Title: Vaults of Secrets
Author: Olukorede S. Yishau
Publisher: Parresia Publishers Ltd
Pages: 118
Reviewer: Nathaniel Bivan
If you have read Olukorede S. Yishau’s ‘In the Name of Our Father’, it will hit you while reading his latest offering that he has a knack for exposing what people do in the name of religion or despite it. But ‘Vaults of Secrets’ isn’t a novel, it’s a collection of ten short stories which revolves around the central idea of locking and unlocking secrets in people’s lives.
So, if Yishau’s debut novel seemingly exposes what so-called ‘men of God’ do in private, this particular story in his new collection, ‘The Special Gift’ explores such hypocrisy differently.
A husband has just been caught having sex with the help and he begs the main character, the one who saw it all, not to tell. He blames the girl, then he blames the devil, and then finally begs because, “If they hear this thing in the church, it will destroy me,” he says. There, the church, again, always at the centre of someone’s hypocrisy, this line seems to imply.
An unforgettable part of this particular story, and perhaps the entire book, is when the main character who is also the narrator, narrates further: “I looked at him and wondered why he had to go through so much pain trying to cover his tracks. With me, secrets are always safe. I have vaults where I keep them.” And there you have it, where the title of this collection springs from.
Still on the same story, remarkable humour is deployed (while describing a womaniser) when the narrator describes an intriguing character, Nonso, who is his boss, as “a perfect example of what success should not be.”
There are more secrets in this book. Such as when a boy in ‘My Mother’s Father is My Father’ overhears a discussion that reveals his mother is also his sister and his grandfather his actual father. The secrets are unending and the author isn’t done yet.
Yishau picks a story idea and weaves smaller stories into it that make you almost forget the initial peg. Whether this is a good or bad move is absolutely left for readers to decide, but it works superbly because what unfolds shows just how much a single idea can flow into multiple fascinating pieces. This is arguably art at its best and here’s proof.
Take the story ‘When Truth Dies’ for example. A woman faints after she sees a man she concludes is her dead husband, but the author quickly takes us away from this initial part of the narrative and shows us the kind of man Omoniyi, the woman’s late husband was, and this ends up forming a very interesting, if not the most interesting part of that story. In doing this, Yishau dishes out chunks of backstory that, one, helps us see Omoniyi’s character through his perception of religion, politics, and ultimately colonialism, and two, beam a searchlight on Nigeria’s social issues. Before you realise it, like the wife, you’re already in love with this character called Omoniyi, and like his wife, become sad that he’s gone.
Here’s how Omoniyi reasons: The main character recalls a particular discussion with her husband where he said: “Everything goes in that country. People lie to get into power and start giving excuses for their failure. If the country were a going concern, it would have been declared bankrupt and offered as scrap to interested parties.”
When Omoniyi continues, he points at the attitude of lateness popularly known as ‘African time’ in the country: “Five minutes after we started boarding, only a few of us were on board. The pilot began offering an apology to passengers, pleading that they would need to wait for some passengers still at the security zone.”
There’s also a subtle criticism of Nigeria’s internal security and handling of the issue of herders when Omoniyi says: “The types of things that happen at Nigeria’s airports are scandalous. The other day, bandits invaded the runway and attacked a private jet. They stole from passengers and the crew. Jesus Christ, only in Nigeria! If bandits can invade airports, then we can forgive those operating on the streets. Then, of course, there was that time they had cattle on the runway.”
Set in different parts of the world – Lagos, New York, and the UK – this work explores themes ranging from incest to prison experience, deceit and infidelity. Then Yishau does something really spectacular with the last story in this collection that reminds one of Ben Okri or Chigozie Obioma and his ‘An Orchestra of Minorities’ where a chi, known as a guardian spirit, is the narrator. In ‘Open Wound’, the narrator is Dazini’s conscience, a woman who makes one bad choice after another. While the conscience nudges, it doesn’t compel, and the writer uses this, perhaps, to remind us of that tiny voice that always gives us a check when we are about to do something terrible.
There couldn’t have been a better cover design for ‘Vaults of Secrets’. The depiction of a detached hand, nose, lips, chin and ear is commendable. Aside a few forgivable typos and an effort to explain actions some readers may find unnecessary, this work is not easy to put down and clearly shows that the author is a writer who has come to stay.
