Sango regarded Lajide as his one great obstacle in this city, and Lajide in turn often called Sango a vandal, sent by the devil to destroy his property at Twenty Molomo Street. Everything was in order between landlord and tenant except good feeling. Sango took care to make no advances to any one of the extremely attractive harem of eight wives with whom Lajide surrounded himself and flooded his premises.
‘Just go up Molomo Street,’ Lajide said. ‘Go and never mind about your work; you’ll come back to fin
ish it.’ He squinted through the haze of cigarette-smoke. ‘Go, you will see something interesting.’ The challenge and the implied insult were intriguing.
Sango was puzzled. ‘I’d like to go, but can’t you just tell me what it is? It’s getting late, and my report —’
Lajide smiled. The cigarette-ash was now one and a half inches long and had not yet fallen off. It had curved slightly. ‘Just go up the road . . .’ The noise suddenly increased. ‘You hear that?’ He was jubilant.
Sango did not like unpleasant surprises in the morning before breakfast. From what he could make of it, the voices appeared to be children’s. But underlying that was something sensational. Sango could feel it.
‘Another husband beating his wife? Are there no police in this city?’
‘Is all right, Sango. If you like, you go. You don’t like to see your gal frien’ naked in de street. When I talk, you say I talk too much —’
‘Which gal frien’? Tell me, which gal frien’?’
Sam appeared and said, ‘Is true, sah. I tink is the gal who jus’ lef’ here. People gather roun’ her and laugh at her. Some even slap her, sah!’
On Molomo Street, the traffic was in a jam. Sango made his way through a seething mob of raving lunatics, jeering with excitement. He was quite unprepared for the surprising sight which met his eyes.
A girl was seated on a stone, and for all the world she looked like a model posing for a group of drunken artists who yelled and threw missiles at her. Only, these mad people were no artists. They were people who had wanted her and had not got her. They were revelling in her humiliation. She sat there on the stone paralysed, defenceless and scornfully beautiful. A child came near and with a stick dealt her a blow across the shoulders. She winced. Everyone shouted and booed.
‘Thief! Thief! Ole! Ole!’
Could this be the same girl in the blue velvet wrapper and the imitation-gold ear-rings? He had suspected that she had something on her mind, but she had been too proud to say just what. Sango pinched himself to make sure he was not dreaming. Aina was seated there on the stone, fully alive to the stone-throwers and the yelling mob. He must do something. It would be foolish to face the mob.
‘Ole! Ole!’ (Thief! Thief!)
‘A thief? What has she stolen?’
‘She’s sitting on it . . . that green cloth.’
‘That one? But—’
‘Yes!’
‘But it is worthless.’
‘She stole it.’
‘Look at her lover! I know him.’
Someone was pointing and Sango knew he had been identified.
‘Yes, that is her lover – the lover of a thief-woman. These Lagos gals. When they make up you don’ know thief from honest woman.’
‘Ha, ha!’
Now Sango understood why Lajide had been so insistent that he should see things for himself. At the other end of the street a policeman was pacing up and down, quite unconcerned. Sango ran towards him.
‘Constable—’ He tried to catch his breath. The traffic drowned his voice. ‘Constable —’
‘I’m a corporal,’ said the man.
‘Oh, sorry. Corporal. Are you going to stand there while they kill the girl?’ He pointed down the road at the crowd. ‘Please help her quick. Only your uniform can save her.’
‘I’m on point duty here. What girl? Not that street girl?’