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Madu's irreverence, calling His Excellency Ojukwu, always bothered Richard but he said nothing because he did not want to see Madu's amused smirk, the same smirk Madu had when he told Kainene, "We are ru
And so, weeks ago, Richard was confused when Kainene first told him, "Madu would like you to write for the Propaganda Directorate. He'll get you a special pass and petrol supplies so you can move around. They'll send your pieces to our public relations people overseas."
"Why me?"
Kainene shrugged. "Why not?"
"The man hates me."
"Don't be so dramatic. I think they want experienced insiders to do stories that are about more than just the number of Biafran dead."
At first the word insider thrilled Richard. But doubts soon crawled out; insider had been Kainene's word, after all, and not Madu's. Madu saw him as a foreigner, which perhaps was why he thought he would be good at this. When Madu called and asked if he would do it, Richard said no.
"Have you thought about it?" Madu asked.
"You would not have asked me if I were not white."
"Of course I asked because you are white. They will take what you write more seriously because you are white. Look, the truth is that this is not your war. This is not your cause. Your government will evacuate you in a minute if you ask them to. So it is not enough to carry limp branches and shout power, power to show that you support Biafra. If you really want to contribute, this is the way that you can. The world has to know the truth of what is happening, because they simply ca
Madu paused to catch his breath, and Richard said, "Yes, I'll do it." They simply ca
His first article was about the fall of Onitsha. He wrote that the Nigerians had tried many times to take this ancient town but the Biafrans fought valiantly, that hundreds of popular novels had been published here before the war, that the thick sad smoke of the burning Niger Bridge had risen like a defiant elegy. He described the Holy Trinity Catholic Church, where soldiers of the Nigeria Second Division first defecated on the altar before killing two hundred civilians. He quoted a calm eyewitness: "The vandals are people who shit on God. We will overcome them."
As he wrote the article, he felt as if he were a schoolboy again, writing letters to Aunt Elizabeth while his headmaster monitored them. Richard remembered him clearly, his mottled complexion, how he called science "muck," how he ate his porridge walking about in the dining hall because he said it was what gentlemen did. Richard was still not sure which he hated more at the time, being forced to write letters home or having the letter-writing session monitored. And he was not sure what he disliked more now, imagining Madu as his monitor or realizing that he cared very much what Madu thought. A note came from Madu some days later. It was very well done (perhaps a little lessjlowery next time?) and they have sent it off to Europe. Madu's handwriting was crabbed, and on the writing paper the nigerian of nigerian army had been crossed out in ink and biafran written in hasty block letters. But Madu's words convinced Richard that he had made the right decision. He imagined himself as the young Winston Churchill covering Kitchener 's battle at Omdurman, a battle of superior versus inferior arms, except that, unlike Churchill, he sided with the moral victor.
Now, weeks later, after more articles, he felt a part of things. He found pleasure in the new respect in the driver's eyes, jumping out to open the door although Richard told him not to bother. He found pleasure in how quickly the civil defenders' suspicious glances at his special duties pass changed to wide grins when he greeted them in Igbo, in how willing people were to answer his questions. He found pleasure in the superiority he adopted with foreign journalists, speaking vaguely about the background to the war-the implications of the national strike and the census and the Western Region chaos-knowing all the while they had no idea what he was talking about.
But his greatest pleasure had come from meeting His Excellency. It was at the staging of a play in Owerri. An air raid had shattered all the louvers in the windows of the theater and the evening breeze blew some of the actors' words away. Richard sat some rows behind His Excellency, and, after the play, a top man at the Mobilization Directorate introduced them. The solid handshake, the "Thank you for the good work you're doing" in that soft Oxford-accented voice had filled Richard with equanimity. Even though he found the political play too obvious, he did not say so. He agreed with His Excellency: It was wonderful, just wonderful.
Richard could hear Harrison in the kitchen. He tuned to Radio Biafra, to the ending of an a
"Richard," Madu said. "How lucky. I just stepped in."
"Is there news on Port Harcourt?"
"News?"
"Is it threatened? There's been shelling in Rumuokwurusi, hasn't there?"
"Oh, we have secure information that some saboteurs got their hands on some shells. You think if the vandals were really that close they would do that kind of halfhearted shelling?"
The amused tone in Madu's voice made him feel instantly foolish. "Sorry for the bother. I just thought…" He let his voice trail off.
"Not at all. Greet Kainene when she comes back," Madu said, before hanging up.
Richard finished his drink and made to pour himself another but decided not to. He forced the stopper back into the mouth of the bottle and went out to the veranda. The sea was still. He stretched and ran a quick hand though his hair, as if to shrug off the foreboding. If Port Harcourt fell, he would lose the town he had come to love, the town in which he loved; he would lose a bit of himself. But Madu had to be right. Madu would not be in denial about a town that was about to fall, certainly not a town where Kainene lived. If he said Port Harcourt was not under threat, it was not.
Richard looked at his hazy reflection in the glass door. He had a tan and his hair looked fuller, slightly tousled, and he thought of Rimbaud's words: I is someone else.
Kainene laughed when Richard told her about Harrison 's beets. Then she touched his arm and said, "Don't worry, if he put the manuscript in a box, it will be safe from termites." She slipped out of her work clothes and stretched languorously, and he admired the lean grace of her arched back. Desire reeled inside him, but he would wait for evening, after di