Anthills of the Savannah

by Chinua Achebe

  The camera crew from the national Television perched on their mobile tower were much admired by the crowd. As they swivelled their machine from one side of the amphitheatre to another taking in all that colour in the brilliant sun—the yellow and red and white and blue—especially the blue—of Kangan indigo dyes, the people smiled and made faces and waved to the camera.

  The only room not taken yet was on the raised platform with numbered seats for VIPs and at the four stakes backed by their own little sea-wall of sandbags. The sun’s heat honed with salt and vapour came down so brutally on the forehead that we all made visors with our hands to save our eyes. Those who had had the foresight to bring along umbrellas could not open them without obstructing others. A mild scuffle began right in front of me and ended only when the offending umbrella was folded up again.

  “I beg una-o,” said its peace-loving owner, “make I de use my thing for walking-stick.”

  “E better so. No be for see umbrella we de roast for sun since we waka come here dis morning.”

  I began to wonder at one point if I hadn’t made a foolish gesture in refusing the ticket for one of those nicely spaced-out, numbered seats, that now seemed so desirably cool. Hardly anybody was sitting on them yet. Isn’t the great thing about a VIP that his share of good things is always there waiting for him in abundance even while he relaxes in the coolness of home, and the poor man is out there in the sun pushing and shoving and roasting for his miserable crumbs? Look at all those empty padded seats! How does the poor man retain his calm in the face of such provocation? From what bottomless wells of patience does he draw? His great good humour must explain it. This sense of humour turned sometimes against himself, must be what saves him from total dejection. He had learnt to squeeze every drop of enjoyment he can out of his stony luck. And the fool who oppresses him will make a particular point of that enjoyment: You see, they are not in the least like ourselves. They don’t need and can’t use the luxuries that you and I must have. They have the animal capacity to endure the pain of, shall we say, domestication. The very words the white master had said in his time about the black race as a whole. Now we say them about the poor.

  But even the poor man can forget what his humour is about and become altogether too humorous in his suffering. That afternoon he was punished most dreadfully at the beach and he laughed to his pink gums and I listened painfully for the slightest clink of the concealed weapon in the voluminous folds of that laughter. And I didn’t hear it. So Chris is right. But how I wish, for the sake of all the years I have known and loved him, that the day never came when he should be that kind of right. But that’s by the way.

  I had never expected that Authority should excel in matters of taste. But the ritual obscenities it perpetrated that afternoon took me quite by surprise—from the pasting of a bull’s eye on the chest of the victim to the antics of that sneaky wolf of a priest in sheep’s clothing whispering God knows what blasphemies into the doomed man’s ear, to the doctor with his stethoscope rushing with emergency strides to the broken, porous body and listening intently to the bull’s eye and then nodding sagely and scientifically that all was finished. Call him tomorrow to minister to genuine human distress and see how slow he can be! And how expensive! Authority and its servants far exceeded my expectations that day on the beach.

  But it wasn’t Authority that worried me really; it never does. It wasn’t those officious footlings, either. It wasn’t even the four who were mangled. It was the thousands who laughed so blatantly at their own humiliation and murder.

  As the four men were led out of the Black Maria the shout that went up was not like any sound I had ever heard or hoped to hear again. It was an ovation. But an ovation to whom for Christ’s sake?

  The four men were as different as the four days in the sky. One had totally lost the power of his legs and was helped to the stakes between two policemen, his trouser front entirely wet. The second was crying pathetically and looking back over his shoulders all the time. Was it to avoid looking ahead to those hefty joists sunk into concrete or was there a deliverer who had given his word in a dream or vision to be there at the eleventh hour? The third had dry eyes and a steady walk. He was shouting something so loud and desperate that the nerves and vessels of his neck seemed ready to burst. Though he had just stepped out of a car he was sweating like a hand-truck pusher at Gelegele Market. The fourth was a prince among criminals. The police said he had eluded them for two years, had three murders to his name and a fourth pointed in his direction. He wore a spotless white lace danshiki embroidered with gold thread, and natty blue terylene trousers. His appearance, his erect, disdainful walk hurled defiance at the vast mockery and abuse of the crowd and incensed it to greater vehemence. He saved his breath for the psychological moment when the crowd’s delirious yelling was suddenly stilled by its desire to catch the command of the officer to the firing squad. In that brief silence, in a loud and steady voice he proclaimed: “I shall be born again!” Twice he said it, or if thrice, the third was lost in a new explosion of jeers and lewd jokes and laughter so loud that it was clearly in compensation for the terrible truth of that silence in which we had stood cowed as though heaven had thundered: Be still and know that I am God. The lady in front of me said:

  “Na goat go born you nex time, noto woman.”

  My tenuous links with that crowd seemed to snap totally at that point. I knew then that if its own mother was at that moment held up by her legs and torn down the middle like a piece of old rag that crowd would have yelled with eye-watering laughter. I still ask myself how anyone could laugh at the proclamation of such a terrible curse or fail to be menaced by the prospect of its fulfilment. For it was clear to me that the robber’s words spoken with such power of calmness into the multitude’s hysteria just minutes before his white lace reddened with blood and his hooded head withered instantly and drooped to his chest were greater than he, were indeed words of prophecy. If the vision vouchsafed to his last moments was to be faulted in any particular it would be this: that it placed his reincarnation in the future when it was already a clearly accomplished fact. Was he not standing right then, full grown, in other stolen lace and terylene, in every corner of that disoriented crowd? And he and all his innumerable doubles, were they not mere emulators of others who daily stole more from us than mere lace and terylene? Leaders who openly looted our treasury, whose effrontery soiled our national soul.

  The only happy memory of that afternoon was the lady in front of me who vomited copiously on the back of the man with the umbrella and had to clean the mess with her damask headtie. I like to believe that there were others like her in every section of that crowd, picking up their filthy mess with their rich cloths. Certainly there were many who fainted although my news reporters put it all to the blazing sun. They also reported, by the way, a very busy day for pick-pockets, minor reincarnations of the princely robber.

  The next day I wrote my first crusading editorial calling on the President to promulgate forthwith a decree abrogating the law that permitted that outrageous and revolting performance. I wrote the editorial with so much passion that I found myself ending it with a one verse hymn to be sung to the tune “Lord Thy Word Abideth.”

  The worst threat from men of hell

  May not be their actions cruel

  Far worse that we learn their way

  And behave more fierce than they.

  A bad hymn, as most hymns tend to be. But people sang it up and down the street of Bassa. Chris was critical of my tone and of my tactlessness in appearing to command His Excellency. But when the said Excellency proceeded to do exactly what I had demanded Chris had to come up with a new tune. My editorial suddenly had nothing whatever to do with the new decree. His Excellency had quite independently come to the conclusion that he could earn a few credits by reversing all the unpopular acts of the civilian regime. And the Public Executions Amendment Decree was only one of them. And this was the same Chris who had just rebuked me for not knowing that publi
c executions were such a popular sport.

  In the one year or more since those particular events I have successfully resisted Chris’s notion of editorial restraint. But for how much longer?

  “I CALLED YOUR OFFICE three or four times,” he says as soon as I enter. He is not looking at me but at the sheaf of typed papers he is bouncing up and down on the table between his palms to line them up.

  “I take it you are asking me to explain why I was not on seat.”

  “Oh don’t be silly, Ikem. I’m only telling you…”

  “Well, sir. I had to go to GTC to hire a battery and have them place mine on twenty-four hour charge. I am sorry about that.”

  “I was calling you about this morning’s editorial.” He is still not looking at me but the irritation on his face and in his voice is clearly mounting despite the quietness. I don’t seem to be able to arouse anger in him these days; only irritation.

  “What about it?”

  “What about it! You know, Ikem I have given up trying to understand what you are up to. Really, I have.”

  “Good! At last!”

  “How can you go about creating stupid problems for yourself and for everybody else.”

  “Come on now! Speak for yourself, Chris. I am quite able to take care of myself. As for my editorials, as long as I remain editor of the Gazette I shall not seek anybody’s permission for what I write. I’ve told you that many times before. If you don’t like it you know what to do, Chris, don’t you? You hired me, didn’t you?”

  “Firing could be the least of your problems just now let me tell you. You had better have some pretty good explanations ready for H.E. The only reason I called you is that he is likely to ask me first and I want to tell you now that I am sick and tired of getting up every Thursday to defend you.”

  “Defend me? Good heavens! Who ever asked you to defend me? From what, anyway. Sounds to me like busy work, Chris.”

  “Well, never mind. I shan’t do it any more. From now on you can go right ahead and stew in your own water.”

  “Thank you, sir. If there is nothing else, may I leave now?”

  “You certainly may!”

  “That was short and sweet,” says his little painted doll of a secretary in the outer office. At a loss I simply glare at her and then slam her door after me. But a few steps down the corridor what I should have said comes, too late, to me. Something like: I’ve heard that you like it long and painful. I stopped; weighed it; changed my mind and continued walking.

  That young lady has a reputation for never putting Chris on the telephone until the secretary at the other end has put on the boss. Apparently she considers it a serious breach of protocol for the Honourable Commissioner to say hello to an assistant. I wonder why everything in this country turns so readily to routines of ritual contest. The heavyweight champion must not show his face but wait in his locker until the challenger has cooled his heels in the ring. I must say the whole charade is so unlike Chris that it must be done without his knowledge. But when will he learn that power is like marrying across the Niger; you soon find yourself paddling by night.

  IT SEEMS CHRIS has tortured himself for nothing. A week has gone by and no despatch-rider has delivered a query to me in the loud type-face of palace Remingtons. No green army jeep or blue police jeep has pulled up outside the Gazette or in front of the flats. Chris is totally shamefaced. Naturally. Who can blame him? I’ll have to go over to his place this evening and see if I can make him feel better.

  Worshipping a dictator is such a pain in the ass. It wouldn’t be so bad if it was merely a matter of dancing upside down on your head. With practice anyone could learn to do that. The real problem is having no way of knowing from one day to another, from one minute to the next, just what is up and what is down. It seems that when Chris was last at the palace the Big Shot had said quite categorically that he would pay a visit to Abazon. Chris came away and began dutifully to relay the news to everyone including myself. But in the meantime the Big Shot has had a brief snooze and on waking up has begun to see the world differently. “I must not go and visit my loyal subjects of Abazon,” he now says. And all plans are immediately cancelled. Which is fine, except that nobody remembers to tell the Honourable Commissioner who has charge for disseminating such vital information throughout the four provinces of the empire. So poor Chris is left totally in the lurch.

  Nobody told me either. But the great difference between me and Chris is that I never did expect to be told. I happened to feel a certain way in the matter and like a free agent, sat up at night after Elewa had gone away in the taxi and composed my thoughts. I keep telling Chris that life is simpler that way. Much simpler. Stop looking back over your shoulder, I tell him. There ain’t no deliverer running just a little behind schedule. March to the stake like a man and take the bullet in your chest. Much simpler.

  But the real irony of the situation is that my own method is more successful even on Chris’s own terms. How many times now have I managed to read the Big Shot’s mind better than all the courtiers? Who knows, I may soon be suspected of witchcraft or of having a secret hot-line to the palace! For it does not stand to reason that from my hermit’s hut in the forest I should divine the thoughts of the Emperor better than the mesmerized toadies in daily attendance. But it is quite simple really. The Emperor may be a fool but he isn’t a monster. Not yet, anyhow; although he will certainly become one by the time Chris and company have done with him. But right now he is still OK, thank God. That’s why I believe that basically he does want to do the right thing. Some of my friends don’t agree with me on this, I know. Even Chris doesn’t. But I am sure I am right; I am sure that Sam can still be saved if we put our minds to it. His problem is that with so many petty interests salaaming around him all day, like that shyster of an Attorney-General, he has no chance of knowing what is right. And that’s what Chris and I ought to be doing—letting him glimpse a little light now and again through chinks in his solid wall of court jesters; we who have known him longer than the rest should not be competing with them. I have shown what light I can with a number of controversial editorials. With Chris I could do much more. If Sam were stronger or brighter he probably wouldn’t need our offices; but then he probably wouldn’t have become His Excellency in the first place. Only half-wits can stumble into such enormities.

  Chris has a very good theory, I think, on the military vocation. According to this theory military life attracts two different kinds of men: the truly strong who are very rare, and the rest who would be strong. The first group make magnificent soldiers and remain good people hardly ever showing let alone flaunting their strength. The rest are there for the swank. The truth of this came to me on two separate occasions afterwards, both of them interestingly enough at the Gelegele Market. A tottering pugnacious drunkard was provoking a fight with a towering stranger carrying a small portmanteau and obviously on his way to the Motor Park. I think the drunk was claiming the box or even the man’s clothes as his own. Everyone in the market, it seemed, knew the drunk because many of the witnesses to the scene gave the same advice to the strong man with the box. “If you don’t handle that fool quite firmly, my friend, he will pester you to death,” they said. But the stranger appeared more eager to slip past his tormentor than follow the crowd’s advice. Which annoyed many of the people in the end. They didn’t see why anybody should let a drunken idiot walk all over him in this outrageous way unless there was something indeed wrong with him. Perhaps he didn’t own the clothes he wore. At that point a newcomer into the watching crowd recognized the stranger as last night’s new champion wrestler of Kangan. “No wonder,” said someone in a simple matter-of-fact voice and the rest of the people seemed to understand too. I was really amazed at their perceptiveness.

  The other incident was at the Motor Park itself. I was sitting in my car reading and waiting for a friend who was having her hair plaited down at the hairdressers’ shed. All around the parked cars young sellers of second-hand clothes displayed thei
r articles on wooden clothes-horses. From time to time there would be a sharp stampede at some secret signal for the approach of a policeman or the Market Master, for none of these boisterous hawkers apparently had any right whatsoever to display their goods at that section of the market reserved for cars. It took no more than one second of unbelievable motion and all those hundreds of wooden frames bedecked with the heavy castoffs of distant affluent and consumer cultures of cold climates would simply melt away in the bright noonday sun. Usually the alarm would prove to be false and they would reappear as promptly and miraculously as they had vanished, with much laughter and joking, and take up their illegal positions again. I never pass up a chance of just sitting in my car, reading or pretending to read, surrounded by the vitality and thrill of these dramatic people. Of course the whole of Gelegele Market is one thousand live theatres going at once. The hair-plaiting shed, for example, where Joy was now having her hair done, seated on a mat on the floor her head held between the knees of the artist into whose nimble hand she fed lengths of black thread, did not lack its own entertainment. But I would pick my vivacious youngsters of the used clothes, any day.

  It was a great shock to me then when that army car drove up furiously, went into reverse before it had had time to stop going forward and backed at high speed into a young man and his clothes who just barely managed to scramble out of the car’s vicious path. A cry went up all round. The driver climbed out, pressed down the lock button and slammed the door. The young trader found his voice then and asked, timidly:

  “Oga, you want kill me?”

  “If I kill you I kill dog,” said the soldier with a vehemence I found totally astounding. Quite mechanically I opened my door and came out. I believe I was about to tell the fellow that there was no need for him to have said that. But I am glad I didn’t in the end, because there are things which an observer can only see if he resists the temptation to jump into the fray and become an actor himself. So I watched the ass walk away with the exaggerated swagger of the coward, and went back into my car. But I was truly seething with anger. My young friends were stunned into total silence. But then the one who had had the brush with the car suddenly laughed and asked: