. She looked at Brother Fonso, and Fonso was not there, only the darkness. She listened but heard nothing; she looked and the accusation of her own conscience reared itself obscuring her vision. All the sins of her past and future life were crowded in that one moment when Fonso stood before her, the archangel of misfortune and death and condemnation. She was the only daughter whom her father loved and doted upon. Her father had never denied her anything. He had seen her married off and she had been wayward and had come to Lagos to pursue the Tropicana lights and the glittering laughter of seductive men, the sequin sheen of the fickle fashions. She had forgotten that she had a father and mother who needed her love. Husbandless, parentless, she had roamed the Nigerian world, a woman among the sophisticates with hollowness for a background. And out of that hollowness this had come.
‘So will you get ready and come now,’ Fonso said with finality.
‘Now? Leave Lagos … now?’
‘Yes, now. There is no time, sister.’ She could feel the intense fire in his glance. ‘If you like, you stay. Papa will die. Is an ol’ man, awright; but he jus’ wan’ to see you before. Doesn’t matter to you. Awright! … I’ve done my own part. Left my business to come to Lagos and look for you the whole town. Lagos which I’ve never been to before. Just to please Papa before he goes.’
Jagua began to cry. ‘But I have nothin’. Them seize all my thin’. How can I come now? Funeral is not a small thin’. How I can come without money! Is a shame! And I never been home for over ten year! No, is too much shame!’
‘No money – all these years?’ His voice was biting. ‘Not you tell me when you come Onitsha that you got cloth business?’ He laughed. ‘And I tol’ you, stop in Onitsha and trade with the Princess! By now, you should have known where you reach.’
Jagua began to sob quietly. She knew Brother Fonso was being cruel to her. She moaned and hung her head, and then she half heard him still talking.
‘Did you hear that Papa wants your money? He never had much money in life. He doesn’t want your money now, in death. He jus’ wants you – Jagua, his daughter who he love. I use to jealous you because of how Papa gone foolish with love for you, Jagua. You, the wayward one; we all try, try, but no: is only you. Now, he’s dyin’, and he forget all you done him—’
‘I don’ fit to go now, Brother Fonso. What I will say dat I bring with me? No, is a very bad time for me. I got nothin’. Funeral ceremony in Ogabu is no small thin’.’ She saw the cynical flash of teeth as Fonso mocked her.
‘Is it because of the men in the room? They’re more important to you than Papa? The money they will give you this night, in this place—’ and he glanced up and down the street, ‘that money will surpass all the money you have seen since dem born you …’
Every word Brother Fonso said gored her consciousness and fermented her spirit till it fizzled out in a cloud of shame. ‘Brother Fonso, is a shame you come meet me like dis. But – to talk true – not because of those people I say I cannot go. Is jus’ – I mean to say, I already shame too much. I don’ fit to reach home now and show my face.’
Imperceptibly Fonso was straightening himself as she talked. By the time she had finished she saw that he was as straight as a palm tree. He had become to her the Day of Judgement, the silent symbol of torture. She pleaded with him, she cried, she struggled to make him see the logic of her decision. He stood there, silent as the dead weight of her past misdeeds, shattering all her coherent thinking and speaking.
‘So you will not go?’ Brother Fonso’s frozen voice chilled her spirit. ‘You leave our Papa to die, to die. He will not come back, you know! You saw him last over ten years ago, and –’
‘Not so, Brother Fonso. I will come, but – give me time.’
He laughed. ‘Till when? When he’s already buried? But, what does the dying man care? Go on! Take the time you want! Death give you de time. He will wait, till you ready for come.’
Brother Fonso turned and walked slowly towards the taxi. She heard him swearing at her. She would have called out to him but her tongue was swollen in her mouth and her voice was dry in her throat. Even her eyes had failed to see the tall form melting quickly and angrily away from her. She heard the taxi reverse, wheel round, move away.
She was standing there and Rosa came and touched her and said: ‘Who dat?’ And Jagua merely looked but could not talk because her throat was parched.
She went at last. In three days she had been able to go round her former friends and to borrow some money. She knew she could never repay the money but she had to obtain it somehow. Something told her that all the money she could find would be valuable. It might even be necessary to pay some very exorbitant medical fees.
Rosa saw her off at the motor station. In her maroon and yellow wax-print dress with the sun on her, she looked fetching. The young man in the blazer came too. Rosa said he was in Lagos for the weekend.
‘What time we expect you, Jagua?’
‘I don’ know, Rosa.’
‘But you goin’ to write we letter, so we know how everythin’ be, not so?’ Rosa smiled. ‘By de way. Jagua. Hope you remember to take de bag dat Uncle Taiwo lef’ with you! I don’ want de politician people to come search me house an’ kill me!’
‘I got it here. Don’ fear, Rosa.’ Jagua glanced by the side of the seat to make sure.
She could not even remember how she performed that journey, but when the lorry turned into the familiar jungle drive, she knew she was home. Home was silent, but it was a silence she could read. Papa was already dead. She knew that now, as the tears came unbidden. No one told her. She could see for herself the cold look in the eyes of all, even the children. The forest road was deserted, and as she trudged along a twig snapped under her foot and the sound reverberated through the jungle. No wine tappers looked down on her from the tree tops, no squirrels chirped as they ate the palm kernels. She saw the dogs, black and dirty, lying dejectedly under the trees. The signboard, DAVID OBI, PASTOR, was covered over with black cloth. Her mother was standing in the middle of a group, head bowed, the women silent and drifting about like smoked ghosts.
‘Mama!’
Her mother’s eyes were yellow. She had shaved off the hair on her head and the clothes she wore, ragged and dull, were in keeping with custom. She saw something else. In the very heaviness of the atmosphere, she felt her mother’s complete loss of hope.
‘You have come at last.’
‘Where’s Papa?’ Jagua asked. She saw the tears. She heard the long howl, from somewhere in the rooms beyond. She had mentioned the unmentionable.
‘Today makes four days,’ said her mother. ‘And you did not come!’
‘Buried … long ago,’ murmured the other women. ‘You did not see Brother Fonso? We sent him to call you. Your father was calling you. Before Fonso reached twenty miles, it happened.’