Anthills of the Savannah - Chinua Achebe [92]
“Sometime you buy small something for repair your machine for him shop?” said Chris’s companion.
“Which machine? I tell you say I get machine?”
“Make you no mind. No condition is permnent. You go get. Meself as I de talk so, you think say I get machine? Even common bicycle I no get. But my mind strong that one day I go jump bicycle, jump machine and land inside motor car! And somebody go come open door for me and say yes sir! And I go carry my belle like woman we de begin to pregnant small and come sitdon for owner-corner, take cigarette put for mouth, no more kolanut, and say to driver comon move! I get strong mind for dat. Make you get strong mind too, everything go allright.”
The soldier now wore a wistful smile which sat strangely on his savaged face.
Across the bridge they walked leisurely, waiting for Braimoh and his lone passenger to get through their own ordeal. Chris’s spirits had returned to such a degree that a certain jauntiness was discernible in his walk. He even suggested to his companion that walking through check-points would seem to be their best bet from now on.
“You think you no go forget your job again?” his companion asked teasingly. “When you no fit talk again that time, fear come catch me proper and I begin pray make this man no go introduce himself as Commissioner of Information!”
“Me Commissioner? At all. Na small small motor part na him I de sell. Original and Taiwan.”
“Ehe! Talkam like that. No shaky-shaky mouth again. But oga you see now, to be big man no hard but to be poor man no be small thing. Na proper wahala. No be so?”
“Na so I see-o. I no know before today say to pass for small man you need to go special college.”
His companion liked that and laughed long and loud. “Na true you talk, oga. Special College. Poor Man Elementary Cerftikate!”
They walked along merrily discussing in confidential tones their recent success. Chris wondered why the soldier had stopped them in the first place. Had he noticed them get down from the taxi?
“At all!” Said his companion. “Make I tell you why he stop us? Na because of how you de walk as to say you fear to kill ant for road. And then you come again take corner-corner eye de look the man at the same time. Nex time make you march for ground with bold face as if to say your father na him get main road.”
“Thank you,” said Chris. “I must remember that… To succeed as small man no be small thing.”
16
THE JOURNEY to the North began five days later. The choice of Abazon as sanctuary came quite naturally. At the purely sentimental level it was Ikem’s native province which, although he had rarely spent much time there in recent years, still remained in a curious paradoxical way the distant sustainer of all his best inspirations, so that going there now in his death became for Chris and Emmanuel something of a pilgrimage.
Then it was a province of unspecified and generalized disaffection to the regime. One could indeed call it natural guerrilla country; not of course in the literal sense of suggesting planned armed struggle which would be extravagantly far-fetched as yet, but in the limited but important meaning of a place where, to borrow the watchword of a civil service poster, you could count on having your secrets kept secret.
And lastly, Braimoh’s wife, Aina was, as it turned out, a native of southern Abazon and Braimoh had volunteered to personally escort the distinguished refugee and hand him over to his in-laws up there for safe-keeping.
All these attractions of Abazon had of course to be set against the one considerable disadvantage of being a place where the regime might be sleeping with one eye open especially since the death of Ikem and the ugly eruption of a new crisis over the government’s refusal to turn over his body to his people for burial under the provocative pretext that investigations were still proceeding into the circumstances of his death!