"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 boards 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.
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 farmwork. 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 naively 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?"
Half of a Yellow Sun Page 21