'E no good for anybody whether na man-o or na woman-o, na the same thing,' said Elewa. 'E good make person cry small… I been try to stop am, I try sotay then I come say no, make you lef am.'
'Why are you all sitting in darkness?' she said turning the lights on as she walked back into the room almost half an hour after she had left it. She spoke with great calmness in her voice. She had made up her face, and even tried on a smile as she resumed her seat. Then she said:
'I am very sorry.'
'Well, I am sorry to have raised that matter today. I didn't…'
'No no no, Emmanuel. I am happy you raised it. In fact you can't know how grateful I feel. I can tell you I am happier now, much happier than I have been since that day.' She said no more. Perhaps in spite of this composure she could not continue.
To fill the aching void, or perhaps he was already powerless in the grip of a gathering underflow, Emmanuel began again:
'You see I have been present only at two deaths…'
'Make you put that your useless story for inside your pocket,' ordered Elewa. 'Why you de look for trouble so? Abi the one you done cause no belleful you?'
'Leave the young man alone. Emmanuel, please continue.'
'The first death I witnessed was my father and then Chris. Without Chris I could not have known that it was possible to die with dignity.'
'Your father didn't die with dignity?' asked Abdul quizzically.
'No, he didn't. Though he was an old man compared to Chris, he had not learnt how to die. He snapped at people; he even cried. He was frightened, scared to death. He ran from one doctor to another and when he had run through them all he took up prayer-houses. He had cancer of the prostate. Every day some vulture would descend on us from nowhere with the story of a prophet or prophetess in some outlandish village and my father would drag my poor mother there the next morning. It was a terrible relief when he died, I am ashamed to admit… But look at Chris, a young man with all his life still in front of him and yet he was able to look death in the eyes and smile and make a joke. It was too wonderful…'
'You don't know why I went in to cry… That joke was a coded message to me, to us,' said Beatrice, to everyone's surprise. 'By the way, Adamma heard it better. What he was trying to say was The last green. It was a private joke of ours. The last green bottle. It was a terrible, bitter joke. He was laughing at himself. That was the great thing, by the way, about those two, Chris and Ikem. They could laugh at themselves and often did. Not so the pompous asses that have taken over.'
'Say that again!' said Emmanuel.
'You know why I cried? Chris was only just beginning to understand the lesson of that bitter joke. The bottles are up there on the wall hanging by a hair's breadth, yet looking down pompously on the world. Chris was sending us a message to beware. This world belongs to the people of the world not to any little caucus, no matter how talented…'
'And particularly absurd when it is not even talented,' said Abdul.
'It was the same message Elewa's uncle was drumming out this afternoon, wasn't it? On his own crazy drum of course. Chris, in spite of his brilliance, was just beginning to be vaguely aware of people like that old man. Remember his prayer? He had never been inside a whiteman house like this before, may it not be his last.'
'And we said Isé!' said Abdul.
'We did. It was a pledge. It had better be better than some pledges we have heard lately.'
'Isée!!'
At last the prodigious passions of that extraordinary day seemed at an end. Silence descended as completely on the party indoors as had darkness outside. Ama whom Beatrice nicknamed Greedymouth having drunk both from the bottle and from Elewa's breast, pendant like a gorgeous ripe papaya on the tree, was sleeping quietly in her cot.
No one spoke or stirred. No one sought another's eyes. Beatrice sat erect, her arms folded across her chest…
Then at last, like one just returned from a distant journey of the mind bearing a treasure in her eyes she murmured, to a welcoming party? merely to herself? Beautiful! And she said it a second time even more softly: Beautiful!
The rest had now turned their faces on her. She alone gazed still at something remote — a third party invisible to the rest, a presence to whom she had spoken her quiet apostrophe?
The change in her when it came was sudden. A deep breath audible through the room and a melting down of the statuesque told of her return…
'I can't thank you enough, Emmanuel, for being there and bringing back the message. And you too, of course, Adamma.' She looked at each in turn with a strained smile on her countenance. 'Truth is beauty, isn't it? It must be you know to make someone dying in that pain, to make him… smile. He sees it and it is… How can I say it?… it is unbearably, yes unbearably beautiful. That's it! Like Kunene's Emperor Shaka, the spears of his assailants raining down on him. But he realized the truth at that moment, we're told, and died smiling… Oh my Chris!'
Two lines of tears coursed down under her eyes but she did not bother to wipe them…
'BB, weting be dis now?' Elewa remonstrated, showing her two palms of innocence to the powers above. 'Even my self I no de cry like dat! What kind trouble you wan begin cause now? I beg-o. Hmm!'
The End