On his way to resume his hard-lying pretence at cock-crow one morning who should he behold stretched right across his path its head lost in the shrubbery to the left and its tail likewise to the right? None other than Eke-Idemili itself, royal python, messenger of the Daughter of God—the very one who carries not a drop of venom in its mouth and yet is held in greater awe than the deadliest of serpents!
His circuitous way to the bachelor’s hut thus barred, his feet obeying a power outside his will took him straight and true as an arrow to the consternation of his compound and his funeral.
BEATRICE NWANYIBUIFE did not know these traditions and legends of her people because they played but little part in her upbringing. She was born as we have seen into a world apart; was baptized and sent to schools which made much about the English and the Jews and the Hindu and practically everybody else but hardly put in a word for her forebears and the divinities with whom they had evolved. So she came to barely knowing who she was. Barely, we say though, because she did carry a vague sense more acute at certain critical moments than others of being two different people. Her father had deplored the soldier-girl who fell out of trees. Chris saw the quiet demure damsel whose still waters nonetheless could conceal deep overpowering eddies of passion that always almost sucked him into fatal depths. Perhaps Ikem alone came close to sensing the village priestess who will prophesy when her divinity rides her abandoning if need be her soup-pot on the fire, but returning again when the god departs to the domesticity of kitchen or the bargaining market-stool behind her little display of peppers and dry fish and green vegetables. He knew it better than Beatrice herself.
But knowing or not knowing does not save us from being known and even recruited and put to work. For, as a newly-minted proverb among her people has it, baptism (translated in their language as Water of God) is no antidote against possession by Agwu the capricious god of diviners and artists.
NWANYIBUIFE
WHEN SHE WAS MARCHED through the ranks of her erstwhile party comrades like a disgraced soldier just cashiered at a courtmartial, his epaulette ripped off with his insignia of rank, she was strangely lucid. The soft voice conveying the news of the car waiting below had done it. Her sense of danger had been stabbed into hypersensitivity by the menace of that voice—quiet as before but flashing ever so briefly that glint of metal. Aha! This was the man who, as rumour has it, returned from an intensive course in a Latin American army and invented the simplest of tortures for preliminary interrogations. No messy or cumbersome machinery but a tiny piece of office equipment anyone could pick up in a stationery store and put in his pocket—a paper-stapler in short, preferably the Samsonite brand. Just place the hand where the paper should be—palm up or down doesn’t really matter—and bang. The truth jumps out surprisingly fast, even from the hardest of cases.
This extended image flashed through Beatrice’s mind in its completeness and in one instant. When she walked through the room behind the major she was likewise able to take in as if by some unseen radar revolving atop her head every detail of the scene. His Excellency was the only party missing from this still life. All the figures, except one, stared at her silently and uninhibitedly from whatever standing or sitting position they were in, the American girl’s eyeballs in particular popping out of her head like the eyeballs of a violent idol. One man alone kept his gaze to the carpet on which he sat and seemed to doodle with his finger—Alhaji Mahmoud, Chairman of the Kangan/American Chamber of Commerce. He was the only person at the party just ended with whom Beatrice had not exchanged a single word that evening beyond a lukewarm hello at the introductions.
It was the same car, the same driver, the same escort. The two had jumped out to salute the Major as he brought their passenger down, opened the door of the car for her himself, slammed it shut after her and walked away without a word.
Naturally the journey back was silent. Which suited her perfectly. The sharp prick of physical anxiety caused by that glint of metal hidden inside the Major’s velvet voice had passed quickly taking also with it the envelopment of utter desolation which had preceded it and which it had so effectively punctured. What passed through her mind and flowed through her senses during the midnight journey could not be assigned a simple name. It was more complex than the succession of hot and cold flushes of malaria. Indignation, humiliation, outrage, sorrow, pity, anger, vindictiveness and other less identifiable emotions swept back and forth through her like successions of waves coming in, hitting shallow bottom of shoreline, exploding in white froth and flowing back a little tired, somewhat assuaged.
By rights she should not have slept that night. But she did; and a deep and plumbless sleep it proved to be. She tumbled into it without preparation from the brink of wakefulness, in full dress. And her waking up was just as precipitate. One instant she was virtually unconscious and the next she was totally awake, her eyes and head absolutely clear. She was tranquil almost. Why? From what source? Last night now seemed far away, like something remembered from a long and turbulent dream. Last night? It wasn’t last night. It was the same night, this night. It was still Saturday night stroke Sunday morning. And it wasn’t light yet.
She heard far away the crowing of a cock. Strange. She had not before heard a cock crow in this Government Reserved Area. Surely nobody here has been reduced to keeping poultry like common villagers. Perhaps some cook or steward or gardener had knocked together an illegal structure outside his room in the Boys’ Quarters for a chicken-house. The British when they were here would not have stood for it. They had totally and completely ruled out the keeping of domestic animals in their reservation. Except dogs, of course. That habit, strange to say, has survived but not for the reasons the British established it. You wouldn’t see any of their black successors walking his dog today but you will find affixed to the iron grill or barbed wire gate a stern warning: BEWARE OF DOG, sometimes embellished with the likeness of an Alsatian or German Shepherd’s head with a flaming red tongue. Unfortunately armed robbers of Kangan do not stop at kicking dogs; they shoot them.
Lying in bed clear-eyed and listening to the sounds of morning was a new experience for Beatrice. As the faint light of dawn began timidly to peer through gaps in window blinds and the high fan-light of her bedroom she heard with a sudden pang of exultation the song of a bird she had heard so often in the mission compound of her childhood but not, as far as she could tell, ever since; certainly never before in Bassa. She immediately sat up in her bed.
The bird, her mother had told her, was the chief servant of the king and every morning he asks the guards of the treasury: Is the king’s property correct?… Is the king’s property correct?… The king’s property… The king’s property… Is the king’s property correct?
She got up, went into the living-room, picked up the front-door keys from the sideboard and unlocked the grill and the door and went out into her narrow balcony. Standing there among her potted plants she took in deep lungfuls of luxuriously cool, fresh morning air and watched streaks of light brightening slowly in the eastern sky. And then he spoke again, the diligent chamberlain: Is the king’s property correct? And now she saw him against the light—a little dark-brownish fellow with a creamy belly and the faintest suggestion of a ceremonial plume on the crown of his head. He was perched on the taller of the two pine trees standing guard at the driveway into the block of flats.
Beatrice had never until now shown the slightest interest in birds and beyond vultures and cattle egrets hardly knew any of them by name. Now she was so taken with this conscientious palace official that she decided to find out his name as soon as possible. She knew there was an illustrated book called something like The Common Birds of West Africa… Again he demanded: The king’s property… The king’s property… Is the king’s property correct?
Strange, but tears loomed suddenly in Beatrice’s eyes as she spoke to the bird: “Poor fellow. You have not heard the news? The king’s treasury was broken into last night and all his property carried away—h
is crown, his sceptre and all.”
As she scanned the pine trees in the rapidly brightening light she saw that the caretaker of the crown jewels was not alone. There were literally scores of other birds hopping about the twigs preening themselves and making low trilling noises or short, sharp calls of satisfaction. He continued intermittently to make his strong-voiced inquiry until the sun had come up and then, as on a signal, the birds began to fly away in ones and twos and larger groups. Soon the tree was empty.
These birds, she thought, did not just arrive here this morning. Here, quite clearly, is where they have always slept. Why have I not noticed them before?
Even her poor mother terrorized as she was by her woman’s lot could fabricate from immemorial birdsong this tale of an African bird waking up his new world in words of English. A powerful flush of remembering now swept through her mind like a gust of wind and she recalled perfectly every circumstance of the story. Alas, her mother had only told, not invented it. The credit must go to a certain carpenter/comedian who played the accordion at village Christian wakes and performed such tricks as lifting a table between his teeth to chase away sleep from the eyes of mourners and relieve the tedium of hymns and pious testimonies.
Beatrice smiled wryly. So, two whole generations before the likes of me could take a first-class degree in English, there were already barely literate carpenters and artisans of British rule hacking away in the archetypal jungle and subverting the very sounds and legends of daybreak to make straight my way.
And my father—wonders shall never end as he would say—was he then also among these early morning road-makers-into-the-jungle-of-tongues? What an improbable thought! And yet all those resounding maxims he wielded like the hefty strokes of an axeman. Cleanliness is next to godliness! Punctuality is the soul of business! (A prelude this, she recalled with a smile now, to the flogging of late-comers to school on rainy mornings.) And then that gem of them all, his real favourite: Procrastination is a lazy man’s apology! A maxim of mixed mintage, that; half-caste first-fruits of a heady misalliance. Or, as Ikem would have said, missionary mishmash!
She thawed fast and unexpectedly to the memory of this man who was her father and yet a total stranger, like the bird who lived and sang in her tree unknown to her till now.
She was still at the railing of her balcony when Agatha came in to begin her chores. “No breakfast for me Agatha,” she called out cheerily to her. “But, make me a nice cup of coffee, please.” She drank it at the same spot where she had taken her position at dawn.
A lizard red in head and tail, blue in trunk chased a drab-grey female furiously, as male lizards always seem to do, across the paved driveway. She darted through the hedges as though her life depended on it. Unruffled he took a position of high visibility at the centre of the compound and began to do his endless press-ups no doubt to impress upon the coy female, wherever she might be hiding in the shrubbery, the fact of his physical stamina.
At last she left the balcony and went indoors for a cold shower and then changed into a long, loose dress of blue adire embroidered in elaborate white patterns at the neck, chest, sleeves and hem. As she looked at herself in her bedroom mirror and liked what she saw, she thought: We can safely leave grey drabness in female attire to the family of lizards and visidng American journalists.
The case of the lizard is probably quite understandable. With the ferocious sexuality of her man she must need all the drabness she can muster for a shield.
She ate a grapefruit and drank a second cup of coffee while she flipped through the barren pages of the Sunday newspapers much of it full-page portrait obituaries even of grandfathers who had died fifty years ago but apparently still remembered every passing minute by their devoted descendants. And, wedged between memories of the living dead, equally fulsome portraiture of the still living who have “made it” in wealth or title or simply years. And once in a while among these dead-alive celebrities a disclaimer of someone newly disreputable, inserted by his former employer or partner using naturally a photograph of the unflattering quality of a police WANTED poster.
She tossed the papers away irritably wondering why one must keep on buying and trying to read such trash. Except that if you didn’t you couldn’t avoid the feeling that you might be missing something important, few of us, alas having the strength of will to resist that false feeling. She got up and put Onyeka Onwenu’s “One Love” on the stereo and returned to the sofa, threw her head on the back-rest and shut her eyes.
As the morning wore on she seemed to become less and less composed. She looked at her watch frequently. Once, after she had changed a record she picked up the telephone, heard the dialling tone and replaced.
When finally it rang she looked at her watch again. It was eleven exactly. She let the telephone ring five or six times and might have left it longer had Agatha not rushed in from the kitchen to answer it.
It was who she thought it was. Chris.
“So you are back,” he joked.
“Yes, I am back,” she answered.
“Anything the matter?”
“Like what?”
“Are you all right, BB?”
“Why, of course. Do I sound as if I might not be all right?”
“Yes, you do… Are you alone?”
“What do you mean?”
“Look, I’m coming over. See you.”
Twenty minutes later his car pulled up outside. Beatrice went not to the front door but to the kitchen door first, opened it and told Agatha that she was expecting someone and did not wish to be disturbed when he came up. Agatha’s saucy and suggestive look at this news led Beatrice to lock the kitchen door altogether. Then she went to answer the doorbell.
Chris decided to take the bull by the horn. As soon as he was let in he asked how the party went.
“Party? But that was last night.”
“Yes, it was last night. And I am asking how did it go?”
“It went all right.”
They were both seated now, she on the sofa, he on a chair across the low centre table standing on a brown circular rug. They sat staring at each other for minutes, if not hours. Chris was completely at a loss. He had never had to cope with BB in such a mood and was quite unprepared. At last he got up, walked a few steps and stopped in front of her.
“Will you be good enough, BB, to tell me in what way I have now offended you.”
“Offended me? Who said you offended me?”
“Then why are you behaving so strange.”
“I am not behaving strange. You are! Chris, you are behaving very strange indeed. Listen, let me ask you a simple question, Chris. I am the girl you say you want to marry. Right? OK, I am taken away in strange, very strange circumstances last night. I call you beforehand and tell you. You come over here and all you say to me is: ‘Don’t worry, it’s all right.’”
“I never said anything of the sort to you.”
“Chris, you asked me, the girl you want to marry, to travel forty miles at night to Abichi…”
“To Abichi? You didn’t say it was Abichi, did you?”
“That’s not the point. You asked the girl you want to marry to go along and keep all options open. Do you remember that? Well, I’m sorry to inform you I did not take your advice.”
“You are being…”
“Please, don’t interrupt. I go off forty miles to this weird party.”
“BB, you never told me it was to Abichi.”
“Please, let me finish. I am carried off to this strange place and my future husband retires to his bed, sleeps well, wakes up, listens to the BBC at seven, has his bath, eats his breakfast and sits down afterwards to read the papers. Perhaps even take a walk in the garden. It is still only nine o’clock, so perhaps you go to your study and attend to some work you brought home. And then, finally at midday you remember the girl you asked to keep all the options open. You pick up the phone and tell her oh, you’re back!”
“I didn’t want to call earlier if that’s what
you are complaining about…”
“I am not complaining about anything. You didn’t want to call earlier. Exactly. You didn’t! You know why you didn’t? Because you didn’t want to find out if I slept in Abichi with your boss.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“You didn’t want to catch me out. Why? Because you are a very reasonable man, Chris. You are a very considerate man. You wouldn’t hurt a fly. Well, I have bad news for you. You are damn too reasonable for this girl. I want a man who cares, not a man…”
“BB, you are out of your mind!”
“She wants a man who cares enough to be curious about where his girl sleeps. That’s the kind of man this girl wants.”
“Well, well!”
“Well, well. Yes, well, well. And about time.”
“Listen BB.” (He took the remaining steps and made to place a hand on her shoulder.)
“Take your hand off me,” she screamed.
“Don’t bark at me, BB.”
“I’m not barking.”
“You are. I don’t know what has come over you. Screaming at me like some Cherubim and Seraphim prophetess or something. What’s the matter? I don’t understand.”
He stood there where the hand he had tried to place on her shoulder had been rebuffed, and gazed down at her. She had now folded her arms across her breast and bent her head forward on her chest as if in silent prayer. Neither of them moved again or spoke for a very long time. Then Chris noticed the slightest heaving of her chest and shoulders and went and sat down on the sofa beside her and placed his left arm across her shoulder and with his right hand raised her chin gently and saw she was crying. She did not resist then as he pulled her to him and reverently tasted the salt of her tears.