Helon Habila
Oil on Water
To my cousin Gabriel. In memory.
Acknowledgments
I wish to thank all those who contributed to bringing this book to reality, too numerous to mention here by name. I am particularly thankful to my agents, David Godwin Associates, for their encouragement and support, and my editor, Alane Salierno Mason, for her invaluable comments and suggestions.
To my wife Susan and the kids, thanks for putting up with me and seeing me through those dark and broody moments of writing.
Part 1
1
I am walking down a well-lit path, with incidents neatly labeled and dated, but when I reach halfway memory lets go of my hand, and a fog rises and covers the faces and places, and I am left clawing about in the dark, lost, and I have to make up the obscured moments as I go along, make up the faces and places, even the emotions. Sometimes, to keep on course, I have to return to more recognizable landmarks, and then, with this safety net under me, I can leap onto less certain terrain.
So, yes, there was an accident, a fire. An explosion in the barn with the oil drums. The fire flew on the wind from house to house, and in a few minutes half the town was ablaze. Many people died, including John’s father. They say he died trying to save my sister, Boma, and if it wasn’t for him, she’d have died. My father was imprisoned. He doesn’t smoke anymore since that day. My mother returned to her parents’ village, where she still lives. And as my sister burned, and my family disintegrated, I was in Lagos listening to lectures, eating dinner in Chinese restaurants, and I didn’t hear about the tragedy till I returned home with my journalism certificate.
No, it was not a pipeline accident, as I told the white man, as I wrote in my published piece. But it might easily have been one, as in countless other villages. My father is still in prison, Boma and I still go to visit him, and each time he sees her face he turns away and his hands shake, and recently she has stopped going. My mother comes from the village once every month to see him. Occasionally I go with her, and I watch them look at each other, and sometimes they have a lot to talk about, and sometimes they just stare at each other in silence. The last time I went with her was over a month ago. I sit away from them, but I can hear what they are saying: She tells him about her life in the village, the farm, how the harvest this year has been good. He listens, nodding his head, and all the time he stares at her, trying to catch her eye, but she avoids his eyes as she speaks. And she calls to me, Rufus, come here. Why do you stand so far away by the window? The guard pretends to be reading his paper but he watches us all the time. I remember that the room smelled of the roasted peanuts my mother brought for my father. I remember that the guard had a bald spot. My mother looked thinner, darker.
The fog lifts as suddenly as it descended, and the sun shines brightly again, and once more I am on sure ground, but I know the fog can return again, get into memory’s eyes, blinding it momentarily.
After a while the sky and the water and the dense foliage on the riverbanks all looked the same: blue and green and blue-green misty. The whole landscape was now a mere trick of light, vaporous and shape-shifting, appearing and disappearing behind the fog. It was early morning, but already we had been in the boat for over two hours, leaving the sea and heading up a tributary, going west. Irikefe Island, also known as Half-Moon Island because of its distinct crescent-shaped coastline, had long since disappeared, swallowed by the distance and the darkness cast by the mist that rose like smoke from the river-
banks. Midriver the water was clear and mobile, but toward the banks it turned brackish and still, trapped by mangroves in whose branches the mist hung in clumps like cotton balls. Ahead of us the mist arched clear over the water like a bridge. Sometimes, entering an especially narrow channel in the river, our light wooden canoe would be so enveloped in the dense gray stuff that we couldn’t see each other as we glided silently over the water. I was wet and cold and hungry, and not for the first time I asked myself if going in search of the kidnapped British woman with Zaq was wise after all. This was our ninth day on her trail. The other journalists had long since returned to Port Harcourt, and I was sure the whole adventure — or rather misadventure — was now to them nothing but a memory, anecdotal currency to trade for a drink on a lazy day in the press clubroom.
Zaq dismissed them with a wave of his hand. — That is the difference between great reporters and average ones.
He was no doubt one of the best this country had ever produced, and because of that I respected his opinion, but right then I’d have settled for food, dry clothes and shelter over greatness, or opinion, for that matter.
— Tell me, Rufus, my friend, what do we seek?
It wasn’t a question, but I answered anyway.
— The woman, and the Professor.
— I said “what,” not “whom.” Forget the woman and her kidnappers for a moment. What we really seek is not them but a greater meaning. Remember, the story is not the final goal.
— Then what is?
— The meaning of the story, and only a lucky few ever discover that. But I think you know that instinctively, otherwise you wouldn’t be here. Everything will turn out fine, you’ll see.
His shirt was wet under the arms and at the back. He was still fighting the sudden fever that had dogged him since we left Port Harcourt, and the more his health had deteriorated, the more he had taken to philosophizing over almost anything: a bat flying overhead, a dead fish on the oil-polluted water, a gathering of rain clouds in the clear sky. But I was glad his mind was still capable of philosophizing. The farther we ventured into the forest, the more I found myself turning to him with questions. I had no idea what he meant about the story and its meaning, but perhaps I would find out before this trip was done. Right now my only hope was that he would continue to hold on till we were back in Port Harcourt, on dry land. Ultimately, things didn’t turn out fine, as I hoped and as he promised, especially for him, but then maybe he was talking not about himself but about me. He might have felt that he had drifted past a point in his river that was beyond return.
In the boat was a bag of dried fruit and a plastic bottle full of water, all of which the old man said were from the priest, Naman. Zaq took out his last bottle of whiskey and, with a heavy sigh, opened it and sipped.
— Isn’t it a bit too early?
— Never too early. Take a sip, Rufus. It’ll keep you warm.
I pushed away the bottle, almost knocking it out of his weak grip.
— Can’t you wait till we’re a bit surer of where we are? We could be lost, you know. .
— We’ll be fine. The old man here will take care of us.
The old man smiled his big, encouraging smile, nodding his gnomish head eagerly. Beside him his son was shrouded in the dense smoke produced by the boat’s outboard motor, his figure appearing and disappearing with the play of the wind on the mist. The boy looked no more than ten years old, but he might have been older, his growth stunted by poor diet. His hair was reddish and sparse, his arms were bony like his father’s. They were both dressed in the same shapeless and faded homespun shirts and trousers, their hands looked rough and callused from seawater, they smelled of fish and seemed as elemental as seaweed. They were wet from water spray coming off the sides of the boat. The boy saw me looking at him and returned my gaze without self-consciousness, his eyes guileless and full of curiosity, forcing me to turn away. We chugged along into the narrowing river, followed by the motor’s droning roar.