As he drove to Mad Medico’s place that afternoon Ikem turned over and over in his mind one particular aspect of the visit of the taxi-driver and his friend—how it seemed so important to him to explain his failure to recognize an admired “personality” like Ikem; and how adroitly he had shifted the guilt for this failure round to the very same object of admiration for driving a battered old Datsun instead of a Mercedes and for driving with his own hands instead of sitting in the owner’s corner and being driven. So in the midst of all their fulsome and perfectly sincere praise of Ikem those two also managed to sneak in a couple of body-blows.
Ikem could understand well enough the roots of the paradox in which a man’s personal choice to live simply without such trimmings as chauffeurs could stamp him not as a modest and exemplary citizen but as a mean-minded miser denying a livelihood to one unemployed driver out of hundreds and thousands roaming the streets—a paradox so perverse in its implications as to justify the call for the total dismantling of the grotesque world in which it grows—and flourishes.
But even in such a world how does one begin to explain the downtrodden drivers’ wistful preference for a leader driving not like themselves in a battered and spluttering vehicle but differently, stylishly in a Mercedes and better still with another downtrodden person like themselves for a chauffeur? Perhaps a root-and-branch attack would cure that diseased tolerance too, a tolerance verging on admiration by the trudging-jigger-toed oppressed for the Mercedes-Benz-driving, private-jet-flying, luxury-yacht-cruising oppressor. An insistence by the oppressed that his oppression be performed in style! What half-way measures could hope to cure that? No, it had to be full measure, pressed down and flowing over! Except that in dictatorships of the proletariat where roots have already been dug up and branches hacked away, an atavistic tolerance seems to linger, quite unexpectedly, for the stylishness of dachas and special shops etc. etc., for the revolutionary elite. Therefore what is at issue in all this may not be systems after all but a basic human failing that may only be alleviated by a good spread of general political experience, slow of growth and obstinately patient like the young tree planted by David Diop on the edge of the primeval desert just before the year of wonders in which Africa broke out so spectacularly in a rash of independent nation states!
When finally Ikem’s thoughts broke out into words seeking Elewa’s view on the matter her response was sharply and decisively on the side of basic nature and the taxi-drivers:
“I no tell you that before say this kind car wey you get de make person shame. To day he no get battery, tomorrow him tyre burst. I done talk say if you no want bring money for buy better car why you no take one good Peugeot from office as others de do and take one driver make he de drive am for you. Your own work different than other people? No be the same government work? Me I no understand am-o.”
11
THE SENSE OF EXHILARATION which had descended on Ikem after the taxi-drivers’ visit stayed with him all afternoon and into the night, a night in which Elewa, touched by the flame of this novel excitement opened to him new reserves of tenderness exceptional even for her. Back now from driving her home he brewed himself a strong cup of black coffee to ward off physical languor from the precincts of his charged and alert mind and sat back to think. In such situations much of his thinking came in strong, even exaggerated, images.
He saw himself as an explorer who has just cleared a cluster of obstacles in an arduous expedition to earn as a result the conviction, more by intuition perhaps than logic, that although the final goal of his search still lies hidden beyond more adventures and dangers, the puzzles just unravelled point unambiguously to inevitable success.
The drivers’ visit was probably not the cause but only the occasion of this sense of thrill and expectancy—a culmination perhaps of several related events beginning with the happenings of last Friday. Or perhaps it merely triggered an awareness going far, far back in his subconscious mind waiting like a dormant seed in the dry season soil for the green-fingered magician, the first rain.
In any event he had always had the necessity in a vague but insistent way, had always felt a yearning without very clear definition, to connect his essence with earth and earth’s people. The problem for him had never been whether it should be done but how to do it with integrity.
At some point he had assumed, quite naively, that public affairs so-called might provide the handle he needed. But his participation in these affairs had yielded him nothing but disenchantment and a final realization of the incongruity of the very term “public” as applied to those affairs shrouded as they are in the mist of unreality and floating above and away from the lives and concerns of ninety-nine percent of the population. Public affairs! They are nothing but the closed transactions of soldiers-turned-politicians, with their cohorts in business and the bureaucracy. Ikem could not even guarantee now that his own limited participation had not been fatally flawed. His most poignant editorials such as his condemnation of the human blood sport called public execution; his general dissatisfaction with government policies; his quarrels and arguments with Chris; everything now began to take on the vaporous haze of a mirage.
Of course, he admitted bitterly, we
always take the precaution of invoking the people’s name in whatever we do. But do we not at the same time make sure of the people’s absence, knowing that if they were to appear in person their scarecrow presence confronting our pious invocations would render our words too obscene even for sensibilities as robust as ours?
The prime failure of this government began also to take on a clearer meaning for him. It can’t be the massive corruption though its scale and pervasiveness are truly intolerable; it isn’t the subservience to foreign manipulation, degrading as it is; it isn’t even this second-class, hand-me-down capitalism, ludicrous and doomed; nor is it the damnable shooting of striking railway-workers and demonstrating students and the destruction and banning thereafter of independent unions and cooperatives. It is the failure of our rulers to re-establish vital inner links with the poor and dispos- sessed of this country, with the bruised heart that throbs painfully at the core of the nation’s being.
Naive romantics would have us believe that this heart at the core is in perfect health. How could it be? Sapped by regimes of parasites, ignorant of so many basic things though it does know some others; crippled above all by this perverse kindliness towards oppression conducted with panache! How could it be in perfect health? Impossible! But despite its many flaws this can be said for it that it does possess an artless integrity, a stubborn sense of community which can enable Elewa to establish so spontaneously with the driver a teasing affectionateness beyond the powers of Ikem.
How then, he asked himself, how can he partake of this source of stability and social meaning? Not (again as the romantics would have him do) by pretending to be like the poor; by wearing specially and expensively aged and patched jeans in mockery of their tatters. Why should he add to the insults they already bear? How then?
What about renouncing my own experience, needs and knowledge? But could I? And should I? I could renounce needs perhaps, but experience and knowledge, how? There seems no way I can become like the poor except by faking. What I know, I know for good or ill. So for good or ill I shall remain myself; but with this deliberate readiness now to help, and be helped. Like those complex, multivalent atoms in biochemistry books I have arms that reach out in all directions—a helping hand, a hand signalling for help. With one I shall touch the earth and leave another free to wave to the skies.
Aha! Come to think of it, that might explain the insistence of the oppressed that the oppressor must not be allowed to camouflage his appearance or confuse the poor by stealing and masquerading in their clothes. Perhaps it is the demand of that primitive integrity of the earth… Or, who knows, it might also be something less innocent (for the earth does have its streak of peasant cunning)—an insistence that your badge of privilege must never leave your breast, nor your coat of many colours your back… so that… on the wrathful day of reckoning… you will be as conspicuous as a peacock!
HIS EXCELLENCY was pacing agitatedly like a caged tiger in the confined space between his desk and the far wall, his hands held tensely behind him, right fist gripped in left palm. He motioned Chris to sit and continued to pace for what seemed like a full minute more before he spoke:
“At last! But God knows I did not ask for it. It’s you, my oldest friends, you and Ikem who swore for reasons best known to you to force a show-down. What more can I say except: So be it… While investigations continue into Ikem’s link with the Abazon agitators he cannot continue to edit the National Gazette. But I must still do things properly and constitutionally no matter the provocation. That’s why I have sent for you. I want you as Commissioner for Information to issue a formal letter suspending him with immediate effect.”
“Hold it, Your Excellency. I don’t understand. What exactly is he supposed to have done?”
“Are you serious? You really don’t know?”
“I am afraid no.”
“Well, let’s not waste time by getting into who knows what, now… Intelligence reports have established that he was involved in planning the recent march on this Palace by agitators claiming to come from Abazon. In fact they were found on careful investigation to be mostly motor-park touts, drug pushers and other criminal elements right here in Bassa.”
“I am sorry but I can’t believe that.”
“In this job Chris, beliefs are not my primary concern. I am no bishop. My concern is the security of this state. You should know that; you are Commissioner for Information. Anyhow, let me assure you there is incontrovertible evidence that Ikem was in contact with these fellows in the quadrangle right here and later drove to a hotel in North Bassa to hold a secret meeting with them. How’s that? Well, you seem to be in a sceptical mood; what will you say then if I tell you that the security agents shadowing him actually arrested him for a minor traffic offence outside the hotel as he was about to leave? Just to make sure no alibis are invented… Good, isn’t it, to know that some organs of government still perform effectively in this country.”
“Can I speak with him?”
“How do you mean? Have you not been speaking with him? Oh, I think I see what you mean. He isn’t in custody or anything of the sort. Not yet. So I certainly think you should see him. But first of all I want him suspended from duty and barred completely from the premises of the Gazette. Is that clear?”
“No it is not. I am sorry Your Excellency but I will not write a letter suspending the Editor of the National Gazette simply because some zealous security officer has come up with a story…”
“I see I have been wasting my breath…”