little gods (2)

Part Two: Drums of Oubala

Someone was smoking. Moji jerked up from her lounger and looked around the garden. Bumblebees fussed and fluttered over hibiscuses while a brief gust ruffled the leaves of her tree shade. The smell returned after the blast. So, where was it coming from? The kitchen window was open. Could it be the cook? Could he be smoking in the house? She had never seen him smoke, and he had better not be. Gently, she peeled away from the lounger and set her feet on the ground.

She yanked the kitchen’s screen door open and snuck in, hoping to catch the culprit red-handed.

No-one there.

The fumes came from the parlor because they grew stronger as she neared the parlor door. Peering inside the parlor, she found Lara sitting on the long couch. Lara was home early. She had her back to Moji and was massaging her neck muscles with both hands. She put down her hands, picked up a cigarette, and held it to her ear. Was it Lara? Or someone that looked like her? She said she had quit smoking.

Moji shuffled into the room, dragging her feet on the ground to announce her. Lara glanced up at her and returned her attention to the ashtray beside her–to flaking off the cigarette butt.

“Didn’t know you were home,” Moji said.

Lara tilted her head and blew a puff of smoke in the air, the bangs of her weave-on falling away from her eyes.

Moji coughed. “Do you want to be alone?”

Lara didn’t reply so Moji made to leave.

“I think something’s wrong with me?” Lara said.

“What?”

“I don’t know exactly.”

Moji took the couch opposite Lara’s.

“Okay, I admit. I’ve had my suspicions.” She cast another dragon’s breath of white clouds.

“My only child is nearly sixteen, and I’ve not been able to get pregnant since. It was what cost me my marriage.”

“Well, good riddance to Tosin. May he find the biological child he is looking for.”

“But that’s not what’s bothering me, Mama. I learned something today.”

Moji waited.

“I had an emergency,” Lara said, staring blankly at the coffee table. “An accident victim, a little boy, needed B-positive blood, and we had none left in the bank. But lucky for him I’m B-positive.”

“So you gave him blood.”

“It had to be screened first. When the results came back, they said it wasn’t fresh.”

“Really?”

“What nonsense, I thought. That’s impossible. I drew it myself, right there in my office. They must have mixed it up with someone else’s. So I drew another pint from my vein and checked it myself.”

“And?”

“It was stale.” Lara froze. The cigarette she had shoved between her lips fell to the rug. “I apologized to the lab and lied that I had made a mistake; I was AB-positive.”

“You’re just learning this now? After all the fertility tests?”

Lara stared at Moji, looking fazed by her reaction and looking past her. “I shouldn’t be alive, Mama. It isn’t possible for the blood of a living, breathing human being to be stale. My cells have low ATP concentrations. If I were crazy, I would say I have rigor mortis. That means I’m dead.”

“Can I tell you a story?”

“Please, Mama. This is not the time.”

“Suit yourself. But remember, I tried to tell you.”

Lara saw the cigarette she had dropped smoldering into her rug and stamped it out. She sank back on her couch and gave Moji a long, hard stare.

“It had better not have anything to do with Taiwo,” she said.

“But it does.”

“Are you going to tell me that he’s my real father and that I’m some sort of miracle birth because I’ve had it with you and your supernatural lover?”

“No, he is not your father.”

“Does it have anything to do with twin souls and people who can heal each other with a touch?”

“Do you want to hear the truth or not?”

Lara pursed her lips.

“Remember the time we went to Porto-Novo?” Moji said. “Yemisi was five then, and we left her with your father and his sister, your Aunt Abiola.”

“You were doing your masters and wanted me to help you with your anthropology paper. You said it was on Voodoo and the people of Benin.”

“I lied. I’m sorry. There was no paper. Voodoo had fascinated me for years; it was the closest thing I knew to what I shared with Taiwo. I suggested you come because I thought you could use a break from motherhood and a holiday from men, as well, after Yemisi’s father—what was that boy’s name again? —turned out to be married and a big fat liar.”

The sun peaks over Jardin Vacances, a seaside resort in the port city of Porto-Novo. Moji, Lara, and six other tourists crowd around Bayor, the guide. They stare up a hillock: Mount Egun, they’re told it’s called. Moji takes mental notes of the steep climb it presents. Encouraged by the news that their trek was nearing its end, Moji searches for cracks to fit her fingers and pull herself up, but Bayor beats her to it and scrambles to the top of the hillock. He secures a rope around the trunk of a kapok tree and lowers the other end. One at a time, all eight of them strap it on like a body harness, and he hauls them up. On top of the hillock, a wheel-and-axle device, but no well, hangs from the kapok tree. Bayor had used it to draw them up.

A dilapidated building with a long veranda and a much-corroded zinc roof basks in the purple gas flare of the evening sun.

“Is this where Oubala lives?” Lara asks Bayor.

“This is our tollgate,” he says. “This is where you will pay for your passage. Koroma, our keeper, will attend to you.”

Moji frowns. “You mean…? We’ve only just reached your toll gate?”

Bayor chuckles. “Don’t worry. Oubala’s place is not far from here. Please wait here while I go and inform Koroma that you have arrived.” He canters down to the building and disappears behind a curtained door.

“I wonder what they do with all the money they collect,” Jean-Pierre, one of two French tourists, says, staring at the ramshackle building Bayor had entered.

“Yeah,” Jeremy, an American tourist, says. “This is a wilderness. I bet ‘a keeper’ is what they call a ranger here.”

Their guide returns with Koroma the Keeper. The Keeper is wearing long baggy knickers, knee-length stockings, and brown buckle shoes usually worn by pupils. He looks like a school principal in the colonial era. He speaks fluent English. After introducing himself, he says, “China gave the world acupuncture, but Benin gave her something even better: Voodoo. Welcome to Voodoo’s holiest site.”

He informs them that, at the stroke of midnight, drums will sound to stir up the spirits of the dead. They are expected to be ready to meet Oubala then. He warns that Oubala takes offense when people run from him, as a few sometimes do, and so if they wish to be tied up and blindfolded when they meet him, it would be a wise choice.

“Why do they run from him?” someone asks.

“The person you are about to meet is unsightly,” The Keeper says. “Since he takes upon himself the afflictions of others, he is expectedly hideous. If you have full-blown AIDS, his vicarious touch will cure you. Unfortunately for him, he will contract it, as well as the other diseases you have. You transmit. Oubala receives. That’s the way it is.”

“Amazing,” Smithie, the tall Aussie, says. “And he’s still alive, is he?”

“I don’t know,” The Keeper says. “People say he is a zombie. And if that is true, it means he is already dead. Now, I hope you all came with cash. We don’t take cheques or credit cards.”

“Did you hear that?” Lara mutters to Moji. “Oubala the Healer is a real-life zombie.”

Jean-Pierre, pacing between tourists, stops to say, “Not real-life. Real dead. Real-dead zombie.” He fleers at Lara and saunters off.

Bayor describes Oubala as a hermit who is likely to repulse with his appearance and urges everyone to choose the option of being tied when they are laid out on his altar. Moji doesn’t fancy this idea.

“I wonder where we’ll sleep,” Rick Matthews, another American, says, speaking Moji’s mind.

“After seeing Oubala, I don’t think any of us will sleep.” Jean-Pierre horselaughs in Rick’s face.

Bayor walks ahead. He takes them to an airy slope with fig trees and says, “You can rest here.”

With their backs on the ground and their heads pillowed by their knapsacks, Moji says to Lara, “You’re not going. You’ll wait for me here.”

“But I am,” Lara says. “We can see him together if you like, the two of us.”

“This is my research. It is not your call.”

“Well, I didn’t come all this way just to carry your bags. I’m going. I’m not eager to see a zombie, true. It’s why I’d much rather go with you, but if you aren’t fine with that…”

“Lara, please. I have a good mind to forfeit everything and return to the hotel.”

“And miss out on your healing? Where will you even find a taxi at this hour?”

Moji tries to discourage her, but it’s futile. “Fine. We’ll go together,” she says.

At a quarter to midnight, the locals start a campfire, and at the stroke of midnight, they begin to beat hourglass-shaped dunduns—the Drums of Oubala, Bayor says they’re called. The thrumming against leather, the chirping of crickets, and the low growls of the wind create an eerie atmosphere. Even Jean-Pierre no longer makes wisecracks. Moji tries again to reason with Lara, but she remains adamant.

They sprawl out on the grass and listen to the distant screams of the first ones to see Oubala. If their screams are anything to go by, Oubala is very frightful. Lara and Moji swap looks.

“Where are the others? Why aren’t they coming back after their healing?” Moji asks Bayor.

“From Oubala’s altar, they are taken to a place where they can rest and heal completely: our very own African spa, if you like. Don’t be afraid, madam. Oubala is not a wild animal.”

“It is better this way,” Jean-Pierre says to Moji. “If they return and tell us what they saw or how they feel, some of us will not want to go.”

Frankly, it is what Moji hopes will dissuade Lara.

Bayor informs Moji that she and Lara are next. “It is time to join those who have received their healing,” he says. “Look. He is here.”

The Keeper is waiting for them a short distance away, holding a torch. He beckons, Hurry, hurry, as they march towards him. 

Moji and Lara tail his knickered behind into the open plains.

They walk until they reach a bonfire. Beside it is a tent decorated with cow horns, tortoise shells, and other objects often used as talismans. The fire is a warming presence that changes direction with the wind. It makes the flailing sound of a piece of washing begging to be saved from a storm. The night cloaks everything beyond a certain radius in pitch-blackness. Locusts, or whatever they are, swarm around it. The Keeper pokes a long stick inside the tent, checking to see if it’s empty. Satisfied, he orders Moji and Lara to lie flat on their backs. And for the umpteenth time, he asks them if they would like to be tied up.

Moji says, “No, thank you.”

“Do not look at him,” he warns. “Scream if you must. Oubala doesn’t know what your screams mean. But he can read your facial expressions, so do not look at him. He could get violent if you cringe.”

Moji doesn’t like his tone of voice or this latest revelation.

The drums thrum out a different rhythm. The flame crackles with flying insects. Lara sniffles. She’s crying.

Moji feels around for her hand and finds her wrist instead. “Lara, shut your eyes. You hear me?”

“They’re closed.”

“Good. Now keep them that way and don’t move no matter what.”

Moji hears thuds. It’s the sound of feet. Someone is chanting a tune and stomping to it. The air smells bad. As the sound of feet grows, the air gets worse. The sound stops. Moji raises her head to look but is afraid of what she might see. If she screams, it would send Lara on a panic run.

Something coarse rests on her left leg. It’s a hand. A palm. It’s callused, like a foot (but toes can’t grasp like fingers). The hand slithers up her left thigh and stops at her stomach. The halitosis she inhales alerts her to the presence of a head. She glimpses teeth: two sets of gums, one above the other. Something gooey sloshes on her face. She opens her eyes and sees a long dribble of saliva hanging over her. She twists away just in time, partly from the halitosis hitting hard. She reaches up and clasps the head by the temples. It feels swollen; it’s not as smooth and flat as she expects.

There’s a weakness in her muscles and bones.

 Energy drains from her.

The head reels back and makes a deep grating sound like a ram with its throat halfway slit. It frees itself from her grasp.

In the light of the fire, a thin man in a breechcloth rolls on the ground, coughing and spitting. Lara is still lying motionless on her mat. Her eyes are shut, but her eyelids are quivering. The strange man has sores all over his body. The flesh on his face is like broth. The sores and boils on his flesh are like bubbles. In place of eyebrows, he has two asymmetrical scar tissues. He trembles in spasms and falls to the ground. The sores on his face shrink. His claw foot resets. His seizure stops, and he sits up. He spits and wipes his drooling mouth. He reaches into his breechcloth and pulls out a dagger. Moji scrambles to her feet, surprised at her ease in doing this.

The man holds the curved dagger by the hilt and points its tip downwards, ready to stab with quick vertical motions. Moji wants to yell, ‘Lara, get up and run’, but doesn’t want to draw attention to Lara until the creature is far enough. She bends down, grabs a fistful of earth, and waits.

The man rushes forward. She throws the sand in his eyes. He shrieks and staggers forward. Blinded, he continues in a beeline, moving in the wrong direction. The drums pulsate. He feels around for her with an outstretched arm. She taps him on the back, and he spins around, blinking. She taps him again from a different angle, and he follows. Circling and tapping, she leads him towards the fire, biding her time for when she will shout, “Lara, open your eyes and run.” He swings at the air haphazardly. He swerves and turns, anticipating her taps from the back. His movement is frenzied and too erratic–too random to predict. He heads in one direction, swings around, and starts in the opposite. He is veering towards Lara. No, stop. He trips over her. He reacts like an ant lion when he’s on top, shaking her violently. Lara howls. Blood pools onto the sand, spreading like tides on a shore—Lara’s blood. Moji screams. She tries to. But she has lost her voice. The drumming stops. Lara’s cries fill the night. Moji pulls Oubala off Lara, surprised at her strength and surprised that the creature is somewhat weak for a man. Oubala, smeared in blood from the waist down, stumbles off into the night like a child afraid of the punishment coming.

Lara’s words are incoherent. She gurgles blood. Moji cradles her and uses her hand to plug up the stab wound just below the rib cage. She screams for help, and this time, she finds her pitch. She can hear running feet.

Moji is trotting behind four men who have wrested Lara from her and are carrying her spread-eagle like carcass.

Moji is in a car with strangers. They are driving her and Lara to a hospital.

Moji is in a hallway, striding beside nurses who wheel a gurney carrying Lara.

Moji is waiting outside the operating theater. People in white lab coats scuttle in and out of double-swing doors.

“We’re sorry, madam, but she lost too much blood. We did the best we could.”

Moji collapses.

Day breaks. Moji has not slept a wink. She can hear the voices of sympathizers. In the stillness of her heart, their words create a soundtrack like the drums of Oubala. They have grown tired of trying to get her to talk. She cannot understand why her heart is beating fast. Too fast. It must be her adrenalin, she thinks. It was working overtime. But how come? It wasn’t like this even when she was face-to-face with Oubala. Perhaps it was the combination of her tension and sorrow.

A mortician is giving her the cost of Lara’s embalming, but she is not listening. She is listening to another conversation. A man is speaking with the chief mortuary attendant. The man wants to buy unclaimed bodies for the medical school where he lectures. He says he wants to use them as cadavers. His voice sounds familiar, but she doesn’t care to look up. He stops talking. She’s not sure why but thinks she can feel his eyes. He calls her by her name. She looks up.

Taiwo? Can it be? He has a beard now. He’s bald too. There are small ‘tea bags’ underneath his eyes. He’s not as handsome as she remembers. No wonder her heart is beating with a new strength: Taiwo is here. Could he feel her too, like when they held each other close?

He stares at her. “Is everything okay?” he asks. “Moji, what’s the matter?” She slouches in her chair to avert his eyes. His question makes her realize she’s crying. Her tears want to flow, but she doesn’t want to do it with him watching. She bolts off. She careens down the hallway. She pushes past anyone in her way, brushing away her tears.

She sprints down an arcade free of people. On a long straight path, Taiwo catches her and pulls her to him. She sobs in his arms.

“My life is not going well,” she says. “Please, let’s run off together. We can start over. We can be young again.”

“Moji, tell me what happened?”

“I’m a bad mother.”

It is hard but she manages to speak about her midnight of madness. He listens. He doesn’t judge her. He hugs her tighter and lets her cry some more. He tells her about his life.

He is a Professor of Human Anatomy at Sainte Felicite University, where he graduated. He said he had studied Voodoo out of curiousness. He made a life out of examining corpses, first as an anatomy student and then as a voodoo novitiate, and chose to become an anatomy lecturer. Moji asks him the questions that still bother her even after all these years: Why did he suddenly leave? Did he not love her anymore? He says he came to Benin to have a life that did not include her, not because he doesn’t love her, but because it was for the best. He is not married, he says, and when she asks him why, he smiles and says, “Moji, we’re about to do something we have never done before.”

She discovers what he means when he takes her back to the city, to his lab at the university, where they join hands together and place them over Lara’s knife wound.

Continued…