Страница 21 из 113
"Oh. Very good. Could you get me this herb, Jomo?"
Jomo stopped and looked at him, his wise wizened face full of fond pity. "It no work for white man, sah."
"Oh, no. I want to write about it."
Jomo shook his head. "You go to dibia and you chew it there in front of him. Not for writing, sah." Jomo turned back to his watering, humming tunelessly.
"I see," Richard said, and as he went back indoors he made sure not to let his dejection show; he walked straight and reminded himself that he was, after all, the master.
Harrison was standing outside the front door, pretending to polish the glass. "Is there something that Jomo is not doing well, sah?" he asked hopefully.
"I was just asking Jomo some questions."
Harrison looked disappointed. It was clear from the begi
When Ola
It took Richard a moment to understand before he laughed at the poor imitation of Sir Winston Churchill. Later, he watched Odenigbo wave around a copy of the Daily Times, shouting, "It is now that we have to begin to decolonize our education! Not tomorrow, now! Teach them our history!" and thought to himself that here was a man who trusted the eccentricity that was his personality, a man who was not particularly attractive but who would draw the most attention in a room full of attractive men. Richard watched Ola
"I will," he said; it was the first time she had mentioned Kainene.
Kainene picked him up at the train station in her Peugeot 404 and drove away from the center of Port Harcourt toward the ocean, to an isolated three-story house with verandas wreathed in creeping bougainvillea of the palest shade of violet. Richard smelled the saltiness of the air as Kainene led him through wide rooms with tastefully mismatched furniture, wood carvings, muted paintings of landscapes, rounded sculptures. The polished floors had a woody scent.
"I did wish it was closer to the sea, so we could have a better view. But I changed Daddy's decor and it's not too nouveau riche, I pray?" Kainene asked.
Richard laughed. Not just because she was mocking Susan-he had told her what Susan had said about Chief Ozobia-but because she had said we. We meant both of them; she had included him. When she introduced him to her stewards, three men in ill-fitting khaki uniforms, she told them, with that wry smile of hers, "You will be seeing Mr. Richard often."
"Welcome, sah," they said in unison, and they stood almost at attention as Kainene pointed to each and said his name: Ikejide, Nna
"Ikejide is the only one with half a brain in his head," Kainene said.
The three men smiled, as though they each thought differently but would of course say nothing.
"Now, Richard, I'll give you a tour of the grounds." Kainene gave a mocking bow and led the way out through the back door to the orange orchard.
"Ola
"So her revolutionary lover has admitted you into the fold. We should be grateful. It used to be that he allowed only black lecturers in his house."
"Yes, he told me. He said that Nsukka was full of people from USAID and the Peace Corps and Michigan State University, and he wanted a forum for the few Nigerian lecturers."
"And their nationalist passion."
"I suppose so. He is refreshingly different."
"Refreshingly different," Kainene repeated. She stopped to flatten something on the ground with the sole of her sandals. "You like them, don't you? Ola
He wanted to look into her eyes, to try and discern what she wanted him to say. He wanted to say what she wanted to hear. "Yes, I like them," he said. Her hand was lax in his and he worried that she would slip it away. "They've made it much easier for me to get used to Nsukka," he added, as if to justify his liking them. "I've settled in quite quickly. And of course there's Harrison."
"Of course, Harrison. And how is the Beet Man doing?" Richard pulled her to him, relieved that she was not a
They were in the orchard now, in the dense interweaving of orange trees, and Richard felt a strangeness overcome him. Kainene was speaking, something about one of her employees, but he felt himself receding, his mind unfurling, rolling back on its own. The orange trees, the presence of so many trees around him, the hum of flies overhead, the abundance of green, brought back memories of his parents' house in Wentnor. It was incongruous that this tropical humid place, with the sun turning the skin of his arms a mild scarlet and the bees su
Into my heart on air that kills From yon far country blows: What are those blue remembered hills, What spires, what farms are those?
That is the land of lost content I see it shining plain, The happy highways where I went And ca
His father's voice would always deepen at the phrase blue remembered hills, and when they left his room, and for the weeks afterward when they would be away, he would look out of his window and watch the far-off hills take on a blue tinge.
Richard was bewildered by Kainene's busy life. Seeing her in Lagos, in brief meetings at the hotel, he had not realized that hers was a life that ran fully and would run fully even if he was not in it. It was strangely disturbing to think that he was not the only occupant of her world, but stranger still was how her routines were already in place, after only a few weeks in Port Harcourt. Her work came first; she was determined to make her father's factories grow, to do better than he had done. In the evenings, visitors-company people negotiating deals, government people negotiating bribes, factory people negotiating jobs-dropped by, parking their cars near the entrance to the orchard. Kainene always made sure they didn't stay long, and she didn't ask him to meet them because she said they would bore him, so he stayed upstairs reading or scribbling until they left. Often, he would try to keep his mind from worrying about failing Kainene that night; his body was still so unreliable and he had discovered that thinking about failure made it more likely to happen.