wa’s chest, richly proportioned, heaved spasmodically like a child’s in the aftermath of crying. In the end Beatrice could tell from her deep breathing that she had at last floated into sleep broken now and again by sudden violent starts of nightmare which mercifully did not wake her up. She needed the sleep, poor child. Soon she herself was dozing off.
The car lights first, sensed in the vague indeterminacy of unformed dreams, and then the harsh crunch of tyres on the pebbled driveway. She sprang to her feet. Out of the glass louvres she could see three jeeps unmistakable in the night from the sinister, narrow, closely-set eyes of headlamps. Her heart thumping she rushed to her bedroom, snatched a tough pair of jeans from her wardrobe, leapt into them, zipped up and belted. Then she searched and pulled out another pair. Elewa was standing beside her.
“Put this on quick!”
Then she pulled out two dressing gowns…
A number of heavy knocks on her door…
“Miss Okoh. This is State Security. Open up at once!”
She put on her dressing gown, helped Elewa into hers and ordered her back into the spare bedroom with hand-and-head gestures.
“Miss Okoh. This is the last warning. Open the door now. State Security.”
“I am coming.”
“Well, hurry up!”
She took the bunch of keys from the sideboard and began to unchain the iron grills. Her hands were shaking so violently she couldn’t get the key into the keyhole. Elewa snatched the bunch from her, turned the padlock and unchained the heavy grill. Then Beatrice shocked into calmness by this action snatched back the keys and, whispering “Go inside!” to Elewa who ignored the command, turned the lock in the steel and glass crittall door. It was wrenched out of her grip and swung outwards. Then a huge soldier rushed in pushing the two women aside so powerfully to his right and left in a dry breast-stroke movement that sent Elewa, slight as a reed, down on the floor on her bottom.
“Easy, Sergeant!” This from an officer who followed less dramatically. Three others came in after the officer while the rest stayed at the door.
“Miss Okoh?”
“Yes.”
“I am sorry to disturb you at this hour. But I have instructions to search your flat. May I proceed?”
“Anything in particular you are looking for?”
“What kind nonsense question be dat.”
“OK, Sergeant. I will do the talking. So keep quiet! Well, yes, Miss Okoh, there are certain things we are looking for but it is not our practice to discuss them first. Incidentally I advise that anybody in the flat should come out right away. All the exits are guarded and anyone trying to escape will be shot. Is that clear? Now we will proceed.” He deployed his men to different locations in the flat with the silent gestures of a field commander. Thereafter he went from one sector to another supervising the operations. Beatrice followed him at a discreet distance.
The red-eyed sergeant who was given charge of Beatrice’s bedroom was executing it with a vengeance. He had pulled out the bedsheets off the bed and thrown them on the floor where he walked all over them as he frenziedly darted from one object to another. It was fortunate that Beatrice never learnt to lock suitcases and things. So the sergeant’s fury had nothing to wrench open. He merely spilt clothes everywhere. The officer came in and asked him again to go easy and picked up the bedsheets himself and threw them back on the bed. As the captain turned his back Beatrice caught in the eye of the sergeant a flash from the utmost depths of contempt and hatred.
“Miss Okoh, excuse my asking. Who is this young lady?”
“She is Elewa… my girlfriend.”
“Your girlfriend? Interesting. What does she do?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean does she have a job?”
“Yes. She is a sales-girl in a Lebanese shop.”
“Does she live with you normally?”
“No, she is just visiting.”
“I see.”
Elewa’s eyes darted from one to the other as they discussed her like the seller and prospective buyer of some dumb animal brought to the market. Her grief had temporarily been displaced by these strange events now going on around her. In her oversize jeans and dressing gown she looked almost comical. She was not walking around with Beatrice and the officer but had taken her position on a dining-chair in the living-room annexe.
Beatrice, worried about her fall, asked as many times as she came through the living-room how she felt. No trouble, she would answer. Perhaps it was the Valium making her unusually calm.