“You see I was right. So, what are you doing now?”
“Just patching up with Civil Defence.”
“Well, good luck to you. Believe me you are a great girl.”
That was the day he finally believed there might be something in this talk about revolution. He had seen plenty of girls and women marching and demonstrating before now. But somehow he had never been able to give it much thought. He didn’t doubt that the girls and the women took themselves seriously; they obviously did. But so did the little kids who marched up and down the streets at the time drilling with sticks and wearing their mothers’ soup bowls for steel helmets. The prime joke of the time among his friends was the contingent of girls from a local secondary school marching behind a banner: WE ARE IMPREGNABLE!
But after that encounter at the Awka check-point he simply could not sneer at the girls again, nor at the talk of revolution, for he had seen it in action in that young woman whose devotion had simply and without self-righteousness convicted him of gross levity. What were her words? We are doing the work you asked us to do. She wasn’t going to make an exception even for one who once did her a favour. He was sure she would have searched her own father just as rigorously.
When their paths crossed a third time, at least eighteen months later, things had got very bad. Death and starvation having long chased out the headiness of the early days, now left in some places blank resignation, in others a rock-like, even suicidal, defiance. But surprisingly enough there were many at this time also who had no other desire than to corner whatever good things were still going and to enjoy themselves to the limit. For such people a strange of normalcy had returned to the world. All those nervous check-points disappeared. Girls became girls once more and boys boys. It was a tight, blockaded and desperate world but none the less a world—with some goodness and some badness and plenty of heroism which, however, happened most times far, far below the eye-level of the people in this story—in out-of-the-way refugee camps, in the damp tatters, in the hungry and bare-handed courage of the first line of fire.
Reginald Nwankwo lived in Owerri then. But that day he had gone to Nkwerri in search of relief. He had got from Caritas in Owerri a few heads of stockfish, some tinned meat, and the dreadful American stuff called Formula Two which he felt certain was some kind of animal feed. But he always had a vague suspicion that not being a Catholic put one at a disadvantage with Caritas. So he went now to see an old friend who ran the WCC depot at Nkwerri to get other items like rice, beans and that excellent cereal commonly called Gabon gari.
He left Owerri at six in the morning so as to catch his friend at the depot where he was known never to linger beyond 8:30 for fear of air-raids. Nwankwo was very fortunate that day. The depot had received on the previous day large supplies of new stock as a result of an unusual number of plane landings a few nights earlier. As his driver loaded tins and bags and cartons into his car the starved crowds that perpetually hung around relief centres made crude, ungracious remarks like “War Can Continue!” meaning the WCC! Somebody else shouted “Irevolu!” and his friends replied “shum!” “Irevolu!” “shum!” “Isofeli?” “shum!” “Isofeli?” “Mba!”
Nwankwo was deeply embarrassed not by the jeers of this scarecrow crowd of rags and floating ribs but by the independent accusation of their wasted bodies and sunken eyes. Indeed he would probably have felt much worse had they said nothing, simply looked on in silence, as his trunk was loaded with milk, and powdered egg and oats and tinned meat and stockfish. By nature such singular good fortune in the midst of a general desolation was certain to embarrass him. But what could a man do? He had a wife and four children living in the remote village of Ogbu and completely dependent on what relief he could find and send them. He couldn’t abandon them to kwashiokor. The best he could do—and did do as a matter of fact—was to make sure that whenever he got sizeable supplies like now he made over some of it to his driver, Johnson, with a wife and six, or was it seven? children and a salary of ten pounds a month when gari in the market was climbing to one pound per cigarette cup. In such a situation one could do nothing at all for crowds; at best one could try to be of some use to one’s immediate neighbours. That was all.
On his way back to Owerri a very attractive girl by the roadside waved for a lift. He ordered the driver to stop. Scores of pedestrians, dusty and exhausted, some military, some civil, swooped down on the car from all directions.
“No, no, no,” said Nwankwo firmly. “It’s the young woman I stopped for. I have a bad tyre and can only take one person. Sorry.”
“My son, please,” cried one old woman in despair, gripping the door-handle.
“Old woman, you want to be killed?” shouted the driver as he pulled away, shaking her off. Nwankwo had already opened a book and sunk his eyes there. For at least a mile after that he did not even look at the girl until she finding, perhaps, the silence too heavy said:
“You’ve saved me today. Thank you.”
“Not at all. Where are you going?”
“To Owerri. You don’t recognize me?”
“Oh yes, of course. What a fool I am … You are …”
“Gladys.”
“That’s right, the militia girl. You’ve changed, Gladys. You were always beautiful of course, but now you are a beauty queen. What do you do these days?”
“I am in the Fuel Directorate.”
“That’s wonderful.”
It was wonderful, he thought, but even more it was tragic. She wore a high-tinted wig and a very expensive skirt and low-cut blouse. Her shoes, obviously from Gabon, must have cost a fortune. In short, thought Nwankwo, she had to be in the keep of some well-placed gentleman, one of those piling up money out of the war.
“I broke my rule today to give you a lift. I never give lifts these days.”
“Why?”
“How many people can you carry? It is better not to try at all. Look at that old woman.”
“I thought you would carry her.”
He said nothing to that and after another spell of silence Gladys thought maybe he was offended and so added: “Thank you for breaking your rule for me.” She was scanning his face, turned slightly away. He smiled, turned, and tapped her on the lap.
“What are you going to Owerri to do?”
&nb
sp; “I am going to visit my girlfriend.”