A Man of the People

  “Where is her home? I must go and talk to her—tomorrow morning, I must.” Before I said this I considered Eddy’s presence but quickly took the calculated risk that he was likely to be on his mother’s side, although you couldn’t see anything of it on his handsome face, even with his mother on the brink of tears.

  “Go if you like,” said Mrs Nanga with feigned indifference, “but don’t tell anyone I sent you. If I am not to grow bigger let me at least remain as small as I am.”

  I was right about Eddy. He immediately and carefully described how to get to Edna’s home—in another and fairly distant part of the village. He even suggested that the driver take me in their Vauxhall, which showed that in spite of his height he was still a mere boy.

  • • •

  I lost my way a few times before I found Odo’s house of red earth and thatched roof. He was sitting in his front room making the rope used for tying yams on to erect poles in the barn. The short pieces of fibre from which he worked lay beside him in three bundles, one of which had become loose at the girdle from depletion. The rope he had made so far was rolled up in a ball lying between his feet; he held its free end in his hand and tied new lengths of fibre to it. When I came in he was strengthening the last knot by pulling hard at it across his chest, exposing his locked teeth in the action. He was a big man with an enormous, shining stomach sitting on the rolled-up portion of his loin-cloth. His eyes were bloodshot and his hair greying.

  We shook hands and I took a chair facing him and backing the approaches to the house. He said “welcome” several times more while he worked.

  “I must carry the debt of a kolanut,” he said, re-tying a knot that had just come undone under his pull. “It got finished only this morning.”

  “Don’t worry about kolanut,” I said, and added after a long pause: “You do not know me, I’m sure. I am one of the teachers at the Grammar School.”

  “Yes,” he said looking up. “I knew it was a face I had seen.”

  We shook hands again and he said “welcome” and apologized once more for not having kolanuts and I replied that it was not every day that people had kolanuts.

  “Since the woman of the house went into hospital there hasn’t been anyone to look after these things,” he said.

  “I hope she will become well again soon.”

  “We are looking on the Man Above.”

  After a suitable pause I asked about Edna.

  “She is cooking the food to take to the hospital,” he replied coldly.

  “I have a message for her from my friend Chief Nanga.”

  “You are a friend of my in-law? Why did you not tell me so? Have you come from Bori, then?”

  “Yes. I came back only yesterday.”

  “True? How was he when you left him?”

  “He was well.”

  He turned round on his seat, towards a door leading into inner rooms and raising his voice called out. Edna’s voice came back from the interior of the compound, like a distant flute.

  “Come and salute our guest,” hollered her father in the same loud voice. While we waited, I felt his eyes on me and so I made a special effort to look as casual as I could. I even turned round on my seat and inspected the approaches to the house and then formed my lips as though I was whistling to myself.

  “Has your wife been in the hospital a long time?” I asked.

  “Since three weeks. But her body has not been hers since the beginning of the rainy season.”

  “God will hear our prayers,” I said.

  “He holds the knife and He holds the yam.”

  Because of my position I could see Edna as she came into the middle room. I suppose she must have washed her face with a little water tipped into her palm; she was now wiping it, as she approached us, with a corner of her lappa, which she dropped as soon as she saw me. A big something caught in my throat and I tried without success to swallow it down. She wore a loose blouse over her lappa and an old silken head-tie. As she emerged into the front room all my composure seemed to leave me. Instead of holding out my hand still seated as befitted a man (and one older than she to boot) I sprang to my feet like some woman-fearing Englishman. She screwed up her face ever so slightly in an effort to remember me.

  “I am a teacher at the Grammar School,” I said a little hoarsely. “We met the day Chief Nanga lectured. . . .”

  “Oh yes, it is true,” she said smiling gloriously. “You are Mr Samalu.”

  “That’s right,” I said, greatly flattered. “You have a good memory on top of your beauty,” I said in English so the father would not understand.

  “Thank you.”

  Perhaps it was the way she was dressed and the domestic responsibility she was exercising, or perhaps she had simply grown a little more since October; whatever the reason she was now a beautiful young woman and not a girl looking as though she was waiting to be taken back to her convent.

  “Sit down, teacher?” said her father, a little impatiently, I thought. Then turning to his daughter he announced that I had a message from Bori. She turned her largish, round eyes to me.

  “Nothing really,” I said embarrassed, “Chief Nanga said I should come and greet you and find out about your mother.”

  “You may tell him she is still in the hospital,” said Edna’s father in a most unpleasant tone, “and that her medicine costs money and that she planted neither cassava nor cocoyam this year.”

  “Don’t listen to him,” said Edna to me, the happiness wrenched out of her eyes. She turned on her father: “Did he not send you something through his wife?”

  “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.”

  “Why shouldn’t you share the house with him?” asked Mrs Nanga deflecting him off his course. “Does a man exclude his brother from his house?”

  “No, that is not done,” he conceded after thinking about it for a while with his head bent slightly to one side. “It is my house; you have spoken the truth.”

  The house in question was the very modern four-storey structure going up beside the present building and which was to get into the news later. It was, as we were to learn, a “dash” from the European building firm of Antonio and Sons whom Nanga had recently given the half-million-pound contract to build the National Academy of Arts and Sciences.

  I had spent about two hours at the house before Edna finally came in the car sent to bring her. In that time I gave out three shillings to three different groups of boys and their masked dancers. The last, its wooden mask-face a little askew and its stuffed pot-belly looking really stuffed, was held in restraint by his attendants tugging at a rope tied round his waist as adult attendants do to a real, dangerous Mask. The children sang, beat drums, gongs and cigarette cups and the Mask danced comically to the song:

  Sunday, bigi bele Sunday

  Sunday, bigi bele Sunday

  Akatakata done come!

  Everybody run away!

  Sunday, Alleluia!

  While the Mask danced here and there brandishing an outsize matchet the restraining rope round his waist came undone. One might have expected this sudden access to freedom to be followed by a wild rampage and loss of life and property. But the Mask tamely put his matchet down, helped his disciples retie the rope, picked up his weapon again and resumed his dance.

  When the drunken visitor had finally been persuaded to go and come back later, Mrs Nanga opened a side door that led from the front room into a porch fitted up as a reception room presumably for V.I.P.s and asked me to go in and rest there. Then she sent Edna to me with a bottle of beer and a glass on a tray. She served me silently. But she did not sit down afterwards; instead she went and leaned with her elbows on one of the windows looking outside.

&nbs
p; I began to drink the beer and wondered how on earth to begin. I suppose Chief Nanga’s house was the wrong place, really. But I had better make the best of it before more visitors came, I thought; and as if to confirm the thought I heard just then the drumming of another group of boys.

  “Why don’t you sit, Edna?” I said with as much decisiveness as I could put into it.

  “I am all right here,” she said. “I want to see what is going on in the road.”

  “Is anything going on?” I stood up and went to her window and was tempted to put an arm round her waist but decided that it might be premature.

  “Oh, just people passing in their new Christmas dresses.”

  “There is something I want to tell you,” I said, returning to my seat.

  “Me?” she said, turning round and looking genuinely surprised.

  “Yes, come and sit down.”

  She sat down and I took one more sip before speaking.

  “I want to give you a piece of advice—as one who has seen more of the world and as a friend.” Good beginning, I thought, and took a sip at my glass. “You will be making a big and serious mistake if you allow anyone to rush you into marriage now. You are too young to be rushed into marrying, especially marrying a polygamist. . . .”

  “Is that what Mama asked you to tell me?” she asked.

  “Who is Mama? Oh, Mrs Nanga, I see. Why? Why should she ask me to tell you anything? No, Edna, it is in your own interest. Don’t go and spoil your life.”

  “What is your business in it?”

  “None whatever. Except that I think a beautiful young girl like you deserves better than to marry an ancient polygamist.”