Obi rose to his feet and thanked them for having such a useful meeting, for did not the Psalmist say that it was good for brethren to meet together in harmony? “Our fathers also have a saying about the danger of living apart. They say it is the curse of the snake. If all snakes lived together in one place, who would approach them? But they live every one unto himself and so fall easy prey to man.” Obi knew he was making a good impression. His listeners nodded their heads and made suitable rejoinders. Of course it was all a prepared speech, but it did not sound overrehearsed.
He spoke about the wonderful welcome they had given him on his return. “If a man returns from a long journey and no one says nno to him he feels like one who has not arrived.” He tried to improvise a joke about beer and palm-wine, but it did not come off, and he hurried to the next point. He thanked them for the sacrifices they had made to send him to England. He would try his best to justify their confidence. The speech which had started off one hundred percent in Ibo was now fifty-fifty. But his audience still seemed highly impressed. They liked good Ibo, but they also admired English. At last he got round to his main subject. “I have one little request to place before you. As you all know, it takes a little time to settle down again after an absence of four years. I have many little private matters to settle. My request is this, that you give me four months before I start to pay back my loan.”
“That is a small matter,” said someone. “Four months is a short time. A debt may get moldy, but it never decays.”
Yes, it was a small matter. But it was clear that not everyone thought so. Obi even heard someone ask what he was going to do with the big money which Government would give him.
“Your words are very good,” said the President at length. “I do not think anyone here will say no to your request. We will give you four months. Do I speak for Umuofia?”
“Ya!” they replied.
“But there are two words I should like to drop before you. You are very young, a child of yesterday. You know book. But book stands by itself and experience stands by itself. So I am’ not afraid to talk to you.”
Obi’s heart began to pound heavily.
“You are one of us, so we must bare our minds to you. I have lived in this Lagos for fifteen years. I came here on August the sixth, nineteen hundred and forty-one. Lagos is a bad place for a young man. If you follow its sweetness, you will perish. Perhaps you will ask why I am saying all this. I know what Government pays senior service people. What you get in one month is what some of your brothers here get in one year. I have already said that we will give you four months. We can even give you one year. But are we doing you any good?”
A big lump caught in Obi’s throat.
“What the Government pays you is more than enough unless you go into bad ways.” Many of the people said. “God forbid!” “We cannot afford bad ways,” went on the President. “We are pioneers building up our families and our town. And those who build must deny ourselves many pleasures. We must not drink because we see our neighbors drink or run after women because our thing stands up. You may ask why I am saying all this, I have heard that you are moving around with a girl of doubtful ancestry, and even thinking of marrying her.…”
Obi leapt to his feet trembling with rage. At such times words always deserted him.
“Please sit down, Mr. Okonkwo,” said the President calmly.
“Sit down, my foot!” Obi shouted in English. “This is preposterous! I could take you to court for that … for that … for that.…”
“You may take me to court when I have finished.”
“I am not going to listen to you anymore. I take back my request. I shall start paying you back at the end of this month. Now, this minute! But don’t you dare interfere in my affairs again. And if this is what you meet about,” he said in Ibo, “you may cut off my two legs if you ever find them here again.” He made for the door. A number of people tried to intercept him. “Please sit down.” “Cool down.” “There is no quarrel.” Everybody was talking at once. Obi pushed his way through and made blindly for his car with half a dozen people at his heels pleading that he return.
“Drive off!” he screamed at the driver as soon as he got into the car.
“Obi, please,” said Joseph, miserably leaning on the window.
“Get out!”
The car drove off. Halfway to Ikoyi he ordered the driver to stop and go back to Lagos, to Clara’s lodgings.
CHAPTER NINE
The prospect of working with Mr. Green and Mr. Omo did not particularly appeal to Obi, but he soon found that it was not as bad as he had thought. For one thing he was given a separate office, which he shared with Mr. Green’s attractive English secretary. He saw very little of Mr. Omo and only saw Mr. Green when he rushed in to bark orders at him or at Miss Marie Tomlinson.
“Isn’t he odd?” said Miss Tomlinson on one occasion. “But he’s really not a bad man.”
“Of course not,” replied Obi. He knew that many of these secretaries were planted to spy on Africans. One of their tactics was to pretend to be very friendly and broad-minded. One had to watch what one said. Not that he cared whether or not Mr. Green knew what he thought of his type. In fact, he ought to know. But he was not going to get it through an agent provocateur.
As the weeks passed, however, Obi’s guard began to come down “small small,” as they say. It started with Clara’s visit to his office one morning to tell him something or other. Miss Tomlinson had heard her voice on the telephone a few times and had commented on its attractiveness. Obi introduced them, and was a little surprised at the English woman’s genuine delight. When Clara left she talked about nothing else for the rest of the day. “Isn’t she beautiful? Aren’t you lucky? When are you getting married? I shouldn’t wait if I were you,” and so on and so forth.
Obi felt like a clumsy schoolboy earning his first praise for doing something extraordinarily clever. He began to see Miss Tomlinson in a different light. If it was part of her tactics, it was really a very clever one for which she deserved credit. But it did not look clever or forced. It seemed to have come straight from her heart.
The telephone rang and Miss Tomlinson answered it.
“Mr. Okonkwo? Right. Hold on for him. For you, Mr. Okonkwo.”
Obi’s telephone was in parallel with hers. He thought it was Clara, but it was only the receptionist downstairs.
“A gentleman? Send him up, please. He want speak to me there? All right, I de come down. Now now.”
The gentleman was in a three-piece suit and carried a rolled umbrella. Obviously a new arrival from England.
“Good morning. My name is Okonkwo.”
“Mark is mine. How do you do?”
They shook hands.
“I’ve come to consult you about something—semiofficial and semiprivate.”
“Let’s go up to my office, shall we?”
“Thank you very much.”
Obi led the way.
“You have just come back to Nigeria?” he asked as they mounted the stairs.
“I’ve been back now six months.”
“I see.” He opened the door. “After you.”
Mr. Mark stepped in, and then pulled up suddenly as if he had seen a snake across his path. But he recovered quickly enough and walked in.
“Good morning,” he said to Miss Tomlinson, all smiles. Obi dragged another chair to his table and Mr. Mark sat down.
“And what can I do for you?”
To his amazement Mr. Mark replied in Ibo:
“If you don’t mind, shall we talk in Ibo? I didn’t know you had a European here.”
“Just as you like. Actually I didn’t think you were Ibo. What is your problem?” He tried to sound casual.
“Well, it is like this. I have a sister who has just passed her School Certificate in Grade One. She wants to apply for a Federal Scholarship to study in England.”
Although he spoke in Ibo, there were some words that he had to say in English. Words like school
certificate and scholarship. He lowered his voice to a whisper when he came to them.
“You want application forms?” asked Obi.
“No, no, no. I have got those. But it is like this. I was told that you are the secretary of the Scholarship Commission and I thought that I should see you. We are both Ibos and I cannot hide anything from you. It is all very well sending in forms, but you know what our country is. Unless you see people …”
“In this case it is not necessary to see anybody. The only …”
“I was actually thinking of coming round to your house, but the man who told me about you did not know where you lived.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Mark, but I really don’t understand what you are driving at.” He said this in English, much to Mr. Mark’s consternation. Miss Tomlinson pricked up her ears like a dog that is not quite sure whether someone has mentioned bones.
“I’m sorry—er—Mr. Okonkwo. But don’t get me wrong. I know this is the wrong place to—er …”
“I don’t think there is any point in continuing this discussion,” Obi said again in English. “If you don’t mind, I’m rather busy.” He rose to his feet. Mr. Mark also rose, muttered a few apologies, and made for the door.
“He’s forgotten his umbrella,” remarked Miss Tomlinson as Obi returned to his seat.
“Oh, dear!” He took the umbrella and rushed out.
Miss Tomlinson was eagerly waiting to hear what he would say when he came back, but he simply sat down as if nothing had happened and opened a file. He knew she was watching him, and he wrinkled his forehead in pretended concentration.
“That was short and sweet,” she said.
“Oh, yes. He is a nuisance.” He did not look up and the conversation lapsed.
Throughout that morning Obi felt strangely elated. It was not unlike the feeling he had some years ago in England after his first woman. She had said almost in so many words what she was coming for when she agreed to visit Obi in his lodgings. “I’ll teach you how to dance the high-life when you come,” he had said. “That would be grand,” she replied eagerly, “and perhaps a little low life too.” And she had smiled mischievously. When the day arrived Obi was scared. He had heard that it was possible to disappoint a woman. But he did not disappoint her, and when it was over he felt strangely elated. She said she thought she had been attacked by a tiger.
After his encounter with Mr. Mark he did feel like a tiger. He had won his first battle hands-down. Everyone said it was impossible to win. They said a man expects you to accept “kola” from him for services rendered, and until you do, his mind is never at rest. He feels like the inexperienced kite that carried away a duckling and was ordered by its mother to return it because the duck had said nothing, made no noise, just walked away. “There is some grave danger in that kind of silence. Go and get a chick. We know the hen. She shouts and curses, and the matter ends there.” A man to whom you do a favor will not understand if you say nothing, make no noise, just walk away. You may cause more trouble by refusing a bribe than by accepting it. Had not a Minister of State said, albeit in an unguarded, alcoholic moment, that the trouble was not in receiving bribes, but in failing to do the thing for which the bribe was given? And if you refuse, how do you know that a “brother” or a “friend” is not receiving on your behalf, having told everyone that he is your agent? Stuff and nonsense! It was easy to keep one’s hands clean. It required no more than the ability to say: “I’m sorry, Mr. So-and-So, but I cannot continue this discussion. Good morning.” One should not, of course, be unduly arrogant. After all, the temptation was not really overwhelming. But in all modesty one could not say it had been nonexistent. Obi was finding it more and more impossible to live on what was left of his forty-seven pounds ten after he had paid twenty to the Umuofia Progressive Union and sent ten to his parents. Even now he had no idea where John’s school fees for next term would come from. No, one could not say he had no need of money.
He had just finished his lunch of pounded yams and egusi soup and was sprawling on the sofa. The soup had been particularly well prepared—with meat and fresh fish—and he had overeaten. Whenever he ate too much pounded yam he felt like a boa that had swallowed a goat. He sprawled helplessly, waiting for some of it to digest, to give him room to breathe.
A car pulled up outside. He thought it was one of the five other occupants of the block of six flats. He knew none of them by name, and only some by sight. They were all Europeans. He spoke about once a month with one of them, the tall P.W.D. man who lived on the other side of the same floor. But his speaking to him had nothing to do with sharing the same floor. This man was in charge of the common garden and collected ten and sixpence every month from each occupant to pay the garden boy. So Obi knew him well by sight. He also knew one of those upstairs who regularly brought an African prostitute home on Saturday nights.
The car started again. It was clearly a taxi, for only taxi drivers could rev up their engines that way. There was a timid knock on Obi’s door. Who could it be? Clara was on duty that afternoon. Joseph, perhaps. For months now he had been trying to regain the blissful seat in Obi’s affections which he had lost at that ill-fated meeting of the Umuofia Progressive Union. His crime was that he had told the President in confidence of Obi’s engagement to an outcast girl. He had pleaded for forgiveness: he had only told the President in confidence in the hope that he might use his position as the father of Umuofia people in Lagos to reason privately with Obi.
“Never mind,” Obi had told him. “Let us forget about it.” But he had not forgotten. He had stopped visiting Joseph in his lodgings. As for Clara, she did not want to set eyes on Joseph again. Obi was sometimes amazed and terrified at the intensity of her hate, knowing how much she had liked him before. Now he was slippery, he was envious, he was even capable of poisoning Obi. The incident, like a bath of palm-wine on incipient measles, had brought all the ugly rashes to the surface.
Obi opened the door with a very dark frown on his face. Instead of Joseph, there was a girl at the door.
“Good afternoon,” he said, completely transformed.
“I am looking for Mr. Okonkwo,” she said.
“Speaking. Come right in.” He was surprised at his own sudden gaiety; the girl was, after all, a complete stranger, albeit a most attractive one. So he pulled in his horns.
“Please sit down. By the way, I don’t think we’ve met before.”
“No. I am Elsie Mark.”
“Pleased to meet you, Miss Mark.” She smiled a most delicious smile, showing a faultless set of immaculate teeth. There was a little gap between the two front ones, rather like Clara’s. Someone had said that girls with that kind of teeth are very warm-blooded. He sat down. He wasn’t shy as he usually was with girls, and yet he didn’t know what to say next.
“You must be surprised at my visit.” She was now speaking in Ibo.
“I didn’t know you were Ibo.” As soon as he said it light broke through. What was left of his gaiety vanished. The girl must have noticed a change in his expression or perhaps a movement of the hands. She avoided his eyes and her words came hesitantly. She was testing the slippery ground with one wary foot after another before committing her whole body.
“I’m sorry my brother came to your office. I told him not to.”
“It’s perfectly all right,” Obi found himself saying. “I told him that—er—that with your Grade One certificate you stood a very good chance. It all depends on you really, how much you impress members of the Board at the interview.”
“The most important thing,” she said, “is to be sure that I am selected to appear before the Board.”
“Yes. But as I said, you stand as good chance as anybody else.”
“But people with Grade One are sometimes left out in favor of those with Grade Two or even Three.”
“I’ve no doubt that may happen sometimes. But all other things being equal.… I’m sorry I haven’t offered you anything. I’m a very bad host. Can I bring you a Coc
a-Cola?” She smiled shyly with her eyes. “Yes?” He rushed off to his refrigerator and brought out a bottle. He took a long time opening it and pouring it into a glass. He was thinking furiously.
She accepted the glass and smiled her thanks. She must be about seventeen or eighteen. A mere girl, Obi thought. And already so wise in the ways of the world. They sat in silence for a long time.
“Last year,” she said suddenly, “none of the girls in our school who got Grade One was given a scholarship.”
“Perhaps they did not impress the Board.”
“It wasn’t that. It was because they did not see the members at home.”
“So you intend to see the members?”
“Yes.”
“Is a scholarship as important as all that? Why doesn’t a relation of yours pay for you to go to a university?”
“Our father spent all his money on our brother. He went to read Medicine but failed his exams. He switched over to Engineering and failed again. He was in England for twelve years.”
“Was that the man who came to see me today?” She nodded. “What does he do for a living?”
“He is teaching in a Community Secondary School.” She was now looking very sad. “He. returned at the end of last year because our father died and we had no more money.”
Obi felt very sorry for her. She was obviously an intelligent girl who had set her mind, like so many other young Nigerians, on university education. And who could blame them? Certainly not Obi. It was rather sheer hypocrisy to ask if a scholarship was as important as all that or if university education was worth it. Every Nigerian knew the answer. It was yes.
A university degree was the philosopher’s stone. It transmuted a third-class clerk on one hundred and fifty a year into a senior civil servant on five hundred and seventy, with car and luxuriously furnished quarters at nominal rent. And the disparity in salary and amenities did not tell even half the story. To occupy a “European post” was second only to actually being a European. It raised a man from the masses to the élite whose small talk at cocktail parties was: “How’s the car behaving?”