The Beautiful Side of the Moon Read online

  ‘Oh, it’s English. But yes, it is derived from Greek, syzygía. It’s an alignment of three celestial bodies. In this case, it’s the alignment of the Earth, the moon, and planet Bolanle.’

  Bolanle is a girl’s name in Yoruba. The man was obviously mad. Maybe the storm had affected his mind, driving him insane and making Adesua angry with him and cold toward me. Maybe they were both mad. That would explain the nonsense language I’d heard them speaking, and also what they had done with their shoes. Maybe it would start affecting me too, if it hadn’t already.

  ‘There is a planet called Bolanle?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Brother Moses said. ‘A planet called Bolanle?

  Yes, yes.’

  ‘A planet called Bolanle?’

  ‘Yes. And tonight it is aligned with the Earth and the moon.’

  ‘And this alignment of the Earth, the moon, and the planet Bolanle is what is causing the storm?’

  ‘No. Not exactly. The alignment is just a signal. People on different planets in the universe use these occurrences to synchronise events. This particular syzygy was agreed to be used as the signal for the commencement of a great event, and the signal has been noted on no fewer than half a dozen planets in our solar system alone.’

  I saw his hair move. I’d not paid much attention to it till then, but the afro was at least six inches thick, and almost entirely white down the middle and the sides under his ears, leaving a stripe of black along each side of his head. As I watched his hair, it moved again. It was as if the hair were alive.

  I couldn’t stop myself from pointing at his undulating afro.

  He looked confused for a moment before his face lit up and the keen smile returned. He gently patted his hair where it had bulged.

  ‘Oh, that is Caesar,’ he said.

  He left his fingers on his hair and a red, yellow, and black snake came out of his hair and curled round his palm.

  I cried out in horror and backed away, slamming into my bedroom door.

  ‘What the hell is going on?’ I shouted. ‘Who the hell are you people? Who keeps a snake in their hair? What the hell is this?’

  I think the word for my state at that moment was ‘hysterical’. A smiling, unperturbed Brother Moses, held the snake hand out in front of him and began walking towards me.

  I woke suddenly and sat up in bed. It was dark. It was silent. A moment passed and I realised I’d had one of those dreams in which you dream that you wake from a dream, not realising that you have only woken up in the second dream and you are still dreaming the first dream in which you’d dreamt that you were dreaming.

  It was hot. I had slept in my clothes. I got up to go and open the window and I saw the sky light up silently with a storm that had no thunder. I heard voices coming from my living room. ‘Du, da da, ra lo, ra ra. Lapu, lapo, laki.’

  I began to cry.

  Chapter 6 A Coin in Time

  In my living room there’s space for a two-seater sofa and a fuchsia tub chair that I acquired when the IT department waiting room was being refurbished. I learnt both the name of the armchair and its colour from Rachel, who took home its twin. I sat in the chair by the door to my bedroom and faced Adesua and Brother Moses, who were sitting opposite me, side by side, without space to spare on the small sofa. Between them and me was the stool, atop which their shoes were now arranged so that the heels were at the corners and the toes all pointed at the candle in the middle.

  I’d knocked and waited before entering my own living room. In that time they must have seated themselves on the sofa to appear less terrifying.

  We sat in this fashion, eyeing each other across the steady tongue of the candle’s flame. Adesua’s face was unwavering, with no hint as to what she may have been thinking, while Brother Moses continued to beam his merry smile at me as if it were a happy occasion. I scrutinised his hair for movement but detected none.

  ‘He’s gone,’ he said. He leaned forward and bowed his head, offering me the assurance of checking for myself.

  If the snake was no longer there, where was it? I drew my feet onto the armchair.

  ‘No, no, no.’ Brother Moses said. ‘Caesar is no longer here.’

  ‘What did you do with it?’

  ‘Do with it? Nothing. He was upsetting you so I told him not to come out again.’

  ‘Out from where? Is it still in your hair?’

  ‘Yes and no.’

  ‘Yes and no? Which is it?’ I returned my feet to the carpet, but my skin continued to anticipate the cold brush of a phantom snake.

  ‘Caesar lives in my hair, along with some other pets. I also keep other useful things in there. Have you ever seen a stairoscope?’

  ‘What do you mean, lives in your hair?’

  ‘Oh, I forgot, you have not yet been initiated. I will explain. You know of three dimensions, but there are others in between, like corridors. Some of these are called folds. I’ve mastered how to use these folds to hide things. It is the mastery of these dimensions that is the source of most magic.’

  He interpreted the look on my face as disbelief. I just didn’t know what to think.

  ‘Have you ever dropped a coin and immediately searched for it and not found it? That’s because the coin, quite by accident, has fallen into a fold. At a later date you might find the coin in a place you have searched before and you might wonder who put it there. Has this ever happened to you?’

  ‘No. We don’t use coins in Nigeria.’

  ‘Oh, I forgot what year it is. Ok, ok. Maybe a ring, or a button that comes loose on your shirt. It has to be some- thing relatively small like that, to increase the chances of slipping through the fold. I have already told you the secret of this dimension. Did you pick up on what it is?’

  He expected me to know something. I stared back at his smiling face and said nothing.

  ‘Time!’ he said. His excitement did not travel. He was mad. But where was the snake?

  ‘You think of time as linear. But what if time is constant, fixed, finite, and it is one or all of the other dimensions that are dynamic?’

  In the glow of the candlelight, his smiling face awaited my response.

  ‘Who are you people and what do you want from me?’ ‘We are magicians, like your father. Like you.’

  ‘My father was not a magician, he was a doctor.’

  ‘He taught you some magic, though. Do you still re- member it?’

  ‘Tricks. He did tricks. He was a doctor. You have the wrong person. Please, just go. Just leave me alone.’

  Adesua turned to Brother Moses. ‘What did I tell you?

  He’s useless. We shouldn’t have bothered.’ Brother Moses ignored her.

  ‘You are a magician, Master Osaretin. It is in your blood. Let me show you. He fetched an object from an inner pocket of his jacket. It was a wooden cube, about three inches square. He held it between his thumb and middle finger and offered it to me across the stool. I stayed where I sat. ‘Do you know what this is?’ he said. ‘Do you know what it does? Do you recognise it? Did you play with one like it when you were a kid?’

  I shook my head. In case he didn’t notice in the poor light, I said, ‘No. I don’t know what it is.’

  ‘Think. Try to remember. Your father gave you one when you were little.’

  ‘No. I’ve never seen it before.’ I recalled building blocks, but I wasn’t going to encourage him.

  ‘Try to remember. Look at it. What does it do?’

  Adesua spoke. ‘It’s useless. He’s not the one. I told you.’

  ‘She’s right,’ I said. ‘You have the wrong person.

  Please, just leave me alone.’

  Brother Moses returned the cube to his pocket. For the first time, the smile left his face, but only for the time it took him to fetch a coin, toss it, and catch it in the air. He hid the coin under his right palm over the back of his left hand.

  ‘Heads or tails?’ he said. I shook my head.

  ‘Please try, Master Osaretin. Heads or tails?’ ‘I do
n’t know.’

  ‘Guess, Master Osaretin. Guess.’ ‘I don’t want to guess.’

  ‘Useless,’ Adesua said.

  I looked at her. Her face was blank. Maybe the disap- pointment, impatience, disgust, and many other forms of loathing were all cancelling each other out.

  The room lit up. This time it wasn’t the silent storm. Power had returned. The world hadn’t ended. The night- mare was over. Yet two of its actors remained.

  Adesua looked at the single shaded light bulb hanging from my ceiling and then she looked at Brother Moses, who looked back at her. I looked out of the window. The steady darkness of the sky had never been such a source of joy. With the return of normalcy I gained confidence.

  ‘I’ve had enough of your games. Just tell me who are you and what you want from me.’

  Brother Moses didn’t look so otherworldly in the light. He was just a madman dressed in purple.

  ‘Master Osaretin. Your father used to toss a coin and make you guess which way it landed. He also used to balance a coin on a device similar to the one I showed you. He was teaching you things to prepare you for this day. Do you want to know how he made the egg disappear?’

  He got me. It showed on my face.

  ‘Yes, Master Osaretin. Your father could catch an egg in the air the way I caught this coin, and it would vanish in his palm. He never showed you how he did it, or how he made money appear in his handkerchief.’

  ‘How do you know that? There is no way you can pos- sibly know that.’ I was afraid again. ‘How do you know about my father?’

  ‘We were friends. I can tell you many things about him but you wouldn’t believe me unless you first accept that he was a magician and so are you.’

  ‘We are wasting time,’ Adesua said.

  ‘No. Master Osaretin will remember. It is in you, Master Osaretin.You are a great magician, just like your father. Tell me about my father.’

  The smile returned to his face. He rested his back against the sofa and began.

  ‘It was the winter of 1975, and my beard was in full bloom.’

  Chapter 7 The Prefiguration of Mr Magic

  ‘We met at a Jazz Club in Soho. He was in London attending a medical convention and I had just moved to the city, as I was due to begin a degree in Theology at King’s College.

  ‘I was playing a trick on a French lady I’d met earlier in Trafalgar Square. I presented my beard to her and invited her to pour a glass of wine into it. Efosa was watching. After the trick, he came to our table and asked if he could also pour his water into my beard. I told him he couldn’t but he poured it all the same and made my clothes wet. Everyone who’d seen me do my trick laughed at what he’d done, including the girl, but I alone knew that although he had poured only a small cup of water into my beard, more than a bucketful passed through and soaked my clothes.

  ‘I was only Magnificent, but he was Grand. He was a Most Grand Magician of the First Order. To become Grand you have to master all the other dimensions. Efosa had mastered them all. Only few ever become Grand. For them, magic comes naturally. It is in their blood. There is no trick performed by any magician that they cannot duplicate. They can also ruin a lesser magician’s trick, like he ruined mine.

  ‘To become something even greater than Grand, you have to discover a new dimension that no one else knows about. In this way, no other magician will be able to recreate your tricks. People said Efosa had discovered such a dimension.’

  My phone began to ring in my trouser pocket, strengthening my suspicion that I had not undressed myself before I woke up naked in bed. But who could be calling at three in the morning?

  ‘Who is it?’ Adesua said.

  They were both looking at me. The ringing phone had made them uncomfortable. I checked the name on my screen.

  ‘It’s my workmate, Rachel.’

  ‘Don’t answer it.’

  ‘Why not?’

  She didn’t reply, but before I could answer the phone Brother Moses said, ‘You must really like women a lot.’

  ‘Why?’ I asked, affronted

  ‘Because they keep using women to try to catch you.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  The phone stopped ringing. A few seconds later the message alert beeped.

  ‘Read it out,’ Adesua said.

  I defiantly refused to follow Adesua’s instructions, but I gave them the gist of what is said. ‘She’s on her way here.’

  Adesua stood up.

  ‘We must leave now,’ she said.

  ‘No,’ Brother Moses said. ‘Let her come. Let him see for himself.’

  I didn’t know what on earth they were talking about, but I was spooked. They were spooky. What had Rachel got to do with any of this?

  Adesua sat back down. ‘Are you sleeping with her?’ she said. I wanted to lie that I was.

  ‘No. But she likes me.’

  We were more like best friends. We even referred to one another as brother and sister and meant it.

  She sniggered. She looked at Brother Moses. Brother Moses shook his head at her and spoke to me.

  ‘We don’t have much time. I must tell you something quickly. I won’t be able to explain all of it now, but you’ll understand everything later. Your father told me about a magician who was born with knowledge of all dimensions known and yet to be known. He said that he was afraid of this magician. Your father, who had explored the dimensions of infinite fear until he became bored, was afraid of this character. He said that this magician had discovered the so-called God Dimension, and once he mastered it, he would have the power to destroy all of creation and recreate it in any way he desired. This is why we have come for you.’

  ‘What has it got to do with me?’

  Adesua answered me. ‘He thinks you are the one.’ ‘Me?’ I asked. She sounded like she didn’t believe it.

  Maybe she wasn’t insane after all.

  Brother Moses had a forlorn look on his face. ‘Yes, I’m afraid so. Your father never said who it was, but he told me his performance name, Mr Magic. I asked every magician I knew but no one else had heard of him except your father. In time I came to realise it was you, and he was only trying to protect you.’

  ‘Protect me? From what?’

  ‘From the people coming to get you now.’

  My phone rang again. It was Rachel. Adesua and Brother Moses watched me as I held the ringing phone in my hand, unsure what to do.

  ‘Answer it,’ Brother Moses said. ‘But whatever you do, do not invite her in.’

  I answered the phone. ‘Hello?’

  ‘Osaretin, oh my God, I’m so happy to hear your voice. Did you get my message?’ Rachel said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m downstairs.’ ‘Okay.’

  ‘Have you watched the news?’ ‘No.’

  ‘It was a solar flare. It’s on CNN. It affected the whole world. It bathed the entire globe in a plasma cloud. It disrupted everything electrical. They said it’s a new kind of phenomenon that has never been experienced before. They are carrying out tests to determine whether it has had any lasting effects. As far as they know, everything has returned to normal and no lives have been lost.

  ‘I was really, really scared, Osaretin. I thought the world was going to end and the only person I kept thinking of was you. I just wanted to be with you. I’m at your door now. Please let me in.’

  ‘You are at the door?’ I said, looking at Adesua and Brother Moses.

  ‘Yes. Let me in.’

  The doorbell rang and I jumped.

  I knew it was Rachel on the phone. It was her voice.

  But I was afraid to open the door.

  ‘Rachel,’ I said. ‘What colour was the paper I showed you?’

  She did not answer. She knocked on the door. ‘Rachel? What colour is my tub chair?’

  She banged on the door. ‘Rachel?’

  ‘Let me in right now!’

  I ended the call, dropped the phone on the chair and got to my feet.

&nbs
p; The banging continued. The entire door shook in its frame.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Brother Moses said. He was so calm.

  He wasn’t even looking at the door.

  ‘They can’t come in if you don’t invite them.’

  ‘They?’

  ‘Yes. It is not your friend. I suspect there’s at least two of them. They won’t take chances with a magician like you.’

  ‘Who are they?’

  ‘They are also magicians. They want to use your powers to destroy many universes.’

  The banging stopped. What was out there? ‘Why?’

  ‘I can’t explain now, we don’t have time.’ A thought suddenly filled me with hope.

  ‘What year was it when my father told you about this Mr Magic?’ I held my breath.

  ‘1975.’

  ‘Don’t you see? It can’t be me. I wasn’t born then!’

  I knew it. They had the wrong person. I wanted to share the information with whoever was out there hoping I’d let them in.

  ‘It was a prophesy,’ Brother Moses said. ‘Few magicians learn this trick. Anyone who knows how to can travel back and forth in time, but whatever information they bring back from the future is useless because they have observed it, and in so doing, altered it. Efosa was one of the few magicians who could return from the future and leave the future intact.

  ‘He could prophesy things to come. He predicted your birth and your powers. He talked about you as if you were already a grown man, so that others would not know who you are. He told me all I needed to know so that I would realise it was you.’

  ‘But what if you are wrong?’

  ‘What you witnessed tonight in the sky, that was them

  trying to find you. They used a device called the drum. Its use on this planet is unprecedented. No. I lie. It has been used once before – they were looking for someone they wished to crucify. It’s like a radar that can scan an entire planet.’

  ‘What were they scanning for?’ ‘For a magician with your powers.’

  ‘I have no powers.’

  ‘You do. You just don’t know it yet.’