The Power(85)

It was a man with long, dark hair hanging down over his face. He had been tied to the post by plastic cords at his wrists and ankles. His hands were pulled back, his shoulders strained, the wrists fastened behind him. His ankles were secured in front of him, the same cord run round the pole a dozen times. It had been hastily done by someone inexpert in ropes and knots. They had simply bound him tightly and left him there. There were the marks of pain across his body, livid and dark, blue and scarlet and black. Around his neck was a sign with a single word in Russian: slut. He had been dead for two or three days.

Tunde photographed the body with great care. There is something beautiful in cruelty and something hateful in artful composition, and he wanted to express both these things. He took his time over it, and did not look around to scout his position or make sure he was not being observed from afar. Later, he couldn’t believe he’d been so stupid. It was that evening that he first became aware that he was being followed.

It was dusk, and though he had walked seven or eight miles on from the body, its lolling head, its dark tongue, were still in his mind. He walked in the dust at the side of the road, through densely clustered trees. The moon was rising, a yellow-clouded fingernail of light between the trees. He thought to himself from time to time, I could make camp here; come on, take out the bedroll. But his feet kept walking, to put another mile, another mile, another mile between him and the curtain of hair falling over the rotting face. The night-birds were calling. He looked out into the darkness of the wood and there, among the trees to his right, he saw a crackle of light.

It was small but unmistakable; no one would take that particular thin, white, momentary filament for anything else. There was a woman out there, and she had made an arc between her palms. Tunde inhaled sharply.

It could be anything. Someone starting a fire, lovers playing a game, anything. His feet started to walk more quickly. And then he saw it again, in front of him. A long, slow, deliberate crackle of light. Illuminating, this time, a dim face, long hair hanging down, the mouth a crooked smile. She was looking at him. Even in the dim light, even far off, he could see that.

Don’t be afraid. The only way to defeat this is not to be afraid. But the animal part of himself was afraid. There is a part in each of us which holds fast to the old truth: either you are the hunter or you are the prey. Learn which you are. Act accordingly. Your life depends upon it.

She made her sparks fly up again in the blue-black darkness. She was closer than he’d thought. She made a noise. Low, croaking laughter. He thought, Oh god, she’s mad. And this was the worst of all. That he might be stalked here for no purpose, that he could die here with no reason.

A twig broke close by his right foot. He did not know if it was her, or him. He ran. Sobbing, gulping, with the focus of an animal. Behind him, when he chanced a glance, she was running, too; the palms of her hands set the trees on fire, skittish flame along the dusty bark and into a few crisp leaves. He ran faster. If there was a thought in his head it was: there will be safety somewhere. If I keep going, there must be.

And as he came to the top of the rising, curved hill path, he saw it: not even a mile away, a village with lit windows.

He ran for the village. There, in the sodium lights, this terror would be bleached from his bones.

He’d been thinking for a long time about how he’d end this. Since the third night, when his friends told him he had to leave, that the police were going door-to-door asking questions about any man who was not properly certified with an approved guardian. On that night, he’d said to himself: I can make this stop any time. He had his phone. All he had to do was charge it and send one email. Maybe to his editor at CNN and maybe copied to Nina. Tell them where he was. They would come and find him, and he would be a hero, reporting undercover, rescued.

He thought, Now. Now is the time. This is it.

He ran into the village. Some of the downstairs windows were still lit. There was the sound of radio or television from some of them. It was only just after nine. For a moment he thought of banging on the door, of saying: Please. Help. But the thought of the darkness that might be behind those lit windows kept him from asking. The night was filled with monsters now.

On the side of a five-storey apartment building he saw a fire escape. He ran for it, began to climb. As he passed the third floor, he saw a dark room with three air conditioners piled on the floor. A store room. Empty, unused. He tried the lip of the window with the tips of his fingers. It opened. He tumbled himself into the musty, quiet space. He pulled the window closed. He groped in the dark until he found what he was looking for. An electrical socket. He plugged his phone in.

The little two-note sound of it starting up was like the sound of his own key in the lock of his front door back at home in Lagos. There. It’s over now. The screen was bright. He pressed the warm light of it to his lips, inhaled. In his mind, he was home already and all the cars and trains and aeroplanes and lines and security that would be needed between here and there were imaginary and unimportant.

He sent an email quickly: to Nina, and to Temi, and to three different editors he’d worked with recently. He told them where he was, that he was safe, that he needed them to contact the embassy to get him out.

While he waited for the reply, he looked at the news. More and more ‘skirmishes’, without anyone being willing to call this an outright war. The price of oil on the up again. And there was Nina’s name, too, on an essay about what’s happening here, inside Bessapara. He smiled. Nina had only ever been here for a long weekend press junket a few months ago. What would she have to say about this place? And then, as he read, he frowned. Something felt familiar about her words.