'Perfectly, Your Excellency. You can count on my absolute discretion.'
'Discretion? No, Mr. Attorney-General, you mean your absolute silence. If a word of this ever gets around, it's either from me or from you. Is that clear?'
'Absolutely, Your Excellency.'
'Good day.'
THREE
Chris called Ikem on the telephone and asked him to send a photographer to the Reception Room of the Presidential Palace to cover a goodwill delegation from Abazon.
'That's a new one. A goodwill delegation from Abazon! A most likely story! What shall we hear next?'
'And for God's sake let me see the copy before it goes in.'
'And why, if one may have the temerity to put such a question to the Honourable Commissioner?'
'You've just said it. Because I am the Honourable Commissioner for Information. That's why.'
'Well that's not good enough, Mr. Commissioner for Information. Not good enough for me. You seem to be forgetting something, namely that it is my name and address which is printed at the bottom of page sixteen of the Gazette and not that of any fucking, excuse my language, any fucking Commissioner. It's me who'll be locked up by Major Samsonite if the need arises, not you. It's my funeral…'
'Quite irrelevant, Ikem. You ought to know that. We have gone over this matter a million times now if we've gone over it once; and I'm getting quite sick and tired of repeating it. I am doing so now for the last time, the very last time. Chapter Fourteen section six of the Newspaper Amendment Decree gives the Honourable Commissioner general and specific powers over what is printed in the Gazette. You know that well. I will now invoke the letter of that law and send you my instruction in writing. Expect it in the next half-hour. It is clear that's how you want it, so I will oblige.'
He hung up and called in his new secretary. As she pulled up her chair and turned to a clean page of her dictation pad the telephone came alive and she made to answer it. But the Commissioner got to it before her and placed his hand on it, and while it continued to ring he said to her: 'I am not in, no matter who it is.' Then he took his hand off and she picked up the receiver.
It was Ikem and he was shouting. Chris could hear his strangled disembodied voice quite clearly because the secretary held the handset a little way from her ear to save her ear-drum.
'He is not on seat, sir.'
'Don't lie to me! He bloody well must be on seat because he just now hung up on me.'
'Well, sir, this is not the only telephone in the city, is it? He could have called you from his home or from the Presidential Palace or anywhere.'
Chris was smiling a mirthless smile. An angry man is always a stupid man. Make a thorough fool of him, my dear girl, he thought. Ikem's concessionary silence was long and heavy. Then without another word he clanged the phone down so heavily that the girl jumped.
'Full marks, dear girl,' said Chris without a smile now. 'And my apologies for the behaviour of my graceless friends.'
'Who was it?'
'Didn't you know? That was the Editor of the Gazette.'
Her flag of victory seemed all of a sudden to lose its wind. Her face fell; Chris noticed it, the look of awe.
The sun in April is an enemy though the weatherman on television reciting mechanically the words of his foreign mentors tells you it will be fine all over the country. Fine! We have been slowly steamed into well-done mutton since February and all the oafs on our public payroll tell us we are doing just fine! No, my dear countrymen. This is Brigadier Misfortune of the Wilting 202 Brigade telling you you are not fine. No my dear countrymen, you will not be fine until you can overthrow the wild Sun of April. Later tonight, fellow countrymen, you will hear the full text from General Mouth himself — I am only a mouthpiece — you will hear the words direct from him after the national anthem shall have been played backwards. Until then, beloved countrymen, roast in peace.
The half kilometre to the Presidential Palace had already taken an hour and fifteen minutes in the closing-time heat and traffic, and he was not half-way there yet. The irresistible temptation of Abazon had brought him to this pass. As he inched forward and stopped and inched again and jammed his foot on the brakes he remembered: in heavy traffic the car to watch is the one ahead of the one behind you. Stupid cleverness, barren smartness that defeats ordinary, solid, sensible people. Like Elewa. She could never even begin to unravel that traffic conundrum.
He looked far ahead just before the next big bend in the road and saw another welcome twitch of motion working its way down the line towards him. He awaited it eagerly but when it got to him he saw it amounted to no more than a miserable metre's progress. So he decided it was not worth the trouble of a gearshift. Save it up and add it to the next incremental move and you will have a nice ride of two metres. Besides, irritating the clutch unnecessarily can lead to… The car behind him blared its horn so loud that he fairly jumped on his seat and out of his heat-haze reverie; he looked and saw through his rear-view mirror a man in great anger, his perspiring head thrust out of his yellow taxi-cab, gesticulating wildly to him to move on. Other cars and drivers were joining now in the blaring and shouting protest. He decided to ignore them all and protect the precious little space ahead of him, even if the heavens should fall! The noise increased tenfold now and began to infect some of the cars ahead which could not possibly know what the matter was but were quite gratuitously joining the horn-blowers behind. He stuck to his guns. Rather than yield he would occupy his mind by observing the surroundings… The traffic going in the opposite direction on his left was luckier, as usual, than the one he found himself trapped in. But he gauged that even if, for the sake of moving at all, one should decide to turn around and join these people speeding away from one's destination the problem of space in which to turn would kill the proposition on the spot… There was nothing else of much interest on that side so he turned to his right and saw for the first time a street decoration of old and dirty flags and bunting lining the route. Some Ministry of Information decorators must have been at work here today putting up these filthy rags saved up and stowed away in mouse-ridden cartons in a Ministry store after last year's May Day celebrations.
It was at this point that he caught with the tail of his eye just in time the driver behind him manoeuvring his taxi out of the line; it was now virtually level with him, albeit on the grass kerb. He cranked his ignition which, mercifully, responded to the first attempt, shifted gear and moved forward to obliterate the prize space into which his antagonist had virtually wedged himself obliquely. From then on a war of nerves ensued between the two men whenever the forward traffic yielded an inch. In all known such encounters in the past between taxi and private drivers the taxi always won, its decisive weapon the certainty that the owner-driver will sooner concede his place than risk a dent on his smooth, precious carapace. But today, for the first time in the traffic history of this land, a taxi driver had met more than his match. This crazy owner-driver adversary failed altogether to live by the norms of his kind. One look at the condition of his car might have forewarned the other; but he either did not look or looked but failed to see.