He turned away. He needed no favors from her lover. “I have to clean up,” he said stiffly.
She drank another cup of water before she said, “Ngwanu; let the day break,” and left.
———
Ugwu stopped going over to Eberechi’s house. He ignored her greetings, was angered by her wide-eyed look and her asking, “What is it, Ugwu? What did I do to offend you?” Eventually, she stopped asking or speaking to him. He didn’t care. Yet when he heard a car drive past, he rushed to see if it was the BIAFRAN ARMY Peugeot 403. He saw her leave in the mornings and thought perhaps she and the major had arranged a regular meeting place until she came by one evening to give some stockfish to Olanna. He opened the door and took the small package without a word.
“Such a nice girl, ezigbo nwa,” Olanna said. “She must be doing well at that relief center.”
Ugwu said nothing. Olanna’s affection offended him, as did the way Baby asked when Aunty Eberechi would come and play with her. He wanted them to feel the same sense of angry betrayal that he did. He would tell Olanna what had happened. It was true that he had never spoken of such personal things to her before but he felt that he could. He planned it carefully for Friday, the day Master went to Tanzania Bar with Special Julius after work. Olanna had taken Baby to visit Mrs. Muokelu, and while he waited for them to come back Ugwu weeded the garden and worried that his story was insubstantial. Olanna would laugh at him in that patient way she laughed at Master when he said something ridiculous. Eberechi had never spoken about her feelings for him, after all. But surely she could not pretend not to know how he felt about her. It was callous to have thrown her army-officer lover in his face like that, even if she did not feel the same way about him.
He steeled himself and went inside when he heard Olanna. They were in the living room, Baby was sitting on the floor and unwrapping something in an old newspaper.
“Welcome, mah,” Ugwu said.
Olanna turned to look at him, and the blankness in her eyes startled him. Something was wrong. Perhaps she had discovered that he had given some of the condensed milk to Eberechi. But her eyes were too hollow, too depthless, to be just about her anger at his milk theft of weeks ago. Something was very wrong. Was Baby sick again? Ugwu glanced at Baby, who was occupied with the newspaper wrapping. His stomach cramped at the prospect of bad news.
“Mah? Did something happen?”
“Your master’s mother is dead.”
Ugwu moved closer because her words had solidified, become suspended objects hovering just above his reach. It took him a moment to understand.
“His cousin sent a message,” Olanna said. “They shot her in Abba.”
“Hei!” Ugwu placed his hand on his head and struggled to remember what Mama had looked like the last time he saw her, standing by the kola nut tree, refusing to leave home. But he could not visualize her. Instead he recalled a blurred image of her in the kitchen in Nsukka, opening a pod of peppercorns. His eyes filled with tears. He wondered what other calamities he was yet to learn of. Perhaps the Hausa vandals had stayed back in his hometown; perhaps they had killed his own mother too.
When Master came home and went into his bedroom, Ugwu was unsure whether to go to the bedroom or wait for him to come out. He decided to wait. He lit the kerosene stove and mixed Baby’s pap. He wished that he had been less resentful of Mama’s strong-smelling soups.
Olanna walked into the kitchen.
“Why are you using the kerosene stove?” she shouted. “I na-ezuzu ezuzu? Are you stupid? Haven’t I told you to save our kerosene?”
Ugwu was startled. “But mah, you said I should cook Baby’s food on the stove.”
“I did not say that! Go outside and light a fire!”
“Sorry, mah.” But she had indeed said that; only Baby ate three times a day now—the rest of them ate twice—and Olanna had asked him to cook her food on the kerosene stove because the smell of firewood smoke made Baby cough.
“Do you know how much kerosene costs? Just because you don’t pay for the things you use you think you can do with them as you like? Is firewood itself not a luxury where you come from?”
“Sorry, mah.”
Olanna sat down on a cement block in the backyard. Ugwu made a fire and finished making Baby’s dinner. He was aware of her eyes on him.
“Your master won’t talk to me,” she said.
The long pause that followed filled Ugwu with a deeply uncomfortable sense of intimacy; she had never before spoken to him about Master like this.
“Sorry, mah,” he said, and sat next to her; he wanted to place a hand on her back to comfort her but he couldn’t and so he left his hand suspended, inches from touching her, until she sighed and got up and went inside.
Master came out to go to the outhouse.
“My madam told me what happened, sah,” Ugwu said. “Ndo. Sorry.”
“Yes, yes,” Master said, and walked on briskly.
It was inadequate to Ugwu, their exchange; he felt as if Mama’s death required more words, more gestures, more shared time between them. But Master had barely glanced at him. And when Special Julius came by later to say ndo, Master was just as brisk and brief.
“Certainly one must expect casualties. Death is the price of our liberty,” he said, and abruptly got up and went back into the bedroom, leaving Olanna to shake her head at Special Julius, her eyes tear-filled.
Ugwu thought Master would stay home from work the next day, but he took a bath earlier than he usually did. He did not drink his tea or touch the yam slices Ugwu had warmed up from the night before. He did not tuck in his shirt.
“You just can’t cross to Biafra-Two, Odenigbo,” Olanna said, as she followed him out to the car. Master pushed down the palm fronds piled on top of it. Olanna kept saying something that Ugwu could not hear while Master silently bent over the open bonnet. He climbed in and drove off with a slight wave. Olanna ran off down the road. Ugwu thought, for one absurd moment, that she was chasing after Master’s car but she came back to say that she had asked Special Julius to follow him and bring him back.
“He said he has to go and bury her. But the roads are occupied. The roads are occupied,” she said. Her eyes were focused on the compound entrance. With each sound she heard—a lorry rumbling past, a chirping bird, a child’s cry—she ran from the veranda bench to peer down the road. A group of people armed with machetes walked past, singing. Their leader had one arm.
“Teacher! Well done!” one of them called, when they saw Olanna. “We are going combing! We are going to root out the infiltrators!”
They had almost passed when Olanna jerked up and shouted, “Please look out for my husband in a blue Opel.”
One of them turned and waved with a slightly puzzled look.
Ugwu could feel the heat of the bright afternoon sun even under the thatch awning. Baby was playing barefoot in the front yard. Special Julius’s long American car drove in and Olanna leaped up.
“He’s not back?” Special Julius asked from the car.
“You didn’t see him,” Olanna said.
Special Julius looked worried. “But who told Odenigbo that he can make it past occupied roads? Who told him?”
Ugwu wanted the man to shut up. He had no right to criticize Master, and rather than sitting there in his ugly tunic he might turn around and go search properly for Master.
After Special Julius left, Olanna sat down and leaned forward and placed her head in her hands.
“Do you want some water, mah?” Ugwu asked.
She shook her head. Ugwu watched the sun fall. Darkness came swiftly, brutally; there was no gradual change from light to dark.
“What am I going to do?” Olanna asked. “What am I going to do?”
“Master will come back, mah.”
But Master did not come back. Olanna sat on the veranda until past midnight, resting her head against the wall.
27
Richard was at the dining table when the doorbell rang. He reduced
the volume of the radio and rearranged the sheets of writing paper before he opened the door. Harrison stood there, his forehead, his neck, his arms, and his legs beneath his khaki shorts all wrapped in bloody bandages.
The red wetness made Richard feel faint. “Harrison! Good God. What happened to you?”
“Good afternoon, master.”
“Were you attacked?” Richard asked.
Harrison came inside and placed his tattered bag down and began to laugh. Richard stared at him. When Harrison raised his hands to untie the bloody bandage on his head, Richard said, “No, no, there’s no need to do that. No need at all. I’ll call the driver right away. We’ll take you to the hospital.”
Harrison yanked the bandage off. His head was smooth; there was no gash, no mark to show where the blood had come from.
“It is beets, sah,” Harrison said, and laughed again.
“Beets?”
“Yes, sah.”
“It isn’t blood then, you mean?”
“No, sah.” Harrison moved farther into the living room and made to stand at the corner, but Richard asked him to sit. He perched on the edge of the chair. The smile left his face as he began to speak.
“I am coming from my hometown, sah. I am not telling anybody that our hometown is falling soon so that they are not saying I am saboteur. But everybody is knowing that the vandals are close. Even two days ago we are hearing shelling, but the town council say it is our troops practicing. So I’m taking my family and our goats to the inside-inside farm. Then I begin coming Port Harcourt because I am not knowing what happened to Master. Even I am sending message with the driver of Professor Blyden since many weeks ago.”
“I didn’t get any message.”
“Foolish man,” Harrison muttered, before he continued. “I am soaking cloth in fresh beet water and tying them in bandage and I am saying I am survivor of air raid. It is only how the militia people are allowing me to enter lorry. Only men with wounds is following the women and children.”
“So what happened in Nsukka? How did you leave?”
“It is many months now, sah. When I am hearing shelling I am packing your things and I am burying the manscrit inside box in the garden, near that small flower Jomo is planting the last time.”
“You buried the manuscript?”
“Yes, sah, because if not they are taking it from me on the road.”
“Yes, of course,” Richard said. It was unreasonable to hope that Harrison had brought In the Time of Roped Pots with him. “So how have you been getting on?”
Harrison shook his head. “Hunger is bad, sah. My people are watching the goats.”
“Watching the goats?”
“To see what they are eating, and after seeing they are boiling the same leaves and giving their children to drink. It is stopping kwashiorkor.”
“I see,” Richard said. “Now go to the Boys’ Quarters and have a wash.”
“Yes, sah.” Harrison stood up.
“And what are your plans now?”
“Sah?”
“Do you plan to go back to your hometown?”
Harrison fiddled with the arm bandage, thick with false blood. “No, sah. I am waiting until the war is ending so I am cooking for master.”
“Of course,” Richard said. It was a good thing two of Kainene’s stewards had gone off to join the army and only Ikejide was left.
“But, sah, they are saying that Port Harcourt is falling soon. The vandals are coming with many ships from Britain. They are shelling outside Port Harcourt now.”
“Go on and have a bath, Harrison.”
“Yes, sah.”
After Harrison left, Richard turned up the volume of the radio. He liked the cadence of the Arabic-inflected voice on Radio Kaduna, but he did not like the gleeful certitude with which it said “Port Harcourt is liberated! Port Harcourt is liberated!” They had been talking about the fall of Port Harcourt for the past two days. So had Lagos radio, although with a little less glee. The BBC, too, had announced that the imminent fall of Port Harcourt was the fall of Biafra; Biafra would lose its viable seaport, its airport, its control of oil.
Richard pulled the bamboo stopper from the bottle on the table and poured himself a drink. The pink liquid spread a pleasant warmth through his body. Emotions swirled in his head—relief that Harrison was alive, disappointment that his manuscript was buried in Nsukka, anxiety about the fate of Port Harcourt. Before he poured a second drink, he read the label on the bottle: REPUBLIC OF BIAFRA, RESEARCH AND PRODUCTION DIRECTORATE, NENE SHERRY, 45%. He sipped slowly. Madu had brought two cartons the last time he visited, joking that locally made liquor in old beer bottles was part of the win-the-war effort.
“The RAP people claim that Ojukwu drinks this, though I doubt it,” he said. “I drink only the clear ones myself because I don’t trust that coloring.”
Madu’s irreverence, calling His Excellency Ojukwu, always bothered Richard but he said nothing because he did not want to see Madu’s amused smirk, the same smirk Madu had when he told Kainene, “We are running our cars with a mix of kerosene and palm oil” or “We’ve perfected the flying ogbunigwe” or “We’ve made an armored car from scrap.” His we was edged with exclusion. The deliberate emphasis, the deepened voice, meant that Richard was not part of we; a visitor could not take the liberties of the homeowners.
And so, weeks ago, Richard was confused when Kainene first told him, “Madu would like you to write for the Propaganda Directorate. He’ll get you a special pass and petrol supplies so you can move around. They’ll send your pieces to our public relations people overseas.”
“Why me?”
Kainene shrugged. “Why not?”
“The man hates me.”
“Don’t be so dramatic. I think they want experienced insiders to do stories that are about more than just the number of Biafran dead.”
At first the word insider thrilled Richard. But doubts soon crawled out; insider had been Kainene’s word, after all, and not Madu’s. Madu saw him as a foreigner, which perhaps was why he thought he would be good at this. When Madu called and asked if he would do it, Richard said no.
“Have you thought about it?” Madu asked.
“You would not have asked me if I were not white.”
“Of course I asked because you are white. They will take what you write more seriously because you are white. Look, the truth is that this is not your war. This is not your cause. Your government will evacuate you in a minute if you ask them to. So it is not enough to carry limp branches and shout power, power to show that you support Biafra. If you really want to contribute, this is the way that you can. The world has to know the truth of what is happening, because they simply cannot remain silent while we die. They will believe a white man who lives in Biafra and who is not a professional journalist. You can tell them how we continue to stand and prevail even though Nigerian MiG-Seventeens, Il-Twenty-eights, and L-Twenty-nine Delfins flown by Russians and Egyptians are bombing us every day, and how some of them are using transport planes and just crudely rolling out bombs to kill women and children, and how the British and the Soviets are in an unholy alliance giving more and more arms to Nigeria, and how the Americans have refused to help us, and how our relief flights come in at night with no lights because the Nigerians will shoot them down during the day…”
Madu paused to catch his breath, and Richard said, “Yes, I’ll do it.” They simply cannot remain silent while we die rang in his head.
His first article was about the fall of Onitsha. He wrote that the Nigerians had tried many times to take this ancient town but the Biafrans fought valiantly, that hundreds of popular novels had been published here before the war, that the thick sad smoke of the burning Niger Bridge had risen like a defiant elegy. He described the Holy Trinity Catholic Church, where soldiers of the Nigeria Second Division first defecated on the altar before killing two hundred civilians. He quoted a calm eyewitness: “The vandals are people who shit on God. We will overcome them.”<
br />
As he wrote the article, he felt as if he were a schoolboy again, writing letters to Aunt Elizabeth while his headmaster monitored them. Richard remembered him clearly, his mottled complexion, how he called science “muck,” how he ate his porridge walking about in the dining hall because he said it was what gentlemen did. Richard was still not sure which he hated more at the time, being forced to write letters home or having the letter-writing session monitored. And he was not sure what he disliked more now, imagining Madu as his monitor or realizing that he cared very much what Madu thought. A note came from Madu some days later. It was very well done (perhaps a little less flowery next time?) and they have sent it off to Europe. Madu’s handwriting was crabbed, and on the writing paper the NIGERIAN of NIGERIAN ARMY had been crossed out in ink and BIAFRAN written in hasty block letters. But Madu’s words convinced Richard that he had made the right decision. He imagined himself as the young Winston Churchill covering Kitchener’s battle at Omdurman, a battle of superior versus inferior arms, except that, unlike Churchill, he sided with the moral victor.
Now, weeks later, after more articles, he felt a part of things. He found pleasure in the new respect in the driver’s eyes, jumping out to open the door although Richard told him not to bother. He found pleasure in how quickly the civil defenders’ suspicious glances at his special duties pass changed to wide grins when he greeted them in Igbo, in how willing people were to answer his questions. He found pleasure in the superiority he adopted with foreign journalists, speaking vaguely about the background to the war—the implications of the national strike and the census and the Western Region chaos—knowing all the while they had no idea what he was talking about.
But his greatest pleasure had come from meeting His Excellency. It was at the staging of a play in Owerri. An air raid had shattered all the louvers in the windows of the theater and the evening breeze blew some of the actors’ words away. Richard sat some rows behind His Excellency, and, after the play, a top man at the Mobilization Directorate introduced them. The solid handshake, the “Thank you for the good work you’re doing” in that soft Oxford-accented voice had filled Richard with equanimity. Even though he found the political play too obvious, he did not say so. He agreed with His Excellency: It was wonderful, just wonderful.
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