A Man of the People (12 page)

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Two nights later we heard the sound of the Crier's gong. His message was unusual. In the past the Crier had summoned the village to a meeting to deliberate over a weighty question, or else to some accustomed communal labour. His business was to serve notice of something that was to happen. But this night he did something new: he announced a decision already taken. The elders and the councillors of Urua and the whole people, he said, had decided that in the present political fight raging in the land they should make it known that they knew one man and one man alone---Chief Nanga. Every man and every woman in Urua and every child and every adult would throw his or her paper for him on the day of election---as they had done in the past. If there was any other name called in the matter the elders and councillors of Urua had not heard it. He said this over and over again with minor changes in detail, like the omission of 'every child' which I noticed particularly because it had struck me as odd in the first place. And I thought: if the whole people had taken the decision why were they now being told of it? In the afternoon the radio, our national Crier, took up the message, amplified it and gave it in four languages including English. I listened to it, as I had listened to the rustic version, wearing my cynical smile. I couldn't say I blamed my village people for recoiling from the role of sacrificial ram. Why should they lose their chance of getting good, clean water, their share of the national cake? In fact they had adequate justification for their volte-face just two days later when the pipes returned. Or, at any rate, some of them returned. The rest apparently had been sent irrevocably to the neighbouring village of Ichida whose inhabitants had also been promised water but hadn't so far seen even one pipe. So the result of all my exertion had been to give Nanga one stone to kill two birds with. When I came back with my newspapers the next day I was told that Councillor 'Couple' had come to see my father with a promise that if he signed a certain document his recent tax levy would be refunded to him. The document merely sought to dissociate him from his son's lunatic activities; it also said that the so-called launching of C. P. C. in his premises was done without his knowledge and consent and concluded by affirming his implicit confidence in our great and God-fearing leader, Chief Nanga. I could visualize my father reading it carefully with his now rarely used spectacles and, then putting his glasses aside, telling the fellow to carry his corpse off. And he must have run---so much so that he left the document behind. 'You made a serious mistake today,' I told my father later that day. 'In your eyes have I ever done anything else in all my life?' 'I am talking about this paper you refused to sign.' He was silent for a while, then he said: 'You may be right. But our people have said that a man of worth never gets up to unsay what he said yesterday. I received your friends in my house and I am not going to deny it.' I thought to myself: You do not belong to this age, old man. Men of worth nowadays simply forget what they said yesterday. Then I realized that I had never really been close enough to my father to understand him. I had built up a private picture of him from unconnected scraps of evidence. Was this the same D. O.'s Interpreter who made a fortune out of the ignorance of poor, illiterate villagers and squandered it on drink and wives or had I got everything terribly, lopsidedly wrong? Anyway, this was no time to begin a new assessment; it was better left to the tax people. 'But one thing I must make clear,' he said suddenly. 'You have brought this trouble into my compound so you should carry it. From today whatever new tax they decide upon I will pass the paper to you.' 'That is a small matter,' I said smiling, and I did mean that it was a small matter. I don't know what put it into my head to go to Chief Nanga's inaugural campaign meeting. Did I want to learn some new trick that I could put to use in my own campaign against him, or was it naked curiosity---the kind that they say earned Monkey a bullet in the forehead? Whatever it was, I went. But I took great pains to disguise myself first---with a hat and sun-glasses. I thought of taking Boniface and the others, but decided they were likely to attract attention and trouble. So I went alone. I parked my car outside the Post Office and walked the three hundred yards or so to the Court premises where the meeting was already in progress. The time on my watch was just a little after four. Even if I hadn't known my way in Anata I could still have found the meeting easily enough. The sound of drums and guns beckoned you on. And there were hundreds of other people going like me to the place. As I got closer I could hear a brass band too---no doubt the Anata Central School. I passed many villagers I knew and who should remember one who was until recently a teacher at the Grammar School, but they obviously had no clue who I was, which showed how good my disguise was. One such person was Josiah, the renegade trader. Those days he walked like a fowl drenched by rain. I came from behind and overtook him. As soon as I turned into the Court premises my eyes caught Chief Nanga and his party sitting on a high platform solidly built from new timber. Of course I only noticed details like the timber when I had worked my way through the crowd to a closer position by ruthlessly widening every crack I saw in front of me and squeezing through, receiving abuses at my back. What I did see right away and what pulled me towards the dais was Edna sitting there on one side of Chief Nanga, much as she had done on that first day, like a convent girl. Mrs Nanga sat on the other side of her husband. All the other people on the platform so far were men, but there were still many empty chairs. When I had got to a point in the thick of the crowd from where I could observe the faces on the dais without attracting their attention I stopped. The dais was surrounded by characters who looked as if they might be able to assist the police in various outstanding investigations. One-eyed Dogo was among them. Then of course there were the placard-carrying Nanga- vanga boys wearing silken, green, cowboy dresses. I noticed that none of the placards today had my name; I shouldn't have blabbed to Nanga about it. There were also about half a dozen policemen around---just in case, which was unlikely in this friendly crowd. I was choking with the acrid smell of other people's sweat and wondered if the ceremony would ever begin. Chief Nanga sat, smiling and cool in his white robes. His wife looking grandly matriarchal in a blue velvet 'up- and-down' fanned herself with one of these delta-shaped Japanese fans, clearly too small and inadequate. Occasionally she lifted the neck of her blouse in front and blew left and right into her bosom. Edna just sat. At last the ceremony seemed about to begin. Some party official wearing the green P. O. P. cap consulted with Chief Nanga who nodded several times, looking at his watch. Then the official grabbed the microphone and began to test it. His shrill voice amplified a hundredfold startled the crowd and then sent them laughing at their own fright. Something seemed to go wrong because the voice was superseded by one prolonged ear-tearing whistle. All other noises had stopped, and soon the high-pitched whistle stopped too. The man counted one to ten and the crowd laughed again. Then he announced that he was the M. C. He said the man before us needed no introduction (hell, I thought, not again!)---'he was no other than the great Honourable Minister Chief Doctor (in advance) M.A. Nanga.' 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