‘By the way, I’ve asked Olanna to introduce you to her revolutionary lecturer lover,’ Kainene said. She pulled her wig off and, with her short hair worn in cornrows, her face looked younger, smaller. ‘She used to date a Hausa prince, a pleasant, bland sort of fellow, but he did not have any of the crazed delusions she has. This Odenigbo imagines himself to be quite the freedom fighter. He’s a mathematician but he spends all his time writing newspaper articles about his own brand of mishmash African socialism. Olanna adores that. They don’t seem to realize how much of a joke socialism really is.’ She put the wig back on and began to brush it; the wavy hair, parted in the middle, fell to her chin. Richard liked the clean lines of her thin body, the sleekness of her raised arm.
‘Socialism could very well work in Nigeria if done right, I think,’ he said. ‘It’s really about economic justice, isn’t it?’
Kainene snorted. ‘Socialism would never work for the Igbo.’ She held the brush suspended in mid-air. ‘Ogbenyealu is a common name for girls and you know what it means? “Not to Be Married by a Poor Man.” To stamp that on a child at birth is capitalism at its best.’
Richard laughed, and he was even more amused because she did not laugh; she simply went back to brushing her hair. He thought about the next time he would laugh with her and then the next. He found himself often thinking about the future, even before the present was over.
He got up and felt shy when she glanced at his naked body. Perhaps she was expressionless only to hide her disgust. He pulled on his underwear and buttoned his shirt hurriedly.
‘I’ve left Susan,’ he blurted out. ‘I’m staying at the Princewill Guesthouse in Ikeja. I’ll pick up the rest of my things from her house before I leave for Nsukka.’
Kainene stared at him, and he saw surprise on her face and then something else he was not sure of. Was it puzzlement?
‘It’s never been a proper relationship, really,’ he said. He did not want her to think he had done it because of her, did not want her asking herself questions about their relationship. Not yet.
‘You’ll need a houseboy,’ she said.
‘What?’
‘A houseboy in Nsukka. You’ll need somebody to wash your clothes and clean your house.’
He was momentarily confused by the non sequitur. ‘A houseboy? I can manage quite well. I’ve lived alone for too long.’
‘I’ll ask Olanna to find somebody,’ Kainene said. She pulled a cigarette from the case, but she didn’t light it. She put it down on the bedside table and came over and hugged him, a tremulous tightening of her arms around him. He was so surprised he did not hug her back. She had never embraced him that closely unless they were in bed. She did not seem to know what to make of the hug either, because she backed away from him quickly and lit the cigarette. He thought about that hug often, and each time he did he had the sensation of a wall crumbling.
Richard left for Nsukka a week later. He drove at moderate speed, pulling off the road once in a while to look at the hand-drawn map Kainene had given him. After he crossed the River Niger, he decided to stop at Igbo-Ukwu. Now that he was finally in Igbo land, he wanted to see the home of the roped pot before anything else. A few cement houses dotted the village; they marred the picturesque quality of the mud huts that were crowded on either side of dirt paths, paths so narrow he parked his car a long way away and followed a young man in khaki shorts who seemed used to showing visitors around. His name was Emeka Anozie. He had been one of the labourers who worked at the dig. He showed Richard the wide, rectangular ditches where the excavations had taken place, the shovels and pans that had been used to brush the dust off the bronzes.
‘You want to talk to our big father? I will interpret for you,’ Emeka offered.
‘Thank you.’ Richard felt slightly overwhelmed by the warm reception, by the neighbours who trailed in and said, ‘Good afternoon, nno, welcome,’ as if they did not even think about minding that he had come uninvited.
Pa Anozie had a dirty-looking cloth wound round his body and tied behind his neck. He led the way into his dim obi, which smelt of mushrooms. Although Richard had read about how the bronzes were found, he asked the question anyway. Pa Anozie nudged a pinch of snuff up his nostrils before he began telling the story. About twenty years ago, his brother was digging a well when he hit something metallic that turned out to be a gourd. He soon found a few others and brought them out, washed them, and called the neighbours to come in and see them. They looked well crafted and vaguely familiar, but nobody knew of anyone making anything like them. Soon, word got to the district commissioner in Enugu, who sent somebody to take them to the Department of Antiquities in Lagos. After that, nobody came or asked anything else about the bronzes for a while, and his brother built his well and life went on. Then, a few years ago, the white man from Ibadan came to excavate. There were long talks before the work began, because of a goat house and compound wall that would have to be removed, but the work went well. It was harmattan, but because they feared the thunderstorms, they covered the ditches with tarpaulins spread across bamboo sticks. They found such lovely things: calabashes, shells, many ornaments that women used to decorate themselves, snake images, pots.
‘They also found a burial chamber, didn’t they?’ Richard asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Do you think it was used by the king?’
Pa Anozie gave Richard a long, pained look and mumbled something for a while, looking grieved. Emeka laughed before he translated. ‘Papa said he thought you were among the white people who know something. He said the people of Igboland do not know what a king is. We have priests and elders. The burial place was maybe for a priest. But the priest does not suffer people like king. It is because the white man gave us warrant chiefs that foolish men are calling themselves kings today.’
Richard apologized. He did know that the Igbo were said to have been a republican tribe for thousands of years, but one of the articles about the Igbo-Ukwu findings had suggested that perhaps they once had kings and later deposed them. The Igbo were, after all, a people who deposed gods that had outlived their usefulness. Richard sat there for a while, imagining the lives of people who were capable of such beauty, such complexity, in the time of Alfred the Great. He wanted to write about this, to create something from this, but he did not know what. Perhaps a speculative novel where the main character is an archaeologist digging for bronzes who is then transported to an idyllic past?
He thanked Pa Anozie and got up to leave. Pa Anozie said something and Emeka asked, ‘Papa is asking will you not take photo of him? All the white people that have come take photo.’
Richard shook his head. ‘No, sorry. I haven’t brought a camera.’
Emeka laughed. ‘Papa is asking what kind of white man is this? Why did he come here and what is he doing?’
As he drove towards Nsukka, Richard, too, wondered just what he was doing and, more worrying, what he was going to write.
The university house on Imoke Street was reserved for visiting researchers and artists; it was sparse, near ascetic, and Richard looked over the two armchairs in the living room, the single bed, the bare kitchen cupboards, and felt instantly at home. The house was filled with a suitable silence. When he visited Olanna and Odenigbo, though, she said, ‘I’m sure you must want to make the place a little more habitable,’ so he said, ‘Yes,’ although he liked the soulless furnishing. He agreed only because Olanna’s smile was like a prize, because her attention flattered him. She insisted that he hire their gardener, Jomo, to come in twice a week and plant some flowers in the yard. She introduced him to their friends; she showed him the market; she said she had found him the perfect houseboy.
Richard envisaged somebody young and alert like their houseboy, Ugwu, but Harrison turned out to be a small, stooped stick of a man, middle-aged, wearing an oversized white shirt that stopped below his knees. He bowed extravagantly at the beginning of each conversation. He told Richard with unconcealed pride that he had formerly worked for