fourth was a prince among criminals. The police said he had eluded them for two years, had three murders to his name and a fourth pointed in his direction. He wore a spotless white lace
danshiki
embroidered with gold thread, and natty blue terylene trousers. His appearance, his erect, disdainful walk hurled defiance at the vast mockery and abuse of the crowd and incensed it to greater vehemence. He saved his breath for the psychological moment when the crowd’s delirious yelling was suddenly stilled by its desire to catch the command of the officer to the firing squad. In that brief silence, in a loud and steady voice he proclaimed: “I shall be born again!” Twice he said it, or if thrice, the third was lost in a new explosion of jeers and lewd jokes and laughter so loud that it was clearly in compensation for the terrible truth of that silence in which we had stood cowed as though heaven had thundered: Be still and know that I am God. The lady in front of me said:
“Na goat go born you nex time, noto woman.”
My tenuous links with that crowd seemed to snap totally at that point. I knew then that if its own mother was at that moment held up by her legs and torn down the middle like a piece of old rag that crowd would have yelled with eye-watering laughter. I still ask myself how anyone could laugh at the proclamation of such a terrible curse or fail to be menaced by the prospect of its fulfilment. For it was clear to me that the robber’s words spoken with such power of calmness into the multitude’s hysteria just minutes before his white lace reddened with blood and his hooded head withered instantly and drooped to his chest were greater than he,were indeed words of prophecy. If the vision vouchsafed to his last moments was to be faulted in any particular it would be this: that it placed his reincarnation in the future when it was already a clearly accomplished fact. Was he not standing right then, full grown, in other stolen lace and terylene, in every corner of that disoriented crowd? And he and all his innumerable doubles, were they not mere emulators of others who daily stole more from us than mere lace and terylene? Leaders who openly looted our treasury, whose effrontery soiled our national soul.
The only happy memory of that afternoon was the lady in front of me who vomited copiously on the back of the man with the umbrella and had to clean the mess with her damask headtie. I like to believe that there were others like her in every section of that crowd, picking up their filthy mess with their rich cloths. Certainly there were many who fainted although my news reporters put it all to the blazing sun. They also reported, by the way, a very busy day for pick-pockets, minor reincarnations of the princely robber.
The next day I wrote my first crusading editorial calling on the President to promulgate forthwith a decree abrogating the law that permitted that outrageous and revolting performance. I wrote the editorial with so much passion that I found myself ending it with a one verse hymn to be sung to the tune “Lord Thy Word Abideth.”
The worst threat from men of hell
May not be their actions cruel
Far worse that we learn their way
And behave more fierce than they.
A bad hymn, as most hymns tend to be. But people sang it up and down the street of Bassa. Chris was critical of my tone and of my tactlessness in appearing to command His Excellency. But when the said Excellency proceeded to do exactly what I had demanded Chris had to come up with a new tune. My editorial suddenly had nothing whatever to do with the new decree. His Excellency had quite independently come to the conclusion that he could earn a few credits by reversing all the unpopular acts of the civilian regime. And the Public Executions Amendment Decree was only one of them. And this was the same Chris who had just rebuked me for not knowing that public executions were such a popular sport.
In the one year or more since those particular
danshiki
embroidered with gold thread, and natty blue terylene trousers. His appearance, his erect, disdainful walk hurled defiance at the vast mockery and abuse of the crowd and incensed it to greater vehemence. He saved his breath for the psychological moment when the crowd’s delirious yelling was suddenly stilled by its desire to catch the command of the officer to the firing squad. In that brief silence, in a loud and steady voice he proclaimed: “I shall be born again!” Twice he said it, or if thrice, the third was lost in a new explosion of jeers and lewd jokes and laughter so loud that it was clearly in compensation for the terrible truth of that silence in which we had stood cowed as though heaven had thundered: Be still and know that I am God. The lady in front of me said:
“Na goat go born you nex time, noto woman.”
My tenuous links with that crowd seemed to snap totally at that point. I knew then that if its own mother was at that moment held up by her legs and torn down the middle like a piece of old rag that crowd would have yelled with eye-watering laughter. I still ask myself how anyone could laugh at the proclamation of such a terrible curse or fail to be menaced by the prospect of its fulfilment. For it was clear to me that the robber’s words spoken with such power of calmness into the multitude’s hysteria just minutes before his white lace reddened with blood and his hooded head withered instantly and drooped to his chest were greater than he,were indeed words of prophecy. If the vision vouchsafed to his last moments was to be faulted in any particular it would be this: that it placed his reincarnation in the future when it was already a clearly accomplished fact. Was he not standing right then, full grown, in other stolen lace and terylene, in every corner of that disoriented crowd? And he and all his innumerable doubles, were they not mere emulators of others who daily stole more from us than mere lace and terylene? Leaders who openly looted our treasury, whose effrontery soiled our national soul.
The only happy memory of that afternoon was the lady in front of me who vomited copiously on the back of the man with the umbrella and had to clean the mess with her damask headtie. I like to believe that there were others like her in every section of that crowd, picking up their filthy mess with their rich cloths. Certainly there were many who fainted although my news reporters put it all to the blazing sun. They also reported, by the way, a very busy day for pick-pockets, minor reincarnations of the princely robber.
The next day I wrote my first crusading editorial calling on the President to promulgate forthwith a decree abrogating the law that permitted that outrageous and revolting performance. I wrote the editorial with so much passion that I found myself ending it with a one verse hymn to be sung to the tune “Lord Thy Word Abideth.”
The worst threat from men of hell
May not be their actions cruel
Far worse that we learn their way
And behave more fierce than they.
A bad hymn, as most hymns tend to be. But people sang it up and down the street of Bassa. Chris was critical of my tone and of my tactlessness in appearing to command His Excellency. But when the said Excellency proceeded to do exactly what I had demanded Chris had to come up with a new tune. My editorial suddenly had nothing whatever to do with the new decree. His Excellency had quite independently come to the conclusion that he could earn a few credits by reversing all the unpopular acts of the civilian regime. And the Public Executions Amendment Decree was only one of them. And this was the same Chris who had just rebuked me for not knowing that public executions were such a popular sport.
In the one year or more since those particular
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