Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Page B

told him about the people she had met since she began to work with her father, how they were all the same. “The new Nigerian upper class is a collection of illiterates who read nothing and eatfood they dislike at overpriced Lebanese restaurants and have social conversations around one subject: ‘How’s the new car behaving?’” Once, she laughed. Once, she held his hand. But she did not ask him into the suite and he wondered if she wanted to give it time or if she had decided that it was not the sort of relationship she wanted with him after all.
    He could not bring himself to act. Days passed before she finally asked if he wanted to go inside, and he felt like an understudy who hoped the actor would not show up and then, when the actor finally did fail to come, became crippled by awkwardness, not quite as ready as he had thought he was for the stage lights. She led the way inside. When he began to pull her dress up above her thighs, she pushed him away calmly, as if she knew his frenzy was simply armor for his fear. She hung her dress over the chair. He was so terrified of failing her again that seeing himself erect made him deliriously grateful, so grateful that he was only just inside her before he felt that involuntary tremble that he could not stop. They lay there, he on top of her, for a while, and then he rolled off. He wanted to tell her that this had never happened to him before. His sex life with Susan was satisfactory, through perfunctory.
    “I’m so sorry,” he said.
    She lit a cigarette, watching him. “Would you like to come to dinner tonight? My parents have invited a few people.”
    For a moment he was taken aback. Then he said, “Yes, I’d love to.” He hoped the invitation meant something, reflected a change in her perception of the relationship. But when he arrived at her parents’ house in Ikoyi, she introduced him by saying, “This is Richard Churchill,” and then stopped with a pause that felt like a deliberate dare to her parents and the other guests to think what they would. Her father looked him over and asked what he did.
    “I’m a writer,” he said.
    “A writer? I see,” Chief Ozobia said.
    Richard wished he hadn’t said he was a writer and so he added, as if to make up for saying he was a writer, “I’m fascinated by the discoveries at Igbo-Ukwu. The bronze castings.”
    “Hmm,” Chief Ozobia murmured. “Do you have any family doing business in Nigeria?”
    “No, I’m afraid not.”
    Chief Ozobia smiled and looked away. He didn’t say very much else to Richard for the rest of the evening. Neither did Mrs. Ozobia, who followed her husband around, her manner regal, her beauty more intimidating close up. Olanna was different. Her smile was guarded when Kainene introduced them, but as they talked, she became warmer and he wondered if the flicker in her eyes was pity, if she could tell how keen he was to say the right things and yet didn’t know what those right things were. Her warmth flattered him.
    He felt strangely bereft when she sat far from him at the table. The salad had just been served when she began to discuss politics with a guest. Richard knew it was about the need for Nigeria to become a republic and stop claiming Queen Elizabeth as head of state, but he did not pay close attention until she turned to him and asked, “Don’t you agree, Richard?” as if his opinion mattered.
    He cleared his throat. “Oh, absolutely,” he said, even though he wasn’t sure what it was he was agreeing with. He felt grateful that she had pulled him into the conversation, included him, and he was charmed by that quality of hers that seemed both sophisticated and naïve, an idealism that refused to be suffocated by gritty reality. Her skin glowed. Her cheekbones rose as she smiled. But she lacked Kainene’s melancholy mystique, which exhilarated and confused him. Kainene sat next to him and said little throughout dinner, once sharply asking a steward tochange a glass that