The audience sat or stood silently entranced. Its sudden end was like a blow and it jolted them into shouts of protest. Calls of Fire! Fire! More! More! and even Opposed! soon turned into a rhythmic chant when Ikem sat down.
The Chairman turned to him and said, 'They want some more!'
'Yes! More! More! More!'
'I thank you, my friends, for the compliment. But as someone once said: There is nothing left in the pipeline!'
'No! No! Opposed!'
'In any case you have listened to me patiently. Now I want to hear you. Dialogues are infinitely more interesting than monologues. So fire your questions and comments and let's exchange a few blows. You've been at the receiving end. But, as the Bible says, it is better to give than to receive. So let's have a few punches from your end. That's what I've come here for.'
And true enough, it was during question-time that he finally achieved the close hand-to-hand struggle he so relished. By nature he is never on the same side as his audience. Whatever his audience is, he must try not to be. If they fancy themselves radical, he fancies himself conservative; if they propound right-wing tenets he unleashes revolution! It is not that he has ever sat down to reason it out and plan it; it just seems to happen that way. But he is aware of it — after the event, so to say, and can even offer some kind of explanation if asked to do so: namely that whatever you are is never enough; you must find a way to accept something however small from the other to make you whole and save you from the mortal sin of righteousness and extremism.
A couple of months ago he had been persuaded against his normal inclination to speak at the Bassa Rotary Club weekly luncheon. On that particular occasion the club had more cause than usual to be happy with itself for it had just bought and donated a water-tanker to a dispensary in one of the poorest districts of North Bassa, an area that has never had electricity nor pipe-borne water. In the after-dinner haze of good works, cigar smoke and liqueur his hosts sat back to hear what their distinguished guest had to tell them… Well, as usual, he left what he should have told them and launched into something quite unexpected. Charity, he thundered is the opium of the privileged; from the good citizen who habitually drops ten kobo from his loose change and from a safe height above the bowl of the leper outside the supermarket; to the group of good citizens like yourselves who donate water so that some Lazarus in the slums can have a syringe boiled clean as a whistle for his jab and his sores dressed more hygienically than the rest of him; to the Band Aid stars that lit up so dramatically the dark Christmas skies of Ethiopia. While we do our good works let us not forget that the real solution lies in a world in which charity will have become unnecessary.
The rotund geniality of his hosts was instantly shattered and distorted into sharp-pointed shapes of aggressiveness.
That world of yours will be in heaven, sneered one gentleman. Even in heaven, said another, there is seniority. Archangels are senior to common angels.
As early as possible Ikem was escorted out of the room by two club officials — a normal practice indeed but which on this occasion was performed with such icy civility that it took on the appearance of showing an ungracious dinner guest to the door straight from the table he has insulted.
But this was no Rotary Club and dealing with it would be easier in some ways, but in others probably more difficult.
The first questioner was apparently a young member of faculty rather than a student. His question was prefaced with a little lecture of his own on the manifest failure of bourgeois reformism to address the fundamental problems of the Third World in general and Kangan in particular. Did Mr. Osodi not consider, in view of the above, the necessity of putting the nation now under the democratic dictatorship of the proletariat?
'No, I don't. I wouldn't put myself under the democratic dictatorship even of angels and archangels. As for the proletariat I don't think I know who they are in the case of Kangan.'
'Workers and peasants,' said the Chairman, helpfully.
'Workers and peasants,' Ikem repeated into the microphone, 'I have just been told.'
'And students,' a voice from the audience called, causing much laughter.
'Fair enough,' said Ikem. 'Charity begins at home.' More laughter. 'Any other suggestions. We have peasants, workers and students… Excellent! Will peasants in this hall please stand.'
There was now hilarious laughter from all corners of the auditorium, especially when another three-piece-suited gentleman got up and offered himself.
'No, you are not a peasant my good friend. Sit down. I want a proper peasant… Well, ladies and gentlemen it does appear we have no peasants here tonight. Perhaps they don't even know we are having this meeting… I am told, by the way, by those who attend shareholders' annual general meetings that there is something called a proxy form which you send nominating somebody else to stand in for you when you cannot yourself be present. Is there anybody here carrying such a document on behalf of peasants? Mr. Chairman, was any proxy form delivered to you?'
The learned professor in spite of the heavy burden of his earnestness felt obliged now to join in some of this rather awkward fun. So he shook his head, not too vigorously but well enough to win the applause of the ticklishly humorous crowd.
'Very well. I think we should leave peasants out of the discussion. They are not here and have sent no one to speak on their behalf… That leaves us with workers and students…'
'And market women,' chipped in a high female voice from the audience, to a renewed burst of merriment.
'Market women, my dear girl, are in the same category as peasants. They are not here either… I will let you into a secret I have told nobody else. My prospective mother-in-law is a market woman.' Laughter!
'A cash madam,' offered someone.
'No, not a cash madam. A simple market woman… This is not a joke now. I am really serious. My prospective mother-in-law sells tie-die cloth in Gelegele market. She is not a cash madam as I have said; she can carry all her worldly wares in one head-load. So she qualifies along with peasants for a seat among the proletariat. But she has not given me, her future son-in-law, any authority to be her proxy at this shareholders' meeting… So let's move on and deal with those we are competent to speak for, namely ourselves. Workers and students. Let's take workers first. Who are they? The same workers who go on strike when outdated and outrageous colonial privileges like motor vehicle advances and allowances are threatened; whose leaders cannot give satisfactory account of millions they collect every month from the compulsory workers' check-off scheme; who never in their congresses attack absenteeism, ghost workers, scandalously low national productivity. Above all, workers whose national president at last year's All-Africa Congress refused to leave his hotel room until an official Peugeot 504 assigned to him was replaced with a Mercedes. His reason you remember: that workers' leaders are not, in his very words, ordinary riff-raffs. You find that funny? Well I don't. I find it tragic and true. Workers' leaders are indeed extraordinary riff-raffs. There has been, for a few years now, a running battle between me and the Civil Service Union. You know that, don't you?' Yes, roared the audience, laughing. 'The reason for our little disagreement is because I have not attempted to hide my opinion of them as plain parasites.' More laughter. 'Those of you who follow our battles may remember that it all came to a head last year when I wrote a stinging editorial on the eve of their Annual Congress.' There was smiling recognition on some faces, some nodding of the head and scattered remnants of laughter. 'In their communiqué at the end of the Congress they referred to certain bourgeois, élitist hack writers who are no more and no less than running dogs of imperialism!' Loud laughter. 'You probably didn't know who they were alluding to but it was their way of replying to my editorial. Their way is indeed peculiar. Our proverb says that the earthworm is not dancing, it is only its manner of walking.' Laughter.