly. His handshake left a dab of sweat in her palm.

“And you’ve met my almost namesake,” said Godspeed, inclining his head at Goodnews Abrakasa, who strode up, grasped Perpetua’s shoulders, and bussed her on both cheeks.

“Welcome, Goodnews,” Perpetua said, her eyes twinkling. “How come you’re alone today?”

“Ah,” Goodnews Abrakasa said, throwing up his hands, “it happened like this. I planned to come with Number Two wife, as Number One has been here before, but one of her children, the one who’s a sickler, got malaria this morning, so she couldn’t make it. Number One wife wanted to follow me, but to avoid future wahala, I refused o.”

Goodnews Abrakasa was a wiry man with caterpillar eyebrows, a pimpled nose, and strong, white teeth. His face shone with good humor. He favored wide collar shirts, unbuttoned to his hairy belly; bell-bottom trousers that were tight in the crotch; and high-heeled boots. Close friends, in private conversation, called him “Big Snake.”

Godspeed made a rude noise in his throat and jerked his head at Goodnews Abrakasa. “But you claim you can control your wives, don’t you, Mr. Polygamist? How come then you’re afraid of them?”

“Who’s afraid?” Goodnews Abrakasa shot back. “When a man sees boiling water and doesn’t stick in his hand, do you call that fear?”

“You two, not now,” Sam Briggs said, brandishing his walking stick as he stepped forward. “Dinner is waiting.” Perpetua took his offered arm. They walked toward the dining room, the others following.

Godspeed sat at one end of the table, Perpetua at the other. Sam Briggs took the seat on Perpetua’s right and Goodnews Abrakasa sat on her left. Tene was passing round the serving dishes when Godspeed sat bolt upright in his chair and glanced around, then raised his hand, beckoning to her. She approached his chair. “Where’s my daughter?” he asked.

“She dey her room.”

“Why?”

Tene looked at Perpetua, and Godspeed followed her gaze.

Perpetua, deep in conversation with Sam Briggs, was unaware of the attention.

Godspeed’s eyes flared. “Drop everything you’re doing and go and bring my daughter, now!” he said in a furious voice. The table fell silent.

“Yes, oga,” Tene said, and left the room.

In a coaxing tone, Mrs. Kenule said to Godspeed: “I was going to ask about your daughter, but I thought she had gone to bed.”

“My daughter doesn’t go to sleep without first seeing me,” Godspeed said. “Besides, she hasn’t had her supper.” He looked at Perpetua. “Is that correct?”

Perpetua nodded. Sam Briggs turned to speak to her, saw the expression on her face, and coughed into his hand.

Tene entered with Daoju in her arms. The child’s eyes were tear-swollen and her face was drawn into unhappy lines. When she saw the strange faces, she clung tighter to Tene’s neck. Then she caught sight of her father.

“Daddy!”

“Baby!”

Godspeed pushed back his chair and rose with opened arms. Tene handed the child to him and shuffled backward. Daoju wriggled in her father’s arms, her features fluid, riven by excitement. She spoke in a rush, her voice a brook after rain, babbling.

“Daddy, Daddy. . crying long. . dark room. . Bible story—”

“Sh, baby, sh, my dear, my love, sh.”

Godspeed asked Boma Peterside to move seats. He set his daughter in the vacated chair, spread a napkin over her lap, then sat down and said, “Everybody, this is Daoju, my princess.”

She beamed and nodded round the table, her body swaying from the force of her swinging legs. Sam Briggs called her beautiful, a budding rose, a chip off her mother’s block. Boma Peterside reached his hand forward and brushed her cheek, as if to check that she was real. Mrs. Kenule asked her about her age, and when she replied, “Two years and three-quarters, thank you,” the whole table except Perpetua burst into laughter.

“My dear Perpetua,” Goodnews Abrakasa said loudly, “I’ve told your husband before and I’m telling you now, your daughter must marry one of my sons. Yes o, Godspeed, I’m staking my claim early. This girl will marry an Abrakasa.”

“As long as it’s your son and not you, we might consider,” Perpetua said, to the amusement of everyone but her husband, who did not join in the laughter. He waited to the end of the others’ raillery of Goodnews Abrakasa, and then he said: “When the time comes my daughter will marry who she pleases.” He turned to Perpetua, who was staring at him with a wide, bitter gaze. “And please, my dear, don’t joke about such matters in front of our daughter.” He looked sideways at Daoju, smiled, pulled a funny face, and patted her head. “One more thing.” He glanced across at his wife, and his jaw muscles bunched. “Daoju just told me, ‘Bible story took my play.’ What does that mean?”

Godspeed and Perpetua, one week after their fight, were still not speaking, not sleeping in the same room or sharing mealtimes together. Daoju had become a sore in their relationship. Since her mother moved out of her father’s bedroom, Daoju had taken over her mother’s side of the bed. When her father returned from work in the evenings, she stuck to him; she played at his feet until her bedtime. But daytime was her mother’s — the mornings when Perpetua, hot-eyed and sharp-fingered with resentment, prepared her for school, and the afternoons when she returned home to meet the cold, haggard look of maternal enmity.

The following Friday, Mr. Farasin returned for the usual. Perpetua welcomed him warmly. She was lonely, unhappy, everyone was against her: her husband, her daughter, even the housemaid.

“The devil’s attacks are getting stronger,” she said to Mr. Farasin as he measured oil into the bucket of water. “Pour in the whole bottle, please, I’m losing my family.”

“God forbid!” Mr. Farasin directed a reassuring look at her. “As long as this matter is in my hands, you will never taste defeat, don’t worry.”

They spent more time on the exorcism than ever before. (It will get worse before it gets better, Mr. Farasin told her, and then reassured her that in his visions she was always beside her husband, in this life and the other, so no fear of that.) Mr. Farasin sprinkled holy water in every corner of the house and boys’ quarters, even the late cook’s room, then went into the garden and sprayed the grass, the trees, the algae-covered fishpond. By the time he emptied the bucket Perpetua was tight-lipped, her eyes darting at every sound, and it was close to the hour Daoju came back home. Perpetua didn’t hurry him, but she was anxious that he depart before her daughter returned. The fight with her husband was still fresh in her mind.

While Mr. Farasin stood in the sitting room, wiping his hands on his trousers, Perpetua ran up the stairs, burst into her room and grabbed some money, then dashed downstairs. Mr. Farasin was no longer where she left him. She was about to call his name when she noticed that his bag, too, was gone. That’s odd, she thought, as she stared at the closed front door. Then she strode forward, picked up the glasses they had drunk from, and headed to the kitchen.

As she entered the kitchen doorway, Perpetua caught a movement, turned her head to look, and froze. Huddled in the far corner, his open attaché case clutched in one hand and in the other two sweet potatoes, was Mr. Farasin. At her gasp, he whipped his head around, and a spasm tightened his face, he seemed about to rush forward, as if to escape or to attack her. Perpetua dropped the glasses with a crash to the floor, and staggered backward.

“Mr. Farasin! What is this, what are you doing?”

He stared down at the sweet potatoes in his hand. “I’m. . ehm. . I was. . ah. .” His voice trailed off.

The truth was revealed. All this time, it had been him. “So it was you!” Perpetua shouted, stabbing her finger at him. “It was you stealing my food! But how could you, Mr. Farasin?”

Mr. Farasin dropped to his knees, his lower lip trembling. The sweet potatoes fell from his hand and bounced across the floor. His bag toppled on its side and from its open mouth rolled out onions, tomatoes, two eggs, a scattering of Maggi cubes.

“I’m sorry, ma,” he begged, wringing his hands and then wiping his face with them. “Please forgive me, I didn’t know what I was doing, it is the devil’s work.”

Perpetua’s face crumpled. All lies, lies, nothing but lies! She had been deceived. She had opened her house to a snake, a thief, exposed her family. Her husband was right again: she knew what he would say when he heard of this. Money-grabbers and charlatans, the words that had started their fight a week ago, were nothing compared to the ones he would use. Thieves. Home breakers. The people you thought would save my daughter’s life when you ran away and left her dying in my arms.

“Mr. Farasin, you have killed me,” Perpetua said, her voice breathless with pain. Mr. Farasin — who was begging forgiveness with quoted Bible verses — looked up at her tone, and then crept forward on his knees. His voice rose, desperate, edged with hope. Perpetua shook her head from side to side and clamped her hands over her ears. Then she strode forward, her house slippers crunching on broken glass, and screamed at Mr. Farasin: “Get out, just get out—” and as he scrambled to his feet, grabbed up his bag and made to empty the stolen items, she flailed her arms at him, “—no, take it, take everything, just get out of my house before my daughter sees you!”

Perpetua sat in the sitting room, feet drawn together and knees apart, her hands lying on her Bible in her lap, and cried with heaving sobs. Tene bustled about her and pled for an answer. In response to her questions, Perpetua cried harder.

When Daoju returned from school to find her mother weeping, she pushed the Bible aside and climbed into her lap. She wrapped her arms around her mother’s neck and pressed her lips to her wet cheek. Her daughter’s clean, untainted smell, her cuddliness, made Perpetua shudder. Hugging each other tightly, they cried together. Tene stood behind them, beaming through her tears.

Godspeed arrived at evening to find the house as quiet as an empty cathedral. He asked Tene for his daughter’s whereabouts, but the housemaid shrugged her shoulders and averted her eyes. In response to his next question, she said, “In your bedroom,” then flashed him a look so charged with meaning that he turned away, confused.

He mounted the stairs slowly, crossed the upstairs hallway with a careful tread, and nudged open his bedroom door. The room was in darkness. As he pressed the door closed he heard the bed sheets rustle. “Don’t put on the light, please,” Perpetua whispered.

He could feel her stare as he walked toward the bed. “Are you ill?”

“No,” she replied. “Won’t you lie down?”

“But I’m a demon, isn’t that what you—”

“Please, Godspeed, don’t.”

With a shock, Godspeed realized she was crying. He bent down quickly to set his briefcase by the armoire, and then sat on the bed and removed his shoes, his socks, his tie, his shirt and trousers. He lifted the covers and slipped in beside her in his vest and briefs. As he turned to face her she wrapped her arms and legs around him. She was naked, her skin burned. He could feel himself melting, sinking under the spell. She was different, something had changed.

“I have something to tell you,” she said.

He waited, afraid to ask, to move, to spoil the moment.

“I love you,” she said.

Except for the grandfather clock, which ticked in the hallway, the house was silent.

The next day, the second-to-last Saturday in May 1970, the Anabrabas, father, mother, and child, dressed up and paid a visit to Banigo Bright Studios, where their happiness was caught, forever, on photographic film.

Perpetua got a phone call later that day. Judith, her best friend with whom she had lost touch at the start of the civil war, was dead. She was shot by the wife of her navy captain lover, after the woman caught them in her home. The bullet entered the back of her head and took her face along when it exited.

Perpetua flung away the receiver with a shrill scream. Tene came running, and Godspeed stood on the staircase landing and listened. Then he approached his weeping, shivering wife, put his arms around her, and said, “At least it was quick. No pain, no suffering. That’s the way to go.”

Daoju was five years old when Tenemenam married. Her fiancé was moving to Port Harcourt to seek his fortune and Tene was sure that if she let him go alone she would never see him again. The wedding reception, planned by Perpetua and paid for by Godspeed, was held on the grounds of the Anabraba house, their parting gift and wedding present. After the good-byes, the hugs, and the promises to stay in touch, Tene climbed into the van that waited to bear her and her hoard of scavenged possessions away, and as the engine revved, as she thrust both hands out of the window and waved, Godspeed stepped forward and dropped a manila envelope thick with money into her lap. The car shot forward, trailing Tene’s squeal.

That was the last they heard of her.

^. 3 ^.

New Year’s Eve 1983, the military struck again. It was the fifth putsch the country had seen in twenty-three years of independence, and the third successful one. But this regime, it soon turned out, was unlike anything that had come before. Its leaders, like all soldiers, believed in the right of might. They had a deep aversion for corruption, for indiscipline, for all forms of opposition. They held civilians in low regard. They had a fondness for Herculean tasks and idiom, such as “cleaning out the Augean stables of our great nation” and “destroying the hydra-headed monster of corruption.” They had messianic ambitions.

It was a new year, a new era, people believed, and so they gave their support to the regime. They cheered when politicians were convicted for corruption by military tribunals, when suspected criminals were executed without trial, when the civil service was purged. Given the harshness of the medicine, it was easy to believe the country would change for the better. Signs of the new season were already there: for the first time in the nation’s history, her people, threatened by the whips of soldiers who enforced the regime’s War against Indiscipline campaign, formed queues at bus stops.

Euphoria passed. Decrees began to rankle. Journalists, artists, and men of conscience who dared speak out were stalked and bundled into detention by secret police. The economy, burdened by debt, nosedived. In a flamboyant effort to counter currency traffickers, the color of the naira was changed, but the success of this policy was thrown in the shade by the wage cuts and lost savings and broken businesses that resulted. The constitution was suspended; labor unions were dissolved; austerity measures were adopted; the borders were closed. Apart from bus stops, long queues formed in front of banks, embassies, and supermarkets, whose shelves the importation bans had denuded. Unemployment rose, and so did crime, despite the ease with which the death penalty was applied.

University students stripped of their subsidies, public servants faced with mass retrenchment, unpaid pensioners, all took to the streets in protest. Wherever unrest appeared, it was crushed.

On the day in February 1984 that Brunei celebrated independence from Great Britain with a banquet that had 4,237 guests in attendance, fifty-one-year-old Godspeed Anabraba was compulsorily retired from the civil service. He was a permanent secretary, and he had worked for government since the early, heady days of independence, so the military authorities could not believe he wasn’t corrupt. They planned to dismiss then detain him, but despite their investigations, despite the two times they raided his house — which he showed evidence of having bought from the government in 1976—and despite how far back they dug into his employment records, they could not uncover any proof of impropriety. After months of petitions, of backdoor interventions from the influential friends he had gathered in his long career, the authorities allowed him to keep a fraction of his financial assets as well as the house he lived in, but they canceled his pension and confiscated the country home he had built in his mother’s honor, his bungalow in Lagos, his three cars, his scattered parcels of land, and his wife’s upmarket restaurant, then sold everything off in a private auction. His offence, he was informed in a letter rife with bad spelling, was “plain for all to sea.”

At sixteen, Daoju was a queen. She had the beauty, the carriage — and, in her father, the king. It was not disputed, in public or at home, that she, the child, was the love of his life. She had her father’s ear, his heart, his complete trust. On days that he brought home large amounts of cash, it was into Daoju’s care he placed the money. Between April 1975 and September 1983 he traveled to conferences in five European countries, one Asian, one African, and two US cities, and Daoju had accompanied him three times, Perpetua once. When relatives visited, seeking favors from the big man, it was to Daoju they directed their entreaties, it was her attention they courted. Perpetua had long since given up efforts to usurp her daughter: between mother and child there existed a fragile, unspoken truce.

Daoju adored her father. She loved him with a fierce, electric passion. He was a man; he was her model for a man. He told her everything, gave her everything. She, in turn, opened her life to him. The few secrets she kept were those she knew would embarrass him. Like the real reason she did not like red wine, because it affected her monthlies and infected her moods. Or, again, that she had never been kissed, not for lack of wooing, but because none of the men, measured against her father, was man enough.

After retirement, Godspeed changed. His promise to himself had been broken. At the height of success, he had failed. His reputation had been assailed and his property stolen, and there was nothing, absolutely nothing he could do. Day after day, he sat at home, gorging himself to plumpness, watching re-reruns of British sitcoms in bed, reading the dailies in his dust-covered study, sleeping sprawled in his favorite chair with his mouth gaped open, purposeless.

Perpetua, too, after the loss of her business, her seven-year-old restaurant, remained at home. She cooked; she cleaned the house; she cried at night in her bedroom. She had good reason to grieve: her husband was a shell of himself. He had lost his spirit, his confidence; and, also, he was bleeding money. Two companies in which he held major shares had crashed. The regime’s currency change had halved the value of the savings left him. When money began to run low, when the quality of life she was accustomed to could not be afforded, Perpetua, out of fear, quarreled with her husband, her daughter, her neighbors, anyone who was near. The Anabraba house became a desolate place. Favor seekers donned masks of sympathizers and trooped in like vultures, in search of pickings. Visitors dwindled, and then stopped. The large, colonial house, which once echoed with prosperity, was now as hushed as a mausoleum.

Three days, one hour, and fourteen minutes before she turned seventeen, Daoju challenged her father for the first time. At 10:46 p.m. on September 8, 1984, she told him, “You’re not man enough to stop me from leaving this house.” Later, for the rest of her life, she realized that was the moment she killed the man who loved her most.

The day had started badly. Daoju woke up that morning to the sound of her mother hurling abuse at her father. This one-way stream of invective was a routine of late, but she usually left for school before it began. It was a Saturday; there was no excuse to leave the house early. So she lay in bed and shared her father’s shame, heard his little secrets, his psychological farts. She felt trapped in a hell that was all her own. She squeezed her eyes shut, curled up under the bedcovers, and tried not to listen as her mother, spluttering with rage and tears, called her father:

a waste of time

a sad excuse for a man

a spineless failure

a stone round her neck.

He remained silent, her voice grew shriller, and she said he was:

a baboon wey dey chop when monkey dey work

a chicken

a pig

a big fat pig.

The insults seemed only to add to her mother’s anguish, as her father did not reply, did not defend himself, did not rise and slap her shut. Daoju wept into her pillow.

Perpetua left the house at midday to visit her ailing father — eighty-one years old and nursing a cancerous prostate gland — whom she meant to ask for money to buy food for the house. Alone with her father, Daoju gave in to an impulse she had fought for weeks. She rolled off the bed, removed her nightgown, and rummaged in the middle drawer of the redwood dresser for what to wear, thinking of what to say to her father, all the words she would tell him to make things right again.

She entered his study to find him asleep. He was aging fast. His thick, uncombed hair and chin stubble were dusty with gray, and the wrinkles in his forehead were as deep as knife cuts. In seven months he had grown a double chin, sagging breasts, and an overhanging paunch. His breath wheezed through his wet, drooping lips.

“Daddy,” she said quietly; and then bent forward to slap his knee. “Daddy!”

He twitched awake and blinked at her. He cleared his throat and swallowed, then stuck his little finger in his right ear and shook his head, his cheeks slapping. He wiped his finger on his shirtfront.

“What is it, baby?”

“Daddy, Daddy. . Mummy. .” Daoju said, but the look in her father’s eyes, that placid stare of the broken beast, corkscrewed through her gut. She doubled over with a moan and slumped to the floor, and then began to cry, her misery a steady drizzle.

The day dragged for Daoju after she returned to her room. The change in her father, which she had hoped was transitory, was clearly deep-rooted. He would never again in her mind be the man he once was. To her, who had loved with all her heart what he represented — the solid, unchanging image that bore the name Daddy — this poor replica, this weakling, was an enemy, and she hated him as much as she had loved her father.

That night, in the sitting room, her mother resumed the insults. After several minutes of silent suffering, Daoju, her lips puckered into an O, rose from her seat in front of the TV and marched toward the barred front door.

“Where are you going?” Perpetua demanded.

Daoju did not reply, did not falter, and did not halt.

Perpetua turned to Godspeed. “Won’t you ask her where she’s going? Look at the time!”

Daoju was unlocking the door when he spoke. “Baby, where are you going?”

“Out,” she said, and glanced over her shoulder at him, her hand on the doorknob.

“Out where?”

“Out of this house, away from you two. God, you make me sick!”

“Daoju!” Perpetua cried out, half rising in her chair. “What did you say?”

Godspeed flapped his hand at his wife. “Calm down, sit down.” To his daughter he said, “That’s going too far, Daoju. You can’t talk to your mother and me that way. Close the door and come back here.”

“I’m not coming. I am going.”

Godspeed held the arms of his chair and levered himself to his feet. Pointing his finger at Daoju, he raised his voice. “I’m warning you, young lady, come back here now!” Then he coughed, his breath wheezing in his chest.

Daoju threw back her head and laughed as her parents watched in amazement. Then she looked her father in the eye and spat out, “You’re not man enough to stop me from leaving this house.” The door banged shut behind her.

Perpetua faced Godspeed. His hands were shaking, his lips trembled, he seemed about to fall over. She felt the urge to clap in his face, to tell him that all those years he had spoiled their daughter, treated her like a wife, this is what it amounted to, a door slammed in his face. Yet when she opened her mouth the words wouldn’t emerge. She pitied him, quivering in front of her without shame or the pretense of a fighting spirit. Victory is not stomping an opponent that something else had laid low. She rose, walked up to him, and took his arm. At the touch of his skin, warmth flowed into her; compassion quickened her breath. She eased him back into the chair and said, “Easy, my dear, forget what she said. She’s just angry at the way things are. She’ll come back and apologize, you’ll see.”

The words barely out of her mouth, Perpetua cocked her head and listened, sure she had heard the gate. There were footsteps approaching. “I told you, she’s back already,” she said in a triumphant tone, and sat down beside her husband to await Daoju’s entry.

The front door burst open and Daoju stagger-ran in, fell in a sprawl. Perpetua screamed, clapped a hand to her mouth, then slid out of the chair and sank to her knees. Six, seven, eight men barged in through the door, bearing automatic rifles. The man in front had a crowbar hooked over his shoulder, and another grasped a machete, its blade glistening red. Godspeed, as he rose from his seat, glared wildly at Daoju, searching for blood.

“You, fat man, down on the ground!” ordered the man with a crowbar on his shoulder.

Godspeed dropped to his hands and knees, crawled quickly across to his daughter, and lay facedown beside her. Perpetua, too, stretched out on her belly and covered her head with her arms. Low sputtering sounds emanated from her, and, now and again, like an expletive, she hissed, “Jesus!” One of the men stepped forward and nudged her thigh with his mud-crusted boot. “Get up, prayer warrior. Show us the money.”

As Perpetua led them through the house they slapped her eleven times. They ransacked the bedrooms, took her jewelry box, her daughter’s gold locket and antique silver charm bracelet, her husband’s red coral studs and ivory cuff links and Breitling wristwatch, all the valuables they could find, all the Anabrabas had left. Then they returned to the sitting room and kicked Godspeed, beat him with their fists and gun butts, cut his forehead, sprained his arm, and broke his ring finger as they yanked off his wedding band, but in spite of the punishment, despite the threats, there was no money to be got. When they demanded the keys to his car and he gasped out that he had none, the robbers had enough.

“You want to waste our time?” the crowbar robber yelled. “You live inside this big house and you’re a fucking poor man!” He paused, glanced at Daoju sobbing in her father’s arms, and a gleam entered his eyes. “But we won’t go just like that. We will teach you a lesson.” He turned to his men and said, “I go do the girl first,” and then unslung the crowbar from his shoulder and tossed it to the floor, where it clattered loudly. “Bring her here. Make una start with the woman.”

“Over my dead body.”

After he spoke, Godspeed climbed to his feet. His right arm, swollen at the elbow, was cradled in his left hand, with its broken finger hanging by skin. He stared at the line of men, and they glared back — bristling like hyenas circling for the kill — and raised their rifles.

“What did you say?” the crowbar robber barked. He strode forward a few steps, looked Godspeed up and down. Then he said, in a low, mellow voice, at once a tone of warning and reasoning: “If you want to die, repeat what you said.”

Someone tittered with excitement. The robbers waited for Godspeed to beg, to plead for his women, to back down. With each second that ticked, the scent of blood grew thicker.

“Daddy, please, it’s all right,” Daoju whispered, and stretched out her hand to her father, her face a mask of dread. Perpetua, sprawled on her side, did not stir.

“Daddy, please, listen to your daughter,” one of the robbers lisped. Then he grabbed his crotch and thrust his hips rapidly back and forth, to raucous laughter.

Godspeed glanced down at his daughter and saw the infant he once saved, and he turned away, his jaw trembling. He stared at the ceiling, bit his swollen underlip, and renewed his pledge. He would not fail. He was ready; only one thing remained. He looked at Perpetua, stared at her bowed head until she sighed weakly and raised her face. I love you too, he mouthed. Her eyes widened, moistened, and she brushed the tears away, anxious to hold his gaze. Then she nodded — and was still nodding when the grandfather clock tolled.