“Let me ask a question. How do we salute our fellows when we come in and see them massed in assembly so huge we cannot hope to greet them one by one, to call each man by his title? Do we not say: To everyone his due? Have you thought what a wise practice our fathers fashioned out of those simple words? To every man his own! To each his chosen title! We can all see how that handful of words can save us from the ache of four hundred handshakes and the headache of remembering a like multitude of praise-names. But it does not end there. It is saying to us: Every man has what is his; do not bypass him to enter his compound…
“It is also like this (for what is true comes in different robes)… Long before sunrise in the planting or harvesting season; at that time when sleep binds us with a sweetness more than honey itself the bush-fowl will suddenly startle the farmer with her scream: o-o-i! o-o-i! o-o-i! in the stillness and chill of the grassland. I ask you, does the farmer jump up at once with heavy eyes and prepare for the fields or does he scream back to the bush-fowl: Shut up! Who told you the time? You have never hoed a cassava ridge in your life nor planted one seed of millet. No! If he is a farmer who means to prosper he will not challenge the bush-fowl; he will not dispute her battle-cry; he will get up and obey.
“Have you thought about that? I tell you it is the way the Almighty has divided the work of the world. Everyone and his own! The bush-fowl, her work; and the farmer, his.
“To some of us the Owner of the World has apportioned the gift to tell their fellows that the time to get up has finally come. To others He gives the eagerness to rise when they hear the call; to rise with racing blood and put on their garbs of war and go to the boundary of their town to engage the invading enemy boldly in battle. And then there are those others whose part is to wait and when the struggle is ended, to take over and recount its story.
“The sounding of the battle-drum is important; the fierce waging of the war itself is important; and the telling of the story afterwards—each is important in its own way. I tell you there is not one of them we could do without. But if you ask me which of them takes the eagle-feather I will say boldly: the story. Do you hear me? Now, when I was younger, if you had asked me the same question I would have replied without a pause: the battle. But age gives to a man some things with the right hand even as it takes away others with the left. The torrent of an old man’s water may no longer smash into the bole of the roadside tree a full stride away as it once did but fall around his feet like a woman’s; but in return the eye of his mind is given wing to fly away beyond the familiar sights of the homestead…
“So why do I say that the story is chief among his fellows? The same reason I think that our people sometimes will give the name Nkolika to their daughters—Recalling-Is-Greatest. Why? Because it is only the story can continue beyond the war and the warrior. It is the story that outlives the sound of war-drums and the exploits of brave fighters. It is the story, not the others, that saves our progeny from blundering like blind beggars into the spikes of the cactus fence. The story is our escort; without it, we are blind. Does the blind man own his escort? No, neither do we the story; rather it is the story that owns us and directs us. It is the thing that makes us different from cattle; it is the mark on the face that sets one people apart from their neighbours.”
The footfalls of waiters padding about the cemented courtyard rose to a new prominence in the profound silence.
“So the arrogant fool who sits astride the story as though it were a bowl of foo-foo set before him by his wife understands little about the world. The story will roll him into a ball, dip him in the soup and swallow him first. I tell you he is like the puppy who swings himself around and farts into a blazing fire with the aim to put it out. Can he? No, the story is everlasting… Like fire, when it is not blazing it is smouldering under its own ashes or sleeping and resting inside its flint-house.
“When we are young and without experience we all imagine that the story of the land is easy, that every one of us can get up and tell it. But that is not so. True, we all have our little scraps of tale bubbling in us. But what we tell is like the middle of a mighty boa which a foolish forester mistakes for a tree trunk and settles upon to take his snuff… Yes, we lay into our little tale with wild eyes and a vigorous tongue. Then, one day Agwu comes along and knocks it out of our mouth and our jaw out of shape for our audacity and hands over the story to a man of his choice… Agwu does not call a meeting to choose his seers and diviners and artists; Agwu, the god of healers; Agwu, brother to Madness! But though born from the same womb he and Madness were not created by the same chi. Agwu is the right hand a man extends to his fellows; Madness, the forbidden hand. Madness unleashes and rides his man roughly into the wild savannah. Agwu possesses his own just as securely but has him corralled to serve the compound. Agwu picks his disciple, rings his eye with white chalk and dips his tongue, willing or not, in the brew of prophecy; and right away the man will speak and put head and tail back to the severed trunk of our tale. This miracle-man will amaze us because he may be a fellow of little account, not the bold warrior we all expect nor even the war-drummer. But in his new-found utterance our struggle will stand reincarnated before us. He is the liar who can sit under his thatch and see the moon hanging in the sky outside. Without stirring from his stool he can tell you how commodities are selling in a distant market-place. His chalked eye will see every blow in a battle he never fought. So fully is he owned by the telling that sometimes—especially when he looks around him and finds no age-mate to challenge the claim—he will turn the marks left on him by the chicken-pox and yaws he suffered in childhood into bullet scars… yes, scars from that day our men pounded their men like palmfruit in the heavy mortar of iroko!”
The tense air was broken suddenly by loud laughter. The old man himself smiled with benign mischief.
“But the lies of those possessed by Agwu are lies that do no harm to anyone. They float on the top of story like the white bubbling at the pot-mouth of new palm-wine. The true juice of the tree lies coiled up inside, waiting to strike…
“I don’t know why my tongue is crackling away tonight like a clay-bowl of ukwa seeds toasting over the fire; why I feel like a man who has been helped to lower a heavy load from off his head; and he straightens his neck again and shakes the ache from it. Yes, my children, I feel light-headed like one who has completed all his tasks and is gay and free to go. But I don’t want to leave thinking that any of you is being pushed away from his proper work, from the work his creator arranged with him before he set out for the world…”
He stopped speaking. The silence was so complete that one could hear him gnashing his teeth. Ikem realized that other people, habitués of the Harmoney Hotel, drinking their beer at single tables in different parts of the courtyard, had also fallen under this old man’s spell and now had their eyes trained on him.
“When we were told two years ago that we should vote for the Big Chief to rule for ever and all kinds of people we had never seen before came running in and out of our villages asking us to say yes I told my people: We have Osodi in Bassa. If he comes home and tells us that we should say yes we will do so because he is there as our eye and ear. I said: if what these strange people are telling us is true, Osodi will come or he will write in his paper and our sons will read it and know that it is true. But he did not come to tell us and he did not write it in his paper. So we knew that cunning had entered that talk.
“There was another thing that showed me there was deception in the talk. The people who were running in and out and telling us to say yes came one day and told us that the Big Chief himself did not want to rule for ever but that he was being forced. Who is forcing him? I asked. The people, they replied. That means us? I asked, and their eyes shifted from side to side. And I knew finally that cunning had entered the matter. And I thanked them and they left. I called my people and said to them: The Big Chief doesn’t want to rule for ever because he is sensible. Even when a man marries a woman he does not marry her for ever.
One day one of them will die and the marriage will end. So my people and I said No.”
There was a huge applause, not only from the tables where the Abazon people sat but from other tables as well.
“But that was not the end. More shifting-eyes people came and said: Because you said no to the Big Chief he is very angry and has ordered all the water bore-holes they are digging in your area to be closed so that you will know what it means to offend the sun. You will suffer so much that in your next reincarnation you will need no one to tell you to say yes whether the matter is clear to you or not.”
“God will not agree,” replied many voices.
“So we came to Bassa to say our own yes and perhaps the work on our bore-holes will start again and we will not all perish from the anger of the sun. We did not know before but we know now that yes does not cause trouble. We do not fully understand the ways of today yet but we are learning. A dancing masquerade in my town used to say: It is true I do not hear English but when they say Catch am nobody tells me to take myself off as fast as I can.”
There was loud laughter from all parts of the courtyard, some of the people savouring the joke by repeating it to themselves or to their neighbours and laughing all over again.
“So we are ready to learn new things and mend our old, useless ways. If you cross the Great River to marry a wife you must be ready for the risk of night journey by canoe… I don’t know whether the people we have come to see will listen to our cry for water or not. Sometime ago we were told that the Big Chief himself was planning to visit our villages and see our suffering. Then we were told again that he was not coming because he had just remembered that we had said no to him two years ago. So we said, if he will not come, let us go and visit him instead in his house. It is proper that a beggar should visit a king. When a rich man is sick a beggar goes to visit him and say sorry. When the beggar is sick, he waits to recover and then goes to tell the rich man that he has been sick. It is the place of the poor man to make a visit to the rich man who holds the yam and the knife.”
“That is indeed the world,” replied the audience.
“Whether our coming to the Big Chief’s compound will do any good or not we cannot say. We did not see him face to face because he was talking to another Big Chief like himself who is visiting from another country. But we can go back to our people and tell them that we have struggled for them with what remaining strength we have… Once upon a time the leopard who had been trying for a long time to catch the tortoise finally chanced upon him on a solitary road. ‘Aha,’ he said; ‘at long last! Prepare to die.’ And the tortoise said: ‘Can I ask one favour before you kill me.?’ The leopard saw no harm in that and agreed. ‘Give me a few moments to prepare my mind,’ the tortoise said. Again the leopard saw no harm in that and granted it. But instead of standing still as the leopard had expected the tortoise went into strange action on the road, scratching with hands and feet and throwing sand furiously in all directions. ‘Why are you doing that?’ asked the puzzled leopard. The tortoise replied: ‘Because even after I am dead I would want anyone passing by this spot to say, yes, a fellow and his match struggled here.’
“My people, that is all we are doing now. Struggling. Perhaps to no purpose except that those who come after us will be able to say: True, our fathers were defeated but they tried.”
WHEN IKEM GOT to his parked car outside the big iron archway on which HARMONEY HOTEL shone in fluorescent letters he found a huge police motor cycle parked in such a way behind it as, quite clearly, to prevent its moving out. As he looked around in surprise a police constable stepped out of the shadows and asked:
“Na you get this car?”
“Yes, anything the matter?”
“Why you no put parking light?”
Parking light. That was a new one. He had never been asked about parking light in Bassa before. But never mind.
“Well, I didn’t see any need. With all this light around.”
He waved his hand at the many fluorescent tubes shining from Harmoney Hotel’s perimeter walls.
“So when you see electric for somebody’s wall it follow say you no go put your parking light? What section of Traffic Law be that one?”
“It’s a matter of common sense, I should say.”
“Common sense! So me self I no get common sense; na so you talk. OK, Mr. Commonsense, make I see your particulars.”
A number of people had come out of the hotel premises to watch the palaver and were joined by a few passers-by on the road. Very soon every Abazon man still around had joined the scene and the Master of Ceremonies stepped forward and asked the policeman if he did not know the Editor of the National Gazette.
“I no know am! Na sake of editor he come abuse me when I de do my work. He can be editor for his office not for road.”
“He no abuse you. I de here all the time,” said one bystander.
“Make you shut your smelling mouth there, Mr. Lawyer. Abi you want come with me for Charge Office to explain? You no hear when he say I no get common sense. That no be abuse for your country? Oga, I want see your particulars. Na you people de make the law na you dey break am.”
Without uttering another word Ikem produced his papers and handed over to the policeman.
“Wey your insurance?”
“That’s what you are looking at.”
He opened a notebook, placed it on the bonnet of the car and began to write, now and again referring to Ikem’s documents. The growing crowd of spectators stood in silence in a circle around the car and the chief actors, the policeman playing his role of writing down somebody’s fate with the self-important and painful slowness of half-literacy… At long last he tore out a sheet of his note-paper and handed it like a death warrant to Ikem.
“Come for Traffic Office for Monday morning, eight o’clock sharp. If you no come or you come late you de go answer for court. Kabisa.”
“Can I have my papers back?”
The policeman laughed indulgently at this clever-stupid man.
“That paper wey I give you just now na your cover till Monday. If any police ask you for particular show am that paper. And when you come for Monday make you bring am.”
He folded Ikem’s documents and put them with his notebook into his breast pocket and buttoned down the flap with the flourish of a judge’s gavel.
The Master of Ceremonies was boiling into another protest but Ikem made the sign of silence to him—a straight finger across sealed lips, and then swung the same finger around to hint at the law officer’s holster.
“Don’t provoke a man doing his duty. The police have something they call accidental discharge.”
“No be me go kill you, my friend.”
This retort was made frontally to Ikem. With a strange expression of mockery and hatred on his face the policeman mounted his heavy machine and roared away. The Master of Ceremonies asked Ikem:
“Did you get his number?”
“I’m afraid I didn’t think of that. Anyway it doesn’t matter.”
“Here it is.”
And he held to him a number written with biro on the palm of his left hand and Ikem took it down on the back of his summons paper.
MONDAY MORNING at the Traffic Police Office. Ikem had decided to do what he rarely did—use his clout. There were more important things to do with his time than engage in fisticuffs with a traffic warden. So he had telephoned the Superintendent of Traffic from his office and made an appointment for nine-thirty.
There was a senior officer waiting for him at the Desk Sergeant’s front room who took him straight into the Superintendent’s office.
“I never meet you before in person sir,” said the Superintendent springing out from behind his massive wooden desk. “Very pleased to meet you sir… I was expecting a huge fellow like this,” and he made a sign sideways and upwards.
“No, I am quite small. Anyone who feels like it can actually beat me up quite easily.”
“Oh no. The pen is mightier than the
sword. With one sentence of your sharp pen you can demolish anybody. Ha ha ha ha ha. I respect your pen, sir… What can I do for you, sir. I know you are a busy man and I don’t want to waste your time.”
As Ikem told his story he thought he saw something like relief spreading through the man’s face.
“Is that all? You shouldn’t have come all this way for that. You should have told me on the phone and I should have asked the stupid fellow to bring your particulars himself to you and to stay there and wash your car before coming back. These boys have no common sense.”
“Well, I suppose he was only doing his job.”
“What kind of nonsense job is that? To go about contravening important people.”
He slapped his open palm on the buzzer with such violence that the orderly who scampered in from the outer office was confusedly straightening his cap, holding his loose belt and attempting a salute all at the same time.
“Go and bring me at once everybody who was on road duty on Saturday night.”
“Sorry, it was Friday night,” said Ikem.
“Sorry, Friday! Everybody here one time. Except those on beat… Again Mr. Osodi, I must apologize to you for this embarrassment.”
“No problem, Superintendent.” He had thought of putting in another mitigating word for the constable but remembered his utterly atrocious behaviour and held his peace.
At that point eight worried constables were marched in. Ikem spotted his man at once but decided that even engaging his eye would be a mark of friendship. They saluted and stood stock-still, their worried eyes alone swivelling around like things with a life of their own.
The Superintendent gazed at them in turn without saying a word. In his code they were all guilty at this stage.