Anthills of the Savannah

EIGHT

Daughters

IDEMILI

That we are surrounded by deep mysteries is known to all but the incurably ignorant. But even they must concede the fact, indeed the inevitability, of the judiciously spaced, but nonetheless certain, interruptions in the flow of their high art to interject the word of their sponsor, the divinity that controls remotely but diligently the transactions of the marketplace that is their world.

In the beginning Power rampaged through our world, naked. So the Almighty, looking at his creation through the round undying eye of the Sun, saw and pondered and finally decided to send his daughter, Idemili, to bear witness to the moral nature of authority by wrapping around Power's rude waist a loincloth of peace and modesty.

She came down in the resplendent Pillar of Water, remembered now in legend only, but stumbled upon, some say, by the most fortunate in rare conditions of sunlight rarer even than the eighteen-year cycle of Odunke festivals and their richly arrayed celebrants leading garlanded cattle in procession through village pathways to sacrifice. It rises majestically from the bowl of the dark lake pushing itself upward and erect like the bole of the father of iroko trees its head commanding not the forest below but the very firmament of heaven.

At first that holy lake was the sole shrine to Idemili. But as people multiplied and spread across the world they built little shrines farther and farther away from the lake wherever they found good land and water and settled. Still their numbers continued to increase and outstrip the provisions of every new settlement; and so the search for land and water also continued.

As it happened, good land was more plentiful than good water and before long some hamlets too far from streams and springs were relieving their burning thirst with the juice of banana stems in the worst years of dry weather. Idemili, travelling through the country disguised as a hunter, saw this and on her return sent a stream from her lake to snake through the parched settlements all the way to Orimili, the great river which in generations to come strange foreigners would search out and rename the Niger.

A deity who does as he says never lacks in worshippers. Idemili's devotees increased in all the country between Omambala and Iguedo. But how could they carry to the farthest limits of their dispersal adequate memories of the majesty of the Pillar of Water standing in the dark lake?

Man's best artifice to snare and hold the grandeur of divinity always crumbles in his hands, and the more ardently he strives the more paltry and incongruous the result. So it were better he did not try at all; far better to ritualize that incongruity and by invoking the mystery of metaphor to hint at the most unattainable glory by its very opposite, the most mundane starkness — a mere stream, a tree, a stone, a mound of earth, a little clay bowl containing fingers of chalk.

Thus it came about that the indescribable Pillar of Water fusing earth to heaven at the navel of the black lake became in numberless shrine-houses across the country, a dry stick rising erect from the bare, earth floor.

It is to this emblem that a man who has achieved wealth of crop and livestock and now wishes to pin an eagle's feather on his success by buying admission into the powerful hierarchy of ozo must go to present himself and offer sacrifices before he can begin the ceremonies, and again after he has concluded them. His first visit is no more than to inform the Daughter of the Almighty of his ambition. He is accompanied by his daughter or, if he has only sons, by the daughter of a kinsman; but a daughter it must be.

This young woman must stand between him and the Daughter of the Almighty before he can be granted a hearing. She holds his hand like a child in front of the holy stick and counts seven. Then she arranges carefully on the floor seven fingers of chalk, fragile symbols of peace, and then gets him to sit on them so lightly that not one single finger may be broken.

If all has gone well thus far he will then return to his compound and commence the elaborate and costly ceremonies of ozo with feasting and dancing to the entire satisfaction of his community and their ancient custom. Then he must go back to the Daughter of the Almighty to let her know that he has now taken the high and sacred title of his people.

Neither at the first audience nor at this second does Idemili deign to answer him directly. He must go away and await her sign and pleasure. If she finds him unworthy to carry the authority of ozo she simply sends death to smite him and save her sacred hierarchy from contamination and scandal. If, however, she approves of him the only sign she condescends to give — grudgingly and by indirection — is that he will still be about after three years. Such is Idemili's contempt for man's unquenchable thirst to sit in authority on his fellows.

The story goes that in the distant past a certain man handsome beyond compare but in randiness as unbridled as the odorous he-goat from the shrine of Udo planting his plenitude of seeds from a huge pod swinging between hind legs into she-goats tethered for him in front of numerous homesteads; this man, they said, finally desired also the ozo title and took the word to Idemili. She said nothing. He went away, performed the rites, took the eagle feather and the titular name Nwakibie, and returned to tell her what he had done. Again she said nothing. Then as a final ritual he took shelter according to custom for twenty-eight days in a bachelor's hut away from his many wives. But though he lived there in the day for all to see he would steal away at dead of night through circuitous moon-swept paths to the hut of a certain widow he had fancied for some time; for as he was wont to ask in his more waggish days: why will a man mounting a widow listen for footsteps outside her hut when he knows how far her man has travelled?

On his way to resume his hard-lying pretence at cock-crow one morning who should he behold stretched right across his path its head lost in the shrubbery to the left and its tail likewise to the right? None other than Eke-Idemili itself, royal python, messenger of the Daughter of God — the very one who carries not a drop of venom in its mouth and yet is held in greater awe than the deadliest of serpents!

His circuitous way to the bachelor's hut thus barred, his feet obeying a power outside his will took him straight and true as an arrow to the consternation of his compound and his funeral.

Beatrice Nwanyibuife did not know these traditions and legends of her people because they played but little part in her upbringing. She was born as we have seen into a world apart; was baptized and sent to schools which made much about the English and the Jews and the Hindu and practically everybody else but hardly put in a word for her forebears and the divinities with whom they had evolved. So she came to barely knowing who she was. Barely, we say though, because she did carry a vague sense more acute at certain critical moments than others of being two different people. Her father had deplored the soldier-girl who fell out of trees. Chris saw the quiet demure damsel whose still waters nonetheless could conceal deep overpowering eddies of passion that always almost sucked him into fatal depths. Perhaps Ikem alone came close to sensing the village priestess who will prophesy when her divinity rides her abandoning if need be her soup-pot on the fire, but returning again when the god departs to the domesticity of kitchen or the bargaining market-stool behind her little display of peppers and dry fish and green vegetables. He knew it better than Beatrice herself.

But knowing or not knowing does not save us from being known and even recruited and put to work. For, as a newly-minted proverb among her people has it, baptism (translated in their language as Water of God) is no antidote against possession by Agwu the capricious god of diviners and artists.

NWANYIBUIFE

When she was marched through the ranks of her erstwhile party comrades like a disgraced soldier just cashiered at a court-martial, his epaulette ripped off with his insignia of rank, she was strangely lucid. The soft voice conveying the news of the car waiting below had done it. Her sense of danger had been stabbed into hypersensitivity by the menace of that voice — quiet as before but flashing ever so briefly that glint of metal. Aha! This was the man who, as rumour has it, returned from an intensive course in a Latin American army and invented the simplest of tortures for preliminary interrogations. No messy or cumbersome machinery but a tiny piece of office equipment anyone could pick up in a stationery store and put in his pocket — a paper-stapler in short, preferably the Samsonite brand. Just place the hand where the paper should be — palm up or down doesn't really matter — and bang. The truth jumps out surprisingly fast, even from the hardest of cases.

This extended image flashed through Beatrice's mind in its completeness and in one instant. When she walked through the room behind the major she was likewise able to take in as if by some unseen radar revolving atop her head every detail of the scene. His Excellency was the only party missing from this still life. All the figures, except one, stared at her silently and uninhibitedly from whatever standing or sitting position they were in, the American girl's eyeballs in particular popping out of her head like the eyeballs of a violent idol. One man alone kept his gaze to the carpet on which he sat and seemed to doodle with his finger — Alhaji Mahmoud, Chairman of the Kangan/American Chamber of Commerce. He was the only person at the party just ended with whom Beatrice had not exchanged a single word that evening beyond a lukewarm hello at the introductions.

It was the same car, the same driver, the same escort. The two had jumped out to salute the Major as he brought their passenger down, opened the door of the car for her himself, slammed it shut after her and walked away without a word.

Naturally the journey back was silent. Which suited her perfectly. The sharp prick of physical anxiety caused by that glint of metal hidden inside the Major's velvet voice had passed quickly taking also with it the envelopment of utter desolation which had preceded it and which it had so effectively punctured. What passed through her mind and flowed through her senses during the midnight journey could not be assigned a simple name. It was more complex than the succession of hot and cold flushes of malaria. Indignation, humiliation, outrage, sorrow, pity, anger, vindictiveness and other less identifiable emotions swept back and forth through her like successions of waves coming in, hitting shallow bottom of shoreline, exploding in white froth and flowing back a little tired, somewhat assuaged.

By rights she should not have slept that night. But she did; and a deep and plumbless sleep it proved to be. She tumbled into it without preparation from the brink of wakefulness, in full dress. And her waking up was just as precipitate. One instant she was virtually unconscious and the next she was totally awake, her eyes and head absolutely clear. She was tranquil almost. Why? From what source? Last night now seemed far away, like something remembered from a long and turbulent dream. Last night? It wasn't last night. It was the same night, this night. It was still Saturday night stroke Sunday morning. And it wasn't light yet.

She heard far away the crowing of a cock. Strange. She had not before heard a cock crow in this Government Reserved Area. Surely nobody here has been reduced to keeping poultry like common villagers. Perhaps some cook or steward or gardener had knocked together an illegal structure outside his room in the Boys' Quarters for a chicken-house. The British when they were here would not have stood for it. They had totally and completely ruled out the keeping of domestic animals in their reservation. Except dogs, of course. That habit, strange to say, has survived but not for the reasons the British established it. You wouldn't see any of their black successors walking his dog today but you will find affixed to the iron grill or barbed wire gate a stern warning: BEWARE OF DOG, sometimes embellished with the likeness of an Alsatian or German Shepherd's head with a flaming red tongue. Unfortunately armed robbers of Kangan do not stop at kicking dogs; they shoot them.

Lying in bed clear-eyed and listening to the sounds of morning was a new experience for Beatrice. As the faint light of dawn began timidly to peer through gaps in window blinds and the high fan-light of her bedroom she heard with a sudden pang of exultation the song of a bird she had heard so often in the mission compound of her childhood but not, as far as she could tell, ever since; certainly never before in Bassa. She immediately sat up in her bed.

The bird, her mother had told her, was the chief servant of the king and every morning he asks the guards of the treasury: Is the king's property correct?… Is the king's property correct?… The king's property… The king's property… Is the king's property correct?

She got up, went into the living-room, picked up the frontdoor keys from the sideboard and unlocked the grill and the door and went out into her narrow balcony. Standing there among her potted plants she took in deep lungfuls of luxuriously cool, fresh morning air and watched streaks of light brightening slowly in the eastern sky. And then he spoke again, the diligent chamberlain: Is the king's property correct? And now she saw him against the light — a little dark-brownish fellow with a creamy belly and the faintest suggestion of a ceremonial plume on the crown of his head. He was perched on the taller of the two pine trees standing guard at the driveway into the block of flats.

Beatrice had never until now shown the slightest interest in birds and beyond vultures and cattle egrets hardly knew any of them by name. Now she was so taken with this conscientious palace official that she decided to find out his name as soon as possible. She knew there was an illustrated book called something like The Common Birds of West Africa… Again he demanded: The king's property… The king's property… Is the king's property correct?

Strange, but tears loomed suddenly in Beatrice's eyes as she spoke to the bird: 'Poor fellow. You have not heard the news? The king's treasury was broken into last night and all his property carried away — his crown, his sceptre and all.'

As she scanned the pine trees in the rapidly brightening light she saw that the caretaker of the crown jewels was not alone. There were literally scores of other birds hopping about the twigs preening themselves and making low trilling noises or short, sharp calls of satisfaction. He continued intermittently to make his strong-voiced inquiry until the sun had come up and then, as on a signal, the birds began to fly away in ones and twos and larger groups. Soon the tree was empty.

These birds, she thought, did not just arrive here this morning. Here, quite clearly, is where they have always slept. Why have I not noticed them before?

Even her poor mother terrorized as she was by her woman's lot could fabricate from immemorial birdsong this tale of an African bird waking up his new world in words of English. A powerful flush of remembering now swept through her mind like a gust of wind and she recalled perfectly every circumstance of the story. Alas, her mother had only told, not invented it. The credit must go to a certain carpenter/comedian who played the accordion at village christian wakes and performed such tricks as lifting a table between his teeth to chase away sleep from the eyes of mourners and relieve the tedium of hymns and pious testimonies.

Beatrice smiled wryly. So, two whole generations before the likes of me could take a first class degree in English, there were already barely literate carpenters and artisans of British rule hacking away in the archetypal jungle and subverting the very sounds and legends of daybreak to make straight my way.

And my father — wonders shall never end as he would say — was he then also among these early morning road-makers-into-the-jungle-of-tongues? What an improbable thought! And yet all those resounding maxims he wielded like the hefty strokes of an axe-man. Cleanliness is next to godliness! Punctuality is the soul of business! (A prelude this, she recalled with a smile now, to the flogging of late-comers to school on rainy mornings). And then that gem of them all, his real favourite: Procrastination is a lazy man's apology! A maxim of mixed mintage, that; half-caste first-fruits of a heady misalliance. Or, as Ikem would have said, missionary mishmash!

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 visiting 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.

'You 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.'

Over 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!'

Slowly, 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.'

'No!'

'Don't quote me. Rumours rumours rumours. I should know though. After all I am the Commissioner for Information, aren't I? But I'm afraid I have very little information myself… Incidentally BB, how can you be so wicked? Imagine confronting me with that embarrassing catalogue of my morning's activities including the BBC at seven! Absolutely wicked… But I suppose it could have been worse. You might have added, for instance, that while the ministry over which I preside dishes out all that flim-flam to the nation on KBC I sneak away every morning when no one is watching to listen to the Voice of the Enemy.'

'That was a good performance of mine, was it?'

'Absolutely flawless. And devastating. I don't know why you still haven't written a play. You would knock Ikem into a cocked hat.'

'That would take some doing. But thanks all the same.'

Before he finally left her flat a little after six she had made another passionate plea to get him to agree to patch things up with Ikem.

'What I heard and saw last night frightened me. Ikem was being tried there in absentia and convicted. You have to save him, Chris. I know how difficult he is and everything. Believe me, I do. But you simply have to cut through all that. Ikem has no other friend and no sense of danger. Or rather he has but doesn't know how to respond. You've tried everything in the book, I know. But you've just got to try them all over again. That's what friends are for. There is very little time, Chris.'

'Little? There may be no time at all left… I should do something; I agree, but what? You see there is nothing concrete on which Ikem and I quarrel. What divides us is style not substance. And that is absolutely unbridgeable. Strange isn't it?'

'Very strange.'

'And yet… on reflection… not so strange. You see, if you and I have a quarrel over an orange we could settle it by dividing the orange or by letting either of us have it, or by handing it over to a third party or even by throwing it away. But supposing our quarrel is that I happen to love oranges and you happen to hate them, how do you settle that? You will always hate oranges and I will always love them; we can't help it.'

'We could decide though, couldn't we, that it was silly and futile to quarrel over our likes and dislikes.'

'Yes,' he answered eagerly. 'As long as we are not fanatical. If either of us is a fanatic then there can be no hope of a settlement. We will disagree as long as we live. The mere prospect of that is what leaves me emotionally drained and even paralysed… Why am I still in this Cabinet? Ikem calls us a circus show, and he is largely right. We are not a Cabinet. The real Cabinet are some of those clowns you saw last night. Why am I still there then? Honour and all that demands that I turn in my paper of resignation. But can I?'

'Yes, you can.'

'Well, I've just told you I have no energy to do it.'

'Nonsense!'

'And even if I were to make one hell of an effort and turn in my paper today, what do I do after that? Go into exile and drink a lot of booze in European capitals and sleep with a lot of white girls after delivering revolutionary lectures to admiring audiences seven worlds away from where my problem is. BB, I have seen that option; I have considered it and believe me it's far less attractive than this charade here.'

'So?'

'So I will stay put. And do you know something else; it may not be easy to leave even if I wanted. Do you remember what he said during that terrifying debate over his life presidency? I told you, didn't I? For one brief moment he shed his pretended calmness and threatened me: If anyone thinks he can leave the Cabinet on this issue he will be making a sad mistake.'

'Anyone walking out of that door will not go home but head straight into detention. Yes I remember that. So?'

'I am not saying that such a ridiculous threat is what is keeping me at my post. I mention it only to show how tricky things can become of a sudden. That's why I have said a hundred million times to Ikem: Lie low for a while and this gathering tornado may rage and pass overhead carrying away roof-tops and perhaps… only perhaps… leave us battered but alive. But oh no! Ikem is outraged that I should recommend such cowardly and totally unworthy behaviour to him. You yourself have been witness to it again and again. And you are now asking me to go yet again and go on my knees and ask an artist who has the example of Don Quixote and other fictional characters to guide him…'

'Oh, that's not fair, Chris. That's most unfair. Ikem is as down to the ground, in his way, as either of us. Perhaps, more so… You only have to compare his string of earthy girlfriends to yours truly…'

Having said it Beatrice immediately regretted her indulgence. She should have resisted the temptation of a soft diversionary remark. Power escaped through it leaving her passionate purpose suddenly limp… They talked on desultorily for a little while longer and then parted without denting the problem. Chris merely restated his position before leaving.

'You are asking a man who has long despaired of fighting to hold back a combatant, fanatical and in full gear. My dear, all he'll ever get for his pains is to be knocked flat on his face.'