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I was then half-way to the outside gate. I turned boldly round but on second thoughts said nothing, turned again and continued.
“Leave am, Dogo. Make e carry im bad luck de go. Na my own mistake for bring am here. Ungrateful ingrate!”
I was now at the gate but his voice was loud and I heard every word.
• • •
I took a taxi to my friend Maxwell’s address. Maxwell Kulamo, a lawyer, had been my classmate at the Grammar School. We called him Kulmax or Cool Max in those days; and his best friends still did. He was the Poet Laureate of our school and I still remember the famous closing couplet of the poem he wrote when our school beat our rivals in the Intercollegiate Soccer Competition:
Hurrah! to our unconquerable full backs.
(The writer of these lines is Cool Max.)
• • •
He was already fully dressed for Court (striped trousers and black coat) and was eating breakfast when I arrived. The few words I spoke to Nanga and the fairly long taxi ride had combined to make it possible for me to wear a passable face.
“Good gracious!” Max shouted, shaking my hand violently. “Diligent! Na your eye be this?” Diligent was a version of Odili I had borne at school.
“Cool Max!” I greeted him in return. “The writer of these lines!” We laughed and laughed and the tears I had not shed last night came to my eyes. Max suspected nothing and even thought I was just coming from home. I told him rather shamefacedly that I had been in town for the past few days but hadn’t found it possible to contact him. He took this to be a reference to his having no telephone in the house, a fact which in turn could be a reflection on his practice.
“I have been on the waiting list for a telephone for two months,” he said defensively. “You see, I have not given anyone a bribe, and I don’t know any big gun . . . So you have been staying with that corrupt, empty-headed, illiterate capitalist. Sorry-o.”
“Na matter of can’t help,” I said. “He na my old teacher, you know.”
I was dipping my bread in the cup of hot cocoa drink Max’s boy had made for me. Chief Nanga and Elsie already seemed so distant that I could have talked about them like casual acquaintances. But I was not going to delay Max by talking now. And in any case I had no wish to make him think that I only remembered him when I could no longer enjoy the flesh-pots of Chief Nanga’s home.
Within minutes I was already feeling so relaxed and at ease here that I wondered what piece of ill-fate took me to Chief Nanga in the first place.
8
It was only after Max had left for Court at around nine that I finally felt the full weight of the previous night’s humiliation settling down on me. The heat and anger had now largely evaporated leaving the cold fact that another man had wrenched my girl-friend from my hand and led her to bed under my very eyes, and I had done nothing about it—could do nothing. And why? Because the man was a minister bloated by the flatulence of ill-gotten wealth, living in a big mansion built with public money, riding in a Cadillac and watched over by a one-eyed, hired thug. And as though that were not enough he had had the obscene effrontery to say he thought I was too tired! A man of fifty or more with a son in a secondary school and a wife whose dress gets caught between the buttocks thought I was too tired! And here was I doing nothing about it except speculating whether Elsie would go back to her hospital that day or spend another night with Chief Nanga. By late afternoon I even had the crazy, preposterous idea of wanting to go to a public telephone to put through an anonymous call. Of course I killed the disgraceful thought right away.
But I suppose it was possible (judging by the way things finally worked themselves out) that these weak and trivial thoughts might have been a sort of smoke screen behind which, unknown to me, weighty decisions were taking shape. It was perhaps like the theory of writing examinations that one of my lecturers used to propound to us. He said the right technique was to read all the questions once through, select those you wanted to answer and then start with the easiest; his theory being that while you were answering the easy number your subconscious would set to work arranging the others for you. I tried it out for my degree examination and although the result was not exactly startling I suppose it could have been worse.
But on the present question of Chief Nanga my subconscious (or something very much like it) seemed to have gone voluntarily into operation. I was just flapping about like a trapped bird when suddenly I saw the opening. I saw that Elsie did not matter in the least. What mattered was that a man had treated me as no man had a right to treat another—not even if he was master and the other slave; and my manhood required that I make him pay for his insult in full measure. In flesh and blood terms I realized that I must go back, seek out Nanga’s intended parlour-wife and give her the works, good and proper. All this flashed through my mind in one brief moment of blinding insight—just like that, without warning!
I was singing happily when Max came home in the late afternoon. He tried to be furious with his house-boy for not giving me my share of the lunch when it was ready, but I went straight to the boy’s defence and said he had offered to serve me but that I insisted on waiting, which was quite untrue.
As we ate I told Max about Elsie and Chief Nanga, amending the story in several minor particulars and generally making light of it all, not only because I was anxious to play down my humiliation but even more because I no longer cared for anything except the revenge.
“If you put juju on a woman it will catch that old rotter,” said Max after I had told the story.
“I know someone who did,” I said light-heartedly, “but the old rotter wasn’t caught.” I then told him the story of the woman who didn’t take off her bra, thinking it would amuse him. I was wrong.
“That’s all they care for,” he said with a solemn face. “Women, cars, landed property. But what else can you expect when intelligent people leave politics to illiterates like Chief Nanga?”
The appearance of comparative peace which Max’s house presented to me that morning proved quite deceptive. Or perhaps some of Chief Nanga’s “queen bee” characteristics had rubbed off on me and transformed me into an independent little nucleus of activity which I trailed with me into this new place. That first night I not only heard of a new political party about to be born but got myself enrolled as a foundation member. Max and some of his friends having watched with deepening disillusion the use to which our hard-won freedom was being put by corrupt, mediocre politicians had decided to come together and launch the Common People’s Convention.
There were eight young people in his room that evening. All but one were citizens of our country, mostly professional types. The only lady there was a very beautiful lawyer who, I learned afterwards, was engaged to Max whom she had first met at the London School of Economics. There was a trade-unionist, a doctor, another lawyer, a teacher and a newspaper columnist.
Max introduced me without any previous consultation as a “trustworthy comrade who had only the other day had his girl-friend snatched from him by a minister who shall remain nameless”.
Naturally I did not care for that kind of image or reputation. So I promptly intervened to point out that the woman in question was not strictly speaking my girl-friend but a casual acquaintance whom both Chief Nanga and I knew.
“So it was Chief Nanga, yes?” said the European and everyone burst out laughing.
“Who else could it be?” said one of the others.
