Anthills of the Savannah - Chinua Achebe [53]
A lizard red in head and tail, blue in trunk chased a drab-grey female furiously, as male lizards always seem to do, across the paved driveway. She darted through the hedges as though her life depended on it. Unruffled he took a position of high visibility at the centre of the compound and began to do his endless press-ups no doubt to impress upon the coy female, wherever she might be hiding in the shrubbery, the fact of his physical stamina.
At last she left the balcony and went indoors for a cold shower and then changed into a long, loose dress of blue adire embroidered in elaborate white patterns at the neck, chest, sleeves and hem. As she looked at herself in her bedroom mirror and liked what she saw, she thought: We can safely leave grey drabness in female attire to the family of lizards and visidng American journalists.
The case of the lizard is probably quite understandable. With the ferocious sexuality of her man she must need all the drabness she can muster for a shield.
She ate a grapefruit and drank a second cup of coffee while she flipped through the barren pages of the Sunday newspapers much of it full-page portrait obituaries even of grandfathers who had died fifty years ago but apparently still remembered every passing minute by their devoted descendants. And, wedged between memories of the living dead, equally fulsome portraiture of the still living who have “made it” in wealth or title or simply years. And once in a while among these dead-alive celebrities a disclaimer of someone newly disreputable, inserted by his former employer or partner using naturally a photograph of the unflattering quality of a police WANTED poster.
She tossed the papers away irritably wondering why one must keep on buying and trying to read such trash. Except that if you didn’t you couldn’t avoid the feeling that you might be missing something important, few of us, alas having the strength of will to resist that false feeling. She got up and put Onyeka Onwenu’s “One Love” on the stereo and returned to the sofa, threw her head on the back-rest and shut her eyes.
As the morning wore on she seemed to become less and less composed. She looked at her watch frequently. Once, after she had changed a record she picked up the telephone, heard the dialling tone and replaced.
When finally it rang she looked at her watch again. It was eleven exactly. She let the telephone ring five or six times and might have left it longer had Agatha not rushed in from the kitchen to answer it.
It was who she thought it was. Chris.
“So you are back,” he joked.
“Yes, I am back,” she answered.
“Anything the matter?”
“Like what?”
“Are you all right, BB?”
“Why, of course. Do I sound as if I might not be all right?”
“Yes, you do… Are you alone?”
“What do you mean?”
“Look, I’m coming over. See you.”
Twenty minutes later his car pulled up outside. Beatrice went not to the front door but to the kitchen door first, opened it and told Agatha that she was expecting someone and did not wish to be disturbed when he came up. Agatha’s saucy and suggestive look at this news led Beatrice to lock the kitchen door altogether. Then she went to answer the doorbell.
Chris decided to take the bull by the horn. As soon as he was let in he asked how the party went.
“Party? But that was last night.”
“Yes, it was last night. And I am asking how did it go?”
“It went all right.”
They were both seated now, she on the sofa, he on a chair across the low centre table standing on a brown circular rug. They sat staring at each other for minutes, if not hours. Chris was completely at a loss. He had never had to cope with BB in such a mood and was quite unprepared. At last he got up, walked a few steps and stopped in front of her.
“Will you be good enough, BB, to tell me in what way I have now offended you.”
“Offended me? Who said you offended me?”
“Then why are you behaving so strange.”
“I am not behaving strange. You