Chapter 54: Chapter 54

CHAPTER 47

Everyone’s gaze fell at the corner where the voice came from. Teju saw the silhouette of a man in a yoga asana, reclining against the air and folding his arms. He was hefty and rectangular. His body contours popped out of his uniform and looked like it would tear it off. DS introduced him. He was known as Gogo, the Special Agent of the Delta Force- one man Mopo. He was the only official, according to DS, that belonged both to the Officials of Progress and Discipline departments simultaneously. In fact, he was the fiercest and most feared, especially on the ‘Field of Labour’. Except that he worked independently and took fewer orders from DS.

He was for Special Tasks or Operations. Most of his assignments were not within the cell. He was always summoned when there were naughty gangs from other cells needed to be taught some manners. He was the Leader on the field of labour and this gave him unmatched power over everyone, even DS. DS turned and watched Teju standing like a soaked lamb in the rain. Teju was lost, and at that time, he found it impossible to look into the faces of these wolves in human clothing. It was even hard to prostrate and beg to be left alone.

DS made a sign for Teju to step forward. As he did, DS summoned a man from the shadows of the prison cell. When the man came forward, Teju saw that the man was skeletal, like something he could squeeze and throw into the waste bin. At first, he thought DS was setting up a fight, but he made it clear that there was going to be an arm wrestle between him and the other man. They cleared an open space for them on the floor. All the inmates gathered around them, and they were surrounded in an arc. There were mumblings and laughter. The eyes of the inmate gleamed as if a prospect of escape from the prison was standing before them.

According to DS, the man was a flyweight champion of arm wrestling in the cell. Teju did not have to defeat him in the arm wrestle. He only had to stop the man from winning before the count of sixty. To Teju, it was an insane challenge, an unimaginably simple one. He wanted to tell the whole cell that he was going to trounce their underfed flyweight champion before the count of sixty. However, the corollary of Teju losing in the wrestle was grave. If he lost, he would be beaten with no mercy. He would sleep on his feet throughout the night. He must not dare to sit or lay his back because he was never going to stand on his feet again if he did. And then, he would dispose of their bucket of shit and urine for thirty days.

They grabbed each other’s hand. The flyweight champion’s grip was weak and slack. Teju tightened his grip. He blew away the little stones on the floor where he would rest his elbow, but it seemed his opponent was unbothered by them. Immediately DS screamed ‘start’, Teju could not identify with the grip he had been holding for some seconds. It was fierce and vicious. It was a desperate and overambitious grip that twisted his tendons. Before he could reflect on what was happening, his hand had fallen by forty-five degrees. It was as if the man had iron installed into his hand like a cyborg. How can somebody who was as fat as a cane, looking undernourished and flimsy be as strong as a stallion? It was like a prank, or perhaps a perpetuation of dark magic.

Teju looked at him, but he was not staring back at him. He was rather staring at their intertwined hands. The whole cell counted in unison. Their voices hit the prison walls and bounced back on the arm wrestlers’ heads. The grip became stronger. Teju was helpless. So, he was going to get beaten like a thief, he thought. He was going to do the most impossible thing in the world- sleep on his feet throughout the night. He did not mind disposing of the bucket of shit and urine for a whole calendar year, but sleeping on his feet was something he had to mind at all cost. How did they expect him to sleep on his feet anyway, how was that even possible? Do they even know he slept in the cushiony comfort of a water bed back at home?

They were on thirty-five when Teju’s hand fell at zero degrees. The whole cell roared with the joy of victory. It was then Teju realised that it was he against the whole cell and the cell had won. They hailed the flyweight champion, calling him appraising names, slapping his head and shoulders. They did some mock jubilation, making their bellies or buttocks collide in a playful manner. Teju was sure there was a penalty for every arm wrestle champion who loses to a newcomer, starting with being ripped off his championship. Or why else would the man be as ruthless as that? When the excitement had subsided, everyone focused on the loser, the J.J.C of the cell.

According to DS, Teju was the worst first-time loser in the history of the cell, a bad record for the cell. He was too weak to fit into the cell, and they were extremely enraged at such a weakling. The cell was one of the strongest in the prison. They had one of the strongest and most powerful inmates, and accommodating such a weakling was a complete liability to them. They did not have the patience to put up with someone who could barely protect himself, let alone protect other members of the cell on the field. It was such a shame, according to DS. It was a big ignominy to have a graduate of a university who was not strong enough to protect himself in the cell he led. It was like a slap in his face, a dent on his flawless reputation.

In prison, having a degree was the most useless criterion for surviving or ruling. One needed to have brains, but physicality was the thing that could keep one alive long enough for one to see the day one would be released from prison. Teju was contemplating on how to beg them to have mercy on him when a violent kick hit the side of his rib. It could not have been a leg that kicked him. It must have been a truncheon that had a strike through the air and landed on his ribs. It was as if his lung was deflating. He gasped for breath as the pain started taking shape in him. The second kick landed on his belly. It felt like having a razor cutting his stomach from the inside, starting from the intestine, then the third, the fourth, and the fifth.

He lost count on the number of kicks and punches that assailed his sacrosanct body. He saw the world turned upside down. His body was set on stinging fire from the outside, but he burned from the inside. Blood escaped from his nose and his mouth. His bones cracked, his joints shifted, his flesh swelled red and his face changed to a purplish colour like that of an overripe avocado. It was the prison wardens who rushed into the cell to save him from getting killed. They swung their batons at the inmates and carried him off from the cell like a log of wood. He was whimpering in the most pitiful way when he begged one of the prison wardens to put him into another cell.

“If you go another cell, they go launch you again with kick and punch. They no go have mercy on you because say they don launch you for your former cell. He better make you go to your cell where they don launch you before than to go to another where they go launch you fresh fresh”. Those were the words of the prison warden. Teju, after considering it for a long time, agreed to return to his cell.

Teju did not take notice of the physical properties of the cell until he was left on his own at a corner, sitting down and reclining against the wall. There were others who were sitting and tilting back like him, and some others were lying on the cell floor, asleep. Two or three people slapped mosquitoes from their arms and legs. Someone coughed, someone sniffed, another person cleared his throat and spit. Some others snored, and the sound of their snoring was like bleating goats. It was metrical, like an orchestra playing a piece to the national anthem.

The government of the cell were all seated at the right corner, each sitting and resting against the wall, smoking ganja and getting high. They spoke to each other sparingly like Jack McCall who had leaves falling off the tree whenever he speaks in the movie- One Thousand Words. They spoke in whispers as though they were in terror that the walls might hear them. The prison warden who was on duty had seen them smoking but did not bother them. Teju had to assume the prison warden had been paid off. He would not wonder how they got the ganja into the cell in the first place. It was undemanding to see that the prison wardens had a part in it.

The cell was cold and dark. It was only the sprinkled ray of the moon minced with the smoke from the ganja that lit the cell from the small open window of the cell. The walls of the cell were frigid and stale. The perfume of ganja filled every space in the air, and they made him lonely, cold and high. He shut his eyes. He inhaled the ganja. He wanted to join them in the smoking, at least, that might make him stay afloat all his predicaments. He pondered on the meeting he had with the officials and DS. They had itemized and explicated all the rules and regulations of the cell. They listed and explained all the duties and obligations of the citizens of the cell. That was when he knew for instance why the officials looked healthier than other inmates. Every inmate was obliged to donate ten per cent of his meal to the government. They called it ‘tax’. It was also mandatory for new inmates to donate all their first meals. It was called the ‘first fruit’.

He could not understand why they would do that. He was irritated by their repressive and exploitative tendencies. He did not wish to join in their ranks no matter the advantages. He wished he had not passed any good comment on DS even though he never meant what he said. He wished he could chew his words back right in front of him, but to what end? What good would that bring? It had been that way before he arrived. It was the law of the cell. It was the law of peace. And it was prudent to let the sleeping bulldog and Rottweiler lie.

Teju would have starved if not for a Good Samaritan who shared his dinner with him. It was beans. It was inconceivably watery and tasteless as if they had mixed soft bean grains with water. But Teju and his benefactor- Dejo did not complain. They ate with afirst-class appetite. After the meal, they both narrated the story that connected them to their cell. After Teju, with sad inflamed eyes gave his own detailed narration, Dejo narrated how he got to jail.

Dejo had been convicted for manslaughter. His younger sister was studying at Obafemi Awolowo University and she came home for the holiday after the semester break. She was his only sibling; their parents had been killed in a car accident. Dejo worked hard to feed himself and his sister. He did menial jobs to get her schooled. However, his sister had a guy who desperately wanted to date her. She rejected his sexual advances whenever she came home on holiday.

One day, the desperate guy came on a strange visit to their house. Dejo’s sister was the only one at home and he attempted to rape her. But in return, he got stabbed in the struggle, and he bled to death. He said his sister was too beautiful to be jailed. She was too decent and smart to be reduced to such fate. Of course, she could not be guilty if she was tried, it was purely self-defence situation but Dejo could not afford a lawyer. Even if a lawyer chose to render a humanitarian service to defend his sister in court, he could compete with the prosecutors in terms of money. He could not buy justice. He could not purchase his sister’s innocence.

She had a bright future ahead. She was a student of International Relations. Dejo gave up himself in his sister’s stead. She needed freedom better than him. Now, his sister had become an employee in a Nigerian embassy. She was living a comfortable life while he rotten away in prison, yet he did not have any regret. It was scarce to say that Dejo was absolutely insane because Teju knew how it felt to be in the love-trap of a person. He considered the love Dejo had for his sister more superior to the love he had for Simi, a love that would readily die in the stead of the loved.

Dejo could not see her suffer. He became responsible for the death of the person who wanted to take his sister’s maidenhood and their happiness by force. Teju shivered as he saw a smile appear on Dejo face. Dejo was smiling broadly as he narrated his disastrous story. It made Teju shrink with horror. It seemed completely creepy, yet it was summarily the most adorable thing one could ever find in a dead place like a prison in Nigeria. Dejo shooed the tiny stones away from the spot he wanted to lay his back on with his hand. Teju stood up and leaned on the wall to find his sleep.