Better Never Than Late Read online

  He did live in Lagos for a little while after university before falling for the temperate climate of Jos and moving there. And he had loved Jos, loved setting up a business and doing well until the riots when he lost everything.

  As he unlocked his bicycle, ready to go home, his mind was still on Prosperous and on the life they could have had, snatched away by hoodlums in Jos and exacerbated by his uncontrolled temper. The way Prosperous had looked at him once the boiling water hit her back. He saw her face transform from shock to confusion and finally, settle into disappointment. He had said he was sorry, he had regretted it immediately, but Prosperous had said nothing in response. If they had never left Jos, he would never have become this version of himself he had difficulty recognizing. With his supermarket doing well and plans to expand, he could have given whatever children they had (and he had hoped that they would be many) a luxurious life. Although Prosperous had a well paid job and didn’t need his money, he still treated her, bought her things “just because.” Belgium had seemed like a good idea, somewhere he could recuperate from his losses and start afresh, but no one had warned him of how low they would have to go. No one had warned him of how it could transform a man. Of how it would steal the fire from Prosperous’s eyes. Often, he felt guilty but something (embarrassment?) stopped him from admitting to Prosperous that he wished they had never moved here. Or that even though he prayed for children, he worried too that they would not have the life he had mapped out for them.

  When they started dating, he had not wanted to take Prosperous to Onitsha to see his father. The old man had refused to move from the one bedroom flat he lived in even when his son had enough money to move him to a much better house, in a much better part of town. When Prosperous suggested, on their trip to Enugu to visit her parents, that they went to Onitsha too, he made a murmured excuse. He could not tell her that he was too embarrassed to let her see where he grew up, the communal courtyard where people cooked on kerosene stoves, the gutters that curved and stretched along the road which served as toilets and dustbins for inhabitants who had long come to accept their position as the forgotten of the state, the one room he had grown up in, the shared roofless bathroom built of zinc sheets. When his father eventually came to visit them in Jos, he complained about how wasteful they were, how the help sliced off too much of the end of yams (Haba! What that girl cuts off can feed a grown man!); how they had two refrigerators (one in the kitchen and one in their bedroom) when one would do. He rationed water too, not flushing the toilet in the guest bedroom he used after every use. It intrigued Prosperous, this difference between his father’s parsimoniousness and Agu’s extravagance. She did not understand it, she said. ‘You both like extremes!’

  Agu’s father had been on the brink of wealth before the Biafran war broke out. He and two other friends had a liquor store. ‘Business was doing well. We were in talks with a company in Spain to be the sole suppliers of Perry Brandy when the war broke out and put an end to that.’ After the war, like every other Biafran, he lost whatever money he had in the bank and was compensated with 20 Nigerian pounds by the victorious government. ‘What could anyone do with that amount of money unless you were a magician?’ Having lived through the war and having been poor for so long, his father was very cautious around wealth, he told Prosperous. With Agu, having tasted poverty had the reverse effect on him. He was determined to douse himself in his wealth so that none of the stench of poverty remained. And he needed not just the physical things that money could buy but also witnesses to his wealth. It filled him up like food to host friends for lavish meals, to hear them praise the quality of the dishes and the drinks they were served. Continuing the tradition in Turnhout rooted him to a past he hoped to return to someday. It made his loss bearable. Prosperous had asked him once why they had to have their friends over every week for ‘these mini parties,’ but he could not tell her. She should be able to see, he thought, that he needed it. That they needed it. ‘I spend all day cooking,’ she complained. ‘You never help!’ If she worked nights like he did, standing on his feet, watching out for old, dented bread tins that might clog the oven exit because the factory owners were too cheap to replace the tins, reaching under the moving conveyor belts to pick up bread that might have fallen (they had been warned never to hit the emergency stop button because doing so kept the loaves in the oven longer and they browned too much to be sold and the factory lost money ‘and if you lose us money, you won’t be paid,’), heaving sacks of flour, pouring buckets of nuts into the right mixer for their “Bread’n’ Nuts”, pushing pallets of bread, she would know that expecting him to help, that asking him to help, was unreasonable. Besides, she had the other women. They always disappeared into the kitchen with her. ‘You swan in and out of the house,’ she said once, ‘and go straight to bed.’ Her words had stung him. Did she really think that what he did was “swanning”?

  In a few days, he would be 48. He should be a father to many children now, living in his eight bedroom home in Jos (with a German Shepherd, a swimming pool and a tennis court in the backyard), with a wife who had the same fire in her eyes that had excited him years ago. He shouldn’t be riding home on a bicycle so early in the morning, a cap pulled down to cover his ears from the bite of the cold. When she complained at the beginning of having to work as a cleaner, he had been too ashamed to talk of his own job, the continuous, boring drudgery of it. A child might make things better, might fill him up the way having visitors in Jos gush over his wealth had. He was tired, so, so tired. ‘Babies bring strength,’ his father always said. ‘If I didn’t have you to look after, I would not have survived your mother’s death.’

  He could see his building now, illumined by street lights. It was morning but not quite clear yet. He got off his bike and rolled it the rest of the way to the building. At the door, he ran into a neighbour, a man much older than he was but with the energy of a much younger person. It did not matter what type of weather it was, the man was always out at the same time walking his dog. Every time they met, his greetings were always effusive. ‘Hallo!’ the man said. Agu returned the greeting. He reached down and patted the dog which had jumped up, in its usual fashion, to him for acknowledgment. ‘She likes you. Of everyone who lives here, you’re the one she likes the most,’ the man said to Agu. ‘She isn’t always this happy to see everyone. Or if she is, she’s too proud to show it!’

  Agu stood in the cold and watched the man and his dog walk away, thinking of how it was only white people that would characterize a dog as proud. And then he thought of Mr. Iwejuo, his Form 1 Bible Knowledge teacher at CKC who began each class by writing ‘pride’ on the blackboard in huge, curling letters and drawing a stick figure on the ground behind the word. He called it a “Meditation on Humility.” While Agu stood there, thinking of Mr. Iwejuo’s lesson, the teacher’s voice came to him as clear as if he was standing there with him. ‘Pride goeth before a fall.’ The teacher had the class chorus this before every class. ‘If you do not want to fall, get rid of pride,’ he told them. ‘But when you fall, as mere mortals do, remember this: all have sinned and everyone deserves grace.’ Years after Mr. Iwejuo’s “Meditation on Humility” spawned racy jokes amongst mischievous young boys about Grace being a girl from a neighbouring school, the lesson they were supposed to learn unravelled itself to him.

  It struck him that it wasn’t embarrassment that stopped him from talking to Prosperous about his job, that stopped him from accepting her parents’ offer when he needed it, that stopped him from admitting to her that he felt guilty. It was pride. The same pride that made him want to keep up the lifestyle he had in Jos even though Prosperous had to bear the brunt of it. The very same pride that made him (and here, he paused, wanting to cry) raise a hand against Prosperous, pour boiling water on her for shaming him. For telling him to “fuck off” in front of the other men. He was that stick figure on the floor, felled by his arrogance. But would he get grace from Prosperous? If he could not forgive himself, would she be able to? He
hoped so, oh he so desperately hoped so. He let himself in, ready to become a new man, deserving of grace.

  Better Never Than Late

  The church was unusually cool for an April morning, thanks to the air conditioning. That was one of the reasons why Kambi had transferred. It was one of the few in the city with a working generator and fully functional air conditioning. Unlike others she had tried and discarded like old scarves, The Holiest of Holies Jehovah Jireh Jehovah El Shaddai Evangelical Church of God had both air and spirit. She felt it as soon as she stepped in, the first time she visited the church. That first day, the spirit had whirled around her head like a wind and she had heard people in the congregation let forth a slew of words neither she nor anybody else understood. She had lived thirty years without knowing she had it in her: this gift of tongues. But Pastor Moses Elijah Samuel Okeke had helped her discover it. The pastor had come to her and laid his hand on her head and told her, ‘Open your mouth and let it out.’

  Kambi felt his gold ring pressing on her forehead, felt the cool promise of it all. Her legs began to quiver as he spoke. ‘Let it out oh sistah! Release your tongue, sistah! Let the spirit speak through you!’ He would not budge until she had shut her eyes, and opened her mouth. Her tongue was tied. ‘Focus,’ the pastor whispered fiercely into her ears. He said, ‘Imagine that the Holy Spirit is a dove perching right now on your shoulder, sistah.’ Kambi focused. The darkness in her mind cleared and conjured up two doves perched one on each shoulder. Kambi opened her mouth, and oh, what words had flown out in that single moment. Now she was an expert tongues-speaker.

  Kambi was in top form this morning. This was not just an ordinary service. Today had been reserved for exorcism. And not just any exorcism, but that of a witch, and at Kambi’s personal request. It was revealed in a dream to her cousin, Ada, who lived with her, that Kambi had remained unmarried after all her fasting and special prayer requests because of Ijeoma.

  ‘That’s what you get for doing some of these girls a favour,’ she said, as if Kambi had knowingly handpicked a witch to work for her. When she went scouting for a maid, Ada had advised her to get someone from home, someone whose family they knew. Ada knew someone who would be perfect for the job and promised to supervise the girl, but Kambi was all too aware of the sort of trouble that could cause. Ejim, her colleague, never stopped complaining of how her house was overrun by her maid’s family and because they were related to Ejim too, she could neither sack the maid nor ask the visitors to leave. No way Kambi was going to make that mistake, so instead of someone from her village, she had asked the security man at work if he knew someone she could employ.

  Two days later, he turned up with a small, dark girl who walked with a limp.

  ‘Forget the limp,’ he said when Kambi’s eyes settled on that unfortunate leg. ‘This one here works like a jackie.’ And she did. Ijeoma was worth the five thousand naira agents’ fees Kambi paid the gateman. And the three thousand she gave the gateman for Ijeoma’s family every month. The girl had never given Kambi any reason to complain until two days ago when Ada had her revelatory dream. Kambi was all for kicking her out of the house immediately but Ada, who had been born-again since she was thirteen and was clearly more experienced in spiritual matters, said, ‘You need to bind her first so that she can release your luck, then you can kick her out if you want to.’ Kambi conceded. It had only been a few years since she’d “seen the light”. She had two degrees, but enough self-knowledge to know that she was out of her depth here. Ada spoke with the authority of one who had done this before, telling Kambi of how she had been one of the few prayer warriors in her former church, tasked with helping the pastor when he performed exorcisms. ‘To fight these demons, Kambi, your spirit has to be strong like a rock!’ And God had blessed Ada, with a strong spirit, in addition to giving her the gift of “sight.”

  Before becoming born-again, Kambi had never attributed any meaning to dreams. When she was introduced to Freud in Pyschology 101 in her first year of university, she argued with her classmates that Freud was wrong. Dreams did not represent anything, they were just random images, she said. ‘But they are not,’ the Pastor who baptised her years after she left university and became religious told her. Dreams were messages from God but not everyone had the gift of interpreting them. Only those with the gift of “sight” knew how to untangle their dreams to find the message in them.

  The way it was shown to Ada, Ijeoma was a witch and had tied up Kambi’s luck since entering her house. Now that Kambi thought of it, it explained a lot of things. She was not ugly. She had, in fact, been a runner up in the Miss Campus Beauty Contest at university. She had a good job working in the Human Resources department of an airline. In the past year alone, she had fasted and prayed more times than she cared to count, to meet a suitable man. In the past two years, she had not even had a serious relationship. It was not that she was afraid of being alone, or “dying alone” like one of her aunts dramatically put it. She just wanted those aunts (and uncles) and her mother to stop asking her, ‘Kambi, when are we meeting the one?’ whenever she turned up to family gatherings alone, asking in tones that insinuated that it was a shortcoming of hers that prevented her from getting married. There was nothing wrong with her, so why could she not find a husband?

  ‘Your husband is being held from you by that witch,’ Ada assured her. ‘She has powerful spirits working through her. Do you know how she got that limp?’

  Kambi said it was from a polio infection she had had as a child. That was what the security guard had told her.

  ‘Nonsense!’ Ada laughed. ‘She sacrificed that leg for her powers. I saw it in a vision. Powerful spirits in her! And you know what else? You remember when Agu visited with his wife before travelling? Ijeoma tied up Prosperous’s luck too.’

  Kambi would have laughed had anyone but Ada, her serious, pious cousin said this. Before being born again and discovering that evil spirits roamed the world, she would have laughed this off, even if it had come from Ada, but now it made sense. No wonder her cousin and his wife were yet to be blessed with children. She suddenly remembered that Ijeoma had flitted around the couple, asking every second, ‘You want something anty? You want something onkul?’ And they had thought that she was just being thoughtfully solicitous. Agu had even said, ‘What a gem of a maid you have here, Kambi. Small but mighty!’ And all the while the witch was busy plotting evil against them. Agu wanted babies. He said so himself every time they spoke on the phone. He could not understand why his wife was unable to conceive. Now, they knew the source of his childlessness. ‘What a wicked child,’ Kambi said. ‘What do we do now?’

  ‘We will beat out a confession from her and get the pastor to bind her on Sunday. We will fight her spirits!’

  The beating was necessary, Ada explained, because it meant that once Ijeoma confessed she would be powerless to harm Kambi for a while. ‘And before she can regain her strength, the pastor would have bound her and thrown away the key!’ Ada shouted triumphantly. But to be on the safe side, Kambi was not to eat any food Ijeoma made. Ada took over the shopping and the cooking. Jobless, a year after graduating from university, she had the time for these things. It was the least she could do for the cousin who had taken her in and offered her a roof, she told Kambi, waving away her gratitude.

  That Friday, Kambi took the day off. Beating out a confession was a serious chore on its own without the distractions of earthly labour. She had strengthened herself with prayers, led by Ada who had asked angels to be by their side as they took on the witch. Kambi felt full of the Holy Spirit, as if it were food she had eaten until she could eat no more. She was ready. Ada had told her to catch the little girl unawares. ‘Do not give her time to make up stories and confuse you.’ Ijeoma was dusting the centre table when Kambi came to her from behind. Thwack! The first lash of the koboko landed decisively on her back. ‘Anty?’ She turned to look at Kambi, her eyes wide, like someone who had seen something scary, a ghost maybe.

  ‘Wit
ch! You think I don’t know, eh?’ The koboko whizzed through the air and landed on Ijeoma’s back. Thwack!

  ‘Anty?’ She writhed.

  Thwack! It landed close to her face.

  Ijeoma slid to the floor, hunched her back and buried her face in her chest to protect it.