Master cut him short. “You know, pan-Africanism is fundamentally a European notion.”
“You are digressing,” Professor Ezeka said, and shook his head in his usual superior manner.
“Maybe it is a European notion,” Miss Adebayo said, “but in the bigger picture, we are all one race.”
“What bigger picture?” Master asked. “The bigger picture of the white man! Can’t you see that we are not all alike except to white eyes?” Master’s voice rose easily, Ugwu had noticed, and by his third snifter of brandy he would start to gesture with his glass, leaning forward until he was seated on the very edge of his armchair. Late at night, after Master was in bed, Ugwu would sit on the same chair and imagine himself speaking swift English, talking to rapt imaginary guests, using words like decolonize and pan-African, molding his voice after Master’s, and he would shift and shift until he too was on the edge of the chair.
“Of course we are all alike, we all have white oppression in common,” Miss Adebayo said dryly. “Pan-Africanism is simply the most sensible response.”
“Of course, of course, but my point is that the only authentic identity for the African is the tribe,” Master said. “I am Nigerian because a white man created Nigeria and gave me that identity. I am black because the white man constructed black to be as different as possible from his white. But I was Igbo before the white man came.”
Professor Ezeka snorted and shook his head, thin legs crossed. “But you became aware that you were Igbo because of the white man. The pan-Igbo idea itself came only in the face of white domination. You must see that tribe as it is today is as colonial a product as nation and race.” Professor Ezeka re-crossed his legs.
“The pan-Igbo idea existed long before the white man!” Master shouted. “Go and ask the elders in your village about your history.”
“The problem is that Odenigbo is a hopeless tribalist, we need to keep him quiet,” Miss Adebayo said.
Then she did what startled Ugwu: she got up laughing and went over to Master and pressed his lips close together. She stood there for what seemed a long time, her hand to his mouth. Ugwu imagined Master’s brandy-diluted saliva touching her fingers. He stiffened as he picked up the shattered glass. He wished that Master would not sit there shaking his head as if the whole thing were very funny.
Miss Adebayo became a threat after that. She began to look more and more like a fruit bat, with her pinched face and cloudy complexion and print dresses that billowed around her body like wings. Ugwu served her drink last and wasted long minutes drying his hands on a dish towel before he opened the door to let her in. He worried that she would marry Master and bring her Yoruba-speaking housegirl into the house and destroy his herb garden and tell him what he could and could not cook. Until he heard Master and Okeoma talking.
“She did not look as if she wanted to go home today,” Okeoma said. “Nwoke m, are you sure you are not planning to do something with her?”
“Don’t talk rubbish.”
“If you did, nobody in London would know.”
“Look, look—”
“I know you’re not interested in her like that, but what still puzzles me is what these women see in you.”
Okeoma laughed and Ugwu was relieved. He did not want Miss Adebayo—or any woman—coming in to intrude and disrupt their lives. Some evenings, when the visitors left early, he would sit on the floor of the living room and listen to Master talk. Master mostly talked about things Ugwu did not understand, as if the brandy made him forget that Ugwu was not one of his visitors. But it didn’t matter. All Ugwu needed was the deep voice, the melody of the English-inflected Igbo, the glint of the thick eyeglasses.
He had been with Master for four months when Master told him, “A special woman is coming for the weekend. Very special. You make sure the house is clean. I’ll order the food from the staff club.”
“But, sah, I can cook,” Ugwu said, with a sad premonition.
“She’s just come back from London, my good man, and she likes her rice a certain way. Fried rice, I think. I’m not sure you could make something suitable.” Master turned to walk away.
“I can make that, sah,” Ugwu said quickly, although he had no idea what fried rice was. “Let me make the rice, and you get the chicken from the staff club.”
“Artful negotiation,” Master said in English. “All right, then. You make the rice.”
“Yes, sah,” Ugwu said. Later, he cleaned the rooms and scrubbed the toilet carefully, as he always did, but Master looked at them and said they were not clean enough and went out and bought another jar of Vim powder and asked, sharply, why Ugwu didn’t clean the spaces between the tiles. Ugwu cleaned them again. He scrubbed until sweat crawled down the sides of his face, until his arm ached. And on Saturday, he bristled as he cooked. Master had never complained about his work before. It was this woman’s fault, this woman that Master considered too special even for him to cook for. Just come back from London, indeed.
When the doorbell rang, he muttered a curse under his breath about her stomach swelling from eating feces. He heard Master’s raised voice, excited and childlike, followed by a long silence and he imagined their hug, and her ugly body pressed to Master’s. Then he heard her voice. He stood still. He had always thought that Master’s English could not be compared to anybody’s, not Professor Ezeka, whose English one could hardly hear, or Okeoma, who spoke English as if he were speaking Igbo, with the same cadences and pauses, or Patel, whose English was a faded lilt. Not even the white man Professor Lehman, with his words forced out through his nose, sounded as dignified as Master. Master’s English was music, but what Ugwu was hearing now, from this woman, was magic. Here was a superior tongue, a luminous language, the kind of English he heard on Master’s radio, rolling out with clipped precision. It reminded him of slicing a yam with a newly sharpened knife, the easy perfection in every slice.
“Ugwu!” Master called. “Bring Coke!”
Ugwu walked out to the living room. She smelled of coconuts. He greeted her, his “Good afternoon” a mumble, his eyes on the floor.
“Kedu?” she asked.
“I’m well, mah.” He still did not look at her. As he uncorked the bottle, she laughed at something Master said. Ugwu was about to pour the cold Coke into her glass when she touched his hand and said, “Rapuba, don’t worry about that.”
Her hand was lightly moist. “Yes, mah.”
“Your master has told me how well you take care of him, Ugwu,” she