Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Page B

were jokes to illustrate each African trait. The uppity African stood out in Richard’s mind: An African was walking a dog and an Englishman asked, “What are you doing with that monkey?” and the African answered, “It’s a dog, not a monkey”—as if the Englishman had been talking to him!
    Richard laughed at the jokes. He tried, too, not to drift throughout the conversations, not to show how awkward he felt. He preferred talking to the women, although he had learned not to spend too long with a particular woman, or Susan would throw a glass at the wall when they got home. He was baffled the first time it happened. He had spent a short time talking to Clovis Bancroft about her brother’s life as a district commissioner in Enugu years ago, and afterward Susan was silent during the drive back in her chauffeur-driven car. He thought perhaps she was dozing off; it had to be why she was not talking about somebody’s ghastly dress or the unimaginative hors d’oeuvres that had been served. But when they got back to her house, she picked up a glass from the cabinet and threw it against the wall. “That horrible little woman, Richard, and right in my face too. It’s so awful!” She sat on the sofa and buried her face in her hands until he said he was very sorry, although he was not quite sure what he was apologizing for.
    Another glass crashed some weeks later. He had talked to Julia March, mostly about her research on the
Asantehene
in Ghana, and stood absorbed, listening, until Susan came over and pulled him by the arm. Later, after the brittle splinter of shattering glass, Susan said she knew he didn’t mean to flirt but he mustunderstand that people were horribly presumptuous and the gossip here was vicious, just vicious. He had apologized again and wondered what the stewards who cleaned up the glass thought.
    Then there was the dinner at which he talked about Nok art with a university lecturer, a timid Yoruba woman who seemed to feel just as out of place as he did. He had expected Susan’s reaction and prepared to apologize before she got to the living room, so that he could save a glass. But Susan was chatty as they were driven home; she asked if his conversation with the woman had been interesting and hoped he had learned something that would be useful for his book. He stared at her in the dim interior of the car. She would not have said that if he had been talking to one of the British women, even though some of them had helped write the Nigerian constitution. It was, he realized, simply that black women were not threatening to her, were not equal rivals.
    Aunt Elizabeth had said that Susan was vivacious and charming, never mind that she was a little older than he was, and had been in Nigeria for a while and could show him round. Richard did not want to be shown round; he had managed well on his past trips abroad. But Aunt Elizabeth insisted.
Africa
was nothing like Argentina or India. She said
Africa
in the tone of one repressing a shudder, or perhaps it was because she did not want him to leave at all, she wanted him to stay in London and keep writing for the
News Chronicle
. He still did not think that anybody read his tiny column, although Aunt Elizabeth said all her friends did. But she would: The job was a bit of a sinecure after all; he would not have been offered it in the first place if the editor were not an old friend of hers.
    Richard did not try to explain his desire to see Nigeria to Aunt Elizabeth, but he did accept Susan’s offer to show him around. The first thing he noticed when he arrived in Lagos was Susan’s sparkle, her posh prettiness, the way she focused entirelyon him, touched his arm as she laughed. She spoke with authority about Nigeria and Nigerians. When they drove past the noisy markets with music blaring from shops, the haphazard stalls of the street-side hawkers, the gutters thick with moldy water, she said, “They have a marvelous energy, really, but very little sense of