Girls at War (13 page)

Tears came to Gladys’s eyes when she saw the gifts. Nwankwo didn’t have too much cash on him but he got together twenty pounds and handed it over to her.

“I don’t have foreign exchange, and I know this won’t go far at all, but …”

She just came and threw herself at him, sobbing. He kissed her lips and eyes and mumbled something about victims of circumstance, which went over her head. In deference to him, he thought with exultation, she had put away her high-tinted wig in her bag.

“I want you to promise me something,” he said.

“What?”

“Never use that expression about shelling again.”

She smiled with tears in her eyes. “You don’t like it? That’s what all the girls call it.”

“Well, you are different from all the girls. Will you promise?”

“O.K.”

Naturally their departure had become a little delayed. And when they got into the car it refused to start. After poking around the engine the driver decided that the battery was flat. Nwankwo was
aghast. He had that very week paid thirty-four pounds to change two of the cells and the mechanic who performed it had promised him six months’ service. A new battery, which was then running at two hundred and fifty pounds was simply out of the question. The driver must have been careless with something, he thought.

“It must be because of last night,” said the driver.

“What happened last night?” asked Nwankwo sharply, wondering what insolence was on the way. But none was intended.

“Because we use the headlight.”

“Am I supposed not to use my light then? Go and get some people and try pushing it.” He got out again with Gladys and returned to the house while the driver went over to neighbouring houses to seek the help of other servants.

After at least half an hour of pushing it up and down the street, and a lot of noisy advice from the pushers, the car finally spluttered to life shooting out enormous clouds of black smoke from the exhaust.

It was eight-thirty by his watch when they set out. A few miles away a disabled soldier waved for a lift.

“Stop!” screamed Nwankwo. The driver jammed his foot on the brakes and then turned his head towards his master in bewilderment.

“Don’t you see the soldier waving? Reverse and pick him up!”

“Sorry, sir,” said the driver. “I don’t know Master wan to pick him.”

“If you don’t know you should ask. Reverse back.”

The soldier, a mere boy, in filthy khaki drenched in sweat lacked his right leg from the knee down. He seemed not only grateful that a car should stop for him but greatly surprised. He first handed in his crude
wooden crutches which the driver arranged between the two front seats, then painfully he levered himself in.

“Thank sir,” he said turning his neck to look at the back and completely out of breath.

“I am very grateful. Madame, thank you.”

“The pleasure is ours,” said Nwankwo. “Where did you get your wound?”

“At Azumini, sir. On the tenth of January.”

“Never mind. Everything will be all right. We are proud of you boys and will make sure you receive your due reward when it is all over.”

“I pray God, sir.”

They drove on in silence for the next half-hour or so. Then as the car sped down a slope towards a bridge somebody screamed—perhaps the driver, perhaps the soldier—“They have come!” The screech of the brakes merged into the scream and the shattering of the sky overhead. The doors flew open even before the car had come to a stop and they were fleeing blindly to the bush. Gladys was a little ahead of Nwankwo when they heard through the drowning tumult the soldier’s voice crying: “Please come and open for me!” Vaguely he saw Gladys stop; he pushed past her shouting to her at the same time to come on. Then a high whistle descended like a spear through the chaos and exploded in a vast noise and motion that smashed up everything. A tree he had embraced flung him away through the bush. Then another terrible whistle starting high up and ending again in a monumental crash of the world; and then another, and Nwankwo heard no more.

He woke up to human noises and weeping and the smell and smoke of a charred world. He dragged himself up and staggered towards the source of the sounds.

From afar he saw his driver running towards him in tears and blood. He saw the remains of his car smoking and the entangled remains of the girl and the soldier. And he let out a piercing cry and fell down again.

C
HINUA
A
CHEBE
was born in Nigeria in 1930. He was raised in the large village of Ogidi, one of the first centers of Anglican missionary work in Eastern Nigeria, and is a graduate of University College, Ibadan.

Characterized by the
New York Times Magazine
as “one of Nigeria’s most gifted writers,” Chinua Achebe has published novels, short stories, essays, and children’s books. His volume of poetry,
Christmas in Biafra
, written during the Biafran War, was the joint winner of the first Commonwealth Poetry Prize. Of his novels,
Arrow of God
is winner of the New Statesman–Jock Campbell Award, and
Anthills of the Savannah
was a finalist for the 1987 Booker Prize in England.

Mr. Achebe has received numerous honors from around the world, including the Honorary Fellowship of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, as well as twelve honorary doctorates from universities in England, Scotland, the United States, Canada, and Nigeria. He is also the recipient of Nigeria’s highest award for intellectual achievement, the Nigerian National Merit Award. In 2007, he won the Man Booker International Prize for Fiction.

Mr. Achebe lives with his wife in Annandale, New York, where they both teach at Bard College. They have four children.