“Yes.”
She said nothing else about it; he did not expect that she would.
15
Ugwu climbed out of the car and went around to the boot. He placed the bag of dried fish on top of the larger bag of garri, hoisted both onto his head, and followed Master up the cracked stairs and into the dim building that was the town union office. Mr. Ovoko came up to meet them. “Take the bags into the store,” he told Ugwu, pointing, as if Ugwu did not know from all the times he had come in the past to bring food for the refugees. The store was empty except for a small bag of rice in the corner; weevils crawled all over it.
“How are things? A na-emekwa?” Master asked.
Mr. Ovoko rubbed his hands together. He had the lugubrious face of one who simply refuses to be consoled. “Nobody is donating much these days. These people keep coming here and asking me for food, and then they start to ask for jobs. You know, they came back from the North with nothing. Nothing.”
“I know they came back with nothing, my friend! Don’t lecture me!” Master snapped.
Mr. Ovoko moved back. “I am only saying that the situation is serious. In the beginning our people rushed to donate food, but now they have forgotten. It will be a disaster if war comes.”
“War will not come.”
“Then why has Gowon continued to blockade us?”
Master ignored the question and turned to leave. Ugwu followed.
“Of course people are still donating food. That dull fellow must be taking the food to his own family,” Master said, as he started the car.
“Yes, sah,” Ugwu said. “Even his stomach is very big.”
“That ignoramus Gowon pledged a miserable, measly amount for more than two million refugees. Did he think it was chickens that died and it is the surviving relatives of those chickens who have returned home?”
“No, sah.” Ugwu looked out of the window. It filled him with sadness, coming here to give garri and fish to people who had fed themselves in the North, listening week after week to Master saying the same things. He reached out and straightened the rope that dangled from the rearview mirror. The plastic keepsake attached to it was a painting of half of a yellow sun on a black background.
Later, as he sat on the backyard steps reading The Pickwick Papers, stopping often to think and to watch the slender leaves of corn swish in the breeze, he was not surprised to hear Master’s raised voice from the living room. Master was always short-tempered on days like this.
“And what about our university colleagues in Ibadan and Zaria and Lagos? Who is speaking out about this? They kept silent while white expatriates encouraged the rioters to kill Igbo people. You would be one of them if you didn’t happen to be in Igboland! How much sympathy can you have?” Master shouted.
“Don’t you dare say I have no sympathy! To say that secession is not the only way to security does not mean I don’t have sympathy!” It was Miss Adebayo.
“Did your cousins die? Did your uncle die? You’re going back to your people in Lagos next week and nobody will harass you for being Yoruba. Is it not your own people who are killing the Igbo in Lagos? Didn’t a group of your chiefs go to the North to thank the emirs for sparing Yoruba people? So what are you saying? How is your opinion relevant?”
“You insult me, Odenigbo.”
“The truth has become an insult.”
There was silence and then the squeaking sound of the front door being opened and banged shut. Miss Adebayo had left. Ugwu stood up when he heard Olanna’s voice. “This is unacceptable, Odenigbo! You owe her an apology!”
It frightened him to hear her shout because she rarely did, and because the last time he had heard her shout was during those fractured weeks before Baby’s birth, when Mr. Richard stopped visiting and everything seemed to be on the brink of drowning. For a moment Ugwu heard nothing—perhaps Olanna, too, had walked out—and then he heard Okeoma reading. Ugwu knew the poem: If the sun refuses to rise, we will make it rise. The first time Okeoma read it, the same day the Renaissance newspaper was renamed the Biafran Sun, Ugwu had listened and felt buoyed by it, by his favorite line, Clay pots fired in zeal, they will cool our feet as we climb. Now, though, it made him teary. It made him long for the days when Okeoma recited poems about people getting buttocks rashes after defecating in imported buckets, the days when Miss Adebayo and Master shouted and yet did not end the evening with her storming off, the days when he still served pepper soup. Now, he served only kola nut.
Okeoma left a little while later, and Ugwu heard Olanna’s voice rise again. “You must, Odenigbo. You owe her an apology!”
“It is not a question of whether or not I owe her an apology. It is a question of whether or not I spoke the truth,” Master said. Olanna said something Ugwu did not hear and then Master spoke in a calmer tone, “All right, nkem, I will.”
Olanna came into the kitchen. “We are going out,” she said. “Come and lock the door.”
“Yes, mah.”
After they left in Master’s car, Ugwu heard a tap on the back door and went to see who it was.
“Chinyere,” he said, surprised. She never came over this early, and never to the main house either.
“Me and my madam and the children are leaving tomorrow morning for the village. I came to tell you to stay well. Ka o di.”
Ugwu had never heard her say so much. He was not sure what to say. They looked at each other for a while.
“Go well,” he said. He watched her walk to the hedge that separated the two compounds and slip underneath it. She would no longer appear at his door at night and lie on her back and spread her legs silently, at least not for a while. He felt a strange crushing weight in his head. Change was hurtling toward him, bearing down on him, and there was nothing he could do to make it slow down.
He sat down and stared at the cover of The Pickwick Papers. There was a serene calm in the backyard, in the gentle wave of the mango tree and the winelike scent of ripening cashews. It belied what he saw around him. Fewer and fewer guests visited now, and in the evenings the campus streets were ghostly, covered by the pearly light of silence and emptiness. Eastern Shop had closed. Chinyere’s mistress was only one of many families on campus who were leaving; houseboys bought huge cartons in the market and cars drove out of compounds with their boots sunken by heavy loads. But Olanna and Master had not packed a single thing. They said that war would not come and that people were simply panicking. Ugwu knew that families had been told they could send women and children to the hometowns, but the men could not leave, because if the men left it would mean that they were panicking and there was nothing to panic about. “No cause for alarm” was what Master said often. “No cause for alarm.” Professor Uzomaka who lived opposite Dr. Okeke had been turned back three times by the militiamen at the campus gates. They let him pass the third day after he swore that he would come back, that he was only taking his family to their hometown because his wife worried so much.
“Ugwuanyi!”
Ugwu looked up and saw his aunty coming toward him from the front yard. He stood up.
“Aunty! Welcome.”
“I was knocking on the front door.”
“Sorry. I did not hear.”
“Are you alone at home? Where is your master?”
“They went out. They took Baby with them.” Ugwu examined her face. “Aunty, is it well?”
She smiled. “It is well, o di mma. I bring a message from your father. They will have Anulika’s wine-carrying ceremony next Saturday.”
“Eh! Next Saturday?”
“It is better they do it now, before war comes, if war is going to come.”
“That is true.” Ugwu looked away, toward the lemon tree. “So. Anulika is really getting married.”
“Did you think you would marry your own sister?”
“God forbid.”
His aunty reached out and pinched his arm. “Look at you, a man has emerged. Eh! In a few years it will be your turn.”
Ugwu smiled. �
��It is you and my mother who will find a good person when the time comes, Aunty,” he said, with a false demureness. There was no point in telling her that Olanna had told him they would send him to university when he finished secondary school. He would not marry until he had become like Master, until he had spent many years reading books.
“I am going,” his aunty said.
“Won’t you drink some water?”
“I cannot stay. Ngwanu, let it be. Greet your master and give him my message.”
Even before his aunty left, Ugwu was already imagining his arrival for the ceremony. This time, he would finally hold Nnesinachi naked and pliant in his arms. His Uncle Eze’s hut was a good place to take her, or perhaps even the quiet grove by the stream, as long as the little children did not bother them. He hoped she would not be silent like Chinyere; he hoped she would make the same sounds he heard from Olanna when he pressed his ear to the bedroom door.
That evening, while he was cooking dinner, a quiet voice on the radio announced that Nigeria would embark on a police action to bring back the rebels of Biafra.
Ugwu was in the kitchen with Olanna, peeling onions, watching the movement of Olanna’s shoulder as she stirred the soup on the stove. Onions made him feel cleaned up, as if the tears they drew from him took away impurities. He could hear Baby’s high voice in the living room, playing with Master. He did not want either of them to come into the kitchen now. They would destroy the magic he felt, the sweet sting of onions in his eyes, the glow of Olanna’s skin. She was talking about the Northerners in Onitsha who had been killed in reprisal attacks. He liked the way reprisal attacks came out of her mouth.
“It’s so wrong,” she said. “So wrong. But His Excellency has handled it all well; God knows how many would have been killed if he did not have the Northern soldiers sent back to the North.”
“Ojukwu is a great man.”
“Yes, he is, but we are all capable of doing the same things to one another, really.”
“No, mah. We are not like those Hausa people. The reprisal killings happened because they pushed us.” His reprisal killings had come out sounding close to hers, he was sure.
Olanna shook her head but said nothing for a while. “After your sister’s wine-carrying, we will go to Abba to spend some time there since the campus is so empty,” she said finally. “You can stay with your people if you want to. We will come back for you when we return; we won’t be gone for more than a month, at the most. Our soldiers will drive the Nigerians back in a week or two.”
“I will come with you and Master, mah.”
Olanna smiled, as if she had wanted him to say that. “This soup is not thickening at all,” she muttered. Then she told him about the first time she cooked soup as a young girl, how she managed to burn the bottom of the pot to a charred purple and yet the soup turned out very tasty. He was absorbed in Olanna’s voice and so he did not hear the sound—boom-boom-boom—from somewhere distant outside the windows, until she stopped stirring and looked up.
“What is that?” she asked. “Do you hear it, Ugwu? What is it?”
Olanna dropped the ladle and ran into the living room. Ugwu followed. Master was standing by the window, holding a folded copy of the Biafran Sun.
“What is that?” Olanna asked. She pulled Baby to her. “Odenigbo!”
“They are advancing,” Master said calmly. “I think we should plan on leaving today.”
Then Ugwu heard the loud honk of a car outside. Suddenly he was afraid to go to the door, even to go to the window and peek out.
Master opened the door. The green Morris Minor had parked so hurriedly that one tire was outside the driveway, crushing the lilies that bordered the lawn; when the man came out of the car, Ugwu was shocked to see that he was only wearing a singlet and trousers. And bathroom slippers too!
“Evacuate now! The federals have entered Nsukka! We are evacuating now! Right now! I am going to all the houses still occupied. Evacuate now!”
It was after he had spoken and rushed back into his car and driven off, honking continuously, that Ugwu recognized him: Mr. Vincent Ikenna, the registrar. He had visited a few times. He drank his beer with Fanta.
“Get a few things together, nkem,” Master said. “I’ll check the water in the car. Ugwu, lock up quick! Don’t forget the Boys’ Quarters.”
“Gini? What things?” Olanna asked. “What will I take?”
Baby started to cry. There was the sound again, boom-boomboom, closer and louder.
“It won’t be for long, we’ll be back soon. Just take a few things, clothes.” Master gestured vaguely before he grabbed the car keys from the shelf.
“I’m still cooking,” Olanna said.
“Put it in the car,” Master said.
Olanna looked dazed; she wrapped the pot of soup in a dish towel and took it out to the car. Ugwu ran around throwing things into bags: Baby’s clothes and toys, biscuits from the fridge, his clothes, Master’s clothes, Olanna’s wrappers and dresses. He wished he knew what to take. He wished that sound did not seem even closer. He dumped the bags in the backseat of the car and dashed back inside to lock the doors and close the window louvers. Master was honking outside. He stood in the middle of the living room, feeling dizzy. He needed to urinate. He ran into the kitchen and turned the stove off. Master was shouting his name. He took the albums from the shelves, the three photo albums Olanna so carefully put together, and ran out to the car. He had hardly shut the car door when Master drove off. The campus streets were eerie; silent and empty.
At the gates, Biafran soldiers were waving cars through. They looked distinguished in their khaki uniforms, boots shining, half of a yellow sun sewn on their sleeves. Ugwu wished he was one of them. Master waved and said, “Well done!”
Dust swirled all around, like a see-through brown blanket. The main road was crowded; women with boxes on their heads and babies tied to their backs, barefoot children carrying bundles of clothes or yams or boxes, men dragging bicycles. Ugwu wondered why they were holding lit kerosene lanterns although it was not yet dark. He saw a little child stumble and fall and the mother bend and yank him up, and he thought about home, about his little cousins and his parents and Anulika. They were safe. They would not have to run because their village was too remote. This only meant that he would not see Anulika get married, that he would not hold Nnesinachi in his arms as he had planned. But he would be back soon. The war would last just long enough for the Biafran army to gas the Nigerians to kingdom come. He would yet taste Nnesinachi’s sweetness, he would yet caress that soft flesh.
Master drove slowly because of the crowds and road blocks, but slowest when they got to Milliken Hill. The lorry ahead of them had NO ONE KNOWS TOMORROW printed on its body. As it crawled up the steep incline, a young man jumped out and ran alongside, carrying a wood block, ready to throw it behind the back tire if the lorry were to roll back.
When they finally arrived at Abba, it was dusk, the windshield was coated in ocher dust, and Baby was asleep.
16
Richard was surprised when he heard the announcement that the federal government had declared a police action to bring the rebels to order. Kainene was not.
“It’s the oil,” she said. “They can’t let us go easily with all that oil. But the war will be brief. Madu says Ojukwu has big plans. He suggested I donate some foreign exchange to the war cabinet, so that when this ends I’ll get any contract I bid for.”
Richard stared at her. She did not seem to understand that he could not comprehend a war at all, brief or not.
“It’s best if you move your things to Port Harcourt until we drive the Nigerians back,” Kainene said. She was scanning a newspaper and nodding her head to the Beatles on the stereo and she made it seem normal, that war was the inevitable outcome of events and that moving his things from Nsukka was simply as it should be.
“Yes, of course,” he said.
Her driver took him. Checkpoints had sprung up everywhere, tires and nail-studded bo
ards placed across the road, men and women in khaki shirts with expressionless, disciplined demeanors standing by. The first two were easy to pass. “Where are you going?” they asked, and waved the car through. But near Enugu, the civil defenders had blocked the road with tree trunks and old rusty drums. The driver stopped.
“Turn back! Turn back!’ A man peered through the window; he was holding a long piece of wood carefully carved to look like a rifle. “Turn back!”
“Good afternoon,” Richard said. “I work at the university in Nsukka and I am on my way there. My houseboy is there. I have to get my manuscript and some personal belongings.”
“Turn back, sah. We will drive the vandals back soon.”
“But my manuscript and my papers and my houseboy are there. You see, I didn’t take anything. I didn’t know.”
“Turn back, sah. That is our order. It is not safe. But soon, when we drive the vandals back, you can return.”
“But you must understand.” Richard leaned farther forward.
The man’s eyes narrowed while the large eye painted on his shirt underneath the word VIGILANCE seemed to widen. “Are you sure you are not an agent of the Nigerian government? It is you white people who allowed Gowon to kill innocent women and children.”
“Abu m onye Biafra,” Richard said.
The man laughed, and Richard was not sure if it was a pleasant or an unpleasant laugh. “Eh, a white man who is saying that he is a Biafran! Where did you learn to speak our language?”
“From my wife.”
“Okay, sah. Don’t worry about your things in Nsukka. The roads will be clear in a few days.”
The driver reversed, and as he drove back the way they had come, Richard kept looking back at the blocked road until he could no longer see it. He thought about how easily those Igbo words had slipped out of him. “I am a Biafran.” He did not know why, but he hoped the driver would not tell Kainene that he had said that. He hoped, too, that the driver would not tell Kainene that he had referred to her as his wife.
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