A Man of the People Read online

  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 pajamas, 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 standing at the door with arms folded across her bust when I came in at the gate. She immediately rushed indoors and disappeared.

  When I brought out my suitcase Chief Nanga, who had not said another word since I insulted him, came forward and tried to put a hand on my shoulder in one last effort at reconciliation.

  “Don’t touch me!” I eased my shoulders away like one avoiding a leper’s touch. He immediately recoiled; his smile hardened on his face and I was happy.

  “Don’t be childish, Odili,” he said paternally. “After all she is not your wife. What is all this nonsense? She told me there is nothing between you and she, and you told me the same thing . . . But anyway I am sorry if you are offended; the mistake is mine. I tender unreserved apology. If you like I can bring you six girls this evening. You go do the thing sotay you go beg say you no want again. Ha, ha, ha, ha!”

  “What a country!” I said. “You call yourself Minister of Culture. God help us.” And I spat; not a full spit but a token, albeit unmistakable, one.

  “Look here, Odili,” he turned on me then like an incensed leopard, “I will not stomach any nonsense from any small boy for the sake of a common woman, you hear? If you insult me again I will show you pepper. You young people of today are very ungrateful. Imagine! Anyway don’t insult me again-o. . . .”

  “You can’t do a damn-all,” I said. “You are just a bush . . .” I cut myself short and walked out, lumbering my suitcase past Dogo the one-eyed stalwart who had presumably heard our voices and come out from the Boys’ Quarters in his sleeping loin-cloth to investigate.

  “Na this boy de halla so for master im face?” I heard him ask.

  “Don’t mind the stupid idiot,” said Chief Nanga.

  �
��E no fit insult master like that here and comot free. Hey! My frien’!” he shouted, coming after me. “Are you there?” His voice was full of menace.

  I was then half-way to the outside gate. I turned boldly round but on second thoughts said nothing, turned again and continued.

  “Leave am, Dogo. Make e carry im bad luck de go. Na my own mistake for bring am here. Ungrateful ingrate!”

  I was now at the gate but his voice was loud and I heard every word.

  • • •

  I took a taxi to my friend Maxwell’s address. Maxwell Kulamo, a lawyer, had been my classmate at the Grammar School. We called him Kulmax or Cool Max in those days; and his best friends still did. He was the Poet Laureate of our school and I still remember the famous closing couplet of the poem he wrote when our school beat our rivals in the Intercollegiate Soccer Competition:

  Hurrah! to our unconquerable full backs.

  (The writer of these lines is Cool Max.)

  • • •

  He was already fully dressed for Court (striped trousers and black coat) and was eating breakfast when I arrived. The few words I spoke to Nanga and the fairly long taxi ride had combined to make it possible for me to wear a passable face.

  “Good gracious!” Max shouted, shaking my hand violently. “Diligent! Na your eye be this?” Diligent was a version of Odili I had borne at school.

  “Cool Max!” I greeted him in return. “The writer of these lines!” We laughed and laughed and the tears I had not shed last night came to my eyes. Max suspected nothing and even thought I was just coming from home. I told him rather shamefacedly that I had been in town for the past few days but hadn’t found it possible to contact him. He took this to be a reference to his having no telephone in the house, a fact which in turn could be a reflection on his practice.

  “I have been on the waiting list for a telephone for two months,” he said defensively. “You see, I have not given anyone a bribe, and I don’t know any big gun . . . So you have been staying with that corrupt, empty-headed, illiterate capitalist. Sorry-o.”

  “Na matter of can’t help,” I said. “He na my old teacher, you know.”

  I was dipping my bread in the cup of hot cocoa drink Max’s boy had made for me. Chief Nanga and Elsie already seemed so distant that I could have talked about them like casual acquaintances. But I was not going to delay Max by talking now. And in any case I had no wish to make him think that I only remembered him when I could no longer enjoy the flesh-pots of Chief Nanga’s home.

  Within minutes I was already feeling so relaxed and at ease here that I wondered what piece of ill-fate took me to Chief Nanga in the first place.

  8

  It was only after Max had left for Court at around nine that I finally felt the full weight of the previous night’s humiliation settling down on me. The heat and anger had now largely evaporated leaving the cold fact that another man had wrenched my girl-friend from my hand and led her to bed under my very eyes, and I had done nothing about it—could do nothing. And why? Because the man was a minister bloated by the flatulence of ill-gotten wealth, living in a big mansion built with public money, riding in a Cadillac and watched over by a one-eyed, hired thug. And as though that were not enough he had had the obscene effrontery to say he thought I was too tired! A man of fifty or more with a son in a secondary school and a wife whose dress gets caught between the buttocks thought I was too tired! And here was I doing nothing about it except speculating whether Elsie would go back to her hospital that day or spend another night with Chief Nanga. By late afternoon I even had the crazy, preposterous idea of wanting to go to a public telephone to put through an anonymous call. Of course I killed the disgraceful thought right away.

  But I suppose it was possible (judging by the way things finally worked themselves out) that these weak and trivial thoughts might have been a sort of smoke screen behind which, unknown to me, weighty decisions were taking shape. It was perhaps like the theory of writing examinations that one of my lecturers used to propound to us. He said the right technique was to read all the questions once through, select those you wanted to answer and then start with the easiest; his theory being that while you were answering the easy number your subconscious would set to work arranging the others for you. I tried it out for my degree examination and although the result was not exactly startling I suppose it could have been worse.

  But on the present question of Chief Nanga my subconscious (or something very much like it) seemed to have gone voluntarily into operation. I was just flapping about like a trapped bird when suddenly I saw the opening. I saw that Elsie did not matter in the least. What mattered was that a man had treated me as no man had a right to treat another—not even if he was master and the other slave; and my manhood required that I make him pay for his insult in full measure. In flesh and blood terms I realized that I must go back, seek out Nanga’s intended parlour-wife and give her the works, good and proper. All this flashed through my mind in one brief moment of blinding insight—just like that, without warning!

  I was singing happily when Max came home in the late afternoon. He tried to be furious with his house-boy for not giving me my share of the lunch when it was ready, but I went straight to the boy’s defence and said he had offered to serve me but that I insisted on waiting, which was quite untrue.

  As we ate I told Max about Elsie and Chief Nanga, amending the story in several minor particulars and generally making light of it all, not only because I was anxious to play down my humiliation but even more because I no longer cared for anything except the revenge.

  “If you put juju on a woman it will catch that old rotter,” said Max after I had told the story.

  “I know someone who did,” I said light-heartedly, “but the old rotter wasn’t caught.” I then told him the story of the woman who didn’t take off her bra, thinking it would amuse him. I was wrong.

  “That’s all they care for,” he said with a solemn face. “Women, cars, landed property. But what else can you expect when intelligent people leave politics to illiterates like Chief Nanga?”

  The appearance of comparative peace which Max’s house presented to me that morning proved quite deceptive. Or perhaps some of Chief Nanga’s “queen bee” characteristics had rubbed off on me and transformed me into an independent little nucleus of activity which I trailed with me into this new place. That first night I not only heard of a new political party about to be born but got myself enrolled as a foundation member. Max and some of his friends having watched with deepening disillusion the use to which our hard-won freedom was being put by corrupt, mediocre politicians had decided to come together and launch the Common People’s Convention.

  There were eight young people in his room that evening. All but one were citizens of our country, mostly professional types. The only lady there was a very beautiful lawyer who, I learned afterwards, was engaged to Max whom she had first met at the London School of Economics. There was a trade-unionist, a doctor, another lawyer, a teacher and a newspaper columnist.

  Max introduced me without any previous consultation as a “trustworthy comrade who had only the other day had his girl-friend snatched from him by a minister who shall remain nameless”.

  Naturally I did not care for that kind of image or reputation. So I promptly intervened to point out that the woman in question was not strictly speaking my girl-friend but a casual acquaintance whom both Chief Nanga and I knew.

  “So it was Chief Nanga, yes?” said the European and everyone burst out laughing.

  “Who else could it be?” said one of the others.

  The white man was apparently from one of the Eastern Bloc countries. He did not neglect to stress to me in an aside that he was there only as a friend of Max’s. He told me a lot of things quietly while the others were discussing some obscure details about the launching. I was as much interested in what he said as the way he said it. His English had an exotic qual
ity occasionally—as when he said that it was good to see intellectuals like Max, myself and the rest coming out of their “tower of elephant tusk” into active politics. And he often punctuated whatever he was saying with “yes”, spoken with the accent of a question.

  I must say that I was immediately taken with the idea of the Common People’s Convention. Apart from everything else it would add a second string to my bow when I came to deal with Nanga. But right now I was anxious not to appear to Max and his friends as the easily impressed type. I suppose I wanted to erase whatever impression was left of Max’s unfortunate if unintentional presentation of me as a kind of pitiable jellyfish. So I made what I intended to be a little spirited sceptical speech.

  “It is very kind of you gentlemen and lady—I say gentlemen and lady advisedly because this happens to be Africa—it is very kind of you to accept me so readily. I wish to assure you all that your confidence will be fully justified. But without trying to put a cat among your pigeons I must say that I find it somewhat odd that a party calling itself the Common People’s Convention should be made up of only professional men and women. . . .”