Ngozi Chimamanda - Half of a Yellow Sun

"He is already serving our nation. We are only interested in idle civilians," he called out to the other soldier, who nodded.

Ugwu's relief made him dizzy He rubbed his wrists. Olanna did not say a word to him as they walked home, and he sensed her silent fury only in the force with which she unlocked and threw open the door.

"I'm sorry, mah," he said.

"You are so stupid you do not deserve the luck you had today," she said. "I bribed that soldier with all the money I have. Now you will produce what I will feed my child, do you understand?"

"I'm sorry, mah," he said again.

She said little to him in the following days. She made Baby's pap herself as if she no longer trusted him. Her responses to his greetings were frosty nods. And he woke up earlier to fetch water and scrubbed the room floor harder and waited to win back her friendship.

Finally, he won it back with the help of roasted lizards. It was the morning that she and Baby were getting ready to go to Orlu to visit Kainene. A hawker walked into the compound with an enamel tray covered in newspapers, holding up a browned lizard on a stick, chanting, "Mme mme suyal Mme mme suya!"

"I want some, Mummy Ola, please," Baby said.

Olanna ignored her and continued to brush her hair. Pastor Ambrose had come out of his room and was bargaining with the lizard hawker.

"I want some, Mummy Ola," Baby said.

"Those things are not good for you," Olanna said.

Pastor Ambrose went back to his room with a newspaper-wrapped package.

"Pastor bought some," Baby said.

"But we are not buying any."

Baby began to cry. Olanna turned and looked at Ugwu in exasperation and suddenly they were both smiling at the situation: Baby was crying to be allowed to eat a lizard.

"What do lizards eat, Baby?" Ugwu asked.

Baby mumbled, "Ants."

"If you eat one, all the ants the lizard ate will crawl around inside your stomach and bite you," Ugwu said calmly.

Baby blinked. She looked at him for a while, as if deciding whether or not to believe him, before she wiped her tears.

On the day that Olanna and Baby left to spend a week with Kainene in Orlu, Master came home from work earlier than usual and did not go to Tanzania Bar; Ugwu hoped that their absence had pulled him out of the ditch he sunk into when his mother died. He sat on the veranda listening to the radio. Ugwu was surprised to see Alice stop by on her way to the bathroom. He assumed Master would give her his distant yes-and-no answers and she would go back to her piano. But they spoke in low tones, most of which Ugwu did not hear; once in a while he heard her giggly laughter. The next day, she was sitting on the bench beside Master. Then she stayed until the whole yard was asleep. Then Ugwu came around from the backyard, days later, and found the veranda empty and the room door firmly shut. His stomach tightened; memories of those days of Amala left a difficult-to-swallow lump in his throat. Alice was different. There was a deliberate childlike aura to her that Ugwu distrusted. He could see why she would not need any medicine from a dibia to tempt Master; she would do it with that pale skin and helpless manner. Ugwu walked to the banana trees and back and then went to the door and knocked loudly He was determined to stop them, to stop it. He heard sounds inside. He knocked again. And again.

"Yes?" Master's voice was muffled.

"It is me, sah. I want to ask if I can take the kerosene stove, sah." After he took the cooker, he would pretend to have forgotten the garri cup, the last bit of yam, the ladle. He was prepared to fake a seizure, an epileptic fit, anything that would keep Master from continuing what he was doing with that woman. It took long minutes before Master opened the door. His glasses were off and his eyes looked swollen.

"Sah?" Ugwu asked, looking past him. The room was empty. "Is it well, sah?"

"Of course it's not well, you ignoramus," Master said, staring at the pair of slippers on the floor. He looked lost in his own mind. Ugwu waited. Master sighed. "Professor Ekwenugo was on his way to lay land mines with the Science Group when they went over some potholes and the mines went off."

"The mines went off?"

"Ekwenugo was blown up. He's dead."

Blown up rang in Ugwu's ears.

Master moved back. "Take the stove, then."

Ugwu came in and picked up the kerosene stove that he did not need and thought of Professor Ekwenugo's long tapering nail. Blown up. Professor Ekwenugo had always been his proof that Biafra would triumph, with the stories of rockets and armored cars and fuel made from nothing. Would Professor Ekwenugo's body parts be charred, like bits of wood, or would it be possible to recognize what was what? Would there be many dried fragments, like squashing a harmattan-dried leaf? Blown up.

Master left moments later for Tanzania Bar. Ugwu changed into his good trousers and hurried to Eberechi's house. It seemed the most natural thing, the only thing, to do. He refused to think of how upset Olanna would be if Mama Oji told her that he had gone out, or of what Eberechi's reaction would be, whether she would ignore him or welcome him or shout at him. He needed to see her.

She was sitting on the veranda alone, wearing that buttocks-molding tight skirt he remembered, but her hair was different, cut in a short rounded shape rather than plaited with thread.

"Ugwu!" she said, surprised, and stood up.

"You cut your hair."

"Is there thread anywhere, talk less of the money to buy it?"

"It suits you," he said.

She shrugged.

"I should have come since," he said. He should never have stopped speaking to her because of an army officer he did not know. "Forgive me. Gbaghalu."

They looked at each other, and she reached out and pinched the skin of his neck. He slapped her hand away, playfully, and then held on to it. He did not let go when they both sat on the stairs, and she told him how the family renting Master's former house was wicked, how the boys on the street hid in the ceiling when the conscripting soldiers came, how the last air raid had left a hole in their wall that rats came through.

Finally, Ugwu said that Professor Ekwenugo had died. "You remember I told you about him? The one in the Science Group, the one who made great things," he said.

"I remember," she said. "The one with the long nail."

"It was cut," Ugwu said and started to cry; his tears were sparse and itchy. She placed a hand on his shoulder and he sat very still so as not to move her hand, so as to keep it where it was. There was a newness to her, or perhaps it was his perception of things that had become new. He believed now in preciousness.

"You said he cut his long nail?" she asked.

"He cut it," Ugwu said. It was suddenly a good thing he had cut his nail; Ugwu could not bear the thought of that nail being blown up.

"I should go," he said. "Before my master comes home."

"I shall come and visit you tomorrow," she said. "I know a shortcut to your place."

Master was not back when Ugwu got home. Mama Oji was screaming, "Shame on you! Shame on you!" at her husband, and Pastor Ambrose was praying that God scatter Britain with holy-spirit dynamite, and a child was crying. Slowly, one after the other, the sounds ceased. Darkness fell. Oil lamps went off. Ugwu sat outside the room and waited until, finally, Master walked in with a small smile on his face and his eyes a glaring red.

"My good man," he said.

"Welcome, sah. Nno." Ugwu stood up. Master was unsteady on his feet, swaying ever so slightly to the left. Ugwu hurried forward and placed his arm around him and supported him. They had just stepped inside the room when Master doubled over with a fierce jerk and threw up. The foaming vomit splattered on the floor. Sour smells filled the room. Master sat down on the bed. Ugwu brought a rag and some water and, while he cleaned, he listened to Master's uneven breathing.