mumbled, and moved on with his tray.
Olanna looked around the table. Her parents were focused on Chief Okonji, nodding eagerly as he told a story about a recent meeting with Prime Minister Balewa. Kainene was inspecting her plate with that arch expression of hers, as if she were mocking the avocado. None of them thanked Maxwell. Olanna wished they would; it was such a simple thing to do, to acknowledge the humanity of the people who served them. She had suggested it once; her father said he paid them good salaries, and her mother said thanking them would give them room to be insulting, while Kainene, as usual, said nothing, a bored expression on her face.
‘This is the best avocado I have tasted in a long time,’ Chief Okonji said.
‘It is from one of our farms,’ her mother said. ‘The one near Asaba.’
‘I’ll have the steward put some in a bag for you,’ her father said.
‘Excellent,’ Chief Okonji said. ‘Olanna, I hope you are enjoying yours, eh? You’ve been staring at it as if it is something that bites.’ He laughed, an overly hearty guffaw, and her parents promptly laughed as well.
‘It’s very good.’ Olanna looked up. There was something wet about Chief Okonji’s smile. Last week, when he thrust his card into her hand at the Ikoyi Club, she had worried about that smile because it looked as if the movement of his lips made saliva fill his mouth and threaten to trickle down his chin.
‘I hope you’ve thought about coming to join us at the ministry, Olanna. We need first-class brains like yours,’ Chief Okonji said.
‘How many people get offered jobs personally from the finance minister,’ her mother said, to nobody in particular, and her smile lit up the oval, dark-skinned face that was so nearly perfect, so symmetrical, that friends called her Art.
Olanna placed her spoon down. ‘I’ve decided to go to Nsukka. I’ll be leaving in two weeks.’
She saw the way her father tightened his lips. Her mother left her hand suspended in the air for a moment, as if the news were too tragic to continue sprinkling salt. ‘I thought you had not made up your mind,’ her mother said.
‘I can’t waste too much time or they will offer it to somebody else,’ Olanna said.
‘Nsukka? Is that right? You’ve decided to move to Nsukka?’ Chief Okonji asked.
‘Yes. I applied for a job as instructor in the Department of Sociology and I just got it,’ Olanna said. She usually liked her avocado without salt, but it was bland now, almost nauseating.
‘Oh. So you’re leaving us in Lagos,’ Chief Okonji said. His face seemed to melt, folding in on itself. Then he turned and asked, too brightly, ‘And what about you, Kainene?’
Kainene looked Chief Okonji right in the eyes, with that stare that was so expressionless, so blank, that it was almost hostile. ‘What about me, indeed?’ She raised her eyebrows. ‘I, too, will be putting my newly acquired degree to good use. I’m moving to Port Harcourt to manage Daddy’s businesses there.’
Olanna wished she still had those flashes, moments when she could tell what Kainene was thinking. When they were in primary school, they sometimes looked at each other and laughed, without speaking, because they were thinking the same joke. She doubted that Kainene ever had those flashes now, since they never talked about such things any more. They never talked about anything any more.
‘So Kainene will manage the cement factory?’ Chief Okonji asked, turning to her father.
‘She’ll oversee everything in the east, the factories and our new oil interests. She has always had an excellent eye for business.’
‘Whoever said you lost out by having twin daughters is a liar,’ Chief Okonji said.
‘Kainene is not just like a son, she is like two,’ her father said. He glanced at Kainene and Kainene looked away, as if the pride on his face did not matter, and Olanna quickly focused on her plate so that neither would know she had been watching them. The plate was elegant, light green, the same colour as the avocado.
‘Why don’t you all come to my house this weekend, eh?’ Chief Okonji asked. ‘If only to sample my cook’s fish pepper soup. The chap is from Nembe; he knows what to do with fresh fish.’
Her parents cackled loudly. Olanna was not sure how that was funny, but then it was the minister’s joke.
‘That sounds wonderful,’ Olanna’s father said.
‘It will be nice for all of us to go before Olanna leaves for Nsukka,’ her mother said.
Olanna felt a slight irritation, a prickly feeling on her skin. ‘I would love to come, but I won’t be here this weekend.’
‘You won’t be here?’ her father asked. She wondered if the expression in his eyes was a desperate plea. She wondered, too, how her parents had promised Chief Okonji an affair with her in exchange for the contract. Had they stated it verbally, plainly, or had it been implied?
‘I have made plans to go to Kano, to see Uncle Mbaezi and the family, and Mohammed as well,’ she said.
Her father stabbed at his avocado. ‘I see.’
Olanna sipped her water and said nothing.
After dinner, they moved to the balcony for liqueurs. Olanna liked this after-dinner ritual and often would move away from her parents and the guests to stand by the railing, looking at the tall lamps that lit up the paths below, so bright that the swimming pool looked silver and the hibiscus and bougainvillea took on an incandescent patina over their reds and pinks. The first and only time Odenigbo visited her in Lagos, they had stood looking down at the swimming pool and Odenigbo threw a bottle cork down and watched it plunk into the water. He drank a lot of brandy, and when her father said that the idea of Nsukka University was silly, that Nigeria was not ready for an indigenous university, and that receiving support from an American university – rather than a proper university in Britain – was plain daft, he raised his voice in response. Olanna had thought he would realize that her father only wanted to gall him and show how unimpressed he was by a senior lecturer from Nsukka. She thought he would let her father’s words go. But his voice rose higher and higher as he argued about Nsukka being free of colonial influence, and she had blinked often to signal him to stop, although he may not have noticed since the veranda was dim. Finally the phone rang and the conversation had to end. The look in her parents’ eyes was grudging respect, Olanna could tell, but it did not stop them from telling her that Odenigbo was crazy and wrong for her, one of those hot-headed university people who talked and talked until everybody had a headache and nobody understood what had been said.
‘Such a cool night,’ Chief Okonji said behind her. Olanna turned around. She did not know when her parents and Kainene had gone inside.
‘Yes,’ she said.
Chief Okonji stood in front of her. His agbada was embroidered with gold thread around the collar. She looked at his neck, settled into rolls of fat, and imagined him prying the folds apart as he bathed.
‘What about tomorrow? There’s a cocktail party at Ikoyi Hotel,’ he said. ‘I want all of you to meet some expatriates. They are looking for land and I can arrange for them to buy from your father at five or six times the price.’
‘I
