The Extinction of Menai. Chuma Nwokolo
lend you . . .’
The hawker straightened up angrily with an armful of newspapers. The retort was fully formed in his mouth when his eyes fell on his tablecloth. By this time I’d had seventy seconds with the left shoe. It was enough. I was reaching for the right shoe when the hawker screamed in horror and leapt on me.
‘It’s free! It’s free!’ I cried, trying to dodge the hawker’s blows, struggling to keep possession of the right shoe. I could be as pushy a salesman as any good shoe-shiner had to be. I knew how to seize and polish shoes still on the feet of objecting owners, who sometimes paid up when their shoes were buffed; yet, months and months of shoe-shining had not prepared me for the thing with the hawker. And it was free! I had said so myself! Eventually I yielded the shoe, but by then my shirt was torn and I was lying on my side in the dust of Kreektown Square.
The short hawker was on his knees, cradling his shoes like babies. The one was shining; the other was still grey and mottled with age. His self-assurance was gone. He rocked to and fro in the dust, muttering: ‘He has cleaned it away, the very dust of Independence Day!’ The throng stood in mystified silence, which turned into consternation when he sniffed and wiped his eyes.
Ruma rolled her eyes knowingly and tapped her head with a discreet finger. A ripple of nods validated her judgment: the last time the staff of Warri Asylum went on strike, this was how lunatics had turned up in the square, bearing branches for rifles, asking for the recruitment office of the Biafran Army. Our honour was safe. This was no premeditated insult to Kreektown. This was a lunatic, pure and simple. She returned to her stall. Her own illness was advancing and did not brook much standing.
The hawker squared his shoulders and rose. He returned to his stall, straightened up the askew tablecloth, and set the shoes down carefully. He shrugged manfully. ‘Okay,’ he told his audience, ‘because of the polish, I will off five thousand naira—but that’s all. Not one kobo more. Who will buy the shoes?’
A few ruffians laughed, but we stared them down. ‘First of all,’ called Kiri Ntupong gently from the safety of his joint, ‘what makes you think your shoes are worth one thousand, even?’ He cradled a snuff hand on a gnarled knee. His eyes were red and rheumy from overindulging his own brew.
‘These are Doctor Nnamdi Azikiwe’s shoes,’ said the hawker quietly. He recovered the circulating affidavit and waved it proudly. ‘The very shoes that he wore on the first of October 1960 for Nigeria’s Independence. Imagine that. These shoes are older than me! They are almost forty years old! They stood next to the Queen of England, see—’ And he opened up the affidavit page of a magazine picture of a youthful queen and a grinning, dashing president for those that cared to look. ‘These shoes you’re looking at were inside the very same room with Tafawa Balewa and Awolowo and Nanga Saul, and all those famous people . . . you can still see the very dust of Independence Day on this one . . .’
There was polite silence in Kreektown Square. The villagers knew their own history. As Nigeria’s first president, Dr. Azikiwe had been central to the Independence ceremony. He was a contemporary to Nanga Saul Bentiy of the Sontik. In the dust where I sat, the photographs from my history books came to life with a trumpeting of destiny. The red tablecloth became a red carpet. The shoes standing at waist level acquired new grandeur; the hands with which I’d handled them began to tingle.
Yet, if I was star-struck, my fellow villagers were cut of more phlegmatic cloth. They did not lose their heads. That was how a classmate returned from his first geography lesson to tell his illiterate mother how Agui Creek—this same Agui we treated with such levity—was actually called River Niger way up north, how it sprung to life more than four thousand kilometres away in Fouta Djalon Mountain, how it watered five great countries and millions of people before going to pieces in our delta, fragmenting into many creeks of which the Agui that washed Kreektown was a tiny finger, and how it finally emptied into the ocean a few kilometres from where we stood. His mother, who had lived all her life by the breadth of the creek without ever having to contemplate its length, allowed her son to finish before asking, ‘So? Is it now too famous for me to baf inside?’
It was Saint John who asked the pertinent question: ‘So?’
The hawker’s mouth dropped open. ‘So? So? These are the most important shoes in Nigeria!’
‘They’re old fashion,’ decided Mukaila. ‘Me, I can never wear them.’
‘You don’t buy shoes like this to wear them!’
‘Why should I buy shoe again, if not to wear?’
‘You buy this type of shoes to keep,’ explained the hawker passionately. ‘These shoes are like a pension plan; you keep them inside a glass cupboard, or trunk box, with plenty of camphor . . .’
‘So you’re the messenger of the latest madness, eh?’ said Ntupong. He had walked up to the shoes for a closer look. His trembling snuff hand granted him easy passage through the crowd, for he was given to explosive sneezes when he snuffed. He studied the shoes at length and nodded sagely. ‘First I am to burn my wooden circumcisionhead, eh? Now I am to replace it with Nnamdi’s shoes, eh?’ He shook his head. ‘Thank you very much.’ He took a final pinch and dusted off his snuff palm on his baggy shorts, but as he turned toward the suddenly thinning crowd, he sneezed. The hawker flinched as the shoes acquired a little more than the dust of independence. ‘Tell those who sent you that Kiri Ntupong was not at home,’ he said as he returned to his shelter.
The hawker took a deep breath and began a desperate sales pitch. ‘So you didn’t hear about Marilyn Monroe’s shoes? One pair of shoes that sold for more than thirty thousand dollars! That’s millions and millions of naira! Think about that! These very shoes you’re looking at are far better than Marilyn Monroe’s shoes! This is Zik of Africa I’m talking about! Even, they’re better than a government pension! See: it’s like having History inside your house! Then one day you bring them out, maybe when you retire, and it’s worth like ten million naira! Think! Ten million naira! That’s like winning the lottery—except—where’s the risk? No risk! You buy it cheap, and the value is only going up and up! A pair of shoes like this is better than a plot of land!’
He stopped only because he ran out of breath.
There was a long silence in which the only sound to be heard was the hawker’s heavy breathing and the commotion of a hen succumbing—with ill grace—to her cockerel. Then Sisi Mari asked politely, ‘Who is this Magdalene Mari?’
‘You don’t even know Marilyn Monroe?’ asked the hawker in a stricken voice.
‘Where’s the shame there?’ she demanded, taking offence. ‘Does she know me?’ There were nods of support from her fellow, democratically inclined Kreektowners.
The hawker realised belatedly that he had travelled too far down the Niger River and had arrived at a market that time had forgotten. He sat down slowly beside his stall as the glow of the red tablecloth slowly faded.
I shared keenly in the fading glory of Azikiwe’s shoes. It was difficult to come to terms with the reality of my own exploding expectations. This was not the business turnaround I had expected. This was not the life I had expected either. I had needed a renaissance so badly. The opportunity of Zik’s shoes had seemed tailor-made to make me shine. Yet right before my eyes, the precious crowd was melting away—and I had not even closed a sale.
‘I knew that 419 people would find the road to Kreektown one day,’ said Etie to her customer as they drifted back to her stall. ‘I should now sell my papahouse and buy a pair of shoes, not so?’
‘But how do they hook so many people when their scams are stupid like this?’
‘You should take your business to Warri,’ suggested Mukaila helpfully, ‘either Warri or Lagos. Lagosians are more . . .’ His words tailed off into a circular, lunatic gesture around the head. Then he headed toward his canoe at the riverside.
Utoma, Ajo, and I were among the last to leave the hawker’s stall. ‘Lagos people copy these foolish things better than Menai people,’ agreed Ajo, not unkindly. He was an undertaker