Anthills of the Savannah - Chinua Achebe [7]
“Yes, Your Excellency, we said so,” admitted Professor Okong. “We are truly sorry.” It wasn’t yet very clear to him what point or connection was being made but what his answer should be was obvious and he repeated it: “Your Excellency we are indeed sorry.”
“It doesn’t matter. You know I’ve never really relied on you fellows for information on anything or anybody. You know that?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I should be a fool to. You see if Entebbe happens here it’s me the world will laugh at, isn’t it?”
Professor Okong found the answer to that one somewhat tricky and so made a vague indeterminate sound deep in his throat.
“Yes, it is me. General Big Mouth, they will say, and print my picture on the cover of Time magazine with a big mouth and a small head. You understand? They won’t talk about you, would they.”
“Certainly not, Sir.”
“No, because they don’t know you. It’s not your funeral but mine.” Professor Okong was uneasy about the word funeral and began a protest but His Excellency shut him up by raising his left hand. “So I don’t fool around. I take precautions. You und’stand?”
“Yes, sir. Once more, may I on behalf of my colleagues and myself give you—I mean Your Excellency—our undeserved—I mean unreserved—apology.”
There was a long pause now like the silence of colleagues for a fallen comrade. His Excellency had been so moved that he needed the time to compose himself again. He took out a handkerchief and wiped his face and then his neck around the collar vigorously. Professor Okong stared on the tabletop with lowered eyes; like eyes at half-mast.
“The crowd that came in an hour or so ago,” he said calmly and sadly, “has come from Abazon.”
“Those people again!” said Okong in a flare-up of indignation. “The same people pestering you to visit them.”
“It is a peaceful and loyal and goodwill delegation…”
“Oh I am so happy to hear that.”
“… that has come all the way from Abazon to declare their loyalty.”
“Very good, sir. Very good! And I should say, about time too…” A sudden violent frown on His Excellency’s face silenced the Professor’s re-awakened garrulity.
“But I have been made to understand that they also may have a petition about the drought in their region. They want personally to invite me to pay them a visit and see their problems. Well you know—everybody knows—my attitude to petitions and demonstrations and those kinds of things.”
“I do, sir. Every loyal citizen of this country knows your Excellency’s attitude…”
“Sheer signs of indiscipline. Allow any of it, from whatever quarter, and you are as good as sunk.”
“Exactly, Your Excellency.”
“This is a loyal delegation though, as I’ve just told you and they have come a long way. But discipline is discipline. If I should agree to see them, what is there to stop the truckpushers of Gelegele Market marching up here tomorrow to see me. They are just as loyal. Or the very loyal marketwomen’s organization trooping in to complain about the price of stockfish imported from Norway.”
The Professor laughed loud but alone and stopped rather abruptly like a maniac.
“So I have a standing answer to all of them. No! Kabisa.”
“Excellent, Your Excellency.” It may have passed through Professor Okong’s mind fleetingly that the man who was now reading him a lecture had not so long ago been politically almost in statu pupillari to him. Or perhaps he no longer dared to remember.
“But we must remember that these are not your scheming intellectual types or a bunch of Labour Congress agitators but simple, honest-to-God peasants who, from all intelligence reports reaching me, sincerely regret their past actions and now want bygones to be bygones. So it would be unfair to go up to them and say: ‘You can go away now, His Excellency the President is too busy to see you.’ You get me?”
“Quite clearly, Your Excellency.” Okong was beginning to get the hang of his summons here,