AllFreeNovel
Share Us
They sat at one of the empty tables at the corner and then noticed that they were directly under a ceiling fan and moved to another table. Soft light came from large globes around which insects danced furiously. Perhaps they did not notice that each globe carried a large number of bodies which, like themselves, had danced once upon a time. Or if they noticed, they did not care.
“Service!” called Joseph importantly, and a steward appeared in white tunic and trousers, a red cummerbund and red fez. “What will you have?” he asked Obi. The steward bent forward waiting.
“Really, I don’t think I want to drink anything more.”
“Nonsense. The day is still young. Have a cold beer.”
He turned to the steward. “Two Heinekens.”
“Oh, no. One will do. Let’s share one.”
“Two Heinekens,” repeated Joseph, and the steward went to the bar and soon returned with two bottles on a tray.
“Do they serve Nigerian food here?”
Joseph was surprised at the question. No decent restaurant served Nigerian food. “Do you want Nigerian food?”
“Of course. I have been dying to eat pounded yams and bitter-leaf soup. In England we made do with semolina, but it isn’t the same thing.”
“I must ask my boy to prepare you pounded yams tomorrow afternoon.”
“Good man!” said Obi, brightening up considerably. Then he added in English for the benefit of the European group that sat at the next table: “I am sick of boilèd potatoes.” By calling them boilèd he hoped he had put into it all the disgust he felt.
A white hand gripped his chair behind. He turned quickly and saw it was the old manageress holding on to chairs to support her unsteady progress. She must have been well over seventy, if not eighty. She toddled across the lounge and behind the counter. Then she came out again holding a shivering glass of milk.
“Who left that duster there?” she said, pointing a shaking left-hand finger at a yellow rag on the floor.
“I no know,” said the steward who had been addressed.
“Take it away,” she croaked. In the effort to give orders she forgot about the glass of milk. It tilted in her unsteady grip and spilt on her neat floral dress. She went to a seat in the corner and sank in, groaning and creaking like old machinery gone rusty from standing in the rain. It must have been her favorite corner, because her parrot’s cage was directly overhead. As soon as she sat down the parrot emerged from its cage on to a projecting rod, lowered its tail, and passed ordure, which missed the old lady by a tenth of an inch. Obi raised himself slightly on his seat to see the mess on the floor. But there was no mess. Everything was beautifully organized. There was a tray by the old lady’s chair nearly full of wet excrement.
“I don’t think the place is owned by a Syrian,” said Obi. “She is English.”
They had mixed grill, which Obi admitted wasn’t too bad. But he was still puzzling in his mind why Joseph had not put him up as he had asked before he left England. Instead, the Umuofia Progressive Union had arranged at their own expense for him to stay at a not particularly good hotel owned by a Nigerian, on the outskirts of Yaba.
“Did you get my last letter from England?”
Joseph said yes. As soon as he had got it he had discussed it with the executive of the U.P.U., and it was agreed that he should be put up in proper fashion at a hotel. As if he read Obi’s thoughts, he said: “You know I have only one room.”
“Nonsense,” said Obi. “I’m moving out of this filthy hotel tomorrow morning and coming into your place.”
Joseph was amazed, but also very pleased. He tried to raise another objection, but it was clear his heart was not in it.
“What will the people of other towns say when they hear that a son of Umuofia returned from England and shared a room in Obalende?”
“Let them say what they like.”
They ate in silence for a short while and then Obi said: “Our people have a long way to go.” At the same time as he was saying it Joseph was also beginning to say something, but he stopped.
“Yes, you were saying something.”
“I said that I believe in destiny.”
“Do you? Why?”
“You remember Mr. Anene, our class teacher, used to say that you would go to England. You were so small then with a running nose, and yet at the end of every term you were at the top of the class. You remember we used to call you ‘Dictionary’?”
Obi was very much embarrassed because Joseph was talking at the top of his voice.
