Ghosts
The chapter opens with the narrator, a 71‑year‑old retired mathematics professor, standing at the university Bursary to inquire again about his unpaid pension. He is greeted by the clerk Ugwuoke and another clerk chewing a pink kola nut. Around a flame tree, a group of tattered men discuss the stolen pension money, cursing the vice‑chancellor, and the narrator buys them bananas and groundnuts. Vincent, his former driver from the 1980s, appears; the narrator chats with him about his daughter Nkiru in America, reminisces about his late wife Ebere, and reflects on the harsh Harmattan season and his skin‑care rituals.
While walking toward his car, the narrator spots Ikenna Okoro, a man believed dead for 37 years. They shake hands, hug, and sit down to talk. Ikenna recounts his supposed death on 6 July 1967 during the evacuation of Nsukka, describing how the narrator’s car stopped his fleeing, how Ikenna drove back onto campus for manuscripts, and how he escaped the fallen campus on a Red Cross plane to Sweden. He explains his involvement in Biafran propaganda: organizing rallies, fundraising in European capitals, and coordinating relief flights to Uli. He reveals that he never remarried after his wife Nnenna’s death and that he retired only last year, prompting his return to Nigeria.
The conversation shifts to the narrator’s personal losses: the death of his wife Ebere three years earlier and the lingering “visits” he feels from her in the night. He tells Ikenna about the post‑war devastation of their Nsukka home—charred books, ruined piano, and the decay of their belongings. He also shares a vivid memory of transporting a wounded Biafran soldier whose blood stained their car’s seat, a story he tells Ikenna to illustrate the war’s brutality.
Ikenna asks about the narrator’s daughter Zik (now a doctor in Connecticut) and about life in Sweden, receiving terse answers. He expresses sorrow over Ebere’s death, and the narrator claims she still “visits” him in dreams. The two discuss the current state of the university: the Staff Club’s decline, corrupt vice‑chancellors, pension fraud, lecturers falsifying birth dates, and the rampant problem of fake drugs, which Ikenna mentions casually. The narrator updates Ikenna on his own routine—reading newspapers, dealing with unreliable electricity and telephone service, caring for his househelp Harrison, and the occasional visits from his granddaughter Nkiru asking if his life is good.
Ikenna says he will travel to Enugu later; he declines an invitation to the narrator’s home. The narrator watches Ikenna walk away, reflecting on “what might have been” and the lingering ghosts of the war. He drives home, noting the hazardous traffic, his aging Mercedes, and the changed landscape of Nigerian academia. The chapter ends with the narrator alone in his study, listening for sounds in the dark, contemplating his solitary existence after a life marked by war, loss, and lingering obligations.