Anthills of the Savannah - Chinua Achebe [78]
And then a few hours later there was yet another special announcement. This time it was issued by the Army Council (a body that no one could recall announcing anything in years), and it told the nation simply that, in an extraordinary meeting of the Army Council, Major Johnson Ossai, Director of the State Research Council, was promoted to the rank of full colonel. End of special announcement.
He is certainly sticking to his promise to do things constitutionally, thought Chris when he heard this latest bulletin.
It was all very well for Beatrice to make fun of his morning routine of informational alienation but no one had yet suggested to him a better way for getting to know what was going on, not in the outside world—that had always known how to wait—but right here in Kangan. So instead of the BBC at seven as usual he got up earlier the next morning and tuned in to its six o’clock news. And true enough Mr. Kent’s deportation from the West African state of Kangan, although extremely scanty in detail, had made world news!
With one ear glued to the little transistor radio he dialled Ikem’s number. He had failed to reach him last night when the news about MM first broke. The houseboy who answered the phone said he had gone out in the afternoon with dat gal… And now the telephone was ringing away and nobody was picking it up. Ikem was notorious as a late riser and positively hated to be disturbed early in the morning, but Chris thought that in present circumstances he might at least pick up his phone… No. Very well.
He tried Beatrice next. She answered sleepily at first but on hearing who and what became instantly and intensely alert.
“Try and get the BBC. They are likely to have a fuller story in the African news after the world bulletin.”
“But how does one get the BBC? You know I have never yet been able to find them. All I get is that infuriating thing in special English from the Voice of America. I think my radio must be made by CIA…”
A little later she called back, her voice utterly dejected, to report failure yet again.
“Never mind, dear. Come right over. I managed to record MM off transmission. Meanwhile I am trying to reach Ikem. His ability to sleep through storms is beginning to irritate me… See you.”
By the time Beatrice went over at about seven-forty-five, Chris had been alerted and was making frantic calls all over Bassa without any success. As soon as her car drove in he rushed out. “Ikem’s not in his flat though he went to bed there last night…”
“He may have gone out early.”
“His car is in the garage and… let’s go and see for ourselves. Can you drive us?”
“Sure.” She noticed he was trembling.
The front door was locked so they went round to the back and through the kitchen door to which the houseboy held a spare key. The flat was in a shambles. Books and papers and clothes were strewn everywhere in the living-room and in the master and spare bedrooms. An alarm clock lay among shards of its broken glass beside the bed.
The houseboy was repeating what he had already told Chris on the telephone a short while ago when there was a tap on the door and a woman came in uncertainly, and then a man. They were Ikem’s neighbours in the adjacent flat. The man, a civil servant, recognized the Commissioner for Information at once.
“Good morning, sir,” he said. Finding the Commissioner there seemed to have lifted his morale and removed some of the gloomy timidity