A Man of the People (9 page)

her front---which happens once in a million. I watched every step she took until she disappeared. Then I sat on alone with her greedy, avaricious father---for that was the impression I had just formed of him. We said very little. I whistled my silent tune and watched his rope lengthening as he tied one short piece of fibre after another to it. When he had produced a reasonable length he wound it on to the ball. Edna came into the middle room again and from there asked her father if he had given 'the stranger' a kolanut. 'I have none,' he said. 'If you have, bring it and we will eat.' 'I bought some yesterday, I thought I told you.' She brought the kolanut in a saucer and gave it to her father who broke the nut after a short avaricious prayer about bringing and eating, threw two lobes into his mouth one after the other, crunched them more noisily than I had ever heard anyone crunch kolanut and passed the saucer to me. I took one of the remaining two and returned the saucer to him. I sat on and on not knowing what else to do. Should I get up and go? That was hardly sensible. At least I should wait on till Edna came out again even if there was no chance of talking to her privately. Then a wonderful idea struck me. Why not offer to give her a lift on my bicycle to the hospital? It was at least two miles away and my bicycle had a good carrier at the back on which the plates of food could be tied. 'Now that I am here,' I told my busy host, 'I ought to go and see Edna's mother so that when next I write to Chief Nanga I shall have something to report.' 'Don't heed what my daughter says,' he told me, looking up from his work. 'Tell my in-law that the treatment of his wife's mother is costing me water and firewood.' 'I shall certainly say so,' I told him. No matter what I might think of him it was clear to me that he was not the kind of man to be bypassed in trying to reach his daughter. Edna was not in the least surprised by my offer; she was obviously the trusting type---which augured well. I hitched the travelling-can containing the food on to the carrier. I didn't want to ride on the rough approach to the house so I rolled the bicycle the short distance from the house to the road while Edna in a green-and-red floral dress walked beside me. Mounting the vehicle with the can on the back and Edna on the cross-bar proved a little tricky; but I am rather good with bicycles. I solved the problem by getting on the seat first and keeping the bicycle stationary with one foot resting firmly on the ground. Then Edna climbed on the bar sitting sideways; and I pushed off. The excitement of having her so close within my arms and the perfume of her hair in my nose would have proved overpowering if I'd had much time to consider it. I hadn't. The road to the hospital turned out to be quite hilly, not steep but just enough to take the wind out of one; and, with the kind of passenger I had, I didn't care to admit too readily to being tired. So I raced up all the little hillocks until my heart raged like a bonfire, which was very stupid of me. 'You are very strong,' said Edna. 'Why?' I said, or rather puffed out, in one enormous expiration, as I rounded the summit of yet another small hill. 'You are eating all the hills like yam.' 'I haven't seen any hill yet,' I replied, getting back some of my breath as I pedalled freely down the small, friendly descent that followed. These words were hardly out of my mouth when a stupid sheep and her four or five lambs rushed out of the roadside on my left. I braked sharply. Unfortunately Edna's back was resting on my left arm and prevented me applying the brake on that side effectively. So only the brake on the front wheel performed fully. The bicycle pitched forward and crashed on the road. Just before the impact Edna had cried out something like 'My father!' She was thrown farther up the road and as soon as I got up, I rushed to help her to her feet again. Then I turned to gaze at the foofoo and soup in the sandy road. I could have wept. I just stood looking at it and biting my lip. Then Edna burst into nervous laughter which completed my humiliation. I didn't want to look at her. Without taking my eyes from the food I murmured that I was very sorry. 'It was not your fault,' she said, 'it was the stupid sheep.' Then I noticed with the corner of my eyes that she was bending down. I turned then and saw where she had grazed her knee on the road. 'Oh dear!' I said, 'Edna, I am sorry.' She left her frock which she had held up a little at the knee and came to dust my shoulder where my new white shirt carried a thick patch of indelible red-earth. Then she bent down and picked up the travelling-can and began to wipe away the sand, and the spilt soup with green leaves. To my surprise she was crying and saying something like 'My mother will die of hunger today'. Actually I think her crying was probably due to hurt pride because the food lying on the road showed how poor her family was. But I may be wrong. At the time, however, I was greatly upset. 'Can she manage bread and corned beef?' I asked. 'We could buy some outside the hospital.' 'I haven't brought any money,' said Edna. 'I have some money,' I said, feeling the first breath of relief since the accident happened. 'And we could get some disinfectant for your knee. I'm terribly sorry, my dear.'

CHAPTER TEN

After the bicycle accident it was clearly impossible to say any of the things I had in mind to Edna. I managed, however, to get out of her that she was going to spend Christmas morning helping Mrs Nanga, and I privately decided to go there myself. At Christmas the village of Anata, like many other rural communities in our part of the country, always gains in numbers and glamour at the expense of the towns. Its sons and daughters who have gone out to work or trade in the cities usually return home with lots of money to spend. But perhaps the most pleasant gains are the many holidaying students from different secondary schools and training colleges and the very occasional university student. We call them holiday-makers and their presence has a way of immediately raising the general tone of the village, giving it an air of well-dressed sophistication. The boys I saw that morning wore Italian-type shoes and tight trousers and the girls wore lipstick and hair stretched with hot iron; I even saw one in slacks, which I thought was very bold indeed. When I arrived at Chief Nanga's house at about eleven there was no Edna. Instead a young man whose alchohol- reeking breath hit your nose as soon as you stepped over the threshold was holding forth and telling Mrs Nanga very noisily in pidgin and vernacular to give him a drink. He looked like a trader home from one of the towns. Mrs Nanga was handling him quietly but expertly. She had obviously done this kind of work before. After a year or two's affluence one learned how to handle less fortunate kinsmen. 'Bring me a beer!' the man shouted and hiccupped. 'Honourable Chief Nanga is my brother and he is what white man call V. I. P. ... Me na P. I. V.---Poor Innocent Victim.' He laughed, turning his dopey eyes in my direction. I couldn't help smiling; the wit and inventiveness of our traders is of course world famous. 'Yes, me na P. I. V.,' he repeated. 'A bottle of beer de cost only five shilling. Chief Honourable Nanga has the money---as of today. Look at the new house he is building. Four storeys! Before, if a man built two storeys the whole town would come to admire it. But today my kinsman is building four. Do I ask to share it with him when it is finished? No. I only ask for common beer, common five shilling beer.' 'Why shouldn't you share the house with him?' asked Mrs Nanga deflecting him off his course. 'Does a man exclude his brother from his house?' 'No, that is not done,' he conceded after thinking about it for a while with his head bent slightly to one side. 'It is my house; you have spoken the truth.' The house in question was the very modern four-storey structure going up beside the present building and which was to get into the news later. It was, as we were to learn, a 'dash' from the European building firm of Antonio and Sons whom Nanga had recently given the half-million- pound contract to build the National Academy of Arts and Sciences. I had spent about two hours at the house before Edna finally came in the car sent to bring her. In that time I gave out three shillings to three different groups of boys and their masked dancers. The last, its wooden mask-face a little askew and its stuffed pot-belly looking really stuffed, was held in restraint by his attendants tugging at a rope tied round his waist as adult attendants do to a real, dangerous Mask. The children sang, beat drums, gongs and cigarette cups and the Mask danced comically to the song: Sunday, bigi bele Sunday Sunday, bigi bele Sunday Akatakata done come! Everybody run away! Sunday, Alleluia! While the Mask danced here and there brandishing an outsize matchet the restraining rope round his waist came undone. One might have expected this sudden access to freedom to be followed by a wild rampage and loss of life and property. But the Mask tamely put his matchet down, helped his disciples retie the rope, picked up his weapon again and resumed his dance. When the drunken visitor had finally been persuaded to go and come back later, Mrs Nanga opened a side door that led from the front room into a porch fitted up as a reception room presumably for V. I. P. s and asked me to go in and rest there. Then she sent Edna to me with a bottle of beer and a glass on a tray. She served me silently. But she did not sit down afterwards; instead she went and leaned with her elbows on one of the windows looking outside. I began to drink the beer and wondered how on earth to begin. I suppose Chief Nanga's house was the wrong place, really. But I had better make the best of it before more visitors came, I thought; and as if to confirm the thought I heard just then the drumming of another group of boys. 'Why don't you sit, Edna?' I said with as much decisiveness as I could put into it. 'I am all right here,' she said. 'I want to see what is going on in the road.' 'Is anything going on?' I stood up and went to her window and was tempted to put an arm round her waist but decided that it might be premature. 'Oh, just people passing in their new Christmas dresses.' 'There is something I want to tell you,' I said, returning to my seat. 'Me?' she said, turning round and looking genuinely surprised. 'Yes, come and sit down.' She sat down and I took one more sip before speaking. 'I want to give you a piece of advice---as one who has seen more of the world and as a friend.' Good beginning, I thought, and took a sip at my glass. 'You will be making a big and serious mistake if you allow anyone to rush you into marriage now. You are too young to be rushed into marrying, especially marrying a polygamist....' 'Is that what Mama asked you to tell me?' she asked. 'Who is Mama? Oh, Mrs Nanga, I see. Why? Why should she ask me to tell you anything? No, Edna, it is in your own interest. Don't go and spoil your life.' 'What is your business in it?' 'None whatever. Except that I think a beautiful young girl like you deserves better than to marry an ancient polygamist.' 'You told my father he was your friend?' 'Even if he was my brother or my father... Edna, give yourself a chance. The man's son is almost your age...' 'That is the world of women,' she said resignedly. 'Rubbish! An educated girl like you saying a thing like that! Are you a Moslem or something?' She got up from her seat and went back to the window. 'He paid for me to go to the College,' she said. 'So what?' I said brusquely and immediately regretted it. I got up, went to the window and put an arm round her waist. Had my arm been a piece of hot iron she couldn't have reacted more smartly. She swung round and pushed me away in one alarmed movement. We stood thus---maybe four feet apart---looking at each other. Then her eyes fell; she turned again and went back to her window-ledge. I returned to my seat and decided to say nothing more. But the temptation to play the hurt, misunderstood champion was too great. 'I ask your pardon, Edna!' I said. 'Do not misunderstand me. You are right that all this is none of my business really. Forget everything I've said.' Hours later, or so it seemed, she replied: 'I am sorry, Odili.' And that was the first time she ever used my Christian name. I suppose I should have burst into song, but I didn't. 'Sorry for what?' I said glumly. 'Have I offended you?' she asked with round-eyed, surprised innocence that could have melted a heart of stone. It melted mine. 'How could you offend me?' I asked, not intending the slightest sarcasm. I was satisfied with the modest progress I seemed to have made. With a girl like Edna what was required was not any precipitous action but a gentle prodding at regular intervals. But while I was making these little private and deliberate decisions in my quiet little corner of Anata, great and momentous events were at last---after long preparation---ready to break and shake all of us out of our leisurely ways. As the whole world now knows, our Minister of Foreign Trade, Alhaji Chief Senator Suleiman Wagada, announced on New Year's Day a twenty per cent rise in import duties on certain types of textile goods. On January 2nd the Opposition Progressive Alliance Party published detailed evidence to show that someone had told the firm of British Amalgamated of the Minister's plans as long ago as October and that they had taken steps to bring in three shiploads of the textiles by mid-December. The Cabinet was split overnight into the savage warring camps of those who wanted the Government to resign and those, like Chief Nanga, who said that the matter concerned the Minister of Foreign Trade alone and if it came to resigning he should resign by himself. And then the filth began to flow. The Daily Matchet for instance carried a story which showed that Chief Nanga, who had himself held the portfolio of Foreign Trade until two years ago, had been guilty of the same practice and had built out of his gains three blocks of seven-storey luxury flats at three hundred thousand pounds each in the name of his wife and that these flats were immediately leased by British Amalgamated at fourteen hundred a month each. At first this and other stories were told in innuendo, but by the second week all restraint and caution were cast to the four winds. The country was on the verge of chaos. The Trade Unions and the Civil Service Union made loud noises and gave notice of nation-wide strikes. The shops closed for fear of looting. The Governor-General according to rumour called on the Prime Minister to resign which he finally got round to doing three weeks later. Meanwhile I was summoned to Bori by Max for consultation and to be present at the launching of the C. P. C. We had been caught with only one foot on the ground, so to speak, but we didn't mind in the least. We were exhilarated like everyone else by the heady atmosphere of impending violence. For we all knew that the coming election was going to be a life and death fight. After seven years of lethargy any action seemed welcome and desirable; the country was ripe and impatient to shed in violent exercise the lazy folds of flabby skin and fat it had put on in the greedy years of indolence. The scandals that were daily exposed in the newspapers---far from causing general depression in the country---produced a feeling akin to festivity; I don't mean for people like Chief the Honourable M.A. Nanga, M.P., or Alhaji Chief Senator Suleiman Wagada, but for the rest of us who thought we had nothing to lose. I returned to Anata with a brand-new Volkswagen, eight hundred pounds in currency notes and assurances that more would be forthcoming. I would have driven straight to see Edna but the shining cream-coloured car was covered in a thick coat of red dust and splattered with brown mud from the long journey, so I decided to go home and have it washed first. Then I drove in style to her place only to be told she had gone to see her grandmother in another village. Her father came out to look at the car, and from the way he did so, you would think he knew a lot about cars. After a very long and thorough inspection he pronounced it a tortoise and chuckled to himself. That visit turned out also to be our last friendly encounter, but I must not anticipate later developments. That was also the day I got home, sat down and composed a very long letter, my first to Edna---giving her all the reasons why she must not marry Chief Nanga. When I first announced that I was going to contest Chief Nanga's seat everybody laughed---everyone except the wicked outlawed trader, Josiah. He came to me one night out of nowhere and said he would like to join my campaign. I was naturally touched but at the same time knew that having a man with his reputation in our party would be an enormous embarrassment, a sure way to kill the whole thing. So I told him as gently as I could that I had no position to offer him. He stood silent for a while and then told me that I would regret my decision and disappeared again into the night before I had time to tell him to go to hell. Chief Nanga's constituency (number 136 in the Constituency Register) was made up of five villages including my own home village Urua, and his home-base Anata. I had thought of carrying the battle right to his doorstep by making Anata my headquarters but I soon changed my mind. The inaugural meeting I arranged in the Assembly Hall of the school was completely disrupted at the very last moment by Mr Nwege the Proprietor. A few villagers had come to hear me, or so I thought, and naturally I was furious to find the hall barred. One of the villagers who seemed particularly incensed by the treatment I had received came forward to introduce himself, or so it seemed to me. 'So you are Mr Samalu?' he said. 'Pleased to meet you.' There was a lot of fellow feeling on his face. I stretched my hand to take his. But instead of a handshake he smartly described an arc at my head and knocked off my red cap. The small crowd thought it was very funny and laughed boisterously. I decided to remain cool and dignified; I bent down to pick up my cap and to my greatest shock and mortification the rascal kicked me behind---not violently but enough to make me land on my two hands, to avoid landing on my head. I was ready for a fight then but the cowardly fellow had taken to his heels---to the applause of most of the people around, the very people I had assumed came to hear me. I decided there and then that I was in hostile territory and must recruit a bodyguard and move to my own village. But Anata had not finished with me yet. That night Mr Nwege sent a boy to call me. When I got to his 'Lodge' he handed me a month's salary and a notice of dismissal. I was about to thank him for so obligingly setting fire to a house that was due for demolition and saving someone's labour, when he snarled: 'I see that you have grown too big for your coat.' My thanks died in my throat. 'You have grown too small in yours, Mr Push-me-down,' I said instead, laughing boisterously in his amazed face. It was an enormous release for me after all the pent-up annoyance of that afternoon. 'Yes, Mr Push-me-down, you have shrivelled up in your coat.' He sprang up from his seat and I thought (or hoped) he was coming to assault me. But no; rather he rushed into an inner room probably to get his double-barrelled gun or something. I didn't wait to find out. It was now four days since I had returned from Bori and I had not seen Mrs Nanga yet, nor Edna for that matter. And that was going to be my last working day---so to speak---before I moved my headquarters to Urua. Frankly I had no more business to do with Mrs Nanga. But a sort of conspiratorial friendship had sprung up between us and I would have felt very bad not to have said good-bye to her. There was also a dash of plain curiosity in it; I wanted to know how she was taking the news that I was contesting her husband's seat. At that point I was still naïve enough in my political thinking to have that kind of curiosity. But perhaps my strongest reason for going was the odd
chance of seeing Edna there. The front door was open and I walked in clapping my hands. 'Who?' asked Mrs Nanga from somewhere inside. 'Me,' I said at the top of my voice. 'There is a seat,' she called out. I sat down facing the approaches to the house. Soon I heard her coming, her slippers clapping against the soles of her feet; and she was humming a tune. I turned my head and our faces met. She stopped dead at the doorway. 'Good morning, Mrs Nanga,' I said. 'What do you want here?' Her Adam's apple was agitated by a hard swallowing. 'I only come to say good-bye,' I said, getting up. 'I do not need your good-bye, do you hear me? And you may thank your personal spirit that there is no strong man in the house. That is why you can sneak here in the noonday....' 'Pardon me---' I began, but was not allowed to finish. Mrs Nanga had suddenly and dramatically raised her voice so the entire village could hear and was calling on all the gods of her people to come and witness that she was sitting in her house, as a weak person was wont to sit when her tormentor, to show how strong he was, brought a fight to her very doorstep.... I heard most of this recitative on my way to the car. I had begun the retreat as soon as she had removed her head-tie and girdled her waist firmly with it pulling the two ends as I had seen Edna's father pull his rope. As it was nearly midday I drove from Mrs Nanga's house to the Anata Mission Hospital to waylay Edna. After more than an hour in my car I did what I should have done in the first place. I decided to go to the Women's ward. But the gateman refused to let my car through. I didn't mind that but I certainly minded his rudeness---and told him so. All he had to do was tell me politely that cars were not allowed in the hospital unless they were carrying a patient. Instead he shouted at me like a mad dog and said, pointing at the notice: 'Abi you no fit read notice?' 'Don't be silly,' I said, 'and don't shout at me!' 'Be silly!' he shouted. 'Idiot like you. Look him motor self. When they call those wey get motor you go follow them comot? Foolish idiot.' I parked my car outside the gate and went in, deciding to ignore the man who had not ceased shouting. 'Na him make accident de kill them for road every day. Nonsense!' As I approached the wards the man's shrill voice rang in my ear pronouncing one evil wish after another. I reflected on the depth of resentment and hatred from which such venom came---and for no other reason than that I owned a car, or seemed to own one! It was depressing and quite frightening. And when I got to the ward and was told with pointless brusqueness by a girl-nurse that my patient had been discharged yesterday I felt really downcast. As a rule I don't like suffering to no purpose. Suffering should be creative, should give birth to something good and lovely. So I drove from the hospital to Edna's place, although her father had told me three days earlier never to set foot in his house again. And for the first time since my return from Bori my luck was on. Edna was in and her father was out. But apparently he had only gone behind the compound---presumably to ease himself. Edna pleaded with me to go. 'No,' I said. 'He will kill you if he finds you here.' 'That would be wonderful,' I said in English. 'I will come to your place to see you if you go now.' 'You can't because I leave Anata tomorrow morning. I have been dismissed from the school. How is your mother? I've just been to the hospital to see her.' Edna's eyes darted from me to the door of the middle room, from which I imagined her father would appear, and darted back again. She was literally shaking with fear. Somehow I was enjoying her terror. It was as though I was drunk---with what I couldn't say. 'Please, Odili,' she said again, with tears in her voice. 'Say "please, Odili" one hundred times and I shall go,' I said, throwing my limbs in all directions for relaxation. 'Oh, you think it is a laughing matter. All right, sit there.' She sat down on the other hard chair and folded her arms under her perfectly formed breasts. 'Please, Odili,' she said, getting up again quickly and wringing her hands. 'One!' 'What is all this?' she said in despair. 'Minus one.' At that moment her father cleared his throat inside the compound. She grabbed my arm and tried to pull me up. I laughed at her puny effort and settled back. Her father had now come into the house and we could hear his footsteps. 'You see now.... What is all this?' He took a little time to focus his eyes properly and decide who I was. When he had decided he took a few more steps until he stood threateningly over me. 'Who do you want here?' he asked with menacing quietness. 'Were you not the one I told the other day never to come here again?' 'Yes,' I said, not even bothering to get up. 'Wait for me,' he said, and rushed back the way he had come. Lately I had seen too many people rushing around threateningly, so that I decided to sit through this one. I wasn't even touched by Edna's weeping. She turned and ran, calling 'Mother! Mother!' But at the door she met her father who shoved her aside and came at me with a raised matchet. I said: 'Who do you want here?' Edna increased her crying which finally brought her sick mother unsteadily to the doorway. Meanwhile I was explaining to my assailant that I came to persuade him and his family to cast their paper for me on voting day. 'Do you think the boy's head is correct?' he asked of no one in particular, and I saw his matchet gradually descend to his side. By the time Edna's mother appeared the worst of the danger seemed over. 'That is the boy who brought me bread, is it not?' she asked as she tottered towards me holding out a shrunken, varicose hand. 'I don't care what he brought you,' said her husband. 'What I know is that he is poking his finger into my in- law's eyes.' 'How?' asked the woman, and her husband explained. She listened carefully, thought about it and then said: 'What is my share in that? They are both white man's people. And they know what is what between themselves. What do we know?' Before I left the place an hour or so later, Edna's father had given me a sound piece of advice---at least sound in his own eyes. 'My in-law is like a bull,' he said, 'and your challenge is like the challenge of a tick to a bull. The tick fills its belly with blood from the back of the bull and the bull doesn't even know it's there. He carries it wherever he goes---to eat, drink or pass ordure. Then one day the cattle egret comes, perches on the bull's back and picks out the tick....' 'Thank you very much for your advice,' I said. 'I hear that they have given you much money to use in fighting my in-law,' he continued. 'If you have sense in your belly you will carry the money into your bed-chamber and stow it away and do something useful with it. It is your own good luck. But if you prefer to throw it away why not ask me to help you?' It was amazing how quickly all kinds of rumour about my plans had spread. It usually took a telegram five days to get to this village from Bori---that is, provided the Post and Telegraph boys were not on strike, and a storm had not felled tree branches across telegraph wires anywhere along the three-hundred-mile route. But a rumour could generally make it in one day or less. When I rose to go, Edna, who had kept very much in the background during the last hour, rose to see me off to the car. 'Where are you going?' asked her father. 'To see him off.' 'To see whom off? Don't let me lay hands on you this afternoon.' 'Bye, bye,' she said from the doorway. 'Bye,' I said, trying to smile.