Anthills of the Savannah - Chinua Achebe [29]
“We were so successful,” he is saying, as though unaware that his story was ever interrupted, “that it became difficult to be sure that all the stuff that came in was bona fide Reject. We did insist on the rejection slip accompanying every manuscript but anybody can make up a rejection slip. You know what I mean. Most magazines are pretty sloppy about their slips… Like some girls, you know. Present company of course excepted… They don’t print them at the Royal Mint… So there was really no way we could be absolutely certain that what we were getting was always genuine Reject. But as I was telling you…” It seems that having got everyone again to listen to him his one desire now is to show his indifference to the rest of us by pretending to talk still to Ikem alone. Some people have nerve. “… our biggest problem was our success. We were soon printing no more than a fraction, a tiny fraction, of the manuscripts that came in. For a while I even toyed with the idea of a companion magazine to be called Reject Two or Double Reject which, I can tell you, would have been just as successful as Reject. But in the end I had to decide against it. Spreading yourself too thin, you know.”
“Fascinating,” says Ikem. “When Chris fires me here perhaps I could hop across and run Double Reject for you. I’m totally taken with the idea.”
“You’re the editor of the local…”
“Rag called the National Gazette,” says Mad Medico. “Ikem is a fine journalist… But shit! Who am I to be awarding him marks? Anyway, his brilliant editorials did as much as anything else to save me from the just consequences of my indiscretion. But what I want to say really is that he is an even finer poet, in my opinion one of the finest in the entire English language.”
“Yes, John told me what a fine poet you are. I’m ashamed to say I haven’t yet read anything of yours but I certainly will now.”
“Take your time,” says Ikem. “And remember MM is not a disinterested witness. I did him a good turn.”
“And I didn’t tell you either,” said MM, “that girl there sitting meekly and called Beatrice took a walloping honours degree in English from London University. She is better at it than either of us, I can assure you.”
“That doesn’t surprise me in the least. I understand that the best English these days is written either by Africans or Indians. And that the Japanese and the Chinese may not be too far behind,” said Dick with somewhat dubious enthusiasm.
PERHAPS MM had a point when he said Beatrice waited too long to meet me. Sometimes I wonder myself whether our relationship is not too sedate, whether we are not too much like a couple of tired swimmers resting at the railing. An early scene returns to my memory, a scene from two years ago and more, stored away in incredible detail and freshness yet, as I think of it, suffused also with ethereality.
I offered to take Beatrice to the Restaurant Cathay and she said no. Chez Antoine? Still no. They were her two favourite places—not too large, no glaring lights and good food. What would she like to do then?
“Can I come home with you?”
“But of course,” was all I could find to say right away. I was still not sure that I had heard right. She divined the puzzlement in my mind and offered something like an explanation. “We’ve both had a long day. All I want to do now is sit still somewhere and listen to records.”
“Wonderful!” Of course she had been to my place quite a few times before but the initiative had never come from her. It was not coyness but she had a style and above all a pace that I decided from the very beginning to respect. After the few whirlwind