Is “going native” still used? I always knew you would! Mother tells me you have given up on the tribal art book and are pleased with this one, a sort of fictionalized travelogue? And on European Evils in Africa! I’m quite keen to hear more about it when you are in London. Pity you gave up the old title: “The Basket of Hands.” Were hands chopped off in Africa as well? I’d imagined it was only in India. I’m intrigued!
Richard imagined that smile Martin often had when they were schoolboys, during those years that Aunt Elizabeth had immersed them in activities with her manic determination that there be no sitting around: cricket tournaments, boxing lessons, tennis, piano lessons from a Frenchman with a lisp. Martin had thrived at them all, always with that superior smile of people who were born to belong and excel.
Richard reached out to pluck a wildflower that looked like a poppy. He wondered what Martin’s wedding would be like; Martin’s fiancée was a fashion designer, of all things. If only Kainene could go with him; if only she didn’t have to stay to sign the new contract. He wanted Aunt Elizabeth and Martin and Virginia to see her, but most of all he wanted them to see him, the man he had become after his years here: to see that he was browner and happier.
Ikejide came up to him. “Mr. Richard, sah! Madam say make you come. There is another coup,” Ikejide said. He looked excited.
Richard hurried indoors. He was right; Madu was wrong. The moist July heat had plastered his hair limply to his head, and he ran his hand through it as he went. Kainene was on a sofa in the living room, her arms wrapped around herself, rocking back and forth. The British voice on the radio was so loud that she raised her voice when she said, “Northern officers have taken over. The BBC says they are killing Igbo officers in Kaduna. Nigerian Radio isn’t saying anything.” She spoke too fast. He stood behind her and began to rub her shoulders, kneading her stiff muscles in circular motions. On the radio, the breathless British voice said it was quite extraordinary that a second coup had occurred only six months after the first.
“Extraordinary. Extraordinary indeed,” Kainene said. She reached out, in a sudden jerky move, and pushed the radio off the table. It fell on the carpeted floor, and a dislodged battery rolled out. “Madu is in Kaduna,” she said, and put her face in her hands. “Madu is in Kaduna.”
“It’s all right, my darling,” Richard said. “It’s all right.”
For the first time he considered the possibility of Madu’s death. He decided not to go back to Nsukka for a while and was not sure why. Was it really because he wanted to be with her when she heard Madu was dead? In the next few days, she was so taut with anxiety that he too began to worry about Madu and then resent himself for doing so, and then resent his resentment. He should not be so petty. She included him in her worry, after all, as if Madu was their friend and not just hers. She told him about the people she called, about the inquiries she made to find out what had happened. Nobody knew. Madu’s wife had heard nothing. Lagos was in chaos. Her parents had left for England. Many Igbo officers were dead. The killings were organized; she told him about a soldier who said the alarm for a battalion muster parade was sounded in his barracks and after everyone assembled, the Northerners picked out all the Igbo soldiers and took them away and shot them.
Kainene was muted and quiet but never tearful, so the day she told him, “I heard something,” with a sob in her voice, he was sure it was news of Madu. He thought about how to console her, whether he would be able to console her.
“Udodi,” Kainene said. “They killed Colonel Udodi Ekechi.”
“Udodi?” He had been so certain it was about Madu that for a moment he was blank.
“Northern soldiers put him in a cell in the barracks and fed him his own shit. He ate his own shit.” Kainene paused. “Then they beat him senseless and tied him to an iron cross and threw him back in his cell. He died tied to an iron cross. He died on a cross.”
Richard sat down slowly. His dislike for Udodi—loud, drunken, duplicity dripping from his pores—had only deepened in the past years. Yet hearing about his death left him sober. He thought, again, of Madu dying and realized he did not know how he would feel.
“Who told you this?”
“Maria Obele. Udodi’s wife is her cousin. She said they are saying that no Igbo officer in the North escaped. But some Umunnachi people said they heard Madu escaped. Adaobi has not heard anything. How could he have escaped. How?”
“He might be hiding out somewhere.”
“How?” Kainene asked again.
Colonel Madu appeared in Kainene’s house two weeks later, much taller-looking now because he had lost so much weight; the angles of his shoulder bones were visible through his white shirt.
Kainene screamed. “Madu! Is this you? O gi di ife a?”
Richard was not sure who walked toward whom first, but Kainene and Madu were holding each other close, Kainene touching his arms and face with a tenderness that made Richard look away. He went to the liquor cabinet and poured a whisky for Madu and a gin for himself.
“Thank you, Richard,” Madu said, but he did not take the drink and Richard stood there, holding two glasses, before he placed one down.
Kainene sat on a side table in front of Madu. “They said they shot you in Kaduna, then they said they buried you alive in the bush, then they said you escaped, then they said you were in prison in Lagos.”
Madu said nothing. Kainene stared at him. Richard finished his drink and poured another.
“You remember my friend Ibrahim? From Sandhurst?” Madu asked finally.
Kainene nodded.
“Ibrahim saved my life. He told me about the coup that morning. He was not directly involved, but most of them—the Northern officers—knew about it. He drove me to his cousin’s house, but I didn’t really understand until he asked his cousin to take me to the backyard, where he kept his domestic animals. I slept in the chicken house for two days.”
“No! Ekwuzina!”
“And do you know that soldiers came to search his cousin’s house to look for me? Everybody knew how close Ibrahim and I were, and they suspected he helped me escape. They didn’t check the chicken house, though.” Colonel Madu paused, nodding and looking into the distance. “I did not know how bad chicken shit smelled until I slept in it for three days. On the third day, Ibrahim sent me some caftans and money through a small boy and asked me to leave right away. I dressed as a Fulani nomad and walked through the smaller villages because Ibrahim said that artillery soldiers had set up blocks on all the major roads in Kaduna. I was lucky to find a lorry driver, an Igbo man from Ohafia, who took me to Kafanchan. My cousin lives there. You know Onunkwo, don’t you?” Madu did not wait for Kainene to respond. “He is the station master at the railway, and he told me that Northern soldiers had sealed off Makurdi Bridge. That bridge is a grave. They searched every single vehicle, they delayed passenger trains for up to eight hours, and they shot all the Igbo soldiers they discovered there and threw the bodies over. Many of the soldiers wore disguises, but they used their boots to find them.”
“What?” Kainene leaned forward.
“Boots.” Madu glanced at his shoes. “You know we soldiers wear boots all the time so they examined the feet of each man, and any Igbo man whose feet were clean and uncracked by harmattan, they took away and shot. They also examined their foreheads for signs of their skin being lighter from wearing a soldier’s beret.” Madu shook his head. “Onunkwo advised me to wait for some days. He did not think I would make it across the bridge because they would recognize me easily under any disguise. So I stayed ten days in a village near Kafanchan. Onunkwo found me different houses to stay in. It was not safe to stay with him. Finally he said he had found a driver, a good man from Nnewi, who would hide me in the water tank of his goods train. The man gave me a fireman’s suit to wear and I climbed into the tank. I had water up to my chin. Each time the train jerked, some of the water entered my nose. When we got to the bridge, the soldiers searched the train thoroughly. I heard footst
eps on the lid of the tank and thought it was all over. But they did not open it and we passed. It was only then I knew that I was alive and I would survive. I came back to Umunnachi to find Adaobi wearing black.”
Kainene kept looking at Madu long after he finished speaking. There was another stretch of silence, which made Richard uncomfortable because he was not sure how to react, what expression to have.
“Igbo soldiers and Northern soldiers can never live in the same barracks after this. It is impossible, impossible,” Colonel Madu said. He had a glassy sheen in his eyes. “And Gowon cannot be head of state. They cannot impose Gowon on us as head of state. It is not how things are done. There are others who are senior to him.”
“What are you going to do now?” Kainene asked.
Madu did not seem to hear her. “So many of us are gone,” he said. “So many solid good men—Udodi, Iloputaife, Okunweze, Okafor—and these were men who believed in Nigeria and didn’t care for tribe. After all, Udodi spoke better Hausa than he spoke Igbo, and look how they slaughtered him.” He stood up and began to pace the room. “The problem was the ethnic balance policy. I was part of the commission that told our GOC that we should scrap it, that it was polarizing the army, that they should stop promoting Northerners who were not qualified. But our GOC said no, our British GOC.” Madu turned and glanced at Richard.
“I’ll ask Ikejide to cook your special rice,” Kainene said.
Madu shrugged, silent, and stared out of the window.
10
Ugwu set the table for lunch. “I’ve finished, sah,” he said, although he knew Master would not touch the okro soup and would keep walking up and down the living room with the radio turned up high, as he had been doing since Miss Adebayo left about an hour ago. She had banged so hard on the front door that Ugwu worried the glass would crack, and then when he opened it she pushed past him, asking, “Where is your master? Where is your master?”
“I will call him, mah,” Ugwu said, but Miss Adebayo had hurried ahead into Master’s study. He heard her say, “There’s trouble in the North,” and his mouth went dry because Miss Adebayo was not an alarmist and whatever was happening in the North had to be serious and Olanna was in Kano.
Ever since the second coup some weeks ago, when the Igbo soldiers were killed, he had struggled to understand what was happening, read the newspapers more carefully, listened more closely to Master and his guests. The conversations no longer ended in reassuring laughter, and the living room often seemed clouded with uncertainties, with unfinished knowledge, as if they all knew something would happen and yet did not know what. None of them would ever have imagined that this would happen, that the announcer on ENBC Radio Enugu would be saying now, as Ugwu straightened the tablecloth, “We have confirmed reports that up to five hundred Igbo people have been killed in Maiduguri.”
“Rubbish!” Master shouted. “Did you hear that? Did you hear that?”
“Yes, sah,” Ugwu said. He hoped the loud noise would not wake Baby up from her siesta.
“Impossible!” Master said.
“Sah, your soup,” Ugwu said.
“Five hundred people killed. Absolute rubbish! It can’t be true.”
Ugwu took the dish into the kitchen and put it in the refrigerator. The smell of spices nauseated him, as did the sight of soup, of food. But Baby would wake up soon and he would have to make her dinner. He brought out a bag of potatoes from the store and sat staring at it, thinking about two days ago, when Olanna left for Kano to fetch Aunty Arize, how her plaited hair had pulled at the skin of her forehead and made it shiny-sleek.
Baby came into the kitchen. “Ugwu.”
“I tetago? Are you awake?” Ugwu asked, before he hugged her. He wondered if Master had seen her walk past the living room. “Did you see baby chickens in your dream?”
Baby laughed, and her dimples sank deep in her cheeks. “Yes!”
“Did you talk to them?”
“Yes!”
“What did they say?”
Baby didn’t give the usual response. She let go of his neck and squatted on the floor. “Where is Mummy Ola?”
“Mummy Ola will be back soon.” Ugwu examined the blade of the knife. “Now, help me with the potato peels. Put them all in the dustbin, and when Mummy Ola comes back, we will tell her you helped with the cooking.”
After Ugwu put the potatoes to boil, he gave her a bath, dusted her body over with Pears talcum powder, and brought out her pink nightdress. It was the one Olanna loved, the one she said made Baby look like a doll. But Baby said, “I want my pajamas,” and Ugwu was no longer sure which it was Olanna loved anyway, the nightdress or the pajamas.
He heard a knock on the front door. Master ran out of his study. Ugwu dashed to the door and grasped the handle first and held on, so that he would be the one to open it, although he knew it couldn’t be Olanna. She had her own key.
“Is it Obiozo?” Master asked, looking at one of the two men standing at the door. “Obiozo?”
When Ugwu saw the hollow-eyed men with the dirt-smeared clothes, he knew right away that he should take Baby away, shield her. He took her food into the bedroom, set it on her play table, and told her she could pretend she was eating with Jill from the Jack and Jill comic that was delivered with the Renaissance. He stood by the door that led to the corridor and peered into the living room. One of the men was speaking, while the other drank from a bottle of water, the glass ignored on the table.
“We saw a lorry driver who agreed to carry us,” the man said, and Ugwu could tell right away that he was Master’s kinsman; his Abba dialect was heavy, each f sounding like a v.
“What happened?” Master asked.
The man placed the bottle of water down and said quietly, “They are killing us like ants. Did you hear what I said? Ants.”
“Our eyes have seen plenty, anyi afujugo anya,” Obiozo said. “I saw a whole family, a father and mother and three children, lying on the road to the motor park. Just lying there.”
“What about Kano? What is happening in Kano?” Master asked.
“It started in Kano,” the man said.
Obiozo was speaking, saying something about vultures and bodies dumped outside the city walls, but Ugwu no longer listened. It started in Kano rang in his head. He did not want to tidy the guest room and find bedsheets and warm the soup and make fresh garri for them. He wanted them to leave right away. Or, if they would not leave, he wanted them to shut their filthy mouths. He wanted the radio announcers to be silent too, but they were not. They repeated the news of the killings in Maiduguri until Ugwu wanted to throw the radio out of the window, and the next afternoon, after the men left, a solemn voice on ENBC Radio Enugu recounted eyewitness accounts from the North: teachers hacked down in Zaria, a full Catholic church in Sokoto set on fire, a pregnant woman split open in Kano. The newscaster paused. “Some of our people are coming back now. The lucky ones are coming back. The railway stations are full of our people. If you have tea and bread to spare, please take it to the stations. Help a brother in need.”
Master leaped up from the sofa. “Go, Ugwu,” he said. “Take tea and bread and go to the railway station.”
“Yes, sah,” Ugwu said. Before he made the tea, he fried some plantains for Baby’s lunch. “I have put Baby’s lunch in the oven, sah,” he said.
He was not sure Master heard him and as he left, he worried that Baby would go hungry and Master would not know that her fried plantains were in the oven. He made himself keep worrying about it until he got to the station. Mats and dirty wrappers were spread all over the platform and people were crumpled down on them, men and women and children crying and eating bread and tending wounds. Hawkers walked around with trays on their heads. Ugwu did not want to go into that ragged bazaar but he steeled himself and walked toward a man sitting on the ground with a red-stained rag wound around his head. Flies buzzed everywhere.
“Do you want some bread?” Ugwu asked.
“Yes, my brother. Dalu. Thank you
.”
Ugwu did not look to see how deep the knife wound on his head was. He poured the tea and held out the bread. He would not remember this man tomorrow because he would not want to.
“Do you want some bread?” Ugwu asked another man nearby, who sat hunched. “I choro bread?”
The man turned. Ugwu recoiled and nearly dropped the flask. The man’s right eye was gone, in its place a juicy-red pulp.
“It was the soldiers who saved us,” the first man was saying, as if he felt he had to tell his story in exchange for the bread he was eating dipped in tea. “They told us to run to the army barracks. Those madmen were chasing us like runaway goats, but once we entered the gates of the barracks we were safe.”
A rickety train pulled up, so full that some people held on to the outside of the coaches, clutching at metal bars. Ugwu watched as tired, dusty, bloody people climbed down, but he did not join those who rushed over to help. He could not bear to think that Olanna was one of those limping and defeated people, and yet he could not bear to think that she was not, that she was still behind, somewhere in the North. He watched until the train emptied out. Olanna was not there. He gave the rest of the bread to the one-eyed man, then turned and ran. He did not stop until he got to Odim Street and past the bush with the white flowers.
11
Olanna was sitting on Mohammed’s veranda, drinking chilled rice milk, laughing at the delicious cold trickle down her throat, at the stickiness on her lips, when the gateman appeared and asked to speak to Mohammed.
Mohammed left and came back moments later, holding what looked like a pamphlet. “They’re rioting,” he said.
“It’s the students, isn’t it?” Olanna asked.
“I think it’s religious. You must leave right away.” His eyes avoided hers.
“Mohammed, calm down.”
“Sule said they are blocking the roads and searching for infidels. Come, come.” He was already heading indoors. Olanna followed. He worried too much, did Mohammed. Muslim students were always demonstrating about one thing or the other, after all, and harassing people who were Western-dressed, but they always dispersed quickly enough.