Stephen was straightening the books his father had disarranged. “Oh, ma, I’ve got the name of the stuff to kill those things.”
“What things?” said his mother, not turning.
“Those things that are eating the bindings.”
“Silverfish,” she said.
“You can get it from the chemist. It’s called Eradem, you just sprinkle it on the shelves.”
She said, “He knows how to stop them being eaten up but he never opens one.”
Wentz was talking to the two guests but the interjection came from him like a voice taking over a medium. “What time has he got. You know he hardly gets through the schoolwork.”
“That’s right.”
His attention hung in the air a moment, probing her; then he took up again the discussion of the new university, disagreeing with Bray that the concentration ought to be on the sciences, in particular engineering.
“Well I don’t see how any one of these new African universities is going to find enough students of a suitable educational level to fill places in half-a-dozen different faculties,” Bray was saying. “The sensible solution would be for those countries linked by geographical, economic, and other ties to plan a kind of federation of higher education, each university concentrating on one or two faculties, and drawing upon all the territories for students. Here, I think the university should start off by offering degree courses in engineering and medicine only. The people who want to read the humanities have Makerere and Lusaka to go to. That way you could build up firstclass teaching staff and equipment, instead of spreading the jam so thin and lowering standards.”
“Then you’ll still have to have some kind of interim programme — I don’t know … something between the school and the university. For the general level of education of your youngsters — also the ones who are going to go to the universities in neighbouring countries, nnh?”
“No one’s questioning that,” Dando said. “It’s a recognized principle — a school of further study or some such.”
“But what’s against combining it with the university, then? That’s what they’re really doing, by lowering the entrance qualifications here. You just take a little longer to go through your degree course, that’s all. But if the university would specialize, Colonel, then you’ve got to have this extra school or whatever, another foundation, another administration, just for the people who are going to study law or languages somewhere outside.”
“What’s needed is technologists, mining engineers, electrical engineers, my dear Hjalmar, not a lot of patriotic idiots writing theses on African literature!” Dando exploded.
“If I want to read law, I don’t know where I’ll go,” Stephen said, pleased.
“Not law, for you,” Hjalmar said. “If you’ve got to get out, you can’t practise law in another country. That’s the way to get caught.”
“Come on, Hjalmar, you drop-out, you could do some teaching at a college preparing people for university, you could contribute something to the nation.”
Wentz poured Dando another glass of aquavit. “Kant and Hegel for the graduates of the mission schools.” Smiling at himself: “If I remember anything to teach.”
“If you can teach, you should,” Bray said. And added, turning to Margot Wentz, “Why do we say that with such certainty, always? How does one know what is right for other people to do?” She took it with a considering smile, like an apology. She said quietly to her daughter, “And how was your cocktail party?”
The girl shrugged and looked into a distance.
“The trade commissioner for the People’s Republic of China, wasn’t it?” said Hjalmar, for the guests, knowing perfectly well what it was. “Very elegant. With paper lanterns and fireworks. Yes!” He pulled a comically impressed face, as at the feat of a precocious child.
Emmanuelle suddenly grinned delightfully. “You should’ve seen Ras bowing from the waist. Everybody bowing from the waist. A eurythmics class. A man’s invited Ras and me to some youth thing in China. He had a long talk with me — through an interpreter of course. Asked me how I’d broken free of neo-colonialist influence. I didn’t know what to say.”
Her brother said to her, “Why does Ras always say ‘longwedge’ for ‘language’, he talks about African ‘longwedges’? Sounds so funny.”
“Go to hell.” Emmanuelle sat up straight.
Stephen laughed, protested. “No, really, why does he … I mean it sounds … I always notice it. …”
She was raised like a cobra, her small head ready to strike. “Get back to your beer bottles.”
His half-afraid, uncomfortable laughter made him writhe; but she was the one who left the room, ignoring everyone. “Hi, Emmanuelle, where’re you going?” Dando called. “Aren’t you going to play the flute for me tonight? What have I done to you, my beauty? Come here!”
“Not Emmanuelle,” said Margot Wentz.
“She’s good, she’s good,” Dando said to Bray.
“Yes, you must hear her another time,” her mother said.
“But there’s no one to teach her, here, that is the trouble,” Hjalmar said. “She’s really very talented. She plays the violin, too. She gets it from Margot’s father, it’s rather nice, she was named for him, too. Emmanuel Gottlieb, the physicist, you might have heard of …?”
Margot Wentz waved away the possibility.
“You should hear how she can play African instruments, Colonel Bray,” Stephen said. “That little hand-piano thing? What she gets out of it! The thing you play with your thumbs.”
“You know Ras Asahe, from broadcasting?” said Hjalmar. “He’s going to do a programme with her playing local instruments. I don’t know what it’s about. He has all sorts of ideas.”
“I used to know his father,” Bray said. “They’re a bright family.”
Everyone was rather tired. There was the sort of silence that winds up an evening. Hjalmar Wentz looked quickly at his wife, and then slowly from Dando to Bray. He spoke in a low tone, a gesture to the presence of the boy, Stephen. “One doesn’t know quite what do do, in these circumstances. You saw tonight. He takes her about everywhere. He must be at least twelve years older; a man of the world. Normally one wouldn’t hesitate to put a stop to it. If he were a white man. But as it is, it’s awkward. … As soon as Margot says anything to Emmanuelle, she thinks … As if, with us, that would ever come into it!” His face was full of the hurt his daughter had no doubt not hesitated to fling at him.
Stephen proclaimed his presence. “Emmanuelle’ll use anything to get her own way.”
But Margot Wentz had the closed, dreamy face of one who is angry to hear private matters put before strangers. They spoke of trivial, friendly things for a few minutes before leaving.
Chapter 4
The invitation to lunch with Mweta came with a telephone call from Joy Mweta herself. Bray had already talked to her at various receptions and they had danced together — for the first time in all the years he had known her — at the Independence Ball. “You know where we’re living now, of course?” she said in her cheerful, chuckling voice, and they laughed. The newspapers had made much of the fact that until the day the President moved into what had been the Governor’s Residence, he had continued to live in the little three-roomed, tin-roofed house in Kasalete Township which had been his home ever since he and Joy came to the capital from Gala. “Is it a formal lunch?” She was a little scornful— “Adamson just wants to see you. At least I hope it will be only you. My baby says to me, mama, why do all these people come and live with us?”