No Longer at Ease (6 page)

“Agreed,” said Obi jovially. “What about women? I have been two days here now and I haven’t seen one yet.”

“Didn’t I tell you I was getting married?”

“So what?”

“When you have paid a hundred and thirty pounds bride-price and you are only a second-class clerk, you find you haven’t got any more to spare on other women.”

“You mean you paid a hundred and thirty? What about the bride-price law?”

“It pushed up the price, that’s all.”

“It’s a pity my three elder sisters got married too early for us to make money on them. We’ll try and make up on the others.”

“It’s no laughing matter,” said Joseph. “Wait until you
want to marry. They will probably ask you to pay five hundred, seeing that you are in the senior service.”

“I’m not in the senior service. You have just been telling me that I won’t get the job because I told that idiot what I thought of him. Anyway, senior service or no senior service, I’m not paying five hundred pounds for a wife. I shall not even pay one hundred, not even fifty.”

“You are not serious,” said Joseph. “Unless you are going to be a Reverend Father.”

While he waited for the result of his interview, Obi paid a short visit to Umuofia, his home town, five hundred miles away in the Eastern Region. The journey itself was not very exciting. He boarded a mammy wagon called
God’s Case No Appeal
and traveled first class; which meant that he shared the front seat with the driver and a young woman with her baby. The back seats were taken up by traders who traveled regularly between Lagos and the famous Onitsha market on the bank of the Niger. The lorry was so heavily laden that the traders had no room to hang their legs down. They sat with their feet on the same level as their buttocks, their knees drawn up to their chins like roast chickens. But they did not seem to mind. They beguiled themselves with gay and bawdy songs addressed mostly to young women who had become nurses or teachers instead of mothers.

The driver of the lorry was a very quiet man. He was either eating kola nuts or smoking cigarettes. The kola was to keep him awake at night because the journey began in the
late afternoon, took all night, and ended in the early morning. From time to time he asked Obi to strike a match and light his cigarette for him. Actually it was Obi who offered to do it in the first instance. He had been alarmed to see the man controlling the wheel with his elbows while he fumbled for a match.

Some forty miles or so beyond Ibadan the driver suddenly said: “Dees b— f— police!” Obi noticed two policemen by the side of the road about three hundred yards away, signaling the lorry to a stop.

“Your particulars?” said one of them to the driver. It was at this point that Obi noticed that the seat they sat on was also a kind of safe for keeping money and valuable documents. The driver asked his passengers to get up. He unlocked the box and brought out a sheaf of papers. The policeman looked at them critically. “Where your roadworthiness?” The driver showed him his certificate of roadworthiness.

Meanwhile the driver’s mate was approaching the other policeman. But just as he was about to hand something over to him Obi looked in their direction. The policeman was not prepared to take a risk; for all he knew Obi might be a C.I.D. man. So he drove the driver’s mate away with great moral indignation. “What you want here? Go away!” Meanwhile the other policeman had found fault with the driver’s papers and was taking down his particulars, the driver pleading and begging in vain. Finally he drove away, or so it appeared. About a quarter of a mile farther up the road he stopped.

“Why you look the man for face when we want give um him two shillings?” he asked Obi.

“Because he has no right to take two shillings from you,” Obi answered.

“Na him make I no de want carry you book people,” he complained. “Too too know na him de worry una. Why you put your nose for matter way no concern you? Now that policeman go charge me like ten shillings.”

It was only some minutes later that Obi realized why they had stopped. The driver’s mate had run back to the policemen, knowing that they would be more amenable when there were no embarrassing strangers gazing at them. The man soon returned panting from much running.

“How much they take?” asked the driver.

“Ten shillings,” gasped his assistant.

“You see now,” he said to Obi, who was already beginning to feel a little guilty, especially as all the traders behind, having learnt what was happening, had switched their attacks from career girls to “too know” young men. For the rest of the journey the driver said not a word more to him.

“What an Augean stable!” he muttered to himself. “Where does one begin? With the masses? Educate the masses?” He shook his head. “Not a chance there. It would take centuries. A handful of men at the top. Or even one man with vision—an enlightened dictator. People are scared of the word nowadays. But what kind of democracy can exist side by side with so much corruption and ignorance? Perhaps a halfway house—a sort of compromise.” When Obi’s reasoning reached this point he reminded himself that England had
been as corrupt not so very long ago. He was not really in the mood for consecutive reasoning. His mind was impatient to roam in a more pleasant landscape.

The young woman sitting on his left was now asleep, clasping her baby tightly to her breast. She was going to Benin. That was all he knew about her. She hardly spoke a word of English and he did not speak Bini. He shut his eyes and imagined her to be Clara; their knees were touching. It did not work.

Why did Clara insist that he must not tell his people about her yet? Could it be that she had not quite made up her mind to marry him? That could hardly be. She was as anxious as himself to be formally engaged, only she said he should not go to the expense of buying a ring until he had got a job. Perhaps she wanted to tell her people first. But if so, why all the mystery? Why had she not simply said that she was going to consult her people? Or maybe she was not as guileless as he had assumed and was using this suspense to bind him more strongly to her. Obi examined each possibility in turn and rejected it.

As the night advanced the rushing air became at first cool and refreshing and then chilly. The driver pulled out a dirty brown cloth cap from the mass of rags on which he sat and covered his head with it. The young Benin woman retied her headcloth to cover her ears. Obi had an old sports jacket which he had bought in his first year in England. He had used it until now to soften the wooden backrest. He threw it over his back and shoulders. But his feet and legs were now the only really comfortable parts of him. The heat of the
engine, which had been a little uncomfortable before, had now been mellowed down by the chilly air until it gently caressed the feet and legs.

Obi was beginning to feel sleepy and his thoughts turned more and more on the erotic. He said words in his mind that he could not say out aloud even when he was alone. Strangely enough, all the words were in his mother tongue. He could say any English word, no matter how dirty, but some Ibo words simply would not proceed from his mouth. It was no doubt his early training that operated this censorship, English words filtering through because they were learnt later in life.

Obi continued in his state of half-asleep until the driver suddenly pulled up by the side of the road, rubbed his eyes, and announced that he had caught himself sleeping once or twice. Everyone was naturally concerned about it and tried to be helpful.

“You no get kola nut for eat?” asked one of the traders from the back.

“Weting I been de eat all afternoon?” asked the driver. “I no fit understand this kind sleep. Na true say I no sleep last night, but that no be first time I been do um.” Everyone agreed that sleep was a most unreasonable phenomenon.

After two or three minutes of general conversation on this subject the driver once more proceeded on his way with the promise and determination to try his best. As for Obi, sleep had fled from his eyes as soon as the driver had pulled up. His mind cleared immediately as if the sun had risen and dried the dew that had settled on it.

The traders burst into song again, this time there was nothing bawdy about it. Obi knew the refrain, he tried to translate it into English, and for the first time its real meaning dawned on him.

“
An in-law went to see his in-law
Oyiemu—o
His in-law seized him and killed him
Oyiemu—o
Bring a canoe, bring a paddle
Oyiemu—o
The paddle speaks English
Oyiemu—o
.”

On the face of it there was no kind of logic or meaning in the song. But as Obi turned it round and round in his mind, he was struck by the wealth of association that even such a mediocre song could have. First of all it was unheard of for a man to seize his in-law and kill him. To the Ibo mind it was the height of treachery. Did not the elders say that a man’s in-law was his
chi
, his personal god? Set against this was another great betrayal; a paddle that begins suddenly to talk in a language which its master, the fisherman, does not understand. In short, then, thought Obi, the burden of the song was “the world turned upside down.” He was pleased with his exegesis and began to search in his mind for other songs that could be given the same treatment. But the song of the traders was now so loud and spicy that he could not concentrate on his thinking.

Nowadays going to England has become as commonplace as going down to the village green. But five years ago it was different. Obi’s return to his village was almost a festival. A “pleasure” car was waiting at Onitsha to convey him in proper state to Umuofia, some fifty miles away. But before they set out he had a few minutes to look round the great Onitsha market.

The first thing that claimed his attention was an open jeep which blared out local music from a set of loudspeakers. Two men in the car swayed to the music as did many others in the crowd that had gathered round it. Obi was wondering what it was all about when the music suddenly stopped. One of the men held up a bottle for all to see. It contained Long Life Mixture, he said, and began to tell the crowd all about it. Or rather he told them a few things about it, for it was impossible to enumerate all its wonderful virtues. The other man brought out a sheaf of handbills and distributed them to the crowd, most of whom appeared to be illiterate. “This paper will speak to you about Long Life Mixture,” he announced. It was quite clear that if there was something on paper about it, then it must be true. Obi secured one of the bills and read the list of diseases. The first three were: “Rheumatism, Yellow feaver, dogbight.”

On the other side of the road, close to the waterfront, a row of women sat selling
garri
from big white enamel bowls. A beggar appeared. He must have been well known because
many people called him by name. Perhaps he was a little mad too. His name was One Way. He had an enamel basin and began a tour of the row. The women beat out a rhythm with empty cigarette cups and One Way danced along the row, receiving a handful of
garri
in his basin from each of them in turn. When he got to the end of the row he had received enough garri for two heavy meals.

Bands of music-makers went out two miles on the Umuofia—Onitsha road to await Obi’s arrival. There were at least five different groups, if one excludes the brass band of the C.M.S. School Umuofia. It looked as if the entire village was celebrating a feast. Those who were not waiting along the road, elderly people especially, were already arriving in large numbers at Mr. Okonkwo’s compound.

The only trouble was that it might rain. In fact, many people half wished it would rain heavily so as to show Isaac Okonkwo that Christianity had made him blind. He was the only man who failed to see that on an occasion such as this he should take palm-wine, a cock, and a little money to the chief rainmaker in Umuofia.

“He is not the only Christian we have seen,” said one of the men. “But it is like the palm-wine we drink. Some people can drink it and remain wise. Others lose all their senses.”

“Very true, very true,” said another. “When a new saying gets to the land of empty men they lose their heads over it.”

At that very moment Isaac Okonkwo was having an argument
about rainmaking with one of the old men who had come to rejoice with him.

“Perhaps you will also tell me that some men cannot send thunder to their enemies?” asked the old man.

Mr. Okonkwo told him that to believe such a thing was to chew the cud of foolishness. It was putting one’s head into a cooking pot.

“What Satan has accomplished in this world of ours is indeed great,” he said. “For it is he alone that can put such abominable thought into men’s stomachs.”

The old man waited patiently for him to finish and said:

“You are not a stranger in Umuofia. You have heard our elders say that thunder cannot kill a son or daughter of Umuofia. Do you know anyone either now or in the past who was so killed?”