This brought a good deal of laughter but again it was a slack, resigned laughter. No one seemed ready to follow up the reprimand or join issue with Couple for defending his fellow racketeers.
Up to this point Max had spoken slowly and deliberately, with very little heat. But now, as he accused the present regime of trying to establish itself as a privileged class sitting on the back of the rest of us, his hands and his voice began to shake.
“Whether it is P.O.P. or P.A.P. they are the same,” he cried.
“The same ten and ten pence,” agreed someone in English.
“They want to share out the wealth of the country between them. That is why you must reject both; that is why we have now formed the C.P.C. as a party of the ordinary people like yourselves. . . . Once upon a time a hunter killed some big-game at night. He searched for it in vain and at last he decided to go home and await daylight. At the first light of morning he returned to the forest full of expectation. And what do you think he found? He saw two vultures fighting over what still remained of the carcass. In great anger he loaded his gun and shot the two dirty uneatable birds. You may say that he was foolish to waste his bullet on them but I say no. He was angry and he wanted to wipe out the dirty thieves fighting over another man’s inheritance. That hunter is yourselves. Yes, you and you and you. And the two vultures—P.O.P. and P.A.P. . . .” There was loud applause. Jolly good, I thought.
“There were three vultures,” said the ex-policeman after the applause had subsided. “The third and youngest was called C.P.C.”
“Why don’t you leave the young man alone to tell us his story?” asked one elderly woman smoking a short clay pipe. But many people obviously thought the ex-policeman very witty and I saw one or two shaking his hand.
Towards the end of his speech Max made one point which frankly I thought unworthy of him or of C.P.C. but I suppose I am too finicky. “We all know,” he said, “what one dog said to another. He said: ‘If I fall for you this time and you fall for me next time then I know it is play not fight.’ Last time you elected a Member of Parliament from Anata. Now it is your turn here in Urua. A goat does not eat into a hen’s stomach no matter how friendly the two may be. Ours is ours but mine is mine. I present as my party’s candidate your own son, Odili Samalu . . .” He walked over to me and held my hand up and the crowd cheered and cheered.
An elderly man who I believe was also a local councillor now stood up. He had sat on the edge of his seat directly opposite the microphone, his two hands like a climber’s grasping his iron staff. His attitude and posture had shown total absorption in what was being said:
“I want to thank the young man for his beautiful words,” he said. “Every one of them has entered my ear. I always say that what is important nowadays is no longer age or title but knowledge. The young man clearly has it and I salute him. There is one word he said which entered my ear more than everything else—not only entered but built a house there. I don’t know whether you others heard it in the same way as I did. That word was that our own son should go and bring our share.” There was great applause from the crowd. “That word entered my ear. The village of Anata has already eaten, now they must make way for us to reach the plate. No man in Urua will give his paper to a stranger when his own son needs it; if the very herb we go to seek in the forest now grows at our very back yard are we not saved the journey? We are ignorant people and we are like children. But I want to tell our son one thing: He already knows where to go and what to say when he gets there; he should tell them that we are waiting here like a babe cutting its first tooth: anyone who wants to look at our new tooth should know that his bag should be heavy. Have I spoken well?”
“Yes,” answered the crowd as they began to disperse.
Later I called Max aside and told him excitedly and in a few words about Chief Nanga’s visit.
“You should have taken the money from him,” he replied.
“What?” I was thunderstruck.
“Chief Koko offered me one thousand pounds,” he continued placidly. “I consulted the other boys and we decided to accept. It paid for that minibus . . .”
“I don’t understand you, Max. Are you telling me that you have taken money and stepped down for P.O.P.?”
“I am telling you nothing of the sort. The paper I signed has no legal force whatever and we needed the money . . .”
“It had moral force,” I said, downcast. “I am sorry, Max, but I think you have committed a big blunder. I thought we wanted our fight to be clean . . . You had better look out; they will be even more vicious from now on and people will say they have cause.” I was really worried. If our people understand nothing else they know that a man who takes money from another in return for service must render that service or remain vulnerable to that man’s just revenge. Neither God nor juju would save him.
“Oh, forget that. Do you know, Odili, that British Amalgamated has paid out four hundred thousand pounds to P.O.P. to fight this election? Yes, and we also know that the Americans have been even more generous, although we don’t have the figures as yet. Now you tell me how you propose to fight such a dirty war without soiling your hands a little. Just you tell me. Anyway we must be moving on to Abaga now. I’ll be here again in a couple of days to iron out everything and let you know our detailed plans from now on. Meanwhile, old boy, if the offer comes again take it. It’s as much your money as his . . .”
“Never!”
“Anyway, the question is purely academic now . . . Your old man is a wonderful fellow. I like him.”
• • •
Seeing Max and Eunice once again, sharing every excitement, had made my mouth water, to put it crudely. As Max made his speech I had found myself watching Eunice’s beautiful profile. She sat at the edge of her chair, wringing her clasped hands like a nervous schoolgirl. Her lips seemed to be forming the same words that he was uttering. Perhaps it was this delicious picture of feminine loyalty that led me early next day to abandon my carefully worked out strategy and go in search of Edna. I meant to tell her point-blank that I was in love with her, and let the whole world know about it as well. If she said no to me because I had not stolen public money and didn’t have a Cadillac, well and good, I should go and bear it like a man. But I was determined not to carry on this surreptitious corner-corner love business one day longer. It would be wonderful, I thought, if I could present her to Max on his next visit here. He would be envious, I knew. Edna might not be a lawyer or sophisticated in the nail-varnish, eyebrow-shadow line like Eunice, but any man who passed Edna on the road and didn’t look back must have a stiff neck. And as far as I was concerned she had just the right amount of education. I had nothing against professional women—in fact I liked them in their way—but if emancipation meant people like that other lady lawyer who came to sleep with illiterate Chief Nanga for twenty-five pounds a time (as he confided to me next morning), then they could keep it.
During the fifteen-mile journey to Anata which took the greater part of forty minutes because of the corrugated laterite surface, I worked out what I was going to say. What was important was not so much what I said but that I should say it decisively and not like a mumbling schoolboy. If the answer wasn’t yes it would be no; as they say, there are only two things you could do with yam—if you don’t boil it, you roast it. Or perhaps I should preface my declaration with an account of what had been happening to me since we met last. Yes, she would certainly like to hear how her famous suitor came to me in the dark like Nicodemus and offered me two-fifty pounds. She would like that and if her greedy father was around it would make his mouth water into the bargain, and raise my standing in his eyes.
Then I remembered that last night as I thought about the offer I had been really angry again about it all. Not only about Max disgracing our party and yet having the face to charge me with idealism and naïvety, but I couldn’t help feeling small at the inevitable comparison of the amounts offered to him and me. Not that it mattered; I would still have refused if it had been ten thousand. The real point surely was that Max’s action had jeopardized our moral position, our ability to inspire that kind of terror which I had seen so clearly in Nanga’s eyes despite all his grandiloquent bluff, and which in the end was our society’s only hope of salvation.
I clearly saw Edna withdrawing hurriedly from the front room as I drove up. Women! No matter how beautiful they are they always try to be more—and usually fail; though in Edna’s case she was great with face powder and the rest, and great without them.
Her younger brother was alone in the room. He stood up as I came in and said: “Good morning, sir.”
“Good morning,” I said. “Was it you brought me the letter?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Thank you.”