‘DON’T RUSH. WE HAVE ENOUGH FREE MILK FOR THE WHOLE COUNTRY…’
His pleading only made things worse; people surged round with basins, had them filled, rushed to their homes, and returned with greater vigour. Soon the whole street, in a frightening tide of buckets and basins, of clanging pots, and rancorous voices, rocked the van. The landlord looked sick with fright. Sweat broke out on his face and he struggled to take off his agbada, but it got caught in the outstretched clawing hands of all the struggling hungry people. The more he tried to get it off, the more entangled it became in all the hands. It was as though his clothes too had become an extension of his party’s promises, a free gift to everyone. On the other side of the van I saw Madame Koto engaged in negotiations with the man at the megaphone, pointing vigorously in the direction of her bar. All around her the crowd hustled. The women’s kerchiefs were torn off, shirts were ripped apart, milk spilt everywhere and powdered the faces of the women and children. With their sweating, milk-powdered faces they looked like starving spirits. The crowd surged, voices swelling, and the driver started the van’s engine. The hunger of the crowd wreaked itself on the van; the handers-out of milk began to shout; the driver got worried; the landlord’s agbada had been torn off him by the crowd. He battled to get it back, clinging on to its edges in desperation, pleading. But the crowd, with confused clawing motions, raking the milk sacks from under the feet of thugs, dragged the landlord’s agbada with them. He clung on stubbornly and they dragged him along with his garment, out of the van, till only his feet wereleft showing,kickingvainly attheair.Oneofthethugsstoppeddishingout the milk and held on to the landlord’s feet, to keep him in, but lost the battle against the confused fury of motions, and the landlord disappeared into the great welter of bodies. His agbada was passed from hand to hand, above the crowd; and soon so many hands grasped at the lace garment that it tore into several pieces in the air and patches of its blue cloth flew this way and that like the feathers of a plucked parrot.
When the landlord next emerged his hair was covered in mud and someone spilt milk on him and he looked like a travesty of an Egungun and when he tried to get back on the van his fellow party men wouldn’t let him because they didn’t recognise him. He shouted his indignation and the thugs, abandoning their activity, set on him, bundled him off, and threw him to the ground, a good distance from the van. The intrepid photographer appeared with his camera and took pictures of the miserable landlord and the surging crowd. The landlord got up in a great fury, shook his fists, swore at the party and, covered in mud and dried milk, his clothes in tatters, his pants all twisted, he stormed away down the street, a solitary figure of wretched defiance. The photographer went on taking pictures. The men on the van posed in between doling out milk, smiling in weird fixity at the camera, while the crowd jostled. I saw three tough-looking men suddenly snatch sacks of milk from the van; I saw them run off down the street, pursued by the party thugs. Children were squashed by the jostling. A man fainted. Women cried out. A girl was prodded in the eye. Someone else, elbowed in the mouth, spat blood into the air. The photographer flashed his camera at a woman with a swollen eye, a basin of milk on her head. I saw a man running out from the crowd’s vanguard, with deep scratches bleeding down his face. The windows of the van were smashed in the mêlée. Blood mixed with milk on the earth. I heard Mum screaming. I fought my way in the direction of her cry. I saw Madame Koto leaving the scene of confusion with utmost dignity, her beads gleaming in the sun. I searched for Mum in the crowding, in the heated sweat and hungry violence of the swelling multitude. Elbows crashed on my head and someone’s fist cracked my nose, drawing blood. I fought my way back out, stumbling over feet of solid bone and rough legs. The van suddenly started moving. It knocked over a man and dragged with it a hundred surging bodies. The crowd poured after the van as if in a holy crusade. The thugs on the back of the van, resorting to a diversionary tactic, tore open a hidden sack and began throwing pennies and silver pieces in the air. The coins landed on our heads, we caught them with our faces, were sometimes blinded by their force as we surged, and we scrambled for them, forgetting the milk, while the van droveaway,cracklingitsannouncements,itsparty promises,andthevenueofthe party’s next great public spectacle. The children ran after the van, while the rest of the crowd, caught in the spiral of its own fever, scrambled for coins.
The photographer chased the van, endlessly taking pictures of the thugs flexingtheir muscles, while party leaflets sailed in the air above us, words we would never read. And when the van had disappeared from our street, when the amplified voice faded into the depths of the area, we recovered slowly from our fever. The road was full of spilt milk and party leaflets. Children searched the dust for hidden coins. Mum emerged from a group of women, her face bruised, powdered milk on her hair, her blouse torn.
‘I won’t vote for them,’ said the woman with the swollen eye.
Mumsaw meand cameafter me, transferringher annoyance, and shouted:
‘Go back to bed!’
I hurried across the street. Everything swayed. A party leaflet stuck to my foot. Powdered milk tickled my nostrils. The heat grew in my ears. A headache hammered away between my eyes. I lingered at the compound-front, listening to voices comparing their experience, arguing about politics. And when I saw Mum crossing the road, I hurried off into the room. Mum brought in her basin of free milk, with a look of exhausted triumph on her face. She placed the basin on the cupboard, as if the effort shehadput intoacquiringithadsomehowmadeitquitespecial.Thenshewent to have a bath. The compound people converged in the passage and got into heated discussions about which of the two main parties was the best, which had more money, which was the friend of the poor, which had the better promises, and they went on like that, tirelessly, till the night fell slowly over the spectacle of the day.
It was quite dark when Dad returned. He looked sober and exhausted. He looked miserable and moved listlessly and his face hung down as if he would burst into tears any moment. He complained about his head, his back, his legs. He grumbled about the political thugs who were giving him trouble at the garage.
‘Inearly killedoneofthemtoday,’hesaid,witharavingexpressioninhiseyes.
Then his voice changed.
‘Too much load. My back is breaking. I must find another job. Join the army. Be a nightsoil man. But this load is getting too much for me.’
There was a brief silence. Then Mum told him about the great event of the day and showed himthemilk. Sheseemed quiteproudofhavingputup agoodfighttoobtain a basinful against all the competition.
‘Now we can have milk in our pap,’ she said.
‘Not me,’ I said.
‘You think their milk is too good for you, eh?’
Dad tasted the milk and wrinkled his face.
‘Rotten milk,’ he said. ‘Bad milk.’
And then he fell asleep in the chair, overcome with exhaustion. He had not bathed, nor had he eaten, and he stank of dried mud, cement, crayfish, and garri sacks. Mum stayed up for a while to see if he would wake; but Dad slept on, grinding his teeth, snoring. And so Mum stretched out on the mat, blew out the candle, and soon began to snore herself.
I stayed awake for a while. I was still feverish and the darkness quivered with figures moving about blindly. Just before I fell asleep I heard a noise on the cupboard and as I looked I saw something growing out of the milk. It grew very tall and white and resolved itself into a ghostly agbada. There was no one in the agbada and it took off from the powdered milk and flew around the room. Then the garment, all white, folded itself, compacted, and settled into the form of a bright indigo dragonfly. It buzzed its wings round the room and disappeared into the impenetrable darkness of a corner. My headache grew more severe. The milk and its peculiar nightgrowths were my singular memories of that Saturday when politics made its first public appearance in our lives.