Half of a Yellow Sun (28 page)

“What do you think of it?” he asked, and before she could answer, he asked what he really wanted to. “Do you like it? How do you feel about it?”

“I think it sounds exceedingly formal and stuffy,” she said. “But what I feel about it is pride. I feel proud.”

He sent it off to the
Herald
. When he got a response two weeks later, he ripped the letter up after reading it. The international press was simply saturated with stories of violence from Africa, and this one was particularly bland and pedantic, the deputy editor wrote, but perhaps Richard could do a piece on the human angle? Did they mutter any tribal incantations while they did the killings, for example? Did they eat body parts like they did in the Congo? Was there a way of trying truly to understand the minds of these people?

Richard put the article away. It frightened him that he slept well at nights, that he was still calmed by the scent of orange leaves and the turquoise stillness of the sea, that he was sentient.

“I’m going on. Life is the same,” he told Kainene. “I should be reacting; things should be different.”

“You can’t write a script in your mind and then force yourself to follow it. You have to let yourself be, Richard,” she said quietly.

But he couldn’t let himself be. He didn’t believe that life was the same for all the other people who had witnessed the massacres.

Then he felt more frightened at the thought that perhaps he had been nothing more than a voyeur. He had not feared for his own life, so the massacres became external, outside of him; he had watched them through the detached lens of knowing he was safe. But that couldn’t be; Kainene would not have been safe if she had been there.

He began to write about Nnaemeka and the astringent scent of liquor mixing with fresh blood in that airport lounge where the bartender lay with a blown-up face, but he stopped because the sentences were risible. They were too melodramatic. They sounded just like the articles in the foreign press, as if these killings had not happened and, even if they had, as if they had not quite happened that way. The echo of unreality weighed each word down; he clearly remembered what had happened at that airport, but to write about it he would have to reimagine it, and he was not sure if he could.

The day the secession was announced, he stood with Kainene on the veranda and listened to Ojukwu’s voice on the radio and afterward took her in his arms. At first he thought they were both trembling, until he moved back to look at her face and realized that she was perfectly still. Only he was trembling.

“Happy independence,” he told her.

“Independence,” she said, before she added, “Happy independence.”

He wanted to ask her to marry him. This was a new start, a new country,
their
new country. It was not only because secession was just, considering all that the Igbo had endured, but because of the possibility Biafra held for him. He would be Biafran in a way he could never have been Nigerian—he was here at the beginning; he had shared in the birth. He would belong. He said,
Marry me, Kainene
in his head many times but he did not say it aloud. The next day, he returned to Nsukka with Harrison.

———

Richard liked Phyllis Okafor. He liked the verve of her bouffant wigs, the drawl of her native Mississippi, as well as the severe eyeglass frames that belied the warmth in her eyes. Since he had stopped going to Odenigbo’s house, he often spent evenings with her and her husband, Nnanyelugo. It was as if she knew he had lost a social life, and she insistently invited him to the arts theater, to public lectures, to play squash. So when she asked him to come to the “In Case of War” seminar that the university women’s association was organizing, he accepted. It was a good idea to be prepared, of course, but there would be no war. The Nigerians would let Biafra be; they would never fight a people already battered by the massacres. They would be pleased to be rid of the Igbo anyway. Richard was certain about this. He was less certain about what he would do if he ran into Olanna at the seminar. It had been easy to avoid her thus far; in four years he had driven past her only a few times, he never went to the tennis courts or the staff club, and he no longer shopped at Eastern Shop.

He stood near Phyllis at the entrance of the lecture hall and scanned the room. Olanna was sitting in front with Baby on her lap. Her lushly beautiful face seemed very familiar, as did her blue dress with the ruffled collar, as if he had seen both very recently. He looked away and could not help feeling relieved that Odenigbo had not come. The hall was full. The woman talking at the podium repeated herself over and over. “Wrap your certificates in waterproof bags and make sure those are the first things you take if we have to evacuate. Wrap your certificates in waterproof bags …”

More people spoke. Then it was over. People were mingling, laughing and talking and exchanging more “in case of war” tips. Richard knew that Olanna was nearby, talking to a bearded man
who taught music. He turned, casually, to slip away, and was close to the door when she appeared beside him.

“Hello, Richard.
Kedu?”

“I’m well,” he said. The skin of his face felt tight. “And you?”

“We are fine,” Olanna said. Her lips had a slight glisten of pink gloss. Richard did not miss her use of the plural. He was not sure if she meant herself and the child, or herself and Odenigbo, or perhaps
we
was meant to suggest that she had made peace with what had happened between them and what it had done to her relationship with Kainene.

“Baby, have you greeted?” Olanna asked, looking down at the child, whose hand was enclosed in hers.

“Good afternoon,” Baby said, in a high voice.

Richard bent and touched her cheek. There was a calmness about her that made her seem older and wiser than her four years. “Hello, Baby.”

“How is Kainene?” Olanna asked.

Richard evaded her eyes, not sure what his expression should be. “She is well.”

“And your book is going well?”

“Yes. Thank you.”

“Is it still called
The Basket of Hands?”

It pleased him that she had not forgotten. “No.” He paused and tried not to think about what had happened to that manuscript, about the flames that must have charred it quickly. “It’s called
In the Time of Roped Pots.”

“Interesting title,” Olanna murmured. “I hope there won’t be war, but the seminar has been quite useful, hasn’t it.”

“Yes.”

Phyllis came over, said hello to Olanna, and then tugged at Richard’s arm. “They say Ojukwu is coming! Ojukwu is coming!” There was the sound of raised voices outside the hall.

“Ojukwu?” Richard asked.

“Yes, yes!” Phyllis was walking toward the door. “You know he dropped into Enugu campus for a surprise visit some days ago? It looks like it’s our turn!”

Richard followed her outside. They joined the cluster of lecturers standing by the statue of a lion; Olanna had disappeared.

“He’s at the library now,” somebody said.

“No, he’s in the senate building.”

“No, he wants to address the students. He’s at the admin block.”

Some people were already walking quickly toward the administration block, and Phyllis and Richard went along. They were close to the umbrella trees that lined the driveway when Richard saw the bearded man, in a severely smart, belted army uniform, striding across the corridor. A few reporters scrambled after him, holding out tape recorders like offerings. Students, so many that Richard wondered how they had congregated so quickly, began to chant. “Power! Power!” Ojukwu came downstairs and stood on top of some cement blocks on the grassy lawn. He raised his hands. Everything about him sparkled, his groomed beard, his watch, his wide shoulders.

“I came to ask you a question,” he said. His Oxford-accented voice was surprisingly soft; it did not have the timbre that it did over the radio and it was a little theatrical, a little too measured. “What shall we do? Shall we keep silent and let them force us back into Nigeria? Shall we ignore the thousands of our brothers and sisters killed in the North?”

“No! No!
” The students were filling the wide yard, spilling onto the lawn and the driveway. Many lecturers had parked their cars on the road and joined the crowd. “Power! Power!”

Ojukwu raised his hands again and the chanting stopped. “If they declare war,” he said. “I want to tell you now that it may become a long-drawn-out war. A long-drawn-out war. Are you prepared? Are we prepared?”

“Yes! Yes! Ojukwu,
nye anyi egbe!
Give us guns!
Iwe di anyi n’obi!
There is anger in our hearts!”

The chanting was constant now—give us guns, there is anger in our hearts, give us guns. The rhythm was heady. Richard glanced across at Phyllis, thrusting a fist in the air as she shouted, and he looked around for a little while at everyone else, intense and intent in the moment, before he too began to wave and chant. “Ojukwu, give us guns! Ojukwu,
nye anyi egbe!
”

Ojukwu lit a cigarette and threw it down on the lawn. It flared for a while, before he reached out and squashed it underneath a gleaming black boot. “Even the grass will fight for Biafra,” he said.

Richard told Kainene how charmed he had been by Ojukwu even though the man showed signs of early balding and was vaguely histrionic and wore a gaudy ring. He told her about the seminar. Then he wondered whether to tell her that he had run into Olanna. They were sitting on the veranda. Kainene was peeling an orange with a knife, and the slender peel dropped into a plate on the floor.

“I saw Olanna,” he said.

“Did you?”

“At the seminar. We said hello and she asked about you.”

“I see.” The orange slipped from her hand, or perhaps she dropped it, because she left it there on the terrazzo floor of the veranda.

“I’m sorry,” Richard said. “I thought I should mention that I saw her.”

He picked up the orange and held it out to her but she did not take it. She got up and walked to the railing.

“War is coming,” she said. “Port Harcourt is going crazy.”

She was looking in the far distance, as if she could actually see
the city in its frenzy of excessive parties and frenetic couplings and speeding cars. Earlier that afternoon, a well-dressed young woman had come up to Richard at the train station and taken his hand. “Come to my flat. I never do it with
oyinbo
man before, but I want try everything now, oh!” she had said, laughing, although the delirious desire in her eyes was serious enough. He had shrugged his hand free and walked away, strangely sad at the thought that she would end up with another stranger in her bed. It was as if the people in this city with the tall whistling pines wanted to grab all they could before the war robbed them of choices.

Richard got up and stood beside Kainene.

“There won’t be war,” he said.

“How did she ask about me?”

“She said, How is Kainene?”

“And you said I was well?”

“Yes.”

She said nothing else about it; he did not expect that she would.

   15   

U
gwu climbed out of the car
and went around to the boot. He placed the bag of dried fish on top of the larger bag of
garri
, hoisted both onto his head, and followed Master up the cracked stairs and into the dim building that was the town union office. Mr. Ovoko came up to meet them. “Take the bags into the store,” he told Ugwu, pointing, as if Ugwu did not know from all the times he had come in the past to bring food for the refugees. The store was empty except for a small bag of rice in the corner; weevils crawled all over it.

“How are things?
A na-emekwa?”
Master asked.

Mr. Ovoko rubbed his hands together. He had the lugubrious face of one who simply refuses to be consoled. “Nobody is donating much these days. These people keep coming here and asking me for food, and then they start to ask for jobs. You know, they came back from the North with nothing. Nothing.”

“I know they came back with nothing, my friend! Don’t lecture me!” Master snapped.

Mr. Ovoko moved back. “I am only saying that the situation is serious. In the beginning our people rushed to donate food, but now they have forgotten. It will be a disaster if war comes.”