Indigo (33 page)

“Seventy-five,” said someone from the back.

This was a friendly auction and part of its etiquette was that as each bid was made, others from the audience craned their necks around and smiled.

“Eighty,” said someone else, making the audience sway.

The potato chips sold for one hundred and ten naira, about one hundred and twenty-five bucks, and the auctioneer moved on to the second item, dinner for six at the Chinese restaurant at the top of the Eko Hotel.

“Let's start this one at eighty-five,” said Leonard Holtz.

Bramwell was sitting on his grandmother's far side. Nurudeen was back in the flat watching a video. Jerry knew that Bramwell had been living with his grandmother and it struck him how different the boys' lives would likely turn out to be, Nurudeen falling under a Western sphere while Bramwell followed his father's path, learning his grandmother's ways of the world. “Brammy, go and bring us another bottle of wine,” Jerry said. He gave Bramwell some money and watched while the boy made his way across the courtyard to the makeshift bar.

It was just then, just after Bramwell left, that the auction audience noticed the soldiers standing at the door. There were three of them, and then three more. Leonard Holtz could see them better than anyone else, and though he was holding up a handmade doll and about to start the bidding again, he said, “May I help you?” The quality of his voice in the microphone made everyone feel startled, but some of the audience nevertheless craned their necks and smiled, nodding as if the soldiers had come to bid.

It wasn't clear who, among the soldiers, was in charge, but the way they stood there reminded Jerry of the three men he and Parker and Louis had faced on the morning of the coup, of the unlucky young sergeant who had followed them into Jankara, and he felt a certain vertigo settle in. When the voice came, however, it did not belong to anyone at the door. Rather, someone at one of the auction tables had stood up, a Nigerian who was not in uniform but in formal tribal clothes. This was the man who had purchased the potato chips, though Jerry hadn't gotten a clear look at him before.

“If we could speak for a moment outside we could let these good people continue with their evening,” said the man. He was clearly addressing Beany's mom, and when she stood away from the table it seemed to Jerry as if Beany stood up too. Her white gown seemed now to be a business suit, her headwrap a tribal cap identical to the one that Jerry had worn. “Who is speaking?” Beany's mother asked, and when she continued, saying, “Move into the light, let me get a better look at you,” it was Beany's voice that she used. Jerry and Pamela both looked at her but they could no longer find the woman in the spot where she stood.

The table where the man sat was at the center of things, a fourteen-seater, but the man himself was not connected with the school. This was Tunde Phelps-Neuman, whom Jerry had last seen in court. Then he had seemed short but now he was tall. He was a reddish-looking man, a thin man with a mild and freckled face.

“I am sorry to say that you are under arrest, madam,” Tunde Phelps-Neuman sadly said, but though he spoke to the image of the woman before him, for everyone at Jerry's table Beany was suddenly full-blooded again, coming from his mother one last time, standing above them and leaning against his cane.

It was clear from his demeanor that Beany expected some kind of exchange, that he wanted something public to happen to make the miracle of his return worthwhile, but Tunde Phelps-Neuman's embarrassment was too strong and too ordinary for that. He was a let's-get-through-this-quietly man, and he only said, “I am sorry about this interruption.” He was looking at Beany but speaking to everyone else.

“When will we ever be ruled by men who can keep their promises?” Beany asked, but by this time Phelps-Neuman had moved away from his table. He took a few steps forward, but as the first three soldiers moved in from the door, Jerry, who had been catatonic in his chair, suddenly found his voice.

“Mr. Phelps-Neuman, this is U.S. Embassy land,” he said. “It is part of the United States. You have no power to arrest anyone here.”

Phelps-Neuman very much wanted to finish the job he'd been given to do, but Jerry's comment stopped him. He didn't know anything about embassy land.

Jerry nodded, allowing a slight smile. He could feel the man's indecision, believed he could see a willingness to relent on his face. When he heard the auction gavel pounding behind him he even briefly thought that Leonard Holtz would come to his aid by trying to resume the bidding. Leonard, however, was mad.

“What are you saying, Jerry?” he asked. “This isn't embassy land. This is Nigeria. This is Nigerian land and he can arrest this woman if he has the power to do so.”

It was true, of course, the ground was as much Nigeria as Onitsha had been, as much Nigeria as Jerry's prison cell.

Jerry did not know what more to say. He had stood up next to Beany and spoken on Beany's behalf but when he looked again it was, of course, Beany's mother standing there, looking a little unsteady after the tremendous effort she had made.

Jerry tried to speak again, but he had waited too long, and Phelps-Neuman had found his voice. “Please,” he said. He then ordered the three soldiers to Jerry's table where they surrounded Beany's mother and escorted her away.

For the longest time there was silence in the schoolyard. Still angry, Leonard Holtz had his gavel raised, but everyone watched the doorway that the soldiers and the old woman and then Phelps-Neuman had gone through. In a moment, though, Tunde Phelps-Neuman came back, walking over to the table where he had previously sat. He picked up his carton of potato chips and carried it back to the auctioneer. He had bought the potato chips but he said that he wanted the money he had spent on them to be considered a donation to the school. He said he hoped the potato chips could be sold again.

That was all. When he left, this time, a little applause began. Certain parents, first Phelps-Neuman's table mates, but finally others too, applauded him as he walked back out the gate. His generosity with the potato chips had disarmed them, mitigating the irritation of the arrest, and though Jerry and his own table mates sat stunned and silent, alone with what they had seen, Leonard Holtz put his anger behind him and held the potato-chip carton up so that everyone could see it when the applause died down. “What we have here,” he said, “is an example of generosity in the extreme.”

The bidding began on the potato chips again, and near Jerry's table, where he and Pamela and Sondra and Smart and Parker and Louis all still sat, LeRoY resumed tapping with his hammer, imitating the auctioneer but getting the whole thing down, turning the possibility of miraculous life into the most incredible kind of abstract art.

LeRoY did it right before their eyes. And at the end of the evening Leonard Holtz was triumphant too, selling first the potato chips and then the whole of panel number three for unheard-of sums.

Acknowledgments

The author wishes to thank the University of Nevada, Las Vegas Foundation, and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas Research Council for generous financial support during the writing of this book. In addition the author wishes to thank Stan & Ebba Jacobson and the faculty and staff of the American International School of Lagos, Nigeria, for their kindness and hospitality, and Mr. Patrick Okoh and his associates, for advice and help concerning the Nigerian legal system.

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1992 Richard Wiley

ISBN: 978-1-4976-5929-2

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