“Nonsense!”
“And even if I were to make one hell of an effort and turn in my paper today, what do I do after that? Go into exile and drink a lot of booze in European capitals and sleep with a lot of white girls after delivering revolutionary lectures to admiring audiences seven worlds away from where my problem is. BB, I have seen that option; I have considered it and believe me it’s far less attractive than this charade here.”
“So?”
“So I will stay put. And do you know something else; it may not be easy to leave even if I wanted. Do you remember what he said during that terrifying debate over his life presidency? I told you, didn’t I? For one brief moment he shed his pretended calmness and threatened me: If anyone thinks he can leave the Cabinet on this issue he will be making a sad mistake.”
“Anyone walking out of that door will not go home but head straight into detention. Yes I remember that. So?”
“I am not saying that such a ridiculous threat is what is keeping me at my post. I mention it only to show how tricky things can become of a sudden. That’s why I have said a hundred million times to Ikem: Lie low for a while and this gathering tornado may rage and pass overhead carrying away roof-tops and perhaps… only perhaps… leave us battered but alive. But oh no! Ikem is outraged that I should recommend such cowardly and totally unworthy behaviour to him. You yourself have been witness to it again and again. And you are now asking me to go yet again and go on my knees and ask an artist who has the example of Don Quixote and other fictional characters to guide him…”
“Oh, that’s not fair, Chris. That’s most unfair. Ikem is as down to the ground, in his way, as either of us. Perhaps, more so… You only have to compare his string of earthy girlfriends to yours truly…”
Having said it Beatrice immediately regretted her indulgence. She should have resisted the temptation of a soft diversionary remark. Power escaped through it leaving her passionate purpose suddenly limp… They talked on desultorily for a little while longer and then parted without denting the problem. Chris merely restated his position before leaving.
“You are asking a man who has long despaired of fighting to hold back a combatant, fanatical and in full gear. My dear, all he’ll ever get for his pains is to be knocked flat on his face.”
9
Views of Struggle
IKEM’S DRIVE that hot afternoon was not in answer to Chris’s instruction to send a reporter to the Presidential Palace. A reporter was indeed sent and he must have duly reported. Ikem went for reasons of his own, in search of personal enlightenment.
He arrived on the grounds of the Palace just as the party was breaking up. So he could do no more for the present than exchange courtesies with the white-bearded leader of the Abazon delegation and arrange a later meeting with him and his group at the hotel where they were lodged.
Harmoney Hotel is a sleazy establishment in the northern slums of the capital and, judging by the ease with which Ikem’s inquiry led him to it, a popular resort in the neighbourhood. It is the kind of place that would boast a certain number of resident prostitutes; a couple of rooms used by three or four young men of irregular hours and unspecified occupation who sleep mostly by day; and a large turnover of small-time traders from up-country visiting Bassa periodically to replenish their stock of retail goods. It is busy and homely in a peculiar kind of way.
Ikem had already discovered at the Presidential Palace that the delegation was not five hundred strong as he had been told but a mere six, and that the large crowd that had accompanied it to the Palace were Abazon indigenes in Bassa: motor mechanics, retail traders, tailors, vulcanizers, taxi- and bus-drivers who had loaned their vehicles, and others doing all kinds of odd jobs or nothing at all in the city. A truly motley crowd! No wonder His Excellency was reported to have received the news of their sudden arrival on his doorstep with considerable apprehension. I would too if I were in his shoes, admitted Ikem mischievously to himself.
They were seated around five or six tables joined together in the open courtyard of the hotel, not five hundred of them now, but perhaps twenty, drinking and discussing excitedly their visit to the Palace.
As soon as they saw Ikem enter from the street through the main iron gate into the roughly cemented courtyard everybody got up including the six visiting elders and received him with something approaching an ovation. He shook hands all round and was looking for a vacant seat when someone, a kind of master of ceremonies, indicated a vacated place of honour for him beside the white-bearded elder. Then he shouted “Service!” very importantly and when a slouching waiter in a dirty blue tunic appeared, ordered six bottles of beer and three more roast chicken. “Quick, quick,” he said.
Then he surveyed the assembled group, picked up an empty beer bottle and knocked its bottom on the table for silence:
“Our people say that when a titled man comes into a meeting the talking must have to stop until he has taken his seat. An important somebody has just come in who needs no introduction. Still yet, we have to do things according to what Europeans call protocol. I call upon our distinguished son and Editor of the National Gazette to stand up.”
Ikem rose to a second tremendous ovation.
“When you hear Ikem Osodi Ikem Osodi everywhere you think his head will be touching the ceiling. But look at him, how simple he is. I am even taller than himself, a dunce like me. Our people say that an animal whose name is famous does not always fill a hunter’s basket.”
At this point Ikem interjected that he expected more people to beat him up now that his real size was known, and caused much laughter.
But in spite of the drinking and eating and the jolly laughter the speaker was still able to register his disappointment that this most famous son of Abazon had not found it possible to join in their monthly meetings and other social gatherings so as to direct their ignorant fumblings with his wide knowledge. He went on with this failing at such length and relentlessness that the bearded old man finally stopped him by rising to his feet. He was tall, gaunt-looking and with a slight stoop of the shoulders.
The shrillness in the other man’s voice was totally absent here but the power of his utterance held everyone captive from his very first words. He began by thanking Abazon people in Bassa for receiving him and the other five leaders from home. He thanked the many young men a few only of whom were now present for turning out in their hundreds to accompany the delegation to the Palace and showing Bassa that Abazon had people. Then he turned sharply to the complaint of the last speaker:
“I have heard what you said about this young man, Osodi, whose doings are known everywhere and fill our hearts with pride. Going to meetings and weddings and naming ceremonies of one’s people is good. But don’t forget that our wise men have said also that a man who answers every summons by the town-crier will not plant corn in his fields. So my advice to you is this. Go on with your meetings and marriages and naming ceremonies because it is good to do so. But leave this young man alone to do what he is doing for Abazon and for the whole of Kangan; the cock that crows in the morning belongs to one household but his voice is the property of the neighbourhood. You should be proud that this bright cockerel that wakes the whole village comes from your compound.”
There was such compelling power and magic in his voice that even the MC who had voiced the complaints was now beginning to nod his head, like everybody else, in agreement.
“If your brother needs to journey far across the Great River to find what sustains his stomach, do not ask him to sit at home with layabouts scratching their bottom and smelling the finger. I never met this young man before this afternoon when he came looking for us at the compound of the Big Chief. I had never met him before; I have never read what they say he writes because I do not know ABC. But I have heard of all the fight he has fought for poor people in this land. I would not like to hear that he has given up that fight because he wants to attend the naming ceremony of Okeke’s son and Mgbafo’s daughter.
“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.