"What book was it?"
"The autobiography of a black American called Frederick Douglass."
Mister Richard wrote something down. "I shall use this anecdote in my book."
"You are writing a book."
"Yes."
"What is it about, sah?"
"The war, and what happened before, and how much should not have happened. It will be called The World Was Silent When We Died. '"
Later, Ugwu murmured the title to himself: The World Was Silent When We Died. It haunted him, filled him with shame. It made him think about that girl in the bar, her pinched face and the hate in her eyes as she lay on her back on the dirty floor.
Master and Olanna wrapped their arms around Ugwu, but lightly, without pressure, so as not to cause him pain. He felt acutely uncomfortable; they had never hugged him before.
"Ugwu," Master said, shaking his head. "Ugwu."
Baby clung to his hand and refused to let go and Ugwu's whole life suddenly gathered in a lump in his throat, and he was sobbing and the tears hurt his eyes. He was angry with himself for crying, and later, as he recounted the story of what had happened to him, he spoke in a detached voice. He lied about how he had been conscripted; he said Pastor Ambrose had pleaded with him to help carry his sick sister to the herbalist's and he was on his way back when the soldiers caught him. He used words like enemy fire and Attack HQ with a casual coldness, as if to make up for his crying.
"And they told us you were dead," Olanna said, watching him. "Maybe Okeoma is alive too."
Ugwu stared at her.
"They said he was killed in action," Olanna said. "And I got word that kwashiorkor has finally taken Adanna. Baby doesn't know, of course."
Ugwu looked away. Her news provoked him. He felt angry with her for telling him what he did not want to hear.
"Too many people are dying," he said.
"It is what happens in war, too many people die," Olanna said. "But we will win this thing. Is your pillow in a good position?"
"Yes, mah."
He could not sit on one part of his buttocks and so, during the first few weeks in Orlu, he lay on his side. Olanna was always beside him, forcing him to eat and willing him to live. His mind wandered often. He did not need the echo of pain on his side and in his buttocks and on his back to remember his ogbunigwe exploding, or High-Tech's laughter, or the dead hate in the eyes of the girl. He could not remember her features, but the look in her eyes stayed with him, as did the tense dryness between her legs, the way he had done what he had not wanted to do. In that gray space between dreaming and daydreaming, where he controlled most of what he imagined, he saw the bar, smelled the alcohol, and heard the soldiers saying "Target Destroyer," but it was not the bar girl that lay with her back on the floor, it was Eberechi. He woke up hating the image and hating himself. He would give himself time to atone for what he had done. Then he would go and look for Eberechi. Perhaps she and her family had gone to their village in Mbaise or perhaps they were here in Orlu somewhere. She would wait for him; she would know he would come for her. That Eberechi would wait for him, that her waiting for him was proof of his redemption, gave him comfort as he healed. It surprised him that it was possible for his body to return to what it had been and for his mind to function with permanent lucidity.
During the day he helped out at the refugee camp, and in the evenings he wrote. He sat under the flame tree and wrote in small careful letters on the sides of old newspapers, on some paper Kainene had done supply calculations on, on the back of an old calendar. He wrote a poem about people getting a buttocks rash after defecating in imported buckets, but it did not sound as lyrical as Okeoma's and he tore it up; then he wrote about a young woman with a perfect backside who pinched the neck of a young man and tore that up too.
Finally, he started to write about Aunty Arize's anonymous death in Kano and about Olanna losing the use of her legs, about Okeoma's smart-fitting army uniform and Professor Ekwenugo's bandaged hands. He wrote about the children of the refugee camp, how diligently they chased after lizards, how four boys had chased a quick lizard up a mango tree and one of them climbed up after it and the lizard leaped off the tree and into the outstretched hand of one of the other three surrounding the tree.
"The lizards have become smarter. They run faster now and hide under blocks of cement," the boy who had climbed told Ugwu. They roasted and shared the lizard, shooing other children away. Later, the boy offered Ugwu a tiny bit of his stringy share. Ugwu thanked him and shook his head and realized that he would never be able to capture that child on paper, never be able to describe well enough the fear that dulled the eyes of mothers in the refugee camp when the bomber planes charged out of the sky. He would never be able to depict the very bleakness of bombing hungry people. But he tried, and the more he wrote the less he dreamed.
Olanna was teaching some children to recite the multiplication tables the morning that Kainene rushed up to the flame tree.
"Can you believe who is responsible for that small girl Urenwa's pregnancy?" Kainene asked, and Ugwu almost did not recognize her. Her eyes bulged out of her angular face, filled with rage and tears. "Can you believe it is Father Marcel?"
Olanna stood up. "Gini? What are you saying?"
"Apparently I've been blind; she's not the only one," Kainene said. "He fucks most of them before he gives them the crayfish that I slave to get here!"
Later, Ugwu watched Kainene push at Father Marcel's chest with both hands, shouting into his face, shoving him so hard that Ugwu feared the man would fall. "Amosu! You devil!" Then she turned to Father Jude. "How could you stay here and let him spread the legs of starving girls? How will you account for this to your God? You both are leaving now, right now. I will take this to Ojukwu myself if I have to!"
There were tears running down her face. There was something magnificent in her rage. Ugwu felt stained and unworthy as he went about his new duties after the priests left-distributing garri, breaking up fights, supervising the scorched and failing farms. He wondered what Kainene would say, what she would do to him, feel about him, if she ever knew about the girl in the bar. She would loathe him. So would Olanna. So would Eberechi.
He listened to the conversations in the evenings, writing in his mind what he would later transfer to paper. It was mostly Kainene and Olanna who talked, as though they created their own world that Master and Mr. Richard could never quite enter. Sometimes Harrison would come and sit with Ugwu but say very little, as though he was both puzzled by and respectful of him. Ugwu was no longer just Ugwu, he was now one of "our boys"; he had fought for the cause. The moon was always a brilliant white, and once in a while the night wind brought the hooting of owls and the rise and fall of voices from the refugee camp. Baby slept on a mat with Olanna's wrapper over her to keep the mosquitoes away. Whenever they heard the far-off drone of the relief planes, nothing like the low-flying swiftness of the bombers, Kainene would say, "I hope that one will manage to land." And Olanna would respond with a light laugh. "We have to cook our next soup with stockfish."
When they listened to Radio Biafra, Ugwu would get up and walk away. The shabby theatrics of the war reports, the voice that forced morsels of invented hope down people's throats, did not interest him. One afternoon, Harrison came up to the flame tree carrying the radio turned up high to Radio Biafra.
"Please turn that thing off," Ugwu said. He was watching some little boys playing on the nearby patch of grass. "I want to hear the birds."
"There are no birds singing," Harrison said.
"Turn it off."
"His Excellency is about to give a speech."
"Turn it off or carry it away."
"You don't want to hear His Excellency?"
"Mba, No."
Harrison was watching him. "It will be a great speech."
"There is no such thing as greatness," Ugwu said.
Harrison walked away looking wounded and Ugwu did not bother to call him; he went back to watching the children. They
ran sluggishly on the parched grass, holding sticks as guns, making shooting sounds with their mouths, raising clouds of dust as they chased one another. Even the dust seemed listless. They were playing War. Four boys. Yesterday, they had been five. Ugwu did not remember the fifth child's name-was it Chidiebele or Chidiebube? — but he remembered how the child's belly had lately started to look as if he had swallowed a fat ball, how his hair had fallen off in tufts, how his skin had lightened, from the color of mahogany to a sickly yellow. The other children had teased him often. Afo mrnili ukwa, they called him: Breadfruit Belly. Once, Ugwu wanted to ask them to stop, so he could explain what kwashiorkor was-perhaps he could read out to them how he described kwashiorkor on his writing sheet. But he decided not to. There was no need to prepare them for what he was sure they would all get anyway. Ugwu did not remember the child's ever playing a Biafran officer, like His Excellency or Achuzie; he always played a Nigerian, either Gowon or Adekunle, which meant he was always defeated and had to fall down at the end and act dead. Sometimes, Ugwu wondered if the child had liked it because it gave him a chance to rest, lying down on the grass.
The child and his family had come from Oguta, one of those families who did not believe their town would fall, and so his mother looked defiant when they first arrived, as if she dared anybody to tell her she was not dreaming and would not be waking up soon. The evening they arrived, the sound of the antiaircraft guns cut through the refugee camp just before dusk. The mother ran out and held him, her only child, in a confused hug. The other women shook her roughly, as the wa-wa-wa roar of the overhead planes came closer. Come to the bunker! Are you mad? Come to the bunker!
The woman refused and stood there holding her son, shaking. Ugwu still did not know why he had done what he did. Perhaps it was because Olanna had already grabbed Baby and run ahead of him and his hands were free. But he reached out and pulled the child from the woman's embrace and ran. The child was still heavy then, still weighed something; his mother had no choice but to follow. The planes were strafing and, just before Ugwu shoved the child down the bunker, a bullet flew closely past; he smelled rather than saw it, the acridness of hot metal.
It was in the bunker, while playing with the damp soil that crawled with crickets and ants, that the child had told Ugwu his name. Chidiebele or Chidiebube, he was not sure. But it was Chidi-something. Perhaps Chidiebele, the more common name. The name almost sounded like a joke now. Chidiebele: God is merciful.
Later, the four boys had stopped playing War and had gone inside when Ugwu heard the thin, strangled wail from the classroom at the end of the building. He knew that that child's aunt would come out soon and bravely tell the people nearby, that the mother would throw herself in the dirt and roll and shout until she lost her voice, and then she would take a razor and leave her scalp bare and bleeding.
He put on his singlet and went out to offer to help dig the small grave.
33
Richard sat next to Kainene and rubbed her shoulder as she laughed at something Olanna was saying. He loved the way her neck looked longer when she threw back her head and laughed. He loved the evenings spent with her and Olanna and Odenigbo; they reminded him of Odenigbo's dimly lit living room in Nsukka, of tasting beer on his pepper-drenched tongue. Kainene reached out for the enamel plate of roasted crickets, Harrison 's new specialty; he seemed to know just where to dig for them in the dry earth and how to break them up into bits after roasting, so that they lasted a bit longer. Kainene placed a piece in her mouth. Richard took two pieces and crunched slowly. It was getting dark, and the cashew trees had become silent gray silhouettes. A dust haze hung above them all.
"What do you think accounts for the success of the white man's mission in Africa, Richard?" Odenigbo asked.
"The success?" Odenigbo unnerved him, the way he would brood for long moments and then abruptly ask or say something unexpected.
"Yes, the success. I think in English," Odenigbo said.
"Perhaps you should first account for the failure of the black man to curb the white man's mission," Kainene said.
"Who brought racism into the world?" Odenigbo asked.
"I don't see your point," Kainene said.
"The white man brought racism into the world. He used it as a basis of conquest. It is always easier to conquer a more humane people."
"So when we conquer the Nigerians we will be the less humane?" Kainene asked.
Odenigbo said nothing. Something rustled near the cashew trees, and Harrison leaped up and ran over to see if it was a bush rat he could catch.
"Inatimi has given me some Nigerian coins," Kainene said finally. "You know these Biafran Organization of Freedom Fighters people have quite a bit of Nigerian money. I want to go to Ninth Mile and see what I can buy, and if that goes well, I will sell some of the things our people at the camp have made."
"That's trading with the enemy," Odenigbo said.
"It's trading with illiterate Nigerian women who have what we need."
"It's dangerous, Kainene," Odenigbo said; the softness in his voice surprised Richard.
"That sector is free," Olanna said. "Our people are trading freely there."
"Are you going too?" Surprise lifted Odenigbo's voice as he stared at Olanna.
"No. At least not tomorrow. Maybe the next time Kainene goes."
"Tomorrow?" It was Richard's turn to be surprised. Kainene had mentioned it once, wanting to trade across enemy lines, but he did not know she had already decided when to go.
"Yes, Kainene is going tomorrow," Olanna said.
"Yes," Kainene said. "But don't mind Olanna, she will never come with me. She's always been terribly frightened of honest free enterprise." Kainene laughed and Olanna laughed and slapped her arm; Richard saw the similarity in the curve of their lips, in the shape of their slightly larger front teeth.
"Hasn't Ninth Mile Road been occupied on and off?" Odenigbo asked. "I don't think you should go."
"It's all decided. I leave with Inatimi early tomorrow morning, and we'll be back by evening," Kainene said, with that finality to her tone that Richard knew well. He was not opposed to the trip, though; he knew many people who did what she wanted to do.
That night, he dreamed that she came back with a basket full of chicken boiled in herbs, spicy jollof rice, soup thick with fish, and he felt irritable when he was jerked awake by raised voices just outside their window. He was reluctant to leave the dream. Kainene had woken up too and they hurried outside, Kainene with a wrapper tied around her chest and he in his shorts. It was only just dawn. The light was weak. A small crowd from the refugee camp was beating and kicking a young man crouched on the ground, his hands placed on his head to shield some of the blows. His trousers were splattered with holes and his collar was almost ripped off but the half of a yellow sun still clung to his torn sleeve.
"What is it?" Kainene asked. "What is it?"
Before anyone spoke, Richard knew. The soldier had been stealing from the farm. It happened everywhere now, farms raided at night, raided of corn so tender they had not yet formed kernels and yams so young they were barely the size of a cocoyam.
"Do you see why anything we plant will not bear fruit?" said a woman whose child had died the week before. Her wrapper was tied low, exposing the tops of drooping breasts. "People like this thief come and harvest everything so that we will starve to death."
"Stop it!" Kainene said. "Stop it right now! Leave him alone!"
"You are telling us to leave a thief? If we leave him today, tomorrow ten of them will come."
"He is not a thief," Kainene said. "Did you hear me? He is not a thief. He is a hungry soldier."
The crowd stilled at the quiet authority in her voice. Slowly, they shuffled away, back to the classrooms. The soldier got up and dusted himself off.
"Have you come from the front?" Kainene asked.
He nodded. He looked about eighteen. There were two angry bumps on either side of his forehead and blood trailed from his nostrils.
He did not respond.
"Come. Come and take some garri before you go," Kainene said.
Tears crawled down from his swollen left eye and he placed a palm on it as he followed her. He did not speak except to mumble "Dalu- thank you" before he left, clutching the small bag of garri. Kainene was silent as she got dressed to go down and meet Inatimi at the camp.
"You'll leave early won't you, Richard?" she asked. "Those Big Men may be in the office for just thirty minutes today."
"I'll leave in an hour." He was going to Ahiara to try and get some provisions from relief headquarters.
"Tell them I'm dying and we desperately need milk and corned beef to keep me alive," she said. There was a new bitter undertone in her voice.
"I will," he said. "And go well. Ije oma. Come back with lots of garri and salt."
They kissed, a brief press of their lips before she left. He knew that seeing that pathetic young soldier had upset her, and he knew, too, that she was thinking that the young soldier was not the reason the crops failed. They failed because the land was poor and the harmattan was harsh and there was no manure and there was nothing to plant, and when she managed to get some seed yams, the people ate half before they planted them. He wished he could reach out and twist the sky and bring victory to Biafra right away. For her.
She was not back when he returned from Ahiara in the evening. The living room smelled of bleached palm oil that came from the kitchen and Baby was lying on a mat, looking through the pages of Eze Goes to School.
"Carry me on your shoulders, Uncle Richard," Baby said, running to him. Richard pretended to try and pick her up and then collapsed on a chair.
"You're a big girl now, Baby. You're too heavy to be picked up."
"No!"
Olanna was standing by the kitchen, watching them. "You know, Baby has grown wiser but she hasn't grown taller since the war started."
Richard smiled. "Better wisdom than height," he said, and she smiled too. He realized how little they said to each other, how carefully they avoided being alone together.
Half of a Yellow Sun Page 45