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

He was not sure what very fierce meant or whether she liked it. He desperately wanted her to approve. Her aura of distance had returned since she came back from visiting Olanna in Nsukka. She had put up a photograph of her murdered relatives – Arize laughing in her wedding dress, Uncle Mbaezi ebullient in a tight suit next to a solemn Aunty Ifeka in a print wrapper – but she said very little about them and nothing about Olanna. She often withdrew into silence in the middle of a conversation, and when she did, he let her be; sometimes he envied her the ability to be changed by what had happened.

‘What do you think of it?’ he asked, and before she could answer, he asked what he really wanted to. ‘Do you like it? How do you feel about it?’

‘I think it sounds exceedingly formal and stuffy,’ she said. ‘But what I feel about it is pride. I feel proud.’

He sent it off to the Herald. When he got a response two weeks later, he ripped the letter up after reading it. The international press was simply saturated with stories of violence from Africa, and this one was particularly bland and pedantic, the deputy editor wrote, but perhaps Richard could do a piece on the human angle? Did they mutter any tribal incantations while they did the killings, for example? Did they eat body parts like they did in the Congo? Was there a way of trying truly to understand the minds of these people?

Richard put the article away. It frightened him that he slept well at nights, that he was still calmed by the scent of orange leaves and the turquoise stillness of the sea, that he was sentient.

‘I’m going on. Life is the same,’ he told Kainene. ‘I should be reacting; things should be different.’

‘You can’t write a script in your mind and then force yourself to follow it. You have to let yourself be, Richard,’ she said quietly.

But he couldn’t let himself be. He didn’t believe that life was the same for all the other people who had witnessed the massacres. Then he felt more frightened at the thought that perhaps he had been nothing more than a voyeur. He had not feared for his own life, so the massacres became external, outside of him; he had watched them through the detached lens of knowing he was safe. But that couldn’t be; Kainene would not have been safe if she had been there.

He began to write about Nnaemeka and the astringent scent of liquor mixing with fresh blood in that airport lounge where the bartender lay with a blown-up face, but he stopped because the sentences were risible. They were too melodramatic. They sounded just like the articles in the foreign press, as if these killings had not happened and, even if they had, as if they had not quite happened that way. The echo of unreality weighed each word down; he clearly remembered what had happened at that airport, but to write about it he would have to reimagine it, and he was not sure if he could.

The day the secession was announced, he stood with Kainene on the veranda and listened to Ojukwu’s voice on the radio and afterward took her in his arms. At first he thought they were both trembling, until he moved back to look at her face and realized that she was perfectly still. Only he was trembling.

‘Happy independence,’ he told her.

‘Independence,’ she said, before she added, ‘Happy independence.’

He wanted to ask her to marry him. This was a new start, a new country, their new country. It was not only because secession was just, considering all that the Igbo had endured, but because of the possibility Biafra held for him. He would be Biafran in a way he could never have been Nigerian – he was here at the beginning; he had shared in the birth. He would belong. He said, Marry me, Kainene in his head many times but he did not say it aloud. The next day, he returned to Nsukka with Harrison.

Richard liked Phyllis Okafor. He liked the verve of her bouffant wigs, the drawl of her native Mississippi, as well as the severe eyeglass frames that belied the warmth in her eyes. Since he had stopped going to Odenigbo’s house, he often spent evenings with her and her husband, Nnanyelugo. It was as if she knew he had lost a social life, and she insistently invited him to the arts theatre, to public lectures, to play squash. So when she asked him to come to the ‘In Case of War’ seminar that the university women’s association was organizing, he accepted. It was a good idea to be prepared, of course, but there would be no war. The Nigerians would let Biafra be; they would never fight a people already battered by the massacres. They would be pleased to be rid of the Igbo anyway. Richard was certain about this. He was less certain about what he would do if he ran into Olanna at the seminar. It had been easy to avoid her thus far; in four years he had driven past her only a few times, he never went to the tennis courts or the staff club, and he no longer shopped at Eastern Shop.

He stood near Phyllis at the entrance of the lecture hall and scanned the room. Olanna was sitting in front with Baby on her lap. Her lushly beautiful face seemed very familiar, as did her blue dress with the ruffled collar, as if he had seen both very recently. He looked away and could not help feeling relieved that Odenigbo had not come. The hall was full. The woman talking at the podium repeated herself over and over. ‘Wrap your certificates in waterproof bags and make sure those are the first things you take if we have to evacuate. Wrap your certificates in waterproof bags …’

More people spoke. Then it was over. People were mingling, laughing, and talking and exchanging more ‘in case of war’ tips. Richard knew that Olanna was nearby, talking to a bearded man who taught music. He turned, casually, to slip away, and was close to the door when she appeared beside him.

‘Hello, Richard. Kedu?’

‘I’m well,’ he said. The skin of his face felt tight. ‘And you?’

‘We are fine,’ Olanna said. Her lips had a slight glisten of pink gloss. Richard did not miss her use of the plural. He was not sure if she meant herself and the child, or herself and Odenigbo, or perhaps we was meant to suggest that she had made peace with what had happened between them and what it had done to her relationship with Kainene.

‘Baby, have you greeted?’ Olanna asked, looking down at the child, whose hand was enclosed in hers.

‘Good afternoon,’ Baby said, in a high voice.

Richard bent and touched her cheek. There was a calmness about her that made her seem older and wiser than her four years. ‘Hello, Baby.’

‘How is Kainene?’ Olanna asked.

Richard evaded her eyes, not sure what his expression should be. ‘She is well.’

‘And your book is going well?’

‘Yes. Thank you.’

‘Is it still called The Basket of Hands?’

It pleased him that she had not forgotten. ‘No.’ He paused and tried not to think about what had happened to that manuscript, about the flames that must have charred it quickly. ‘It’s called In the Time ofRoped Pots.’

‘Interesting title,’ Olanna murmured. ‘I hope there won’t be war, but the seminar has been quite useful, hasn’t it.’

‘Yes.’

Phyllis came over, said hello to Olanna, and then tugged at Richard’s arm. ‘They say Ojukwu is coming! Ojukwu is coming!’ There was the sound of raised voices outside the hall.

‘Ojukwu?’ Richard asked.

‘Yes, yes!’ Phyllis was walking towards the door. ‘You know he dropped into Enugu campus for a surprise visit some days ago? It looks like it’s our turn!’

Richard followed her outside. They joined the cluster of lecturers standing by the statue of a lion; Olanna had disappeared.

‘He’s at the library now,’ somebody said.

‘No, he’s in the senate building.’

‘No, he wants to address the students. He’s at the admin block.’

Some people were already walking quickly towards the administration block, and Phyllis and Richard went along. They were close to the umbrella trees that lined the driveway when Richard saw the bearded man, in a severely smart, belted army uniform, striding across the corridor. A few reporters scrambled after him, holding out tape recorders like offerings. Students, so many that Richard wondered how they had congregated so quickly, began to chant. ‘Power! Power!’ Ojukwu came downstairs and stood on top of some cement blocks on the grassy lawn. He raised his hands. Everything about him sparkled, his groomed beard, his watch, his wide shoulders.

‘I came to ask you a question,’ he said. His Oxford-accented voice was surprisingly soft; it did not have the timbre that it did over the radio and it was a little theatrical, a little too measured. ‘What shall we do? Shall we keep silent and let them force us back into Nigeria? Shall we ignore the thousands of our brothers and sisters killed in the North?’

‘No! No!’ The students were filling the wide yard, spilling onto the lawn and the driveway. Many lecturers had parked their cars on the road and joined the crowd. ‘Power! Power!’

Ojukwu raised his hands again and the chanting stopped. ‘If they declare war,’ he said. ‘I want to tell you now that it may become a long-drawn-out war. A long-drawn-out war. Are you prepared? Are we prepared?’

‘Yes! Yes! Ojukwu, nye anyi egbe! Give us guns! Iwe di anyi n’obi! There is anger in our hearts!’

The chanting was constant now – give us guns, there is anger in our hearts, give us guns. The rhythm was heady. Richard glanced across at Phyllis, thrusting a fist in the air as she shouted, and he looked around for a little while at everyone else, intense and intent in the moment, before he too began to wave and chant. ‘Ojukwu, give us guns! Ojukwu, nye anyi egbe!’

Ojukwu lit a cigarette and threw it down on the lawn. It flared for a while, before he reached out and squashed it underneath a gleaming black boot. ‘Even the grass will fight for Biafra,’ he said.

Richard told Kainene how charmed he had been by Ojukwu even though the man showed signs of early balding and was vaguely histrionic and wore a gaudy ring. He told her about the seminar. Then he wondered whether to tell her that he had run into Olanna. They were sitting on the veranda. Kainene was peeling an orange with a knife, and the slender peel dropped into a plate on the floor.

‘I saw Olanna,’ he said.

‘Did you?’

‘At the seminar. We said hello and she asked about you.’

‘I see.’ The orange slipped from her hand, or perhaps she dropped it, because she left it there on the terrazzo floor of the veranda.

‘I’m sorry,’ Richard said. ‘I thought I should mention that I saw her.’