She got up from her seat and went back to the window.
“He paid for me to go to the College,” she said.
“So what?” I said brusquely and immediately regretted it.
I got up, went to the window and put an arm round her waist. Had my arm been a piece of hot iron she couldn’t have reacted more smartly. She swung round and pushed me away in one alarmed movement. We stood thus—maybe four feet apart—looking at each other. Then her eyes fell; she turned again and went back to her window-ledge. I returned to my seat and decided to say nothing more. But the temptation to play the hurt, misunderstood champion was too great.
“I ask your pardon, Edna!” I said. “Do not misunderstand me. You are right that all this is none of my business really. Forget everything I’ve said.”
Hours later, or so it seemed, she replied:
“I am sorry, Odili.” And that was the first time she ever used my Christian name. I suppose I should have burst into song, but I didn’t.
“Sorry for what?” I said glumly.
“Have I offended you?” she asked with round-eyed, surprised innocence that could have melted a heart of stone. It melted mine.
“How could you offend me?” I asked, not intending the slightest sarcasm.
• • •
I was satisfied with the modest progress I seemed to have made. With a girl like Edna what was required was not any precipitous action but a gentle prodding at regular intervals. But while I was making these little private and deliberate decisions in my quiet little corner of Anata, great and momentous events were at last—after long preparation—ready to break and shake all of us out of our leisurely ways.
As the whole world now knows, our Minister of Foreign Trade, Alhaji Chief Senator Suleiman Wagada, announced on New Year’s Day a twenty per cent rise in import duties on certain types of textile goods. On January 2nd the Opposition Progressive Alliance Party published detailed evidence to show that someone had told the firm of British Amalgamated of the Minister’s plans as long ago as October and that they had taken steps to bring in three shiploads of the textiles by mid-December. The Cabinet was split overnight into the savage warring camps of those who wanted the Government to resign and those, like Chief Nanga, who said that the matter concerned the Minister of Foreign Trade alone and if it came to resigning he should resign by himself. And then the filth began to flow. The Daily Matchet for instance carried a story which showed that Chief Nanga, who had himself held the portfolio of Foreign Trade until two years ago, had been guilty of the same practice and had built out of his gains three blocks of seven-storey luxury flats at three hundred thousand pounds each in the name of his wife and that these flats were immediately leased by British Amalgamated at fourteen hundred a month each. At first this and other stories were told in innuendo, but by the second week all restraint and caution were cast to the four winds.
The country was on the verge of chaos. The Trade Unions and the Civil Service Union made loud noises and gave notice of nation-wide strikes. The shops closed for fear of looting. The Governor-General according to rumour called on the Prime Minister to resign which he finally got round to doing three weeks later.
Meanwhile I was summoned to Bori by Max for consultation and to be present at the launching of the C.P.C. We had been caught with only one foot on the ground, so to speak, but we didn’t mind in the least. We were exhilarated like everyone else by the heady atmosphere of impending violence. For we all knew that the coming election was going to be a life and death fight. After seven years of lethargy any action seemed welcome and desirable; the country was ripe and impatient to shed in violent exercise the lazy folds of flabby skin and fat it had put on in the greedy years of indolence. The scandals that were daily exposed in the newspapers—far from causing general depression in the country—produced a feeling akin to festivity; I don’t mean for people like Chief the Honourable M. A. Nanga, M.P., or Alhaji Chief Senator Suleiman Wagada, but for the rest of us who thought we had nothing to lose.
I returned to Anata with a brand-new Volkswagen, eight hundred pounds in currency notes and assurances that more would be forthcoming. I would have driven straight to see Edna but the shining cream-coloured car was covered in a thick coat of red dust and splattered with brown mud from the long journey, so I decided to go home and have it washed first. Then I drove in style to her place only to be told she had gone to see her grandmother in another village. Her father came out to look at the car, and from the way he did so, you would think he knew a lot about cars. After a very long and thorough inspection he pronounced it a tortoise and chuckled to himself. That visit turned out also to be our last friendly encounter, but I must not anticipate later developments. That was also the day I got home, sat down and composed a very long letter, my first to Edna—giving her all the reasons why she must not marry Chief Nanga.
• • •
When I first announced that I was going to contest Chief Nanga’s seat everybody laughed—everyone except the wicked outlawed trader, Josiah. He came to me one night out of nowhere and said he would like to join my campaign. I was naturally touched but at the same time knew that having a man with his reputation in our party would be an enormous embarrassment, a sure way to kill the whole thing. So I told him as gently as I could that I had no position to offer him. He stood silent for a while and then told me that I would regret my decision and disappeared again into the night before I had time to tell him to go to hell.
Chief Nanga’s constituency (number 136 in the Constituency Register) was made up of five villages including my own home village Urua, and his home-base Anata. I had thought of carrying the battle right to his doorstep by making Anata my headquarters but I soon changed my mind. The inaugural meeting I arranged in the Assembly Hall of the school was completely disrupted at the very last moment by Mr Nwege the Proprietor. A few villagers had come to hear me, or so I thought, and naturally I was furious to find the hall barred. One of the villagers who seemed particularly incensed by the treatment I had received came forward to introduce himself, or so it seemed to me.
“So you are Mr Samalu?” he said. “Pleased to meet you.” There was a lot of fellow feeling on his face.
I stretched my hand to take his. But instead of a handshake he smartly described an arc at my head and knocked off my red cap. The small crowd thought it was very funny and laughed boisterously. I decided to remain cool and dignified; I bent down to pick up my cap and to my greatest shock and mortification the rascal kicked me behind—not violently but enough to make me land on my two hands, to avoid landing on my head. I was ready for a fight then but the cowardly fellow had taken to his heels—to the applause of most of the people around, the very people I had assumed came to hear me. I decided there and then that I was in hostile territory and must recruit a bodyguard and move to my own village. But Anata had not finished with me yet. That night Mr Nwege sent a boy to call me. When I got to his “Lodge” he handed me a month’s salary and a notice of dismissal. I was about to thank him for so obligingly setting fire to a house that was due for demolition and saving someone’s labour, when he snarled:
“I see that you have grown too big for your coat.” My thanks died in my throat.
“You have grown too small in yours, Mr Push-me-down,” I said instead, laughing boisterously in his amazed face. It was an enormous release for me after all the pent-up annoyance of that afternoon. “Yes, Mr Push-me-down, you have shrivelled up in your coat.”
He sprang up from his seat and I thought (or hoped) he was coming to assault me. But no; rather he rushed i
nto an inner room probably to get his double-barrelled gun or something. I didn’t wait to find out.
It was now four days since I had returned from Bori and I had not seen Mrs Nanga yet, nor Edna for that matter. And that was going to be my last working day—so to speak—before I moved my headquarters to Urua.
Frankly I had no more business to do with Mrs Nanga. But a sort of conspiratorial friendship had sprung up between us and I would have felt very bad not to have said good-bye to her. There was also a dash of plain curiosity in it; I wanted to know how she was taking the news that I was contesting her husband’s seat. At that point I was still naïve enough in my political thinking to have that kind of curiosity. But perhaps my strongest reason for going was the odd chance of seeing Edna there.
The front door was open and I walked in clapping my hands.
“Who?” asked Mrs Nanga from somewhere inside.
“Me,” I said at the top of my voice.