NINE

WHEN I GOT home I sat outside and didn’t play with any of the children.I felt very wretched and didn’t notice the daylight pass into evening. Mosquitoes and fireflies appeared. Lamps were lit inside rooms. The men of the compound talked about politics, about the Party of the Poor. They too had come with loudhailers and leaflets and had promised a lot of things and had won considerable support because they said they would never poison the people.

It was dark when Mum returned. She looked haggard and sun-blackened. She shuffled into the room, dropped her tray of provisions, fell on the bed, lay there unmoving, and was instantly asleep. I warmed the food and swept the room. When shewokeup, shelooked better. Shesatdownandate.Aftereatingshelay onthebed and I sat on Dad’s chair, watching the door. She was silent. I told her I had seen Dad; shestartedtoworkup atemperaboutmyhavingbegunwanderingagain,butshewas too tired to sustain it. She lay there, grumbling in an ancient monotone about how hard life was, and I listened intently, for I had begun to understand somethingof what shemeant.Westayedup tillvery late,incompletesilence,waitingforDadtoreturn.

‘What did your father say when you saw him?’ she asked eventually.

‘Nothing.’

‘How can he say nothing?’

‘He said nothing.’

‘You didn’t see him.’

‘I did.’

‘Where?’

‘At the garage.’

We went on waiting. We stayed up, dozing fitfully, till dawn faintly lighted up the sky. Mum became very agitated.

‘What has happened to him?’ she asked me.

‘I don’t know,’ I said. She began to weep.

‘Are you sure you saw him?’

‘Yes.’

‘Washewell?Didhetalktoyou?Whatdidhesay?Ipray nothinghashappenedto him. What will I do if something bad has happened? How will I live? Who will take care of you?’

She went on like that, talking, asking questions, muttering, breaking down into sobs, till I fell asleep on the chair. When the cocks cracked the egg of dawn with their cries, Mum got out of bed, washed her face, and prepared to go and search for Dad in the police stations and hospitals of the world. She had just put food out for me, when Dad appeared at the door. He looked terrible. He looked like an anguished ghost, a forlorn spirit. His eyes were red, his face white and drawn, cement and yam powder all over his brow, his beard wild. He looked unwashed and I knew instantly that he had been roving the streets all night. He avoided my eyes and Mum rushed to him and flungher arms round his neck. Heflinched and Mumsaid:

‘Where have you been, my husband? We were so worried..

‘Don’taskmeany questions,’Dadgrowled,pushingMumaway fromhim.

He went and sat on the bed, staining it with dried mud. He blinked rapidly. Mum fussed over him, trying to anticipate his needs. She hurried out and prepared food. He didn’t touch it. She boiled water for him to bathe with. He didn’t move. She touched him tenderly and Dad exploded:

‘Don’t trouble me, woman! Don’t bother me!’

‘I don’t want to..’

‘Leave me alone! Can’t a man do what he wants without a woman troubling him? I have a right to do what I want! So what if I stayed out last night! You think I have been doing nothing? I’ve been thinking, you hear, thinking! So don’t trouble me as if I’ve been with another woman..’

‘I didn’t say you have been with…’

At that exact moment Dad leapt up into a tidal rage and scattered the plates of food and tossed away the centre table and grabbed the bedclothes and hurled them across theroom.They landedonme,coveringmyface.Istayedlikethatwiththebedclothes over my head while Dad raged. Mum cried out and then stifled the cry. I heard Dad hittingher. I looked and Dad was slappingher on thehead,kickingthetable,shaking Mum, pushing her, muscling her around, and her arms flailed, and then she submitted herself to his anger, and I got up and rushed at him, and he shoved me aside and I fell on his boots and hurt my bottom and I stayed there without moving. And then, quite suddenly, Dad stopped hitting her. He stopped in the middle of a slapping motion, which changed into an embrace. He held her tight while she sobbed, shaking. Dad also shook, and he led her to the bed and held her, and they stayed like that, unmoving, embracing awkwardly, for a long time. Outside I could hear the cocks crowing. The compound people were preparing for work. Children cried. The female prophet of the new churches chanted for the world to repent. The muezzin pierced the dawn with calls to prayer. Dad kept saying:

‘Forgive me, my wife, forgive me.’

And Mum, sobbing, shaking, also kept saying, as if it were a litany:

‘My husband, I was only worried, forgive me…’

I got up and crept out of the room and went to the housefront. I slept on the cement platform till Mum came to wake me. When I went back into the room Dad was asleep on the bed, his mouth open, his nose flaring and softening, an agonised expression on his wrinkled forehead.

I lay on the mat and didn’t go to school that day. Mum lay with Dad on the bed till the afternoon and then she went off to the market. When I awoke, Dad was still asleep. Heslept with his sufferingstillon his face.

That evening the van of bad politics returned. The women, children, and jobless men oftheareawent up anddowntheplaceasifsomethingterribleweregoingtohappen. The street became crowded. I went across to the photographer’s studio and saw the van of the politicians who had poisoned us. They blared passionate speeches through their loudhailer. We listened in silence to the politicians of bad milk. We listened as they blamed the other party for the milk. We listened as they maintained, with ferocious conviction, that it was their rivals, the Party of the Poor, who had been impersonatingthem, pretendingto bethem.

‘THEY WERE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE MILK, NOT US. THEY WANT TO DISCREDIT US,’ the loudhailers cried.

We found their statement very strange because at the back of the van were the very same people who had come round the first time. We recognised them all. Now they came with bags of garri, but with twice the number of thugs. They had whips and clubs among the garri bags and they seemed prepared for charity and war at the same time.

‘WE ARE YOUR FRIENDS. WE WILL BRING YOU ELECTRICITY AND BAD ROADS, NOT GOOD MILK, I MEAN GOOD ROADS, NOT BAD MILK,’ the politicians maintained, with great vigour.

People massed round the vehicle. The photographer darted around with his camera. He wasn’t taking pictures, but he seemed to have awoken completely from his hunger and his fever. The thugs handed out pans of garri but no one came forward to receive any. The people massed silently round the van. It was as if a message was being passed along. There was something ominous in their silence.

‘TRUST US! TRUST OUR LEADER! TRUST OUR GARRI! OUR PARTY BELIEVES IN SHARING THE NATIONAL GARRI AND…’

‘LIES!’ someone cried from the crowd.

‘THIEVES!’ said another.

‘POISONERS!’

‘MURDERERS!’

The four voices broke the stranglehold of the loudspeaker. The politician who had been launching into his litany of promises lost control and stammered. The loudspeaker gave off a high-pitched screeching noise. The people increased round the van. They were silent again and they followed the van silently as it moved, women with hungry resentful faces, men with thunderous brows. The thugs jumped down from the back of the van. One of them said:

‘WHO CALLED US THIEVES?’

No one answered. The thug’s eyes fell on the photographer. His camera made him conspicuous. As the thug moved towards the photographer the politician cried, through the agency of the loudhailer:

‘WE ARE YOUR FRIENDS!’

Then he repeated the words, with other entreaties, in his language, appealingto local sentiments. At that same moment the thug punched the photographer, whose nose started to bleed. No one moved. The thug lifted his great fist again and the photographer ducked intothecrowd,screaming,andthemenwentonofferingpansof garri, and the politician went on with his claims, and suddenly a stone smashed the van’s window and undammed the fury of angry bodies. Several hands clawed at the van; someone cracked the politician on the head and he screamed into the loudspeaker. The driver started the vehicle; it jerked forward and knocked a woman over. The photographer recorded the moment. The woman howled and the men hurled stones, breaking the side windows and shattering the windscreen. The crowd surged to thefront ofthevan,preventingitfrommoving.Thethugsjumpeddownandwhipped people,thephotographerfrenziedly tookpictures,andthepeoplewentonstoningthe side windows till they gave completely and then they threw rocks at the men handing out garri. The men shouted, blood appeared on their faces; the politician appealed for calm; someone in the crowd cried: