“Listen to her,” said the man turning to me. “Because she ate yesterday she won’t eat today? No, my daughter. This is the time to enjoy an in-law, not when he has claimed his wife and gone away. Our people say: if you fail to take away a strong man’s sword when he is on the ground, will you do it when he gets up . . . ? No, my daughter. Leave me and my in-law. He will bring and bring and bring and I will eat until I am tired. And thanks to the Man Above he does not lack what to bring.”
“Excuse me,” said Edna in English and then explained in our language that she must go and finish her cooking and take lunch to her mother before one o’clock or the nurses would not let her in. She smiled vaguely and turned to go and I had the first opportunity of noticing that her back was as perfect as her front—which happens once in a million. I watched every step she took until she disappeared.
Then I sat on alone with her greedy, avaricious father—for that was the impression I had just formed of him. We said very little. I whistled my silent tune and watched his rope lengthening as he tied one short piece of fibre after another to it. When he had produced a reasonable length he wound it on to the ball.
Edna came into the middle room again and from there asked her father if he had given “the stranger” a kolanut.
“I have none,” he said. “If you have, bring it and we will eat.”
“I bought some yesterday, I thought I told you.” She brought the kolanut in a saucer and gave it to her father who broke the nut after a short avaricious prayer about bringing and eating, threw two lobes into his mouth one after the other, crunched them more noisily than I had ever heard anyone crunch kolanut and passed the saucer to me. I took one of the remaining two and returned the saucer to him.
I sat on and on not knowing what else to do. Should I get up and go? That was hardly sensible. At least I should wait on till Edna came out again even if there was no chance of talking to her privately. Then a wonderful idea struck me. Why not offer to give her a lift on my bicycle to the hospital? It was at least two miles away and my bicycle had a good carrier at the back on which the plates of food could be tied.
“Now that I am here,” I told my busy host, “I ought to go and see Edna’s mother so that when next I write to Chief Nanga I shall have something to report.”
“D
on’t heed what my daughter says,” he told me, looking up from his work. “Tell my in-law that the treatment of his wife’s mother is costing me water and firewood.”
“I shall certainly say so,” I told him. No matter what I might think of him it was clear to me that he was not the kind of man to be bypassed in trying to reach his daughter.
Edna was not in the least surprised by my offer; she was obviously the trusting type—which augured well. I hitched the travelling-can containing the food on to the carrier. I didn’t want to ride on the rough approach to the house so I rolled the bicycle the short distance from the house to the road while Edna in a green-and-red floral dress walked beside me. Mounting the vehicle with the can on the back and Edna on the cross-bar proved a little tricky; but I am rather good with bicycles. I solved the problem by getting on the seat first and keeping the bicycle stationary with one foot resting firmly on the ground. Then Edna climbed on the bar sitting sideways; and I pushed off. The excitement of having her so close within my arms and the perfume of her hair in my nose would have proved overpowering if I’d had much time to consider it. I hadn’t. The road to the hospital turned out to be quite hilly, not steep but just enough to take the wind out of one; and, with the kind of passenger I had, I didn’t care to admit too readily to being tired. So I raced up all the little hillocks until my heart raged like a bonfire, which was very stupid of me.
“You are very strong,” said Edna.
“Why?” I said, or rather puffed out, in one enormous expiration, as I rounded the summit of yet another small hill.
“You are eating all the hills like yam.”
“I haven’t seen any hill yet,” I replied, getting back some of my breath as I pedalled freely down the small, friendly descent that followed. These words were hardly out of my mouth when a stupid sheep and her four or five lambs rushed out of the roadside on my left. I braked sharply. Unfortunately Edna’s back was resting on my left arm and prevented me applying the brake on that side effectively. So only the brake on the front wheel performed fully. The bicycle pitched forward and crashed on the road. Just before the impact Edna had cried out something like “My father!” She was thrown farther up the road and as soon as I got up, I rushed to help her to her feet again. Then I turned to gaze at the foofoo and soup in the sandy road. I could have wept. I just stood looking at it and biting my lip. Then Edna burst into nervous laughter which completed my humiliation. I didn’t want to look at her. Without taking my eyes from the food I murmured that I was very sorry.
“It was not your fault,” she said, “it was the stupid sheep.”
Then I noticed with the corner of my eyes that she was bending down. I turned then and saw where she had grazed her knee on the road.
“Oh dear!” I said, “Edna, I am sorry.”
She left her frock which she had held up a little at the knee and came to dust my shoulder where my new white shirt carried a thick patch of indelible red-earth. Then she bent down and picked up the travelling-can and began to wipe away the sand, and the spilt soup with green leaves. To my surprise she was crying and saying something like “My mother will die of hunger today”. Actually I think her crying was probably due to hurt pride because the food lying on the road showed how poor her family was. But I may be wrong. At the time, however, I was greatly upset.
“Can she manage bread and corned beef?” I asked. “We could buy some outside the hospital.”
“I haven’t brought any money,” said Edna.
“I have some money,” I said, feeling the first breath of relief since the accident happened. “And we could get some disinfectant for your knee. I’m terribly sorry, my dear.”
10
After the bicycle accident it was clearly impossible to say any of the things I had in mind to Edna. I managed, however, to get out of her that she was going to spend Christmas morning helping Mrs Nanga, and I privately decided to go there myself.
At Christmas the village of Anata, like many other rural communities in our part of the country, always gains in numbers and glamour at the expense of the towns. Its sons and daughters who have gone out to work or trade in the cities usually return home with lots of money to spend. But perhaps the most pleasant gains are the many holidaying students from different secondary schools and training colleges and the very occasional university student. We call them holiday-makers and their presence has a way of immediately raising the general tone of the village, giving it an air of well-dressed sophistication. The boys I saw that morning wore Italian-type shoes and tight trousers and the girls wore lipstick and hair stretched with hot iron; I even saw one in slacks, which I thought was very bold indeed.
When I arrived at Chief Nanga’s house at about eleven there was no Edna. Instead a young man whose alcohol-reeking breath hit your nose as soon as you stepped over the threshold was holding forth and telling Mrs Nanga very noisily in pidgin and vernacular to give him a drink. He looked like a trader home from one of the towns. Mrs Nanga was handling him quietly but expertly. She had obviously done this kind of work before. After a year or two’s affluence one learned how to handle less fortunate kinsmen.
“Bring me a beer!” the man shouted and hiccupped.
“Honourable Chief Nanga is my brother and he is what white man call V.I.P. . . . Me na P.I.V.—Poor Innocent Victim.” He laughed, turning his dopey eyes in my direction. I couldn’t help smiling; the wit and inventiveness of our traders is of course world famous.
“Yes, me na P.I.V.,” he repeated. “A bottle of beer de cost only five shilling. Chief Honourable Nanga has the money—as of today. Look at the new house he is building. Four storeys! Before, if a man built two storeys the whole town would come to admire it. But today my kinsman is building four. Do I ask to share it with him when it is finished? No. I only ask for common beer, common five shilling beer.”