Susan called some days later. It was late morning and Kainene was at one of her factories.
“I didn’t know you had Kainene’s number,” Richard said. Susan laughed.
“I heard Nsukka was evacuated and I knew you would be with her. So how are you? Are you all right?”
“Yes.”
“You didn’t have trouble evacuating, did you?” Susan asked. “You’re all right?”
“I’m all right.” He was touched by her concern.
“Right. So what are your plans?”
“I will be here for now.”
“It’s not safe, Richard. I’m not staying here longer than another week. These people never fight civilized wars, do they? So much for calling it a civil war.” Susan paused. “I rang the British Council in Enugu and I can’t believe our people there are still going off to play water polo and have cocktails at the Hotel Presidential! There’s a bloody war going on.”
“It will be cleared up soon.”
“Cleared up, ha! Nigel is leaving in two days. Nothing is going to clear up; this war will drag on for years. Look what happened in the Congo. These people have no sense of peace. They’d sooner fight until the last man is down—”
Richard hung up while Susan was still speaking, surprising himself by the rudeness. There was a part of him that wished he could help her, throw away the bottles of liquor in her cabinet and wipe away the paranoia that scarred her life. Perhaps it was a good thing she was leaving. He hoped she would find happiness, with Nigel or otherwise. He was still occupied with thoughts of Susan, half hoping she would not call again and half hoping she would, when Kainene came home. She kissed his cheeks, his lips, his chin. “Did you spend the day worrying about Harrison and In the Time of Roped Pots?” she asked.
“Of course not,” he said, even though they both knew it was a lie.
“Harrison will be fine. He must have packed up and gone to his village.”
“Yes, he must have,” Richard said.
“He probably took the manuscript with him.”
“Yes.” Richard remembered how she had destroyed his first real manuscript, The Basket of Hands, how she had led him to the orchard, to the pile of charred paper under his favorite tree, her face all the time expressionless; and how afterward he had felt not blame or anger but hope.
“There was another rally in town today, at least a thousand people walking, and many cars covered in green leaves,” she said. “I wish they would stick to fields instead of blocking major roads. I’ve already donated money and I won’t be held up in the hot sun just to help further Ojukwu’s ambition.”
“It’s about a cause, Kainene, not a man.”
“Yes, the cause of benign extortion. You know taxi drivers no longer charge soldiers? They get offended when a soldier offers to pay the fare. Madu says there is a group of women at the barracks every other day, from all sorts of backwater villages, bringing yams and plantains and fruit to the soldiers. These are people who have nothing themselves.”
“It’s not extortion. It’s the cause.”
“The cause indeed.” Kainene shook her head but she looked amused. “Madu told me today that the army has nothing, absolutely nothing. They thought Ojukwu had arms piled up somewhere, given the way he’s been talking, ‘No power in Black Africa can defeat us!’ So Madu and some of the officers who came back from the North went to tell him that we have no arms, no mobilization of troops, and that our men are training with wooden guns, for goodness’ sake! They wanted him to release his stockpiled arms. But he turned around and said they were plotting to overthrow him. Apparently he has no arms at all and he plans to defeat Nigeria with his fists.” She raised a fist and smiled. “But I do think he is terribly attractive: that beard alone.”
Richard said nothing. He wondered, fleetingly, if he should grow a beard.
17
Olanna leaned on the veranda railing of Odenigbo’s house in Abba, looking out at the yard. Near the gate, Baby was on her knees playing in the sand while Ugwu watched her. The wind rustled the leaves of the guava tree. Its bark fascinated Olanna, the way it was discolored and patchy, a light clay alternating with a darker slate, much like the skin of village children with the nlacha skin disease. Many of those children had stopped by to say “nno nu, welcome,” on the day they arrived from Nsukka, and their parents and uncles and aunts had come too, bearing good wishes, itching for gossip about the evacuation. Olanna had felt a fondness for them; their welcome made her feel protected. Her warmth had extended even to Odenigbo’s mother. She wondered now why she did not pull Baby away from the grandmother who had rejected her at birth and why she herself did not move away from Mama’s hug. But there was a haunting, half-finished quality to all that happened that day—cooking in the kitchen with Ugwu, the departure so hasty that she worried the oven was left on, the crowds on the road, the sound of shelling—so she took Mama’s hug in her stride, even hugged her back. Now they had gone back to being civil, Mama often came over to see Baby, through the wooden gate in the mud wall that separated her home from Odenigbo’s. Sometimes Baby went across to visit her and run after the goats that wandered in her courtyard. Olanna was never sure how clean were the pieces of dried fish or smoked meat Baby came back chewing, but she tried not to mind, just as she tried to stifle her resentment; Mama’s affection for Baby had always been half-baked, halfhearted, and it was too late for Olanna to feel anything but resentment.
Baby was laughing at something Ugwu said; her pure high-pitched laughter made Olanna smile. Baby liked it here; life was slower and simpler. Because their stove and toaster and pressure cooker and imported spices were left behind in Nsukka, their meals were simpler too, and Ugwu had more time to play with her.
“Mummy Ola!” Baby called. “Come and see!”
Olanna waved. “Baby, it’s time for your evening bath.”
She watched the outline of the mango trees in the next yard; some of them had fruit drooping down like heavy earrings. The sun was falling. The chickens were clucking and flying up into the kola nut tree, where they would sleep. She could hear some villagers exchanging greetings, in the same loud-voiced way that the women in the sewing group did. She had joined them two weeks ago, in the town hall, sewing singlets and towels for the soldiers. She felt bitter toward them at first, because when she tried to talk about the things she had left behind in Nsukka—her books, her piano, her clothes, her china, her wigs, her Singer sewing machine, the television—they ignored her and started to talk about something else. Now she understood that nobody talked about the things left behind. Instead they talked about the win-the-war effort. A teacher had donated his bicycle to the soldiers, cobblers were making soldiers’ boots for free, and farmers were giving away yams. Win the war. It was difficult for Olanna to visualize a war happening now, bullets falling on the red dust of Nsukka while the Biafran troops pushed the vandals back. It was often difficult to visualize anything concrete that was not dulled by memories of Arize and Aunty Ifeka and Uncle Mbaezi, that did not feel like life being lived on suspended time.
She kicked off her slippers and walked barefoot across the front yard and over to Baby’s sand hut. “Very nice, Baby. Maybe it will still be standing tomorrow, if the goats don’t come in the yard in the morning. Now, time for a bath.”
“No, Mummy Ola!”
“I think Ugwu is going to carry you off right now.” Olanna glanced at Ugwu.
“No!”
Ugwu picked Baby up and ran off toward the house. Baby’s slipper fell off and they stopped to pick it up, Baby saying “No!” and laughing at the same time. Olanna wondered how Baby would take their leaving the following week for Umuahia, three hours away, where Odenigbo had been deployed to the Manpower Directorate. He had hoped to work at the Research and Production Directorate, but there were too many overqualified people and too few jobs; even she had been told there was no vacancy for her at any of the directorates. She would teach at the primary school, her own win-the-war effort. It did have
a certain melody to it: win-the-war, win-the-war, win-the-war. She hoped Professor Achara had found them accommodation close to other university people so that Baby would have the right kind of children to play with.
She sat down on one of the low wooden chairs that slanted so that she had to recline in them in order to rest her back. They were chairs she saw only in the village, made by village carpenters who set up dusty signs by the corners of the dirt roads, often with CARPENTER misspelled: capinter, capinta, carpentar. You could not sit up on such chairs; they assumed a life of hard-earned rest, of evenings reclining in fresh air after a day of farm-work. Perhaps they assumed, also, a life of ennui.
It was dark and the bats were flying noisily above when Odenigbo came home. He was always out during the day, attending meeting after meeting, all of them on how Abba would contribute to the win-the-war effort, how Abba would play a major role in establishing the state of Biafra; sometimes she saw men returning from the meetings, holding mock guns carved from wood. She watched Odenigbo walk across the veranda, aggressive confidence in his stride. Her man. Sometimes when she looked at him she felt gripped by proud possession.
“Kedu?” he asked, bending to kiss her lips. He examined her face carefully, as if he had to do so to make sure she was well. He had been doing that since she returned from Kano. He told her often that the experience had changed her and made her so much more inward. He used massacre when he spoke to his friends, but never with her. It was as if what had happened in Kano was a massacre but what she had seen was an experience.
“I’m fine,” she said. “Aren’t you a little early?”
“We finished early because there’s going to be a general meeting in the square tomorrow.”
“Why?” Olanna asked.
“The elders decided it was time. There are all kinds of silly rumors about Abba evacuating soon. Some ignoramuses even say the federal troops have entered Awka!” Odenigbo laughed and sat down next to Olanna. “Will you come?”
“To the meeting?” She had not even considered it. “I’m not from Abba.”
“You could be, if you married me. You should be.”
She looked at him. “We are fine as we are.”
“We are at war and my mother would have to decide what will be done with my body if anything happened to me. You should decide that.”
“Stop it, nothing will happen to you.”
“Of course nothing will happen to me. I just want you to marry me. We really should marry. It no longer makes sense. It never made sense.”
Olanna watched a wasp flit around the spongy nest lodged in the wall corner. It had made sense to her, the decision not to marry, the need to preserve what they had by wrapping it in a shawl of difference. But the old framework that fit her ideals was gone now that Arize and Aunty Ifeka and Uncle Mbaezi would always be frozen faces in her album. Now that bullets were falling in Nsukka. “You have to take wine to my father, then,” she said.
“Is that a yes?”
A bat swooped down and Olanna lowered her head. “Yes. It is a yes,” she said.
In the morning, she heard the town crier walking past the house, beating a loud ogene. “There will be a meeting of all Abba tomorrow at four p.m. in Amaeze Square!” Gom-gom-gom. “There will be a meeting of all Abba tomorrow at four p.m. in Amaeze Square!” Gom-gom-gom. “Abba has said that every man and every woman must attend!” Gom-gom-gom. “If you do not attend, Abba will fine you!”
“I wonder how steep the fines are,” Olanna said, watching Odenigbo dress. He shrugged. He had only the two shirts and pairs of trousers that Ugwu had hurriedly packed, and she smiled, thinking of how she knew what he would wear each morning before he dressed.
They had sat down to have breakfast when her parents’ Land Rover drove into the compound.
“How fortuitous,” Odenigbo said. “I’ll tell your dad right away. We can have the wedding here next week.” He was smiling. There was something boyish about him since she’d said yes on the veranda, something naïvely gleeful that she wished she felt too.
“You know it’s not done that way,” she said. “You have to go to Umunnachi with your people and do it properly.”
“Of course I know. I was only joking.”
Olanna walked to the door, wondering why her parents had come. They had visited only a week ago, after all, and she was not quite ready for another monologue from her jittery mother while her father stood by and nodded his agreement: Please come and stay with us in Umunnachi; Kainene should leave Port Harcourt until we know whether this war is coming or going; that Yoruba caretaker we left in Lagos will loot the house; I am telling you, we really should have arranged to bring all the cars back.
The Land Rover parked under the kola nut tree, and her mother climbed out. She was alone. Olanna felt slight relief that her father had not come. It was easier to deal with one at a time.
“Welcome, Mom, nno,” Olanna said, hugging her. “Is it well?”
Her mother shrugged in the way that was meant to say so-so. She was wearing a red george wrapper and pink blouse and her shoes were flat, a shiny black. “It is well.” Her mother looked around, the same way she had looked around, furtively, the last time before pushing an envelope of money into Olanna’s hand. “Where is he?”
“Odenigbo? He’s inside, eating.”
Her mother led the way to the veranda and leaned against a pillar. She opened her handbag, gestured for Olanna to look inside. It was full of the glitter and twinkle of jewelry, corals and metals and precious stones.
“Ah! Ah! Mom, what is all that for?”
“I carry them everywhere I go now. My diamonds are inside my bra.” Her mother was whispering. “Nne, nobody knows what is going on. We are hearing that Umunnachi is about to fall and that the federals are very close by.”
“The vandals are not close by. Our troops are driving them back around Nsukka.”
“But how long is it taking to drive them back?”
Olanna disliked the petulant pout on her mother’s face, the way her mother lowered her voice as if doing so would exclude Odenigbo. She would not tell her mother that they had decided to get married. Not yet.
“Anyway,” her mother said, “your father and I have finalized our plans. We have paid somebody who will take us to Cameroon and get us on a flight from there to London. We will use our Nigerian passports; the Cameroonians will not give us trouble. It was not easy but it is done. We paid for four places.” Her mother patted her headgear, as if to ensure that it was still there. “Your father has gone to Port Harcourt to tell Kainene.”
Olanna felt pity at the plea in her mother’s eyes. Her mother knew she would not run away to England with them, and that Kainene would not either. But it was so like her to try, to make this doomed, grasping, well-meaning effort.
“You know I won’t go,” she said gently, wanting to reach out and touch her mother’s perfect skin. “But you and Dad should go, if it will make you feel safer. I’ll stay with Odenigbo and Baby. We’ll be fine. We are going to Umuahia in a few weeks for Odenigbo to start work at the directorate.” Olanna paused. She wanted to say that they would have their wedding in Umuahia but instead she said, “As soon as Nsukka is recovered, we’ll go back.”
“But what if Nsukka is not recovered? What if this war drags on and on?”
“It won’t.”
“How can I leave my children and run to safety?”
But Olanna knew she could and she would. “We’ll be fine, Mom.”
Her mother wiped her eyes with her palm, although there were no tears, before she brought out an airmail envelope from her handbag. “It’s a letter from Mohammed. Somebody brought it to Umunnachi. Apparently he heard Nsukka was evacuated and he thought you had come to Umunnachi. Sorry; I had to open it, to make sure there was nothing dangerous in it.”
“Nothing dangerous?” Olanna asked. “Gini? What are you talking about, Mom?”
“Who knows? Is he not the enemy now?”
Olanna shook
her head. She was pleased her mother would be going abroad and she would not have to deal with her until this war was over. She wanted to wait until her mother left before she read the letter, so that her mother would not search her face for an expression, but she could not help pulling out the single sheet of paper right away. Mohammed’s handwriting was like him—patrician and long, with elegant flourishes. He wanted to know if she was well. He gave her phone numbers to call if she needed help. He thought the war was senseless and hoped it would end soon. He loved her.
“Thank God you didn’t marry him,” her mother said, watching her fold the letter. “Can you imagine what a situation you would have been in now? O di egwu!”
Olanna said nothing. Her mother left soon afterward; she did not want to come inside and see Odenigbo. “You can still change your mind, nne, the four places are paid for,” she said, climbing into the car, holding tight to her jewelry-filled bag. Olanna waved until the Land Rover drove past the compound gates.
It surprised her, how many men and women were in Abba, gathered at the square for the meeting, crowded around the ancient udala tree. Odenigbo had told her how, as children, he and the others, sent to sweep the village square in the mornings, would instead spend most of their time fighting over the fallen udala fruit. They could not climb the tree or pluck the fruit because it was taboo; udala belonged to the spirits. She looked up at the tree as the elders addressed the crowd and imagined Odenigbo here as a boy, looking up as she was doing, hoping to see the shadowy outline of a spirit. Had he been energetic like Baby? Probably, perhaps more so than Baby.
“Abba, kwenu!” the dibia Nwafor Agbada said, the man whose medicine was said to be the strongest in these parts.
“Yaa!” everyone said.
“Abba, kwezuenu!”
“Yaa!”
“Abba has never been defeated by anyone. I said that Abba has never been defeated.” His voice was strong. He had only a few cotton-ball tufts of hair on his head, and his staff shook as he plunged it into the ground. “We do not look for quarrels, but when your quarrel finds us, we will crush you. We fought Ukwulu and Ukpo and finished them. My father never told me about a war where we were defeated, and his father never told him either. We will never run from our homeland. Our fathers forbid it. We will never run from our own land!”
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