Summary
Chapter 4: Second Witness: Ikem Osodi
The chapter opens with the narrator, Ikem, talking with his girlfriend and explaining to the reader that his neighbor beats his wife with some regularity. Ikem and Elewa fight often about sleeping in the same bed, and Elewa is nervous about traveling home to her apartment in a taxi because she thinks she will be stopped and beaten along her route. Ikem takes extra precautions with the taxi driver to ensure her safe passage. The next morning when Ikem arrives at the office, he takes a call from Chris who urges him again to stop writing his long editorials about His Excellency's policies.
Ikem reflects on witnessing executions and how he was surprised when His Excellency opted for such obscenities. This was the subject of his first editorial about His Excellency. Chris arrives at Ikem's office and they continue to fight about editorials; Ikem insists that he will not be told what to write. This conversation between old friends prompts Ikem's internal monologue about why worshiping a dictator is a difficult and frustrating job given the volatility of His Excellency. This conversation between Ikem and Chris is also the first time that His Excellency is referred to as Sam, implying two things: a closeness between the three of them that precedes His Excellency's rise to power and that Ikem does not worship his Excellency.
In school, His Excellency only desired to do what was expected of him—he was not very smart, but Ikem comments that power is like acting, so Sam was well suited for his rise in some regards. The poet in attendance at the party, meanwhile, is desperate for others to listen to him but no one does. Later when Chris goes home with his girlfriend Beatrice, they are discussing the sexual relationship between Sam and Gwen, as well as what all of them were like when they were younger. Ikem was smart, Sam was well-rounded, and Chris describes himself as a child of luck.
Chapter 5
Chapter 5 opens with Ikem and Mad Medico meeting for drinks. Mad Medico is the nickname of John Kent, who is neither a doctor nor mad. He also knew Ikem, Chris, and His Excellency when they were younger, and Mad Medico still calls His Excellency Sam. Through the course of their conversation, the reader learns that His Excellency's Cabinet was locked up after the delegation arrived. The conversations shifts back to Ikem, Chris, and Sam's earlier days, particularly around a story about when Mad Medico tried to set Sam up with a women, Gwen, while he was recovering in a British hospital.
Chapter 6: Beatrice
Chapter 6 is the first chapter that Beatrice, Chris' girlfriend, narrates. It begins with someone calling for her on the phone, and her first instinct is to think there has been an accident and Chris is injured. Much to her surprise, it is His Excellency calling to invite her to a small private dinner. While she used to see His Excellency quite regularly, she had not seen him in well over a year. Later in the week, a man arrives at Beatrice's house to pick her up, sent by His Excellency to bring her to the dinner. Beatrice believes they are going to the Palace, but the soldier sent to pick her up says that they are actually traveling 40 miles away to the Presidential Guest House for Abichi Lake. Beatrice is furious to be just finding this out now.
Beatrice reflects back on Chris' advice to remain cool and calm, which he gave her when she was angry that His Excellency ordered her to come to dinner without inquiring if she was free. He also implies that there may be a more consequential reason for the invitation: "Sam is not such a fool you know. He knows things are now pretty hopeless and may see in you a last hope to extricate himself. You may be able to help" (77). It is unclear how Beatrice will help, even to Chris. The guest house was a site of controversy between Ikem and Chris, and Beatrice agreed with Ikem in the argument. What was His Excellency retreating from? Basic needs of the people he is intended to serve? Chris argued that structures such as the retreat were important components of nation building: "Nations were fostered as much by structures as by laws and revolutions. These structures where they exist now are the pride of their nations. But everyone forgets that they were not erected by democratically-elected Prime Ministers but very frequently by rather unattractive, bloodthirsty medieval tyrants. The cathedrals of Europe, the Taj Mahal of India, the pyramids of Egypt and the stone towers of Zimbabwe were all raised on the backs of serfs, starving peasants and slaves. Our present rulers in Africa are in every sense late-flowering medieval monarchs, even the Marxists among them. Do you remember Mazrui calling Nkrumah a Stalinist Czar? Perhaps our leaders have to be that way. Perhaps they may even need to be that way" (79).
When Beatrice arrives, she is escorted to an opulent room full of guests. His Excellency takes her around the room and introduces her, telling the guests that she is "one of the most brilliant daughters of this country." The reader finally learns more about Beatrice in these brief moments—she is the Senior Assistant Secretary in the Ministry of Finance and the only person in the service, male or female, with a first-class honors in English. Later in the evening, Lou, the American journalist, returns to Beatrice to say that she very much wants to speak with her about the "women's angle" before leaving the country. Beatrice rebuffs her but Lou is not discouraged, though she leaves her in peace for the moment.
Beatrice assesses the people at the dinner party to be the new power brokers around His Excellency. Beatrice is seated next to His Excellency and near the American reporter, though they do not talk much during the evening. When not speaking with His Excellency, Beatrice speaks with the guest to her right, who has "no greater will for social courtesies than a standby generator has to produce electricity when the mains are performing satisfactorily" (82). The American journalist becomes increasingly drunk as the evening progresses, and she begins to interact in unusual ways with His Excellency, like leaving him in mid-conversation to speak with another guest. She also lectures the group on why the country needed to maintain its present level of foreign debt service in exchange for American aid, in the form of surplus grains, for the drought provinces. Beatrice asks if Lou has read the Daily Gazette lately, implying that she would see how deeply unpopular the debt payments are among the public. She says that she has and that she thinks the editor must be some sort of Marxist, dismissing his arguments with commentary on Cuba and Angola. His Excellency appears to agree with everything Lou is saying to the group.
After dinner, Beatrice is summoned towards a smaller group by His Excellency. He pats the side of the sofa next to him and says, "African Chiefs are always polygamists," forcing Beatrice to reconsider why she was invited to the party. It is clearly not to mediate between Chris and His Excellency. Was it to engage in polygamy? This prompts a memory from when she was a student and she danced suggestively in order to win over her boyfriend's affection from a white girl.
Analysis
There is an example of personification when Ikem explains the danger of America's influence on the state: "No, the English have, for all practical purposes, ceased to menace the world. The real danger today is from the fat, adolescent and delinquent millionaire, America, and from all those virulent, mishapen freaks like Amin and Bokassa sired on Africa by Europe." America, the country, is personified in the most undesirable of terms—as a gluttonous and immature millionaire. The description of His Excellency as a child is also quite important, and it implies that his inherent character traits expose him to the influence of older African leaders.
Chapter 5's conversation between Beatrice and Chris contains a very important quote that is an example of foreshadowing: "We are all connected. You cannot tell the story of any of us without implicating the others." How will the future of this novel show the ways in which they are connected? The use of the word implicated, which has a negative and criminal association, is also ominous and foreshadows dramatic interpersonal conflict to come.
Chapter 6 also alludes to past tension and the ways in which the relationship between Chris and His Excellency has changed, as well as insinuates that His Excellency has changed a great deal as well. While Beatrice used to see him quite regularly, she's now shocked when she hears from him. She is completely overwhelmed by his presence on the phone and stammers her way through the conversation, offering many apologies to His Excellency. What preceded this change in relationship? At this point, all of the narrators have spoken to the fact that it has changed, but it is not clear exactly what happened or if there was a particular event that precipitated the change.
Another interesting component of Chapter 6 is the change in writing style between the narrative text and the dialogue. Beatrice says the following to Agatha when the driver arrives, "Tellam make he siddon," I said, "I de nearly ready," but this style of writing is not used in the parts where she is narrating. Using the writing style of the quote would completely change the dynamic of the narration, and using it for the quote provides a stark contrast between internal monologue and dialogue.
When Beatrice is first being introduced at His Excellency's party, the initial person she meets is Lou Cranford, an American journalist. Upon learning that Beatrice is the only person in the service to receive high honors in English at her university, Lou responds, "Wow, that's terrific. How did you do it Beatrice?" While it may seem like a benign follow-up question, the element of disbelief reveals part of the condescending relationship between America and Basa. How did she do it, Lou asks, as if Beatrice accomplished an impossible task and must have used something other than diligence and hard work to accomplish this goal. Additionally, this interaction is gendered. If His Excellency was introducing a man who was the only person to achieve high honors, it's harder to imagine that he would clarify that he is the only person, including men and women, to achieve this honor. Rather, he would likely just be presented as the only person to achieve this honor.
