Anthills of the Savannah - Chinua Achebe [52]
She got up, went into the living-room, picked up the front-door keys from the sideboard and unlocked the grill and the door and went out into her narrow balcony. Standing there among her potted plants she took in deep lungfuls of luxuriously cool, fresh morning air and watched streaks of light brightening slowly in the eastern sky. And then he spoke again, the diligent chamberlain: Is the king’s property correct? And now she saw him against the light—a little dark-brownish fellow with a creamy belly and the faintest suggestion of a ceremonial plume on the crown of his head. He was perched on the taller of the two pine trees standing guard at the driveway into the block of flats.
Beatrice had never until now shown the slightest interest in birds and beyond vultures and cattle egrets hardly knew any of them by name. Now she was so taken with this conscientious palace official that she decided to find out his name as soon as possible. She knew there was an illustrated book called something like The Common Birds of West Africa… Again he demanded: The king’s property… The king’s property… Is the king’s property correct?
Strange, but tears loomed suddenly in Beatrice’s eyes as she spoke to the bird: “Poor fellow. You have not heard the news? The king’s treasury was broken into last night and all his property carried away—his crown, his sceptre and all.”
As she scanned the pine trees in the rapidly brightening light she saw that the caretaker of the crown jewels was not alone. There were literally scores of other birds hopping about the twigs preening themselves and making low trilling noises or short, sharp calls of satisfaction. He continued intermittently to make his strong-voiced inquiry until the sun had come up and then, as on a signal, the birds began to fly away in ones and twos and larger groups. Soon the tree was empty.
These birds, she thought, did not just arrive here this morning. Here, quite clearly, is where they have always slept. Why have I not noticed them before?
Even her poor mother terrorized as she was by her woman’s lot could fabricate from immemorial birdsong this tale of an African bird waking up his new world in words of English. A powerful flush of remembering now swept through her mind like a gust of wind and she recalled perfectly every circumstance of the story. Alas, her mother had only told, not invented it. The credit must go to a certain carpenter/comedian who played the accordion at village Christian wakes and performed such tricks as lifting a table between his teeth to chase away sleep from the eyes of mourners and relieve the tedium of hymns and pious testimonies.
Beatrice smiled wryly. So, two whole generations before the likes of me could take a first-class degree in English, there were already barely literate carpenters and artisans of British rule hacking away in the archetypal jungle and subverting the very sounds and legends of daybreak to make straight my way.
And my father—wonders shall never end as he would say—was he then also among these early morning road-makers-into-the-jungle-of-tongues? What an improbable thought! And yet all those resounding maxims he wielded like the hefty strokes of an axeman. Cleanliness is next to godliness! Punctuality is the soul of business! (A prelude this, she recalled with a smile now, to the flogging of late-comers to school on rainy mornings.) And then that gem of them all, his real favourite: Procrastination is a lazy man’s apology! A maxim of mixed mintage, that; half-caste first-fruits of a heady misalliance. Or, as Ikem would have said, missionary mishmash!
She thawed fast and unexpectedly to the memory of this man who was her father and yet a total stranger, like the bird who lived and sang in her tree unknown to her till now.
She was still at the railing of her balcony when Agatha came in to begin her chores. “No breakfast for me Agatha,