An African Affair (13 page)

Maureen bristled. “Come on, James. Giving people information isn’t just for the sales. And selling art isn’t just selling soap.”

James shrugged. “Isn’t it? Well, I guess you’re right. It’s much more expensive.”

Lindsay suggested they go out for dinner first since the show didn’t start until midnight. Maureen said she’d skip dinner and take a nap, but asked them to pick her up afterward.

The meal at the local Chinese restaurant went smoothly enough, though James seemed a little out of sorts. Maybe, thought Lindsay, he’s annoyed at the change in plans. At one point, as he was preparing his mu shu pork, he mentioned casually that he might be able to finish his affairs here in two weeks and return to London. She noted, with a sinking feeling, that he made no mention of what that would mean for them. She nodded slowly. She was tired of her doubts, tired of wanting more than he could give. She welcomed an unlooked-for moment of resolution. What would be would be; she wouldn’t try to force it anymore.

She launched into a litany of complaints about Lagos, concentrating on the electrical blackouts.

“You need a generator.”

“I know, but I can’t find one. There’s a long waiting list.”

“A bribe would fix that,” he said. “I’ll find out who you need to deal with.”

“Thanks,” she said. “But, you know, I feel bad doing that—I promised myself I wouldn’t join in the general corruption and this would be the second time.”

He gave her a patronizing glance. “You’re just playing by the rules of a different game. If you’ve learned nothing else about Africa, you should have learned that rules were made to be broken.”

“By whom?”

“By those who can.” Then, noticing her disapproval, he added: “What I mean is, life is different here. In the United States, in England, a rule is a rule. In Africa, it’s an orientation.”

They both laughed and for some reason found it hard to stop. Then she asked him to give her some background on Bayo, but he said it would be more fun for her to be surprised.

“Be ready for a scene.”

She was. She felt she’d be ready for anything.

At 11 P.M., with James at her side and Maureen in the backseat, Lindsay drove her white Peugeot into the heart of the city. Slowly, the stucco white villas and lush empty gardens gave way to drab wooden shacks and noisy, crowded streets. A group of young men huddled around a radio blaring the upbeat rhythms of high life. A woman swathed in bright yellow and brown fabric sold fruit, cigarettes, and coconuts from behind a makeshift booth illuminated by a row of candles.

Finally, at James’s direction, they pulled up to a large ramshackle house on a spacious corner lot. It stood behind three majestic palms in the middle of a neglected plot of gravel, dirt, and litter, fenced in by chicken wire. They had arrived at the home, the compound, the commune of Bayo Awollowa Soti.

They had come early since Lindsay hoped she could arrange a brief meeting with Bayo before showtime. She reasoned that once she made an initial contact, he would be more likely to grant her a longer interview. They knocked at the door and were greeted by a beautiful young woman with elaborately braided hair pinned up in half-moons around her head. Lindsay identified herself as a journalist and asked if she could speak to Bayo for a few moments. The woman hesitated, but James said something to her in Yoruba and she nodded. “Wait,” she ordered in English, and disappeared into the house. Lindsay looked at James in surprise.

“I didn’t know you spoke Yoruba,” she said.

He shrugged it off. “Just a few words,” he answered.

After a few minutes, they were joined by a stocky, affable man in his thirties who introduced himself as “J.R.” and said he handled Bayo’s public relations. He put out his hand to James and told them to accompany him. As they followed him through a maze of corridors, James whispered that although J.R. always deferred to Bayo in public, he was smarter than he seemed.

“He’s really a key adviser,” James said. “Bayo calls him his ‘Minister of Information.’ ”

“How modest,” Maureen answered. “Does Bayo think he’s a head of state?”

“That’s no joke,” James whispered back. “Don’t forget he calls this place his own republic.”

They stopped talking as they were ushered into the sitting room.

Bayo was ready for them. He was perched on a high-backed wicker chair like a king astride his throne. An image of Yul Brynner in
The King and I
flitted through Lindsay’s mind. He was dressed only in white bikini Jockey shorts; his black, bare, muscular chest glistened with oil, as did his taut legs. His stomach was flat, his wiry hair cropped short. He was not handsome, but he emanated power and sensuality, and Lindsay felt drawn to him.

There were about twenty women milling about him. J.R. said they were his “wives,” but it seemed clear to Lindsay that their job was simply to service him in whatever way he wanted. The women were beautiful and young, dressed scantily in tight shorts or long African skirts with halter tops. They all had vacant eyes, the look of people perpetually stoned. They seemed more like cult followers than musical groupies.

J.R. nervously ushered them forward for an audience with the great man himself.

Bayo looked appraisingly at Lindsay, slowly moving his gaze upward, over her long legs, her blue paisley sleeveless dress, till he reached her face. The look was so brazen she wasn’t even offended. She stared at him, refusing to lower her own gaze. He didn’t say a word but shifted his attention to Maureen, whom he looked over in the same way. Lindsay saw him take in her delicate frame, her bright red Chinese silk jacket, and finally her blue-green eyes, which, like Lindsay’s, met his without flinching.

James grabbed his hand in a thumbs-up handshake and introduced the women, saying they were there to see the show. “They’re reporters,” he said. “Maureen is with the Associated Press and Lindsay writes for a big-time New York paper.”

“Which one?” Bayo asked quickly.

“The
Globe
,” Lindsay answered. Bayo nodded, impressed. He’d lived briefly in California as a student at Berkeley, where he had picked up the rhetoric of the Black Power movement. He knew the
Globe
’s reach.

He turned toward the women with new interest. “Well, let’s see what you can tell the Americans about us,” he said. He put a cigarette in his mouth and snapped his fingers. Three of the blank-eyed women leapt forward to light it. A slender woman with a high forehead and delicate features got there first with a Zippo, and Bayo bent his head slightly to the lighter. Then he mumbled something and she withdrew, returning a minute later with a box full of joints, each the size of a Cohiba cigar.

“NNG,” Bayo announced proudly to the group in a loud voice. “Nigerian Natural Grass, the best there is.”

Bayo lit it, inhaled deeply, holding the cigarette in one hand and the joint in the other, and nodded toward his guests. The woman brought the box over to Maureen, who shook her head, and then to Lindsay.

“No, thank you,” Lindsay said. “If I smoked that, I’d never make it to the show.” James accepted.

“Yeah, smart to take it slow, baby,” Bayo said to Lindsay. “It’s strong stuff.” Lindsay noticed he never looked directly at anyone; he always gazed toward some unseen but ever-present audience.

“When I was in L.A. the first time,” he said, “I was at a party and someone brought out this tiny little joint—I mean, it was so thin, in Lagos we’d have been ashamed to light it. And they acted like it was this great thing.” He screwed up his face and raised his voice to a higher pitch: “ ‘Ooh, grass, great, man,’ ” he imitated, laughing derisively. “And then they passed it around to share with about five other people,” he continued. “I couldn’t believe it.”

He curled his lip at the memory. All the women laughed obligingly with him and stopped as soon as he stopped. Then, as abruptly as a cat who after purring on your lap suddenly bites your finger, Bayo looked bored. He got up, shook hands with James, offered his hand limply to Lindsay and Maureen, and walked toward the door.

“Catch you later, man,” he said to James over this shoulder.

He exited, followed by his entire retinue, leaving Lindsay, James, and Maureen unsure of what to do next.

“Well,” said James. “What do you think?”

“I can’t say I like him,” Maureen said, “but he’s certainly interesting. He’d make a good feature—plenty of local color.”

Lindsay nodded. Turning to James, she said: “He seemed to know you pretty well. How come?”

“I met him the first time I came to Nigeria about eight years ago. I had this friend in college, a Nigerian named Fendi Omagbracpaya, who used to play the saxophone, which as you’ll see in a minute is Bayo’s instrument. When they were students, he and Bayo used to jam together. By my first trip he’d become an executive in the importexport business, but he still loved Bayo’s funky music. When Bayo heard that I was an art dealer, we did some business together. He hasn’t changed much. I’m still just about the only white face in the crowd.”

“Now there are three of us,” Lindsay said.

“Yeah. And over the years I’ve seen a few others, mostly awkward State Department types trying to understand ‘the scene,’ but it’s rare.”

As they were talking, J.R. came for them. “Bayo say I take you in. Show go start now.” He winked at Lindsay. James whispered that his pidgin was an affectation. “He’s been to university in Yorkshire and can speak perfect English.”

As they moved outside, they saw that hundreds of people crowded up and down the narrow streets. Bayo was slowly making his entrance on the back of a donkey. He was dressed now in tight black pants and a purple sequined shirt, opened to the waist. The crowd went wild when they caught sight of him, chanting “Ba-yo, Ba-yo, Ba-yo” with mounting frenzy. Lindsay was struck by the power of the man—not just his charisma but also the hold he had on his followers. She thought that he could be a populist force, drawing power from the most disenchanted voters. She’d have liked to watch his triumphal march longer, but J.R. hustled them out of the crowd and toward the Juju House, the ramshackle club just down the street, shepherding them across a foulsmelling open sewer.

Maureen leaned over to Lindsay and whispered in her ear. “This is one helluva story.”

The crowd surged around the club, a simple cement house with a tin roof, trying to get in. J.R. waved his charges past four thugs acting as security guards who were frisking arrivals for weapons. As their little group passed through, someone thrust a bunch of yellow printed flyers into their hands. “Brothers and Sisters, Follow Bayo. Take
The Next Step
,” Lindsay read. At the bottom was an address and a date later that week for a political meeting where Bayo would speak.

J.R. noticed Lindsay reading the pamphlet. “Watch out for de black boots, man,” he said.

“What?” Lindsay asked.

“De black boots. De police wear dem,” J.R. answered. Then, losing the pidgin, he said: “The police have spies here. They are hard to spot, but they always wear black boots.”

Lindsay looked down.

“You are wearing black boots,” she said, looking around. “A lot of people are wearing black boots.”

J.R. laughed. His eyes twinkled. “Yeah man, dat’s why dem hard to spot.” He pushed his way forward and they followed.

Inside, a club that had been built to seat about two hundred people was overrun with more than three times that number—mostly men—crowding in around tables. Above the stage, on either side, were four huge dangling metal cages, each holding a topless woman who gyrated and danced to Bayo’s recordings. Their faces wore that same stoned look as the girls in the house. Except for Lindsay’s own small group, everyone in the audience was black. Some stared with curiosity, others with what appeared to be open hostility.

J.R. led them to a table and sat down. They waited, transfixed, listening to the loud, throbbing music. Finally the lights dimmed, the recorded music stopped, and Bayo bounded onstage. The place went wild. He picked up his sax and started to play Afro beat—a combination of American jazz, rock and roll, and African percussive rhythms. At intervals, he’d put the sax down and sing, strut, and prance around the stage, pacing like a panther as the caged women danced more and more wildly, contracting their pelvises in rhythmic sharp movements.

It was . . . fabulous, an assault on the senses such as Lindsay had never before experienced. Some people got up and danced to the music. Maureen and Lindsay exchanged looks. It had been many years since they had danced together at high school parties, ignoring their dates and commanding the floor. Now, swept up in the frenzy, they spontaneously got up and began their old, well-practiced routine. James and J.R. stared agape. After a while, laughing and out of breath, Maureen sat down and Lindsay followed.

“You’re full of surprises,” James said.

In between numbers, Bayo talked politics, attacking the government, Nigerian laws, and specifically Olumide, whom he called a fascist pig, in true American sixties style. “Oink oink,” he screamed, as the drums beat accompaniment, and then put his hand to his ear, encouraging audience response. “Oink,” they screamed. “Oink oink . . .”

“We go do sometin dis time, brothers and sisters,” Bayo shouted. “We go stop dem fuckas. We goin take da NEXT STEP, you heah me brothers, what we goin take?”

“DA NEXT STEP,” the crowd roared, “DA NEXT STEP.” Lindsay was shocked that the movement was already so brazen in its opposition. She had had no inkling. That is what comes of spending too much time with foreign diplomats and journalists and not enough on the streets, she thought. She scanned the crowd and saw that in addition to the usual Lagos working-class men there were also a sprinkling of visitors wearing the long cloaks of the north.

“These be Hausa,” J.R. said. “Members of the Hausa Radical Union.”

This was unusual—crossing tribal and religious lines for a protest movement.