Anthills of the Savannah - Chinua Achebe [72]
Ikem’s suspension was the first headline. Something approaching an amused look crept into his features for the brief duration of his limelight—a straightforward announcement without frills. Then all of a sudden he was stung as if by a scorpion and he screamed and leapt to his feet.
“Oh no!” he shouted. “They can’t do that! Chris did you hear that? And you say I should lie low. Lie low and let these cannibals lay their dirty hands on a holy man of the earth. Switch that damn thing off!” He was already making for the television set when Chris’s voice telling him to get a hold of himself told him also that this was not his television set, nor this his house. He went back and sank into his seat, his left thumbnail between his teeth. Then he got up again:
“Elewa, let’s go!”
What had caused all this agitation had been a subsidiary item tagged on to Ikem’s news because of its relative unimportance and prefaced accordingly with the formula: In another development…
Yes, in another development, according to this smug newscaster dispensing national anguish in carefully measured milligrammes, six leaders from Abazon who were involved in a recent illegal march on the Presidential Palace without police permit as required by decree had been arrested. And (in the same development) the office of the Director of SRC had informed the Crime Correspondent of KTV that the six men who had made useful statements were being held in BMSP.
12
ON THE TWO previous occasions when Ikem had spoken before audiences at the University of Bassa he had attracted large crowds, but nothing quite on the scale of the present event. Every seat in the two-thousand-capacity Main Auditorium was taken and a large overspill sat or stood on gangways or peeped in through doors and windows from the two side-corridors running the length of the hall. It would appear that his suspension from the National Gazette had pushed his popularity rating, already pretty high, right to the top of the charts. Even more remarkable than the size of the crowds was their patience. The lecture took off at least forty minutes behind schedule while sweating Students Union officials dashed in and out of the hall occasionally shouting, “Testing! Testing! Testing!” into a dead microphone. But such was the good humour of this audience that when the system finally came alive it was given a thunderous ovation.
A few last-minute consultations by the organizers and the lecture seemed finally set to begin. But no. First the introductions. A minor union official took the microphone and introduced the Master of Ceremonies, a tall handsome fellow in a white three-piece suit, who in turn and at some length introduced the President of the Union who delivered a most elaborate introduction of the Chairman for the occasion who—at long last—introduced Mr. Ikem Osodi. It was all so reminiscent of the style of campaign meetings in the good old Byzantine days of politicians who, should they rise now from the bowels of their rat-holes and station themselves cautiously just below the surface, would be watching shiny-eyed, twitching their whiskers in happy remembrance.
Ikem called his lecture “The Tortoise and the Leopard—a political meditation on the imperative of struggle.” This announcement was greeted with tumultuous approval. No doubt it had the right revolutionary ring to it and Ikem smiled inwardly at the impending coup d’état he would stage against this audience and its stereotype notions of struggle, as indeed of everything else.
“Mr. Chairman, sir…” he said, bowing mock-deferentially to the Professor who had just been eulogized by the Students’ Union President as a popular academic admired