‘If they parade like this when a man
‘He was drunk, and he beat her terribly’ I said, shouting above the din. ‘And a punishment was imposed on him by her family and the whole community.’
‘I gave to him a few good whacks with the stick my own self!’ Prabaker added, his face aglow with happy excitement.
‘Over the last few months, he worked hard, stayed sober, and did a lot of jobs in the community’ I continued. ‘It was part of his punishment, and a way of earning the respect of his neighbours again. His wife forgave him a couple of months ago. They’ve been working and saving money together. They’ve got enough, now, and they’re leaving today on a holiday.’
‘Well, there are worse things for people to celebrate,’ Didier decided, permitting himself a little shoulder and hip roll in time to the throbbing drums and snake-flutes. ‘Oh, I almost forgot. There is a superstition, a famous superstition attached to that Hassaan Obikwa. You should know about it.’
‘I’m not superstitious, Didier,’ I called back over the thump and wail of the music.
‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ he scoffed. ‘Everyone in the whole world is superstitious.’
‘That’s one of Karla’s lines,’ I retorted.
He frowned, pursing his lips as he strained his memory to recall.
‘It is?’
‘Absolutely. It’s a Karla line, Didier.’
‘Incredible,’ he muttered. ‘I thought it was one of mine. Are you sure?’
‘I’m sure.’
‘Well, no matter. The superstition, about him, is that everyone who meets Hassaan Obikwa, and exchanges names with him in a greeting, will one day find himself a client of his-either a living client or a dead one. To avoid this fate, you don’t tell him your name when you meet him the first time. No-one ever does. You didn’t tell him your name, did you?’
A roar went up from the crowd surrounding us. Joseph and Maria were close. As they approached, I saw her radiant, hopeful, brave smile and his competing expressions of shame and determination. She was beautiful, with her thick hair trimmed short and styled to match the modern cut of her best dress. He’d lost weight, and looked fit, healthy, and handsome. He wore a blue shirt and new trousers. Husband and wife pressed against one another tightly, step for step, all four hands balled into a bouquet of clenched fingers. Family members followed them, holding a blue shawl to catch notes and coins thrown by the crowd.
Prabaker couldn’t resist the call to dance. He leapt off the bench and joined the thick tangle of jerking, writhing bodies that preceded Joseph and Maria on the track. Stumbling and tottering on his platform shoes, he skipped to the centre of the dancers. His arms were outstretched for balance as if he was crossing a shallow river on a path of stones. His yellow shirt flashed as he whirled and lurched and laughed in the dance. Didier, too, was drawn into the avalanche of revelry that ploughed through the long lane to the street. I watched him glide and sway gracefully into the party, swept along in the rhythmic dance until only his hands were visible above his dark, curly hair.
Girls threw showers of flower petals plucked from chrysanthemums. They burst in brilliant white clusters, and settled on all of us in the converging crowd. Just before the couple passed me, Joseph turned to look into my eyes. His face was fixed between a smile and a frown. His eyes were burning, glistening beneath the tight brows of his frown, while his lips held a happy smile. He nodded twice before looking away.
He couldn’t know it, of course; but with that simple nod of his head, Joseph had answered the question that had remained with me, as a dull ache of doubt, since the prison. Joseph was saved. That was the look simmering in his eyes as he nodded his head. It was the fever of salvation. That look, that frowning smile, combined shame and exultation because both are essential-shame gives exultation its purpose, and exultation gives shame its reward. We’d saved him as much by joining in his exultation as we had by witnessing his shame. And all of it depended upon our action, our interference in his life, because no man is saved without love.
