The Interpreters, page 2
“But they all crack, don’t they? Sooner or later they crack.”
“I don’t want to see it happen.”
“Who will stop it? Your tired grandfather?”
“No. But we could.”
“But do we want to? Or try?”
“No. Too busy, although I’ve never discovered doing what. And that is what I constantly ask—doing what? Beyond propping up the herald-men of the future, slaves in their hearts and blubber-men in fact doing what? Don’t you ever feel that your whole life might be sheer creek-surface bearing the burdens of fools, a mere passage, a mere reflecting medium or occasional sheer mass controlled by ferments beyond you?”
Bandele shrugged. “I don’t work in the Civil Service.”
“But you acquiesce in the system. You exist in it. Lending pith to hollow reeds.”
“Is that why power attracts you?” Bandele asked.
“I merely want to be released from the creek-surface.”
“From apostasy,” Kola said.
“What’s that?”
“What? Oh you mean apostate? An apostate, that’s a face I cannot draw, even badly. You know, an absolute neutrality.”
One paddler felt in the water for movement. Anxiously he said, “The tide, it changes direction by late afternoon.”
“Changes how? Away from the shore?”
The man nodded.
Affecting innocence Kola asked, “How many wives has the old man?”
For a moment Egbo was deceived, then he laughed. “I’ve admitted that’s a powerful consideration. I’ve thought of that. Long and seriously. Just think, not only to be able to fill my house with women but to have it regarded as befitting and manly. I don’t know how many he has but I won’t be skimpy, I tell you.”
“You don’t need to.”
“Oh I’ve dreamt of me and a household like that dozens of times. And the future prospects for the country’s traditions. By example to convert the world.”
“You are the first genuine throw-back of this generation.”
“On the contrary. Polygamy is an entirely modern concept. Oh I don’t deny the practice is old, but whoever thought it was polygamy then?”
“Okay, okay, do we get ashore or not?”
As if he hadn’t heard, “I have, I sometimes suspect, strained objectivity to its negative limits. What choice, I ask myself, is there between the ugly mudskippers on this creek and the raucous toads of our sewage-ridden ports? What difference?”
“None.”
“That is the answer I dread to find if I yield to temptation and reclaim my place here. None. Sometimes I even go so far that I say, ‘What is my grandfather but a glorified bandit?’ Only that doesn’t help either. Sooner a glorified bandit than a loud-mouthed slave.”
The canoeman pointed at the water. The currents had become discernible, sluggish veins beneath a sleepy coil of python. It strokes you, the creekmen would say, strokes you with voluptuous mermaid arms to the deepest caves, infinitely coy and maternal. “Not yet,” Egbo said, “not another Egbo so soon, you nymphomaniac depths.” But there remained the question of a choice still and he had made none, none at least that he was directly conscious of.
“All right, let’s go.”
“Which way, man? You haven’t said.”
Perhaps he had hoped they would simply move and take the burden of a choice from him, but it was like Bandele to insist although motiveless. So, leaving it at that Egbo simply said,
“With the tide.”
Kola grinned. “Like apostates?”
* * *
—
A shade of anger over his face, resentment at his failure to bury the abortive quest finally, especially the promise it still held for him like a salvation. He looked around the club seeking an object to frizzle and be warmed in turn by energies he had aroused. There was only Lasunwon the politician-lawyer. He dogged their company always, an eternal garbage can for such sporadic splurges, and uncomplaining. Silently he watched him choke slowly on his college tie which had assumed a will of its own and pressed its knot on the gulping Adam’s apple. The beer reversed direction and Lasunwon’s nostrils were twin nozzles of a fireman’s nose. When Egbo opened his eyes he was astonished to see Lasunwon beaming across the floor to an acquaintance.
The party between them and the rain scrambled up and fled as a sudden uplift swamped them, spraying Sagoe’s table in hard mists. Bandele reached a long thin leg and tripped the deserted table on its edge, so it made a shield. Sagoe shivered suddenly and Dehinwa’s tone turned anxious.
“You are shivering,” testing Sagoe’s head for fever.
“It’s only the damp,” he said, “I am not shivering but I can’t get used to the damp.”
“Liar. It’s the cold you caught yesterday.” She turned to the others. “He went out again on Apapa road. And you know why he does it? To crow over stalled cars.”
“That’s not true. I go prospecting for oil from the pot-holes.”
“Very funny.”
“You look for seepage in the middle of the road, that is all there is to it.”
“Riding a bicycle in that weather. That is why they all call you a communist. You know you are top of the preventive detention list.”
“At least wait for the bill to be passed.”
Dehinwa, still angrily protective, turned to Bandele, “He came home with his head blocked and his nose streaming. Serve you right.”
Sagoe grimaced and covered up his ears in the shawl, and for some moments there was silence.
The trumpet stabbed the night in one last defiant note, and the saxophone slunk out of light, a wounded serpent diminishing in obscene hisses. Kola had exhausted the paper napkins forced from waiters, now Sekoni joined him in searching for any forgotten space among the jumbled doodles. He pointed to a modest corner but Kola shook his head. “Couldn’t draw a bean there.” He began to wave the napkins, hoping to attract a waiter. Sekoni took the ball-pen from him and drew an object in the rejected space, shaped like an onion.
Kola gave up. The waiters were huddled near the bar. They all had the vacant stare of boredom, and two were wholly mesmerised by cascades from the roof. He looked briefly at Sekoni’s onion and turned to Egbo.
“What did you begin to say?”
Somewhere in blind air, a loud rending, the agony of pitch-soaked beams torn against the grain, and they all waited for the crash of zinc. It was very near and they strained over the low roofs of the courtyard towards the sound. But Sekoni’s were the cat’s eyes. “Th-there, it is over th-th-there.” And immediately the crash came, a damp thud of bricks, and later the higher-pitched collapse of rusted sheets.
“One tooth,” Egbo announced. “The sky-line has lost a tooth from its long rotted gums.” Sekoni stammered worse than ever. “Th-th-they will b-b-be homeless to…n-night. P-p-p-perhaps we should stop there and see if wwwe can h-h-h-help.”
Sagoe had begun to snore gently. Normally Egbo would thrill to a storm, his face unnaturally animated. Tonight, he merely glowered, muttering imprecations at the sky, “Didn’t beg you to join in celebrating my depression.” Using his left palm for surface, Kola resumed his sketches. Bandele fitted himself, wall-gecko, into a corner.
Like a secret weapon, something called a stronga-head; for him it was always a term for the stubborn child, and Egbo felt resentful at his helplessness. They said it too when he was rescued—they, the world of grown-ups, of strangers, of wise humanity—they pronounced it as they saved him from the water, fully conscious; this one they said, has a strong head. But not the two, the preacher his father and a king’s daughter, whose bodies were recovered only hours afterwards. From then it was from parent to parent, for his aunt who really took charge of him was a restless spirit and her face even now remained for him undefined. The school-teacher, his first guardian, wore out canes on him. And his aunt returned suddenly from Dahomey, took one look at the weals and broke an inkwell on the teacher’s head. Then to Oshogbo to a trading partner. But the merchant’s wife only took the weals to cross them with new ones. For one thing, he would refuse to mind the shops. “My aunt is your trading partner,” Egbo would ask, “so how does that make me your shop-keeper?”
But there was worse. “When you greet your elders,” the merchant said, “you prostrate yourself.” “You mean, lie flat on my belly?” “On your belly, you son of the devil.” And Egbo would correct him gently, “My father was a reverend pastor and he never taught me to prostrate.” Seizing his koboko the man tore at Egbo’s skin crying, “You are a small child. You will learn the hard way or the path of whips!” Years later he went to a boarding school and only returned to the merchant’s home for holidays. But his guardian was awaiting him, his flabby paunch overflowing downwards, huge rolls of soft amala over a leather rim. And Egbo set down his box, braced himself and greeted him standing. Out from under the chair flew the whip, only there were intellectual arguments to be used now. “If I only kneel to God why should I prostrate to you?” And the merchant paused on the blow trembling. Suppose God overheard the argument and took Egbo’s side? That was a long cheat in time for divine vengeance. For days he moved meekly, spoke only in whispers, waiting for God to forget the precocious thought and his own existence. But nothing happened for a week, then three, and gradually he regained his boldness. Only, Egbo’s point remained, and could he presume to dismiss it as mere child’s talk? It was not difficult to find new excuses, Egbo was discovered at midnight lying at the water’s edge in the grove of Oshun, one ear against the ground. “What were you doing there?” they asked. He said he was praying. So they beat him for paganistic leanings. “All well-trained children pray in church,” the woman screamed, “not in some evil grove of heathens.”
* * *
—
They waited for the rain to release them, dozing off in fits.
Sagoe stirred, drew Dehinwa’s head to him and whispered, “Honestly now, do I look as blank as the others?” But he was very loud and Bandele overheard. “Vacuous,” he assured him, and Egbo added, “as a politician in press conference.” Dehinwa said, “These two are still very much alive,” meaning Kola whose palm was now a mess of ink lines and Sekoni who was fighting the cobbles over heaven knew what topic. The cobbles were in fact his own myth, his one aberration of humour in a life of painful sincerity…. “D-d-during my ch-ch-childhood, I wwwas fond of swallowing c-c-c-cobbles. Now when I hic…cup they rrrush to my throat, and I c-c-can’t speak.” The “hiccups” were most violent when Sekoni was excited and his excitement as he spun this case-history was only equalled by that of the listeners. For this was, from Sekoni, wildly humorous. It was dumbfounding, and the effort left him a child in forced feeding, his head rebellious to the stress of entry. In his case, ideas. Bizarre, unintelligible, commonplace, inspired, even things he had himself said or done and taken daily for granted—when the novelty reached him he stood assaulted.
For minutes Sagoe screwed his eyes and opened them out again weaving back and forth in sudden striking-snake motions, indifferent to Dehinwa’s plaintive “For heaven’s sake, keep still!” Some event powered his neck and he lunged finally at Egbo’s face and remained there a mere foot away. Egbo watched him indulgently, then encouraged him with his drunk imbecile grin.
“Have you found what you want?”
Sagoe shook his head and sighed, “What a waste.”
Only Dehinwa would persist in searching for sense in a drunk Sagoe. “What,” she demanded, “is a waste?”
With difficulty, they made out Sagoe’s complaint. “Do you see Egbo’s face in ultramarine? This club has atmosphere.”
Light from the blue bulb in the aquarium had spilled on Egbo. There were fluttering spots on Lasunwon’s face also, and they seemed to act as meat-tenderising rays. His muscles were slacked about the mouth and cheeks and resisted all Kola’s efforts to reset them. Dehinwa continued to insist, “But what is a waste?”
“The atmosphere, girl, the atmosphere. We should be love pairs. Even scheming lechers and their gulls would do but what do we have? Five drunken sots.” Dehinwa’s retort was lost half-way as Sagoe mummified her in her shawl. From the shadow of a pillar, Bandele emerged from a cat-nap, unwrapped his eyes and inspected the scene.
“It hasn’t stopped then.”
“The rain, no.”
Sekoni chuckled suddenly, his usual brief retracted ration. Kola stopped and looked up, but did not press for explanation. Nothing particularly funny seemed to be happening and he went back to his work. No doubt, some forgotten incident. Sekoni would not laugh at the actual moment of an event. Often he would react with alarm, with worry, and if the others were strangers to him they would wonder if they had not been guilty of some callousness. But invariably, prompted by some accident or whatever reviewing device Sekoni had built in him, he would recollect the scene and laugh, a short illicit laughter.
The fish began a little amphibious game thrashing wildly and darting suddenly behind a rock to stare at some unseen pursuer. Lasunwon watched, turned maudlin. Wagging a finger of admonition at the aquarium he said, “We human beings are rather like that, living in a perpetual trap, closed in by avenues on which escape is so clearly written.” The fish, outraged, paused in mid-motion, assaulted through the mouth; Sekoni fought the cobbles valiantly but lost, shook his head in pitying disapproval. Egbo simply took Lasunwon by his college tie, jerked his head forward with a “God punish you.”
Sagoe sat up at last and looked for the waiter. “I need a brandy to shake the ague.”
“No more no more. You are already drunk.”
“As the only woman in the party, you should efface yourself. Never be heard, never, never, in male company.”
“You see, you are drunk.”
“No I am low. Damn it, I am low. And that wretched band was really to blame. They depressed me the moment they began to play. And then this transition from high-life to rain maraccas has gone on far too long. Rain rhythm is too complex and I am too slow to take it in. You too, tootsie.”
“You are talking too much.”
“You should not be talking at all I told you. Anyway, I refuse to go down like these others. Just look at them. And if the Sheikh weren’t too preoccupied with his cobbles he’d be talking too.”
“Now you are up, bring your shoulder here.” Dehinwa leant and was soon dozing. Sagoe looked round in alarm, wondering if he had been left alone to cope with Sekoni. Alone with the Sheikh’s intensity! As if by accident he kicked Egbo underneath the table, but the legs only retracted. Cautiously he tried to peep beneath Bandele’s lids only to find the eyes surveying him with their familiar mildness. “Don’t worry, I am not asleep.”
Sagoe leant across the table and lowered his voice. “He depresses me and I am sad enough as it is.”
“What’s wrong with you?”
Sagoe smiled. “You won’t believe it, but it’s our dead chairman. Sir Derinola. I never thought I could shed a tear for him.”
“The ex-Judge?”
“Ay. The lawyers nicknamed him the Morgue. He was all right until he let the politicians buy him over. It’s funny but I despised him when he was alive!”
“I thought you were trying to get away from morbid thoughts.”
“That’s true, Skeikh set me off.” He lowered his voice. “It’s this earnestness of his really, and one never quite knows what to do…like a cripple coming out of a car and you don’t know how to help him. Place your hands under his elbows or leave him alone and merely open the door? Or bring out his crutches and hold them out. You know what I mean, why does he have to be so bloody pig-headed! I can’t get used to it.”
“You don’t have to. Just be indifferent.”
“That’s easy said. Well for you, maybe, but not me. Sometimes when I interrupt him and sense him still struggling in the background, I feel I have somehow strangled him, you know what I mean, strangled him but not quite finished him altogether. How Kola copes…”
“Kola keeps him from getting bruised.”
Kola could hear him of course. For the first time he thought of himself in that role and decided it was not quite true. “But tell me,” Sagoe continued, “what is it between him and the Dome?”
Bandele hurriedly glanced round. Sekoni wasn’t listening, but just the same he said, “Later, later. Kola will explain it better.”
Few people achieved the right indifference to Sekoni, and his fantasies needed so much time to unburden.
A new band took the stand, but they had not come to duel the rain. The small apala group had slowly begun to function as the string trio, quartet, or the lone violinist of the restaurants of Europe, serenaders of the promising purse. This was an itinerant group, unfed; their livelihood would depend on alms. Normally their haunts were the streets, the markets and even private offices where they could practise a mild blackmail. They had a great nose for the occasion and were prepared for the naming-day before the child was born. They grew bolder, took in the urban needs, taught style to the new oyinbos, and became as indispensable to the cocktail party as the olive on a stick. First their tunes, then their instruments—the talking-drum especially—invaded the night-clubs. And later they re-formed, and once again intact, exploited intervals and other silences wrought by circumstance. As this group now did. Just the one box-guitar, three drums which seemed permanent outgrowths of the armpits, voices modulated as the muted slur by the drums’ controlling strings. And they gauged the mood, like true professionals, speaking to each other, not to their audience, who would, if they chose, not know this language. But fashion had changed. Denial was now old-fashioned and after the garish, exhibitionist, bluff of the high-life band, this renewed a cause for feeling, hinted meanings of which they were, a phase before, half-ashamed.
