People of the City

by Cyprian Ekwensi

  ‘But I’m tired of him and want to leave. But should I agree to what Lajide suggests? I do not like him very much.’

  Sango thought it over. His mind was confused. Her total trust in him had diverted his original desire for her. He could think of her now only as a sister. He forgot that he ever wanted her.

  What he was too blind to see was that Beatrice had fallen in love with him. He talked to her about sticking to Grunnings and she looked only into his eyes and held his hand with tenderness.

  Then he realized that she was not listening and had started dozing in the soft sea breeze.

  •

  Day by day thousands of copies of the West African Sensation rolled off the huge presses, were quickly bundled into waiting green vans that immediately struck out north, east, west, covering the entire country from the central point of the city. In the last few months of his present tour, McMaster’s policy of giving local writers free rein was beginning to pay off. The West African Sensation was becoming a part of life, something eagerly awaited for its stories of politics, crime, sport, and entertainment.

  For Sango, life had settled down to a routine and he seemed to be looking for some excitement to brighten up his page. Sometimes he had to remind himself that however exciting crime was, it brought tragedy to someone. But it was his function to report it, and to him it had become something clinical, with neither blood nor sentiment attached.

  Unexpectedly, his chance came one afternoon with a strange phone call; and it very nearly altered his whole life. The caller had said that a body had been found floating on the lagoon. McMaster had instantly detailed Sango to cover the assignment.

  Sango found on his arrival at the beach that a huge crowd had gathered in the manner of the people of the city. The police vans blared at them through loudspeakers, urging them to keep clear and to touch nothing. The shops and offices had emptied and there were clerks with pencils stuck to their ears, fashionable girls with baskets of shopping slung over their arms, ice-cream hawkers pedalling bicycles, motorists tooting their horns. The coconut palms waved their lazy fronds over the body draped in white and lying on the sands.

  Sango went over and took a bold look at the face. It was the body of a man in the prime of life, and, as it turned out later, he had taken his own life. His name, Sango discovered, was Buraimoh Ajikatu. He had been missing from home for about three days. He was a clerk in a big department store and he was married, with four children.

  They said he had been finding it increasingly difficult to support his family. To him the city had been an enemy that raised the prices of its commodities without increasing his pay; or even when the pay was increased, the increased prices immediately made things worse than before.

  Buraimoh’s plight was not alleviated by a nagging wife. He complained aloud and a friend at the office who worked no harder but always enjoyed the good things of life, said: ‘Have you not heard of the Ufemfe society?’

  He had not heard and the friend told him about Lugard Square at midnight. There was to be a meeting. He went, and was enrolled. They promised him all he wanted. And strangely enough, life became bearable. He could not understand why his salary was increased, or why he was promoted to stores assistant, but it was not in his place to question. There was even a promise of becoming branch manager within one month. Why had it not happened all the time he was not an Ufemfe member? That too he could not answer. But he had been initiated and he now knew the secret sign of Ufemfe; this revealed to him that he had been the only non-member in the department store.

  One night the blow fell. This was the unexplained portion of the pact. They asked him in a matter-of-fact manner to give them his first-born son. He protested, asked for an alternative sacrifice, and when they would not listen threatened to leave the society. But they told him that he could not leave. There was a way in, but none out – except through death. He was terrified, but adamant.

  He had told no one of his plight, and that was when he vanished from home. Now that the good things of life were his, he would not go back and tell his wife. All this Sango learnt, and much more besides. For him it had great significance. By uncovering this veil, he had discovered where all the depressed people of the city went for sustenance. They literally sold their souls to the devil.

  Even so, when things became much too unbearable for him, Sango often thought it would not be the worst thing in life to join the Ufemfe. And he would remember that swollen body with its protruding tongue and bulging eyes, a body that had been rescued from the devil’s hands and given a decent Christian burial. And yet the tragedy remained.

  8

  Sango had heard of the coal crisis which broke out in the Eastern Greens, of the twenty-one miners who had been shot down by policemen under orders from ‘the imperialists’. To him it had a faint echo of something happening in a distant land.

  He was somewhat taken aback when McMaster called him into the office and told him that a passage had been booked for him to travel to the Eastern Greens and bring back reports.

  Sango was not happy to leave the city where he was still unsettled, sharing a room with First Trumpet, having his meals outside. But worse still he was afraid he might see his mother and find her worse than ever. He had just sent her twelve pounds – all the money he had kept to deposit as advance payment for a room.

  The plane was taking him towards the Eastern Greens, nearer the source of his poverty, of his ambition to seek his fortune as a journalist and musician west of the Great River. Until he landed and visited the mines and saw the scene of desolation he could think of nothing else but his mother in hospital, and the girl Elina in the convent. He would try, if possible, to visit the two of them. It did not seem possible to visit the two places in the little time that would be available.

  He saw the Great River below, broad and brownish with here and there a canoeman – a mere dot many thousands of feet below. Instantly his past life seemed to flash before his eyes. He saw his own poverty and his youthful ambition and found that he must work still harder to give happiness to his dependants.

  As the plane touched down Sango saw the expectant group standing at the air terminal. One of them would be Mr Nekam, President of the Workers’ Union. Sango had not met him but had seen pictures of him in the Sensation. Indeed Nekam was there, bearded and in a bush shirt.

  ‘You’ll be staying with me,’ he said to Sango, shaking him warmly by the hand. ‘So, better you cancel your hotel booking.’

  Sango, who wanted to see both sides of the dispute, told Nekam: ‘You’ll give me a free hand, I hope; not try to influence my reports in any way.’

  They drove through unmade roads into the workers’ quarters and Sango noted immediately the atmosphere one experiences in a town under the iron boot. Policemen were everywhere. Not the friendly unarmed men he had been used to in the city, but aggressive boot-stamping men who carried short guns, rifles or tear-gas equipment. There were African police and white officers and they all had that stern killer look on their faces. The shadow of death had darkened the people’s faces as they went about their daily business, and though Sango listened hard, he could hear no laughter.

  He decided to go – not to the president’s house – but to the famous valley of death at the foot of the hills where the coal was mined. Here he saw the thorn scrub where many wounded miners had crawled in agony to die of bullet wounds. At the Dispensary many of the miners were being treated for head injuries and fractures in thigh and arm.

  Sango spoke to them and their story was full of lament. They told how an outstanding allowance, amounting to thousands of pounds, had been denied them. How frequently labour disputes arose, and how the mine boss – an overbearing white man – would not listen. The background to the shooting had been simply – strained feelings.

  Back in the home of the workers’ president, Sango found that Nekam occupied a little compound with two rooms and one kitchen, that his wife raised chickens and rented a stall in the market where she sold cigarettes,
tinned foods and cloth. The children had been sent away into the village because of the emergency.

  Sango got down immediately to work. Nekam showed him copies of telegrams from the West African Students’ Union in London, the President of the Gold Coast, the League of Coloured Peoples in New York . . . and one from a President in South America, urging Nekam to bring the matter up at the United Nations. Some of the telegrams were unrealistic but heartening.

  At a Press conference the following day, Sango discovered that this shooting had become a cementing factor for the nation. The whole country, north, east, and west of the Great River, had united and with one loud voice condemned the action of the British Government in being so trigger-happy and hasty. Rival political parties had united in the emergency and were acting for the entire nation. Sango was thrilled.

  In his report he was loud in praise of the new movement and caustic in his comment on the attitude of the British. His youthful fire knew no restraint and he wrote about the bleeding and the dying, the widowed and the homeless; the necessity to compensate these men who had sacrificed so much that the country’s trains might run, its power-houses function, and its industries flourish. No other correspondent had been so brave and forthright, and the Sensation was eagerly bought and read for ‘the real truth about the coal crisis in the Eastern Greens’.

  For Sango the great question was: why do politicians have to wait for a period of crisis before they can sink their selfish differences and unite? Why can it not always be like this, what can we do to hold this new feeling? Even as he tortured himself with these questions he knew that as soon as the crisis was over the leaders would all go their different and opposite ways, quarrelling like so many market women.

  At night he was at the airport to see the arrival of dark troop-planes from Great Britain. His report on the arrival of these reinforcements drew forth an immediate denial from the Government. The troops had nothing to do with the coal crisis, they said. And now the coal city was drained of women and children, black and white. Only the able-bodied men remained to face the terror.

  Thanks to the unity of the politicians a way out was found. In the leaders Nekam placed all his confidence. In him the workers, in their turn, believed. The result was that the politicians said to Nekam:

  ‘We must do things in a constitutional manner. It is hard, but that is the best sign of maturity. We don’t want any more demonstrations or violence. Go and get your miners back to work and leave all negotiations with the British to us. Do we represent you or do we not? That is the first question.’

  ‘You do!’ grunted Nekam.

  Nekam, who had faith in the politicians, told the workers, who surely still had faith in him. He spent all night negotiating with the gang leaders who accused him of back-pedalling. By early morning he was fagged out. He invited Sango to the railway station where the workers took their train. If they did return to work, his task had been performed. If they did not, then something else must be tried; he could not now tell what.

  They stood looking down at the valley below. The mist of morning cleared from the hills. In the east the sky reddened and the redness oozed into the valley. Sango peered, then held Nekam excitedly. Nekam followed Sango’s eyes, but said nothing. His lips were pursed. Down there, there was movement – in groups. Neither Sango nor Nekam dare say the groups were composed of miners coming to work. It was best to wait. Soon the train would come.

  The first man arrived with pick and Davy lamp, followed by others and soon the station was humming with mumbling men. They had come. He had succeeded. With hearts too full for words, Sango and Nekam boarded the train which took them down to the mines.

  Sango followed them inside, into the abyss of the earth where heat reigned supreme, and reverberations threatened the teak props. There was ever present a sense of death, danger, disaster. Yet the men who risked all worked in sweat and courage.

  Sango heard a rumbling ahead of him and went forward to investigate. The gang leader pulled him back. ‘Look out! Coal coming up!’

  Sango stepped aside, just in time. A chain of automatic wagons loaded with coal clattered by. The striking miners had produced the first fruits of their toil and of Nekam’s negotiations.

  That same afternoon, a telegram was delivered to Sango. He tore it open with blackened hands. Nekam was peering over his shoulder.

  COME BACK BY LORRY STOP YOU CAN GET FAST SERVICE FROM JIKAN TRANSPORT STOP REGARDS MCMASTER

  ‘You going back?’ Nekam said.

  ‘The job is done, isn’t it?’

  •

  Daybreak found Sango and Nekam at the lorry station. Knowing how ‘fast’ the lorry service could be from the Eastern Greens, Sango made sure that the driver of Jikan Transport would stop in the village near the convent where Elina was. It would be a good opportunity to see her.

  While the lorry was being loaded up with passengers, dried fish, yams and oil, Nekam talked of his ambitions to see the country progress as a whole till it took its place in the front rank of self-governing countries within the British Commonwealth. There was still a lot to be done, but this crisis was only the beginning of national unity.

  ‘Keep up the struggle, Sango. We workers at this end will never give up.’

  Sango had listened to this kind of serious talk once before: that bright day when he had been at an identical motor station, and his father, an old man, now no more, had come to see him off. The hairy Nekam was less gentle, more full of fire.

  The lorry horned. ‘That’s the signal to go aboard, Nekam. Thank you for your hospitality. You’ve made me see the whole business from the inside as a real reporter should. I’d like you to be a little patient. I’m sure the National Committee for Justice which the politicians have formed will do something. The bereaved will get full social compensation. And when the Commission of Inquiry arrives from Britain, I hope I shall be here again to listen to the evidence.’

  Nekam stood back, while Sango walked towards the lorry and took a seat in the second class – a little partition shielded from the driver. He sat with his knees bunched up, counting the miles between him and the village where Elina was.

  The lorry backed away and there stood Nekam under a tree, his arm raised. Sango waved back. It had taken a national disaster of the magnitude of shooting down twenty-one unarmed men to bring together leaders from north, east and west, to make the country realize as never before where its real destiny lay. What catastrophe, Sango wondered, would crystallize for him the direction of his own life? Soon – perhaps in another twelve months – he might be called upon to marry Elina; certainly his mother would insist on this to protect him from the gold-digging women of the city. But would he be ready?

  A fat woman sitting on his right sighed. He turned and looked at her face, radiant and attractive. Before the lorry had moved three miles, she was fast asleep, using Sango’s back as a pillow.

  When the lorry at last pulled up at the little village, Sango found that his second-class seat had been worth having after all. The other passengers in the third class were covered from head to foot in red dust.

  •

  The convent was beautifully situated: about a mile or two from the main motor-road, it overlooked an arm of the river. Sango walked across the village and beyond the market-place till he was well out in the woods. Peace and quiet such as he could never dream of, were here in the scented air, and the music of unseen birds. It was incredible, this idealized setting which had been chosen for a convent. Less than a hundred miles from the scene of death, desolation and the shattering of amities, yet this place stubbornly refused to see the evil in the world, talked only of the good and the pure. The sadness came when the girls graduated, as Elina would. Then rude shocks were theirs in the words, thoughts and deeds of the outside world.

  Sango’s steps were already becoming reluctant. He knew before the gate swung back and admitted him that some purification treatment must be meted out to him before he could dream of being worthy of Elina.

 
; One of the girls led him round the beautifully kept lawns to the waiting-room, where she showed him a school bench and told him to wait. It was siesta time, she explained, and Elina must not be disturbed. Sango, confronted with pictures of the Madonna and Child, the Sacred Heart of Jesus radiating mercy to sinners like himself, saw no hope of his own salvation. He knelt down suddenly and made the sign of the cross.

  At that moment he vowed to spend the rest of his life doing good, and cared nothing for the fact that the lorry-driver up at the village had told him as he poured palm-wine into his drinking horn: ‘Don’ keep long.’

  It took some time before a delicate rustle startled Sango out of his reverie. The Mother Superior, for she it must be, in her whites and black hood, clear-skinned and graceful in her old age, came into the little waiting room.

  ‘You sent a letter some time ago from the coal city? It is an awkward time to come, for the girls are at rest.’

  Sango could see numerous heads peering into the room from dormitory windows. Such a commotion did a male visitor cause in a girls’ establishment.

  He said, ‘Yes, Mother Superior.’

  ‘But I’ll treat this as a special case, since you live so far away.’ Once again she questioned him about his name, religion, and occupation. She talked at length about Elina and, sweeping up her robe to avoid dust, she walked gently down the steps. Sango looked into the dormitory windows: the heads had vanished.

  •

  Elina was a tall girl, quick-smiling, but somewhat gawky in appearance. Looking at her as she hung timidly on the arm of the head-girl who led her in, Sango felt his heart contract with pain and disillusionment. Pure she must be, innocent, a virgin no doubt; but one whom Sango could never see himself desiring. He smiled back at her, hoping she could not by some mysterious means fathom his thoughts. He cursed himself for his city background which had taught him to appreciate the voluptuous, the sensual, the sophisticated in woman. Elina was none of these. What did he want for a wife, anyway? A whore? Perhaps not; but he knew what he did not want. This must be the most awkward moment of his life. He was tongue-tied, and the presence of a chaperone choked back any warmth he might have shown.