On the other hand this was a beautiful moment, full of significance for them both. He was the man from the city who would one day be her husband. She was the pure girl, brought up according to the laws of God and the Church, unadulterated and therefore totally ignorant of the realities of life, looking forward to a life divine with him. Could anything be more impossible, he asked himself?
How the interview ended he never could tell, but he found himself walking back across the village to the impatient lorry, now on the point of departing without him. Now something had gone out of his life’s purpose. As an ideal, unseen and alive only in his imagination, Elina had been an incentive. But now he felt that urge gone. He was alone with no idealized plan. And there was his weakness for the city woman with no restraining factor, nothing to check his lasciviousness. Whatever happened he was determined that his mother must not know of his disappointment.
If only this lorry journey were ten times as long, he would have time to work it all out before returning to the city.
PART TWO
When all doors are closed
9
This was no homecoming, because even though the taxi stopped in the lane where he shared a little room with First Trumpet, he had no feeling of ownership, let alone of freedom and privacy.
First Trumpet was dressed to go out, and in the band’s uniform too. ‘Ha, Sango, welcome!’ He was polishing his trumpet. ‘How you left us like that?’
And before Sango could answer: ‘We read all your dispatches in the Sensation. But were you not afraid? That was hot news! How was the rioting out there?’
Sango put down his box in a corner and flopped into a chair. ‘That’s the first time I’ve relaxed in two weeks! Where are you going, all dressed up like this?’
‘You’ve forgotten about the elections! Our band is playing for one of the parties. I don’t care about their politics, but they pay well. Don’t you see how I’ve been running the band in your absence?’
‘Very good indeed.’ He yawned. ‘Well done! So I’m back with parties again. I thought we’d finished with parties as from last week. What’s the use of all this nonsense when we are being led by the National Committee for Justice? I hope this election does not create a split. I’d hate to see the politicians split up once again.’
First Trumpet had his instrument under his arm and one foot on the doorstep. ‘No . . . have no fear. They’ll remain together, they won’t split. You know how they act at election time. They make foolish promises, they abuse themselves. It’s politics. Well! I must be off to Lugard Square; the band will be waiting.’
‘Whom did you say you were playing for?’
‘The S.G.N. Party.’ He was already on the street.
Sango knew the S.G.N. (Self-Government-Now) Party as the one which claimed to represent the interests of the working man. Most of its members were people like Mr Nekam of the Eastern Greens. They were fanatics in their cause, and strongly opposed to the R.P. – the Realization Party – which helped people ‘realize their dreams’.
Sango wished Sam were here to help him unpack his suitcase. First Trumpet had gone without even asking him whether he had had a meal recently. It was not strictly his business, but it would have been comforting to hear. Sango set about having a bath and a change of clothing. When he returned to his room, he found Bayo sitting in an armchair, a warm smile on his face.
‘Sango! Ah-ah! You just flew away like that! This your job is terrible. But what have you been eating in that place? Your skin looks so fresh!’
Sango’s heart warmed. Now he knew he was really back. ‘I have plenty of news for you, Sango. Just wait. A lot has happened. Do you know, I saw your gal – the one who went to jail.’
‘Aina?’ Sango was thrilled to hear her name, the very mention of it. In one reckless moment, he forgot the pain of Elina. When he saw that Bayo had observed his eagerness, he feigned anger. But Bayo smiled.
‘I saw her on Beecroft Bridge, selling cigarettes.’
‘Oh?’
‘But Sango, you don’t sound interested. What’s wrong? You’re not like your old self. Or is the suffering you saw there still with you? Forget it, man!’
‘I’m my old self, Bayo. It’s nothing.’
He was putting on his cleanest shirt and selecting his best tie. Why, he asked himself? Why? Must he impress an ex-jailbird like Aina? ‘You have no feeling,’ she had once told him.
‘I don’t blame you, anyway,’ said Bayo. ‘Those policemen are wicked. Shooting down their own brothers like that! Just because they wanted to be paid extra money. They’ll not die well!’
He rambled on in his usual manner and soon the hard-luck story came up. ‘I too, have changed. D’you know . . . Don’t you see how thin I have become?’
Sango looked at him. If there was anything thin about Bayo that evening it was the colour of his tie. His hair was permed as usual and the nylon ankle-socks that peeped out under the narrow trousers were ablaze with colour. The basket shoes had three tones.
‘Sango, I’ve suffered too much in this world, and now I have made a decision. I made it when you were away, because I had no other friend in the world. Look, I said to myself. Bayo, everybody is becoming something. Our country is fighting for self-government. Our boys and girls are going to Britain and America, they are learning new things to make our country greater. I must become a serious man and move with the times.’
Sango looked at the face of his faithful friend. ‘Do you really mean that, Bayo?’
Bayo sat forward with a show of indignation. ‘Only the other day a lady bought me a new suit and gave me ten pounds on top. She is about forty-five, very wealthy, but no child. She has married, thrice, but no children. She wanted me to fulfil her desire, but I refused.’
‘True, you mean that?’
It was certainly surprising for Bayo to act in this manner. Something must have happened. Sango was quite sure now. It could be the encounter with the police; but something must have happened. Bayo was restless, unable to sit still. He got up, went to the door, came back.
‘I don’t know why things always happen like this. I’ve gone out with a lot of girls; they’ve spent pots of money on me. Yet I never spend one mite on them; it doesn’t pay to do so. All those girls were nothing to me —’
‘What are you talking about, Bayo?’
‘Do you know a girl called Suad Zamil? She’s a Lebanese, sister of a cloth merchant.’
‘Never heard of her. What’s she to you?’
‘I want to marry her; we’ve fixed everything for next month.’
‘Does she love you?’
‘You don’t appear surprised, Sango. That’s why I like you. You do not blame me when I make a mistake. Have I made a mistake? Tell me, Sango. Everyone is blaming me. They say the marriage is impossible between me, an African, and this Suad, a Lebanese. Do you know, Sango, what frightens me is that the girl cannot sit down or think or even eat or sell her brother’s cloth in the shop, she’s thinking of Bayo – oh my love! She is always at the window. I pass there one hundred times in one day and it is still not enough for her. She is not afraid of African food. She says she is prepared to eat even sand with me and if necessary live in our slum. Anywhere, so long I’m there. Do you think she is mad?’
‘D’you love her?’
‘Why d’you think I’ve been racking my brain in the last few weeks? Why d’you think I’ve been trying to make money on my own? Only you were not in town to advise me, that’s what saddened me.’
Sango laced his shoes. This was one of those blinding love affairs into which Bayo was always falling, only to forget them entirely in a matter of days. He listened without attaching any importance to the words, and this attitude only made Bayo strive to impress him with his seriousness.
‘She’s the most beautiful girl in the whole world, and oh, so gentle! About nineteen, I should say, with very thick hair. You’ll like to run your fingers through her hair, Sango. She does not speak any English, so we speak
Yoruba. Yes, she’s a native. She was born here . . .’
Bayo relapsed into a moody silence. Sango, who had finished dressing, said, ‘Aina! Where can I find her?’
‘Beecroft Bridge. As soon as you cross the bridge, look among the cigarette sellers. You’ll see her.’
•
Beecroft Bridge was at least half a mile long. No one would sell cigarettes on the bridge, so Sango looked in the stalls outside the taxi park. It was already getting late and the shops were closing. Sango bade good-bye to Bayo on the bus and got down near the bridge. He began to search for Aina among the handful of girls selling cigarettes, but in this rush-hour din he could identify none of them. He had become a target for the final appeals of the late hawkers.
‘Penny bread! . . . Sugar bread! . . .’ they cried from all sides of him. He was irritated but trapped. ‘Banjo’ (auction) ‘akowe’ (envelopes) ‘Banjo, akowe! . . .’
The cars and lorries and buses were trying to press forward in the slow traffic-stream by tooting horns. ‘Pip-pip! Paw-paw!’
Sango wanted to escape. He glanced desperately about him. Slippered feet rushed among the traffic, yet none belonged to the girl he sought. And the drone of the heavy diesel engines threatened to drown his voice.
Suddenly, everything seemed to stop, as if by an order. At that moment Sango caught just one glimpse: a girl straining upwards, trying to sell cigarettes to passengers through a bus window. He crossed the street, breaking through the tormenting chains that bound him prisoner.
‘Aina!’
Her face was flushed with excitement, and she turned and looked into his eye. The change she was offering to the passenger on the bus slipped and rolled between the wheels. The cloth tied round her hips broke loose. Sango in one leap stood beside her.
She was panting with wonder. ‘What do you want? Twenty years is not for ever. Did you think I would die in jail?’
‘Let us go to the Hollywood, Aina. I’ll call a taxi and we’ll go and eat. Where’s your stall? Have you anyone to look after it for you?’
It was a way of life she liked. The glamorous surroundings, the taxis, the quick drinks. This was one reason why she had come to the city from her home sixty miles away: to ride in taxis, eat in fashionable hotels, to wear the aso-ebi, that dress that was so often and so ruinously prescribed like a uniform for mournings, wakings, bazaars, to have men who wore white collars to their jobs as lovers, men who could spend.
‘I can’t. I —’
‘You must, Aina! After all, this meeting calls for some celebration. We may become enemies after that, but just let me give you this welcome. After all, I’ve been away and returned only this afternoon. How was I to know that you had come out of —’
A taxi drew alongside. He said: ‘The Hollywood!’
They were in and he was sitting beside her. Suddenly all the restraint he had imposed on himself broke loose and he held her in his arms and hugged her. She pushed against him like a naughty child, but he saw the tears in her eyes and he was sad. Yet the next moment she was laughing, teasing him derisively till all the pent-up desire he had for her broke over him and he knew he was still putty in her hands, this street walker with the dark, smooth face and white smile. Could it be for her sake that Elina had ceased to appeal to him? What was the magic of this unbreakable spell?
Outside the hotel he paid his fare and took her upstairs to the restaurant. He chose a seat near two large mirrors where Aina could have ample scope to admire her reflection. He tried to find out what the prison had taught her. She was bitter against him, that he could see. But she was also bitter against everybody, against the very city that had condemned her. She had become hardened. Where previously Aina might have stalled or hesitated, or used a tactful word, she now spoke bluntly. Amusa was shocked by her cynicism.
‘It’s money I want now,’ she said.
He nodded understandingly.
‘I’m coming to visit you, Amusa, so get some money ready.’
His heart sank. ‘Er . . . Lajide sacked me . . . er —’
‘Said he doesn’t want thieves and jailbirds, like me – eh? Don’t deny, I know!’
He swallowed. She had got him wrong, but why reveal to her his present address?
‘Well, I’m a thief! I’ve been to jail, and I’ll still come to Twenty Molomo Street, and I shall visit you! Nobody can stop me, not even Lajide!’
Sango looked round nervously. ‘People are listening, Aina —’
‘I don’t care!’ The waiter was standing behind her. Sango ordered chicken stew with rice.
There could be no guarantee that it did her any good, because throughout the meal she kept stabbing at him with her bitter explosions. It is said that a pleasant and cheerful disposition aids digestion. Aina apparently had not heard of this.
‘I tried to bail you,’ Sango said. ‘Really, I did, Aina.’
‘Marry me, now, Sango. Don’t you know I love you very much? Sango, I’ll die for you.’
He heard that warning again. The warning voice of his mother, about the women of the city. Letters from her were usually written by a half-literate scribe, but that warning was never in doubt.
‘Aina, but—’
‘You are very wicked, Amusa.’ She was smiling, and that made matters worse, because her smile always melted his heart. ‘If someone had told me that you would do this to me, after that night on Molomo Street and the way you said you loved me —’
‘We’re still friends, Aina.’
She was still smiling. He tried to make it easy for her. But how could he make her see that their paths diverged from the very beginning?
‘I want to ask you a favour,’ she said, as the waiter cleared the table.
Sango lit her cigarette and after she had inhaled deeply, she said: ‘I want new clothes: the native Accra dress . . . really special. The clothes I had before I went to jail, they’re no use to me now. From now on I want to be wearing glamour specs. Nor for my eyes – my eyes are okay – but for fancy. And a gold watch. I have suffered for three months hard labour. Now I must enjoy all I dreamed of at night in my cell.’
‘But Aina, you know how broke I am, always!’ He took out his wallet and found some pound notes which he offered her.
She took them from him without one word of thanks. Nor did she smile. It was then he knew that nothing could alter the bitterness she felt towards him.
•
Aina regretted not having gone with Sango. She watched his taxi swing into the traffic till it was hidden away by a mammy-wagon. Soon he would be at Lugard Square to see the soap-box orators. Aina looked at her clothes and decided that election time was fashion time, and one way to make certain she would be noticed was to get herself something smart. With only five pounds in the folds of her dress, she had a problem.
On High Street she noticed the sign SALE in large letters on every window of Zamil’s shop. Zamil himself was standing knee-deep among the rayons and organdies, the printed cottons and velvets – just the very materials Aina would have loved. He was overwhelmed by customers and so was his sister at the other end of the counter. Dark-haired and pretty in a dark way, she had a large pair of scissors beside her on the counter.
‘Suad! Mind the money!’ shouted Zamil and fired away the rest of the sentence in rapid Arabic. Without looking up, Suad continued to zip out the cloth by the yard. There was no one else in this shop but Zamil, his sister, and the customers. It was a family business in which little outside help was employed. Aina glanced round and saw bargains by the dozen. One caught her fancy – a rich plum velvet. She imagined herself wearing a dress of this material, cut by a dressmaker along Jide Street, frilled with lace at the bust-line, around the sleeves . . . the sleeves must be very short, to show off the roundness of her arms. Aina was overcome. It dawned on her that no one was watching.
‘Steal it, Aina!’ came that irresistible urge. ‘They’re all looking away!’
She propped herself against the wall. If she took it, she could
conceal it in the folds of her dress, sneak out quickly. The customers would still be yelling as they were doing now, Zamil and his sister would still be cutting cloth and piling the pound notes on the counter. Ten yards of material – no more; light enough. . . . Quickly now, before someone comes to buy it! No, they would be too frightened of the price.
Aina moved forward. She stopped. A silence reigned in the shop. She looked up and saw that a man in blue robes with a light blue gilt-edged cap had arrived. Lajide.
‘Any more velvet cloth? I want twenty, thirty, forty yards; no fifty yards. Let me see . . . eight wives each one six yards, tha’s forty-eight . . . give me fifty yards.’
Everyone in the shop had stopped bargain-hunting. There was a gap of silence, which Zamil immediately tried to fill. ‘My sister Suad – she will open a new bale for you. Suad!’ And he rattled off in rapid Arabic. Suad left her own customers and came across, smoothing back her rich black hair.
Zamil took a ready reckoner and thumbed through it short-sightedly. ‘Twenty-three . . . pounds . . . two an’ six, that’s the cost of fifty yards.’
‘Twenty poun’,’ said Lajide with confidence, but Zamil would not give in. The haggling began. The crowd piled nearer the two men.
Lajide sat down, crossed his legs, lit a cigarette. He said: ‘Zamil, how you enjoy the new house? Perhaps some of your brothers, they want fine place like that, eh? I got a new house for sale!’
People of the City Page 9