“The vandals.”
“No, them.” Kainene pointed back at the room. “I hate them for dying.”
Kainene took the baby inside and gave it to another woman, a relative of the dead woman’s whose bony body was quivering; because her eyes were dry, it took Olanna a moment to realize that she was crying, the baby pressed against her flattened, dry breasts.
Later, as they walked to the car, Kainene slipped her hand into Olanna’s.
29
Ugwu knew the story from Pastor Ambrose was implausible, that some people from a foundation abroad had set up a table at the end of St. John’s Road and were giving away boiled eggs and bottles of refrigerated water to anyone who passed by. He knew, too, that he should not leave the compound; Olanna’s warnings echoed in his head. But he was bored. It was sticky hot and he hated the ashy taste of the water stored in a clay pot behind the house. He longed for water, for anything, cooled by electricity. And the story could well be true; anything was possible. Baby was playing with Adanna and he could take the shortcut and be back before she even noticed he was gone.
He had just rounded the corner past the Church of St. John when he saw, farther down the road, a group of men standing in a single line with their hands placed on their heads. The two soldiers with them were very tall and one held his gun pointed forward. Ugwu stopped. The soldier with the gun began to shout something and to run toward him. Ugwu’s heart jumped in his chest; he looked at the bush by the roadside but it was too thin to hide in. He looked back and the road was clear and unending; there was nothing to shield him from the soldier’s bullet. He turned and dashed into the church compound. An elderly priest wearing white was standing at the top of the steps by the main door. Ugwu bounded up, relieved, because the soldier would not come inside the church to take him. Ugwu tugged at the door but it was locked.
“Biko, Father, let me go inside,” he said.
The priest shook his head. “Those outside who are being conscripted, they are God’s children too.”
“Please, please.” Ugwu yanked at the door.
“God’s blessings will go with you,” the priest said.
“Open this door!” Ugwu shouted.
The priest shook his head and backed away.
The soldier ran into the church compound. “Stop or I shoot!”
Ugwu stood staring, his mind blank.
“You know what they call me?” the soldier shouted. “Kill And Go!” He was too tall for the tattered trousers that stopped long before his black boots started. He spat on the ground and pulled Ugwu’s arm. “Bloody civilian! Follow me!”
Ugwu stumbled along. Behind them, the priest said, “God bless Biafra.”
Ugwu did not look at the faces of the other men as he joined the line and raised his hands to his head. He was dreaming; he had to be dreaming. A dog was barking from somewhere close by. Kill And Go shouted at one of the men, cocked his gun, and shot into the air. Some women had gathered a little way away and one of them was speaking to Kill And Go’s partner. At first, she spoke in low, pleading tones, then she raised her voice and gesticulated wildly. “Can’t you see he cannot talk well? He is an imbecile! How will he carry a gun?”
Kill And Go tied the men up in pairs, their hands behind their backs and the rope stretched taut between them. The man Ugwu was tied to jerked at the rope as if to see how strong it was and Ugwu was almost thrown off balance.
“Ugwu!”
The voice had come from the group of women. He turned. Mrs. Muokelu was looking at him with shocked eyes. He nodded at her, in a way that he hoped was respectful, because he could not take the risk of talking. She began to half walk, half run down the road and he watched her go, disappointed and yet not sure what he had expected her to do.
“Get ready to move!” Kill And Go shouted. He looked up and saw a boy at the end of the road and ran off after him. His partner pointed a gun at the line. “Anybody run I shoot.”
Kill And Go came back with the boy walking ahead of him.
“Shut up!” he said, as he tied the boy’s hands behind his back. “Everybody move! Our van is on the next road!”
They had just begun to walk at an awkward pace, Kill And Go shouting, “Lep! Ai!” when Ugwu saw Olanna. She was hurrying, panicky, wearing her wig, which she hardly wore these days, and she had hastily put it on because it was lopsided on her head. She smiled and motioned to Kill And Go, and he shouted, “Stop!” before he went over to her. They talked with his back to the men and, moments later, he turned around and slashed at the rope that bound Ugwu’s hands.
“He is already serving our nation. We are only interested in idle civilians,” he called out to the other soldier, who nodded.
Ugwu’s relief made him dizzy. He rubbed his wrists. Olanna did not say a word to him as they walked home, and he sensed her silent fury only in the force with which she unlocked and threw open the door.
“I’m sorry, mah,” he said.
“You are so stupid you do not deserve the luck you had today,” she said. “I bribed that soldier with all the money I have. Now you will produce what I will feed my child, do you understand?”
“I’m sorry, mah,” he said again.
She said little to him in the following days. She made Baby’s pap herself as if she no longer trusted him. Her responses to his greetings were frosty nods. And he woke up earlier to fetch water and scrubbed the room floor harder and waited to win back her friendship.
Finally, he won it back with the help of roasted lizards. It was the morning that she and Baby were getting ready to go to Orlu to visit Kainene. A hawker walked into the compound with an enamel tray covered in newspapers, holding up a browned lizard on a stick, chanting, “Mme mme suya! Mme mme suya!”
“I want some, Mummy Ola, please,” Baby said.
Olanna ignored her and continued to brush her hair. Pastor Ambrose had come out of his room and was bargaining with the lizard hawker.
“I want some, Mummy Ola,” Baby said.
“Those things are not good for you,” Olanna said.
Pastor Ambrose went back to his room with a newspaper-wrapped package.
“Pastor bought some,” Baby said.
“But we are not buying any.”
Baby began to cry. Olanna turned and looked at Ugwu in exasperation and suddenly they were both smiling at the situation: Baby was crying to be allowed to eat a lizard.
“What do lizards eat, Baby?” Ugwu asked.
Baby mumbled, “Ants.”
“If you eat one, all the ants the lizard ate will crawl around inside your stomach and bite you,” Ugwu said calmly.
Baby blinked. She looked at him for a while, as if deciding whether or not to believe him, before she wiped her tears.
On the day that Olanna and Baby left to spend a week with Kainene in Orlu, Master came home from work earlier than usual and did not go to Tanzania Bar; Ugwu hoped that their absence had pulled him out of the ditch he sunk into when his mother died. He sat on the veranda listening to the radio. Ugwu was surprised to see Alice stop by on her way to the bathroom. He assumed Master would give her his distant yes-and-no answers and she would go back to her piano. But they spoke in low tones, most of which Ugwu did not hear; once in a while he heard her giggly laughter. The next day, she was sitting on the bench beside Master. Then she stayed until the whole yard was asleep. Then Ugwu came around from the backyard, days later, and found the veranda empty and the room door firmly shut. His stomach tightened; memories of those days of Amala left a difficult-to-swallow lump in his throat. Alice was different. There was a deliberate childlike aura to her that Ugwu distrusted. He could see why she would not need any medicine from a dibia to tempt Master; she would do it with that pale skin and helpless manner. Ugwu walked to the banana trees and back and then went to the door and knocked loudly. He was determined to stop them, to stop it. He heard sounds inside. He knocked again. And again.
“Yes?” Master’s voice was muffled.
“It is me, sah
. I want to ask if I can take the kerosene stove, sah.” After he took the cooker, he would pretend to have forgotten the garri cup, the last bit of yam, the ladle. He was prepared to fake a seizure, an epileptic fit, anything that would keep Master from continuing what he was doing with that woman. It took long minutes before Master opened the door. His glasses were off and his eyes looked swollen.
“Sah?” Ugwu asked, looking past him. The room was empty. “Is it well, sah?”
“Of course it’s not well, you ignoramus,” Master said, staring at the pair of slippers on the floor. He looked lost in his own mind. Ugwu waited. Master sighed. “Professor Ekwenugo was on his way to lay land mines with the Science Group when they went over some potholes and the mines went off.”
“The mines went off?”
“Ekwenugo was blown up. He’s dead.”
Blown up rang in Ugwu’s ears.
Master moved back. “Take the stove, then.”
Ugwu came in and picked up the kerosene stove that he did not need and thought of Professor Ekwenugo’s long tapering nail. Blown up. Professor Ekwenugo had always been his proof that Biafra would triumph, with the stories of rockets and armored cars and fuel made from nothing. Would Professor Ekwenugo’s body parts be charred, like bits of wood, or would it be possible to recognize what was what? Would there be many dried fragments, like squashing a harmattan-dried leaf? Blown up.
Master left moments later for Tanzania Bar. Ugwu changed into his good trousers and hurried to Eberechi’s house. It seemed the most natural thing, the only thing, to do. He refused to think of how upset Olanna would be if Mama Oji told her that he had gone out, or of what Eberechi’s reaction would be, whether she would ignore him or welcome him or shout at him. He needed to see her.
She was sitting on the veranda alone, wearing that buttocks-molding tight skirt he remembered, but her hair was different, cut in a short rounded shape rather than plaited with thread.
“Ugwu!” she said, surprised, and stood up.
“You cut your hair.”
“Is there thread anywhere, talk less of the money to buy it?”
“It suits you,” he said.
She shrugged.
“I should have come since,” he said. He should never have stopped speaking to her because of an army officer he did not know. “Forgive me. Gbaghalu.”
They looked at each other, and she reached out and pinched the skin of his neck. He slapped her hand away, playfully, and then held on to it. He did not let go when they both sat on the steps, and she told him how the family renting Master’s former house was wicked, how the boys on the street hid in the ceiling when the conscripting soldiers came, how the last air raid had left a hole in their wall that rats came through.
Finally, Ugwu said that Professor Ekwenugo had died. “You remember I told you about him? The one in the Science Group, the one who made great things,” he said.
“I remember,” she said. “The one with the long nail.”
“It was cut,” Ugwu said and started to cry; his tears were sparse and itchy. She placed a hand on his shoulder and he sat very still so as not to move her hand, so as to keep it where it was. There was a newness to her, or perhaps it was his perception of things that had become new. He believed now in preciousness.
“You said he cut his long nail?” she asked.
“He cut it,” Ugwu said. It was suddenly a good thing he had cut his nail; Ugwu could not bear the thought of that nail being blown up.
“I should go,” he said. “Before my master comes home.”
“I shall come and visit you tomorrow,” she said. “I know a shortcut to your place.”
Master was not back when Ugwu got home. Mama Oji was screaming, “Shame on you! Shame on you!” at her husband, and Pastor Ambrose was praying that God scatter Britain with holy-spirit dynamite, and a child was crying. Slowly, one after the other, the sounds ceased. Darkness fell. Oil lamps went off. Ugwu sat outside the room and waited until, finally, Master walked in with a small smile on his face and his eyes a glaring red.
“My good man,” he said.
“Welcome, sah. Nno.” Ugwu stood up. Master was unsteady on his feet, swaying ever so slightly to the left. Ugwu hurried forward and placed his arm around him and supported him. They had just stepped inside the room when Master doubled over with a fierce jerk and threw up. The foaming vomit splattered on the floor. Sour smells filled the room. Master sat down on the bed. Ugwu brought a rag and some water and, while he cleaned, he listened to Master’s uneven breathing.
“Don’t tell any of this to your madam,” Master said.
“Yes, sah.”
Eberechi visited often, and her smile, a brush of her hand, or her pinching his neck became exquisite joys. The afternoon he first kissed her, Baby was asleep. They were inside, sitting on the bench and playing Biafran whot and she had just said “Check up!” and placed down her last card when he leaned closer and tasted the tart dirt behind her ear. Then he kissed her neck, her jaw, her lips; under the pressure of his tongue, she opened her mouth and the gushing warmth of it overwhelmed him. His hand moved to her chest and enclosed her small breast. She pushed it away. He lowered it to her belly and kissed her mouth again before quickly slipping his hand under her skirt.
“Just let me see,” he said, before she could stop him. “Just see.”
She stood up. She did not hold him back as he raised her skirt and pulled down the cotton underwear with a small tear at the waistband and looked at the large rounded lobes of her buttocks. He pulled the underwear back up and let go of her skirt. He loved her. He wanted to tell her that he loved her.
“I am going,” she said, and straightened her blouse.
“What of your friend the army officer?”
“He is in another sector.”
“What did you do with him?”
She rubbed the back of her hand against her lips as if to wipe something off.
“Did you do anything with him?” Ugwu asked.
She walked to the door, still silent.
“You like him,” Ugwu said, feeling desperate now.
“I like you more.”
It didn’t matter that she was still seeing the officer. What mattered was the more, whom she preferred. He pulled her to him but she moved away.
“You will kill me,” she said, and laughed. “Let me go.”
“I’ll escort you halfway,” he said.
“No need. Baby will be alone.”
“I’ll be back before she wakes up.”
He wanted to hold her hand; instead, he walked so close to her that, once in a while, their bodies brushed against each other. He didn’t go far before turning back. He was a short pathway away from home when he saw two soldiers standing next to a van and holding guns.
“You! Stop there!” one of them called.
Ugwu began to run until he heard the gunshot, so deafening, so alarmingly close that he fell to the ground and waited for the pain to drill into his body, certain he had been hit. But there was no pain. When the soldier ran up to him, the first thing Ugwu saw was the pair of canvas shoes, before he looked up at the wiry body and scowling face. A rosary hung around his neck. The burnt smell of gunpowder came from his gun.
“Come on, stand up, you bloody civilian! Join them there!”
Ugwu stood up and the soldier slapped the back of his head and a splintering light spread to his eyes; he dug his feet into the loose sand to steady himself for a moment before he walked over to join the two men standing with their arms raised high. One was elderly, at least sixty-five, while the other was a teenager of perhaps fifteen. Ugwu mumbled a “good afternoon” to the elderly man and stood next to him, arms raised.
“Enter the van,” the second soldier said. His thick beard covered most of his cheeks.
“If it has come to this, that you are conscripting somebody my age, then Biafra has died,” the elderly man said quietly.
The second soldier was watching him.
The first soldier sh
outed, “Shut up your stinking mouth, agadi!” and slapped the elderly man.
“Stop that!” the second soldier said. He turned to the elderly man. “Papa, go.”
“Eh?” The elderly man looked uncertain.
“Go, gawa.”
The elderly man began to walk away, at first slowly and uncertainly, his hand rubbing the cheek where he had been slapped; then he broke into an unsteady run. Ugwu watched him disappear down the road and wished he could leap across and clutch his hand and be propelled along to freedom.
“Get into the van!” the first soldier said. It was as if the elderly man’s leaving had angered him and that he held not the second soldier but the new conscripts responsible. He shoved the teenager and Ugwu. The teenager fell and quickly scrambled to his feet before they climbed into the back of the van. There were no seats; old raffia bags and rawhide canes and empty bottles lay scattered on the rusting floor. Ugwu was startled to see a boy sitting there, humming a song and drinking from an old beer bottle. Ugwu smelled the harshness of local gin as he lowered himself next to the boy and thought that perhaps he was a stunted man and not a boy.
“I am High-Tech,” he said, and the scent of local gin became stronger.
“I am Ugwu.” Ugwu glanced at his oversize shirt, tattered shorts, boots, and beret. He was indeed a boy. No more than thirteen. But the dry cynicism in his eyes made him seem much older than the teenager crumpled down opposite them.
“Gi kwanu? What is your own name?” High-Tech asked the teenager.
The teenager was sobbing. He looked familiar; perhaps he was one of the neighborhood boys who had fetched water at the borehole before dawn. Ugwu felt sorry for him and yet angry, too, because the teenager’s crying made the hopelessness of their situation stark and final. They really had been conscripted. They really would be sent to the war front with no training.
“Aren’t you a man?” High-Tech asked the teenager. “I bu nwanyi? Why are you behaving like a woman?”
The teenager had his hand pressed against his eyes as he cried. High-Tech’s sneer turned into mocking laughter. “This one doesn’t want to fight for our cause!”
Half of a Yellow Sun Page 41