“I’m going for a walk,” he said, although he was sure she didn’t hear him.
Outside, Ikejide was plucking oranges; his uniform bunched up at the back as he nudged fruit down with a stick.
“Good morning, sah,” he said.
“Kedu?” Richard asked. He felt comfortable practicing his Igbo with Kainene’s stewards, because they were always so expressionless that it did not matter whether or not he got the tones right.
“I am well, sah.”
“Jisie ike.”
“Yes, sah.”
Richard went to the bottom of the orchard, where he could see, through the thicket of trees, the white foam of the sea’s waves. He sat on the ground. He wished that Major Madu had not invited them to dinner; he was not at all interested in meeting the man’s wife. He got up and stretched and went around to the front yard and looked at the violet bougainvillea that crept up the walls. He walked for a while down the muddy stretch of deserted road that led to the house before he turned back. Kainene was in bed reading a newspaper. He climbed in beside her and she reached out and touched his hair, her fingers gently caressing his scalp. “Are you all right? You’ve been tense since yesterday.”
Richard told her about Okeoma, and because she did not respond right away, he added, “I remember the first time I read about Igbo-Ukwu art, in an article where an Oxford don described it as having a strange rococo, almost Fabergé-like virtuosity. I never forgot that—rococo, almost Fabergé-like virtuosity. I fell in love even with that expression.”
She folded the newspaper and placed it on the bedside cabinet. “Why does it matter so much what Okeoma thinks?”
“I do love the art. It was horrible of him to accuse me of disrespect.”
“And it’s wrong of you to think that love leaves room for nothing else. It’s possible to love something and still condescend to it.”
Richard rolled away from her. “I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t even know if I’m a writer.”
“You won’t know until you write, will you?” Kainene climbed out of bed, and he noticed a metallic sheen on her thin shoulders. “I see you don’t feel up to an evening out. I’ll call Madu and cancel dinner.”
She came back after making the phone call and sat on the bed, and in the silence that separated them he suddenly felt grateful that her crispness gave him no space for self-pity, gave him nothing to hide behind.
“I once spat in my father’s glass of water,” she said. “He hadn’t upset me or anything. I just did it. I was fourteen. I would have been incredibly satisfied if he drank it, but of course Olanna ran and changed the water.” She stretched out beside him. “Now you tell me something horrible you did.”
He was aroused by her silky skin rubbing against his
, by how readily she had changed the evening plans with Major Madu. “I didn’t have the confidence to do horrible things,” he said.
“Well, tell me something, then.”
He thought of telling her about that day in Wentnor when he hid from Molly and felt, for the first time, the possibility of shaping his own destiny. But he didn’t. Instead, he told her about his parents, how they stared at each other when they talked, forgot his birthdays, and then had Molly make a cake that said HAPPY BELATED BIRTHDAY weeks after. They never knew what and when he ate; Molly fed him when she remembered. They had not planned to have him and, because of that, they had raised him as an afterthought. But he understood even as a young boy that it was not that they did not love him, rather it was that they often forgot that they did because they loved each other too much. Kainene raised her eyebrows, sardonic, as if his reasoning did not make sense to her, and because of that he was afraid to tell her that he sometimes thought he loved her too much.
2. The Book: The World Was Silent When We Died
He discusses the British soldier-merchant Taubman Goldie, how he coerced, cajoled, and killed to gain control of the palm-oil trade and how, at the Berlin Conference of 1884 where Europeans divided Africa, he ensured that Britain beat France to two protectorates around the River Niger: the North and the South.
The British preferred the North. The heat there was pleasantly dry; the Hausa-Fulani were narrow-featured and therefore superior to the negroid Southerners, Muslim and therefore as civilized as one could get for natives, feudal and therefore perfect for indirect rule. Equable emirs collected taxes for the British, and the British, in return, kept the Christian missionaries away.
The humid South, on the other hand, was full of mosquitoes and animists and disparate tribes. The Yoruba were the largest in the Southwest. In the Southeast, the Igbo lived in small republican communities. They were nondocile and worryingly ambitious. Since they did not have the good sense to have kings, the British created “warrant chiefs,” because indirect rule cost the Crown less. Missionaries were allowed in to tame the pagans, and the Christianity and education they brought flourished. In 1914, the governor-general joined the North and the South, and his wife picked a name. Nigeria was born.
PART TWO
The Late Sixties
7
Ugwu lay on a mat in his mother’s hut, staring at a dead spider squashed on the wall; its body fluids had stained the mud a deeper red. Anulika was measuring out cups of ukwa and the crusty aroma of roasted breadfruit seeds hung thick in the room. She was talking. She had been talking for quite a while, and Ugwu’s head ached. His visit home suddenly seemed much longer than a week, perhaps because of the endless gassy churning in his stomach from eating only fruit and nuts. His mother’s food was unpalatable. The vegetables were overcooked, the cornmeal was too lumpy, the soup too watery, and the yam slices coarse from being boiled without a dollop of butter. He could not wait to get back to Nsukka and finally eat a real meal.
“I want to have a baby boy first, because it will place my feet firmly in Onyeka’s house,” Anulika said. She walked over to get a bag in the rafters and Ugwu noticed, again, the new suspicious roundness to her body: the breasts that filled her blouse, the buttocks that rolled with each step. Onyeka must have touched her. Ugwu could not bear to think of the man’s ugly body thrusting into his sister’s. It had all happened too fast; there had been talk of suitors the last time he visited, but she had spoken of Onyeka in such an indifferent way that he did not think she would accept his proposal so quickly. Now even their parents were too swift to talk about Onyeka, his good mechanic job in town, his bicycle, his good behavior, as if he were already a member of the family. Nobody ever mentioned his stunted height and the pointed teeth that looked like they belonged to a bush rat.
“You know, Onunna from Ezeugwu’s compound had a baby girl first, and her husband’s people went to see a dibia to find out why! Of course, Onyeka’s people will not do that to me, they don’t dare, but I want to have a boy first anyway,” Anulika said.