A Man of the People (8 page)

CHAPTER NINE

I returned to Anata on 23rd December after Max and his fiancée, Eunice, had tried in vain to make me spend Christmas in Bori. The lorry dropped me at the small roadside market called Waya which had sprung up to serve the Grammar School. Something unusual seemed to be going on in Josiah's shop-and-bar. Whatever it was had drawn crowds from the rest of the market to it. You couldn't say definitely at first whether it was a good thing or a bad from the loud, excited talking, but it was soon clear from the kind of gesticulation I saw that something had gone wrong. I saw one old woman swing her hand in a gyre round her head and jerk it towards Josiah's shop, a most ominous sign. 'Teacher,' said one villager who had spotted me and was coming to shake hands. I didn't know him by name. 'Are you back already? Let me carry your box. I hope your home people are well.' We shook hands and I told him that my home people were well when I left them. Then I asked him what was going on there at the shop. 'What else could it be but Josiah,' he said, taking up my box and placing it on his head. 'I have said that what the white man's money will bring about has not shown itself yet. You know Azoge?' 'The blind beggar?' 'Yes, the blind beggar. Josiah is not touched by Azoge's ill-fortune and he is not satisfied with all the thieving he does here in the name of trade but must now make juju with Azoge's stick.' At this point he turned aside to greet another villager and they both shook their heads over the abomination. 'I don't understand,' I said when we resumed our conversation. 'Josiah called Azoge to his shop and gave him rice to eat and plenty of palm-wine. Azoge thought he had met a kind man and began to eat and drink. While he was eating and drinking Josiah took away his stick---have you ever heard such abomination?---and put a new stick like the old one in its place thinking that Azoge would not notice. But if a blind man does not know his own stick, tell me what else would he know? So when Azoge prepared to go he reached for his stick and found that a strange one was in its place, and so he began to shout....' 'I still don't understand. What does Josiah want to do with his stick?' 'How are you asking such a question, teacher? To make medicine for trade, of course.' 'That is terrible,' I said, still very much in the dark but not caring to make it known. 'What money will do in this land wears a hat; I have said it.' When we got to my house I gave him one shilling and he thanked me, gave a few more unhelpful details of the incident and went to rejoin the crowd. I would have gone there too but was tired from my long journey and in any case my mind was on other things. I meant to rest a little, have a wash and go in search of Mrs Nanga. But the noise outside was getting louder and louder and in the end I had to go out to see. Josiah had apparently barricaded himself inside his shop, from where, no doubt, he could hear the crowds outside pronouncing deadly curses on him and his trade. The blind man, Azoge, was there still, telling his story over and over again. I walked from one little group to another, listening. 'So the beast is not satisfied with all the money he takes from us and must now make a medicine to turn us into blind buyers of his wares,' said one old woman. 'May he blind his mother and his father, not me.' She circled her head with her right hand and cast the evil towards the shop. 'Some people's belly is like the earth. It is never so full that it will not take another corpse. God forbid,' said a palm-wine tapper I knew. I believe he was one of those who supplied Josiah with the wine he retailed in beer- bottles. But the most ominous thing I heard was from Timothy, a middle-aged man, who was a kind of Christian and a carpenter. 'Josiah has taken away enough for the owner to notice,' he said again and again. 'If anyone ever sees my feet in this shop again let him cut them off. Josiah has now removed enough for the owner to see him.' I thought much afterwards about that proverb, about the man taking things away until the owner at last notices. In the mouth of our people there was no greater condemnation. It was not just a simple question of a man's cup being full. A man's cup might be full and none be the wiser. But here the owner knew, and the owner, I discovered, is the will of the whole people. Within one week Josiah was ruined; no man, woman or child went near his shop. Even strangers and mammy- wagon passengers making but a brief stop at the market were promptly warned off. Before the month was out, the shop-and-bar closed for good and Josiah disappeared---for a while. But to return to the day I came back from Bori: I hired a bicycle in the evening from the repairer in the market and went to see Mrs Nanga. I had to see her before the story of my quarrel with her husband got to Anata and ruined my chances of reaching Edna, the intended 'parlour- wife'. Not that I thought Chief Nanga himself would want to transmit it although there was no knowing what he might or might not do, but there were many others in Bori who might send it on for want of better news. She was surprised to see me but I had a convincing explanation ready; sudden change of plans and that kind of thing. Her children came and shook hands. The village, I noticed, had already rubbed off a good deal of their Bori trimness and made their Corona-School English a little incongruous. 'Go and get a drink for Odili,' said Mrs Nanga to her eldest son, Eddy---the one at secondary school. He soon brought me a bottle of ice-cold beer which was just the thing after my strenuous ride. I poured the first glass down my throat in one go and then began to sip the second. As I did so I kept wondering how to broach the question of Edna without appearing too suspicious. 'When are you preparing to return to Bori?' I asked. 'The house is quite cold without you and the children.' 'Don't tell me about Bori, my brother. I want to rest a bit here... Eddy's father says I should come back at the end of next month before he goes to America but I don't know....' 'I thought you were going with him?' 'Me?' She laughed. 'Yes. Why not?' 'My brother, when those standing have not got their share you are talking about those kneeling. Have you ever heard of a woman going to America when she doesn't know ABC?' Fine, I thought, and was about to plunge in, but Mrs Nanga obliged me even more! 'When Edna comes she will go to those places,' she said. 'I am too old and too bush.' 'Who is Edna?' 'Don't you know about Edna, our new wife?' 'Oh, that girl. Nonsense. She doesn't know half as much book as you.' 'Ah, she does-o. I no go Modern School.' 'But standard six in your time was superior to Senior Cambridge today,' I said in our language, refusing to be drawn into the levity of pidgin. 'You talk as though I went to school in nineteen-kridim,' she said, somewhat hurt. 'No, no, no,' I said. 'But education has been falling every year. Last year's standard six is higher than this year's.' But she didn't seem to be all that hurt after all. Her mind appeared to be far away on other thoughts. 'I passed the entrance to a secondary school,' she said wistfully, 'but Eddy's father and his people kept at me to marry him, marry him, and then my own parents joined in; they said what did a girl want with so much education? So I foolishly agreed. I wasn't old enough to refuse. Edna is falling into the same trap. Imagine a girl straight from college not being allowed to teach even for one year and look around. Anyway what is my share in it? Let her come quick-quick to enjoy Chief Nanga's money before it runs away.' She laughed bitterly. My first reaction was to feel uncomfortable, not so much for what Mrs Nanga had said as by the presence while she said it of her fifteen-year-old son, Eddy. 'Is she coming into the house soon?' 'I don't know. What is my own there? She can come tomorrow as far as I am concerned; the house is there. And she can take over from me and stay awake at night to talk grammar; and in the morning her dress will be smelling of cigarette smoke and white people.' I couldn't help laughing. 'Why don't you want to advise her? She should take at least one year and teach and look around. She will listen to you, I'm sure; she is only a little girl, really.' 'True? She was born yesterday, eh? Let her come and suck.' She indicated her left breast. 'No, my brother, I won't spoil anybody's good fortune. When Eddy's father married me I was not half her age. As soon as her mother recovers let her come and eat Nanga's wealth... The food is cooked and the smell of the soup is around. Let nobody remember the woman who toiled and starved when there was no money...' She rubbed her eyes with a corner of her lappa and blew her nose into it. 'Where is her home? I must go and talk to her---tomorrow morning, I must.' Before I said this I considered Eddy's presence but quickly took the calculated risk that he was likely to be on his mother's side, although you couldn't see anything of it on his handsome face, even with his mother on the brink of tears. 'Go if you like,' said Mrs Nanga with feigned indifference, 'but don't tell anyone I sent you. If I am not to grow bigger let me at least remain as small as I am.' I was right about Eddy. He immediately and carefully described how to get to Edna's home---in another and fairly distant part of the village. He even suggested that the driver take me in their Vauxhall, which showed that in spite of his height he was still a mere boy. I lost my way a few times before I found Odo's house of red earth and thatched roof. He was sitting in his front room making the rope used for tying yams on to erect poles in the barn. The short pieces of fibre from which he worked lay beside him in three bundles, one of which had become loose at the girdle from depletion. The rope he had made so far was rolled up in a ball lying between his feet; he held its free end in his hand and tied new lengths of fibre to it. When I came in he was strengthening the last knot by pulling hard at it across his chest, exposing his locked teeth in the action. He was a big man with an enormous, shining stomach sitting on the rolled-up portion of his loin-cloth. His eyes were bloodshot and his hair greying. We shook hands and I took a chair facing him and backing the approaches to the house. He said 'welcome' several times more while he worked. 'I must carry the debt of a kolanut,' he said, re-tying a knot that had just come undone under his pull. 'It got finished only this morning.' 'Don't worry about kolanut,' I said, and added after a long pause: 'You do not know me, I'm sure. I am one of the teachers at the Grammar School.' 'Yes,' he said looking up. 'I knew it was a face I had seen.' We shook hands again and he said 'welcome' and apologized once more for not having kolanuts and I replied that it was not every day that people had kolanuts. 'Since the woman of the house went into hospital there hasn't been anyone to look after these things,' he said. 'I hope she will become well again soon.' 'We are looking on the Man Above.' After a suitable pause I asked about Edna. 'She is cooking the food to take to the hospital,' he replied coldly. 'I have a message for her from my friend Chief Nanga.' 'You are a friend of my in-law? Why did you not tell me so? Have you come from Bori, then?' 'Yes. I came back only yesterday.' 'True? How was he when you left him?' 'He was well.' He turned round on his seat, towards a door leading into inner rooms and raising his voice called out. Edna's voice came back from the interior of the compound, like a distant flute. 'Come and salute our guest,' hollered her father in the same loud voice. While we waited, I felt his eyes on me and so I made a special effort to look as casual as I could. I even turned round on my seat and inspected the approaches to the house and then formed my lips as though I was whistling to myself. 'Has your wife been in the hospital a long time?' I asked. 'Since three weeks. But her body has not been hers since the beginning of the rainy season.' 'God will hear our prayers,' I said. 'He holds the knife and He holds the yam.' Because of my position I could see Edna as she came into the middle room. I suppose she must have washed her face with a little water tipped into her palm; she was now wiping it, as she approached us, with a corner of her lappa, which she dropped as soon as she saw me. A big something caught in my throat and I tried without success to swallow it down. She wore a loose blouse over her lappa and an old silken head-tie. As she emerged into the front room all my composure seemed to leave me. Instead of holding out my hand still seated as befitted a man (and one older than she to boot) I sprang to my feet like some woman-fearing Englishman. She screwed up her face ever so slightly in an effort to remember me. 'I am a teacher at the Grammar School,' I said a little hoarsely. 'We met the day Chief Nanga lectured....' 'Oh yes, it is true,' she said smiling gloriously. 'You are Mr Samalu.' 'That's right,' I said, greatly flattered. 'You have a good memory on top of your beauty,' I said in English so the father would not understand. 'Thank you.' Perhaps it was the way she was dressed and the domestic responsibility she was exercising, or perhaps she had simply grown a little more since October; whatever the reason she was now a beautiful young woman and not a girl looking as though she was waiting to be taken back to her convent. 'Sit down, teacher?' said her father, a little impatiently, I thought. Then turning to his daughter he announced that I had a message from Bori. She turned her largish, round eyes to me. 'Nothing really,' I said embarrassed, 'Chief Nanga said I should come and greet you and find out about your mother.' 'You may tell him she is still in the hospital,' said Edna's father in a most unpleasant tone, 'and that her medicine costs money and that she planted neither cassava nor cocoyam this year.' 'Don't listen to him,' said Edna to me, the happiness wrenched out of her eyes. She turned on her father: 'Did he not send you something through his wife?' 'Listen to her,' said the man turning to me. 'Because she ate yesterday she won't eat today? No, my daughter. This is the time to enjoy an in-law, not when he has claimed his wife and gone away. Our people say: if you fail to take away a strong man's sword when he is on the ground, will you do it when he gets up...? No, my daughter. Leave me and my in-law. He will bring and bring and bring and I will eat until I am tired. And thanks to the Man Above he does not lack what to bring.' 'Excuse me,' said Edna in English and then explained in our language that she must go and finish her cooking and take lunch to her mother before one o'clock or the nurses would not let her in. She smiled vaguely and turned to go and I had the first opportunity of noticing that her back was as perfect as