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'What did you say?" she asked.
"We can't afford petrol right now. It's a pound a gallon."
"They paid you last week. We have to be sure that the car will move."
"I've asked Special Julius to do a check exchange. He has not brought the money"
Ola
"How are we going to buy petrol then?" she asked.
He said nothing.
She walked past him and outside. The moon was behind a cloud and, sitting out in the blackness of the yard, she could still smell that cheap vapor-heavy scent of local gin. It trailed him, it clouded the paths that he walked. His drinking in Nsukka-his auburn, finely refined brandy-had sharpened his mind, distilled his ideas and his confidence so that he sat in the living room and talked and talked and everybody listened. This drinking here silenced him. It made him retreat into himself and look out at the world with bleary weary eyes. And it made her furious.
Ola
"No," she said calmly. The air was charged with unreality, as if she would certainly wake up in a minute. "No," she said again, shaking her head.
"Madu sent his batman with the message. Ugwu was with the field engineers, and they suffered massive casualties in an operation last week. Only a few came back and Ugwu was not one of them. They did not find his body, but they did not find many of the bodies." Kainene paused. "There was not much that was whole to find."
Ola
"Come with me. Bring Chiamaka. Come and stay in Orlu." Kainene was holding her, Baby was saying something, and a haze shrouded everything until she looked up and saw the sky. Blue and clear. It made the present real, the sky, because she had never seen the sky in her dreams. She turned and marched down the road to Tanzania Bar. She walked past the dirty curtain at the door and pushed Odenigbo's cup off the table; a pale liquid spread on the cement floor.
"Have you drunk enough, eh?" she asked him quietly. "Ugwu anwugo. Did you hear me? Ugwu has died."
Odenigbo stood up and looked at her. The rims of his eyes were puffy.
"Go on and drink," Ola
The woman who owned the bar came across and said, "Oh! Sorry, ndo," and made to hug her but Ola
In the following days, days filled with dark gaps of time, Odenigbo did not go to Tanzania Bar. He gave Baby a bath, made their garri, came home earlier from work. Once he tried to hold Ola
The first songs were vigorous and then Mama Ada
Naba na ndokwa, Ugwu, naba na ndokwa. O ga-adili gi mma, Naba na ndokwa.
Odenigbo half stumbled out of the yard before they finished singing, a livid incredulity in his eyes, as if he could not believe the words of the song: Go in peace, it will be well with you. Ola
"We will stay in Kainene's house only until we find a place," he said, as if they had many choices, as if he had forgotten that, before, he would have said that Umuahia would not fall; and she said nothing in response.
She told Baby that Ugwu had gone to heaven.
"But he's coming back soon, Mummy Ola?" Baby asked.
And Ola
She visited Mrs. Muokelu's home, hoping for a story of a vision that involved Ugwu's safety, but a neighbor told her that Mrs. Muokelu's whole family was gone. They had left without telling anybody. She listened to the war reports on Radio Biafra more carefully, as if there might be clues about Ugwu in the ebullient voice reporting the pushback of the vandals, the successes of gallant Biafran soldiers. A man wearing a stained white caftan walked into the yard on a Saturday afternoon, and Ola
"Tell me," she said. "Tell me where Ugwu is."
The man looked confused. "Dalu. I am looking for Alice Njokamma from Asaba."
" Alice?" Ola
"Yes, Alice from Asaba. I am her kinsman. My family's compound is next to theirs."
Ola
"She is in?" he asked.
Ola
The man knocked again and called out, "I am from the Isioma family in Asaba."
Alice opened the door and he went in. Moments later, Alice rushed out and threw herself on the ground, rolling this way and that; in the evening sunlight, her sand-patched skin was tinted with gold.