The Evening Of The Morning

013

Agbo looked at the two dead boys on the ground, expecting their corpse to twitch but nothing happened. Then his gaze brushed to his amputated leg, and then to the unconscious girl. This was not the Christmas he envisioned.

"The new year is almost here." Magaga said, "I never told you the memory that the new year would blur."

Agbo didn't care about it. At least not now.

Since Agbo remained silent, Magaga went on to narrate the time when he was a god; when he had sailed the high tides of the Atlantic with the Portuguese; the first foreign country to arrive at the shores in Badagiri, Nigeria. About twenty of them. They had riffles. And when they came in contact with the first black man, they shot him. No, Alfonso, a man with lengthy beards, shot him out of paranoia. The black man was huge and had an axe in his hand. The black man's name was Akerele. Magaga, who was Carlos at that time, made sure to find out. He was the father of the girl who Carlos later fell in love with.

The gunshot attracted the closest ear; a woman, who wore only a goatskin skirt. On seeing the white people the woman took to her heels, her breast flapping up and down. She alerted the whole kindred. And minutes later, a mob, spare headed by a naked man holding a giggling staff, surrounded them. Carlos and his crew were seeing more black people than they had ever seen in slave camps. It was no longer a myth; Black people were real.

"Bring down your gun!" Carlos told his fellows.

"What are they saying?" Alfonso who had mistakenly shot Akerele asked, looking panicked, changing his aim from one person to the other.

"I don't understand what they are saying." Another said.

"Because you can't understand their language." Carlos said, "Stand down soldiers!"

The naked man and the mob behind him were yelling different words that even Carlos couldn't comprehend.

The naked man's pupils slid up and his eyes became wholly white. He stretched his hand, as though giving blessing but the men's breathing seized and in a bid to hold their neck, their rifle fell to the ground. Only Carlos was still standing. The rest were suffocating.

Behind the naked man, who had both hands stretched, two little boys, bathed in chalk, chopped off the head of the white hens in their hands with a swing of a sharp blade. They bathed the naked man, who Carlos had realized was a spiritual man, with the blood pumping from the neck of the chicken.

There, Carlos noticed a similarity in practice. For blood is sacred. The naked man focused the invincible energy coursing through him on Carlos. Carlos felt it, but it was weak. If it was humans blood, the energy would have been stronger, Carlos knew that and also that the language of the mind was universal. With his telepathic power, he heard a certain name or word revolving around, and he sensed it was something sacred. Carlos spoke to the naked man, he told him that he was Amadioha. To the unclad old man, Amadioha was supreme and could be the only one who could do what the man was doing; withstanding his powers and talking without speaking.

Still talking to the unclad man through his mind, Carlos said, I am the god of thunder. The atmosphere changed and dark clouds scudded. "I bring the rain." Instantly rain began to fall, but just within that vicinity. And the mob went rigid.

"Bow!"

The naked man, who alone heard what Carlos said, dropped his staff and bowed. Murmur waved around the crowd.

"Amadioha! Amadioha!" The naked man said aloud, head pinned to the floor. "The one who watches when people sleeps, the one who kills when angered, and curses the land with famine, but when adored, fills the women with seeds and exults the lowly."

Is this man Amadioha? The question waved around the crowd in whispers. And one by one they fell to their knees. In a matter of seconds, the mob around him were on their knees. His men were also lifeless around him. He spoke to the naked man again. He didn't know what they called it, so he just said, "Take me to my house." The Christians would say, Church, while Moslems say, Mosque.

The naked man guided Carlos to the shrine which smelt of death. A smell that would make one sniff out a dead rat under the chair or under a box, but Carlos didn't need to search. Carcasses of different animals- Chickens, dog, goat, sheep, humans-were littered everywhere. Carlos couldn't stand the dog-awful stench. He demanded that a new hut be built in a different location. One bigger than the King's palace was built and while the construction was ongoing he was a guest in the king's palace- A wide space dotted with huts roofed with thatch.

The news went far and wide and was still travelling that Amadioha had come in human form. The Igwe's palace crawled with worshipers. Guards held the edges of long sticks, forming a kind of barricade that gave Carlos a few feet of privacy. Carlos was getting paranoid. For two months Carlos didn't step out of the hut. And the people camped there. He ate the roasted offering that the chief priest brought every day. Some days, it was about five unspiced chickens. Other days, it was a full goat, and that day, as the Chief priest brought his offering-two unspiced turkeys -to his hut, Carlos spoke to him. "Tell the people to leave, or else I would curse the land with famine." Of course, he couldn't do that, but the chief priest didn't know. The chief priest conveyed the message to them and from Carlos' hut he heard the murmur that waved around. But by midnight, when he peeped outside, the space was empty. Only the dim yellow light glowed from inside the huts around. Carlos wanted to understand them as he had done many cultures.

The easiest way to learn the ethos of a people is as a child; growing up into the culture, that way the culture would be rooted in the child. To become a child, Carlos had to find a woman to love. His love life was another adventure for him. He wanted it to be as the last drama, performed by slaves, he had watched before setting out on the Atlantic in search of the unknown.

But the universe already had something in store for him. The Oba's daughter came to him. She laid outside his hut and sang words of praise. It was exactly midnight, and her voice woke everyone up, even her father. They all watched from a distance. The chief priest had given strict instruction; one conveyed by Carlos, not to go within Amadioha's hut.

During the day, they complied with the rule, but at night, Carlos would hear footsteps and maybe a bleating goat, or the muffled crock of a hen. Through the feel of the earth, he sensed that they sliced the goat's or chicken's neck and said inaudible prayers. He heard the language of the mind. A young woman prayed that her father, the man that Alfonso shot, rest in peace and that Amadioha healed her husband who suffered injury while hunting an elephant. Another, a youth prayed for his harvest to be bountiful. They left the carcass there and morning came and night came again and three people came before his hut. This time the king-Oba- was one. He prayed that a qualified suitor would ask for his daughter's hand in marriage and that she stopped prostituting. He sliced four goats and left.

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