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Authors: Chinua Achebe
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recognized the stranger as last night’s new champion wrestler of Kangan. “No wonder,” said someone in a simple matter-of-fact voice and the rest of the people seemed to understand too. I was really amazed at their perceptiveness.
The other incident was at the Motor Park itself. I was sitting in my car reading and waiting for a friend who was having her hair plaited down at the hairdressers’ shed. All around the parked cars young sellers of second-hand clothes displayed their articles on wooden clothes-horses. From time to time there would be a sharp stampede at some secret signal for the approach of a policeman or the Market Master, for none of these boisterous hawkers apparently had any right whatsoever to display their goods at that section of the market reserved for cars. It took no more than one second of unbelievable motion and all those hundreds of wooden frames bedecked with the heavy castoffs of distant affluent and consumer cultures of cold climates would simply melt away in the bright noonday sun. Usually the alarm would prove to be false and they would reappear as promptly and miraculously as they had vanished, with much laughter and joking, and take up their illegal positions again. I never pass up a chance of just sitting in my car, reading or pretending to read, surrounded by the vitality and thrill of these dramatic people. Of course the whole of Gelegele Market is one thousand live theatres going at once. The hair-plaiting shed, for example, where Joy was now having her hair done, seated on a mat on the floor her head held between the knees of the artist into whose nimble hand she fed lengths of black thread, did not lack itsown entertainment. But I would pick my vivacious youngsters of the used clothes, any day.
It was a great shock to me then when that army car drove up furiously, went into reverse before it had had time to stop going forward and backed at high speed into a young man and his clothes who just barely managed to scramble out of the car’s vicious path. A cry went up all round. The driver climbed out, pressed down the lock button and slammed the door. The young trader found his voice then and asked, timidly:
“Oga, you want kill me?”
“If I kill you I kill dog,” said the soldier with a vehemence I found totally astounding. Quite mechanically I opened my door and came out. I believe I was about to tell the fellow that there was no need for him to have said that. But I am glad I didn’t in the end, because there are things which an observer can only see if he resists the temptation to jump into the fray and become an actor himself. So I watched the ass walk away with the exaggerated swagger of the coward, and went back into my car. But I was truly seething with anger. My young friends were stunned into total silence. But then the one who had had the brush with the car suddenly laughed and asked:
“Does he mean that after killing me he will go and kill a dog?”
And the others joined in the laughter.
“No, he means that to kill you is like to kill a dog.”
“So therefore you na dog… Na dog born you.”
But the victim stuck to his far more imaginative interpretation. “No,” he said again. “If I kill you I kill dog means that after he kill me he will go home and kill his dog.”
Within ten minutes the life of the group was so well restored by this new make-believe that when the offensive soldier returned to his car to drive away his victim of half an hour ago said to him:
“Go well, oga.” To which he said nothing though it diminished him further still, if such a thing could be conceived. And then I was truly glad that I had not interfered with that impeccable scenario.
T O SAY THAT S AM was never very bright is not to suggest that he was a dunce at any time in the past or that he is one now. His major flaw was that all he ever wanted was to do what was expected of him especially by the English whom he admired sometimesto the point of foolishness. When our
The other incident was at the Motor Park itself. I was sitting in my car reading and waiting for a friend who was having her hair plaited down at the hairdressers’ shed. All around the parked cars young sellers of second-hand clothes displayed their articles on wooden clothes-horses. From time to time there would be a sharp stampede at some secret signal for the approach of a policeman or the Market Master, for none of these boisterous hawkers apparently had any right whatsoever to display their goods at that section of the market reserved for cars. It took no more than one second of unbelievable motion and all those hundreds of wooden frames bedecked with the heavy castoffs of distant affluent and consumer cultures of cold climates would simply melt away in the bright noonday sun. Usually the alarm would prove to be false and they would reappear as promptly and miraculously as they had vanished, with much laughter and joking, and take up their illegal positions again. I never pass up a chance of just sitting in my car, reading or pretending to read, surrounded by the vitality and thrill of these dramatic people. Of course the whole of Gelegele Market is one thousand live theatres going at once. The hair-plaiting shed, for example, where Joy was now having her hair done, seated on a mat on the floor her head held between the knees of the artist into whose nimble hand she fed lengths of black thread, did not lack itsown entertainment. But I would pick my vivacious youngsters of the used clothes, any day.
It was a great shock to me then when that army car drove up furiously, went into reverse before it had had time to stop going forward and backed at high speed into a young man and his clothes who just barely managed to scramble out of the car’s vicious path. A cry went up all round. The driver climbed out, pressed down the lock button and slammed the door. The young trader found his voice then and asked, timidly:
“Oga, you want kill me?”
“If I kill you I kill dog,” said the soldier with a vehemence I found totally astounding. Quite mechanically I opened my door and came out. I believe I was about to tell the fellow that there was no need for him to have said that. But I am glad I didn’t in the end, because there are things which an observer can only see if he resists the temptation to jump into the fray and become an actor himself. So I watched the ass walk away with the exaggerated swagger of the coward, and went back into my car. But I was truly seething with anger. My young friends were stunned into total silence. But then the one who had had the brush with the car suddenly laughed and asked:
“Does he mean that after killing me he will go and kill a dog?”
And the others joined in the laughter.
“No, he means that to kill you is like to kill a dog.”
“So therefore you na dog… Na dog born you.”
But the victim stuck to his far more imaginative interpretation. “No,” he said again. “If I kill you I kill dog means that after he kill me he will go home and kill his dog.”
Within ten minutes the life of the group was so well restored by this new make-believe that when the offensive soldier returned to his car to drive away his victim of half an hour ago said to him:
“Go well, oga.” To which he said nothing though it diminished him further still, if such a thing could be conceived. And then I was truly glad that I had not interfered with that impeccable scenario.
T O SAY THAT S AM was never very bright is not to suggest that he was a dunce at any time in the past or that he is one now. His major flaw was that all he ever wanted was to do what was expected of him especially by the English whom he admired sometimesto the point of foolishness. When our
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