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“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 frighte

ned 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 theater, 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 of Roped Pots.”