Half of a Yellow Sun Read Online Free

Master’s face. “We need wood, sah,” he said.
    “Wood?”
    “For your books, sah. So that I can arrange them.”
    “Oh, yes,
shelves
. I suppose we could fit more shelves somewhere, perhaps in the corridor. I will speak to somebody at the works department.”
    “Yes, sah.”
    “Odenigbo. Call me Odenigbo.”
    Ugwu stared at him doubtfully. “Sah?”
    “My name is not Sah. Call me Odenigbo.”
    “Yes, sah.”
    “Odenigbo will always be my name.
Sir
is arbitrary. You could be the
sir
tomorrow.”
    “Yes, sah—Odenigbo.”
    Ugwu really preferred
sah
, the crisp power behind the word, and when two men from the works department came a few days later to install shelves in the corridor, he told them that they would have to wait for Sah to come home; he himself could not sign the white paper with typewritten words. He said
Sah
proudly.
    “He’s one of these village houseboys,” one of the men said dismissively, and Ugwu looked at the man’s face and murmured a curse about acute diarrhea following him and all of his offspring for life. As he arranged Master’s books, he promised himself, stopping short of speaking aloud, that he would learn how to sign forms.
    In the following weeks, the weeks when he examined every corner of the bungalow, when he discovered that a beehive was lodged on the cashew tree and that the butterflies converged in the front yard when the sun was brightest, he was just as careful in learning the rhythms of Master’s life. Every morning, he picked up the
Daily Times
and
Renaissance
that the vendor dropped off at the door and folded them on the table next to Master’s tea and bread. He had the Opel washed before Master finished breakfast, and when Master came back from work and was taking a siesta, he dusted the car over again, before Master left for the tennis courts. He moved around silently on the days that Master retired to the study for hours. When Master paced the corridor talking in a loud voice, he made sure that there was hot water ready for tea. He scrubbed the floors daily. He wiped the louvers until they sparkled in the afternoon sunlight, paid attention to the tiny cracks in the bathtub, polished the saucers that he used to serve kola nut to Master’s friends. There were atleast two visitors in the living room each day, the radiogram turned on low to strange flutelike music, low enough for the talking and laughing and glass-clinking to come clearly to Ugwu in the kitchen or in the corridor as he ironed Master’s clothes.
    He wanted to do more, wanted to give Master every reason to keep him, and so one morning he ironed Master’s socks. They didn’t look rumpled, the black ribbed socks, but he thought they would look even better straightened. The hot iron hissed and when he raised it, he saw that half of the sock was glued to it. He froze. Master was at the dining table, finishing up breakfast, and would come in any minute now to pull on his socks and shoes and take the files on the shelf and leave for work. Ugwu wanted to hide the sock under the chair and dash to the drawer for a new pair but his legs would not move. He stood there with the burned sock, knowing Master would find him that way.
    “You’ve ironed my socks, haven’t you?” Master asked. “You stupid ignoramus.”
Stupid ignoramus
slid out of his mouth like music.
    “Sorry, sah! Sorry, sah!”
    “I told you not to call me sir.” Master picked up a file from the shelf. “I’m late.”
    “Sah? Should I bring another pair?” Ugwu asked. But Master had already slipped on his shoes, without socks, and hurried out. Ugwu heard him bang the car door and drive away. His chest felt weighty; he did not know why he had ironed the socks, why he had not simply done the safari suit. Evil spirits, that was it. The evil spirits had made him do it. They lurked everywhere, after all. Whenever he was ill with the fever, or once when he fell from a tree, his mother would rub his body with
okwuma
, all the while