As I drove down the very same incline on which Edna and I had so dramatically come to grief over a black sheep and its lambs only a few weeks earlier, I could not help thinking also of the quick transformations that were such a feature of our country, and in particular of the changes of attitude in my own self. I had gone to the University with the clear intention of coming out again after three years as a full member of the privileged class whose symbol was the car. So much did I think of it in fact that, as early as my second year, I had gone and taken out a driver’s licence and even made a mental note of the make of car I would buy. (It had a gadget which turned the seats into a bed in a matter of seconds.) But in my final year I had passed through what I might call a period of intellectual crisis brought on partly by my radical Irish lecturer in history and partly by someone who five years earlier had been by all accounts a fire-eating president of our Students’ Union. He was now an ice-cream-eating Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Labour and Production and had not only become one of the wealthiest and most corrupt landlords in Bori but was reported in the Press as saying that trade-union leaders should be put in detention. He became for us a classic example of the corroding effect of privilege. We burnt his effigy on the floor of the Union Building from which he had made fine speeches against the Government, and were fined by the University authorities for blacking the ceiling. Many of us vowed then never to be corrupted by bourgeois privileges of which the car was the most visible symbol in our country. And now here was I in this marvellous little affair eating the hills like yam—as Edna would have said. I hoped I was safe; for a man who avoids danger for years and then gets killed in the end has wasted his care.
As soon as I got home, my boy Peter handed me a blue envelope. The writing was beautifully rounded; without doubt a woman’s hand. It wasn’t Joy’s (Joy was a casual friend teaching in a near-by school); I hoped with a pounding heart that it was from Edna. But it couldn’t be, she would have said something about it when I saw her an hour or so ago.
“A boy brought it on a bicycle. Soon after you left in the morning,” said Peter.
“All right,” I said. “Go away.”
I tried to open it fast and then held back for fear of what it might contain. Also I didn’t want to destroy the beautiful envelope. It was Edna! Why hadn’t she mentioned it?
Dear Odili,
Your missive of 10th instant was received and its contents well noted. I cannot adequately express my deep sense of gratitude for your brotherly pieces of advice. It is just a pity that you did not meet me in the house when you came last time. My brother has narrated to me how my father addressed you badly and disgraced you. I am really sorry about the whole episode and I feel like going on a bended knee to beg forgiveness. I know that you are so noble and kind-hearted to forgive me before even I ask [smiles!].
I have noted carefully all what you said about my marriage. Really, you should pity poor me, Odili. I am in a jam about the whole thing. If I develop cold feet now my father will almost kill me. Where is he going to find all the money the man has paid on my head? So it is not so much that I want to be called a minister’s wife but a matter of can’t help. What cannot be avoided must be borne.
What I pray for is happiness. If God says that I will be happy in any man’s house I will be happy.
I hope we will always be friends. For yesterday is but a dream and tomorrow is only a vision but today’s friendship makes every yesterday a dream of happiness and every tomorrow a vision of hope.
Good-bye and sweet dreams.
Yours v. truly,
Edna Odo
P.S. My brother told me you have bought a new car. Congrats and more grease to your elbows. I hope you will carry me in it one day in remembrance of the bicycle accident [smiles!].
Edna.
It was dated yesterday. She must have been expecting me to mention it, or perhaps she was too concerned about my safety.
I read it again standing up, then sitting down and finally lying on the bed, flat on my back. Some of it was Edna and some (like the bit about visions of tomorrow) clearly was not; it must have come straight from one of these so-called “Letter Writers”. I remember one—The Complete Loveletter Writer—which was very popular with us in my school days. It was written, printed and published by an adventurous trader in Kataki and claimed on its front cover to have sold 500,000 copies, which I believe was merely a way of saying that it had sold a few hundred copies or hoped to do so. I know some foreigners think we are funny with figures. One day when I was still at the University, an old District Officer with whom my father had worked long ago came to our house; he had just come back to our area as adviser on co-operatives after years of retirement and was paying a call on his old interpreter. As they talked in the parlour my younger half-brothers and sisters kept up an endless procession in front of the strange visitor until he was constrained to ask my father how many children he had.
“About fifteen,” said my father.
“About? Surely you must know.”
My father grinned and talked about other things. Of course he knew how many children he had but people don’t go counting their children as they do animals or yams. And the same I fear goes for our country’s population.
But to return to Edna’s letter. Having mentally removed those parts of it which were not her sweet spontaneous self I began to analyse the rest word by word to try and discover how I stood in her estimation. First of all “Dear Odili” was somewhat disappointing; I had written “My dearest Edna” in my own letter and if interest was mutual the correct way would be for the woman to reply in the same degree of fondness or perhaps one grade lower—which in this case would be “My dear Odili”. Anyway there were small compensations dotted here and there in the main body of the letter and I was prepared to place considerable weight on “sweet dreams”. Altogether I felt a little encouraged to launch my offensive against Chief Nanga.
As soon as I returned to my own village I set about organizing my bodyguard. There were four of them, and their leader was a tough called Boniface who had arrived in our village a few years before from no one knew where. He didn’t even speak our language at the time. He does now, but still prefers pidgin. I don’t know whether it is true that he had a single bone in his forearm instead of the normal two but that was the story. He sometimes behaved like a crazy man which he himself admitted openly, saying it had arisen from a boyhood accident in which he fell down a mango tree and landed on his head. I paid him ten pounds a month and gave him food, which was quite generous; his three assistants earned much less. Wherever I went in my campaigning, Boniface sat with me in front and the other three at the back of the car. As our journeys became more and more hazardous I agreed to our carrying the minimum of weapons strictly for defence. We had five matchets, a few empty bottles and stones in the boot. Later we were compelled to add two double-barrelled guns. I only agreed to this most reluctantly after many acts of violence were staged against us, like the unprovoked attack by some hoodlums and thugs calling themselves Nanga’s Youth Vanguard or Nangavanga, for short. New branches of this Nangavanga were springing up every day throughout the district. Their declared aim was to “annihilate all enemies of progress” and “to project true Nangaism”. The fellows we ran into carried placards, one of which read: NANGAISM FOREVER: SAMALU IS TREITOR. It was the first time I had seen myself on a placard and I felt oddly elated. It was also amusing, really, how the cowards slunk away from the roadblocks they had put up when Boniface reached out and grabbed two of their leaders, brought their heads together like dumb-bells and left them to fall to either side of him. You should have seen them fall like cut banana trunks. It was then I acquired my first trophy—the placard with my name on it. But I lost my windscreen which they smashed with stones. It was funny but from then on I began to look out for unfriendly placards carrying my name and to feel somewhat disappointed if I didn’t see them or saw too few.
; • • •
One early morning Boniface and one of the other stalwarts woke me up and demanded twenty-five pounds. I knew that a certain amount of exploitation was inevitable in this business and I wasn’t going to question how every penny was spent. But at the same time I didn’t see how I could abdicate my responsibility for C.P.C. funds entrusted to me. I had to satisfy my conscience that I was exercising adequate control.
“I gave you ten pounds only yesterday,” I said and was about to add that unlike our opponents we had very limited funds—a point which I had already made many times. But Boniface interrupted me.
“Are you there?” he said. “If na play we de play make you tell us because me I no wan waste my time for nothing sake. Or you think say na so so talk talk you go take win Chief Nanga. If Government no give you plenty money for election make you go tell them no be sand sand we de take do am. . . .”
“Man no fit fight tiger with empty hand,” added his companion before I could put in a word to correct Boniface’s fantastic misconception.
“No be Government de give us money,” I said. “We na small party, C.P.C. We wan help poor people like you. How Government go give us money . . . ?”
“But na who de give the er weting call . . . P.C.P. money?” asked Boniface puzzled.
“Some friends abroad,” I said with a knowing air to cover my own ignorance which I had forgotten to worry about in the heat of activity.
“You no fit send your friends telegram?” asked Boniface’s companion.
“Let’s not go into that now. What do you need twenty-five pounds for? And what have you done with the ten pounds?” I felt I had to sound firm. It worked.
“We give three pound ten to that policeman so that he go spoil the paper for our case. Then we give one-ten to Court Clerk because they say as the matter done reach him eye the policeman no kuku spoil am just like that. Then we give another two pound . . .”
“All right,” I said. “What do you want the twenty-five pounds for?”
“They no tell you say Chief Nanga done return back from Bori yesterday?”
“So you wan give am money too?” I asked.
“This no be matter for joke; we wan the money to pay certain porsons wey go go him house for night and burn him car.”
“What! No, we don’t need to do that.” There was a minute’s silence.
“Look my frien’ I done tell you say if you no wan serious for this business make you go rest for house. I done see say you want play too much gentleman for this matter . . . Dem tell you say na gentlemanity de give other people minister . . . ? Anyway wetin be my concern there? Na you sabi.”
• • •
My father’s attitude to my political activity intrigued me a lot. He was, as I think I have already indicated, the local chairman of P.O.P. in our village, Urua, and so I expected that his house would not contain both of us. But I was quite wrong. He took the view (without expressing it in so many words) that the mainspring of political action was personal gain, a view which, I might say, was much more in line with the general feeling in the country than the high-minded thinking of fellows like Max and I. The only comment I remember my father making (at the beginning anyway) was when he asked if my “new” party was ready to give me enough money to fight Nanga. He sounded a little doubtful. But he was clearly satisfied with what I had got out of it so far, especially the car which he was now using nearly as much as myself. The normal hostility between us was put away in a corner, out of sight. But very soon all that was to change, and then change again.
We were sitting in his outbuilding one day about noon reading yesterday’s newspapers which I had just bought from the local newsagent and hairdresser, Jolly Barber, when I saw Chief Nanga’s Cadillac approaching. I thought of going into the main house but decided against it. After all, he was walking into my own lair and if anyone was to feel flustered it shouldn’t be me but the intruder. I told my father who was peering helplessly at the car that it was Chief Nanga and he immediately reached for a singlet to cover the upper part of his body, re-tied his enormous lappa nervously and went to the doorstep to receive the visitor wearing a flabby, ingratiating smile—the type our people describe so aptly as putrid. I sat where I was, pretending to read.
“Hello! Odili, my great enemy,” greeted Chief Nanga in the most daring assault of counterfeit affability I had ever seen or thought possible.
“Hello,” I said as flat as the floor.
“Did you see Chief the Honourable Minister yesterday?” asked my father severely.
“Let him be, sir,” said Chief Nanga. “He and I like to say harsh things to each other in jest. Those who don’t know us may think we are about to cut off one another’s heads . . .”
I settled farther back in my cane chair and raised the newspaper higher. He tried a few more times to draw me out but I stoutly refused to open my mouth, even when my father foolishly shouted at me and drew near as though to strike me. Fortunately for both of us he didn’t do it; for me it would have spelled immediate disaster; a man who hit his father wouldn’t have had much of a hearing thereafter in my constituency. It was interesting to me—thinking about it later—how Chief Nanga who had been so loudly interceding for me (or appearing to do so) suddenly withdrew into expectant silence, praying no doubt that my father’s rage would push him over the brink. When he realized that his prayer would not be answered after all he said, without the slightest hint of falseness, “Don’t worry about Odili, sir. If a young man does not behave like a young man who is going to?”
“He should wait till he builds his own house then he may put his head into a pot there—not here in my house. If he has no respect for me why should he carry his foolishness to such an important guest . . . ?”
“Never mind, sir. I am no guest here. I regard here as my house and yourself as my political father. Whatever we achieve over there in Bori is because we have the backing of people like you at home. All these young boys who are saying all kinds of rubbish against me, what do they know? They hear that Chief Nanga has eaten ten per cent commission and they begin to break their heads and holler up and down. They don’t know that all the commissions are paid into party funds. . . .”
I had lowered my newspaper to half-mast, so to speak.
“That’s right,” said my father knowingly, but I could tell by watching his face that his final state of knowledge was achieved through an effort of will. At first he had seemed puzzled by Nanga’s explanation and then I suppose he felt that as a local chairman of P.O.P. he could not admit to ignorance of its affairs so he immediately knew. As in breaking the law, what one knows and what one ought to know come to the same thing.
“I suppose your new four-storeyed building is going to be the party headquarters,” I asked, putting down the newspaper altogether.
“Chief the Honourable Minister was not talking to you,” said my father lamely.
“Naturally he wouldn’t because he knows I know what he knows . . . The buses, for instance, we all know are for carrying the party, and the import duty . . .”
“Shut up!” shouted my father.
“Leave him alone, sir. When he finishes advertising his ignorance I will educate him.”
I wanted to say he should go and educate his mother but decided against it.
“Have you finished, Mr Nationalist? He that knows not and knows not that he knows not is a fool.”
“Don’t mind him, Chief. He is my son but I can tell you that if I had another like him I would have died long ago. Let us go into the house.” My father led the way to the dark parlour of the main house—a stone and cement building which was once the best and most modern house in Urua. But today nobody remembers it when buildings are talked about. It has become old-fashioned with its high, steep roof into which had gone enough corrugated iron sheets for at least two other houses. Some day someone will have to replace the wooden jalousie of its narr
ow windows with glass panes so as to let in more light into the rooms. And most likely the someone will be me.
I stayed on in the outbuilding exulting in my successful onslaught which had driven my father and his important guest from this airy comfortable day-room into the dark stone house.
About half an hour later my father came to the front door of the main house and called my name. “Sir!” I answered full of respect but without getting up or stirring in any way.
“Come in here,” he said. I took my time to get up and walk over. A bottle of whisky and another of soda stood on a tray on the small round table in the middle of the room. Chief Nanga’s glass was half full; my father’s empty, as usual.
“Sit down,” he said to me; “we don’t eat people.” The joviality in his tone and manner put me on guard right away.
I sat down ostentatiously ignoring to look in Nanga’s direction. My father didn’t waste his words.
“When a mad man walks naked it is his kinsmen who feel shame not himself. So I have been begging Chief Nanga for forgiveness, on your behalf. How could you go to his house asking for his help and eating his food and then spitting in his face? . . . Let me finish. You did not tell me any of these things—that you abused him in public and left his house to plot his downfall. . . . I said let me finish! It does not surprise me that you slunk back and said nothing about it to me. Not that you ever say anything to me. Why should you? Do I know book? Am I not of the Old Testament? . . . Let me finish. In spite of your behaviour Chief Nanga has continued to struggle for you and has now brought you the scholarship to your house. His kindness surprises me; I couldn’t do it myself. On top of that he has brought you two hundred and fifty pounds if you will sign this paper. . . .” He held up a piece of paper.
A Man of the People Page 12