A Man of the People (6 page)

front of Elsie and me. Her husband, John, was sitting by her; I hadn't realized he was back. I whispered into Elsie's ear that that was the woman who gave the party I spoke about. 'Is she the famous Elsie?' she whispered back. 'No, her friend.' 'So no be only one, even,' she said, smiling, 'Odi the great.' She often shortened my name to Odi. I didn't listen much to Chief Nanga's speech. When Elsie and I were not whispering into each other's ears I was thinking about the night or even about such irrelevant things as the dress of some of the people in the room. There was one man I noticed particularly. His robes were made from some expensive-looking, European woollen material---which was not so very strange these days. But what surprised me was that the tailor had retained the cloth's thin, yellow border on which the manufacturer advertised in endless and clear black type: 100% WOOL: MADE IN ENGLAND. In fact the tailor had used this advertisement to ornamental advantage on both sleeves. I was struck once again by our people's endless resourcefulness especially when it came to taste in clothes. I noticed that whenever the man hitched up his sleeves which he did every two or three minutes he did it very carefully so that the quality of his material would not be lost in the many rich folds of the dress. He also wore a gold chain round his neck.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Chief Nanga was a born politician; he could get away with almost anything he said or did. And as long as men are swayed by their hearts and stomachs and not their heads the Chief Nangas of this world will continue to get away with anything. He had that rare gift of making people feel---even while he was saying harsh things to them---that there was not a drop of ill will in his entire frame. I remember the day he was telling his ministerial colleague over the telephone in my presence that he distrusted our young university people and that he would rather work with a European. I knew I was hearing terrible things but somehow I couldn't bring myself to take the man seriously. He had been so open and kind to me and not in the least distrustful. The greatest criticism a man like him seemed capable of evoking in our country was an indulgent: 'Make you no min' am.' This is of course a formidable weapon which is always guaranteed to save its wielder from the normal consequences of misconduct as well as from the humiliation and embarrassment of ignorance. For how else could you account for the fact that a Minister of Culture announced in public that he had never heard of his country's most famous novel and received applause---as indeed he received again later when he prophesied that before long our great country would produce great writers like Shakespeare, Dickens, Jane Austen, Bernard Shaw and---raising his eyes off the script---Michael West and Dudley Stamp. At the end of the function Mr Jalio and the Editor of the Daily Matchet came forward to congratulate him and to ask for copies of the speech. Chief Nanga produced two clean copies from his file, bent down at the table and amended the relevant portions in his own fair hand by the addition of those two names to the list of famous English writers. I knew the Editor already from a visit he had paid the Minister a few days earlier. A greasy-looking man, he had at first seemed uneasy about my presence in the room and I had kept a sharp look out for the slightest hint from Chief Nanga to get up and leave them. But no hint was given. On the contrary I felt he positively wanted me to stay. So I stayed. Our visitor took a very long time to come to the point, whatever it was. All I could gather was that he had access to something which he was holding back in Chief Nanga's interest. But it was clear that the Minister did not attach very great importance to whatever it was; in fact he appeared to be sick and tired of the man but dared not say so. Meanwhile the journalist told us one story after another, a disgusting white foam appearing at the corners of his mouth. He drank two bottles of beer, smoked many cigarettes and then got a 'dash' of five pounds from the Minister after an account of his trouble with his landlord over arrears of rent. Apparently it was not a straightforward case of debt but, since the landlord and the journalist came from different tribes, the element of tribalism could not be ruled out. 'You see what it means to be a minister,' said Chief Nanga as soon as his visitor left. His voice sounded strangely tired and I felt suddenly sorry for him. This was the nearest I had seen him come to despondency. 'If I don't give him something now, tomorrow he will go and write rubbish about me. They say it is the freedom of the Press. But to me it is nothing short of the freedom to crucify innocent men and assassinate their character. I don't know why our government is so afraid to deal with them. I don't say they should not criticize---after all no one is perfect except God---but they should criticize constructively....' So that other afternoon when the journalist came forward to get a copy of the speech and shouted: 'First rate, sir; I shall put it in the front page instead of a story I have promised the Minister of Construction,' I just wondered if he ever suspected where he and his stories would be if Chief Nanga had his way. It must have been about eight o'clock---it was certainly dark---when we left the exhibition to drive back home. As soon as the car moved I dovetailed my fingers into Elsie's on her lap and threw the other arm across her shoulders in a bold, proprietary gesture. 'That was a beautiful speech and you didn't have much time to go over it,' I said, just to get some talk going while privately I throbbed with expectation. An image that had never until then entered my mind appeared to me now. I saw Elsie---or rather didn't see her---as she merged so completely with the darkness of my room, unlike Jean who had remained half undissolved like some apparition as she put her things on in the dark. 'When an old woman hears the dance she knows her old age deserts her,' replied Chief Nanga in our language. I laughed more loudly than the proverb deserved and then translated it for Elsie who spoke a different language. We used the laughter to get a little closer so that the arm I had over her shoulder slipped under her arm to her breast, and I pressed her against my side. When we got back, Chief Nanga and I had whisky while Elsie went upstairs to change. Incidentally, when on our first return from the hospital Chief Nanga had told his steward to take Elsie's bags to his absent wife's room I had been greatly alarmed. But then I had quickly reassured myself that he was merely displaying great tact and delicacy, and I felt grateful just as I had done when he had told us of the all-night Cabinet meeting. There was only a short flight of stairs between my room on the ground floor and where Elsie was being installed. When all was silent I would go up quietly, tap on her door, find her waiting and take her downstairs to my room, and we could pretend that our host was none the wiser. We had an excellent dinner of rice, ripe plantains and fried fish. Elsie, looking ripe and ready in a shimmering yellow dress, took us back to the President of the Writers' Association and his funny garb. I found myself putting up a feeble kind of defence. 'Writers and artists sometimes behave that way,' I said. 'I think he will heed my advice,' said Chief Nanga. 'He is a well-comported young man.' This surprised me a great deal. I suppose it was Jalio's flattering words in introducing the Minister that did it; or more likely Chief Nanga had not missed the almost deferential manner in which one of the ambassadors had approached Jalio with a copy of his book for an autograph. I remember looking at Chief Nanga then and seeing astonishment and unbelief on his face, but I did not think it was enough to persuade him to call Jalio 'a well-comported young man' so soon after their clash. The words 'well-comported' struck me almost as forcibly as the sentiment they conveyed. I couldn't say whether it was right or wrong, and in any case you felt once again that such distinctions didn't apply here. Chief Nanga was one of those fortunate ones who had just enough English (and not one single word more) to have his say strongly, without inhibition, and colourfully. I remember his telling me of a 'fatal accident' he once had driving from Anata to Bori. Since he was alive I had assumed that someone else had been killed. But as the story unfolded I realized that 'fatal' meant no more than 'very serious'. I retired soon after dinner so that the others might take the cue. And Elsie did. The second time I peeped out she was no longer there in the sitting-room. But Chief Nanga sat on stolidly looking at the file of the speech he had already given. Every two minutes or so I came to the door and peeped out and there he was. Could he be asleep? No, his eyes seemed to be moving across the page. I was getting quite angry. Why didn't he take the blessed file to his study? But perhaps what hurt me most was the fact that I could not muster up sufficient bravado to step into the sitting-room and up the stairs. Perhaps he even expected me to do so. Let me say that I do not normally lack resolution in this kind of situation; but Chief Nanga had, as it were, cramped my style from the very first by introducing an element of delicacy into the affair, thus making it not so much a question of my own resolution as of my willingness to parade Elsie before a third person as a common slut. So there was nothing for it but wait in anger. I sat on my bed, got up again and paced my room barefoot and in pyjamas. It seemed a full hour before Chief Nanga finally switched the lights off and turned in. I gave him about five to ten minutes to settle down in his bed while I had time to steady myself from the strain of the last hour and the unsettling effect which imminent fulfilment always has on me. Then I began to tiptoe upstairs running my palm up the wooden railing for guidance. By the time I got to the landing my eyes were fairly at home in the darkness and it was easy finding Elsie's door. My hand was already on the knob when I heard voices within. I was transfixed to the spot. Then I heard laughter and immediately turned round and went down the stairs again. I did not go into my room straight away but stood for long minutes in the sitting-room. What went on in my mind at that time lacked form and I cannot now set it down. But I remember finally deciding that I was jumping to conclusions, that Chief Nanga had in all probability simply opened the connecting door between the two rooms to say good-night and exchange a few pleasantries. I decided to give him a minute or two more, and then discarding this pussy-footed business go up boldly and knock on Elsie's door. I went back to my room to wait, switched on the bedside lamp which was worked by a short silvery rope instead of a normal switch, looked at my watch which I had taken off and put on a bedside stool. It was already past half-past ten. This stung me into activity again. I hadn't thought it was so late. I rushed into the sitting-room and made to bound up the stairs when I heard as from a great distance Elsie deliriously screaming my name. I find it difficult in retrospect to understand my inaction at that moment. A sort of paralysis had spread over my limbs, while an intense pressure was building up inside my chest. But before it reached raging point I felt it siphoned off, leaving me empty inside and out. I trudged up the stairs in the incredible delusion that Elsie was calling on me to come and save her from her ravisher. But when I got to the door a strong revulsion and hatred swept over me and I turned sharply away and went down the stairs for the last time. I sat on my bed and tried to think, with my head in my hands. But a huge sledgehammer was beating down on my brain as on an anvil and my thoughts were scattering sparks. I soon realized that what was needed was action; quick, sharp action. I rose to my feet and willed myself about gathering my things into the suitcase. I had no clear idea what I would do next, but for the moment that did not trouble me; the present loomed so large. I brought down my clothes one at a time from the wardrobe, folded them and packed them neatly; then I brought my things from the bathroom and put them away. These simple operations must have taken me a long time to complete. In all that time I did not think anything particularly. I just bit my lower lip until it was sore. Occasionally words like 'Good Heavens' escaped me and came out aloud. When I had finished packing I slumped down in the chair and then got up again and went out into the sitting-room to see if the sounds were still coming. But all was now dark and quiet upstairs. 'My word!' I remember saying; then I went to wait for Elsie. For I knew she would come down shedding tears of shame and I would kick her out and bang the door after her for ever. I waited and waited and then, strange as it may sound, dozed off. When I started awake I had that dull, heavy terror of knowing that something terrible had happened without immediately remembering what it was. Of course the uncertainty lasted only one second, or less. Recollection and panic followed soon enough and then the humiliating wound came alive again and began to burn more fresh than when first inflicted. My watch said a few minutes past four. And Elsie had not come. My eyes misted, a thing that had not happened to me in God knows how long. Anyway the tears hung back. I took off my pyjamas, got into other clothes and left the room by the private door. I walked for hours, keeping to the well-lit streets. The dew settled on my head and helped to numb my feeling. Soon my nose began to run and as I hadn't brought a handkerchief I blew it into the roadside drain by closing each nostril in turn with my first finger. As dawn came my head began to clear a little and I saw Bori stirring. I met a night- soil man carrying his bucket of ordure on top of a battered felt hat drawn down to hood his upper face while his nose and mouth were masked with a piece of black cloth like a gangster. I saw beggars sleeping under the eaves of luxurious department stores and a lunatic sitting wide awake by the basket of garbage he called his possession. The first red buses running empty passed me and I watched the street lights go off finally around six. I drank in all these details with the early morning air. It was strange perhaps that a man who had so much on his mind should find time to pay attention to these small, inconsequential things; it was like the man in the proverb who was carrying the carcass of an elephant on his head and searching with his toes for a grasshopper. But that was how it happened. It seems that no thought---no matter how great---had the power to exclude all others. As I walked back to the house I tried in vain to find the kind of words I needed to speak to Chief Nanga. As for Elsie I should have known that she was a common harlot and the less said about her the better. Chief Nanga was outside his gate apparently looking out for me when I came round the last bend. He happened just then to be looking in the opposite direction and did not see me at once. My first reaction on seeing him was to turn back. Fortunately I did not give in to that kind of panic; in any case he turned round just then, saw me and began to come towards me. 'Where have you been, Odili?' he asked. 'We---I---have been looking for you; I nearly phoned nine-nine- nine.' 'Please don't talk to me again,' I said. 'What...! Wonders will never end! What is wrong, Odili?' 'I said don't talk to me again,' I replied as coolly as possible. 'Wonders will never end! Is it about the girl? But you told me you are not serious with her; I asked you because I don't like any misunderstanding.... And I thought you were tired and had gone to sleep...' 'Look here, Mr Nanga, respect yourself. Don't provoke me any more unless you want our names to come out in the newspapers today.' Even to myself I sounded strange. Chief Nanga was really taken aback, especially when I called him mister. 'You have won today,' I continued, 'but watch it, I will have the last laugh. I never forget.' Elsie was