“All right,” I said. “Go away.”
I tried to open it fast and then held back for fear of what it might contain. Also I didn’t want to destroy the beautiful envelope. It was Edna! Why hadn’t she mentioned it?
Dear Odili,
Your missive of 10th instant was received and its contents well noted. I cannot adequately express my deep sense of gratitude for your brotherly pieces of advice. It is just a pity that you did not meet me in the house when you came last time. My brother has narrated to me how my father addressed you badly and disgraced you. I am really sorry about the whole episode and I feel like going on a bended knee to beg forgiveness. I know that you are so noble and kind-hearted to forgive me before even I ask [smiles!].
I have noted carefully all what you said about my marriage. Really, you should pity poor me, Odili. I am in a jam about the whole thing. If I develop cold feet now my father will almost kill me. Where is he going to find all the money the man has paid on my head? So it is not so much that I want to be called a minister’s wife but a matter of can’t help. What cannot be avoided must be borne.
What I pray for is happiness. If God says that I will be happy in any man’s house I will be happy.
I hope we will always be friends. For yesterday is but a dream and tomorrow is only a vision but today’s friendship makes every yesterday a dream of happiness and every tomorrow a vision of hope.
Good-bye and sweet dreams.
Yours v. truly,
Edna Odo
P.S. My brother told me you have bought a new car. Congrats and more grease to your elbows. I hope you will carry me in it one day in remembrance of the bicycle accident [smiles!].
Edna.
It was dated yesterday. She must have been expecting me to mention it, or perhaps she was too concerned about my safety.
I read it again standing up, then sitting down and finally lying on the bed, flat on my back. Some of it was Edna and some (like the bit about visions of tomorrow) clearly was not; it must have come straight from one of these so-called “Letter Writers”. I remember one—The Complete Loveletter Writer—which was very popular with us in my school days. It was written, printed and published by an adventurous trader in Kataki and claimed on its front cover to have sold 500,000 copies, which I believe was merely a way of saying that it had sold a few hundred copies or hoped to do so. I know some foreigners think we are funny with figures. One day when I was still at the University, an old District Officer with whom my father had worked long ago came to our house; he had just come back to our area as adviser on co-operatives after years of retirement and was paying a call on his old interpreter. As they talked in the parlour my younger half-brothers and sisters kept up an endless procession in front of the strange visitor until he was constrained to ask my father how many children he had.
“About fifteen,” said my father.
“About? Surely you must know.”
My father grinned and talked about other things. Of course he knew how many children he had but people don’t go counting their children as they do animals or yams. And the same I fear goes for our country’s population.
But to return to Edna’s letter. Having mentally removed those parts of it which were not her sweet spontaneous self I began to analyse the rest word by word to try and discover how I stood in her estimation. First of all “Dear Odili” was somewhat disappointing; I had written “My dearest Edna” in my own letter and if interest was mutual the correct way would be for the woman to reply in the same degree of fondness or perhaps one grade lower—which in this case would be “My dear Odili”. Anyway there were small compensations dotted here and there in the main body of the letter and I was prepared to place considerable weight on “sweet dreams”. Altogether I felt a little encouraged to launch my offensive against Chief Nanga.
As soon as I returned to my own village I set about organizing my bodyguard. There were four of them, and their leader was a tough called Boniface who had arrived in our village a few years before from no one knew where. He didn’t even speak our language at the time. He does now, but still prefers pidgin. I don’t know whether it is true that he had a single bone in his forearm instead of the normal two but that was the story. He sometimes behaved like a crazy man which he himself admitted openly, saying it had arisen from a boyhood accident in which he fell down a mango tree and landed on his head. I paid him ten pounds a month and gave him food, which was quite generous; his three assistants earned much less. Wherever I went in my campaigning, Boniface sat with me in front and the other three at the back of the car. As our journeys became more and more hazardous I agreed to our carrying the minimum of weapons strictly for defence. We had five matchets, a few empty bottles and stones in the boot. Later we were compelled to add two double-barrelled guns. I only agreed to this most reluctantly after many acts of violence were staged against us, like the unprovoked attack by some hoodlums and thugs calling themselves Nanga’s Youth Vanguard or Nangavanga, for short. New branches of this Nangavanga were springing up every day throughout the district. Their declared aim was to “annihilate all enemies of progress” and “to project true Nangaism”. The fellows we ran into carried placards, one of which read: NANGAISM FOREVER: SAMALU IS TREITOR. It was the first time I had seen myself on a placard and I felt oddly elated. It was also amusing, really, how the cowards slunk away from the roadblocks they had put up when Boniface reached out and grabbed two of their leaders, brought their heads together like dumb-bells and left them to fall to either side of him. You should have seen them fall like cut banana trunks. It was then I acquired my first trophy—the placard with my name on it. But I lost my windscreen which they smashed with stones. It was funny but from then on I began to look out for unfriendly placards carrying my name and to feel somewhat disappointed if I didn’t see them or saw too few.
; • • •
One early morning Boniface and one of the other stalwarts woke me up and demanded twenty-five pounds. I knew that a certain amount of exploitation was inevitable in this business and I wasn’t going to question how every penny was spent. But at the same time I didn’t see how I could abdicate my responsibility for C.P.C. funds entrusted to me. I had to satisfy my conscience that I was exercising adequate control.
“I gave you ten pounds only yesterday,” I said and was about to add that unlike our opponents we had very limited funds—a point which I had already made many times. But Boniface interrupted me.
“Are you there?” he said. “If na play we de play make you tell us because me I no wan waste my time for nothing sake. Or you think say na so so talk talk you go take win Chief Nanga. If Government no give you plenty money for election make you go tell them no be sand sand we de take do am. . . .”
“Man no fit fight tiger with empty hand,” added his companion before I could put in a word to correct Boniface’s fantastic misconception.
“No be Government de give us money,” I said. “We na small party, C.P.C. We wan help poor people like you. How Government go give us money . . . ?”
“But na who de give the er weting call . . . P.C.P. money?” asked Boniface puzzled.
“Some friends abroad,” I said with a knowing air to cover my own ignorance which I had forgotten to worry about in the heat of activity.
“You no fit send your friends telegram?” asked Boniface’s companion.
“Let’s not go into that now. What do you need twenty-five pounds for? And what have you done with the ten pounds?” I felt I had to sound firm. It worked.