I did not listen to the many virtues of Chief Nanga as enumerated by this M.C., partly because I knew them very well already but also because the fellow having presumably lost his own eardrums long ago was showing no respect at all to ours . . . I put my hands over the ears to break the sharp-pointed assault. And to pass the time while waiting for Nanga’s speech I began to exercise my fancy. What would happen if I were to push my way to the front and up the palm-leaf-festooned dais, wrench the microphone from the greasy hands of that blabbing buffoon and tell the whole people—this vast contemptible crowd—that the great man they had come to hear with their drums and dancing was an Honourable Thief. But of course they knew that already. No single man and woman there that afternoon was stranger to that news—not even the innocent-looking convent girl on the dais. And because they all knew, if I were to march up to the dais now and announce it they would simply laugh at me and say: What a fool! Whose son is he? Was he not here when white men were eating; what did he do about it? Where was he when Chief Nanga fought and drove the white men away? Why is he envious now that the warrior is eating the reward of his courage? If he was Chief Nanga, would he not do much worse?
These questions would not, of course, be spread out into so many words; more likely they would be compressed into a few sharp blows to the head. . . .
As my mind dozed lazily on these fanciful thoughts I saw Josiah, the outlawed trader, mount the few steps to the dais and whisper to Chief Nanga who sprang up immediately searching the crowd. Josiah then turned round and pointed in my direction. I turned sharply at the same time and began to push blindly through the crowd, panic-stricken, appearing to make no progress whatever. Then I heard the loudspeakers call out to the crowd to stop that man wearing a hat and dark glasses. I took off the hat. For a brief moment nothing happened and I struggled through a few more bodies. Then some tentative hands tried to stop me from behind but I shook them off and continued to push and shove.
“I said stop that thief trying to run away!” screamed the loudspeaker. The hands gained a little resolution and one vaguely-seen body stood firmly in my way. But I was not running any more then. I wanted to know who called me a thief. So I turned round and was pushed forward from three sides to the foot of the dais.
“Odili the great,” saluted Chief Nanga. Then he took the microphone and said: “My people, this is the boy who wants to take my seat.” The announcement was greeted by a wild uproar, compounded of disbelief, shock and contemptuous laughter. “Come up here,” said Nanga. “They want to see you.” I was pushed up the steps to the dais. As I went up I noticed that Edna had covered her face with both hands.
“My people,” said Nanga again. “This is the boy who is thrusting his finger into my eye. He came to my house in Bori, ate my food, drank my water and my wine and instead of saying thank you to me he set about plotting how to drive me out and take over my house.” The crowd roared again. My panic had now left me entirely and in its place I found a rock-cold fearlessness that I had never before felt in my heart. I watched Nanga, microphone in one hand, reeling about the dais in drunken jubilation. I seemed to see him from a superior, impregnable position.
“I hear some people asking who is he: I will tell you. He was once my pupil. I taught him ABC and I called him to my house to arrange for him to go to England. Yes, I take the blame; he did not just smell his hand one morning and go to my house—I called him. Anyone who wants to may blame me.” There were louder cries of shock at such an unspeakable betrayal. “He even tried to take a girl on whose head I had put the full bride-price and many other expenses—and who according to our custom is my wife—this girl here. . . .” He went over to Edna and roughly pulled her hands away from her face. “He tried to take this girl who is covering her face for shame. Fortunately my wife caught him and told me.” He turned aside from the crowd to me. “Odili the great! So you have come to seek me out again. You are very brave; or have you come to seek Edna, eh? That’s it. Come to the microphone and tell my people why you came; they are listening . . .” He thrust the microphone into my face.
“I came to tell your people that you are a liar and . . .” He pulled the microphone away smartly, set it down, walked up to me and slapped my face. Immediately hands seized my arms, but I am happy that he got one fairly good kick from me. He slapped me again and again. Edna rushed forward crying and tried to get between us but he pushed her aside so violently that she landed on her buttocks on the wooden platform. The roar of the crowd was now like a thick forest all around. By this time blows were falling as fast as rain on my head and body until something heavier than the rest seemed to split my skull. The last thing I remembered was seeing all the policemen turn round and walk quietly away.
• • •
The events of the next four weeks or so have become so widely known in the world at large that there would be little point in my relating them in any detail here. And in any case, while those events were happening I was having a few private problems of my own. My cracked cranium took a little time to mend—to say nothing of the broken arm and countless severe bruises one of which all but turned me into a kind of genealogical cul-de-sac.
I remember the first time I woke up in the hospital and felt my head turbanned like an Alhaji. Everything seemed unreal and larger than life and I was sure I was dreaming. In the dream I saw Edna and my father and Mama standing around my bed. I also saw, through a gap in the screen, two policemen. But the only thing that was immediate and in focus was that pressure trapped inside the head pounding away in a panic effort to escape. I tried to feel my turban but the pain followed my thought to the arm—and I went off again. The next time I looked around me my father and Mama and the policemen were still there, and they looked more solid than the last time. Edna had vanished. Perhaps her figure had been planted there in the first place by my fevered fancy. I wondered—in a dull, faraway manner—what the police were doing beside my bed. But I did not wonder too much nor too long. Every other single thing was strange anyway and two policemen (or four when they were changing guards) didn’t make much difference. (Perhaps it was their way of making amends for their desertion when I had needed them.) But one morning I woke up to find they had disappeared. “Where are they?” I asked the nurse who brought my medicine.
“They done go.”
“But why?”
“You de ask why, instead to thank God that they done withdraw your case?”
My case? I tried hard to remember but couldn’t and gave up. My father should be coming any minute now and he would know. But when he came and I asked him he refused to tell, saying I should get better first. But I kept at him until he said yes, I had been under arrest for being found in possession of dangerous weapons.
“Found, where? Who found me?”
“In your car. They said five matchets were found in your car and two double-barrelled guns. Anyway they have now withdrawn the case.”
My thoughts were slowly coming into focus. “What day is the election?”
“I don’t know.”
“Say you won’t tell me, but not that you don’t know,” I said petulantly. “Could I have my radio?”
“Not yet; the doctor says you are to rest.”
The next day I asked again and if only to save himself from my pestering importunity he said yes, the thugs had ransacked my car, overturned it and set it on fire; then after I had been brought to hospital I was placed under arrest ostensibly for having weapons in my car but really to prevent me from signing my nomination paper.
“Nomination paper? But I have already signed it,” I said.
“No, that first one never reached the Electoral Officer. It was seized by thugs from your people on their way to the Electoral Office . . .”
I tried to sit up but he pressed me back; not that I could have made it, anyway.
“Now I have told you. Don’t ask me any more questions, do you hear me? Even in this hospital you
cannot say who is a friend and who an enemy. That is why I am here so much.” He said this quietly and with a backward glance. “Max came here in person with a new nomination paper for you but they turned him back.”
“I see.”
It was in fact election day as we spoke. My father found it easy to conceal the fact from me because they had put me in a special isolated ward. That same night Max was killed in Abaga but I didn’t hear of it either, until two days after; and then I wept all day that day, and the pressure inside my head returned and I hoped I would die, but the doctor put me to sleep.
• • •
As I got the story later from Joe, the trade-unionist, Max had been informed by our party intelligence that Chief Koko’s resourceful wife was leading the Women’s Wing of the P.O.P. in an operation that one might describe as breastfeeding the ballot, i.e. smuggling into the polling booths wads of ballot paper concealed in their brassières. Max immediately investigated. But as soon as he alighted from his car, one of Chief Koko’s jeeps swept up from behind, knocked him over and killed him on the spot.
The police, most of whom turned out to be disguised party thugs, performed half-hearted motions to arrest the driver of the jeep but Chief S. I. Koko came forward and told them not to worry; he would handle the matter himself. Eunice had been missed by a few inches when Max had been felled. She stood like a stone figure, I was told, for some minutes more. Then she opened her handbag as if to take out a handkerchief, took out a pistol instead and fired two bullets into Chief Koko’s chest. Only then did she fall down on Max’s body and begin to weep like a woman; and then the policemen seized her and dragged her away. A very strange girl, people said.
The fighting which broke out that night between Max’s bodyguard and Chief Koko’s thugs in Abaga struck a match and lit the tinder of discontent in the land. Nearer home in Anata Chief Nanga, having been elected unopposed, tried to disband his private army, if only to save himself their keep; but some of them refused to be disbanded and staged a minor battle in which Dogo (the one-eyed bodyguard) lost an ear. Then they went on a rampage, sacking one market after another in the district, seizing women’s wares and beating up people. My father’s youngest wife lost her entire stock of dried fish in our village market during one of their raids and got a swollen face instead. Other election thugs in different parts of the country hearing of the successes of Chief Nanga’s people quickly formed their own bands of marauders. And so a minor reign of terror began.
Meanwhile the Prime Minister had appointed Chief Nanga and the rest of the old Cabinet back to office and announced over the radio that he intended to govern and stamp out subversion and thuggery without quarter or mercy. He assured foreign investors that their money was safe in the country, that his government stood “as firm as the Rock of Gibraltar” by its open-door economic policy. “This country,” he said, “has never been more united or more stable than it is today.” He nominated Chief Koko’s widow to the Senate and from there made her Minister for Women’s Affairs, intending to quiet the powerful guild of Bori market women who had become restive.
Some political commentators have said that it was the supreme cynicism of these transactions that inflamed the people and brought down the Government. That is sheer poppycock. The people themselves, as we have seen, had become even more cynical than their leaders and were apathetic into the bargain. “Let them eat,” was the people’s opinion, “after all when white men used to do all the eating did we commit suicide?” Of course not. And where is the all-powerful white man today? He came, he ate and he went. But we are still around. The important thing then is to stay alive; if you do you will outlive your present annoyance. The great thing, as the old people have told us, is reminiscence; and only those who survive can have it. Besides, if you survive, who knows? it may be your turn to eat tomorrow. Your son may bring home your share.
No, the people had nothing to do with the fall of our Government. What happened was simply that unruly mobs and private armies having tasted blood and power during the election had got out of hand and ruined their masters and employers. And they had no public reason whatever for doing it. Let’s make no mistake about that.
• • •
One day just before I left hospital Edna came to see me. We looked at each other without speaking. What could I say about that letter in which I had called her an uneducated girl and said many other crude things besides? But attack, they say, is the best defence. So I attacked. “Congratulations,” I said. “I will never contest his seat again.” I smiled falsely. She said nothing, just stood where she was, staring at me with those round, rock-melting eyes. “I am terribly sorry, Edna,” I said. “I have behaved like an animal . . . I will always remember that in all that crowd you were the only one who tried to help me.” My eyes clouded. “Don’t cry,” I said when I looked at her again and found my tears running down her face. “Please, my love, don’t. Come and sit here.” And SHE DID.
“Edna, I don’t know . . . I feel like a beast . . . believe me . . . about that letter . . . I was so unhappy . . . you can’t imagine how miserable I was. Will you ever forgive me?”
“Forgive you? For what? Everything you said in it is true.”
“Oh please don’t talk like that, Edna. I know how you must feel. But please I didn’t mean to . . . you know. I was so confused and I didn’t want to . . . I didn’t want you to go and marry that idiot. That was why . . . To God . . .” I tried instinctively to seal the oath by touching my lips and pointing to the sky with my swearing finger, forgetting momentarily in my confusion that my right arm was in plaster. I was reminded soon enough, and changed to my left finger which felt odd.
“Marry him? To be frank with you I did not want to marry him . . . All the girls in the college were laughing at me . . . It was only my father . . . I don’t claim to know book but at least . . .”
“Oh please, Edna——”
“. . . at least I thank God that I am better than some people with all their minister and everything. He is no better than any bush, jaguda man, with all his money. And what you said, about his wife’s jealousy——”
“Wait a bit,” I said, something having clicked inside my head and told me to pay some attention to what the other party was saying. “Wait a bit. Are we talking about my first letter or the second?”
“Second? Which second letter? Did you write two?”
“Yes, after I came to see you,” I said and then said to myself: Don’t let up, man! Attack and cover your defences. “Yes, when I came to see you and you made me so miserable . . . I wrote; you mean you didn’t get it?”
“No, I did not. After you came to see me? . . . It must be one of those the postmaster handed over to him.”
“Postmaster? I don’t understand.”
“Oh, you didn’t hear? The postmaster and the man are like this.” She dovetailed her fingers. “He was passing all my letters to him.”
“No! What a beast!”
“Have you ever seen a thing like that? It was only God that saved me from his hands.”
“God and Odili.”
“Yes, and Odili . . . What did you say in it?”
“In what? Oh the letter . . . Yes, well, the usual things.”
“Tell me.”
“I will, later. Let’s talk about new things now, about our future plans.” After a short silence of contemplation on this unbelievable piece of good fortune I said somewhat lightheartedly: “A whole Cabinet Minister prying into a little girl’s love-letters!”
“Have you ever seen such bad luck!” said Edna, and then something seemed to dawn on her and she asked: “But who is a little girl?”
I smiled and squeezed her hand, then pursued my own thoughts aloud.
“The inquisitive eye will only blind its own sight,” I pronounced. “A man who insists on peeping into his neighbour’s bedroom knowing a woman to be there is only punishing himself.”
<
br /> It was then Edna’s turn to squeeze my good hand.
We heard my father’s voice greeting the nurse in the main ward and Edna quickly got up from my bed and sat on a chair.
“Ah, my daughter!” he said. “You have kept away so long. I began to think I had frightened you away.”
“No, sir,” she said embarrassed.
“Frightened her away? How?”
“I told her I was going to marry her for one of my sons that day she spent a whole night with us here . . .”
“So it wasn’t a dream?”
“What dream?”
“Never mind, father. What I mean is you should marry her for this son here.”
“That remains to be seen.”
• • •
After my illness my father, some of his close relatives and I went with a big pot of palm-wine to Edna’s father to start a “conversation”. The first few visits we made no headway at all. Our host simply refused to believe that he had lost a Chief and Minister as son-in-law and must now settle for this crazy boy who had bought a tortoise and called it a car. But the Army obliged us by staging a coup at that point and locking up every member of the Government. The rampaging bands of election thugs had caused so much unrest and dislocation that our young Army officers seized the opportunity to take over. We were told Nanga was arrested trying to escape by canoe dressed like a fisherman.
Thereafter we made rapid progress with Edna’s father who, no doubt, saw me then as a bird in hand. He told us that Chief Nanga had paid a bride-price of one hundred and fifty pounds for his daughter and another one hundred pounds on her education and other incidentals. Was that all? I thought.
“Our custom,” said my father firmly, “is to return the bride-price—finish. Other bits and pieces must be the man’s loss. Is that not the custom?” Our party said yes, that was the custom.
As indeed it was. But I was not interested in legalistic-traditional arguments just now, especially when they were calculated to delay things (a coup might be followed by a counter coup and then where would we be?); and anyway I did not want to go through life thinking that I owed Chief Nanga money spent on my wife’s education. So I agreed—to my people’s astonishment—to pay everything. “Let us go outside and whisper together,” said my scandalized relations. I said a flat no and they shrugged their acquiescence, astonished at my firmness—and pleased, because we admire firmness.
A Man of the People Page 15
