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

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       14

      Richard did not think it would be so easy to find Nnaemeka’s family, but when he arrived at Obosi and stopped at the Anglican church to ask, the catechist told him they lived just down the road, in the unpainted house flanked by palm trees. Nnaemeka’s father was small and albino, copper-coloured, his eyes a greyish-hazel that brightened as soon as Richard spoke Igbo. He was so different from the large, dark customs officer at the airport that for a moment Richard wondered if perhaps he was in the wrong house and this was not Nnaemeka’s father. But the older man blessed the kola nut in a voice so similar to Nnaemeka’s that it took Richard back to the airport lounge that hot afternoon and to Nnaemeka’s irritating chatter before the door burst open and the soldiers ran in.

      ‘He who brings the kola nut brings life. You and yours will live, and I and mine will live. Let the eagle perch and let the dove perch and, if either decrees that the other not perch, it will not be well for him. May God bless this kola in Jesus’ name.’

      ‘Amen,’ Richard said. He could see other resemblances now. The man’s gestures as he broke the kola nut apart into five lobes were eerily like Nnaemeka’s, as was the set of his mouth, with the lower lip jutting out. Richard waited until they had chewed the kola nut, until Nnaemeka’s mother appeared, dressed in black, before he said, ‘I saw your son at the airport in Kano, the day it happened. We talked for a while. He spoke about you and his family.’ Richard paused and wondered whether they would prefer to hear that their son had remained stoic in the face of death or if they would want to hear that he fought it, that he charged towards the gun. ‘He told me that his grandmother from Umunnachi was a respected herbal doctor known far and wide for her cure of malaria, and that it was because of her that he first wanted to be a doctor.’

      ‘Yes, that is so,’ Nnaemeka’s mother said.

      ‘He spoke only good words about his family,’ Richard said. He chose his Igbo words carefully.

      ‘Of course he would speak good words about his family.’ Nnaemeka’s father gave Richard a long look as if he did not understand why Richard had to say what they already knew.

      Richard shifted on the bench. ‘Did you have a funeral?’ he asked, and then wished he had not.

      ‘Yes,’ Nnaemeka’s father said; he fixed his gaze on the enamel bowl that held the last lobe of kola nut. ‘We waited for him to return from the North and he did not return, so we had a funeral. We buried an empty coffin.’

      ‘It was not empty,’ Nnaemeka’s mother said. ‘Did we not put that old book he used to read for the civil service exam inside?’

      They sat in silence. Dust motes swam in the slice of sunlight that came through the window.

      ‘You must take the last piece of kola nut with you,’ Nnaemeka’s father said.

      ‘Thank you.’ Richard slipped the lobe into his pocket.

      ‘Shall I send the children to the car?’ Nnaemeka’s mother asked. It was difficult to tell what she looked like, with the black scarf that covered all of her hair and much of her forehead.

      ‘The car?’ Richard asked.

      ‘Yes. Did you not bring us things?’

      Richard shook his head. He should have brought yams and drinks. It was after all a condolence visit, and he knew how things were done. He had been caught up in himself, in thinking that his coming was enough, that he would be the magnanimous angel who brought the last hours of their son to them and, by doing so, would assuage their grief and redeem himself. But to them he was just like any other person who had come to pay condolences. His visit made no difference to the only reality that mattered: their son was gone.

      He got up to leave, knowing that nothing had changed for him either; he would feel the same way he had felt since he returned from Kano. He had often wished that he would lose his mind, or that his memory would suppress itself, but instead everything took on a terrible transparence and he had only to close his eyes to see the freshly dead bodies on the floor of the airport and to recall the pitch of the screams. His mind remained lucid. Lucid enough for him to write calm replies to Aunt Elizabeth’s frantic letters and tell her that he was fine and did not plan to return to England, to ask her to please stop sending flimsy airmail editions of newspapers with articles about the Nigerian pogroms circled in pencil. The articles annoyed him. ‘Ancient tribal hatreds’, the Herald wrote, was the reason for the massacres. Time magazine titled its piece man must whack, an expression printed on a Nigerian lorry, but the writer had taken whack literally and gone on to explain that Nigerians were so naturally prone to violence that they even wrote about the necessity of it on their passenger lorries. Richard sent a terse letter off to Time. In Nigerian Pidgin English, he wrote, whack meant eat. At least the Observer was a little more adroit, in writing that if Nigeria survived the massacres of the Igbo, it would survive anything. СКАЧАТЬ