The new death

THE thing about poison is that a small quantity is often a lethal dose, while a substantial amount gets forcefully ejected by the body. Iloisibe’s uncle’s words rang clear in her mind as she downed the foamy contents of the calabash pressed tight upon her lips by the Bolong chief priest. Her uncle had said that guilty people always aim to drink as little as possible, afraid that the contents of their darkened hearts would be laid bare. But the blameless would often gulp down the whole of their potions, eager to prove their innocence.

Iloisibe did not immediately fall, frothing in the mouth, gasping for final breaths, and muttering out confessions just like she had seen in countless Nigerian movies. Instead, she had regurgitated her breakfast of akamu and kosai, along with the sour-tasting, crimson-coloured concoction she had forced down her throat. If her uncle's assertions were correct, did this not prove her innocence? A part of her still wondered if perhaps she had killed her husband. It was true that many of her relatives still practised the old way of destroying adversaries with swarms of killer bees. Still, she could not think of a single reason why she would wish her husband dead.

Death had found Samson on one sweltering Sunday night in the heart of Sambisa forest. Rumours had been swirling around for weeks that the insurgents had planned to attack the military base. All the soldiers had been warned to be on high alert, and so they were. As soon as Samson's platoon took the night shift, stoically sitting in the trenches, a synchronized buzzing wafted in from the South-West and grew louder with each passing second. The swarm of bees clouded the sky like a violent, dark storm and settled upon the soldiers, stinging and feasting on their flesh as they fled. Every one of them had survived the attack except Samson. He had lived through five years of so much war, so much chaos, and so much bloodshed that he had begun to think that perhaps death had forgotten him.

Daniel was the first to take ill after the visit to Bolong. Iloisibe heard from Rankisi, who heard from Siyona, who heard from Daniel’s wife that he had not been able to get out of bed for two days. They said he had a furious fever, cough, chills, and diarrhoea.

It was not as if Iloisibe wished him ill, but still, she couldn't help thinking that his sickness was a punishment from God. She remembered when Daniel's thunderous knocking had woken her up the morning after the news of her husband's death broke. Muttering curses under her breath, Iloisibe had eased herself out of bed and shuffled towards the door.

When she unlocked it, a curdle-faced Daniel brushed past her into the house, stopped in the middle of the living room, hands akimbo, and asked, “Where are the documents?”

Iloisibe had looked into Daniel’s hardened eyes, and she had known he was not joking. Without saying another word, Daniel headed straight into the master bedroom. He pulled open the bedside drawer, emptied its contents on the floor and began to rummage through. Dissatisfied with his findings, he moved to the next drawer and repeated the same. Iloisibe promptly fled the scene.

When she returned moments later in the company of Major Chudi, she found the room looking like a herd of elephants had wrestled in it. Clothes, shoes, and papers were strewn all over the floor and on the bed. Daniel knelt in front of the wide-open wardrobe, a file in his hands, flipping through sheets of papers. He looked up, his eyebrows furrowing in an angry frown when he saw Major Chudi.

Major Chudi seized him by the collar and shoved him towards the door. “Get out of here!” he barked.

“Who are you to tell me to get out of my own house?” thundered Daniel

“Your house?” Major Chudi looked incredulously from Iloisibe to Daniel to Iloisibe again, who shrugged, puzzled as well.

“Yes! My brother’s house is my house, and so are all his properties,” Daniel tried to sound confident and sure of himself, but the slight tremor in his voice betrayed him. He had not thought this through at all. What was he thinking coming to harass a soldier’s widow in an army barracks?

“Shut up!” barked Major Chudi. “Shut up before I rearrange this your face for you! If no be say you be Samson brother, I for beat shege comot for your body. If you disturb this woman again, you go regret am! Gerrout of here!”

Daniel directed an icy glare at Iloisibe. "You will not live in the barracks forever," he said.

He then turned and stomped out of the house.

So, you see, that was why when Daniel's condition worsened, and the news of his death reached Iloisibe's ear, she did not shed a single tear. Instead, she felt relieved that she was vindicated at last because the priest at Bolong shrine had proclaimed that her husband's murderer, whoever they may be, would not see the face of the new moon.

Kadiki, Iloisibe's father-in-law, fell sick two days after Daniel's death. He was at the wake-keep of a childhood friend who had gone to join his ancestors after a brief illness when he slumped and was rushed to the hospital. When she heard, Iloisibe hastened to his bedside.

He had a fever, cough, chills, and bouts of diarrhoea. The doctor said it was nothing to worry about, that he could be cured, but Kadiki died on the fourth night.

Daniel’s death, Iloisibe could understand. It was no secret that he had envied his brother’s success and may have wanted him dead, but as for Kadiki, she could not see why an old man would want to kill his son. Although in these perilous economic times, one could never tell. These days, people would do anything for naira notes. After all, it had been Kadiki’s idea for her to swear her innocence at the shrine of Bolong.

Kadiki had gathered everyone together at the family home, three days after the earth had swallowed Samson’s coffin. He said Samson would not be happy wherever he was to know that the people he helped had nowhere to turn to. That since he had plots of land and some money in the bank, they should be used to take care of the extended family as he had always done. He then ordered Iloisibe to hand over all of Samson's documents to his brother, Daniel, so they could be looked after properly.

Iloisibe had gently but firmly refused. Samson had two young children; the oldest was just in Primary Two. When the money finished, who would pay their school fees?  Even if Kadiki had no hand in her husband’s death, Iloisibe reasoned that his death must be a punishment from God, the price for pouring salt into a widow’s fresh wounds.

And so, with God’s wrathful arrows fully pierced into the hearts of its intended targets, Iloisibe was finally ready to move on and settle into her life as a new widow. But tragedy struck again.

Three days after Kadiki's death, she woke up with an itch in her throat. She drank a mixture of ginger, lemon, and honey to keep the impending cold at bay, but by nightfall, the itch had grown into a thorn in her throat. When she swallowed, the thorn pricked her; when she stood up, her head throbbed; when she laid down, a flaming fever fanned her being. She wondered if perhaps she had killed her husband with some ancestral black magic she had no control of.

The doctor pumped Iloisibe with antibiotics and pain medication, but the fever persisted. By the seventh day, she could neither tell the taste of water nor food, and she was certain that she would soon be joining her husband in the grave. However, at the end of two weeks, the sore throat, fever, headaches, and chills disappeared as suddenly as they had come.

Later, when she was back home and was watching the evening news with her two young daughters, she heard about the new death. On the news, they said the whirlwind of the new death was blowing from China to Italy, to Brazil, to the United States, sweeping thousands away, snuffing ragged breaths from aching frames.

What Iloisibe did not know was that the new death had been around for four months and that the world leaders had known about it the whole time. Iloisibe also did not know that before Samson was stung by the bees, he had a serious fever, a harrowing headache, a cough, sore throat, and he could not taste his water or food.

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