Читать книгу Half of a Yellow Sun, Americanah, Purple Hibiscus: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Three-Book Collection - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie - Страница 30

19

Ugwu sat on the steps that led to the backyard. Raindrops slid down the leaves, the air smelt of wet soil, and he and Harrison were talking about his upcoming trip with Mr Richard.

‘Tufia! I don’t know why my master wants to see that devilish festival in your village,’ Harrison said. He was a few steps below; Ugwu could see the bald patch on the middle of his head.

‘Maybe Mr Richard wants to write about the devil,’ Ugwu said. Of course the ori-okpa was not a devilish festival, but he would not disagree with Harrison. He needed Harrison to be in a good mood so he could ask him about tear gas. They were silent for a while, watching the vultures hovering overhead; the neighbours had killed a chicken.

‘Ah, those lemons are ripening.’ Harrison gestured to the tree. ‘I’m using the fresh one for meringue pie,’ he added in English.

‘What is meh-rang?’ Ugwu asked. Harrison would like that question.

‘You don’t know what it is?’ Harrison laughed. ‘It is an American food. I will make it for my master to bring here when your madam comes back from London. I know she will like it.’ Harrison turned to glance at Ugwu. He had placed a newspaper before sitting on the step, and it rumpled as he shifted. ‘Even you will like it.’

‘Yes,’ Ugwu said, although he had sworn never to eat Harrison’s food after he dropped by Mr Richard’s house and saw Harrison spooning shredded orange peels into a pot of sauce. He would have been less alarmed if Harrison had cooked with the orange itself, but to cook with the peels was like choosing the hairy skin of a goat rather than the meat.

‘I also use lemons to make cake; lemons are very good for the body,’ Harrison said. ‘The food of white people makes you healthy, it is not like all of the nonsense that our people eat.’

‘Yes, that is so.’ Ugwu cleared his throat. He should ask Harrison about tear gas now, but instead he said, ‘Let me show you my new room in the Boys’ Quarters.’

‘Okay.’ Harrison got up.

When they walked into Ugwu’s room, he pointed to the ceiling, patterned black and white. ‘I did that myself,’ he said. He had held a candle up there for hours, flicking the flame all over the ceiling, stopping often to move the table he was standing on.

‘O maka, it is very nice.’ Harrison looked at the narrow spring bed in the corner, the table and chair, the shirts hanging on nails stuck to the wall, the two pairs of shoes arranged carefully on the floor. ‘Are those new shoes?’

‘My madam bought them for me from Bata.’

Harrison touched the pile of journals on the table. ‘You are reading all of these?’ he asked in English.

‘Yes.’ Ugwu had saved them from the study dustbin; the Mathematical Annals were incomprehensible, but at least he had read, if not understood, a few pages of Socialist Review.

It had started to rain again. The patter on the zinc roof was loud and grew louder as they stood under the awning outside and watched the water sliding down from the roof in parallel lines.

Ugwu slapped at his arm – he liked the rain-cooled air, but he didn’t like the mosquitoes flying around. Finally he asked the question. ‘Do you know how I can get tear gas?’

‘Tear gas? Why do you ask?’

‘I read about it in my master’s newspaper, and I want to see what it is like.’ He would not tell Harrison that he in fact heard of tear gas when Master talked about the members of the Western House of Assembly, who punched and kicked one another until the police came and sprayed tear gas and they all passed out, leaving orderlies to carry them, limp, to their cars. The tear gas fascinated Ugwu. If it made people pass out, he wanted to get it. He wanted to use it on Nnesinachi when he went home with Mr Richard for the ori-okpa festival. He would lead her to the grove by the stream and tell her the tear gas was a magic spray that would keep her healthy. She would believe him. She would be so impressed to see him arrive in a white man’s car that she would believe anything he said.

‘It will be very difficult to get tear gas,’ Harrison said.

‘Why?’

‘You are too young to know why.’ Harrison nodded mysteriously. ‘When you are a grown man I will tell you.’

Ugwu was puzzled at first, before he realized that Harrison did not know what tear gas was either but would never admit it. He was disappointed. He would have to ask Jomo.

Jomo knew what tear gas was and laughed long and hard when Ugwu told him what he wanted to use it for. Jomo clapped his hands together as he laughed. ‘You are a sheep, aturu,’ Jomo said finally. ‘Why do you want to use tear gas on a young girl? Look, go to your village, and if the time is right and the young girl likes you, she will follow you. You don’t need tear gas.’

Ugwu kept Jomo’s words in mind as Mr Richard drove him to his hometown the next morning. Anulika ran up the path when she saw them and boldly shook Mr Richard’s hand. She hugged Ugwu and, as they walked along, told him that their parents were at the farm, their cousin gave birth only yesterday, Nnesinachi left for the North last week –

Ugwu stopped and stared at her.

‘Has something happened?’ Mr Richard asked. ‘The festival hasn’t been cancelled, has it?’

Ugwu wished it had been. ‘No, sah.’

He led the way to the village square, already filling up with men and women and children, and sat under the oji tree with Mr Richard. Children soon surrounded them, chanting ‘Onye ocha, white man,’ reaching out to feel Mr Richard’s hair. He said, ‘Kedu? Hello, what’s your name?’ and they stared at him, giggling, nudging each other. Ugwu leaned against the tree and mourned the time he had spent thinking of seeing Nnesinachi. Now she was gone and some trader in the North would end up with his prize. He hardly noticed the mmuo: masculine figures covered in grass, their faces snarling wooden masks, their long whips dangling from their hands. Mr Richard took photographs, wrote in his notebook, and asked questions, one after another – what was that called and what did they say and who were those men holding back the mmuo with a rope and what did that mean – until Ugwu felt irritable from the heat and the questions and the noise and the enormous disappointment of not seeing Nnesinachi.

He was silent on the drive back, looking out of the window.

‘You’re already homesick, aren’t you?’ Mr Richard asked.

‘Yes, sah,’ Ugwu said. He wanted Mr Richard to shut up. He wanted to be alone. He hoped Master would still be at the club so he could take the Renaissance from the living room and curl up on his bed in the Boys’ Quarters and read. Or he would watch the new television. If he was lucky, an Indian film would be on. The large-eyed beauty of the women, the singing, the flowers, the bright colours, and the crying, were what he needed now.

When he let himself in through the back door, he was shocked to find Master’s mother near the stove. Amala was standing by the door. Even Master did not know they were coming, or he would have been asked to clean the guest room.

‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Welcome, Mama. Welcome, Aunty Amala.’ The last visit was fresh in his mind: Mama harassing Olanna, calling her a witch, hooting, and, worst of all, threatening to consult the dibia in the village.

‘How are you, Ugwu?’ Mama adjusted her wrapper before she patted his back. ‘My son said you went to show the white man the spirits in your village?’

‘Yes, Mama.’

He could hear Master’s raised voice from the living room. Perhaps a visitor had dropped by and he had decided not to go to the club.

‘You can go and rest, i nugo,’ Mama said. ‘I am preparing my son’s dinner.’

The last thing he wanted now was for Mama to colonize his kitchen or use Olanna’s favourite saucepan for her strong-smelling soup. He wished so much that she would just leave. ‘I will stay in case you need help, Mama,’ he said.

She shrugged and went back to shaking out black peppercorns from a pod. ‘Do you cook ofe nsala well?’

‘I have never cooked it.’

‘Why? My son likes it.’

‘My madam has never asked me to cook it.’

‘She is not your madam, my child. She is just a woman who is living with a man who has not paid her bride price.’

‘Yes, Mama.’

She smiled, as if pleased that he had finally understood something important, and gestured to two small clay pots at the corner. ‘I brought fresh palm wine for my son. Our best wine-tapper brought it to me this morning.’

She pulled out the green leaves stuffed in the mouth of one pot and the wine frothed over, white and fresh and sweet-smelling. She poured some into a cup and gave it to Ugwu.

‘Taste it.’

It was strong on his tongue, the kind of concentrated palm wine tapped in the dry season that made men in his village start to stagger too soon. ‘Thank you, Mama. It is very good.’

‘Do your people tap wine well?’

‘Yes, Mama.’

‘But not as well as my people. In Abba, we have the best wine-tappers in the whole of Igboland. Is that not so, Amala?’

‘It is so, Mama.’

‘Wash that bowl for me.’

‘Yes, Mama.’ Amala began to wash the bowl. Her shoulders and arms shook as she scrubbed. Ugwu had not really looked at her and now he noticed that her slender, dark arms and face were shiny-wet, as if she had bathed in groundnut oil.

Master’s voice, loud and firm, came from the living room. ‘Our idiot government should break ranks with Britain too. We must take a stand! Why is Britain not doing more in Rhodesia? What bloody difference will limp economic sanctions make?’

Ugwu moved closer to the door to listen; he was fascinated by Rhodesia, by what was happening in the south of Africa. He could not comprehend people that looked like Mr Richard taking away the things that belonged to people that looked like him, Ugwu, for no reason at all.

‘Bring me a tray, Ugwu,’ Mama said.

Ugwu brought down a tray from the cupboard and made as if to help her serve Master’s food, but she waved him away. ‘I am here so you can rest a little, you poor boy. That woman will start overworking you again once she returns from overseas, as if you are not somebody’s child.’ She unwrapped a small packet and sprinkled something into the soup bowl. Suspicion flared in Ugwu’s mind; he remembered the black cat that appeared in the backyard after her last visit. And the packet was black, too, like the cat.

‘What is that, Mama? That thing you put in my master’s food?’ he asked.

‘It is a spice that is a specialty of Abba people.’ She turned to smile briefly. ‘It is very good.’

‘Yes, Mama.’ Maybe he was wrong to think she was putting her medicine from the dibia in the master’s food. Maybe Olanna was right and the black cat meant nothing and was only a neighbour’s cat, although he did not know any of the neighbours who had a cat like that, with eyes that flashed yellow-red.

Ugwu didn’t think again of the strange spice or the cat because, while Master had dinner, he sneaked a glass of palm wine from the pot and then another glass, since it was so sweet, and afterwards he felt as if the inside of his head was coated in soft wool. He could hardly walk. From the living room, he heard Master say in an unsteady voice, ‘To the future of great Africa! To our independent brothers in the Gambia and to our Zambian brothers who have left Rhodesia!’ followed by laughter in wild bursts. The palm wine had got to Master as well. Ugwu laughed along, even though he was alone in the kitchen and did not know what was funny. Finally, he fell asleep on the stool, his head against the table that smelt of dried fish.

He woke up with stiff joints. His mouth tasted sour, his head ached, and he wished the sun were not so oppressively bright and that Master would not speak so loudly over the newspapers at breakfast. How can more politicians return unopposed than elected? Utter rubbish! This is rigging of the worst order! Each syllable throbbed inside Ugwu’s head.

After Master left for work, Mama asked, ‘Will you not go to school, gbo, Ugwu?’

‘We are on holiday, Mama.’

‘Oh.’ She looked disappointed.

Later, he saw her rubbing something on Amala’s back, both of them standing in front of the bathroom. His suspicions returned. There was something wrong about the way Mama’s hands were moving in circular motions, slowly, as if in consonance with some ritual, and about the way Amala stood silent, with her back straight and her wrapper lowered to her waist and the outline of her small breasts visible from the side. Perhaps Mama was rubbing a potion on Amala. But it made no sense because if Mama had indeed gone to the dibia, the medicine would be for Olanna and not Amala. It may be, though, that the medicine worked on women and Mama would have to protect herself and Amala to make sure that only Olanna died or became barren or went mad. Perhaps Mama was performing the preliminary protections now that Olanna was in London and would bury the medicine in the yard to keep it potent until Olanna came back.

Ugwu shivered. A shadow hung over the house. He worried about Mama’s cheeriness, her tuneless humming, her determination to serve all of Master’s meals, her frequent hushed words to Amala. He watched her carefully whenever she went outside, to see if she would bury anything, so he could unearth it as soon as she went back indoors. But she did not bury anything. When he told Jomo that he suspected Mama had gone to a dibia to find a way to kill Olanna, Jomo said, ‘The old woman is simply happy to have her son to herself, that is why she is cooking and singing every day. Do you know how happy my mother is when I go to see her without my wife?’

‘But I saw a black cat the last time she came,’ Ugwu said.

‘Professor Ozumba’s housegirl down the street is a witch. She flies to the top of the mango tree at night to meet with her fellow witches, because I always rake up all the leaves they throw down. She is the one the black cat was looking for.’

Ugwu tried to believe Jomo, that he was reading undue meaning into Mama’s actions, until he walked into the kitchen the next evening, after weeding his herb garden, and saw the flies in a foaming mass by the sink. The window was barely open. He did not see how so many flies, more than a hundred fat, greenish flies, could have come in through that crack to buzz together in a dense, turbulent cluster. They signified something terrible. Ugwu dashed to the study to call Master.

‘Quite odd,’ Master said; he took off his glasses and then put them back on. ‘I’m sure Prof. Ezeka will be able to explain it, some sort of migratory behaviour. Don’t shut the window so you don’t trap them in.’

‘But, sah,’ Ugwu said, just as Mama came into the kitchen.

‘Flies do this sometimes,’ she said. ‘It is normal. They will go the same way they came.’ She was leaning by the door and her tone was ominously victorious.

‘Yes, yes.’ Master turned to go back to the study. ‘Tea, my good man.’

‘Yes, sah.’ Ugwu did not understand how Master could be so unperturbed, how he could not see that the flies were not normal at all. As he took the tea tray into the study, he said, ‘Sah, those flies are telling us something.’

Master gestured to the table. ‘Don’t pour. Leave it there.’

‘Those flies in the kitchen, sah, they are a sign of bad medicine from the dibia. Somebody has done bad medicine.’ Ugwu wanted to add that he knew very well who it was, but he was not sure how Master would take that.

‘What?’ Master’s eyes narrowed behind his glasses.

‘The flies, sah. It means somebody has done bad medicine for this house.’

‘Shut the door and let me do some work, my good man.’

‘Yes, sah.’

When Ugwu returned to the kitchen, the flies were gone. The window was the same, open only a crack, and the wan sunlight lit up the blade of a chopping knife on the table. He was reluctant to touch anything; the mysteries around him had tainted the pans and pots. For once, he was pleased to let Mama cook, but he did not eat the ugba and fried fish she made for dinner, did not take so much as a sip of the leftover palm wine he served to Master and his guests, did not sleep well that night. He kept jerking awake with itchy, watering eyes, wishing he could talk to somebody who would understand: Jomo, his aunty, Anulika. Finally he got up and went into the main house to dust the furniture, something mild and mindless that would keep him occupied. The purple-grey of early dawn filled the kitchen with shadows. He turned on the light switch fearfully, expecting to find something. Scorpions, perhaps; a jealous person had sent them to his uncle’s hut once, and his uncle woke up every day for weeks to find angry black scorpions crawling near his newborn twin sons. One baby had been stung and almost died.

Ugwu cleaned the bookshelves first. He had removed the papers from the centre table and was bent over dusting it when Master’s bedroom door opened. He glanced at the corridor, surprised that Master was up so early. But it was Amala who walked out of the room. The corridor was dim and her startled eyes met Ugwu’s more startled eyes and she stopped for a moment before she hurried on to the guest room. Her wrapper was loose around her chest. She held on to it with one hand and bumped against the door of the guest room, pushing it as if she had forgotten how to open it, before she went in. Amala, common, quiet, ordinary Amala, had slept in Master’s bedroom! Ugwu stood still and tried to get his whirling head to become steady so that he could think. Mama’s medicine had done this, he was sure, but his worry was not what had happened between Master and Amala. His worry was what would happen if Olanna found out.