SIX

SUNDAY BROUGHT us the secret faces of politics.

Dad’s relations came to visit. They came with their children, all of them stiff and shy in the good clothes they rarely wore. We didn’t have enough chairs for them and Mum had to swallow her pride and borrow chairs from our neighbours. The compound was aflame with politics. Our relations came to visit, but they also came to criticise. They attacked Dad for not visiting them, for not attending the meetings of ourtownspeople,fornot contributingtoweddingpresents,funeralarrangements,and endless financial engagements. Dad responded badly to their criticisms. He blamed them for not helping him, for not being visible during his times of crisis; and their recriminations flew back and forth, developed into terrible arguments, with everyone shouting at the top of their voices, till they all seemed more like implacable enemies than like members of an extended family.

They seemed so much against one another that I felt ashamed being in the room, witnessing it all. The wives and children of our relations avoided looking at me and then I suspected that they hated us as much as we avoided their company. After a long period of shouting one of our relations tried to change the subject by bringing up politics and the coming elections. It was the most unfortunate change of subject. Another great altercation started and burned vehemently in the small room. Dad, who supportedtheParty forthePoor,quiveredduringtheargument,unabletocontainhis rage; our relation, who supported the Party of the Rich, was very calm, almost disdainful. He had more money than Dad and lived in a part of the city that already had electricity.

The room vibrated with their differences and at times it seemed they would fall on one another and fight out the battle of ascendancies. But Mum came in with a tray of food and drinks. Dad sent for some ogogoro and kola-nuts and made a libation, praying for harmony in the extended arms of the family. Our relations ate in silence. After they had eaten, they drank in silence. Conversation had been exhausted. When the silence got too oppressive the wives of our relations went out into the passage with Mum and I heard them laughing while the men sat in the room, embarrassed by their differences.

The afternoon intensified with the heat. Voices in the compound grew louder; children played in the passage; neighbours quarrelled; our relations said they were going; Dad didn’t disguise his relief. One of the wives gave me a penny and called me a bad boy for not visiting them. Dad saw his relations off. He was away a long time. When he got back he was in quite a storm of bad temper. He raged against all relations, against all the relatives who had more money than him. He cursed their selfishness, and swore that they only came to visit to make themselves feel better in comparison with our condition. He worked himself into a tremendous verbal campaign against the Party of the Rich and in the height of his denunciation his eyes fell on the basin of powdered milk. He snatched it from the top of the cupboard and stormed out. I heard Mum pleading with him not to throw the milk away and then I heard her sigh. Dad came back with an empty basin and a wicked gleam in his eyes.

Mum sulked and Dad held her close and danced with her; she tried to push him away, but Dad clung to her, and soon she was hitting him affectionately on the back. I turned over on the bed. The fever had been retreating from me and I felt better with each hour. I heard them dancing, heard Mum’s weakening protestations, and heard Dad suggest that they go visiting. Mum liked the idea. Dad went and bathed and when he got back Mum went. It took Mum a long time to get ready and while she powdered her face and arranged the elaborate ornamented folds of her head-gear and dug out her necklaces and bangles, her wrappers and white shoes, and plaited her hair hurriedly in the mirror, Dad was already asleep on his three-legged chair. The room was very hot and patches of sweat appeared on Dad’s French suit, his only decent clothes. And when Mum was ready she was entirely transformed. All the tiredness, the overwork, the boniness of her face, the worry expressions on her forehead, had gone. Her face sparkled with freshness, lipstick, and eyeshadow. Her skin-tone had been softened with foundation and rouge. And I sawinMumsomethingoftheinnocentbeauty that must have made the village air lustrous when Dad first set eyes on her. She looked radiant and every movement scented the room with her cheap perfume. The sweat ran down her powdered face and her eyes were bright with excitement. She touched Dad and he woke up with a start, his eyes bloodshot and bulging, his jacket armpits wet through with sweat.

‘You women take so long,’ Dad said.

‘We may be poor, but we’re not ugly,’ Mum said.

Dad woke into a good mood. He rubbed his eyes, downed a short of ogogoro, forebade my going out, hooked his arm under Mum’s and, in a picture of wedded bliss, stepped out into the world.

I waited till they had gone. Then I got up, poured myself some ogogoro, downed it, andwenttothepassagetowatchthebustlingSunday afternoonlifeofthecompound.

As the afternoon passed on into the evening the children crying in the compound began to cough. Men and women queued up outside the toilet, and everyone complained of stomach trouble. The women doubled-up and sat miserably on stools outside their rooms. A man heaved and threw-up beside the well. Women screamed that they had been poisoned and said they had crabs clawingaround in their intestines. Children seared the evening with the livid heat of their weeping. Then the refrain of vomitingbegan.

The compound people without exception looked sick and when they passed me they glared at me as though I were in some way responsible for the mass illness. All the jollity and good feeling of Sunday gave way to groans, to cries of incomprehension, and demands for a witch-doctor’s investigation. This went on all evening. The compound became a place of vomiting; tenants vomited at the housefront, along the passage, in the toilet, outside the bathroom, and the sound itself seemed to becomecatching. Thechildren, unabletoholdanythingdown,wererushed tothetoilet.They weretreatedwithcastoroil,toneutralisewhateverpoisonstheyhad ingested. But nothing worked. I sat outside and watched it all in amazement. Then one of the creditors’ wives went past me, stiffened, turned to me, her eyes openingwide, and, in a groan that sounded like a curse, released a flood of undigested beans and rice and bile all over my Sunday clothes. She disappeared into the backyard. I washed off her vomit and went to the housefront and filled my pockets with stones. I stopped when I saw Mumand Dad returningfromtheir outingandranbacktotheroom.Dad was high-spirited and drunk. Mum’s face was flushed in sweat and love, her eyes bright, her radiance beautiful.

‘What were you doing outside?’ I told him what had happened. ‘What were you going to do?’ ‘Stone her.’

‘Go and stone her!’ he said.

I went out and threw stones at their door and missed and broke one of their windows.

Thecreditorcameout,lookingdesperately sick.

‘Areyou mad?’ heasked, wieldingamachete.

‘Your wife vomited on me,’ I said.

Thecreditor burst out laughingand then hefrozeand rushed to thebackyard.

‘Everyonemust haveeaten somethingbad,’ Dad said.

And then Mumtold how mystified shehadbeenatseeingpeoplesickeverywhere, at the endemic vomiting along paths and housefronts. The friends they went to visit had been ill the whole time. It seemed a plague had come upon us, insinuated itself into our intestines.

‘The whole world is sick, but my family is well,’ Dad said, proudly. ‘That’s how Godrevealsthejust.By theirfruitsweshallknowthem.Weareastrongfamily.’

He went on in this vein, singing lustily, till the dragonfly awoke in the room and soaredviolently totheceilingandkeptcrashingagainstthewallsindrunkenflight.