I noticed that, no matter how powerfully Iffe bargained, she always projected an image of friendship and generosity. To make each customer feel happy with her purchase, and return another day — that was her aim. And so Iffe introduced a kind of mock-intimacy at the onion stand, an air of human closeness mixed with spectacle; her gifts encouraged this, since the extra onions, wrapped at the end of the sale and quickly removed from view, could be assessed only by the one involved in the transaction; and since that person could not know the size of another’s gift, she had no standard by which to judge her own, whose true value remained elusive.
Several times a week the Honeymans’ cook came to buy onions. She was an old woman with dry skin, and her hair was wrapped in a white scarf, which indicated she had performed the hajj. Tall, yet hunched, grasping, shrewd, reptilian, she had very few of her teeth left. Often she chewed — but on what? And from between those dark gums came all her cunning, gossip and sour odours.
‘Ku aro,’ she said one afternoon, and put her empty basin on the ground. She chose a pile of onions and paid. There was a pause. The real bargaining was about to begin. The Honeymans’ cook began to sway from side to side. She gathered her loose jaw into an attitude of firm (yet somehow benign) force, raised her black eyes to a point on the horizon and said, ‘I think the world will soon end.’
‘I cannot believe it,’ Iffe replied.
‘Buy a small pile for two pennies? Whasamatter?’
‘I cannot believe the world will end because you don’t get a pile for less than two pennies.’
‘Can a porson chop if onions begin to cost money like that?’ The Honeymans’ cook gestured to a passer-by. ‘Eh? Have you seen anything like it before?’ But the woman continued down the vegetable line.
‘This girl na waya o!’ cried the Honeymans’ cook. Then, imploringly, ‘Drop on a little.’
‘This is how I sell it.’
‘Don’t be a stronghead.’
Iffe said nothing.
‘You think I’m an oyinbo?’
There was a pause.
‘Or picken with a small belly?’
‘I need to make profit,’ Iffe said.
The Honeymans’ cook remained silent. She passed a bead from hand to hand. Then, after several minutes, she bent as far as her hunched frame allowed and said, conspiratorially, her wide grey lips close to my ear, ‘This is not the first time the price is so high.’ She unbent herself and said loudly, ‘Iffe, I think you can remember! That time of Hitla. There were very few onions in Eko. Five pennies couldn’t buy a single pile. Ikoko Omon, can you imagine! People begin to use that onion powder. Yekpe!’ The Honeymans’ cook made a hacking sound that might have been laughter. ‘Our trouble was more than. Iffe, can you remember?’ Iffe nodded her head. ‘So,’ the Honeymans’ cook bent to address me once again, ‘I asked a few questions. And they said this Hitla is the man who is stopping onions from reaching Eko. I said this Hitla must be a nonsense foolish man. Does he want everybody to die? Ikoko Omon, do you hear! But it was not Hitla but the government. They were chopping onions for the soja! Ehen. Well, Iffe, she wouldn’t allow her people to starve. Some woman. Not so? Ikoko Omon! Eh? So she said she must gather a protest because she wants her people to prosper. The reason is because she is a big honest woman.’ The Honeymans’ cook raised her hands above her head. Passers-by had stopped to listen. She coughed at length, then continued her story. ‘Oh yes. I remember. Iffe went to the Alaga and said that she will join the onion sellers in a big protest. The Alaga began to look at Iffe, straight for her in face. “Iffe,” she said. “Iffe, you are a good woman before.” The next day now Iffe took the women to Government House. They were singing and dancing, up down, up down up. The noise of the women grew. But some they were getting scared. The government was trying to cut their heart. Some were forming fool. Some began to hala. So Iffe closed her eyes and said, “All those who are getting scared … go home.” Not so?’ Iffe smiled. The Honeymans’ cook was enjoying her story, as was I, and the onlookers too. ‘And Iffe kept her eyes closed. Well, so when she opened them no porson went. Very soon Iffe asked to see the governor. But he didn’t agree to come out. So the women sang.’ The Honeymans’ cook gestured expansively. She sang for me.
Governor Richards!
A big man with a big ulcer!
Your behaviour is deplorable.
Governor is a thief.
Council members thief.
Anyone who does not know Iffe
trouble no dey ring bell.
Oh you, vagina’s head seeks vengeance.
You men, vagina’s head seeks vengeance.
Ehen. Well, the Governor he didn’t agree to Iffe’s terms. So what did she do? She put stones in the onion sacks to make up the price! Ha! Iffe, God don butter your bread!’
It was a striking story. And yet what impressed me more than the account of the demonstration, more than the belligerence of the market women, was the excitement the Honeymans’ cook had introduced to the bargaining process: the brilliant length of the tale, her bold flattery, the spectacular waving of her feeble arms. But even more striking was Iffe’s response. She must have been aware of the charade, alert to the charming words whose purpose was self-gain. Nevertheless she granted a superior gift to the Honeymans’ cook. Reward the deceiver? I was astonished. And I arrived at a fresh way of understanding the market: what I had thought was fuelled wholly by the need for profit was, I understood, reliant also on spectacle, on the ritual of display, so that she who bargained most creatively, or more skilfully and emotively than the other, or excited the other’s pride, won the greater bargain. And I understood that to trade was, like other human endeavours, a form of theatre.
So there was play-acting involved in trading! This was a revelation to me. To have noticed drama at the market, and to have become aware of Iffe’s place in that drama, might have been to shatter my admiration for her. It might have led me to feel I had caught her unawares, and had discovered the artlessness or inauthenticity beneath her charm. But it was the contrary. My eyes shone for her all over again. It was thrilling to recognize qualities in her that until now my observations of her had taught me to reject. Those gifts of presence and personality that had impressed me for their authenticity — the unhurried gestures which seemed always to call up from the well of human feelings a genuine response, the moisture on her nose indicating an honest day’s work, her rich voice I thought the very embodiment of natural resonance — shifted meaning, became the contrary, for I now admired those gifts precisely for their theatricality.
By four o’clock, when the last of the onions had been packed away, we began our journey home. I paused before setting off, for I experienced a splendid joy in treading in the place Iffe’s feet had landed only a moment before. I felt extraordinarily happy and light. On the bus, I recall the grey mass of cloud that hung over the sea. What else do I recall from that day? Stepping from the bus to discover the street-lamps had been newly electrified and the humming in and out as we walked between them. Coming round the corner to the first sight of home, where under the swallow’s nest Riley’s pointer sat waiting to gulp down what fell to her from that teeming pod. And yet the last thing I recall was the presence at my side of Iffe, who became more beautiful to me the longer I stayed in her company. And I knew I could no longer consider myself an autonomous being, and that I wanted to be like Iffe in every way, and would do everything in my power to assimilate her qualities, the moment when, walking through the front garden, she looked at me, raised her clammy fingers to her lips and yawned.