Planck’s Constant by Niran Okewole (Nigeria)

The iron rings of Kekule adorned the entrance to the Science building popularly known as the White House. Ken went past them as he descended the staircase, ignoring a couple of undergraduate girls dressed in stretch pants and body-hugs. They were from his solid state physics tutorial class. He guessed from their discreet glances and hushed whispers that they were gossiping about him, probably about Gbonju, his current girlfriend.

He made for the parking lot where his battered grey “Shagari” model Mercedes Benz was parked. It was well past two in the afternoon and he was hungry. Mama Wale would be pleased to see him. She ran his favourite lunch spot at the old bukateria. No one else within a thousand mile radius knew how to make amala and ewedu like Mama Wale. She also had friends among the game hunters who kept her supplied with fresh bush meat. On lucky afternoons, there was even palm wine instead of beer.

Gbolahan, the economist, was already there. He could tell by the black Pajero jeep, the only one on campus. Gbolahan had won a couple of World Bank grants. He ran the girls on campus like an assembly line. At times he had up to five or six girlfriends, which could be quite messy, like when two Sociology students stripped themselves down to their bras and panties right in front of the amphitheatre, clawing at each other with fixed nails till they bled. Ken preferred to be with one girl at a time.

After lunch he dropped by to see Dr Anjorin at the Department of Fine Arts. Dr Anjorin was Publicity Secretary of the Academic Staff Union, and chair of the committee on graphics into which Ken had been coopted. The committee made posters and illustrations for the newsletter and other union publications.

The Fine Arts department shared the building with the Departments of Music and Theatre Arts. From upstairs wafted down strains of Liszt’s Liebestraum. He had not heard Liszt in a while. Back in his days as an undergraduate, he would come up the road from the White House to the Arts building to paint and listen to music. At times there would be a choir rehearsal, at other times someone pounding away Liszt or Chopin. This was usually in the afternoon, away from the hustle and bustle. In the evenings the attraction was the Pit Theatre, where there might be a play on. Ken had discovered from those days, in addition to an addiction to theatre and considerable painting talent, an enduring love for piano, which now embraced Duke Ellington, Oscar Peterson and Bob James.

*

He parked in front of his chalet on Road 8, strolled down to the old Leventis store to pick up groceries. He would have a quick nap, and then meet Gbolahan and Professor Kwame for a game of tennis at the Staff Club, just across the road from his chalet.

Before drifting off to sleep he went through his mail. He perused the final proofs of his most recent paper on crystallography which had arrived from the South African journal. It was co-authored with Ted Dragg, the visiting professor. With the other four papers he already had, Ken felt he stood a good chance of getting a full lecturership after completing his doctorate. At least two more papers were bound to come out of his PhD thesis. His doctorate was already long overdue, he thought as he dozed off. If only he hadn’t opposed the head of department’s examination policy during that faculty meeting…

*

Gbonju came in the evening. He was having a shower after his tennis match when she knocked. She was armed with the assignment he had given the class that morning. She had a habit of doing all her studying in the afternoon after class, leaving the rest of the evening free. She was a prodigy of sorts, with grade point average in the first class range.

Femi Osofisan’s “The Chattering and the Song “ was showing at the Pit Theatre. Their first conversation was at the Pit Theatre. It was one of those interludes Ken had always loved when before the main event starts, the troupe would drum and dance, singing native classics. Ken had never really taken notice of Gbonju – her lean, dark features were not out of the ordinary, and knowing she was among the best students made him pass her off as a bookworm – but he was impressed to see her singing and gyrating with the band. He soon discovered she also had a good head for beer.

“What did you say the guy’s name is again” He asked Gbonju who had read the play.

“Sontri?”

“No, the drinkard-revolutionary.”

“Leje. “ She recites her favourite lines, where Leje talks about togetherness, renewal and survival. She does this with dancing waves of the hands as they approach the entrance.

He sees some of her classmates in the audience. If Gbonju has seen them, she does not show it, and is soon lost in the performance. When, in the epilogue, Funlola and Leje do their love dance, Gbonju gripped Ken’s hand tightly, staring wordlessly into his eyes. Back at his chalet, their love making was so intense it felt like death and reincarnation.

*

She left for Ibadan on saturday to spend the weekend with her parents. Ken spent the morning tidying up his apartment. He was doing his laundry when Akin came. He was a journalist working in Lagos with the banned Tempo magazine. He had a back pack with him which Ken knew contained the samizdat publication. It could not be sold at the stands, and so Akin usually brought copies to Ife every fortnight for Ken to sell discreetly to the university community. This was a risky venture because even there on campus, there were agents of the military regime.

Akin was a socialist, a fact which Ken taunted him with endlessly. They had met during their student days, in the mid-eighties. Both had found themselves manning barricades during the anti-SAP riots, and after the day’s work would retreat to Awolowo Hall to quaff several bottles of ice cold beer and argue about the implications of the decline in Stalinist Russia for the world balance of power.

Today Akin’s face appeared strained. His guerilla journalism had not gone unnoticed by the State Security Service, who, having incarcerated one of the senior editors, were now hot on the trail of the rest of the gang.

“I am working on a novel,”Akin announced, as Ken opened a second bottle of beer for him.

“About time. What is it about?”

“A dissident community. Many of my real life experiences are going into it.”

“A kind of therapy?”

“Sort of. I want to see how far I can get with it before I get caught.“

“You make getting caught seem inevitable,” Ken chuckled.

“It is. Unless I want to pack it in and border-hop.“

Akin was arrested a few weeks later, while trying to cross the Seme border into Benin Republic with Gag, the lawyer and poet. By that time though, a substantial part of the novel had been written, and it went on to win an award.

After he left, Ken went into the garage which he had converted to a studio. He set about putting some more strokes into his two newest paintings. One he had named ‘Singularities’, and had evolved out of his study of the work of Stephen Hawking and Roger Penrose on cosmology and the origins of the universe.

The other one he was particularly fond of. It had a grizzly, rake thin and prematurely aging man dressed in a dirty wrapper and torn singlet. He was armed with a broom with which he was trying to clear the cobwebs which had formed a map across his roof. The dim light of an oil lamp caught a giant spider scurrying along the spawned tapestry, trying to evade the broom.

In spite of the man’s abject penury, there was something affirmative about the way he held the broom above his head. Ken had already tagged this painting the ‘World Wide Web’.

He painted till it grew dark, finally putting away his brushes and palets. Feeling light-headed, he locked up and sauntered toward the smell of suya coming from the Staff Club, a few copies of Tempo under his armpit.

At the club a few tables had been joined at the centre of which were Professor Olode and Dr Sopetu. They were both Marxists, and Olode, a zoologist, had been in the vanguard of the revolutionary movement on campus and beyond since the 1970s. He had been the prison guest of each military regime since then. With the recent annulment of the presidential elections, there were rumours that mass protests would soon be underway. Both men were founding members of Campaign for Democracy, a nationwide coalition.

“Pacifists like Dr Randle keep talking about non-violent means,” Sopetu thundered. “But this annulment is already a form of violence, calling for counter-violence. “

“Besides, “ Olode began in his calm, measured manner, “our lawyer friends have already headed to the courts to challenge the annulment. But the judges are being intimidated by the junta. What we need is to put pressure on the government by a wave of civil action.”

Ken, calling for beer, waved the copies of Tempo that had not already been grabbed. Doris Obong signaled that she wanted one, winking at him as he passed a copy to her. She was in International Relations, got married to a diplomat as an undergraduate but was now divorced. She had a daughter in boarding school. She was strikingly attractive, and, in her mid-thirties, was at least half a decade older than Ken. She had just moved to a chalet three blocks away from his. Ken thought she was flirting with him the other day at the old Leventis store but could not be sure.

Someone asked what assurance there was that the elected civilian government would not be more corrupt than the military. Professor Olode started explaining that in any democracy, there were basic freedoms which made it possible for the citizenry to check an erring government. The press for instance, and the courts. Some of the lecturers present did not agree, citing instances of democracies where the press, the courts and every other civil institution had been straightjacketed. These included states that had won their independence on the platform of visionary leadership. The debate gradually heated up.

Doris had managed to get a seat directly opposite Ken. He tried to shift his legs to a more comfortable angle, hitting her ankle in the process.

“Sorry,”He spluttered, a little embarassed.

She smiled at him. As the night wore on, and the tables became crowded with emptied bottles of beer, Ken found himself and Doris engaged in awordless conversation, where only stolen glances spoke and spoke volumes. He did not know when her legs slowly started creeping up his, till eventually her foot was wedged against his crotch. By this time most of the others were leaving.

She was blind drunk. Ken felt it his duty to see her off home. He was also impelled by something other than chivalry. He still felt stiff from having had her foot up his crotch, and as she leaned against him for the short distance to her flat, he felt as though little flames had been lit all over him.

She was dozing lightly by the time they got to her doorstep, but the effort of fumbling for her keys roused her a little. Once inside, she started pulling at his trousers. Ken wondered, as he tried to keep pace with her desperate love-making, what could make a woman want it so bad – naked lust? Prolonged deprivation? His thoughts were interrupted by her helpless moaning as she came again and again.

She made sure his arms stayed around her all through the night. Neither woke up till well past noon.

*

There was no better place to drink beer on a Sunday night than the Diganga Hotel bar, just outside the main university gate. The garden had a tropical flavour with cane chairs and tables made of hewn wood. The stands were covered with thatch like small huts and all around were well-tended palms which provided a gentle breeze in the evening.

A local band played on Friday nights, while contemporary hits featured on Saturdays, to the delight of sensation-seeking youth from the off-campus hostels. The dance-hall atmosphere of Saturday evenings was replaced on Sunday night by sweet nostalgia as the disc jockey played old grooves.

Ken had not been there in a while, not since Zainab. It was as if she haunted the place, leaving her treacherous fragrance on every napkin and her fingerprints on every spoon.

In a discreet corner, where the little light bulbs twinkling like yam tendrils round the trunk of the palms had been switched off at the request of the clientele, sat a middle-aged man in a blue lace agbada gown and a black cap. With him was a much younger girl, possibly a teenager, whose occasional laughter had an effervescent quality.

In the background, Lionel Richie crooned ‘Say You, Say Me’. Staring at the bubbles in his beer glass, Ken thought of the last article he had read in a popular science journal, about the feasibility of alternate, bubble universes. According to the writer, it was possible to travel through time from one universe to another. Ken wondered how great it would be to do that – hop between worlds. Perhaps he would be ten again, in a world where only his mother existed and there was no liquor-laden, belt wielding father in the next room snoring off a hangover. Or maybe he would be sixteen again, in a world where Agnes, his high school crush, would fall for him and not that Yankee wannabe, Duro.

The middle-aged man and his girl were in a bubble of their own. The girl had left her seat and now sat on the man’s lap. She was feeding him fried chicken and after a few mouthfuls she raised his glass of beer to his lips. They were obviously enjoying themselves. She set the glass down as he swallowed her within the folds of his agbada.

“Ken, my Ken! Long time no see.”

He looked up to see Sola the doctor. The two men had met a couple of years back at the Kegites club, and grew to like each other. It was a rude shock when Ken found out that Sola’s wife, Funke, had been one of Gbolahan’s girlfriends since her school days. He knew Gbolahan still slept with her even though she was now married.

“I have good news,”Sola said after settling into the next seat and hailing the barman. “I have just passed my fellowship examination. I am now a neurologist.”

“Congratulations, man.”

“That is not all. I have a job waiting for me in Botswana.”

“Botswana? “

“They have a fantastic neurology unit at the university. I was there during a conference last year, where I presented a paper. The head of department promised me a job after my residency.“

“I’m happy for you. Just that I thought you docs were all heading to Europe and America. “

“That may come later. For now, believe me, anything is better than Nigeria.”

As he said this, he shook to Whitney Houston’s ‘How Will I Know.’

“So is Funke going with you?”

“Not immediately. Soon as I am settled.”

“You really believe that? That anything is better than Nigeria? “

“My guy, as a doctor in this country I earn less than an oil company driver. I didn’t go through all the stress to earn a dog’s pay. “

Ken decided to drop the topic. Atlantic Starr did ‘Secret Lovers’ and Ken’s mind went back to Funke and Gbolahan.

“1986.”

“What? “ Ken asked, placing a toothpick in the path of an ant which was crawling across their table.

“He’s doing 1986 hits, “ Sola replied. “The last time I came, the DJ did this special where all the songs were from 1982.“

“1986. Great year for us.“

“How so?” Sola asked.

“You know, the Nobel and all. “

“True. But it was also the year of SAP. And Dele Giwa.” Sola turned serious. “I know you think I’m being impertinent, leaving Nigeria for Botswana. But look around you, man! This country is a sinking ship. You and I were both students in this university in 1986. Do you remember how the climate seemed charged with intellectual energy? Some of the best brains in the country were here. Expatriates too. Where are they now ? They’ve all fled.”

“Maybe things will get better, “ Ken said, not really believing his own words.

“It’s not going to get better, Ken, and you of all people should know that. Things are going to get worse. Much worse. “

Perhaps it was the beer, perhaps it was Dionne Warwick singing ‘That’s What Friends are for’- another 1986 classic – Ken was on the verge of telling Sola about Funke’s affair with Gbolahan when a corpulent woman stormed in. She was wearing a blue lace attire and black headtie. She spotted the matchingly dressed man in the dark corner, locked in a deep embrace with an unknown girl. With a howl that was part rage, part pain, part humiliation, she lunged at the amorous pair, knocking the girl off her randy husband’s lap. She then attacked the sprawling girl with her handbag. Her husband, in a bid to restrain her, received two vicious slaps.

“Is this your office, Baba Wale? You left me at my sister’s naming ceremony , saying you were going to the office. Is this your office?”

The headtie had slipped off her head and she removed it completely, leaving her plaited hair bare. She tied the gele round her waist. The girl, probably an undergraduate, used the few moments when the woman’s focus was on her husband to sneak away.

*

On Monday morning Ken learnt that Professor Olode had been arrested. Some men in black suits had come to his flat around 8pm the previous evening, pulling him out of the car just as he was driving out of his garage. They shot in the air to scare away inquiring neighbours. The car engine was still running when his wife came home half an hour later. Dr Sopetu had gone into hiding.

The atmosphere on campus was very tense. When Ken returned to his chalet, he found that the lock at the front door had been broken. He pushed the door open, stepping in cautiously, but found the chalet was empty. The whole place had been turned upside down. He had left a few copies of Tempo beside the computer. He cursed his carelessness. They were gone now.

He reached for the bottle of MacDowells, a gift from the chemist Sanjay. His nerves were screwed, his mind a haze as he drifted into the garage. He sat on a stool and stared vaguely at a blank canvass. Like a demented robot, he dabbed absently at the emptiness . The formlessness soon evolved a pattern and Ken completely forgot his predicament for the next couple of hours, pausing only when Gbonju came. She had heard about the arrest, and knew of Ken’s clandestine activities. Her face was etched with concern.

“I see you still have the fortitude to paint.“

“I’m doing this to steady my nerves. Works better than whisky.” He smiled wanly.

“What is this one called?” She asked , looking at the spirals with a quiet point of light at the centre.

“Planck’s Constant,” He replied, without a moment’s hesitation. “The still point of a turning world. The blood-drenched eye of the storm.”

“Do you think you should make a run for it ?“ She asked after a while.

“I’ve already packed a bag. I’m not sleeping here tonight. “

“Whatever happens, Ken, I just want you to know – “

They heard loud banging at the door. There was terror in Gbonju’s eyes.

“They’re here, “ Ken said needlessly, the hanging brush dripping red paint on the garage floor.

NIRAN OKEWOLE is a senior registrar at the Psychiatric Hospital, Yaba, Lagos.