Lagos Noir by Chris Abani

Author:Chris Abani
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook, book
Publisher: Akashic Books
Published: 2018-05-23T04:00:00+00:00

Eden

by Uche Okonkwo

Obalende

Madu had never reached into the back of the videocassette cupboard: that dark, dusty place where the films were older than God. But today, bored and desperate not to rewatch another film—Nneka the Pretty Serpent, Terminator 2, Mortal Kombat—with his sister Ifechi, he got on his knees in front of the cupboard and thrust his hand in, taking out the first tape he touched. The cassette had his father’s initials on its side, written in black ink on a strip of adhesive paper.

Ifechi peered at it. “What film is that?”

Holding the cassette up to his face, Madu read the title: A Taste of Paradise.

Ifechi hesitated. “Madu . . .” she warned, “it’s Daddy’s film.”

“So what?”

Madu stood and took the tape out of its case, noticing, through the clear plastic in the cassette’s center, that both spools had almost an equal amount of tape around them. He slipped the tape into the player and pressed play.

“Won’t you rewind it?” Ifechi asked.

“Let’s see what kind of film it is first.”

They waited as the familiar whirring sound started from the cassette player. Then a massive penis filled the screen.

“Jesus!” Madu shrieked, jumping back and away from the TV without taking his eyes off it. His sister stood frozen, watching the screen like it would rip her into a million pieces if she dared to turn away. For a while, the only sounds in the living room were the hum of the cassette player and the creaking of the ceiling fan as the blades turned. The old TV was acting up again—there was no sound. Madu crept toward the set and brought his palm down against its side twice, sharply, like he’d seen their father do many times to get the speakers to function. It worked. They heard moaning sounds carried on waves of fluty background music.

Two white men, one white woman, a white bed, white walls, a white floor littered with long-stemmed red roses, all the more stark against so much white. The woman lay writhing on the bed, her legs spread wide as she touched herself. Ifechi, distressed to find that the exposed flesh between the woman’s legs was the same pink as her best pinafore, decided that yellow was her new favorite color. One of the men straddled the woman’s head and she took his penis in her mouth.

“She’s licking it, sha!” Madu cried, his mouth hanging open.

The second man, who’d stood leaning against a wall watching the other two while he stroked his penis, bent to pick up a rose. He held it in one hand, and with the thumb and forefinger of the other he stroked the rose’s unnaturally smooth stem: up, down, then up and down again. He kneeled between the woman’s legs and took the hand he found there, sucking on each finger like she’d dipped them in chocolate. Then he trailed the flower up the woman’s thigh.

“Hei!” Ifechi said as the rose stem disappeared beneath the patch of blond pubic hair between the woman’s legs.

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