Anthills of the Savannah - Chinua Achebe [58]
Ikem had already discovered at the Presidential Palace that the delegation was not five hundred strong as he had been told but a mere six, and that the large crowd that had accompanied it to the Palace were Abazon indigenes in Bassa: motor mechanics, retail traders, tailors, vulcanizers, taxi- and bus-drivers who had loaned their vehicles, and others doing all kinds of odd jobs or nothing at all in the city. A truly motley crowd! No wonder His Excellency was reported to have received the news of their sudden arrival on his doorstep with considerable apprehension. I would too if I were in his shoes, admitted Ikem mischievously to himself.
They were seated around five or six tables joined together in the open courtyard of the hotel, not five hundred of them now, but perhaps twenty, drinking and discussing excitedly their visit to the Palace.
As soon as they saw Ikem enter from the street through the main iron gate into the roughly cemented courtyard everybody got up including the six visiting elders and received him with something approaching an ovation. He shook hands all round and was looking for a vacant seat when someone, a kind of master of ceremonies, indicated a vacated place of honour for him beside the white-bearded elder. Then he shouted “Service!” very importantly and when a slouching waiter in a dirty blue tunic appeared, ordered six bottles of beer and three more roast chicken. “Quick, quick,” he said.
Then he surveyed the assembled group, picked up an empty beer bottle and knocked its bottom on the table for silence:
“Our people say that when a titled man comes into a meeting the talking must have to stop until he has taken his seat. An important somebody has just come in who needs no introduction. Still yet, we have to do things according to what Europeans call protocol. I call upon our distinguished son and Editor of the National Gazette to stand up.”
Ikem rose to a second tremendous ovation.
“When you hear Ikem Osodi Ikem Osodi everywhere you think his head will be touching the ceiling. But look at him, how simple he is. I am even taller than himself, a dunce like me. Our people say that an animal whose name is famous does not always fill a hunter’s basket.”
At this point Ikem interjected that he expected more people to beat him up now that his real size was known, and caused much laughter.
But in spite of the drinking and eating and the jolly laughter the speaker was still able to register his disappointment that this most famous son of Abazon had not found it possible to join in their monthly meetings and other social gatherings so as to direct their ignorant fumblings with his wide knowledge. He went on with this failing at such length and relentlessness that the bearded old man finally stopped him by rising to his feet. He was tall, gaunt-looking and with a slight stoop of the shoulders.
The shrillness in the other man’s voice was totally absent here but the power of his utterance held everyone captive from his very first words. He began by thanking Abazon people in Bassa for receiving him and the other five leaders from home. He thanked the many young men a few only of whom were now present for turning out in their hundreds to accompany the delegation to the Palace and showing Bassa that Abazon had people. Then he turned sharply to the complaint of the last speaker:
“I have heard what you said about this young man, Osodi, whose doings are known everywhere and fill our hearts with pride. Going to meetings and weddings and naming ceremonies of one’s people is good. But don’t forget that our wise men have said also that a man who answers every summons by the town-crier will not plant corn in his fields. So my advice to you is this. Go on with your meetings and marriages and naming ceremonies because it is good to do so. But leave this young man alone to do what he is doing for Abazon and for the whole