Half of a Yellow Sun

  Richard could hear Harrison in the kitchen. He tuned to Radio Biafra, to the ending of an announcement about the enemy’s being wedged in Oba, before he turned the radio off. He poured a smaller drink and reread his last sentence. He was writing about Commando Special Forces, how popular and revered they were by civilians, but his dislike of their commander, a German mercenary, made his words stiff. The writing was stilted. The sherry had sharpened his anxiety rather than deadened it. He got up and picked up the phone and called Madu.

  “Richard,” Madu said. “How lucky. I just stepped in.”

  “Is there news on Port Harcourt?”

  “News?”

  “Is it threatened? There’s been shelling in Umuokwurusi, hasn’t there?”

  “Oh, we have secure information that some saboteurs got their hands on some shells. You think if the vandals were really that close they would do that kind of halfhearted shelling?”

  The amused tone in Madu’s voice made him feel instantly foolish. “Sorry for the bother. I just thought …” He let his voice trail off.

  “Not at all. Greet Kainene when she comes back,” Madu said, before hanging up.

  Richard finished his drink and made to pour himself another but decided not to. He forced the stopper back into the mouth of the bottle and went out to the veranda. The sea was still. He stretched and ran a quick hand through his hair, as if to shrug off the foreboding. If Port Harcourt fell, he would lose the town he had come to love, the town in which he loved; he would lose a bit of himself. But Madu had to be right. Madu would not be in denial about a town that was about to fall, certainly not a town where Kainene lived. If he said Port Harcourt was not under threat, it was not.

  Richard looked at his hazy reflection in the glass door. He had a tan and his hair looked fuller, slightly tousled, and he thought of Rimbaud’s words: I is someone else.

  Kainene laughed when Richard told her about Harrison’s beets. Then she touched his arm and said, “Don’t worry, if he put the manuscript in a box, it will be safe from termites.” She slipped out of her work clothes and stretched languorously, and he admired the lean grace of her arched back. Desire reeled inside him, but he would wait for evening, after dinner, after they had entertained any guests, after Ikejide had retired. They would go out to the veranda and he would push the table aside and spread out the soft rug and lie on his naked back. When she climbed astride, he would hold her hips and stare up at the night sky and, for those moments, be sure of the meaning of bliss. It was their new ritual since the war started, the only reason he was grateful for the war.

  “Colin Williamson stopped by my office today,” Kainene said.

  “I didn’t know he was back,” Richard said, and Colin’s sunburned face came to his mind, the flash of discolored teeth as he talked, too often, about how he left the BBC because his editors were supportive of Nigeria.

  “He brought a letter from my mother,” Kainene said.

  “From your mother!”

  “She read his story in the Observer and contacted him to ask whether he would be returning to Biafra and would he deliver a letter to her daughter in Port Harcourt. She was surprised when he said he knew us.”

  Richard loved the way she said us. “Are they all right?”

  “Of course they are; nobody is bombing London. She says she has nightmares about Olanna and me dying, she’s saying prayers, and they’re involved with the Save Biafra Campaign in London—which must mean they sent a small donation.” Kainene paused and handed him an envelope. “She rather cleverly taped some British pounds into the inner lining of a card. Quite impressive. She sent one for Olanna too.”

  He read the letter quickly. Regards to Richard was the only reference to him, at the bottom of the blue paper. He wanted to ask Kainene how she planned to deliver Olanna’s but he would not. Silence had enshrined the subject of Olanna with each month, each year, that passed without their bringing it up. When Kainene received the three letters Olanna had written since the war started, she had said nothing except that she received them. And she had not replied.

  “I’ll send somebody to Umuahia next week to deliver Olanna’s,” Kainene said.

  He gave the letter back to her. The silence was becoming curdled.

  “The Nigerians won’t stop talking about Port Harcourt,” he said.

  “They won’t take Port Harcourt. Our best battalion is here.” Kainene sounded casual enough, but there was a new wariness in her eyes, the same wariness she had when she told him, months ago, that she wanted to buy an uncompleted house in Orlu. She had said it was better to own property rather than cash but he suspected that, for her, it was a safety net in case Port Harcourt fell. For him, considering the fall of Port Harcourt was blasphemous. Every weekend, when they inspected the house to make sure her builders were not stealing the materials, he never spoke of their living there, as though to absolve himself from the blasphemy.

  And he no longer wanted to travel. He wanted to guard Port Harcourt with his presence; as long as he was there, he felt, nothing would happen. But the public relations people in Europe had asked for an article about the airstrip in Uli, so he left reluctantly, very early in the morning, so he would be back before midday when Nigerian planes strafed vehicles driving on major roads. A wide bomb crater loomed ahead on Okigwe Road. The driver swerved to avoid it and Richard felt a familiar foreboding, but his thoughts lightened as they approached Uli. It was his first visit to Biafra’s only link to the outside world, this wonder of an airstrip where food and arms evaded Nigerian bombers. He climbed out of the car and looked at the strip of tarmac with thick bush on either side and thought of the people who did so much with so little. A tiny jet was parked at the far end. The morning sun was hot; three men were spreading palm fronds on the tarmac, working swiftly and sweating, pushing along large carts piled with fronds. Richard went over to say, “Well done, jisienu ike.”

  An official came out of the unfinished terminal building nearby and shook Richard’s hand. “Don’t write too much, oh! Don’t give away our secrets,” he joked.

  “Of course not,” Richard said. “Can I interview you?”

  The man beamed and flexed his shoulders and said, “Well, I am in charge of customs and immigration.” Richard hid a smile; people always felt important when he asked for an interview. They talked standing by the tarmac, and shortly after the man returned to the building, a tall fair-haired man walked out. Richard recognized him: Count Von Rosen. He looked older than in the picture Richard had seen, closer to seventy than sixty, but his was an elegant aging; his strides were long and his chin firm.

  “They told me you were out here and I thought I’d say hello,” he said, his handshake as unwavering as his green eyes. “I’ve just read your excellent article on the Biafran Boys Brigade.”

  “A pleasure to meet you, Count Von Rosen,” Richard said. And it was a pleasure. Ever since he read about this Swedish aristocrat who bombed Nigerian targets with his own small plane, he had wanted to meet him.

  “Remarkable men,” the count said, glancing at the workers who were making sure that, from above, the black stretch of tarmac would look like bush. “Remarkable country.”

  “Yes,” Richard said.

  “Do you like cheese?” the count asked.

  “Cheese? Yes. Yes, of course.”

  The count dug into his pocket and brought out a small packet. “Excellent cheddar.”

  Richard took it and tried to shield his surprise. “Thank you.”

  The count fumbled in his pocket again and Richard worried that he might be bringing out more cheese. But he pulled out a pair of sunglasses and put them on. “I’m told your wife is a wealthy Igbo, one of those who stayed back to fight for the cause.”

  Richard had never thought about it like that, Kainene staying back to fight for the cause, but he was pleased that the count had been told this and told also that he and Kainene were married. He felt a sudden fierce pride for Kainene. “Yes. She’s an extraordinary woman.”


  There was a pause. The intimacy of the cheese present required a reciprocating gesture, so Richard opened his diary and showed the count first a photo of Kainene, taken by the pool with a cigarette between her lips, and then the photo of the roped pot.

  “I fell in love with Igbo-Ukwu art and then fell in love with her,” he said.

  “Beautiful, both,” the count said, before he took his sunglasses off to examine the photos.

  “Are you going on a mission today?” Richard asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Why are you doing this, sir?”

  He put his glasses back on. “I worked with the freedom fighters in Ethiopia and before that I flew in relief to the Warsaw ghetto,” he said with a slight smile, as if that answered the question. “Now I must get on. Keep up the good work.”

  Richard watched him walk away, a straight-backed courtier, and thought how different he was from the mercenary. “I love the Biafrans,” the red-faced German had said. “Nothing like the bloody kaffirs in Congo.” He had spoken to Richard in his house in the middle of the bush, drinking from a large bottle of whisky, watching his adopted child—a pretty Biafran toddler—playing with a collection of old shrapnel on the floor. Richard had felt annoyed by the affectionate contempt with which he treated the child and by the exception he made of Biafrans. It was as though the mercenary felt that here finally were black people he could like. The count was different. Richard glanced at the tiny jet again before he climbed into the car.

  On the way back, just outside Port Harcourt, he heard the distant rattle of gunfire. It was not long before it stopped. It worried him. And when Kainene suggested they go to Orlu the next day to find a carpenter for her new house, Richard wished they did not have to go. Two consecutive days away from Port Harcourt worried him.

  The new house was surrounded by cashew trees. Richard remembered how dejected it had looked when Kainene bought it—half-finished with layers of green mold on the unpainted walls—how the flies and bees clustered over the fallen cashews had nauseated him. The owner had been principal of the community secondary school down the road. Now that the school was a refugee camp, now that his wife had died, he was going into the interior with his goats and his children. He repeated, “This house is out of shelling range, completely out of shelling range,” until Richard wondered how he could possibly know where the Nigerians would shell from. There was an unobtrusive charm about the bungalow, Richard conceded, as they walked through the empty, newly painted rooms. Kainene hired two carpenters from the refugee camp, made sketches on a sheet of paper, and, back in the car, told Richard, “I don’t trust them to make a decent table.”

  A shrill sound went off as they drove out of Orlu. The driver stopped with a jerk, in the middle of the road, and they jumped out of the car and into the thick green bush. Some women who had been walking along the road ran too, looking up as they did, twisting their necks. It was the first time Richard had taken cover with Kainene; she lay flat and rigid on the ground next to him. Their shoulders touched. The driver was a little way behind them. The silence was absolute. A loud rustling nearby made Richard tense until a redheaded lizard crawled out. They waited and waited and finally got up when they heard the revving of a car engine and rising voices from nearby, “My money is gone! My money is gone!” There was a market only yards away. Somebody had stolen from one of the traders while she was taking cover. Richard could see her and some other women underneath open stalls, shouting and gesticulating. It was difficult to believe how silent it all had been a moment ago, and how Biafran markets now thrived so easily in the bush since the Nigerians bombed the open-air Awgu market.

  “False alarm is worse than the real one,” the driver said.

  Kainene dusted herself down carefully, but the ground was wet and the mud had stuck to her clothes; her blue dress looked designed with chocolate-colored smudges. They climbed into the car and continued the journey. Richard sensed that Kainene was angry.

  “Look at the tree,” he told her, pointing. It had been cleanly split in two, from the branches down to the stem. One half still stood, slightly tilted, while the other lay on the ground.

  “It seems recent,” Kainene said.

  “My uncle flew a plane in the war. He bombed Germany. It’s strange to think of him doing something like this.”

  “You don’t talk about him.”

  “He died. He was shot down.” Richard paused. “I’m going to write about our new forest markets.”

  The driver had stopped at a checkpoint. A lorry loaded with sofas and shelves and tables was parked by the side, and a man stood beside it talking to a young female civil defender wearing khaki jeans and canvas shoes. She left him and came up and peered at Richard and Kainene. She asked the driver to open the boot, looked inside the glove compartment, and then extended her hand for Kainene’s handbag.

  “If I had a bomb, I would not hide it in my bag,” Kainene muttered.

  “What did you say, madam?” the young woman asked.

  Kainene said nothing. The woman looked through the bag carefully. She brought out a small radio. “What is this? Is this a transmitter?”

  “It is not a transmitter. It is a ra-di-o,” Kainene said, with a mocking slowness. The young woman examined their special duties passes, smiled, and adjusted her beret. “Sorry, madam. But you know we have many saboteurs who use strange gadgets to transmit to Nigeria. Vigilance is our watchword!”

  “Why have you stopped that man with the lorry?” Kainene asked.

  “We are turning back people evacuating furniture.”

  “Why?”

  “Evacuations like this cause panic in the civil population.” She sounded as if she were reciting something rehearsed. “There is no cause for alarm.”

  “But what if his town is about to fall? Do you know where he has come from?”

  She stiffened. “Good day, madam.”

  As soon as the driver started the car, Kainene said, “It’s such an awful joke, isn’t it?”

  “What?” Richard asked, although he knew what she meant.

  “This fear we are whipping up in our people. Bombs in women’s bras! Bombs in tins of baby milk! Saboteurs everywhere! Watch your children because they could be working for Nigeria!”

  “It’s normal for wartime.” He sometimes wished she would not be so arch about things. “It’s important for people to be aware that there are saboteurs in our midst.”

  “The only saboteurs we have are the ones Ojukwu invented so he can lock up his opponents and the men whose wives he wants. Did I ever tell you about the Onitsha man who bought up all of the cement we had in the factory shortly after the refugees started coming back? Ojukwu is having an affair with the man’s wife and has just had the man arrested for nothing.”

  She was tapping her foot on the car floor. She always sounded like Madu when she spoke about His Excellency. Her disdain did not convince Richard; it began when Madu complained that His Excellency had bypassed him and made his junior a commanding officer. If His Excellency had not bypassed Madu, perhaps she would be less critical.

  “Do you know how many officers he’s locked up? He is so suspicious of his officers that he’s using civilians to buy arms. Madu said they just bought some miserable bolt-action rifles in Europe. Really, when Biafra is established, we will have to remove Ojukwu.”

  “And replace him with who, Madu?”

  Kainene laughed, and it pleased and surprised him that she had enjoyed his sarcasm. His foreboding returned, a rumbling rush in his stomach, as they approached Port Harcourt.

  “Stop so that we can buy akara and fried fish,” Kainene said to the driver, and even the driver’s stepping on the brake made Richard nervous.

  When they got home, Ikejide said Colonel Madu had called four times.

  “I hope nothing is wrong,” Kainene said, opening the oil-smeared newspaper package of fried fish and bean cakes. Richard took a still-hot akara and blew on it and told himself that Port Harcourt was safe. Nothing wa
s wrong. The phone rang and he grabbed it and felt his heart begin to jog when he heard Madu’s voice.

  “How are you? Any problems?” Madu asked.

  “No. Why?”

  “There’s a rumor that Britain supplied five warships to Nigeria, so youths have been burning British shops and houses all over Port Harcourt today. I wanted to be sure you hadn’t been bothered. I can send one or two of my boys down.”

  First, Richard was irritated at the thought that he still was a foreigner who could be attacked, and then he felt grateful for Madu’s concern.

  “We’re fine,” he said. “We’ve just come back from seeing the house in Orlu.”

  “Oh, good. Let me know if anything develops.” Madu paused and spoke to somebody in muffled tones before he came back on the line. “You should write about what the French ambassador said yesterday.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “I was told that Biafrans fought like heroes, but now I know that heroes fight like Biafrans,” Madu intoned proudly, as if the compliment was one given him personally and he wanted to make sure Richard knew it.

  “Yes, of course,” Richard said again. “Port Harcourt is safe, isn’t it?”

  There was a pause on Madu’s end. “Some saboteurs have been arrested and all of them are non-Igbo minorities. I don’t know why these people insist on aiding the enemy. But we will overcome. Is Kainene there?”

  Richard handed Kainene the phone. The sacrilege of it, that some people could betray Biafra. He remembered the Ijaw and Efik men he had spoken to at a bank in Owerri, who said the Igbo would dominate them when Biafra was established. Richard had told them that a country born from the ashes of injustice would limit its practice of injustice. When they looked at him doubtfully, he mentioned the army general who was Efik, the director who was Ijaw, the minority soldiers who were fighting so brilliantly for the cause. Still, they looked unconvinced.