“Sam!” shouted Cletus across to his houseboy. “Put some more water on the fire.” And then turning to me he said again, his eyes glazed in crazy reminiscence: “Mike, you must tell them the battle I waged with sugar.”
“He was called Sugar Baby at school,” I said, dodging again.
“Oh, Mike, you’re no bloody good with stories. I wonder who ever recommended you for the Propaganda Directorate.” The other two laughed. Beads of perspiration trembled on his forehead. He was desperate. He was on heat begging, pleading, touti
ng for the sumptuous agony of flagellation.
“And he lost his girlfriend,” I said turning brutal. “Yes, he lost a nice, decent girl because he wouldn’t part with half-a-dozen cubes of the sugar I bought him.”
“You know that’s not fair,” he said turning on me sharply. “Nice girl indeed! Mercy was just a shameless grabber like all the rest of them.”
“Like all the rest of us. What interests me, Cletus, is that you didn’t find out all those months you went with her and slept with her until I brought you a packet of sugar. Then your eyes were opened.”
“We know you brought it, Mike. You’ve told us already. But that’s not the point …”
“What then is the point?” Then I realized how foolish it was and how easy, even now, to slip back into those sudden irrational acrimonies of our recent desperate days when an angry word dropping in unannounced would start a fierce war like the passage of Esun between two peace-loving friends. So I steered myself to a retrieving joke, retrieving albeit with a razor-edge.
“When Cletus is ready to marry,” I said, “they will have to devise a special marriage vow for him. With all my worldly goods—except my Tate and Lyle—I thee honour. Father Doherty if they ever let him back in the country will no doubt understand.”
Umera and his friend laughed again.
Girls at War
The first time their paths crossed nothing happened. That was in the first heady days of warlike preparation when thousands of young men (and sometimes women too) were daily turned away from enlistment centres because far too many of them were coming forward burning with readiness to bear arms in defence of the exciting new nation.
The second time they met was at a check-point at Awka. Then the war had started and was slowly moving southwards from the distant northern sector. He was driving from Onitsha to Enugu and was in a hurry. Although intellectually he approved of thorough searches at road-blocks, emotionally he was always offended whenever he had to submit to them. He would probably not admit it but the feeling people got was that if you were put through a search then you could not really be one of the big people. Generally he got away without a search by pronouncing in his deep, authoritative voice: “Reginald Nwankwo, Ministry of Justice.” That almost always did it. But sometimes either through ignorance or sheer cussedness the crowd at the odd check-point would refuse to be impressed. As happened now at Awka. Two constables carrying heavy Mark 4 rifles were watching distantly from the roadside leaving the actual searching to local vigilantes.
“I am in a hurry,” he said to the girl who now came up to his car. “My name is Reginald Nwankwo, Ministry of Justice.”
“Good afternoon, sir. I want to see your trunk.”
“O Christ! What do you think is in the trunk?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
He got out of the car in suppressed rage, stalked to the back, opened the trunk and holding the lid up with his left hand he motioned with the right as if to say: After you!
“Are you satisfied?” he demanded.
“Yes, sir. Can I see your pigeon-hole?”
“Christ Almighty!”
“Sorry to delay you, sir. But you people gave us this job to do.”
“Never mind. You are damn right. It’s just that I happen to be in a hurry. But never mind. That’s the glovebox. Nothing there as you can see.”
“All right, sir, close it.” Then she opened the rear door and bent down to inspect under the seats. It was then he took the first real look at her, starting from behind. She was a beautiful girl in a breasty blue jersey, khaki jeans and canvas shoes with the new-style hair-plait which gave a girl a defiant look and which they called—for reasons of their own—“air force base”; and she looked vaguely familiar.
“I am all right, sir,” she said at last meaning she was through with her task. “You don’t recognize me?”
“No. Should I?”
“You gave me a lift to Enugu that time I left my school to go and join the militia.”
“Ah, yes, you were the girl. I told you, didn’t I, to go back to school because girls were not required in the militia. What happened?”
“They told me to go back to my school or join the Red Cross.”