with, the creature got on its legs again, standing upright, and began to walk slowly on the red carpet. The crowd cheered loudly, mostly in disbelief. Who could have imagined that a primate could cat-walk so beautifully? But that was not all.
After taking a few steps forward, the creature paused briefly turned first to the left and then to the right, waved to the audience and continued walking gingerly. The crowd went wild with applause. The animal's trainer must be a smart man, they told each other in loud voices. Of course, he heard them, but pretended to be engrossed in his performance, and kept a poker face. This was not the highlight of his performance. He kept that one in reserve until the time was right.
Within a few minutes of standing there on the front lines with the heavy basket on the floor in front of him, Dotun had learned the names of the trainer and his baboon. Everyone called the trainer Bade and the baboon was called Koko. Dotun felt sure that the trainer's name was a short form of Ajibade, but he wondered about the name of the baboon. Was it derived from the cocoa fruit whose brown pods were the same shade as the baboon's furry coat or was it a name in another language? Dotun had no clue, but with each moment he spent there watching the various performances from Koko and sometimes from Bade, who was an acrobat in his own right, Dotun felt sure that he had discovered his future ambition: to become a performer just like Bade. There was something about the tall, lanky, slightly muscular Bade, which inspired admiration and respect from people. He was shirtless, wearing several amulets and cowrie necklaces on his neck that reached all the way down to his belly button. His long trousers were made of a black and red ankara fabric with a pattern of pineapples and oranges repeated across it. Since he was under the sun, which on that Saturday had decided to beat down mercilessly, large beads of sweat rolled down his bald head, down the ridges of his back and disappeared under the trousers which clothed his lower half. One would expect Koko to smell; he was an animal, after all. But Bade also had an unmistakable body odor which the spectators at the back were spared the horror of sampling. But Dotun, who was on the very front row, got more than a whiff of it, and it seemed to intoxicate him further. Dotun had fallen under this man's spell and lost track of time as he watched him do what musicians and artistes did everyday: entertain.
When it looked like the baboon was getting tired of the show, evidenced by its reluctance to obey certain commands, Bade gave the animal some water to drink. As it lapped it up, he looked into the crowd, searching for one person. It was his accomplice. The boy gave him a signal that they both understood, and then in a loud voice, Bade made an announcement:
"All de tin wey me and Koko dey do na small tin o. Yes, de one wey e remain na de main, de main. Before I go do am, una go clap for us. Oya clap!"
And the crowd began to clap, reluctantly at first, and then slowly and surely, as Bade walked around the circle urging them to clap louder, they obliged. When he was satisfied with the clapping, he asked for perfect silence. Up to this point, Koko had a metal chain fastened to his waist. But Bade now removed that chain and allowed the animal to roam freely during its time in the spotlight.
Now that Koko had finished his performance, Bade fastened the chain back on Koko's waist, and gave the other end of the chain to his accomplice, who had magically reappeared beside him. After getting a young woman from the crowd to come forward as a volunteer, he spoke to the crowd, telling them that he would take something belonging to her and make it disappear. So, with the crowd almost completely quiet and watching him closely, he took a beaded necklace from the neck of his volunteer and began to rub it between his fingers. As he did so, he would hold it close to his mouth and utter strange words into his cupped palms. Then without warning he yelled into the crowd:
"Say it after me, '1, 2, 3 … Disappear!' "
The crowd repeated those words after him, and sure enough after the 7th time, he held up his hands to the crowd: they were bare, and the necklace was gone.
At that point, some people became uncomfortable, and a few spectators actually left. But they did not leave completely. They went to bring more people to come and see this man's magic trick.
Now that he had made the woman's necklace disappear, the next step was to make it re-appear. This time, he asked for another volunteer from the crowd. A man who looked to be in his mid-thirties came forward and threatened to beat up the magician if he did not make the necklace re-appear. He was the young woman's brother.
Bade laughed a warm, hearty laugh and told the man that it would not come to that. His confidence must have reassured the man who assumed a relaxed pose and obeyed Bade's instructions. Bade told him to clap his hands and circle around the woman three times. He did. He had barely circled her the third time when he called Koko to come forward. The animal obeyed. Bending down momentarily to shake the animal's hand, Bade rose with something in his hand. It was the woman's necklace. He held it up to the crowd who screamed wildly and began to clap their hands. The young woman smiled, retrieved her necklace and promptly disappeared along with her brother.
Bade performed this same trick four more times, each time, taking something of value from his volunteer and replacing it within seconds. With each performance, the crowd grew more demanding. They wanted more. And Bade knew just what he would do.
Finally, he announced that this was his last trick for the day. This announcement could not have come at a better time as the sun which had disappeared behind a cloud, seemed to be taking forever to come out again. A loud rumble in the distance proclaimed an impending thunderstorm. But Bade was determined to perform this last trick before he left. This time, he did not ask for a volunteer.
He walked around the circle, looking at one person after the other and shaking his head. Eventually, he got the spot where Dotun stood, looked straight at him and announced that he had found the perfect candidate. There was something in Bade's voice that set Dotun's mind at ease and yet scared him at the same time. But his curiosity outweighed his fear, and he ignored the voice in his head which told him never to trust strangers. All the warnings that Mrs. Phillips and even his parents had told him were gone with the wind. He simply followed Bade into the middle of the circle, temporarily abandoning the basket of items.
After asking Dotun for his name, which he gave willingly, Bade announced to the crowd that he would make Dotun disappear. One woman yelled a pertinent question:
"Na who get dis pikin?"
Of course no one came forward to say that Dotun was their child, and so Bade went forward unchallenged. He took off one of the amulets on his neck, the one made from carved wood pieces, and placed it on Dotun's neck. He told Dotun in Yoruba to repeat certain words after him. Just before he started his chant, he turned to the crowd and urged them to start shouting "1, 2, 3 … Disappear!"
They all did. As they kept repeating those words, Bade walked around Dotun slowly and began to sing a song. It was a familiar song but Dotun could not remember where he had heard it. As Bade sang each line, Dotun repeated the three words Bade had given him: "Mo ti lo," which loosely translates to "I have gone."
As Bade kept singing, Dotun began to feel sleepy. Bade had warned him beforehand that he had to keep repeating those three words no matter what. But after the 8th line of the song and after repeating "Mo ti lo," 7 times, Dotun could not fight the sleep any longer and he did not repeat the words anymore. At that point, Bade stood facing Dotun. The last thing Dotun saw was a look of horror on Bade's face. And then everything went black.
The crowd scattered in different directions when they saw the little boy disappear. Most of them had not believed in the potency of Bade's trick and thought he was bluffing. But when they saw Dotun vanish before their eyes, fear gripped them. They did not wait to find out what would happen next as they all ran away, fearing what the magician could do to them. However, a few brave souls came back with two policemen who were at the bus stop extorting money from bus drivers. When they got back
, Bade was still standing there chanting intensely and gesticulating wildly with his hands. Koko and the accomplice stood close by watching him.
As soon as Bade saw the policemen coming from a distance, along with the men who had gone to fetch them, he abandoned his exercise. Running towards the other two, he placed his right hand on Koko and his left hand on the accomplice, and within seconds, they disappeared into thin air. The policemen and the other people with them were so shocked, they froze on the spot. How were they going to arrest a man who had literally vanished before their very eyes? The people who had gone to fetch the policemen walked away and the policemen themselves retreated to their station to tell the tale of the man who had vanished with a baboon and another man. Nobody knew where Dotun was or what had become of him.
* * *
It has been three weeks since Dotun disappeared from Sabo market in broad daylight, but the town of Isare-Remo is still abuzz with the tale of a young boy who mysteriously appeared on his father's farm on a Saturday afternoon. There had been no okada, no bus, no car, not even a bicycle that had transported the boy all the way from Lagos to that town. But he had