Jagua Nana

His face flushed. ‘Why he don’ kill me den? If is so easy why he don’ kill me?’ A smile played on his lips. ‘Since he don’ wan’ to fight, I must fight him firs’. Das politics. Spare no foe!’

Jagua knew it was useless arguing with him. This was the kind of moment when she looked at him and hated him. She looked round the room and saw how cosy he had made it for her. She thought of the generous allowance he made her every month. She decided not to speak.

‘Remember de meetin’ dis evenin’.’

‘Which meetin’?’

‘Campaign meetin’ of de women. You promise to address dem for me!’

‘But I don’ know nothing about politics.’

Uncle Taiwo laughed. ‘What you wan’ to know? You already been to campaign meetin’ with me, almos’ daily.’

Jagua was terrified. When she made the promise to address the market women on Uncle Taiwo’s behalf, she did not know he would take it seriously.

‘Dis evening by five,’ Uncle Taiwo reminded her.

‘So soon?’

‘Five is de bes’ time; dem will be returning from market den.’

‘Ah don’ know what ah will tell dem.’

He leaned back and slapped his knee. ‘Tell dem to vote for O.P. 2. What? You tellin’ me you don’ know what you will say?’ He began to laugh and to slap his knees, the stool, shaking till the beer glasses bounced off the stool. ‘You don’t know what you will tell dem? Oh, you jus’ too funny. Tell dem to vote for O.P. 2! Tell dem our party is de bes’ one. We will give dem free market stall, plenty trade, and commission so dem kin educate de children. Tell dem all de lie. When Uncle Taiwo win, dem will never remember anythin’ about all dis promise. Tell dem ah’m against women paying tax. Is wrong, is wicked. Tell dem ah’m fighting for equality of women. Women mus’ be equal to all men. You wonderin’ what to tell dem? Oh, Lord! Tell dem all women in dis Lagos mus’ get good work if dem vote for me. No more unemployment. Women mus’ be treated right. Dem mus’ have status. Dem mus’ have class …’

Jagua listened to the male roar of Uncle Taiwo’s voice. She admired the big arms that waved in sweeping arcs, encompassing the stature of the man who had grown doub

ly large in her eyes.

‘Is enough!’ she said, bright-eyed, feeling herself a little girl beside the Party Agent. ‘You not in de market yet!’

Uncle Taiwo roared his roaring laugh. ‘God, ah mus’ win, I mus’ win and become Councillor.’ He pulled her to him in a sudden romantic outburst and slapped her jutting buttocks. ‘When ah become Councillor, den my woman will be a big woman. Den ah will marry you.’

‘What of your odder wives?’ Jagua pouted. ‘Where you goin’ to keep dem when de Council give you big flat?’

‘My other wives?’ He laughed again. ‘You will join dem. I got only three now in de house. You’re de only one I got outside. Ha-ha-ha-aa! … You worryin’ about Freddie Namme. He already marry anodder. He return from U.K. with wife and two pickin’. The man is findin’ way to make quick money, but is a pity he got no idea of politics; so he can’t win me in de election. People never hear of him.’ He slapped her bottom once again and she cried out. ‘You mus’ forget Freddie at once. Because now I keepin’ you for meself. I paying de rent. I furnishing dis room, so you got every comfort to enjoy.’

When Uncle Taiwo talked like this, one part of Jagua always longed for Freddie Namme. Uncle Taiwo, for all his kindness was coarse, believing only in the power of money. In the campaign meetings she had helped him buy loyalty but he forgot that life was far bigger than campaign meetings.

Jagua went down to Obanla to speak with Dennis and to find out what had really happened. It was a bright afternoon, intensely hot. She got down from the bus and walked under the trees. The barber in the corner of the street waved at her but she paid no attention to him.

The house in which Dennis and the gang lived was the third on the right, facing a large piece of farmland where faeces and refuse were dumped. She walked to the door and knocked. The hollow sounds gave her a fright. She pushed the door and walked from one room to the other in a dream. There was not a soul. A dog rushed in from the courtyard and began whining. She caressed the lonely animal, walked along the verandah and shut the door. Dennis and his group had disappeared.

As she walked up the path, she saw a blue Pontiac flash past and remembered Uncle Taiwo. She remembered too that in a matter of hours she would be addressing a campaign meeting of market women.

Jagua stood on a box and looked down on the heads of three thousand market women. Near her was a microphone and above the little square the O.P. 2 flag waved its orange and white stripes. She had been studiously following Uncle Taiwo to all his meetings, but today it was Uncle Taiwo’s turn to follow her. She found herself nervously caressing the microphone, but as the first few words shattered the hubbub and the chattering, Jagua experienced a new sense of power. Her voice was new, attractive. The women turned their heads to see who was speaking. They listened. Far away across the bridge, right down to the lagoon-side where the long cars were parked, the people seemed to start and look up at the unusual interruption.

Yes, the women had come to the campaign meeting of Uncle Taiwo. They had come to listen to the man. They had been listening to him now for weeks. Jagua knew these women; astute, sure of themselves and completely independent and powerful. Their votes could easily sway the balance because they voted en bloc. Some of them had children studying in England and most of them had boys in the Secondary Schools. To them education was a real issue. They went to the mosque on Fridays and to market on Sundays, if the market day fell on a Sunday. From dawn to dusk they sat in the squalid market with the drain running through it: a drain that could never drain because the water in it was an arm of the lagoon which was part of the Bight of Benin which was part of the Atlantic and Pacific and Indian Oceans, and these could never be drained. In the middle of the market stood the refuse dump from which the sanitary lorries came to shift the rubbish once a day. Many men in the ‘Senior Service’ came to this ‘cut-price’ market to squeeze away a few odd pennies from the grasping hands of the big Department Stores. They bought tea and towels, sugar and coca cola, coffee, milk and peanuts from these women who could undersell anyone else because they bought wholesale from shady sources and were content with little or no profit. In many ways these women reminded Jagua of the Merchant Princesses of Onitsha, but these Lagos women did not seem to have quite the staggering sums of money used by the Princesses. Jagua knew that some of them came because they imagined that an election campaign meeting was a carnival, a meeting place for high fashion and love. So they came in their velvet specials: blues and greens, mauve and gold velvets to delight their men who liked them rounded in the hips. Their blouses were made of the sheerest transparent nylons, so that Jagua was gazing at three thousand brassieres (of those who bothered to wear brassieres). In most cases anyone who had the keen sight could look through and see the dark areolae and the long child-sucked nipples.

‘How many of you can remember your own birthdays?’ Jagua asked them. She did not need to be subtle for the language she used was not English. A silence fell at once on the multitude. ‘Very few of you. But most of you remember the birthdays of your children. Now is it not a wonderful thing to us Lagos people, that in O.P. 1 an official of that party should be given a wedding anniversary present by his wife? Mark you, I do not say it is a bad thing. I say it is a wonderful thing indeed. But you must all bear with me. The woman who gave her husband this present is a woman like yourself. On the wedding anniversary, she called her husband to the seaside. Then this woman of O.P. 1 said to her husband. ‘My Lord, may we both live happily for ever. Here are the keys of our new building. I built it to mark our wedding anniversary.’ And she gave him a bunch of keys and pointed to a new house standing on the beach, all six floors of it, and magnificent. A woman. Where did she find the money? A trader, like ourselves!’

A hubbub arose. Jagua waited for the din to die down. ‘Of course, her husband was very surprised. He took the keys, and sure enough, he was not dreaming. They were the keys of the new building and the building cost – I think, I am not sure, exactly – fifty thousand pounds. I have said the figure in English, so that you can all interpret it to your friends. £50,000. Yes, about that. Every amenity was there. A£50,000 house, built on the beach, by a woman like yourself. So what are you all doing? Go and build one like that for your husbands, or is it that you can’t find £50,000?’

‘She stole it! …’ came the throaty accusation.

Some of the women took down their head ties and threw them on the floor and stamped about, slapping their hips in anger. Jagua spoke into the microphone. ‘I am still coming to the end of my story.’ They listened, and she went on: ‘You see the sort of people you will be voting for, if you vote O.P. 1. You will be voting for people who will build their private houses with your own money. But if you vote for O.P. 2, the party that does the job, you will see that you women will never pay tax. Don’t forget that. O.P. 2 will educate your children properly. But those rogues in O.P. 1? They will send their children to Oxford and Cambridge, while your children will only go to school in Obanla. No: Obanla is still too good for your children, because – oh! – how can your children find the space to be educated in Lagos schools, if O.P. 1 ever comes into power? No, your children will be sent to the slummy suburbs. These people will open a hundred businesses using the names of their wives. But you? You will continue to sleep on the floor with grass mats while their wives sleep on spring mattresses. You will carry your things to market on your head, and while in the market, you will be bitten by mosquitoes, and your children will be bitten by mosquitoes and develop malaria. And you will console yourselves that you are struggling. Tell me, what are you struggling for? Or are you going to struggle all the time? Now is the time to enjoy! On Saturdays you will kill a small chicken and call your friends. You will shake hips to the apala music and deceive yourself that you are happy. But look! The roof of your house leaks when it rains. The pan roofs are cracking with rust. There is no space in the compound where your children can play. The latrine is the open bucket, carried by nightsoil men who are always on strike, so the

smell is always there. The bathroom is narrow and slimy and it smells of urine. You call that life!’ Jagua was tempted to roar with laughter in the best Uncle Taiwo manner. ‘You call that life? Yes, that is the life they have given you and will continue to give you if you return an O.P. 1 government to power. See now, see what they’ve done? They’ve gone and brought an Englander, to contest against Uncle Taiwo.’ She turned and looked at him. He was shaking his head sadly, and presently he rose and the crowd cheered him. ‘His name is Freddie Namme, this Englander. And do you know where he went to marry his wife? From Sa Leone. It is one thousand miles from Lagos. The people do not speak Yoruba there, neither do they speak Ibo or Hausa. It is a different part of Africa. Now tell me: if you vote for a man marrying such a foreign woman, do you think he will understand what you want, you Nigerian women?’