Half of a Yellow Sun (6 page)

Olanna was annoyed but only mildly, because she knew the line moved fast anyway. So she was surprised at the outburst that followed, from a man wearing a brown safari suit and clutching a book: Odenigbo. He walked up to the front, escorted the white man back into the line and then shouted at the ticket seller. “You miserable ignoramus! You see a white person and he looks better than your own people? You must apologize to everybody in this line! Right now!”

Olanna had stared at him, at the arch of his eyebrows behind the glasses, the thickness of his body, already thinking of the least hurtful way to untangle herself from Mohammed. Perhaps she would have known that Odenigbo was different, even if he had not spoken; his haircut alone said it, standing up in a high halo. But there was an unmistakable grooming about him, too; he was not one of those who used untidiness to substantiate their radicalism. She smiled and said “Well done!” as he walked past her, and it was the boldest thing she had ever done, the first time she had demanded attention from a man. He stopped and introduced himself. “My name is Odenigbo.”

“I’m Olanna,” she said and later, she would tell him that there had been a crackling magic in the air and he would tell her that his desire at that moment was so intense that his groin ached.

When she finally felt that desire, she was surprised above everything else. She did not know that a man’s thrusts could suspend memory, that it was possible to be poised in a place where she could not think or remember but only feel. The intensity had not abated after two years, nor had her awe at his self-assured eccentricities and his fierce moralities. But she feared that this was because theirs was a relationship consumed in sips: She saw him when she came home on holiday; they wrote to each other; they talked on the phone. Now that she was back in Nigeria they would live together, and she did not understand how he could not show some uncertainty. He was too sure.

She looked out at the clouds outside her window, smoky thickets drifting by, and thought how fragile they were.

Olanna had not wanted to have dinner with her parents, especially since they had invited Chief Okonji. But her mother came into her room to ask her to please join them; it was not every day that they hosted the finance minister, and this dinner was even
more important because of the building contract her father wanted.
“Biko
, wear something nice. Kainene will be dressing up too,” her mother had added, as if mentioning her twin sister somehow legitimized everything.

Now, Olanna smoothed the napkin on her lap and smiled at the steward placing a plate of halved avocado next to her. His white uniform was starched so stiff his trousers looked as if they had been made out of cardboard.

“Thank you, Maxwell,” she said.

“Yes, aunty,” Maxwell mumbled, and moved on with his tray.

Olanna looked around the table. Her parents were focused on Chief Okonji, nodding eagerly as he told a story about a recent meeting with Prime Minister Balewa. Kainene was inspecting her plate with that arch expression of hers, as if she were mocking the avocado. None of them thanked Maxwell. Olanna wished they would; it was such a simple thing to do, to acknowledge the humanity of the people who served them. She had suggested it once; her father said he paid them good salaries, and her mother said thanking them would give them room to be insulting, while Kainene, as usual, said nothing, a bored expression on her face.

“This is the best avocado I have tasted in a long time,” Chief Okonji said.

“It is from one of our farms,” her mother said. “The one near Asaba.”

“I’ll have the steward put some in a bag for you,” her father said.

“Excellent,” Chief Okonji said. “Olanna, I hope you are enjoying yours, eh? You’ve been staring at it as if it is something that bites.” He laughed, an over-hearty guffaw, and her parents promptly laughed as well.

“It’s very good.” Olanna looked up. There was something wet about Chief Okonji’s smile. Last week, when he thrust his card into her hand at the Ikoyi Club, she had worried about that smile
because it looked as if the movement of his lips made saliva fill his mouth and threaten to trickle down his chin.

“I hope you’ve thought about coming to join us at the ministry, Olanna. We need first-class brains like yours,” Chief Okonji said.

“How many people get offered jobs personally from the finance minister,” her mother said, to nobody in particular, and her smile lit up the oval dark-skinned face that was so nearly perfect, so symmetrical, that friends called her Art.

Olanna placed her spoon down. “I’ve decided to go to Nsukka. I’ll be leaving in two weeks.”

She saw the way her father tightened his lips. Her mother left her hand suspended in the air for a moment, as if the news were too tragic to continue sprinkling salt. “I thought you had not made up your mind,” her mother said.

“I can’t waste too much time or they will offer it to somebody else,” Olanna said.

“Nsukka? Is that right? You’ve decided to move to Nsukka?” Chief Okonji asked.

“Yes. I applied for a job as instructor in the Department of Sociology and I just got it,” Olanna said. She usually liked her avocado without salt, but it was bland now, almost nauseating.

“Oh. So you’re leaving us in Lagos,” Chief Okonji said. His face seemed to melt, folding in on itself. Then he turned and asked, too brightly, “And what about you, Kainene?”

Kainene looked Chief Okonji right in the eyes, with that stare that was so expressionless, so blank, that it was almost hostile. “What about me indeed?” She raised her eyebrows. “I too will be putting my newly acquired degree to good use. I’m moving to Port Harcourt to manage Daddy’s businesses there.”

Olanna wished she still had those flashes, moments when she could tell what Kainene was thinking. When they were in primary school, they sometimes looked at each other and laughed,
without speaking, because they were thinking the same joke. She doubted that Kainene ever had those flashes now, since they never talked about such things anymore. They never talked about anything anymore.

“So Kainene will manage the cement factory?” Chief Okonji asked, turning to her father.

“She’ll oversee everything in the east, the factories and our new oil interests. She has always had an excellent eye for business.”

“Whoever said you lost out by having twin daughters is a liar,” Chief Okonji said.

“Kainene is not just like a son, she is like two,” her father said. He glanced at Kainene and Kainene looked away, as if the pride on his face did not matter, and Olanna quickly focused on her plate so that neither would know she had been watching them. The plate was elegant, light green, the same color as the avocado.

“Why don’t you all come to my house this weekend, eh?” Chief Okonji asked. “If only to sample my cook’s fish pepper soup. The chap is from Nembe; he knows what to do with fresh fish.”

Her parents cackled loudly. Olanna was not sure how that was funny, but then it was the minister’s joke.

“That sounds wonderful,” Olanna’s father said.

“It will be nice for all of us to go before Olanna leaves for Nsukka,” her mother said.

Olanna felt a slight irritation, a prickly feeling on her skin. “I would love to come, but I won’t be here this weekend.”

“You won’t be here?” her father asked. She wondered if the expression in his eyes was a desperate plea. She wondered, too, how her parents had promised Chief Okonji an affair with her in exchange for the contract. Had they stated it verbally, plainly, or had it been implied?

“I have made plans to go to Kano, to see Uncle Mbaezi and the family, and Mohammed as well,” she said.

Her father stabbed at his avocado. “I see.”

Olanna sipped her water and said nothing.

After dinner, they moved to the balcony for liqueurs. Olanna liked this after-dinner ritual and often would move away from her parents and the guests to stand by the railing, looking at the tall lamps that lit up the paths below, so bright that the swimming pool looked silver and the hibiscuses and bougainvillea took on an incandescent patina over their reds and pinks. The first and only time Odenigbo visited her in Lagos, they had stood looking down at the swimming pool and Odenigbo threw a bottle cork down and watched it plunk into the water. He drank a lot of brandy, and when her father said that the idea of Nsukka University was silly, that Nigeria was not ready for an indigenous university and that receiving support from an American university—rather than a proper university in Britain—was plain daft, he raised his voice in response. Olanna had thought he would realize that her father only wanted to gall him and show how unimpressed he was by a senior lecturer from Nsukka. She thought he would let her father’s words go. But his voice rose higher and higher as he argued about Nsukka’s being free of colonial influence, and she had blinked often to signal him to stop, although he may not have noticed since the veranda was dim. Finally the phone rang and the conversation had to end. The look in her parents’ eyes was grudging respect, Olanna could tell, but it did not stop them from telling her that Odenigbo was crazy and wrong for her, one of those hotheaded university people who talked and talked until everybody had a headache and nobody understood what had been said.

“Such a cool night,” Chief Okonji said behind her. Olanna turned around. She did not know when her parents and Kainene had gone inside.

“Yes,” she said.

Chief Okonji stood in front of her. His
agbada
was embroidered with gold thread around the collar. She looked at his neck, settled into rolls of fat, and imagined him prying the folds apart as he bathed.

“What about tomorrow? There’s a cocktail party at Ikoyi Hotel,” he said. “I want all of you to meet some expatriates. They are looking for land and I can arrange for them to buy from your father at five or six times the price.”

“I will be doing a St. Vincent de Paul charity drive tomorrow.”

Chief Okonji moved closer. “I can’t keep you out of my mind,” he said, and a mist of alcohol settled on her face.

“I am not interested, Chief.”

“I just can’t keep you out of my mind,” Chief Okonji said again. “Look, you don’t have to work at the ministry. I can appoint you to a board, any board you want, and I will furnish a flat for you wherever you want.” He pulled her to him, and for a while Olanna did nothing, her body limp against his. She was used to this, being grabbed by men who walked around in a cloud of cologne-drenched entitlement, with the presumption that, because they were powerful and found her beautiful, they belonged together. She pushed him back, finally, and felt vaguely sickened at how her hands sank into his soft chest. “Stop it, Chief.”

His eyes were closed. “I love you, believe me. I really love you.”

She slipped out of his embrace and went indoors. Her parents’ voices were faint from the living room. She stopped to sniff the wilting flowers in a vase on the side table near the staircase, even though she knew their scent would be gone, before walking upstairs. Her room felt alien, the warm wood tones, the tan furniture, the wall-to-wall burgundy carpeting that cushioned her feet, the reams of space that made Kainene call their rooms
flats
. The copy of
Lagos Life
was still on her bed; she picked it up, and
looked at the photo of her and her mother, on page five, their faces contented and complacent, at a cocktail party hosted by the British high commissioner. Her mother had pulled her close as a photographer approached; later, after the flashbulb went off, Olanna had called the photographer over and asked him please not to publish the photo. He had looked at her oddly. Now, she realized how silly it had been to ask him; of course he would never understand the discomfort that came with being a part of the gloss that was her parents’ life.

She was in bed reading when her mother knocked and came in.

“Oh, you’re reading,” her mother said. She was holding rolls of fabric in her hand. “Chief just left. He said I should greet you.”

Olanna wanted to ask if they had promised him an affair with her, and yet she knew she never would. “What are those materials?”

“Chief just sent his driver to the car for them before he left. It’s the latest lace from Europe. See? Very nice,
i fukwa?”

Olanna felt the fabric between her fingers. “Yes, very nice.”

“Did you see the one he wore today? Original!
Ezigbo!
” Her mother sat down beside her. “And do you know, they say he never wears any outfit twice? He gives them to his houseboys once he has worn them.”

Olanna visualized his poor houseboys’ wood boxes incongruously full of lace, houseboys she was sure did not get paid much every month, owning cast-off caftans and
agbadas
they could never wear. She was tired. Having conversations with her mother tired her.

“Which one do you want,
nne?
I will make a long skirt and blouse for you and Kainene.”

“No, don’t worry, Mum. Make something for yourself. I won’t wear rich lace in Nsukka too often.”

Her mother ran a finger over the bedside cabinet. “This silly
housegirl does not clean furniture properly. Does she think I pay her to play around?”

Olanna placed her book down. Her mother wanted to say something, she could tell, and the set smile, the punctilious gestures, were a beginning.

“So how is Odenigbo?” her mother asked finally.

“He’s fine.”

Her mother sighed, in the overdone way that meant she wished Olanna would see reason. “Have you thought about this Nsukka move well? Very well?”

“I have never been surer of anything.”

“But will you be comfortable there?” Her mother said
comfortable
with a faint shudder, and Olanna almost smiled because her mother had Odenigbo’s
basic
university house in mind, with its sturdy rooms and plain furniture and uncarpeted floors.

“I’ll be fine,” she said.

“You can find work here in Lagos and travel down to see him during weekends.”

“I don’t want to work in Lagos. I want to work in the university, and I want to live with him.”

Her mother looked at her for a little while longer before she stood up and said, “Good night, my daughter,” in a voice that was small and wounded.