Half of a Yellow Sun (64 page)

“Turn it off.”

“His Excellency is about to give a speech.”

“Turn it off or carry it away.”

“You don’t want to hear His Excellency?”

“Mba
, no.”

Harrison was watching him. “It will be a great speech.”

“There is no such thing as greatness,” Ugwu said.

Harrison walked away looking wounded and Ugwu did not bother to call him; he went back to watching the children. They ran sluggishly on the parched grass, holding sticks as guns, making shooting sounds with their mouths, raising clouds of dust as they chased one another. Even the dust seemed listless. They were playing War. Four boys. Yesterday, they had been five. Ugwu did not remember the fifth child’s name—was it Chidiebele or Chidiebube?—but he remembered how the child’s belly had lately started to look as if he had swallowed a fat ball, how his hair had fallen off in tufts, how his skin had lightened, from the color of mahogany to a sickly yellow. The other children had teased him often.
Afo mmili ukwa
, they called him: Breadfruit Belly. Once, Ugwu wanted to ask them to stop, so he could explain what kwashiorkor was—perhaps he could read out to them how he described kwashiorkor on his writing sheet. But he decided not to. There was no need to prepare them for what
he was sure they would all get anyway. Ugwu did not remember the child’s ever playing a Biafran officer, like His Excellency or Achuzie; he always played a Nigerian, either Gowon or Adekunle, which meant he was always defeated and had to fall down at the end and act dead. Sometimes, Ugwu wondered if the child had liked it because it gave him a chance to rest, lying down on the grass.

The child and his family had come from Oguta, one of those families who did not believe their town would fall, and so his mother looked defiant when they first arrived, as if she dared anybody to tell her she was not dreaming and would not be waking up soon. The evening they arrived, the sound of the antiaircraft guns cut through the refugee camp just before dusk. The mother ran out and held him, her only child, in a confused hug. The other women shook her roughly, as the
wa-wa-wa
roar of the overhead planes came closer.
Come to the bunker! Are you mad? Come to the bunker!

The woman refused and stood there holding her son, shaking. Ugwu still did not know why he had done what he did. Perhaps it was because Olanna had already grabbed Baby and run ahead of him and his hands were free. But he reached out and pulled the child from the woman’s embrace and ran. The child was still heavy then, still weighed something; his mother had no choice but to follow. The planes were strafing and, just before Ugwu shoved the child down the bunker, a bullet flew closely past; he smelled rather than saw it, the acridness of hot metal.

It was in the bunker, while playing with the damp soil that crawled with crickets and ants, that the child had told Ugwu his name. Chidiebele or Chidiebube, he was not sure. But it was Chidi-something. Perhaps Chidiebele, the more common name. The name almost sounded like a joke now. Chidiebele:
God is merciful
.

Later, the four boys had stopped playing War and had gone inside when Ugwu heard the thin, strangled wail from the classroom at the end of the building. He knew that that child’s aunt would come out soon and bravely tell the people nearby, that the mother would throw herself in the dirt and roll and shout until she lost her voice, and then she would take a razor and leave her scalp bare and bleeding.

He put on his singlet and went out to offer to help dig the small grave.

   33   

R
ichard sat next to Kainene
and rubbed her shoulder as she laughed at something Olanna was saying. He loved the way her neck looked longer when she threw back her head and laughed. He loved the evenings spent with her and Olanna and Odenigbo; they reminded him of Odenigbo’s dimly lit living room in Nsukka, of tasting beer on his pepper-drenched tongue. Kainene reached out for the enamel plate of roasted crickets, Harrison’s new specialty; he seemed to know just where to dig for them in the dry earth and how to break them up into bits after roasting, so that they lasted a bit longer. Kainene placed a piece in her mouth. Richard took two pieces and crunched slowly. It was getting dark, and the cashew trees had become silent gray silhouettes. A dust haze hung above them all.

“What do you think accounts for the success of the white man’s mission in Africa, Richard?” Odenigbo asked.

“The success?” Odenigbo unnerved him, the way he would brood for long moments and then abruptly ask or say something unexpected.

“Yes, the success. I think in English,” Odenigbo said.

“Perhaps you should first account for the failure of the black man to curb the white man’s mission,” Kainene said.

“Who brought racism into the world?” Odenigbo asked.

“I don’t see your point,” Kainene said.

“The white man brought racism into the world. He used it as a basis of conquest. It is always easier to conquer a more humane people.”

“So when we conquer the Nigerians we will be the less humane?” Kainene asked.

Odenigbo said nothing. Something rustled near the cashew trees, and Harrison leaped up and ran over to see if it was a bush rat he could catch.

“Inatimi has given me some Nigerian coins,” Kainene said finally. “You know these Biafran Organization of Freedom Fighters people have quite a bit of Nigerian money. I want to go to Ninth Mile and see what I can buy, and if that goes well, I will sell some of the things our people at the camp have made.”

“That’s trading with the enemy,” Odenigbo said.

“It’s trading with illiterate Nigerian women who have what we need.”

“It’s dangerous, Kainene,” Odenigbo said; the softness in his voice surprised Richard.

“That sector is free,” Olanna said. “Our people are trading freely there.”

“Are you going too?” Surprise lifted Odenigbo’s voice as he stared at Olanna.

“No. At least not tomorrow. Maybe the next time Kainene goes.”

“Tomorrow?” It was Richard’s turn to be surprised. Kainene had mentioned it once, wanting to trade across enemy lines, but he did not know she had already decided when to go.

“Yes, Kainene is going tomorrow,” Olanna said.

“Yes,” Kainene said. “But don’t mind Olanna, she will never come with me. She’s always been terribly frightened of honest free enterprise.” Kainene laughed and Olanna laughed and slapped her arm; Richard saw the similarity in the curve of their lips, in the shape of their slightly larger front teeth.

“Hasn’t Ninth Mile Road been occupied on and off?” Odenigbo asked. “I don’t think you should go.”

“It’s all decided. I leave with Inatimi early tomorrow morning,
and we’ll be back by evening,” Kainene said, with that finality to her tone that Richard knew well. He was not opposed to the trip, though; he knew many people who did what she wanted to do.

That night, he dreamed that she came back with a basket full of chicken boiled in herbs, spicy
jollof
rice, soup thick with fish, and he felt irritable when he was jerked awake by raised voices just outside their window. He was reluctant to leave the dream. Kainene had woken up too and they hurried outside, Kainene with a wrapper tied around her chest and he in his shorts. It was only just dawn. The light was weak. A small crowd from the refugee camp was beating and kicking a young man crouched on the ground, his hands placed on his head to shield some of the blows. His trousers were splattered with holes and his collar was almost ripped off but the half of a yellow sun still clung to his torn sleeve.

“What is it?” Kainene asked. “What is it?”

Before anyone spoke, Richard knew. The soldier had been stealing from the farm. It happened everywhere now, farms raided at night, raided of corn so tender they had not yet formed kernels and yams so young they were barely the size of a cocoyam.

“Do you see why anything we plant will not bear fruit?” said a woman whose child had died the week before. Her wrapper was tied low, exposing the tops of drooping breasts. “People like this thief come and harvest everything so that we will starve to death.”

“Stop it!” Kainene said. “Stop it right now! Leave him alone!”

“You are telling us to leave a thief? If we leave him today, tomorrow ten of them will come.”

“He is not a thief,” Kainene said. “Did you hear me? He is not a thief. He is a hungry soldier.”

The crowd stilled at the quiet authority in her voice. Slowly,
they shuffled away, back to the classrooms. The soldier got up and dusted himself off.

“Have you come from the front?” Kainene asked.

He nodded. He looked about eighteen. There were two angry bumps on either side of his forehead and blood trailed from his nostrils.

“Are you running?
I na-agba oso?
Have you deserted?” Kainene asked.

He did not respond.

“Come. Come and take some
garri
before you go,” Kainene said.

Tears crawled down from his swollen left eye and he placed a palm on it as he followed her. He did not speak except to mumble
“Dalu
—thank you” before he left, clutching the small bag of
garri
. Kainene was silent as she got dressed to go down and meet Inatimi at the camp.

“You’ll leave early won’t you, Richard?” she asked. “Those Big Men may be in the office for just thirty minutes today.”

“I’ll leave in an hour.” He was going to Ahiara to try and get some provisions from relief headquarters.

“Tell them I’m dying and we desperately need milk and corned beef to keep me alive,” she said. There was a new bitter undertone in her voice.

“I will,” he said. “And go well.
Ije oma
. Come back with lots of
garri
and salt.”

They kissed, a brief press of their lips before she left. He knew that seeing that pathetic young soldier had upset her, and he knew, too, that she was thinking that the young soldier was not the reason the crops failed. They failed because the land was poor and the harmattan was harsh and there was no manure and there was nothing to plant, and when she managed to get some seed yams, the people ate half before they planted them. He
wished he could reach out and twist the sky and bring victory to Biafra right away. For her.

She was not back when he returned from Ahiara in the evening. The living room smelled of bleached palm oil that came from the kitchen and Baby was lying on a mat, looking through the pages of
Eze Goes to School
.

“Carry me on your shoulders, Uncle Richard,” Baby said, running to him. Richard pretended to try and pick her up and then collapsed on a chair.

“You’re a big girl now, Baby. You’re too heavy to be picked up.”

“No!”

Olanna was standing by the kitchen, watching them. “You know, Baby has grown wiser but she hasn’t grown taller since the war started.”

Richard smiled. “Better wisdom than height,” he said, and she smiled too. He realized how little they said to each other, how carefully they avoided being alone together.

“No luck at Ahiara?” Olanna asked.

“No. I tried everywhere. The relief centers are empty. I saw a grown man sitting on the floor in front of one building and sucking his thumb,” he said.

“What about the people you know at the directorates?”

“They said they have nothing and that our emphasis now is self-sufficiency and farming.”

“Farming with what? And how are we going to feed millions of people on the tiny territory we hold now?”

Richard looked at her. Even the slightest hint of criticism of Biafra made him uncomfortable. Worries had lodged in the cracks in his mind since Umuahia fell, but he did not voice them.

“Is Kainene at the camp?” he asked.

Olanna wiped her brow. “I think so. She and Inatimi should be back by now.”

Richard went outside to play with Baby. He placed her on his shoulders so that she could grasp at a cashew leaf above and then put her down, thinking how tiny, how light, she was for a six-year-old. He drew lines on the ground and asked her to pick up some stones and tried to teach her to play
nchokolo
. He watched her lay out and arrange the pieces of jagged metal from a tin: her shrapnel collection. Kainene was not back an hour later. Richard took Baby down the road to the camp. Kainene was not sitting on the steps in front of the Point of No Return, as she sometimes did. She was not in the sickroom. She was not in any of the classrooms. Richard saw Ugwu under the flame tree, writing on a piece of paper.