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The jesting mood died instantly in the air, folded its wings and fell like a stone; the tributary conversations dried up.
“I was kneeling on the road at his side weeping uselessly. She,” he nodded his head in Adamma’s direction, “was trying to do something. Then I said something idiotic like Don’t go, don’t leave us please. And, I can’t describe it, that effort—you could touch it almost—to dismiss pain from his face and summon a smile and then crack a joke. He called it The Last Grin.”
Beatrice started in her seat.
“Yes I remember,” said silent Adamma. “The last green. But he did not finish it.”
Beatrice rushed away into her bedroom. Elewa followed after her. While they were away nothing more was said. After a few minutes Elewa came back.
“Is she all right?” asked Abdul a little ahead of other inquirers.
“No trouble. To cry small no be bad thing. BB no be like me wey de cry every day like baby wey him mother die.”
“Madam too strong,” said Agatha. “To strong too much no de good for woman.”
“E no good for anybody whether na man-o or na woman-o, na the same thing,” said Elewa. “E good make person cry small… I been try to stop am, I try sotay then I come say no, make you lef am.”
“WHY ARE YOU all sitting in darkness?” she said turning the lights on as she walked back into the room almost half an hour after she had left it. She spoke with great calmness in her voice. She had made up her face, and even tried on a smile as she resumed her seat. Then she said:
“I am very sorry.”
“Well, I am sorry to have raised that matter today. I didn’t…”
“No no no, Emmanuel. I am happy you raised it. In fact you can’t know how grateful I feel. I can tell you I am happier now, much happier than I have been since that day.” She said no more.
Perhaps in spite of this composure she could not continue.
To fill the aching void, or perhaps he was already powerless in the grip of a gathering underflow, Emmanuel began again:
“You see I have been present only at two deaths…”
“Make you put that your useless story for inside your pocket,” ordered Elewa. “Why you de look for trouble so? Abi the one you done cause no belleful you?”
“Leave the young man alone. Emmanuel, please continue.”
“The first death I witnessed was my father and then Chris. Without Chris I could not have known that it was possible to die with dignity.”
“Your father didn’t die with dignity?” asked Abdul quizzically.
“No, he didn’t. Though he was an old man compared to Chris, he had not learnt how to die. He snapped at people; he even cried. He was frightened, scared to death. He ran from one doctor to another and when he had run through them all he took up prayer-houses. He had cancer of the prostate. Every day some vulture would descend on us from nowhere with the story of a prophet or prophetess in some outlandish village and my father would drag my poor mother there the next morning. It was a terrible relief when he died, I am ashamed to admit… But look at Chris, a young man with all his life still in front of him and yet he was able to look death in the eyes and smile and make a joke. It was too wonderful…”
“You don’t know why I went in to cry… That joke was a coded message to me, to us,” said Beatrice, to everyone’s surprise. “By the way, Adamma heard it better. What he was trying to say was The last green. It was a private joke of ours. The last green bottle. It was a terrible, bitter joke. He was laughing at himself. That was the great thing, by the way, about those two, Chris and Ikem. They could laugh at themselves and often did. Not so the pompous asses that have taken over.”
“Say that again!” said Emmanuel.
“You know why I cried? Chris was only just beginning to understand the lesson of that bitter joke. The bottles are up there on the wall hanging by a hair’s breadth, yet looking down pompously on the world. Chris was sending us a message to beware. This world belongs to the people of the world not to any little caucus, no matter how talented…”
“And particularly absurd when it is not even talented,” said Abdul.
“It was the same message Elewa’s uncle was drumming out this afternoon, wasn’t it? On his own crazy drum of course. Chris, in spite of his brilliance, was just beginning to be vaguely aware of people like that old man. Remember his prayer? He had never been inside a whiteman house like this before, may it not be his last.”
“And we said Isé!” said Abdul.
“We did. It was a pledge. It had better be better than some pledges we have heard lately.”
“Isé!!”
At last the prodigious passions of that extraordinary day seemed at an end. Silence descended as completely on the party indoors as had darkness outside. Ama whom Beatrice nicknamed Greedymouth having drunk both from the bottle and from Elewa’s breast, pendant like a gorgeous ripe papaya on the tree, was sleeping quietly in her cot.
