Anthills of the Savannah

by Chinua Achebe

  “What shall I tell Mama-John?” a middle-aged civil servant was fabled to have wept when a taxi drew an ugly gash along the entire length of the shining side of his new Volvo. Well, Ikem had no wife to fear at home and no child called John, James or any other name. So the contest was more than equal. Grimly oblivious of the car beside him riding with its two legs in the bush, Ikem pursued the red brake-lights ahead like a randy he-goat sniffing the bottom of his mate.

  After fifteen minutes of dangerously close brushes the contender-driver conceded victory with a heavy curse, pulled back and returned again to second place behind the victor thanks to the cooperation of the bronze medallist who halted for him to resume his original position.

  Ikem heaved a very deep sigh and then, gallant in victory, pronounced it the work of the sun. We are parboiled as farmers do their rice to ease the shelling. Thereafter we take only five minutes to cook.

  That night he composed his Hymn to the Sun:

  Great Carrier of Sacrifice to the Almighty: Single Eye of God! Why have you brought this on us? What hideous abomination forbidden and forbidden and forbidden again seven times have we committed or else condoned, what error that no reparation can hope to erase?

  Look, our forlorn prayers, our offerings of conciliation lie scattered about your floor where you cast them disdainfully away; and every dawn you pile up your long basket of day with the tools and emblems of death.

  Wide-eyed, insomniac, you go out at cock-crow spitting malediction at a beaten, recumbent world. Your crimson torches fire the furnaces of heaven and the roaring holocaust of your vengeance fills the skies.

  Undying Eye of God! You will not relent, we know it, from compassion for us. Relent then for your own sake; for that bulging eye of madness that may be blinded by soaring motes of an incinerated world. Single Eye of God, will you put yourself out merely that men may stumble in your darkness. Remember: Single Eye, one-wall-neighbour-to-Blindness, remember!

  What has man become to you, Eye of God, that you should hurt yourself on his account? Has he grown to such god-like stature in your sight? Homeward-bound from your great hunt, the carcass of an elephant on your great head, do you now dally on the way to pick up a grasshopper between your toes?

  Great Messenger of the Creator! Take care that the ashes of the world rising daily from this pyre may not prove enough when they descend again to silt up the canals of birth in the season of renewal.

  The birds that sang the morning in had melted away even before the last butterfly fell roasted to the ground. And when songbirds disappeared, morning herself went into the seclusion of a widow’s penance in soot and ashes, her ornaments and fineries taken from her—velvets of soft elusive light and necklaces of pure sound lying coil upon coil down to her resplendent breasts: corals and blue chalcedonies, jaspers and agates veined like rainbows. So the songbirds left no void, no empty hour when they fled because the hour itself had died before them. Morning no longer existed.

  The trees had become hydra-headed bronze statues so ancient that only blunt residual features remained on their faces, like anthills surviving to tell the new grass of the savannah about last year’s brush fires.

  Household animals were all dead. First the pigs fried in their own fat; and then the sheep and goats and cattle choked by their swollen tongues. Stray dogs in the market-place in a running battle with vultures devoured the corpse of the madman they found at last coiled up one morning in the stall over which he had assumed unbroken tenancy and from where he had sallied forth every morning to mount the highest rung of the log steps at the centre of the square and taunt the absent villagers. Where is everybody? You have not forgotten your own market day? Come! Bring your long baskets of yams and your round baskets of cocoyams. Where are the fish women and the palm-oil women, where the high headloads of pottery? Come, today may be your lucky day, the day you may find a blind man to trade against. You have nothing to sell? Who said so? Come! I will buy your mother’s cunt.

  The dogs growled as they tore him apart and snapped at the vultures who struck back fearlessly with their beaks. After that last noisy meal the vultures pushed in their wicked, bashed-in heads and departed for another country.

  In the end even the clouds were subdued though they had held out longest. Their bedraggled bands rushed their last pathetic resources from place to place in a brave but confused effort to halt the monumental formations of the Sun’s incendiary hosts. For this affront the Sun wreaked a terrible vengeance on them cremating their remains to their last plumes and scattering the ashes to the four winds. Except that the winds had themselves fled long ago. So the clouds’ desecrated motes hung suspended in a mist across the whole face of the sky, and gave the Sun’s light glancing off their back the merciless tint of bronze. Their dishonoured shades sometimes would stir in futile insurrection at the spirit-hour of noon starting a sudden furious whirling of ash and dust, only to be quickly subdued again.

  In last desperate acts the Earth would now ignite herself and send up a shield of billowing black smoke over her head. It was pitiful and misguided for the heat of the brush fires merely added to the fire of the Sun. And soon, anyhow, there was no fodder left to burn.

  No one could say why the Great Carrier of Sacrifice to the Almighty was doing this to the world, except that it had happened before, long, long ago in legend. The earth broke the hoes of the grave-diggers and bent the iron tip of their spears. Then the people knew the time had come to desert their land, abandoning their unburied dead and even the dying, and compounding thereby whatever abominations had first unleashed the catastrophe. They travelled by starlight and lay under the shade of their mats by day until the sands became too hot to lie upon. Even legend is reticent about their plight recounting only that every night when the journey began again many failed to rise from under their mats and that those who did stagger up cast furtive glances at the silent shelters and set their stony faces to the south. And by way of comment the voice of legend adds that a man who deserts his town and shrine-house, who turns his face resolutely away from a mat shelter in the wilderness where his mother lies and cannot rise again or his wife or child, must carry death in his eyes. Such was the man and such his remnant fellows who one night set upon the sleeping inhabitants of the tiny village of Ose and wiped them out and drank the brown water in their wells and took their land and renamed it Abazon.

  And now the times had come round again out of storyland. Perhaps not as bad as the first times, yet. But they could easily end worse. Why? Because today no one can rise and march south by starlight abandoning crippled kindred in the wild savannah and arrive stealthily at a tiny village and fall upon its inhabitants and slay them and take their land and say: I did it because death stared through my eye.

  So they send instead a deputation of elders to the government who hold the yam today, and hold the knife, to seek help of them.

  4

  Second Witness—Ikem Osodi

  “LOOK HERE, ELEWA, I don’t like people being difficult for no reason at all. I explained this whole thing to you from the very beginning. Didn’t I?”

  “You explain what? I beg you, no make me vex… Imagine! Hmm! But woman done chop sand for dis world-o… Imagine! But na we de causam; na we own fault. If I no kuku bring my stupid nyarsh come dump for your bedroom you for de kick me about like I be football? I no blame you. At all!”

  “I don’t know what you are talking about.”

  “How you go know? You no fit know.”

  There is a car coming into the driveway and I go back to the window to see. No, it’s only one of the people in the flats, but I stay at the window all the same and watch the car creep towards the common garage building on the right. One of the brake lights shows a naked white bulb in a broken red casing. So it was Mr. So Therefore, the notorious Posts and Telegraphs man in the next flat. He crawled through the third door. Perhaps he will beat his beautiful wife tonight; he hasn’t done it now in months. Do you miss it then? Confess, you disgusting brute, that in
deed you do! Well, why not? There is an extraordinary surrealistic quality about the whole thing that is almost satisfyingly cathartic. I start hearing it in my dream and then pass into a state of half-waking, and stay there for the rest of the act because he always chooses that hour when sleep is at its most seductive—the hour favoured also by the most discriminating armed robbers. And in the morning I find myself wondering how much of it had happened and how much I had dreamt up on my own. I ran into them once the very next morning on the short walk to the garage and they were so outrageously friendly and relaxed! She especially. I was dumbfounded. Later I hear how a concerned neighbour once called the police station—this was before I came to live here—and reported that a man was battering his wife and the Desk Sergeant asked sleepily: “So Therefore?” So, behind his back, we call him Mr. “So Therefore.” I can never remember his real name.

  Elewa is still equitably cursing her woman’s lot and me. I shall say nothing more, just sit here on this window-sill and keep a lookout for the taxi which is taking much too long to appear. I wonder why. At this time of night you can generally get them to come within the hour.

  “Imagine… To put a girl for taxi at midnight to go and jam with arm robbers in the road.”

  “You know very well, Elewa, that there are no more armed robbers in Bassa.”

  “The woman dem massacre for motor Park last week na you killam.”

  “Nobody will kill you, Elewa.”

  “Nobody will kill you Elewa. Why you no drive me home yourself if say you know arm robbers done finish for Bassa. Make you go siddon.”

  “I can’t take you home because my battery is down. I have told you that twenty times already.”

  “Your battery is down. Why your battery no down for afternoon when you come pick me.”

  “Because you can manage a weak battery in the daytime but not at night, Elewa.”

  “Take your mouth comot my name, ojare. Tomorrow make you take your nonsense battery come pick me again. Nonsense!”

  She is turning really aggressive. If I didn’t know my Elewa I would be really worried. But she will call me first thing in the morning; perhaps during my nine o’clock editorial conference. The first time we parted in this kind of mood I was convinced I had lost her for good. That was the night I first tried to explain my reason for not letting her sleep in my flat. I should not have bothered with reasons at all if she hadn’t kept saying I had another girl coming, that was why. “Your compliment to my stamina notwithstanding,” I said totally and deliberately over her head, “the reason is really quite simple. I no want make you join all the loose women for Bassa who no de sleep for house.” She stared at me with her mouth wide open, quite speechless. Thinking to press home my point and advantage I said something like: “I wouldn’t want a sister of mine to do that, you see.” She fired back then: “Anoder time you wan’ poke make you go call dat sister of yours, you hear?”

  When we parted I thought we were through. But next morning in the middle of my editorial conference my stenographer came in from the outer office and asked me to take a call.

  “Who is that?” I asked angrily.

  “A certain girl,” he said, in his stupid officialese.

  “Tell her to call again whoever it is. Oh, never mind I’ll take it. Excuse me gentlemen.”

  It was Elewa asking if I would take her to the beach in the afternoon to buy fresh fish from fishermen coming ashore before the “thick madams” of the fish market had a chance to gobble up everything. “I go cook you nice pepper soup, today,” she said.

  In the end the taxi does appear and I grab my torchlight and take her down our unswept and unlit stairs. Whenever I go up or down those stairs I remember the goat owned in common that dies of hunger. The driver opens the rear door from his seat. No interior light comes on. I flash my light where it ought to have been and see a few tangled wires. To reassure Elewa I make a show of studying the driver’s face in the light of my torch. The driver protests:

  “I beg make you no flash light for my eye. Wayting?”

  “I want to be able to recognize you in the morning.”

  “For sake of what?”

  “For nothing. Just in case.” I move to the front of the car and flash the light at the registration number.

  “Na him make I no de gree come for dis una bigman quarter. Na so so wahala.”

  “Do you know it is an offence to operate a vehicle without interior lights according to the Criminal Code chapter forty-eight section sixteen subsection one hundred and six?”

  “Na today—even na jus’ now as I de come here de light quench out.”

  His lie is as good as mine but I have an advantage: I know he is lying; he doesn’t know I am, and he is scared.

  “OK. Tomorrow morning, first thing, make you go for mechanic fixam proper.”

  “OK, oga.”

  I seal our mutual understanding with a twenty kobo tip and then turn to Elewa who has withdrawn totally into herself and the far corner of the back seat. “You’ll be alright, love.”

  “Driver, kick moto make we de go, I beg you.”

  I will keep trying till I find a reason that clicks with her.

  I have never seen the sense in sleeping with people. A man should wake up in his own bed. A woman likewise. Whatever they choose to do prior to sleeping is no reason to deny them that right. I simply detest the very notion of waking up and finding beside you somebody naked and unappetizing. It is unfair to you but especially to her. So I have never bargained with my right to repossess my apartment and my freedom fully. To shower and retire to my bed, alone is, it seems to me, such a simple, straightforward and reasonable expectation. But many women take it as a personal affront, which I find very odd indeed. They are their own worst enemy, women are.

  Elewa thinks it proves I don’t love her well enough. It proves the exact opposite. I am extremely fond of the girl, more than anybody I can remember in years. And her lovemaking is just sensational. No gimmicks. I suppose I shall never discover where in that little body of hers she finds the power to lift you up bodily on her trunk while she is slowly curving upwards like a suspension bridge, her head and feet alone driven like steel piles into the riverbed. And then—mixed metaphors, unmixed blessings—shake you like a miner panning for gold! When we agree about sleeping separately we will have great times together. She is really a fine, fine girl.

  Who was it invented the hot shower? It’s the kind of thing one ought to know and never does. We clutter up our brains with all kinds of useless knowledge and we don’t know the genius who invented the shower or the paper stapler… Let us now praise famous men and our fathers that begat us. Except that our fathers were not very famous in the invention line. But what does it matter? The French taught their little African piccaninnies to recite: our forefathers, the Gauls… It didn’t stop Senghor from becoming a fine African poet… A true descendant of the Mandin-gauls!

  I must get to work. That’s the other thing about sleeping together. It prevents work. And if we are to improve on our fathers’ performance in the invention business we must learn the sweet uses of hard work. I couldn’t write tomorrow’s editorials with Elewa’s hands cradling my damp crotch.

  Chris keeps lecturing me on the futility of my crusading editorials. They achieve nothing. They antagonize everybody. They are essays in overkill. They’re counter-productive. Poor Chris. By now he probably believes the crap too. Amazing what even one month in office can do to a man’s mind. I think that one of these days I shall set him down in front of a blackboard and chalk up for him the many bull’s-eyes of my crusading editorials. The line I have taken with him so far is perhaps too subtle: But supposing my crusading editorials were indeed futile would I not be obliged to keep on writing them? To think that Chris no longer seems to understand such logic! Perhaps I have been too reluctant to face up to changes in my friends. Perhaps I should learn to deal with him along his own lines and jog his short memory with the many successes my militant editorials have had. Exc
ept, there is a big danger in doing it.

  Those who mismanage our affairs would silence our criticism by pretending they have facts not available to the rest of us. And I know it is fatal to engage them on their own ground. Our best weapon against them is not to marshal facts, of which they are truly managers, but passion. Passion is our hope and strength, a very present help in trouble. When I took over the National Gazette from Chris I had no strong views one way or another about capital punishment. I even had no particular abhorrence about staging it publicly. If I had to vote I would probably vote against it by instinct but without much excitement. But all that was changed for me in the course of one afternoon. I became a passionate crusader. Chris said I was a romantic; that I had no solid contact with the ordinary people of Kangan; that the ordinary people of Kangan believed firmly in an eye for an eye and that from all accounts they enjoyed the spectacle that so turned my stomach.

  From all accounts! From one account, mine, Chris never went to the show. I did. And by God he is right about the enjoyment! But, thank God again, also totally wrong.

  By two o’clock there was no standing room on the beach, neither on the hot white sand nor the black granite boulders of the great breakwater wall stretching out to sea. On ordinary days only suicidal maniacs climbed those giant rocks that halted the galloping waves as the fierce horsemen at the durbar are stilled by an imaginary line before the royal pavilion. But this was no ordinary day. It was a day on which ordinarily sane people went berserk. The crowd on the perilous sea-wall had a fair sprinkling of women. And even children.