"They have brought bamboo beds and cooking utensils already. And the new Director for Mobilization is coming next week." She sounded tired. She opened the pot on the stove and stared at the slices of boiled yam.

"What about the children, mah?"

"I was asking Headmistress if we could be relocated, and she looked at me and started laughing. We are the last. All the schools in Umuahia have become refugee camps or army training camps." She closed the pot. "I'm going to organize classes here in the yard."

"With Mrs. Muokelu?"

"Yes, and you too, Ugwu. You will teach a class."

"Yes, mah." The thought excited and flattered him. "Mah?"

"Yes?"

"Do you think the vandals are in my hometown?"

"Of course not," Olanna said sharply. "Your hometown is too small. If they stay anywhere, it will be in the university."

"But if they took the Opi road into Nsukka-"

"I said your hometown is too small! They will not be interested in staying there. There is nothing there to stay for, you see. It is just a small bush."

Ugwu looked at her and she looked at him. The silence was heavy and accusing.

"I'm going to sell my brown shoes to Mama Onitsha, and I will make a new pretty dress for Baby," Olanna said finally and Ugwu thought her voice was forced.

He began to wash the plates.

Ugwu saw the black Mercedes-Benz gliding down the road; the word director written on its metallic number plate sparkled in the sun. Near Eberechi's house, it slowed down, shiny and enormous, and Ugwu hoped they would stop and ask him where the primary school was so he would get a good look at the dashboard. They did not just stop, though; they drove past him and into the compound. An orderly in a stiff uniform jumped out to open the back door before the car came to a complete halt. He saluted as the director climbed out.

It was Professor Ezeka. He did not look as tall as Ugwu remembered; he had put on some weight and his thin neck had filled out. Ugwu stared. There was something sleek and new about him, about the fine cut of his suit, but his supercilious expression was the same, as was his hoarse voice. "Young man, is your master in?"

"No, sah," Ugwu said. In Nsukka, Professor Ezeka had called him Ugwu; now he looked as if he did not recognize him. "He has gone to work, sah."

"And your madam?"

"She has gone to the relief center, sah."

Professor Ezeka motioned for his orderly to bring a piece of paper and he scribbled a note and gave it to Ugwu. His silver pen gleamed. "Tell them the Director for Mobilization came."

"Yes, sah." Ugwu remembered his fastidious peering at glasses in Nsukka, his thin legs always crossed, disagreeing with Master. After the car drove down the street very slowly, as if the driver knew how many people were watching, Eberechi walked across. She was wearing that tight skirt that molded her buttocks to a perfect roundness.

"Neighbor, how are you?" she asked.

"I am well. How are you?"

She shrugged to say she was so-so. "Was that the Director for Mobilization himself who just left?"

"Professor Ezeka?" he asked breezily. "Yes, we knew him well in Nsukka. He used to come to our house every day to eat my pepper soup."

"Eh!" She laughed, wide-eyed. "He is a Big Man. Ihukwara moto? Did you see that car?"

"Original imported chassis."

They were silent for a while. He had never had a conversation this long with her before and had never seen her so close up. It was difficult to keep his eyes from moving down to that magnificent flare of buttocks. He struggled to focus on her face, her large eyes, the rash of pimples on her forehead, her hair plaited in thread-covered spikes. She was looking at him, too, and he wished he was not wearing the trousers with the hole near the knee.

"How is the small girl?" she asked.

"Baby is fine. She's asleep."

"Are you coming to do the primary school roof?"

Ugwu knew that an army contractor had donated some corrugated iron for replacing the blown-off roof and that volunteers were camouflaging it with palm fronds. But he had not planned to join them.

"Yes, I shall come," he said.

"See you then."

"Bye-bye." Ugwu waited for her to turn so that he could stare at her retreating backside.

When Olanna came back, her basket empty, she read Professor Ezeka's note with a half smile on her face. "Yes, we just heard yesterday that he's the new director. And how like him to write something like this."

Ugwu had read the note-Odenigbo and Olanna, dropped by to say hello. Shall drop by again next week, if this tedious new job allows. Ezeka- but he asked, "How, mah?"

"Oh, he's always felt a bit better than everybody else." Olanna placed the note on the table. "Professor Achara is going to help get us some books and benches and blackboards. Many women have told me they will send their children to us next week." She looked excited.

"That is good, mah." Ugwu shifted on his feet. "I'm going down to help with the school roof. I'll be back to make Baby's food."

"Oh," Olanna said.

Ugwu knew she was thinking about the conscriptions. "I think it is important to help in something like this, mah," he said.

"Of course. Yes, you should help. But please be careful."

Ugwu saw Eberechi right away; she was with some men and women who were bent over a pile of palm fronds, cutting, matting, passing them on to a man on a wooden ladder.

"Neighbor!" she said. "I have been telling everyone that your people know the director personally."

Ugwu smiled and said a general good afternoon. The men and women murmured good afternoon and ehe, kedu, and nno with the admiring respect that came with knowing who he knew. He felt suddenly important. Somebody gave him a cutlass. A woman sat on the stairs grinding melon seeds, and some little girls were playing cards under the mango tree, and a man was carving a walking stick whose handle was the carefully realized bearded face of His Excellency. There was a rotten smell in the air.

"Imagine living in this kind of place." Eberechi leaned close to him to whisper. "And many more will come now that Abakaliki has fallen. You know that since Enugu fell, accommodation has been a big problem. Some people who work in the directorates are even sleeping in their cars."

"That is true," Ugwu agreed, although he did not know this for sure. He loved that she was talking to him, loved her familiar friendliness. He began to trim some palm fronds with firm strokes. From the classroom, someone turned the radio on: gallant Biafran soldiers were completing a mopping-up operation in a sector Ugwu did not hear clearly.

"Our boys are showing them!" the woman grinding melon seeds said.

" Biafra will win this war, God has written it in the sky," said a man with a beard braided in a single thin strand.

Eberechi giggled and whispered to Ugwu, "Bush man. He does not know it is Bee-afra, not Ba-yafra."

Ugwu laughed. Fat black ants were crawling all over the palm fronds, and she squealed and looked helplessly at him when one crawled onto her arm. Ugwu brushed it off and felt the warm moistness of her skin. She had wanted him to brush it off; she did not seem like the kind of person who was truly afraid of ants.

One of the women had a baby boy tied to her back. She adjusted the wrapper that held him and said, "We were on our way back from the market when we discovered the vandals had occupied the junction and were shelling inside the village. We could not go home. We had to turn and run. I had only this wrapper and blouse and the small money from selling my pepper. I don't know where my two children are, the ones I left at home to go to the market." She started to cry. The abruptness of her tears, the way they gushed out of her, startled Ugwu.

"Woman, stop crying," the man with the braided beard said curtly.