Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

photo he searched her expression, looking for what he did not know. He wrote a few pages in a burst of manic productivity, fictional portraits of a tall ebony-colored woman with a near-flat chest. He went to the British Council Library and looked up her father in the business journals. He copied down all four of the numbers next to OZOBIA in the phone book. He picked up the phone many times and put it back when he heard the operator’s voice. He practiced what he would say in front of the mirror, the gestures he would make, although he was aware that she would not see him if they spoke over the phone. He considered sending her a card or perhaps a basket of fruit. Finally, he called. She didn’t sound surprised to hear from him. Or perhaps it was just that she sounded too calm, while his heart hammered in his chest.
    “Would you like to meet for a drink?” he asked.
    “Yes. Shall we say Zobis Hotel at noon? It’s my father’s, and I can get us a private suite.”
    “Yes, yes, that would be lovely.”
    He hung up, shaken. He was not sure if he should be excited, if
private suite
was suggestive. When they met in the hotel lounge, she moved close so that he could kiss her cheek and then led the way upstairs, to the terrace, where they sat looking down at the palm trees by the swimming pool. It was a sunny, luminous day. Once in a while, a breeze swayed the palms, and he hoped it would not tousle his hair too much and that the umbrella above would keep away those unflattering ripe-tomato spots that appeared on his cheeks whenever he was out in the sun.
    “You can see Heathgrove from here,” she said, pointing. “The iniquitously expensive and secretive British secondary school my sister and I attended. My father thought we were too young to be sent abroad, but he was determined that we be as European as possible.”
    “Is it the building with the tower?”
    “Yes. The entire school is just two buildings, really. There were very few of us there. It is so exclusive many Nigerians don’t even know it exists.” She looked into her glass for a while. “Do you have siblings?”
    “No. I was an only child. My parents died when I was nine.”
    “Nine. You were young.”
    He was pleased that she didn’t look too sympathetic, in the false way some people did, as if they had known his parents even though they hadn’t.
    “They were very often away. It was Molly, my nanny, who really raised me. After they died, it was decided I would live with my aunt in London.” Richard paused, pleased to feel the strangely inchoate intimacy that came with talking about himself, something he rarely did. “My cousins Martin and Virginia were about my age but terribly sophisticated; Aunt Elizabeth was quite grand, you see, and I was the cousin from the tiny village in Shropshire. I started thinking about running away the first day I arrived there.”
    “Did you?”
    “Many times. They always found me. Sometimes just down the street.”
    “What were you running to?”
    “What?”
    “What were you running to?”
    Richard thought about it for a while. He knew he was running away from a house that had pictures of long-dead people on the walls breathing down on him. But he didn’t know what he was running toward. Did children ever think about that?
    “Maybe I was running to Molly. I don’t know.”
    “I knew what I wanted to run to. But it didn’t exist, so I didn’t leave,” Kainene said, leaning back on her seat.
    “How so?”
    She lit a cigarette, as if she had not heard his question. Her silences left him feeling helpless and eager to win back her attention. He wanted to tell her about the roped pot. He was not sure where he first read about Igbo-Ukwu art, about the native man who was digging a well and discovered the bronze castings that may well be the first in Africa, dating back to the ninth century. But it was in
Colonies Magazine
that he saw the photos. The roped pot stood out immediately; he ran a finger over the