Capgras

By Charles Ayanleke
© 2009

Joe McCain sipped again on his pint of Guinness.
He looked around this old Irish pub he had visited every Friday night for as long as he remembered. He always came here with the same guys. Conor O’Callaghan and Seamus O’Rouke had been with him from the very beginning. They all arrived in the United States about the same time and now all had their families in Akron. They had made it a point to maintain some of their Irishness by meeting up with others regularly at the O’Connel Bar in downtown.

Conor was an electrician who still works for the local electrical company. Unlike Joe, he resisted the temptation to quit since he was so scared of facing the challenges inherent in setting up his own business. He is a short, big, burly man built almost like a tank, with graying hair where it was available. That means only his chin.

Seamus is the exact opposite to Conor in appearance. He was slim, almost malnourished looking, with distinctly boyish looks that has served him well with women. Or has it? Seamus had been married and divorced six times in the last two decades. He tells all that would be willing to listen now that he’s done with marriage, but neither Conor nor Joe is willing to believe him.

This way, they could all catch up on old times and reminisce about Ireland. Their stories were very different from that of the earlier wave of Irish immigrants in the thirties and forties following the potato famine. They all simply wanted to trade the struggling Irish economy for the American dream.

Once Joe returned from the missionary trip to Nigeria, he had a complete change in several aspects of his life. That included his aspirations, his hopes, his expectations and his faith.
He was a devout Catholic and key member of the St Anthony’s Guild of his local parish in Galway. When the opportunity came in 1978 for the church to send four lay parishioners with a reverend sister and the assistant parish priest on a missionary trip to Africa, Joe jumped on it.

He had never travelled out of Ireland at that point, and being a relatively young man, he saw that as an opportunity of a lifetime to expand his frontiers.
He had watched how his poor parents toiled endlessly on the potato farm in rural Galway. Their lives were like a video tape in repeat mode. Everyday was like the previous one. Life was a boring routine. He had initially contemplated moving east to Dublin once he finished high school, but he chose to wait. Now how glad he was that he did. The more popular move was the Dublin move among the youngsters on the west coast at the time. There were the fabled limitless opportunities in Dublin. The country was undergoing a lot of restructuring and rebirth especially with all the talk of a European union.

Their small missionary party had arrived in Lagos at a time of unaccustomed prosperity for the locals. It was the oil boom in Nigeria. The country had just discovered the black gold a few years previously and now, every segment of the society was oil drunk. The country had just finished hosting the International Festival of Arts and Culture (FESTAC), trying its best to project its new found wealth to the rest of the world. A whole new town was built for the purpose of housing participants at the festival. The new development is named after the event to this day.

The Nigerian Government had suddenly appeared to be at a loss about the future of the grand new development after the festival closed. What followed was a very generous auctioning of several of the housing units to civil servants at ridiculous rates by the Federal Housing Authority (FHA).
One of the first families to move into the new estate after the first wave of auctioning were the Williams. This interesting family was typical of the civil service family of the seventies. The head of the family, Chief Segun Williams, was a permanent secretary in the ministry of Agriculture. His ministry had been the main driver of the Nigerian economy prior to the discovery of oil. Now they were being gradually relegated as the ministry of petroleum resources took over the driving seat.

Mrs. Williams was a headmistress at the local elementary school. They had five children, two boys and three girls. The eldest girl, Aduke, was a rare beauty. She had just completed high school and was not sure what course to pursue in college. She was tall, slim, with a smooth ebony complexion and long dark hair. She had curves in all the right places, sexy wide hips and full breasts.

Joe McCain and the rest of their missionary party arrived at the Williams’ on a bright tropical afternoon on the invitation of Chief Williams. The local Catholic Bishop of the diocese had introduced the chief to the priest, Rev Father O’Connor. Their mission was to help establish the first Catholic Church in FESTAC town.

Joe can not remember a word that was said at that first meeting or indeed at subsequent ones. He was never able to take his eyes off Aduke. She looked like an African goddess or something. Now there were very few blacks in Ireland in the seventies, and certainly the few there were could only be seen in the capital Dublin City. Joe had never travelled out of Galway up till that point, and his only contact with black people was on the television.

He would repeatedly sneak out of their hotel base at the Eko Le Meridian to return to FESTAC. It was extremely difficult to see the girl. She was regularly restricted from going out alone from the house mainly because the Williams realized their baby girl was now fully matured and they needed to protect her the best they could from unscrupulous men.
Joe did not see himself as unscrupulous. At the same time, he knew his feelings would kill him if he didn’t at least somehow address them. He would feel much better if the girl told him to fuck off. At least he would know he’d tried. But he just could not let go without trying.

The first time he went back alone to FESTAC, he instructed the cab driver to drop him off a full hundred yards or so away from the Williams’ house on 21st street. He had to use the cabs as he had no valid Nigerian driving license and didn’t know the local roads even if he had a car. The cab service was very well run and extremely patronizing especially if you were willing to be a little generous to the drivers. It was popularly referred to as “drop” by the locals. For a few extra quid, the driver could stay with you all day taking you wherever you wished to go that day, neglecting any other business or customers.

Joe had walked the hundred yards cautiously. It was still unusual to see a white man walking alone on Lagos streets in the late seventies. The few expatriates there were could only be seen in their expensive jeeps and mostly lived in Ikoyi or Victoria Island; the most affluent parts of Lagos at that time.

He stopped by the corner of the street and called a young boy he saw rolling a car tire by the roadside. “Do you know Aduke?” he asked the boy.
The little boy nodded. He added he was a family friend of the Williams.
Joe’s eyes widened. He asked if the boy could do him a favor for a few bucks.
After he explained his little plan to the little boy, the boy was confident he could pull it off. As Joe squeezed a Naira bill into the boy’s palm, he could see the disbelief in his eyes. The lad had obviously not been expecting any tip so generous. One Naira was a lot of money to a ten-year-old in the seventies.

Joe had now been waiting about thirty minutes and was growing increasingly restless and impatient.
Had the plan been busted? Did the little boy dupe him? Perhaps Aduke wasn’t even available.
At that moment when his spirit was beginning to dampen, he saw her silhouette against the backdrop of the bright tropical sunshine. He could not believe his eyes. It was going to happen. His heart started racing, He had no idea what he was going to say to her. Or how she might react to whatever he had to say.

He watched her approach slowly. She could see him just around the corner. She walked with the self-assurance and grace of a goddess. Her wide hips seemed to adopt a rhythmic dancing movement as she walked toward him. Her long legs appeared to speak to one another with every step. This girl could walk straight into any modelling catwalking event all over the world and pick the top price.

His heart was in his mouth.
“Hi”, she said.
“Hi, my name is Joe McCain”, he said.
“I know you. You came with the missionaries didn’t you?” Aduke asked almost rhetorically.
“Yes, I did.”
“So, why did you return alone, and why aren’t you coming in?”
“I came to see you”
“Why?”
“Well, I guess I’d just love to know you better as a person”
“And you couldn’t do that by coming into the house and in the presence of my parents?”
“Well, I don’t know how the chief might respond…. I wouldn’t want to put you in trouble.”
“Actually, this is the approach that is most likely to put us both in trouble”
“It’s more complicated than that…I also wouldn’t like the other missionaries to find out”
“Ha. I always get the bad feeling with clandestine arrangements”
“Trust me, I mean no harm”

“Okay, so what would you like to know…. I only have about five minutes before mama starts screaming my name.”
“Would you be able to have a drink with me sometime, so we get to know each other better?”
“That’s just impossible. I can’t leave home for more than ten minutes. My parents will freak out.”
“Ah, common, Aduke. You aren’t a baby. I’m sure you know how to excuse yourself. That is of course if you would like to get together with me for some fun time.”

He left his hotel address and room number with her and gave her a twenty Naira bill. She almost fainted. Twenty Naira was a lot of money to a teenager in 1978. He told her to use the money for a “drop” to his address. He said he would expect her on Friday night. If he doesn’t see her, he would get the message.
The locals popularly called the twenty-naira bill “Muri”. It bares the bust of the assassinated former military head of state, General Murtala Rabat Muhammed. The country’s main international airport in Lagos was also later named after the slain leader.

Joe shook her hand and turned back towards his cab driver waiting in the distance.
Aduke just stood there for a minute, watching this white man return to his cab and staring at the crisp green bill in her left palm. She was genuinely confused.
As his cab drove away, she slowly started to walk lazily back towards her house. Her life was suddenly becoming a fiction novel. She had a lot of thinking to do in the next couple of days.
It was Wednesday.

She went straight into her room and just lay in bed examining her options.
She could not deny to herself that she had noticed the attractive young Irish man from the first day her dad hosted the missionaries. His golden cropped hair and muscular frame were just as alluring as his blue eyes and warm smile. It was the first time she was really seeing a young white man up close. Her previous encounters were with older white men like the aging parish priest in their village in Badagry on the border with the Republic of Benin and her English teacher in high school.

Although she’d found him attractive, she was certain he was a religious man on a missionary trip and would have no desire for women. She had been shocked beyond belief when little Samson walked into the kitchen to tell her a white man was waiting for her outside.
Samson was no stranger to discrete missions like this since he was the go between for her and Bayo too while their relationship lasted. Her parents never found out about her affair with Bayo. She was glad it ended because it was putting a lot of strain on her studies at the time, and he was a well known player all over FESTAC anyway, so it was good riddance.

But Joe would be a different proposition altogether, She would now have to leave the safety of FESTAC town and head to the mainland. She would love to experience the elegance of the Le Meridian hotel. She had heard a lot about it. Yet she could not pass up the opportunity to see his cute eyes again. She could not believe that he had also taken notice of her.

She must have a special effect on men. She was beginning to notice how much of their attention she actually commanded. Her mum had always warned her that most young men were after one thing and one thing only. Once they got what they wanted, they’d usually lose interest, mama would always caution

But that wasn’t her experience with Bayo. She found the more they had sex, the more he wanted her. She was the one who had to break it off because the passion threatened to consume them both. And he was having several other girls on the side. She felt she wasn’t special to him, he was just using her like several of the other girls.
She knew that was not a problem limited to black men only. But she was prepared to see how Joe would be different, especially since he appeared to be so God-fearing. It must take a lot of conviction to leave your country for a missionary trip to a distant continent.

*This has been an excerpt from my next novel.