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On December 15, 2005, I was scheduled to travel to Naija on vacation.
At exactly 4:00 a.m. that morning my telephone rang.
It was a call from Naija and the voice on the other end was urgent and frantic: please send money right away, uncle Faster is in serious trouble. He was arrested yesterday. I hung up the phone while the caller was still talking and cursed the evil spirit that made me answer that call. It had to be a hoax, I thought. Besides, I did not recognize the voice.
At 6:20 a.m., the phone rang again. This time it was uncle Faster’s wife. Alarmed, my blood pressure went up. Why would my uncle, the richest man in our village, indeed the wealthiest man in all the surrounding towns, ask me for money? What type of trouble is he in? His wife would not tell me. All she would say was that he needed about Five Hundred Thousand Naira to bail himself out of jail or…? Or what? Or he would have to marry the pregnant girl.
“Which pregnant girl?” I asked impatiently as I paced the floor.
She hung up.
I sat at the edge of my bed, my head lowered between my hands. My mind raced back home as I thought about Faster, my uncle on my mother’s side. A man of reputedly large wealth, Faster, at an early age, had left my mother’s hometown, half a day's journey from Lagos, to settle down in my village Okike. An extremely flashy man, he was well known in all parts of our village and beyond, where his primary occupation was philanthropy. He pledged money here and there, to this and that group, and to this and that cause. Whether he actually redeemed the pledges, was a topic of frequent gossip and considerable dispute. Rumour had it that he seldom honored his promise; and when he did, it was for a fraction of the pledge. A pledge, the gossips said, was his way of securing free publicity for himself. But publicity for what? Nobody knows.
I kept wondering what type of trouble he could be in.
Faster is a man of fifty or fifty-nine depending on the age group in which he found himself. He gave himself the generic title of businessman, a dubious title at best, because no one seemed to know exactly what he did for a living; and the name Faster, as you may already have guessed, was not his real name. He came about the name in a most unusual way, as a teenager. Due to his large size, in height and weight, tax collectors harassed him constantly, refusing to believe that he was only a teenager. He was frequently on his heels, running from the taxmen. Having paid no taxes, he had no tax papers to present on demand, as required by law. He was easily tired as a consequence of his large size, which seriously hindered his escape. The tax collectors caught him each and every time. Often he was jailed and released, and then caught by a different taxman, sometimes the very same day.
Then one day, after several years of the abuse in the hands of the taxman, he decided he would run no more. What was the point of repeating the same futile process daily, a continuous and fruitless process. The solution was to pay the taxes, right or wrong, for, in his own words, "no one can run faster than his own legs". When he announced that brilliant piece of truism to his peers, the name stuck - no one can run faster than his own legs - or Faster, in abbreviation.
At exactly 8:30 a.m. my telephone rang again. This time I let ring about twenty times, while I considered whether to pick up the receiver. It was my mother on the phone. She was frantic: my son, don’t be angry about what I want to tell you. Go ahead, I said very quickly, because the suspense was killing me. Go ahead, mother. Mother said: “it’s about my brother, your uncle. He is the man who impregnated the wife of your brother who lives in New York. Remember that the girl had been living with me while your brother lived in America… I tried to keep it a secret to save the family from shame… but the girl went to the police…”
“Uncle Faster is the person who impregnated Oyaw’s wife?” I shouted.
“Mother”, I said, with a note of finality, “let him marry the girl. She is not Oyaw’s wife anyway. She was just his fiancée. Let uncle Faster marry her”.
“But”, my mother said, her voice breaking with emotion, “but … your uncle already has a wife…”
“Let him die in jail then”. I hung up.
My stomach turned inside out and sweat ran down my brow, not because of my uncle, but because I had hung up on my dear mother. I imagined her crying across the Atlantic.
I caught my pre-scheduled flight to Naija that same day.
On December 16, I arrived home on the same evening that uncle Faster was released from jail, arranged by his lawyer, in order for him to marry the girl and avoid prosecution for rape and adultery. He did not have the money for bail.
Out of curiosity, I went, uninvited, to the pre-arranged village ceremony where my uncle was supposed to marry the girl. I had been there before with mother and my brother Oyaw five months earlier. Once again, the entire village of people and animals of the girl’s village was there waiting for my uncle, Elder Mannoc presiding. I could not look my uncle in the face as I sat several yards away from him and my mother.
When his name was called at the village square, Faster began with his signature practice. He pledged two bags of money to each of the elders, which instantly drew whispers and murmurs of condemnation among the women. Bribery was forgivable where and when appropriate, but bribery with a pledge? Public bribery of the elders who were the custodians of community morality? The elders themselves, seemingly stunned, opened and closed their mouths, then waived him along. He, instead, swaggered into the crowd, handing out paper money to the women, who were not impressed. They took the money anyway, for, you must understand, that in our land, to accept money from a man even when you disapprove of him or his conduct are two separate matters, neither of which should trouble you.
The crowd was neither excited by the free money nor by his patented swagger, which normally extracted excitement from bystanders. He would take two quick steps forward, pause very briefly, then two steps, then pause. One. Two. Pause. One. Two. Pause. Each time he paused, the only excited young man in the crowd shouted “Faster! Faster!”
The adults who knew him by reputation saw his quick steps as a residue of his experiences running from the tax collectors; and yet, with no sense of contradiction, they saw his brief pauses also as a remnant of the same taxing days. They saw no inconsistency in this because, as we say in our part of the world, no one is ever cured of madness; that is to say that once you have suffered from madness, you are forever a madman; thereafter, raise your voice in public and your friends will whisper that your madness is resurfacing, but keep completely quiet and they will still whisper that quietness is a known symptom of madness. That is why, in the eyes of the public, no one ever recovers from madness.
So when the crowd saw Faster's strident one, two, pause, one, two, pause, the image of the man bolting from the taxman began to return. Was this not the man who....
"Hold it!", Elder Mannoc interrupted, "Hold it! My son, what do you think you are doing?"
"I'm distributing money", Faster responded with a startled look, offended by the interruption. "What do you think I'm doing?"
Murmurs and whispers of astonishment among the women grew louder. Now Elder Mannoc was not your usual amiable elder. He was a man who had served in the English man's war. The name and year of the war and the geographical region of the battles was not known; The Elder had limited education and couldn't care less about geography. But ever since he returned from the war, he had become the loudest and boldest man in the surrounding towns. Murmurs and whispers among the women did not subside.
The Elder started to call for a recess and dismiss Faster when his colleagues quickly pulled him aside and whispered to him soothingly. He calmed down.
"Young man", he said to Faster, "would you stop your foolishness and return to your seat?"
Faster peered at him for a long minute, hesitated, then swaggered back to his seat.
"Now, young man, as you know, we don't tell an adult to come out from the scorching sun - that may be his choice. By the same token, we shouldn't have to tell you what to do or say on this occasion. Please proceed."
Faster did not appreciate the lecture. He frowned.
"What do I need to say or do?" he asked, in a tone which indicated that he really did not want an answer, and drew more murmurs of disapproval. An elderly woman, carrying her walking stick, abruptly got up, began to walk away, muttering something about today's thoughtless youth who need some education about the seriousness of wooing a bride. When she came close to Faster, she raised her stick in a mock attempt to strike him. The entire crowd went wild with applause for her and jeers at Faster. She walked away, still talking to herself.
Again, Elder Mannoc wanted to dismiss Faster right there and then and call a recess. The other elders counseled Mannoc to give Faster another chance. Scold him, they said, but do not dismiss him; our daughter needs a husband.
"Do you have a name, a town, family? What is the purpose of your presence here? Those are the types of information you need to address first before we ask you further questions. There will be time enough to spread your wealth later. Now proceed."
With an outward display of anger and wounded pride, Faster himself rebuked the elders. "You know who I am. Everyone here, indeed everyone in the whole country, knows me. This is a waste of time for me. Please produce the girl right away and let me know the bride price. Whatever the price, I will pay. In fact, I'm willing to pledge..."
"What nonsense!" announced the Elder, shouting down the belligerent suitor. "You've proven our forefathers adage that a heedless fool will not need to bribe his way to his destiny for he always gets there sooner than later." The elders looked at each other and nodded their heads. Words were not needed because, as we say in the village, further discussion of an issue already settled is done with the nodding of heads.
As everyone began to disperse, you could hear the women heaping insult and jeers on Faster. The pregnant girl, a young woman of nineteen years of age, who apparently had suffered enough without the assistance of a husband, suddenly ran out of the house and into his hands. Faster’s wife of ten years, who had been sitting near me, away from Faster, sobbing, suddenly ran to the girl and embraced her. Thus, without ever paying the bride price, which my uncle certainly did not have, the girl, Faster, and Faster’s wife, hand in hand, went home with him.
Taking the girl as a second wife; marriage, no matter how unusual, no matter how incomplete, was, apparently, all that the law needed to keep Faster from going back to jail. When I saw them the next day, they were all happy and my mother was at peace.
As soon as I returned to the U.S.A., I placed a call to my brother Oyaw in New York. “My brother,” I said, “you won’t believe what story I brought back from home…”
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Posted by Robot| 26.11.2006 23:35