Wole Soyinka: The Interpreters (1965)
'Metal on concrete jars my drink lobes'. This was Sagoe, grumbling as he stuck fingers in his ears against the mad screech of iron tables. Then his neck was nearly snapped as Dehinwa leapt up and Sagoe's head dangled in the void where her lap had been. Bandele's arms never ceased to surprise. At half-span they embraced table and chairs, pushed them deep into the main wall as dancers dodged long chameleon tongues of the cloudburst and the wind leapt at them, visibly malevolent. In a moment only the band was left.
The 'plop' continued some time before its meaning became clear to Egbo and he looked up at the leaking roof in disgust, then threw his beer into the rain muttering.
'I don't need his pity. Someone tell God not to weep in my beer.'
*
That's the arresting, some would say dismaying, opening of the novel the thirty-year-old Wole Soyinka published in 1965, The Interpreters. It did not offer to be a novel that slipped down easily.
The scene is a nightclub (the Cambana) in Lagos. The group of young men are getting more drunk, Sagoe especially. (His girlfriend Dehinwa isn't drinking.) They are sitting outside the main framework of the building in one of the partitioned cubicles for private groups, but the fierce rain has just started, there's a rush to move tables and chairs under the awning. Within the cubicle Bandele with his long arms is shunting their table and all the chairs at once, Dehinwa has had to leap up leaving the prone Sagoe's head unsupported. When they sit down again, Egbo's beer turns out to be right under a drip from the roof.
The action can be extricated from the dense prose, but there's more here than the action. Egbo is already matching himself against the gods, glinting with an Ogun manner. Sagoe is already complaining in his self-centred yet fanciful and somehow not quite charmless way.
The novel spends more time on these two characters than any of the others, yet strangely they have little to do with each other's lives, they never come into real conflict nor into real harmony. They have been friends since childhood, and in Chapter 5 we catch a glimpse of them back in Sunday School, exchanging notes about the weekly purgatives being foisted on them by Sagoe's mother. (Sagoe's troubled stomach being already a shaping concern of his young life.).
But now, still part of the same circle of friends, they discreetly keep their distance. At one point Egbo goes into a rant to Kola and Bandele about how the past should be dead and the dead should be past:
". . .They owe the living a duty to be forgotten quickly, usefully. Believe me, the dead should have no faces."
"You and Sagoe should get together," Kola said.
"He is a politician."
"Meaning? You tell me what new African doesn't spew politics."
"You see? You don't even know what I am talking about. . . ."
(from The Interpreters, Chapter 9 (p. 120))
The novel isn't really focussed on interrelationships. Instead its characteristic image is already here on the opening page. A dazzle of physical action and activity around them, and these bright upwardly mobile returnees to a newly post-colonial Nigeria -- drunk, confused by their surroundings and confused by their personal inner conflicts. A little directionless, not knowing quite what to make of it all or what to do with their lives.
And the "visibly malevolent" wind is an early hint at the underlying presence of the amphibious lagoon country and the Yoruba pantheon of gods who play actively yet indecipherably across the novel's experience of modern SW Nigeria. Felt as presence rather than outright protagonists.
Here's another moment when Egbo thinks about Sagoe and tries a summation, the language buckling:
Under the heavy brood of grey, Egbo began to wonder how high the water had risen in the church of Lazarus. He remembered now that it was built on a slight rise of land, but the floods seemed ambitious enough for the main church, even for the altar several steps above the nave. A rotted half of a canoe shifting silt and slopping water reminded him of the telephone operator's voice in Sagoe's office which drove him mad -- and he was wondering what he had known, what he had seen, for he knew humanity welled in his throat like bilge-water in a black, decayed dug-out. Often he had watched Sagoe where he could sniff and unsniff emotions like a stranger . . . Sagoe, Sagoe . . . but then, weren't they all caught in a common centrifuge through the hurt of gilded abstractions, full of flies, reaching for a long time-whisk to brush away thought-smarts embedded in each sting . . .
(from Chapter 15 (p. 221).)
The Interpreters isn't always as stretchingly poetic as this, but even when it isn't you have to read carefully, because it's very swift.
They left the club towards morning. Egbo started them up, following out the lone dancer when the singers left, and the spell shattered about her.
'You have a rendezvous in space?' Sagoe asked. (1)
'Get lost.' (2)
'In space, certainly, what do you say, my little Secretary?' (3)
'Egbo at least is sensible. Time we all went home.' (4)
Bandele rose, 'When do you set off for Ibadan?' Sagoe asked him.
'Soon as I get up. I'm setting off before these two.' (5)
'I doubt that. Sheikh wants to get back early. But if you are ready before me, he can ride back with you.' (6)
'Anyway, if I don't see you before you go, just leave the houseboy in charge.' (7)
'You won't be back. Good-night, Dehinwa. Don't let him drive.' (8)
(beginning of Chapter 2 (pp. 31-32)).
1. Sagoe to Egbo. Referring back to his comparison of the dancer's buttocks to satellites in space (Ch. 1 (p. 25)). So a suggestion of a rendezvous between the buttocks.
2. Egbo's response to Sagoe's crudity. (And he means it literally, too -- Egbo on the hunt needs to leave his friends behind.)
3. Sagoe (perhaps a bit put out by Egbo's force) makes a weakly witty allusion to the expression "lost in space". (But he surely isn't thinking of the US TV series, whose first episodes aired in 1965.) He redirects the sexual suggestion to his girlfriend Dehinwa (who works as a secretary). Dehinwa has not allowed Sagoe to have sex with her.
4. Dehinwa's response. As often, she's the level-headed one.
5. Bandele replying to Sagoe. Bandele is a professor at the university of Ibadan. "These two" means Kola and Sekoni. Kola teaches too (art). Kola has had their troubled friend Sekoni come to live with him. Sekoni sculpts, Kola paints. Among the group of friends, these are the three who live in Ibadan (about 80 miles from Lagos). Sagoe has invited the Ibadan trio to use his flat, hoping himself to spend the night with Dehinwa. Sagoe, Dehinwa, Egbo and Lasunwon live in Lagos, as is gradually conveyed in the squabble about sleeping arrangements that follows soon after. (Strikingly, the novel never ventures any nearer to Egbo's lodgings, nor to his work in Lagos. The Egbo of the novel is always restlessly out and about.)
6. Kola speaking, hearing himself referred to. "Sheikh" is a nickname for Sekoni, who is of Islamic background (though he married a Christian).
7. Sagoe speaking. A hint that he anticipates not sleeping at his own flat. Dehinwa picks up the implication, and takes him to task about it on the next page.
8. This could be either Bandele or Kola speaking. Sounds more like Kola to me, but it's arguable.
*
Here's a minimal cribsheet to this easy-to-lose-your-way novel, with emphasis on the narrative events that move forward from Chapter 1 through to Chapter 18.
Part One
Chapter 1. Lagos: The nightclub. Flashback 1: boat trip to near Egbo's grandfather's village; Egbo could be its new ruler; Egbo's indecision. Back to the nightclub scene: Kola's drawings, the lone dancer. Flashback 2: Sekoni's power station project, aborted by a corrupt inspector.
Chapter 2. Lagos. Leaving the club (Egbo heading off in pursuit of the lone dancer). Dehinwa reluctantly taking the drunk Sagoe to her own home. Late-night scene with Dehinwa's reproving mother and aunt.
Chapter 3. Ibadan. Presentation party at Ibadan (university). Monica Faseyi and her social-climbing husband. Kola's encounter with Monica Faseyi and Usaye.
Chapter 4. Flashback 3 to a younger Egbo. His sexual initiation by Simi.
Chapter 5. Lagos. A hung-over Sagoe in Dehinwa's room. Flashback 4 to Sagoe applying for a job at the "Independent Viewpoint" newspaper. Derinola, Mathias, Sagoe's Voidante philosophy. Flashback 5 to Sagoe and Egbo (and Dehinwa), when children, at their Sunday School. Flashback 4 continued: Sagoe meets Bandele and Kola for the first time since his return from the USA. Winsala and Derinola: the job offer.
Chapter 6. Flashback 4 continued: Sagoe fails to get his report on Sekoni's power station published. Voidancy continued. Flashback 6, Sekoni and his father's pilgrimage to Old Jerusalem, then forward to Ibadan where Sekoni lives with Kola: his sculpture (The Wrestler), and Kola's squabble with Joe Golder.
Chapter 7. Lagos: Sagoe's bath, walk and taxi and walk (over Carter Bridge) to Ikoyi cemetery. The two funerals.
Chapter 8. Lagos: Sagoe witnesses the flight and capture of "Barabbas" (later named Noah). Re-encounters the albino who was at the funeral. The albino's intervention to rescue "Barabbas".
Chapter 9. Ibadan: Egbo at Bandele's. The shrine under the bridge. More memories of first night with Simi (Flashback 3). Egbo and the girl student, the mystery, they make love.
Chapter 10. Ibadan: Sagoe at Bandele's. The infuriating Peter. The Oguazors' party. (Egbo is there too, as is Kola though he later claims otherwise (Ch. 14).)
Part Two
Chapter 11. Sekoni's death in a road accident. Lagos: At the Cambana nightclub again. The albino (Lazarus), his story of dying and returning to life, his invitation to come to his church. Kola's argument with Lasunwon.
Chapter 12. Near Lagos: Lazarus, the church service, the dedication of Noah (= "Barabbas"). Bandele's reproof to the other "interpreters", to their scepticism and exploitation. Kola wishes to paint Noah. Egbo thinking of his potential village kingdom again.
Chapter 13. Ibadan: Sagoe at Bandele's. Avoiding Peter, he meets Joe Golder who invites him back to his eighth-floor apartment. Sagoe changes his mind about staying the night there. Joe's homosexuality. Sagoe's vulgar assault on James Baldwin's Another Country.
Chapter 14. Ibadan: Lunch at the Faseyis'. Bandele, Kola, Egbo. Mrs Faseyi. Kola's sense of betrayal. Joe Golder's modelling for Kola.
Chapter 15. Kola's thoughts about Egbo. Flashback 7, a fight at the Mayomi club (Egbo and the thug, trussed by Bandele). Back to the present, near Lagos: Kola and Egbo lost in the rain at the lagoon, trying to re-locate the church of Lazarus. The fire. Noah panicky and trapped (we later find out that they rescue him and take him back to Ibadan).
Chapter 16. Ibadan: Kola's almost-finished painting of the Yoruba pantheon. Egbo and Simi, Kola and Monica (they are now together). Lazarus sitting for the painting. The absent Noah. Joe Golder.
Chapter 17. Ibadan: Egbo torn between Simi and the girl student. Bandele arriving at two in the morning; Joe Golder in the back seat. Noah is dead, he fell from the balcony in panic when Joe made advances. They go to tell Kola. Egbo's revulsion at Joe. Bandele's cover-up story to Lazarus.
Chapter 18. Ibadan: Sekoni's exhibition, with music by Joe Golder. Bandele gives Egbo the pregnant student's message. Egbo spits at Dr Lumoye. Bandele says (to the Lumoye/Oguazor group): "I hope you all live to bury your daughters".
 |
| Carter Bridge, Lagos in 1963 |
 |
| Page from Wole Soyinka's typescript of the poem "Idanre" (1965) |
 |
| CD cover of the Fela Ransome Kuti compilation Lagos Baby 1963-1969 mostly with his "highlife jazz" band Koola Lobitos |
Fela Ransome Kuti (1938 - 1997) was Wole Soyinka's cousin. The music in the opening scene of The Interpreters is supplied first by a highlife band and then by an itinerant apala group. In Chapter 10, at the Oguazors' pretentious party, Kola comes over to talk to Monica Faseyi and "then begin quite crazily to do a slow High Life to the ballet music playing softly from hidden speakers".
*
Wole Soyinka is better known as a playwright and poet than as a novelist. But The Interpreters has always been guardedly attended to. Its strikingly experimental idiom, its mixture of blur and overload, sparked praise from some and unease in others about whether this was the way a truly African novel should go about things. Wasn't this modernism, and wasn't modernism intrinsically American/European? Some of that debate is captured in this piece by Nasrullah Mambrol:
https://literariness.org/2019/04/12/analysis-of-wole-soyinkas-novels/
*
Soyinka himself has always been an outspoken and independent voice. For example, he did not fully buy in to the pan-African ethos embodied in the esteemed African Writers Series (AWS), calling it "The Orange Ghetto". He saw the dangers of a self-limiting definition. Nevertheless, his own books sold in far greater volume once they were republished in the AWS.
(See this fascinating 2018 piece on the AWS by Josh MacPhee in Lapham's Quarterly:
https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/judged-its-covers .)
The copy of The Interpreters I picked up last year was of course an AWS one. It contained notes by Eldred Jones as well as an indispensable glossary. (These notes seem to refer to an editor's Introduction that isn't present in this edition.)
*
As I write (June 2021), Wole Soyinka's third novel is about to be published, a mere 56 years after The Interpreters.
Labels: African Writers Series, Wole Soyinka
Permalink posted by Michael Peverett @ 2:59 pm
0 comments
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home