Anthills of the Savannah

FOURTEEN

As she was drowsily getting dressed for work the bedside telephone rang. Startled, she grabbed it on the second ring. A voice said: 'Miss Okoh?'

'Yes. Who is that?' Her heart was thumping and the telephone in her unsteady hand bobbed up and down against her ear. Silence at the other end. Was he gone? Then:

'Never mind who. I know where the horse is. But I don't want to find him. Get him moved. Before tonight.' He rang off.

Or was he cut off? She stood transfixed, the handset in her hand vibrating still against her ear. Hoping the voice would return? Had they been intercepted? Slowly she replaced and sank with leaden weariness into her unmade bed.

Move him? Was it a trap? To lure him into the soldier-infested streets? Who exactly was this fellow? Could he be genuine? Who in God's name could one ask? Tears of loneliness began to form in her eyes. She got up, wiped them and blew her nose and then tiptoed to Elewa's room. She was sleeping beautifully, childlike, beguiled perhaps by a dream in which the bad news had not yet been heard, where what happened here had not yet happened. She tiptoed out again leaving her to snatch what strength she could from the short reprieve of her dreams. She picked up her handbag and went alone in search of a safe telephone.

Later in the office she had a restless day wondering whether any of the score of accidents that could happen to the move had happened, and which. Only one was needed. Just as they say of bullets… The worst thing was sitting there so inactive signing daft letters, and not knowing what was going on. Should she risk a quick phone call from another office just to know, even without saying a word, whether his host, already gone to work when she had transmitted the message, had been reached to come back to arrange the move. And again that officer, was he genuine? Could anyone be genuine in these shark-infested waters? What then could his game be? Oh God! But why couldn't she just slip into one of the offices down the corridor, dial the number and see who picks up the phone? But Chris would be mad; he had been so insistent that she must not… And if she simply dialled the number and didn't speak, that could cause panic at the other end and might lead to a false step… Oh my God!

She left her office like a bird released from its cage, on the dot of three-thirty. (Chris had also insisted that she must not leave before closing time on his account because her movements would then attract attention. Damn his efficiency!) She did not head straight for home but went ostensibly shopping. From the crowded parking-lot, however, she went elsewhere than the shops.

There was a sprightliness in her walk as she returned to the parking-lot that told all her news. She decided to treat herself to a phial of Blue Grass and went into the shops. Instead of one bottle she bought two; one for Elewa. Then she picked up a loaf of bread and a few other groceries and set out jauntily for home. At the car-park she deposited her bag of purchases on the bonnet of her car and unzipped her handbag for the key. She searched one compartment and then the other. Her ill-used heart began to palpitate again. She told herself to keep calm, take a deep breath, and search the bag more thoroughly. She did, and even emptied the contents on the bonnet. But the little bunch was not there. She half-ran all the hundred or so yards to the public telephone. A man was making a call. She knocked on the glass door and tried to slide it open. The man interrupted his conversation to protest.

'I am sorry. I'm looking for my car key.'

'There is no car key here,' said the man angrily as he wrenched the door from her hand, shut it firmly and resumed his conversation, after a hissing sound longer than men generally could manage. She returned dejectedly to the car after she had retraced her steps with mounting hopelessness through the various stops she had made inside the shop and the different cashiers' stations where she had brought out her wallet from her handbag and made payments. Everyone, especially the perfumery girls, remembered her, but not her bunch of keys.

She was tired; hugely tired. The sun's routine oppression had changed all at once into a special act of vindictiveness against her in reprisal perhaps for the nervous energy she had just displayed instead of the languor decreed from above. All around her in the parking-lot she saw vaguely in slow motion hundreds, more wise than she, who obeyed and prospered.

She turned around for no apparent reason and took a look inside the car, and saw the keys dangling from the key-hole. Transports of joy! Now she could go home and even if she failed to locate her spares — which had become a major fear since she had begun considering strategies — she could bring a mechanic, even a car-thief, and force the door-lock or do something with the glass, and move the car.

Smiling, she went in search of a taxi. Was it happiness about the keys or something deeper, a response called up by the crisis in which she and her friends were enmeshed? Whatever it was, she struck up a conversation with the taxi-driver and very soon she was learning things she didn't know, about the death of Ikem, about the missing Commissioner for Information and about the planned meeting tomorrow of the Taxi Drivers Union 'to put their mouth into this nonsense story' of Ikem's death.

'If you get somewhere to go make you go today. Tomorrow no taxi go run.'

By the time they got to her flat the rapport between Beatrice and the driver was such that although she took a little time finding her spare keys he did not mind in the least. The beer she offered him to make the time pass more pleasantly he put away under his dashboard until his break-time. He promised to bring the empty bottle back tomorrow on his way to the meeting.

'Don't worry about the bottle,' said Beatrice.

'Why I no go worry? I be monkey wey dem say to give im water no hard but to get your tumbler back?'

Beatrice burst into laughter as she climbed back into the car for the return journey to the parking-lot. Even the joker had to laugh then at his own joke.

Chris's last hideout had been raided as promised at midnight. Beatrice had got ready quite early but had had to wait until there was adequate traffic on the roads before venturing out to put a call through to the house. The conversation was brief and undetailed, without proper names.

'Any visitors?'

'Yes they came at twelve.'

'Any problems?'

'None so far.'

'So far?'

'Well, none really. Nothing at all.'

'Thank God.'

Click!

She went into her flat as she sometimes did, quietly by the kitchen entrance. Elewa was at the table dipping dry bread in a mug of Ovaltine while Agatha watched her leaning on the doorway between the kitchen and the dining-annexe.

'What are you watching her for? And what sort of breakfast is this? No eggs… no margarine…'

'But she no ask me for egg or margarine.'

'She no ask you?'

'Make you no worry, BB. This one done do.'

'Agatha, you are a very stupid girl and a very wicked girl… Get out of my way!'

She pushed past her back into the kitchen, broke and whisked three eggs for an omelette. While it simmered she brought breakfast things out of the refrigerator to the table — margarine, marmalade, honey, orange juice, milk. Then she sat down and insisted that Elewa eat the egg and drink the fresh orange juice. She literally waited on her not just because her grief entitled her to it but she wanted her solicitude to be a ringing rebuke to Agatha who had made no attempt to conceal her resentment at having to serve someone she clearly felt, judging from the contempt in her eyes and the way she curled her lips, was no better than a servant herself.

After the first surge of anger Beatrice found herself feeling for the first time for this poor, twisted, desiccated, sanctimonious girl something she had never before thought of extending to her — pity. Yes, she thought, her Agatha deserved to be pitied; this girl who danced and raved about salvation from dawn to dusk every Saturday, who distributed free leaflets (she had once even sneaked up to Chris when Beatrice stepped out of the room and given him one). Yes, this Agatha who was so free with leaflets dripping with the saving blood of Jesus and yet had no single drop of charity in her own anaemic blood.

As she drank her coffee and nibbled at the bread and omelette she was having just to keep Elewa company and make sure she had a little something nourishing and needful for her condition she wondered why Agatha should want to be so beastly to the girl.

Of course being a servant could not be fun. Beatrice knew that. She had never belittled the problem or consciously looked down on anyone because she was a servant, so help her God. For she was sensitive enough and intelligent enough to understand, and her literary education could not but have sharpened her perception of the evidence before her eyes: that in the absurd raffle-draw that apportioned the destinies of post-colonial African societies two people starting off even as identical twins in the morning might quite easily find themselves in the evening one as President shitting on the heads of the people and the other a nightman carrying the people's shit in buckets on his head. So how could a girl like Beatrice, intelligent, compassionate, knowing that fact of our situation look down on another less lucky and see more to it than just that — blind luck?

But there was more to it. There had to be. Look at Elewa. Was she not as unlucky as Agatha in the grand capricious raffle? A half-literate sales-girl in a shop owned by an Indian; living in one room with a petty-trader mother deep in the slums of Bassa. Why had she not gone sour? Why did she radiate this warmth and attraction and self-respect and confidence? Why did it seem so natural to install her in the spare bedroom and not, like Agatha, in the servant's quarters? She was Ikem's girl, true. But was that all? And how come Ikem singled her out in the first place to be his girl from the millions just as unlucky as herself? There was something in her that even her luckless draw could not remove. That thing that drew Ikem to her, and for which she must be given credit.

Ikem! Oh yes, Ikem. Provocative, infuriating, endearing Ikem! He was, had to be, at the root of these unusual musings! She recalled the last visit he had paid her in this flat. Though she was to see him a couple of times again subsequently, the last time only the other day at Chris's place when they had all watched the news of his suspension together, that last visit here at her flat had risen with his death to dominate her consciousness of him and driven earlier and even later memories firmly into the background.

It was perhaps the strong, spiritual light of that emergent consciousness that gave Elewa, carrying as it turned out a living speck of him within her, this new luminosity she seemed to radiate which was not merely a reflection of common grief which you could find anywhere any hour in Kangan, but a touch, distinct, almost godlike, able to transform a half-literate, albeit good-natured and very attractive, girl into an object of veneration.

But even more remarkable was the way this consciousness was now, at the ebb-tide of her anger impinging on despised Agatha, who had wilfully placed herself until now beyond the reach of Beatrice's sympathy by her dry-as-dust, sanctimonious, born-again ways; yes, impinging on her of all people and projecting on to the screen of the mind a new image of her; and in the background the narrator's voice coming through and declaiming: It is now up to you women to tell us what has to be done. And Agatha is surely one of you.

And do you know what? Perhaps it might even be said that by being so clearly, so unpleasantly, so pig-headedly unhappy in her lot Agatha by her adamant refusal to be placated may be rendering a service to the cause more valuable than Elewa's acceptance; valuable for keeping the memory of oppression intact, constantly burnished and ready. How about that?

It was Agatha's habit to cry for hours whenever Beatrice said as much as boo to her; and Beatrice's practice to completely ignore her. But today, after she had deposited the used plates in the sink, Beatrice turned to where Agatha sat with her face buried in her hands on the kitchen-table and placed her hand on her heaving shoulder. She immediately raised her head and stared at her mistress in unbelief.

'I am sorry Agatha.'

The unbelief turned first to shock and then, through the mist of her tears, a sunrise of smiles.

The voice had become expansive, even self-indulgent. Two calls in one day! In the morning it was to give her full marks for moving the horse; but, if the horse was still in Bassa, to impress upon her that the city was not a safe environment for him. So she had better be thinking quite soon of a cross-country gallop.

'It's not me you should worry about; I can promise never to find a horse. It's the others who are more efficient than myself in the matter of finding horses.'

Completely bemused at the end of this strange mixture of whimsy and deadliness Beatrice found herself saying the words: 'Are you genuine?' which rang almost as strangely in her ear as the communication that had given rise to it. He gave no answer. Perhaps he was already half-way to replacing his telephone and didn't hear the question. Or perhaps he heard but did not wish to put himself in the vulnerable position of being questioned. If so, fair enough. One should not look a gift-horse in the mouth. The fellow wasn't hired by her as her private detective, so he was within his rights to lay down conditions for his freely volunteered assistance.

Assistance, did she say? So she was already assuming he was on her side, already taking him for granted. So early in the day. Careful now, Beatrice, careful. How did her people say it? Don't disparage the day that still has an hour of light in its hand.

That evening he called again to answer the question.

'You asked was I genuine? If by that you mean do I ride horses or do I play polo the answer is an emphatic no. But if you mean do I like horses, yes. I am a horse-fancier.' Click!

So he did hear it. Only he needed the time, a whole day, to work out a clever answer. Oh, well. She couldn't really complain… though she must admit to being a little troubled by the tone of sportiveness creeping into his manner. But again, why not? Why should this unconventional benefactor be judged by her own sedate sense of seriousness. Was she forgetting that kind though he might have been to her on one occasion he was still a practising hangman? And what could be more natural than for a man in his profession to have a somewhat unorthodox sense of humour — gallows humour, in fact!

Two other things that happened that day compounded Beatrice's anxiety. The National Gazette had come out in the morning with a strange story: The Commissioner for Information, Mr. Christopher Oriko, who had not been seen in his office or his residence for the past one week had according to unconfirmed reports left the country in a foreign airliner bound for London disguised as a Reverend Father and wearing a false beard.

What were they up to now? Was this a smoke-screen behind which they hoped to eliminate their second victim less messily than the first?

Then at six o'clock came a police statement declaring Mr. Christopher Oriko, Commissioner for Information wanted by security officers in connection with the recent coup plot and calling on anyone who had information concerning his whereabouts to contact the nearest police station and warned citizens that concealing information about a coup plotter was as serious as failing to report a coup plot or taking part in a coup plot; and the penalty for each was death.

This announcement had not come as a complete surprise to Beatrice. Still to hear those idiotic accusations made against the backdrop of that unflattering full-face picture of Chris dug up from God knows where staring out at you from the screen injected a chill into one's circulation, even without the ominous death sting at the end.

She and Elewa sat in reflective silence after the announcement. Agatha who seemed to have heard it from the kitchen and moved up to the door was leaning on the doorway, silently. Then the telephone rang as though on cue shattering the dramatic silence. Elewa sat up, her head held high like a deer that sniffs danger, its erect ears waiting for a confirming rustle. But no stealthy sound came and no flashing movement, and she sat back again. Beatrice's change of countenance, the tone and words of her half of the conversation had dispelled the air of dread which had lately attended telephone calls. The conversation was indeed about the announcement but whoever Beatrice was talking to seemed merely to be expressing friendly concern. When she dropped the telephone Elewa and Agatha had been having a quiet discussion of their own on the matter.

'Madam, make you no worry at all,' said Agatha. 'Whether they look from here to Jericho, they no go find am. By God's power.'

'Amin,' replied Elewa. 'Na so we talk.'