Jekwu Anyaegbuna graduated from the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England, with an MA in Creative Writing. He was the winner of a Commonwealth Short Story Prize in 2012 and is a contributor of Granta Magazine. He lives in England and you can follow him on Twitter. 

 

 

My battle with infertility drives me to a white-gown church on the outskirts of the cloudless city of Ilorin. The church is set on a rocky mountain, the zenith for miracles. It’s widely called MAC, short for Miracles Apostolic Church (Oke Iyanu). I clutch a rope and drag a white ram up the high mountain. I’m struggling to make the animal walk, having sprained my thin wrist forcing it on the bus, the passengers growling and pinching their noses from the smell of ram-pee that spewed on the floor.

The four walls of the church are built from wood and a bamboo cross, as tall as a streetlight, stands on top of the corrugated-iron roof. A shimmering stream runs to the foot of the mountain, emptying into a murky lake. The lake also receives sewage channeled from nearby houses. There are unlit red candles along the bank of the stream. Crabs have dug holes to hide inside when they hear the crushing sounds of feet, and hungry Goliath frogs are touring the length and breadth of the lake, looking for food.

Prophet Elijah, who owns the church, is reputed to cure every incurable disease and reverse all medical abnormalities. Of course, I believe everything he says. Why wouldn’t I? Who am I, an ordinary man, to question a man of God? As a devoted Christian, I’m convinced that the mother of God conceived Jesus Christ without losing her virginity. Even though I don’t really believe it when I’m told a woman gave birth to three high-heeled shoes at Miracles Apostolic Church, I try to. It’s only through belief that my miracle will happen. I trust the powers of the prophet will cure my sterility. This one isn’t a witch doctor. He’s different, a real man of Christ.

As I climb up the mountain, my rude ram bangs its head against a glistening rock and howls, each of its curved horns almost splitting into two. Its robust scrotum sways from side to side.

When I inquired about this church, Prophet Elijah told me to get a ram, one with a bloated stomach, a wide backbone, meaty thighs, and a neck like a drum.

“Through prayer, I’ll remove your bad testicles and replace them with the ram’s testicles,” he said.

“You mean I’ll produce a real human being from the animal’s sperm?” I asked.

“Exactly.”

“I’ll go to Baboko Market and search.”

Today, as I struggle to control it, I wonder if a baby produced from this ram’s testicles will look and behave like the animal. Gasping for breath, I manage to haul the stubborn beast into the church, my huge beard drenched with sweat. The prophet smiles on seeing me. He doesn’t wear shoes because he has burnt his toes from staggering across a charcoal fire to prove his faith and power.

His giant dreadlocks have never held a conference with water, and his skin is the color of raw bitumen. He has only one eye. One of his church members told me he lost the other in a childhood battle with measles. His followers often say it was the measles that sharpened his remaining eye to the details of the other world. His voice is guttural. I’ve heard he used to be obese, but his frequent dry fasts and prayers have melted the fat away, leaving a spindly neck strewn with veins and the limbs of a marathoner. His once-white gown, now brown from dust and filth, billows around his singed feet. He isn’t married and doesn’t want to marry, because he’s modelled his life after Jesus Christ, whom the white missionaries said had only a platonic relationship with women.

The prophet trots forward and places his hand on my sweating head to bless me. He holds a cardboard-bound Bible as thick as a shoebox, murmuring a strange song. When he’s finished his ministrations, he goes to sit in a cane chair by the altar, facing the empty wooden pews. Save for his verger, a muscular man with a bulging chest, who comes to take the ram from me, there are no worshippers present. Perhaps Prophet Elijah has earmarked today for my special treatment. It’s a dehydrated afternoon in need of a drink of rain, the atmosphere wetting my armpits and the heat wrinkling my forehead.

The verger, still grappling with the ram, tries to tie its front legs with a rope, but it resists. He then grabs its hind legs, ties them, and extends the rope to the front legs. The animal collapses on the ground with a loud thud, bleating like there’s a knife to its neck already, its eyes popping out, its tongue thick and stained green.

“Mr. Timothy, take your clothes off and lie down on the altar,” the prophet says.

I flinch. “Excuse me?”

“Don’t be ashamed,” the verger says. “All of us here are men.”

“Mr. Timothy, we all came to the world naked, remember?” Prophet Elijah says.

When my bare back touches the warm rock on the altar, I squirm. But the prospect of my wife Regina giving birth to a child is more than enough compensation. I stare at the roof, already feeling the potency of this divine treatment from this one-eyed prophet. I’m positive that I’ll always remember this as a great day.

The prophet sits on the ground, facing me with his legs crossed. He closes his eyes and gabbles a short prayer only he understands. He stands up, covers my genitals with the middle of his heavy Bible, and prays with his hands over it. When he removes the Bible, he grabs my penis and gives it a squash, startling me. He picks up my bloated scrotum like a coin and drops it on the back of his hand as if measuring its weight. It seems he enjoys fiddling with my private parts, and I wonder if this is part of the treatment. He shuts his eyes again in prayer, muttering words that sound like Yoruba and Urhobo mixed together. Maybe he’s speaking in tongues. Now he gives my member a quick massage, strokes it up and down, and swings it around. God, his hands are thorny. And, to my shame, my manhood has stood stiff on the altar.

Prophet Elijah nods. “Angel Michael.”

“Master, I’m right behind you,” the verger answers.

“Slit the throat of the ram.”

“Your slave has heard, Master.”

The prophet lets go of my asset, and I sit up to watch. The knife glitters when the verger pulls it out of the sheath. He drags the ram and places it on a moss-strewn stone near me, singing an ominous song littered with plenty of Hallelujahs. With a swift thrust of the knife, the neck tears apart. The prophet asks me to lie down again as he tows the beheaded animal closer to me and positions the bleeding neck onto my genitals. The blood is so hot, spurting, that I wriggle away.

“Don’t move,” he commands me, frowning.

“If you shift again, every spirit we’ve invited to cure you will vanish,” the verger says.

I writhe back to my former position, and the red flow continues. Blowflies perch on my drenched groin and stomach and thighs, scratching my skin. Prophet Elijah picks up a plastic cup and allows blood to trickle into it until it’s full from the slaughtered ram’s neck. He says another prayer and stares into the cup as if he’s noticed Jesus Christ swimming inside.

“Drink this blessed juice,” he says, extending his hand.

I nod. “Jesus Christ is the best doctor indeed.”

I sit up and guzzle half the blood, choking, as it tastes nothing like the blood that I often drink during Communion services. I almost vomit, but I hold it in my cramping stomach. He collects the cup and asks me to lie down again. This time, he cuts off the ram’s testicles entirely. As I wonder what he’s going to do with them, he dips them in the pool of blood on the ground and dumps them on my penis, now flaccid.

“I command these testicles to transfer into you right now,” he says.

“Amen!” the verger yells out.

I steel myself, awaiting the prick of a needle to stitch the testicles to the gap between my legs, but a lack of movement prevails.

The prophet bends down and holds my testicles. “Your balls will be filled with this ram’s sperm in the mighty name of Jeeeesus Christ!”

“Amen!” the verger and I scream.

“You’ll produce a child.”

“Amen!”

“You’ll never be laughed at.”

“Amen!”

“Your enemies will be put to shame.”

“Amen!”

The prophet straightens up. The verger drags the dead ram to the back of the church, through the crooked door behind the altar, holding the detached testicles in his other hand. I suppose for the next few months these men won’t need to go to Baboko Market to buy meat. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with prophets profiting when their followers are sick.

 

#

 

I think back to seven years ago, immediately after my wedding, when a medical doctor in Ilorin diagnosed me with a low sperm count and proposed a hi-tech solution I couldn’t afford. As a carpenter with a ramshackle hut by the roadside, I was in dire need of a child to carry on my name and grow up to be richer than Aliko Dangote. So, I sought an alternative remedy and came under the spell of a witch doctor. To repair my bad testicles, he served me the barbecued genitalia of a giant chimpanzee, garnished with slices of red pepper and purple onions on a paper plate. I ate them. They tasted beefy and salty.

The witch doctor compelled me to bathe with stinking herbal concoctions, and I slept in a coffin inside his rose-scented temple for seven nights. On Christmas Day at midnight, he took me to a mortuary where he made me kneel and pray to the sexual organs of seven dead men. He promised that dangling my sickly genitals in front of those dead men while celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ, was one of the best ways to make my wife pregnant.

Last year, he forced a diaper on a kid goat in his sacred temple, and I cuddled the animal overnight as my unborn child. When he asked my wife to allow a puppy to suck at her breasts, the puppy representing our longed-for baby, she agreed after some moment of hesitation. Three months ago, I donated flowers and toiletries to hospices and orphanages. I’d hoped my generosity might persuade the God of Children to give me a child.

Yesterday, my wife Regina wept and screamed because she got her period again. She couldn’t even stop her tears as I caressed her cheeks and chest in our bedroom.

“Reggie, take it easy,” I said.

She jiggled her head, sitting unsteadily on the bed. “We’ve tried so hard, yet I’m still not pregnant.” She hugged herself as if feverish, glaring at me. “Seven whole years!”

“Let’s await God’s time. He’s supreme.”

“What is God’s time? You need a solution, not time.”

“Be patient with me, Reggie. Be patient.”

“Haven’t I endured enough?”

“Don’t worry. I’ve found a prophet who can give me a total cure. A man with troubled testicles doesn’t rest.”

 

#

 

Now Prophet Elijah asks me to stand up and put on my clothes. He splashes the remaining blood in the cup on my head and sprinkles it on my white T-shirt. He mandates me not to have a bath for seven days because seven is a spiritually effective number. I’ve had the nasty smell of the blood on me for about thirty minutes, so I can imagine how disgusting I’ll smell for one week without bathing.

He slides into the cane chair. “You should bring your wife here.”

“Why?” I ask, hoping the question won’t stain his holiness.

“You’re going to make love to her in my presence.”

“Never,” I say, aghast.

He leans forward, his single eye glinting at me, like moonlight on vegetable oil.

“Mr. Timothy, it’s the Lord’s mandate, not mine.”

I am wondering if the Lord enjoys watching porn. “Don’t you think the Lord looking at the nakedness of a childless couple might offend his angels?”

The prophet shakes his head, rattling his dusty dreadlocks. “No, Mr. Timothy. Holy is the mind of the Lord.”

“But I cannot do a shameful thing like that, Master.”

He sighs. “Look, Mr. Timothy, one of the other reasons you can’t have a child is your landlord. He’s a sorcerer, a cultist even. He scoops your sperm away with his powerful jujus, those diabolical talismans.”

“My landlord?”

“I swear. His wealth multiplies every time he sacrifices your precious sperm to a money-doubling god. He also steals your wife’s ovaries, corrupting her womb. He visits Gujarat and Ijebu-Ode regularly, to sharpen the blade of his power even more.”

Prophet Elijah has begun to make more sense. I’ve been suspecting my landlord of criminality, of being a ritualist. So, he’s the devil behind my childlessness? I’ve noticed that he doesn’t respond to my greetings. Now I fully grasp why the prophet squeezed my genitals like that. His power is stronger than the landlord and his talismans.

“I don’t think my wife will agree to come. She’s suffered enough already.”

“You must wheedle her into coming. Just find a subtle way to convince her.”

I tell him I’ll do my best.

“You see, when you make love to her in the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ, he’ll give you both a baby and prevent your landlord from stealing it. And, you know, our Lord longs to watch a married couple making love.”

“That’s interesting, Master.”

He gulps down his spittle. “As a matter of fact, I always ask my congregants who intend to marry to have sex first inside this church before their wedding day. It’s the only opportunity to present their genitals to Jesus Christ.”

“Really, Master?”

“Really. Even my youth members who engage in premarital sex come here to buy holy condoms from Jesus Christ.”

“What?” I scream, hitting my chest in shock.

“Yes, Jesus Christ approves of condoms so much that he supplies them to me. He prefers protected sex among adolescents.”

“Marvellous Jesus Christ.”

It puzzles me that the Lord and his prophet can sit down and watch teenagers have sex inside the church. But I conclude that it’s to bless their young sperm and ovaries, making them fertile and preparing them for future marital responsibilities. I didn’t have the privilege of the Lord-prophet-supervised sex as a teenager. Perhaps, that’s why I’m a barren adult.

“In your case, you’re lucky because I’ll allow you to make love to your wife here, even though you’re not a member.”

This man is indeed a generous angel from heaven. “Thank you, Master. Thank you. Thank you.”

“You’ll do the business at night so that unholy eyes won’t see you, but I must be present to seek the face of Father Lord in prayer while you’re on top of her.”

He gives me his phone number in case I decide to come tomorrow or any day. I’m now certain that sex on the mountain will smash the yoke of my infertility, and I must break this news to my wife Regina. I’m eager to return home but have to wait until the day is dark. I don’t want my neighbours to think I’ve become a cultist saturated with blood.

 

#

 

I stand at Sobi Junction for almost one hour while taxicabs refuse to take me home. They all speed off as soon as they see me disheveled like a waste disposal site. I decide to tell a meek-looking postman that I’ve had an accident, and he agrees to let me into his van, covering his nose. I’m sure I smell like a slaughterhouse.

I make it back home and creep through the wide compound full of gossipy neighbours. Regina will probably be asleep. I tap on the metal door, which we keep locked because of thieves, but she doesn’t stir. I see only a flicker of light through the keyhole. She’s turned the lantern low. I knock again, this time louder. She makes it to the door and opens it, yawning. On seeing me, she screams and recoils. I dart inside and plonk myself down on the floor. I puff and pant, struggling to calm down.

“Have you had an accident, Tim?” she asks, shutting the door.

“Not an accident, Reggie. I’ve been to a special healing session.”

“What kind of healing session leaves you covered in blood?”

“It’s the new cure for my low sperm count.”

She sighs, covering her nose. “And what type of blood smells this bad?”

“The blood of Jesus Christ.”

She frowns and stares down at me. “I don’t believe it.” Her hands now on her hips. “Please be serious. What happened to you?”

“Reggie, I’ve come from the prayer mountain, and the prophet there wants to see you.”

“Nonsense.”

I’m not surprised at her disbelief. Although a Christian, she’s never been a church-going, Bible-reading type, like me. She prefers working hard in the sun to kneeling hard at the altar. My people say that if a salesman has once deceived a woman, she’ll never listen to a marketer again, even if the product appears genuine.

“The prophet has sworn to transform my faulty testicles into God’s testicles, capable of producing strong babies,” I tell her. “Both of us must now go and have sex inside the church so that Jesus Christ will watch and give us a beautiful child.”

She frowns again as if she’s just received a cash-withdrawal notice from her bank without her instruction. “You sound like a drunken man, Tim. What’s wrong with you? Are you unhinged?”

‘Reggie, we’ve got nothing to lose. Please believe me. Help me to help yourself. I’m begging you.”

She flops down on our spring mattress, which makes a shrill sound under her weight. As if to clear a cobweb of confusion covering her face, she rubs her hand over it, shutting her eyes for a moment, inhaling and exhaling loudly, before opening them again.

“When do you want us to go?” she asks, looking up at our wall clock.

“Tomorrow night.”

“You’re not making any sense but I’ll do it, if you think it’ll work.”

“There’s no one like Prophet Elijah, I tell you.”

“If you say so?” she says, shrugging.

My stomach roars. “Sweetie, I’m hungry.”

“Let me dish out your food.” She rises from the mattress, placing her hand over her nose. “But you must sleep on the floor tonight. I don’t want blood on these bedcovers; I only washed them yesterday.”

 

#

 

It’s drizzling when Regina and I arrive at the foot of the mountain the next night. It’s compulsory for every woman devotee—patient—to bathe in the stream before climbing up. Bathing gets rid of her worldly impurities before meeting the clean prophet. I wonder if men don’t have earthly muck too. I beam my torchlight as Regina strips herself naked, dropping her skirt and blouse on a jagged rock. There’s a bar of soap that the prophet keeps in a bowl on the bank of the stream. She lathers herself, scrubbing her face and arms and legs and torso, and lingers on her armpits as if those parts contain her worst bodily filth. When she’s done, she rinses herself and leaves the stream. She cups her hands, scraping water from her face and flinging it away. Her lips tremble from the Christian song she hums, Amazing Grace. She puts her clothes back on, and we start to climb up the steep track that leads to the holy house. I hold her shivering hand.

“Don’t be afraid, Reggie.”

“Tim, I trust you. Why should I be scared? I can’t wait to breastfeed my baby.”

Looking down from the mountainside, I see Ilorin is a cityscape of neem trees and lonely streets, an urban sprawl of streetlights, blinking telephone masts, white-painted houses, lighted minarets and corrugated-iron roofs. What a fine city! But who needs modern amenities when the testicles need an urgent amendment?

When we arrive at the church, Prophet Elijah has lit green, red, orange and yellow candles, and placed one in each of the four corners of the dark interior. A lantern hangs from the ceiling, and through the small windows, slanting rays of the moon cut the darkness. The smell of incense hangs heavy inside. On the beveled altar, he’s placed a bare brown mattress, keeping it firm with a huge stone on each of the four corners. I wonder what the duo of cymbals in the center of the mattress are there for. Maybe they represent togetherness or, perhaps, they’re our unborn twins. That would be interesting.

He grabs the cymbals, wanders over to the cane chair facing the mattress, and sits down, holding a wooden cross in his left hand. He mumbles a hasty prayer and sprinkles holy water on the mattress. He asks us to undress and lie down. Regina moves towards the mattress, and I follow suit. When we’ve both stripped off our clothes, he places the wooden cross on top of his Bible and begins to hit his pair of cymbals together.

“You can start now,” he says.

“Let’s make it happen,” I tell Regina, with lots of enthusiasm in my voice.

We don’t have our usual foreplay; it’s a waste of time tonight. The faster we make love, the quicker a baby will form in Regina’s womb. She hugs me while I carry out my duty. I’m panting already.

From the corner of my eye, I catch the prophet swallow hard. He appears entertained as he nods his satisfaction and even smiles, but what can I do? My wife and I are desperate to have a baby. Even if it means having sex in a shopping mall, it doesn’t matter, provided the pattering feet of a child will be heard on the floor of our bedroom.

My ejaculation doesn’t come quickly, but the prophet’s cymbals provide me with a don’t-be-tired-at-work song and I press on. I notice Regina is huffing, getting exhausted, perhaps because she’s not used to this type of stiff mattress.

The prophet springs to his burnt feet. “May the ram’s sperm become yours and turn into a child from heaven.”

“Amen!” Regina and I scream, still locked together but without pleasure.

“I pray in the mighty name of Jeeeesus Christ.”

“Amen!” I exclaim and collapse onto the mattress, offloaded. My wife heaves a loud sigh.

“You may stand up and go,” Prophet Elijah says. “I can assure you, Mr. Timothy, that she’ll be pregnant within seven days.”

 

#

 

One month later, Regina tells me she’s menstruating yet again. What a barrel of bad news! I feel like dashing back to that mountain to catch the prophet and reclaim my ram.

“Elijah is a sham prophet,” I scream at Regina. “He’s a thief. I’ll slit his throat today and set his dirty dreadlocks ablaze.”

“Tim, take it easy,” she says.

“Where’s my machete?”

I grab the machete, about to leap out of the house but Regina grips my elbows, asking me not to go. “Calm down, calm down!”

“Calm down?”

“If you didn’t kill the witch doctor, why would you think of killing the prophet? Look, I’m also disappointed, but we must keep our hearts and heads swarming with hope.”

She drags me to the kitchen and shows me white sacks of palm nuts, up to thirty of them. I don’t know who has put them here; several tenants use this spacious kitchen. Five of the sacks are empty, lying on top of the full ones. Regina starts folding the empty sacks one after the other.

“I sold the contents of these five sacks two days ago at an inflated price to our neighbour’s wife,” she says. “She paid without even bargaining.”

I slowly place the machete on the floor and squint at her. “I don’t understand why you’re showing me these sacks of nonsense.”

“It’s my new business, Tim, and it’s very profitable. You know that red palm nuts are in season now, don’t you?”

“I didn’t know.”

“If red palm fruits aren’t harvested early, birds and squirrels will damage them in the bush.”

I jog my brain, scratch my stomach, and stare at the ceiling, wondering what the sacks and birds and squirrels have to do with my sperm-count problem. But I notice my anger suddenly begins to plummet down. I exhale loudly.

“What are you saying, Reggie?”

She beams at me. “I guess you’re feeling better now.”

I shrink back in disbelief as she stands akimbo, staring at me. “Is that why you’ve brought me here, to pacify me?”

“Tim, whenever you’re upset, the best cure is to distract you, and I’ve just done that. In any case, our people say that looking at red palm nuts is a good drug for rage. Besides, after selling these remaining twenty-five sacks, we might eventually afford a medical specialist at the Metropolitan Fertility Hospital.”

I smile. “Naughty woman!”

She bursts out laughing, dabbing my huge beard with her soft fingers. “You should go and have a bath and get some sleep.”

“Reggie, I regret all the ridiculous things I’ve done when all the time you’re the one quietly making our dream happen.”

“Don’t worry, Tim; we’re in this problem together. Of course, it’s much easier to sell palm nuts than borrow God’s testicles.”

I hug her, and we’re both laughing and laughing and laughing.