Half of a Yellow Sun, Americanah, Purple Hibiscus: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Three-Book Collection. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

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       6

      Richard ate the pepper soup slowly. After he had spooned up the pieces of tripe, he raised the glass bowl to his lips and drank the broth. His nose was running, there was a delicious burning on his tongue, and he knew his face was red.

      ‘Richard eats this so easily,’ Okeoma said, seated next to him, watching him.

      ‘Ha! I didn’t think our pepper was made for your type, Richard!’ Odenigbo said, from the other end of the dining table.

      ‘Even I can’t take the pepper,’ another guest said, a Ghanaian lecturer in economics whose name Richard always forgot.

      ‘This is proof that Richard was an African in his past life,’ Miss Adebayo said, before blowing her nose into a napkin.

      The guests laughed. Richard laughed too, but not loudly, because there was still too much pepper in his mouth. He leaned back on his seat. ‘It’s fantastic,’ he said. ‘It clears one up.’

      ‘The finger chops are lovely too, Richard,’ Olanna said. ‘Thank you so much for bringing them.’ She was sitting next to Odenigbo, and she leaned forwards to smile at him.

      ‘I know those are sausage rolls, but what are these things?’ Odenigbo was poking at the tray Richard brought; Harrison had daintily wrapped everything in silver foil.

      ‘Stuffed garden eggs, yes?’ Olanna glanced at Richard.

      ‘Yes. Harrison has all sorts of ideas. He took out the insides and filled them with cheese, I think, and spices.’

      ‘You know the Europeans took out the insides of an African woman and then stuffed and exhibited her all over Europe?’ Odenigbo asked.

      ‘Odenigbo, we are eating!’ Miss Adebayo said, although she was stifling laughter.

      The other guests laughed. Odenigbo did not. ‘It’s the same principle at play,’ he said. ‘You stuff food, you stuff people. If you don’t like what is inside a particular food, then leave it alone, don’t stuff it with something else. A waste of garden eggs, in my opinion.’

      Even Ugwu looked amused as he came into the dining room to clear up. ‘Mr Richard, sah? I put the food in container for you?’

      ‘No, keep it or throw it away,’ Richard said. He never took any leftover food back; what he took back to Harrison were the compliments from the guests about how pretty everything was, but he did not add that the guests then bypassed his canapés to eat Ugwu’s pepper soup and moi-moi and chicken boiled in bitter herbs.

      Everyone was moving to the living room. Soon, Olanna would turn off the light because the fluorescent glare was too bright, and Ugwu would bring more drinks, and they would talk and laugh and listen to music, and the light that spilt in from the corridor would fill the room with shadows. It was his favourite part of their evenings, although he sometimes wondered if Olanna and Odenigbo touched each other in the dimness. He shouldn’t think about them, he knew; it was no business of his. But he did. He noticed the way Odenigbo looked at her in the middle of an argument, not as if he needed her to be on his side, because he didn’t seem ever to need anybody, but simply to know that she was there. He saw, too, how Olanna sometimes blinked at Odenigbo, communicating things he would never know.

      Richard placed his glass of beer on a side table and sat next to Miss Adebayo and Okeoma. His peppery tongue still tingled. Olanna got up to change the music. ‘My favourite Rex Lawson first, before some Osadebe,’ she said.

      ‘He’s a little derivative, isn’t he, Rex Lawson?’ Professor Ezeka asked. ‘Uwaifo and Dairo are better musicians.’

      ‘All music is derivative, Prof,’ Olanna said, her tone teasing.

      ‘Rex Lawson is a true Nigerian. He does not cleave to his Kalabari tribe; he sings in all our major languages. That’s original – and certainly reason enough to like him,’ Miss Adebayo said.

      ‘That’s reason not to like him,’ Odenigbo said. ‘This nationalism that means we should aspire to indifference about our own individual cultures is stupid.’

      ‘Don’t waste your time asking Odenigbo about High Life. He’s never understood it,’ Olanna said, laughing. ‘He’s a classical music person but loath to admit it in public because it’s such a Western taste.’

      ‘Music has no borders,’ Professor Ezeka said.

      ‘But surely it is grounded in culture, and cultures are specific?’ Okeoma asked. ‘Couldn’t Odenigbo then be said to adore the Western culture that produced classical music?’

      They all laughed, and Odenigbo looked at Olanna in that way that softened his eyes. Miss Adebayo launched into the French ambassador issue again. She did not think the French should have tested atomic weapons in Algeria, of course, but she did not understand why it mattered enough for Balewa to break off diplomatic СКАЧАТЬ