Anthills of the Savannah Read Free

indeterminate had entered it and was building up slowly within its ambience. At first I thought the air-conditioners had become just fractionally louder which would be perfectly consistent with the generating vagaries of the National Electric Power Authority. Then the Chief Secretary’s observation and the flurry of conversation it started about His Excellency’s changing moods kept us from noticing the sound for a while. The Attorney-General came over to my seat and clapped me on the shoulder.
    “What’s the matter with you, Chris? Why are you so tense these days? Relax, man, relax; the world isn’t coming to an end, you know.”
    I was angrily but silently rebuffing his peace overtures when, as though on a signal, everyone in the room stopped talking. Then we all turned to the east window.
    “A storm?” someone asks.
    The low hibiscus hedge outside the window and its many brilliant red bells stood still and unruffled. Beyond the hedge the courtyard with its concrete slabs and neatly manicured bahama grass at the interstices showed no flying leaves or dust. Beyond the courtyard another stretch of the green and red hedge stood guard against the one-story east wing of the Presidential Palace. Over and beyond the roof the tops of palm-trees at the waterfront swayed with the same lazy ease they display to gentle ocean winds. It was no ordinary storm.
    The Chief Secretary whose presence of mind is only inhibited by the presence of His Excellency moves over to the sill, unhooks a latch and pushes back a glass window. And the world surges into the alien climate of the Council Chamber on a violent wave of heat and the sounds of a chanting multitude. And His Excellencyrushes back into the room at the same time leaving the huge doors swinging.
    “What is going on?” he demands, frantically.
    “I shall go and see, Your Excellency,” says the Inspector-General of Police, picking up his peaked cap from the table, putting it on his head and then his baton under his arm and saluting at attention.
    “Look at him! Just look at him,” sneers His Excellency. “Gentlemen, this is my Chief of Police. He stands here gossiping while hoodlums storm the Presidential Palace. And he has no clue what is going on. Sit down! Inspector-General of Police!”
    He turns to me. “Do you know anything about this?”
    “I am sorry I don’t, Your Excellency.”
    “Beautiful. Just beautiful. Now can anyone here tell me anything about that crowd screaming out there?” He looks at each of us in turn. No one stirs or opens his mouth. “That’s what I mean when I say that I have no Executive Council. Can you see what I mean now, all of you? Take your seats, gentlemen, and stay there!” He rushes out again.
    At the door he is saluted again by the orderly of the quivering hands. Perhaps it is the way the fellow closes those heavy doors now like a gaoler or perhaps some other subtle movement or gesture with the sub-machine-gun in his left hand that drew from the Attorney-General a deep forlorn groan: “Oh my God!” I put on a broad smile and flash it in his face. He backs away from me as from a violent lunatic.
    Very few words are spoken in the next half hour. When the doors swing open again, an orderly announces:
Professor Okong Wanted by His Excellency
!
    “I go to prepare a place for you, gentlemen… But rest assured I will keep the most comfortable cell for myself.” He went out laughing. I too began to laugh quite ostentatiously. Then I said to my colleagues: “That is a man after my heart. A man who will not piss in his trousers at the first sound of danger.” And I went to the furthest window and stood there alone gazing outwards.
    Professor Reginald Okong, though a buffoon, is a fighter of sorts and totally self-made. Unfortunately he has no sense of political morality which is a double tragedy for a man who began his career as an American Baptist minister and later became Professor of Political Science at our university. Perhaps he