“Yes, sir. Once more, may I on behalf of my colleagues and myself give you—I mean Your Excellency—our undeserved—I mean unreserved—apology.”
There was a long pause now like the silence of colleagues for a fallen comrade. His Excellency had been so moved that he needed the time to compose himself again. He took out a handkerchief and wiped his face and then his neck around the collar vigorously. Professor Okong stared on the tabletop with lowered eyes; like eyes at half-mast.
“The crowd that came in an hour or so ago,” he said calmly and sadly, “has come from Abazon.”
“Those people again!” said Okong in a flare-up of indignation. “The same people pestering you to visit them.”
“It is a peaceful and loyal and goodwill delegation…”
“Oh I am so happy to hear that.”
“… that has come all the way from Abazon to declare their loyalty.”
“Very good, sir. Very good! And I should say, about time too…” A sudden violent frown on His Excellency’s face silenced the Professor’s re-awakened garrulity.
“But I have been made to understand that they also may have a petition about the drought in their region. They want personally to invite me to pay them a visit and see their problems. Well you know—everybody knows—my attitude to petitions and demonstrations and those kinds of things.”
“I do, sir. Every loyal citizen of this country knows your Excellency’s attitude…”
“Sheer signs of indiscipline. Allow any of it, from whatever quarter, and you are as good as sunk.”
“Exactly, Your Excellency.”
“This is a loyal delegation though, as I’ve just told you and they have come a long way. But discipline is discipline. If I should agree to see them, what is there to stop the truckpushers of Gelegele Market marching up here tomorrow to see me. They are just as loyal. Or the very loyal marketwomen’s organization trooping in to complain about the price of stockfish imported from Norway.”
The Professor laughed loud but alone and stopped rather abruptly like a maniac.
“So I have a standing answer to all of them. No! Kabisa.”
“Excellent, Your Excellency.” It may have passed through Professor Okong’s mind fleetingly that the man who was now reading him a lecture had not so long ago been politically almost in statu pupillari to him. Or perhaps he no longer dared to remember.
“But we must remember that these are not your scheming intellectual types or a bunch of Labour Congress agitators but simple, honest-to-God peasants who, from all intelligence reports reaching me, sincerely regret their past actions and now want bygones to be bygones. So it would be unfair to go up to them and say: ‘You can go away now, His Excellency the President is too busy to see you.’ You get me?”
“Quite clearly, Your Excellency.” Okong was beginning to get the hang of his summons here, and with it his confidence was returning.
“That’s why I have sent for you. Find some nice words to say to them. Tell them we are tied up at this moment with very important matters of state. You know that kind of stuff…”
“Exactly, Your Excellency. That’s my line.”
“Tell them, if you like, that I am on the telephone with the President of United States of America or the Queen of England. Peasants are impressed by that kind of thing, you know.”
“Beauriful, Your Excellency, beauriful.”
“Humour them, is what I’m saying. Gauge the temperature and pitch your message accordingly.”
“I will, Your Excellency. Always at Your service.”
“Now if indeed they have brought a petition, accept it on my behalf and tell them they can rest assured that their complaints or rather problems—their problems, not complaints, will receive His Excellency’s personal attention. Before you go, ask the Commissioner for Information to send a reporter across; and the Chief of Protocol to detail one of the State House photographers to take your picture shaking hands with the leader of the delegation. But for God’s sake, Professor, I want you to look at the man you are shaking hands with instead of the camera…”
Professor Okong broke into another peal of laughter.
“I don’t find it funny, people shaking hands like this… while their neck is turned away at right angles, like that girl in The Exorcist, and grinning into the camera.”
“Your Excellency is not only our leader but also our Teacher. We are always ready to learn. We are like children washing only their bellies, as our elders say when they pray.”
“But whatever you do, make sure that nothing about petitions gets into the papers. I don’t want to see any talk of complaints and petitions in the press. This is a goodwill visit pure and simple.”
“Exactly. A reconciliation overture from Your Excellency’s erstwhile rebellious subjects.”