Going from the Lagos mainland to Ikoyi on a Saturday night was like going from a bazaar to a

funeral. And the vast Lagos cemetery which separated the two places helped to deepen this
feeling. For all its luxuorious bungalows and flats and its extensive greenery, Ikoyi was like a
graveyard. It had no corporate life---at any rate for those Africans who lived there. They had not
always lived there, of course. It was once a European reserve. But things had changed, and some
Africans in “European pasts” had been given houses in Ikoyi. Obi Okonwo,for example lived
there, and as he drove from Lagos to his flat he was struck again by these two cities in one. It
always reminded him of twin kernels separated by a thin wall in a palm-nut shell. Sometimes one
kernel was shiny-black and alive, the other powdery-white and dead.

“What is making you so moody?” He looked sideways at Clara who was ostentatiously sitting as
far away from him as she could, pressed against the left door. She did answer. “Tell me, darling.”
He said, holding her hand in one of his while he drove with the other. “Leave me. Ojare,” she
said, snatching her hand away.

Obi knew very well why she was moody. She had suggested in her tentative way yhay they
should go to the films. At this stage in their relationship, Clara never said: “Let us go to films.”
She said instead: “There is a good film at the capital.” Obi, who didn’t care for films. Especially
those that Clara called good, had said after long silence: “Well, if you insist, but Im not keen”
Clara didn’t insist, but she felt very much hurt. All evening she had been nursing her feelings. Its
not too late to go to your film, Said Obi capitulatingm or appearing to do so. “You may go if you
want to,Im not coming,” she said. Only three days before they had gone to see “a very good
film” which infuriated Obi so much that he stopped looking at the screen altogether,except when
Clara whispered one explanation or another for his benefit. “That man going to be killed” she
would prophesy, and sure as death. The doomed man would be shot almost immediately. Drom
downstairs the shilling ticket audience participated noisily in action.

He recalled this poem and then turned and looked at the rotting dog in the storm drain and smiled
“ I have tasted putrid flesh in the sppoon,” he said through clencked teeth. “For more apt.” at last
Clara emerged from the side street and they drove away.
They drove for a while in silence through narrow overcrowded streets. “I can’t understand why
you should choose your dressmaker from the slums,” Clara didn’t reply. Instead she started
humming “Cke sara sara”

The streets were now quite noisy and crowded, which was to be expected on a Saturday night at
nine o’clock. Every few yards one met bonds of dancers often wearing identical dress or “also
ebi” Gay temporary sheds were erected in front of derelict houses and lit with brilliant
fluorescent tubes for the celebration of an engagement or marriage or birth or promotion or
success in business or the death of an old relative.

Obi slowed down as he approached three drummers and a large group of young women in
damask and velvet swivelling their waists as effortlessly as oiled ball-bearings. A taxi driver
hooted impatiently and overtook him,leaning out at the same time to shout: “Ori oda, your had
no correct!” “Ori oda—Bloody fool!” replied Obi. Almost immediately a cyclist crossed the road
without looking back or giving any signal. Obi jammed on his brakes and his tyres screamed on
the tarmac. Clara let out a little scream and gripped his right arm. The cyclist looked back once
and rode away his ambition written for all to see on his black bicycle-bag --- FUTURE
MINISTER.

Going from the Lagos mainland to Ikoyi on a Saturday night was like going from a bazaar to a
funeral. And the vast Lagos cemetery which separated the two places helped to deepen this
feeling. For all its luxuorious bungalows and flats and its extensive greenery, Ikoyi was like a
graveyard. It had no corporate life---at any for those Africans who lived there. They hadn’t
always lived there,of course. It was onece at first Bay og Biscay was very calm collected. The
boat was now heading towards a horizon where the sky was lightm seeming to hold out a vague
promise of sunshine. The sea’s circumference was no longer merged with the sky, but stood out
in deep clear contrast like a giant tarmac from which God’s aeroplane might take off. Then as
evening approached, the peace and smoothness vanished quite suddenly. The sea’s face was
contorted with anger. Obi felt slightly dizzy and top-heavy. When he went down for supper he
merely looked at his food. One or two passengers were not there at all. The others ate almost in
silence.
Obi returned to his cabin and was going straight to bed when someone tapped at his door. He
opened and it was Clara. “I noticed you werenot looking very well” she said Ibo. “so I brought
you some tablets of Avomine”. She gave him an envelope with half a dozen white tablets in it.
“Take two before you go to bed”

“Thank you very much,its so kind of you” Obi was completely overwhelmed and all the coldness
and indifference he had rehearsed deserted him. But,he starmmed , “am I not depriving you of
er..”

“Oh no, I’ve got enough for all the passenger, that’s the advantage of having a nurse on board.”
She smilled faintly. “I’ve just given some to Mrs.Wright and Mr.Macmillan. Good night, you’ll
feel better in the morning.

All night Obi rolled from one edge of the bed to the other in symphaty with the fitful progress of
the little ship grooning and creaking in the darkness. He could neither sleep nor keep awake. But
somehow he was able to think about Clara most of the night a few seconds at a time. He had
taken a firm decision not show any interest in her. And yet when he had opened the door and
shee her, his joy and confusion must have been very plain. And she had treated him just like
another patient. “I have enough for all the passenger” she had said. “I gave some to
Mr.Macmillon and Mrs. Wright”. But then she had spoken in Ibo, for the first time, as if to say,
“We belong together: we speak the same language.” And she had appeared to some concern.

The gathering ended with the singing of “Praise God from whom all blessing flow”. The guests
then said their farewells to Obi, many of them repeating all the advice that he had already been
givem. They shook hands with him and as they did so they pressed their presents into his palm to
buy a pencil with or an exercise book or a loaf of bread for the journey, a shilling there and a
penny there--- substansial presents in a village where money was so rarw, where men and
women toiled from year to wrest a meagre living from an unwilling and exhausted soil.
Obi was away in England for a little under four years.He sometimes found it difficult to believe
that it was as short as thaat, It seemed more like decade than four years, what with the miseries
of winter when his longing to return home took on the sharpness of physical pain. It was in
Englanf that Nigeria first became more than just a name to him. That was the first great thing
that England did for him.

But the Nigeria he returned ro was in many ways different from the picture he had carried in his
mind during those four years There were many things he could no longer recognise, and others---
like the slums og Lagos—which he was seeing for the first time.

As a boy in the village of Umuofia he had heard his first stories about Lagos from a soldier home
on leave from the war. Those soldiers were heroes who had seen the great world. They spoke of
Abyssinia, Egypt, Palestine, Burma and so on. Some of them had been village ne’er-do-wells,
but now they were heroes. They had bags and bags of money and the villagers,sat at their feel to
listen to their stories. One of them went regularly to a market in the neighbouring village and
helped himselg to whatever he liked. He went in full uniform, breaking the earth with his boots
and no one dared touch him. It was said that if you touched a soldier, Government would deal
with you. Besides, soldiers were as strong as lions because of the injections they wew given in
the army. It was from one og these soldiers that Obi had first picture of Lagos.