the thing was going to be financed. 'At the same time,' said Max, acting the perfect chairman, 'I can't say that I blame Odili for making that point. He's always been a stickler for thoroughness. Do you know the name we called him at school? Diligent.' Everyone laughed. 'I should add that he was called Cool Max,' I said. 'He always played it cool.' 'And still does,' said the lady with a wink at him. 'I beg your pardon,' protested Max playfully. 'Anyhow, lady and gentlemen, or rather, gentlemen and lady, to borrow our friend's fine example...' 'Max!' protested the girl in mock outrage. 'Well, I never!' 'I think to save all difficulty---yes? we should simply say comrades---yes?' suggested the European, laughing nervously which made me think he wasn't joking like the rest of us. 'Hear! hear!' said the trade-unionist. 'Yes,' said Max coolly, 'except that as I said several times before, I don't want anybody to say we are communists. We can't afford the label. It would simply finish us. Our opponents would point at us and say, "Look at those crazy people who want to have everything in common including their wives", and that would be the end of it. That's the plain fact.' 'I don't know about that,' said the trade-unionist. 'I think our trouble in this country is that we are too nervous. We say we are neutral but as soon as we hear communist we begin de shake and piss for trouser. Excuse me,' he said to the lady and dropped the pidgin as suddenly as he had slid into it. 'The other day somebody asked me why did I go to Russia last January. I told him it was because if you look only in one direction your neck will become stiff....' We all laughed loud, especially the European. 'I know, Joe...' began Max, but Joe did not yield easily. 'No, excuse me, Max,' he said, 'I am serious. We are either independent in this country or we are not.' 'We are not,' said Max, and everyone laughed again, including Joe this time, all the heat apparently siphoned off him. I was struck by Max's cool, sure touch. He was clearly in control of the situation. And he seemed to me to have just the right mixture of faith and down-to-earth practical common sense. 'We will not win the next election,' he told me on another occasion. In itself it was a fairly obvious statement; but how many mushroom political parties had we seen spring up, prophesy a landslide victory for themselves and then shrivel up again. 'What we must do is get something going,' said Max, 'however small, and wait for the blow-up. It's bound to come. I don't know how or when but it's got to come. You simply cannot have this stagnation and corruption going on indefinitely.' 'How do you propose getting the money?' 'We will get some,' he smiled, 'enough to finance ordinary election expenses. We will leave mass bribing of the electors to P. O. P. and P. A. P. We will simply drop cats among their pigeons here and there, stand aside and watch. I am right now assembling all the documentary evidence I can find of corruption in high places. Brother, it will make you weep.' 'I am sure.' Because I had asked him jokingly as we were about to retire to bed if he still wrote poetry, Max had gone and fished out lines he wrote seven years ago to the music of a famous highlife. He wrote it during the intoxicating months of high hope soon after Independence. Now he sang it like a dirge. And, believe me, tears welled up at the back of my eyes; tears for the dead, infant hope. You may call me sentimental if you like. I have the poem, 'Dance-offering to the Earth-Mother', right here before me as I write and could quote the whole of it; but it could never convey in print the tragic feeling I had that evening as Max sang it tapping his foot to the highlife rhythm, and bringing back vividly the gaiety and high promise of seven years ago which now seemed more than seven lifetimes away! I will return home to her---many centuries have I wandered--- And I will make my offering at the feet of my lovely Mother: I will rebuild
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