Anthills of the Savannah (16 page)

She thawed fast and unexpectedly to the memory of this man who was her father and yet a total stranger, like the bird who lived and sang in her tree unknown to her till now.

She was still at the railing of her balcony when Agatha came in to begin her chores. “No breakfast for me Agatha,” she called out cheerily to her. “But, make me a nice cup of coffee, please.” She drank it at the same spot where she had taken her position at dawn.

A lizard red in head and tail, blue in trunk chased a drab-grey female furiously, as male lizards always seem to do, across the paved driveway. She darted through the hedges as though her life depended on it. Unruffled he took a position of high visibility at the centre of the compound and began to do his endless press-ups
no doubt to impress upon the coy female, wherever she might be hiding in the shrubbery, the fact of his physical stamina.

At last she left the balcony and went indoors for a cold shower and then changed into a long, loose dress of blue
adire
embroidered in elaborate white patterns at the neck, chest, sleeves and hem. As she looked at herself in her bedroom mirror and liked what she saw, she thought: We can safely leave grey drabness in female attire to the family of lizards and visidng American journalists.

The case of the lizard is probably quite understandable. With the ferocious sexuality of her man she must need all the drabness she can muster for a shield.

She ate a grapefruit and drank a second cup of coffee while she flipped through the barren pages of the Sunday newspapers much of it full-page portrait obituaries even of grandfathers who had died fifty years ago but apparently still remembered every passing minute by their devoted descendants. And, wedged between memories of the living dead, equally fulsome portraiture of the still living who have “made it” in wealth or title or simply years. And once in a while among these dead-alive celebrities a disclaimer of someone newly disreputable, inserted by his former employer or partner using naturally a photograph of the unflattering quality of a police WANTED poster.

She tossed the papers away irritably wondering why one must keep on buying and trying to read such trash. Except that if you didn’t you couldn’t avoid the feeling that you might be missing something important, few of us, alas having the strength of will to resist that false feeling. She got up and put Onyeka Onwenu’s “One Love” on the stereo and returned to the sofa, threw her head on the back-rest and shut her eyes.

As the morning wore on she seemed to become less and less composed. She looked at her watch frequently. Once, after she had changed a record she picked up the telephone, heard the dialling tone and replaced.

When finally it rang she looked at her watch again. It was eleven exactly. She let the telephone ring five or six times and might have left it longer had Agatha not rushed in from the kitchen to answer it.

It was who she thought it was. Chris.

“So you are back,” he joked.

“Yes, I am back,” she answered.

“Anything the matter?”

“Like what?”

“Are you all right, BB?”

“Why, of course. Do I sound as if I might not be all right?”

“Yes, you do… Are you alone?”

“What do you mean?”

“Look, I’m coming over. See you.”

Twenty minutes later his car pulled up outside. Beatrice went not to the front door but to the kitchen door first, opened it and told Agatha that she was expecting someone and did not wish to be disturbed when he came up. Agatha’s saucy and suggestive look at this news led Beatrice to lock the kitchen door altogether. Then she went to answer the doorbell.

Chris decided to take the bull by the horn. As soon as he was let in he asked how the party went.

“Party? But that was last night.”

“Yes, it was last night. And I am asking how did it go?”

“It went all right.”

They were both seated now, she on the sofa, he on a chair across the low centre table standing on a brown circular rug. They sat staring at each other for minutes, if not hours. Chris was completely at a loss. He had never had to cope with BB in such a mood and was quite unprepared. At last he got up, walked a few steps and stopped in front of her.

“Will you be good enough, BB, to tell me in what way I have now offended you.”

“Offended me? Who said you offended me?”

“Then why are you behaving so strange.”

“I am not behaving strange. You are! Chris, you are behaving very strange indeed. Listen, let me ask you a simple question, Chris. I am the girl you say you want to marry. Right? OK, I am taken away in strange, very strange circumstances last night. I call you beforehand and tell you. You come over here and all you say to me is: ‘Don’t worry, it’s all right.’”

“I never said anything of the sort to you.”

“Chris, you asked me, the girl you want to marry, to travel forty miles at night to Abichi…”

“To Abichi? You didn’t say it was Abichi, did you?”

“That’s not the point. You asked the girl you want to marry to
go along and keep all options open. Do you remember that? Well, I’m sorry to inform you I did not take your advice.”

“You are being…”

“Please, don’t interrupt. I go off forty miles to this weird party.”

“BB, you never told me it was to Abichi.”

“Please, let me finish. I am carried off to this strange place and my future husband retires to his bed, sleeps well, wakes up, listens to the BBC at seven, has his bath, eats his breakfast and sits down afterwards to read the papers. Perhaps even take a walk in the garden. It is still only nine o’clock, so perhaps you go to your study and attend to some work you brought home. And then, finally at midday you remember the girl you asked to keep all the options open. You pick up the phone and tell her oh, you’re back!”

“I didn’t want to call earlier if that’s what you are complaining about…”

“I am not complaining about anything. You didn’t want to call earlier. Exactly. You didn’t! You know why you didn’t? Because you didn’t want to find out if I slept in Abichi with your boss.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“You didn’t want to catch me out. Why? Because you are a very reasonable man, Chris. You are a very considerate man. You wouldn’t hurt a fly. Well, I have bad news for you. You are damn too reasonable for this girl. I want a man who cares, not a man…”

“BB, you are out of your mind!”

“She wants a man who cares enough to be curious about where his girl sleeps. That’s the kind of man this girl wants.”

“Well, well!”

“Well, well. Yes, well, well. And about time.”

“Listen BB.” (He took the remaining steps and made to place a hand on her shoulder.)

“Take your hand off me,” she screamed.

“Don’t bark at me, BB.”

“I’m not barking.”

“You are. I don’t know what has come over you. Screaming at me like some Cherubim and Seraphim prophetess or something. What’s the matter? I don’t understand.”

He stood there where the hand he had tried to place on her shoulder had been rebuffed, and gazed down at her. She had now
folded her arms across her breast and bent her head forward on her chest as if in silent prayer. Neither of them moved again or spoke for a very long time. Then Chris noticed the slightest heaving of her chest and shoulders and went and sat down on the sofa beside her and placed his left arm across her shoulder and with his right hand raised her chin gently and saw she was crying. She did not resist then as he pulled her to him and reverently tasted the salt of her tears.

As their struggle intensified to get inside each other, to melt and lose their separateness on that cramping sofa, she whispered, her breathing coming fast and urgent: “Let’s go inside. It’s too uncomfortable here.” And they fairly scrambled out of the sofa into the bedroom and peeled off their garments and cast them away like things on fire, and fell in together into the wide, open space of her bed and began to roll over and over until she could roll no more and said: “Come in.” And as he did she uttered a strangled cry that was not just a cry but also a command or a password into her temple. From there she took charge of him leading him by the hand silently through heaving groves mottled in subdued yellow sunlight, treading dry leaves underfoot till they came to streams of clear blue water. More than once he had slipped on the steep banks and she had pulled him up and back with such power and authority as he had never seen her exercise before. Clearly this was her grove and these her own peculiar rites over which she held absolute power. Priestess or goddess herself? No matter. But would he be found worthy? Would he survive? This unending, excruciating joyfulness in the crossroads of laughter and tears. Yes, I must, oh yes I must, yes, oh yes, yes, oh yes. I must, must, must. Oh holy priestess, hold me now. I am slipping, slipping, slipping. And now he was not just slipping but falling, crumbling into himself.

Just as he was going to plead for mercy she screamed an order: “OK!” and he exploded into stars and floated through fluffy white clouds and began a long and slow and weightless falling and sinking into deep, blue sleep.

When he woke like a child cradled in her arms and breasts her eyes watching anxiously over him, he asked languorously if she slept.

“Priestesses don’t sleep.”

He kissed her lips and her nipples and closed his eyes again.

“Y
OU CALLED ME
a priestess. No, a prophetess, I think. I mind only the Cherubim and Seraphim part of it. As a matter of fact I do sometimes feel like Chielo in the novel, the priestess and prophetess of the Hills and the Caves.”

“It comes and goes, I imagine.”

“Yes. It’s on now. And I see trouble building up for us. It will get to Ikem first. No joking, Chris. He will be the precursor to make straight the way. But after him it will be you. We are all in it, Ikem, you, me and even Him. The thing is no longer a joke. As my father used to say, it is no longer a dance you can dance carrying your snuff in one cupped hand. You and Ikem must quickly patch up this ridiculous thing between you that nobody has ever been able to explain to me.”

“BB, I can’t talk to Ikem any more. I am tired. And drained of all stamina.”

“No, Chris. You have more stamina than you think.”

“Well, I certainly seem to. But only under your management, you know.” He smiled mischievously and kissed her.

“You know I am not talking about that, stupid.”

She left him in bed, had a quick shower, came back and only then retrieved her dress where she had flung it and put it back on. All the while Chris’s eyes were glued on her flawless body and she knew it. She next retrieved Chris’s things and stacked them neatly at the foot of the bed. Then she left the room to find out about lunch. Agatha seething with resentment was seated on the kitchen chair, her head on the table, pretending to be asleep. Yes, she had finished lunch she answered while her narrowed, righteous eyes added something like: while you were busy in your sinfulness.

Beatrice prepared a plate of green salad to augment the brown beans with fried plantain and beef stew. Agatha had not bothered to make any dessert no doubt expecting to have the pleasure of hearing her mistress’s complaint. Beatrice simply ignored her and quickly put together from cakes and odds and ends in the fridge two little bowls of sherry trifles. Then she went back to the room and woke Chris up.

It would appear from the way she beamed at him when he appeared at the table that Agatha did not include him in her moral censure. Girls at war! thought Beatrice with a private smile which
the other apparently noticed and answered with a swift frown. Even Chris noticed the sudden switch.

“What’s eating your maid?” he asked as soon as she had returned to the kitchen.

“Nothing. She is all smiles to you.”

“Familiarity breeding contempt, then?”

“No, more than that. She is a prophetess of Jehovah.”

“And you are of the House of Baal.”

“Exactly. Or worse, of the unknown god.”

O
VER LUNCH
she told him about last night at Abichi. Or as much as it was possible to tell. Chris took in the introductory details warily knowing that the gaiety in her voice was hiding something awful. When she finally let it out he was so outraged he involuntarily jumped up from his seat.

“Please sit down and eat your food.” He sat down but not to eat. Not another morsel.

“I can’t believe that,” he kept saying. Beatrice’s efforts to get him to resume his lunch failed totally. He had gently pushed his plate away.

“Look, Chris, this salad is not Agatha’s.
I
made it specially for you.”

He relented somewhat and shovelled two or three spoonfuls of vegetables into his mouth and set the spoon down again. Finally she gave up, saying she should have known better and not shot her stupid mouth till he had eaten. She called Agatha and asked her to put the dessert back in the fridge and bring them coffee things. Without answering, she began instead to clear the table.

“Agatha!”

“Madam!”

“Leave the table alone and get us coffee, please. After that you can clear the table.”

“Yes, madam.”

“Let’s go and sit more comfortably,” she said to Chris. “We will have coffee and brandy. I insist on that. I want a little celebration. Don’t ask me for what. A celebration, that’s all.
Kabisa!
”

S
LOWLY, VERY SLOWLY
under Beatrice’s expert resuscitation his spirits began to rally. She dwelt on the amusing trivia as much as
possible and underplayed the shocks. But most masterly of all she got Chris to actively participate in recreating the events.

“Who is that Alhaji fellow, Chairman, I think, of the Kangan/American Chamber of Commerce?” she asked.

“Oh that one. Alhaji Abdul Mahmoud. Didn’t you know him? I thought you did. You see, that’s the trouble with being such a recluse. If you came out to even one cocktail party a month you would know what was going on… Alhaji Mahmoud is himself a bit of a hermit though. He hardly appears anywhere and when he does, hardly says a word. Rumour has it that he has in the last one year knocked all other Kangan millionaires into a cocked hat. Eight ocean liners, they say, two or three private jets; a private jetty (no pun intended). No customs officials go near his jetty and so, say rumour-mongers, he is the prince of smugglers. What else? Fifty odd companies, including a bank. Monopoly of government fertilizer imports. That’s about it. Very quiet, even self-effacing but they say absolutely ruthless. All that may or may not be standard fare for multi-millionaires. What I find worrying and I don’t think I can quite believe it yet is that (voice lowered) he may be fronting you know for… your host.”