as well, in their own way; and it seemed to me that people near the bottom, who responded more instinctively to things, had the greater fear. The fear was real, not affected, and I felt it was this, rather than ideas of beauty and history and culture (as some people said), that was keeping the past and all the old gods close.
A Lagos city councillor said to me, “Even the pastor of the church will go very quietly, if he can, to the traditional priest and the shrine. Let me tell you: the average African is very afraid of the pagan, and the pagan is there. Muslims and Christians practise forgiveness and cannot harm you. In the pagan religion there is no forgiveness. It is a tit-for-tat religion. There are rules you have to follow very strictly, and if you go against them you either die or go mad. They punish swiftly and they stick to it. They adhere to what the priests in the shrines or the gods demand. So you see it has a strong hold.”
3
THERE WAS a king of Lagos. He was called the Oba. There are Obas or chiefs all over Nigeria, some hereditary, some appointed (and paid) by the central government. The Oba of Lagos had nothing of the antiquity and mystery of the Kabaka of Uganda; he didn’t have subjects, properly speaking; he didn’t call up the religious awe. This Oba was a businessman and a policeman. His Oba-ship had been challenged by someone, as I had heard; and the case was still before the courts. In the meantime the Oba ruled and was generally accepted. He had had a long and distinguished career in the police service; he had retired at the very top, as DIG (Deputy Inspector-General).
The Oba knew Edun, and Edun thought I should see him. When I said the meeting was a good idea, Edun right away took out his mobile and telephoned the Oba. That was like Edun. He didn’t like to waste time; it was one reason for his business success. I could hear, from what was taking place on the telephone, that the Oba had his doubts, perhaps about writers generally, or perhaps just about me. Edun talked him round: there would be no interview, no direct quotations. So a meeting was fixed, and Edun promised to come with me. I was glad about that; it made the business of the royal audience more manageable.
He was a king of the people here in Lagos, and he lived in a popular part of the town, off a very long street of traders and their small shops. The Nigerians love to trade; there are traders in the unlikeliest places. The visitor, seeing a crowd in constant movement, can often find himself wondering who the buyers are and who the sellers, and (since the quantities dealt in can be so small) what accidents have led them to choose their respective roles. A buyer, it seems, can easily be a vendor, and a vendor the other thing.
All at once, in the long street of traders, and after a house with a roughly painted notice on its upper story which said that the house belonged to a royal family (not our Oba), after this in a side road there was a concrete arch of two interlocking V’s, one inverted. This arch framed the royal purlieus. On the right-hand side were more small shops, some selling plastic trinkets; in front of them were food vendors with trays. On the left-hand side was the royal street, properly speaking. A big black iron gate barred the way. There was a sentry in a sentry-box. Edun rolled down the glass window and the sentry waved us on. We passed a small concrete house, unremarkable in every way; this was the old palace of the Oba, before Nigerian oil and money. The new palace was just ahead. It was like a middle-class residential house.
The crowd outside seemed ordinary at first, but very soon the eye began to take in more. The people, men and women, were attendants on the Oba. They were bright-eyed and expectant and smiling. Some of them were drummers; others made a lesser kind of noise with bits of old metal. This took me back to Trinidad and the nineteen-forties, when the steel band was being perfected. A sweet metallic noise was called up from the discarded wheels of motor-cars. Men held the old wheels aloft in their left hand, to keep the sound