7

THE DISGRACED

EGBUNU, the old fathers say that a mouse cannot run into

an empty mousetrap in broad daylight unless it has been

drawn to the trap by something it could not refuse. Egbunu,

would a fish see an empty metal hook sticking out beneath

water and cleave to it? How would it unless it is enticed by

something on the hook? Isn’t this similar to how a man is

enticed into a situation he would not have liked to be in? My

host, for instance, would not have agreed to attend Ndali’s

father’s party had they not shown repentance and her

father signed an invitation card with his name on it: ‘Mr

Chinonso Olisa’

. Although I will acknowledge that he was

persuaded in part by the determination to make Ndali happy

at all costs and by a desire to see Oliver De Coque perform

live, he was cautious even to the end. He decided to attend

the party with only a part of him attuned to it, merely

dragging along the other intransigent half. And I, his chi, had

been unable to decide whether he should go. I feared that

from what I knew of man, a feeling such as that which they

had shown him – repulsion – does not easily expire. But I

had seen the healing and equilibrium that this woman had

brought into his life and desired that it would continue. For it
is abominable for a chi to stand in the way of his own host.

When a man affirms a thing, and if his chi does not desire

this thing, all it can do is persuade its host. But if its host

refuses, then the chi must not attempt to compel its host

against his will; it must affirm the thing. This is again whythe wise fathers often say that if a man
agrees to

something, his chi must agree too. The second reason for

my ambivalence was because I had developed a strong faith

in Ndali’s love for him, mostly after encountering her chi,

and I strongly believed that if he married her, he would

become complete, as the old fathers often say that a man is

not complete until he marries a woman.

The day before the party, they went to buy greeting cards

for her father at the big supermarket near the Oando petrol

station. At a roadside clothes shop on Crowther Street, he

bought an isiagu tunic. Although Ndali had pointed out that

the ones with the black lion-head prints were better looking,

he was drawn to the red ones for some reason he could not

understand. They had emerged from the shop and were

walking towards a shopping complex, the speakers of a

church blasting from an upstairs block on the complex,

when he saw Motu in front of an open mechanic’s workshop.

She stood between a pile of motor tyres and a mechanic

who, dressed in blue overalls and large dark goggles, was

firing a rod with something that gave off radiant, glittering

sparks of red flame. She was dressed in a flowing gown, the

green one with red leaf prints, which he’d removed a few

times before making love to her. She had just finished

selling groundnuts to one of the men, and she was bunching

a piece of cloth into an aju to place on her head before

balancing the tray on it. It felt, Egbunu, that for an instant,

he’d slipped from the hands of his present world like an

oiled fish. He stood there, undecided as to what to do,

wondering why she had left him. But Motu did not even turn.

She put the tray on her head and walked in the other

direction, towards a crowded market. He thought to call out

to her but feared that she might not hear him over the great

noise of the welding machine. His heart palpitating, he

turned towards Ndali, who had continued to walk on without

knowing he was no longer in tow. He had not realised that

while watching Motu, he’d also focused on the fire from the

mechanic’s welder. And when he stirred away from it, hisvision had become blurred, and for a
moment it appeared as

if the world and all that was in it had become covered in a

thick, silky veil of yellow.

CHUKWU, Ndali did not return with him to his house that

day. She went to help her parents prepare for the big next

day. Aside from attending to a sick hen who had started to

sprout a nacre-like substance on the sides of its beak,

dabbing it with a clean towel soaked in warm water, he

spent the rest of the day thinking of Motu. He wondered

what had happened, whose hand it was that had stretched

out and grabbed her away from his fold and stolen her away

from him. He would have spoken to her, had he been alone.

He thought long about why she left him, without warning,

without provocation, when in fact it had seemed she loved

him and he’d been firmly planted in her heart. Children of

men beware: you cannot put your confidence in another

man. No one is fixed beyond being blown sideways. No one!

I have seen it many times. He was still deep in thought

when his phone buzzed. He picked it up, tapped the

message box, and read, They really want u to come Obim!!!

even my brother. i luv u, gudnyt.

He arrived at her family’s residence the following day to

find that he was the first person there. Ndali came to meet

him and asked him to follow her into the house. But he

would hear none of it. He sat in a plastic chair under one of

the two tarpaulin-covered pavilions erected for guests.

Another pavilion stood separated from these two by a raised

stage platform with a floor covered by a red rug. It was the

High Table, where the party hosts and other dignitaries were

to sit. There, the seats were arranged behind a long table

near the stage, which was covered with embroidered cloth.

A group of men soaked in sweat set speakers in place

beside the table while two women dressed in identical

blouses and skirts decorated big cakes with the moulded

effigy of Ndali’s father holding a staff.He picked up a copy of the programme placed on his seat

and was starting to read when he felt a chair behind him

rattle. Before he could tell what it was, or even look back, a

hand tapped his shoulder and a head bent towards his side.

‘So you came,

’ the head said.

Things had happened so quickly that he was incapacitated

by the ghastly thrill of sudden fright.

‘You came after all,

’ the man, whom he now recognised to

be Chuka, repeated. Chuka spoke the language of the White

Man with a foreign accent similar to Ndali’s.

‘Some people,

some people, they just have no shame. No shame. How can

you – after all popman did to you that day – come here?’

Chuka placed his arm on my host’s shoulder and pulled

him closer. I heard the voice of my host’s head shout, W as

he not close enough ? A sound in the upward direction in the

distance caused him to raise his head and catch the sight of

Ndali on what must have been the balcony of her room.

‘Wave at her, tell her you are okay,

’ Chuka said.
‘Wave at

her!’

She was saying something he could not hear but which I

made out to be a question as to whether or not he was fine.

He obeyed the order he’d been given, and she waved back

and blew a kiss into the air. He had thought her brother was

concealing himself behind him, but now Chuka shouted,

‘Your man and I are having a sweet talk!’

At that my host thought he saw something like a smile

flash across his lover’s face, an unmistakable sign that she

believed her brother.

‘Good. Thank you, Chuka,

’ she shouted back.

Chuka had spoken the language of the White Man to his

sister, but now he continued his onslaught in the language

of the fathers: ‘I bu Otobo; otobo ki ibu. R eal , real otobo.

How should one position his neck or shape his mouth to

pass a message into the head of an otobo like you? How? It

baffles me.

’ He squeezed my host’s shoulder so hard that he

squirmed.‘Now, listen, Church R at , my father said I should tell you

that if we hear “phim” from you, or any noise at all, you will

be in serious trouble. Do you know you are playing with fire?

You are cuddling a consuming fire. You are romancing the

child of a tiger, Nwa-agu.

’ Chuka drew a deep breath and

released it on his neck.

‘Ah, you dress in a respectable fashion, Church R at ,

Chuka said now, pulling up the isiagu on my host by its

shoulder.

‘L ooks very good , sir . Otobo. Eh, let me pass the

message: no speaking, no doing anything. No phim. Don’t

make the mistake of coming out to join the family on the

dance floor, or anything like that, no matter what my sister

says. I repeat , no matter what my sister says. You hear

me?’

Gaganaogwu, I had known my host at that point for

twenty-five years and three moons, and I had never seen

him that embarrassed. He was wounded as if Chuka had not

said words to him but had lashed him with a whip. What

pained him the most was that he could not retaliate. As a

boy, he had not been afraid of fights: in fact, he had been

feared, for although he did not court trouble, he fought with

a fist of stone when provoked. But in this situation, he was

incapacitated, hand-tied. So although bruised, he simply

nodded in response.

‘Good, Church R at , you are welcome.

’

For no particular reason, he would always remember

those final words, a mix of the language of the fathers and

the White Man’s: ‘Odinma, Church R at , ibia wo.

The early fathers often say that a planned war does not

take even the crippled by surprise. But an unplanned one,

that which is unexpected, can defeat even the strongest

army. It is why they also say, in their cautionary wisdom,

that if one wakes in the morning to find something as

innocuous as a hen chasing him, he should run because he

does not know whether the hen has grown teeth and claws

during the night. Thus defeated, my host sat stunned for the

rest of the [Link] guests started pouring in not too long after Chuka left

him. The invitation card indicated that the event was to be

held from 4 to 9 p.m. But the first guests arrived around a

quarter after five. Ndali had bemoaned the fact that this

would happen –

‘You will see that they will all follow Nigerian

time. This is why I hate attending events like this. If it was

not because of my father, I tell you, just count me out.

’ He

watched as the seats filled up all around him with guests

who came wearing different attire, usually a man in flowing

traditional cloth and his wife in an equally sparkling blouse,

a wrappa wound around her waist, a fancy purse or handbag

in her hand. Children sat in the last two rows of plastic

chairs, with high armrests. By the time most of the seats

were occupied, the air was filled with a cocktail of perfumes

and body fragrances.

The man who sat by his left arm took up conversation with

him. Without being asked, the man said that his wife was

one of those cooking ‘up there in the palace’

, pointing to the

house of the Obialors. My wife, too, he said, intending to

silence the man. But the man spoke on about the big

attendance, and then about the hotness of the weather. My

host listened with a dry indifference which, in time, the man

seemed to notice. And when the seats next to him became

filled with a couple, he turned away from my host to them.

Glad that he’d finally been left alone, my host evaluated

what had happened: a hand had come, drawn him back so

hard he’d almost fallen out of his seat. Then a mouth had

asked him why he’d come, called him foolish, called him a

hippopotamus, mocked his clothes, laughed at his love for

Ndali, and inflicted the death blow: Church Rat. Had the

seats been filled as they were now, none of that would

probably have happened. These people had all come too

late. So late were they that the celebrated entrance of

Oliver De Coque – his favourite musician, the great singing

bird of Igboland, Okuna-acha-na-abali, the chief of Igbo

highlife music – meant nothing. He sat as if benumbed as

the guests rose to cheer the singer. Blood would have stirredwithin him as the emcee of the
occasion and the famous

home-video actor Osuofia introduced Oliver De Coque. But

the words sounded like the words of a rambler. He would

have laughed at Osuofia’s jokes – for instance, the one he’d

drawn right out of his famous movie, Osuofia in L ondon ,

about how white people had mangled his name and called

him Oso-fire. But the joke sounded like a child’s gibberish,

and it even surprised him that people laughed. The big fat

man in front of him, how is he laughing like that? The

woman beside the man, why is she rocking like that on the

chair? He made no response at all to Osuofia’s constant

bellowing of ‘Kwenu!’ to which the people responded,

‘Yaah!’ And when, shortly after the introduction and the

invitation of certain persons to the High Table, and after

Oliver De Coque mounted the stage to the tune of ‘People’s

Club’

, he sat dead as a log of wood. Even De Coque had

come too late.

Much to his irritation, the man who sat next to him on the

left had been dancing in his chair and had remembered him
again. And the man would bend every now and again to

comment about the attendance, the music, Oliver De

Coque’s genius, and whatever. But the log of wood merely

nodded and muttered under his breath. And even this was

said with much reluctance. The man did not know that he’d

been asked not to make even the faintest of sounds, a phim.

It struck him now, as he thought about it, that the order had

come from the owner of the party himself, the very host,

Ndali’s father. In the midst of these thoughts, he heard

something knock at the back of his chair. His heart flew out

of him. When he turned, he found the culprit was the boy

who sat directly behind him. The boy’s foot had hit his chair.

EZEUWA, there are times when it feels like the universe, as

if possessing the face of a laconic man, mocks man. As if

man were a toy, a plaything given to the whims of the

universe. Get down, it seems to say one time. And when a

man sits, it orders him to stand again. It gives a man foodwith one hand and with the other
compels him to vomit it. I

have lived in the world for many cycles of life, and I have

seen this mysterious phenomenon many times. How, for

instance, might one explain that just shortly after my host

had been startled by this boy (a mere boy!) and returned his

gaze back to the great musician, a hand tapped him from

behind again, and before he could stir, he hears,

‘Obim,
Obim, they will call us soon. Stand and come. Stand and

come’? Well, the action must have come to him too quickly

for him to think it through. And because she’d esteemed

him highly before those present by calling him her darling,

he’d risen and followed her in the glory of the moment. He

would himself be taken in by her beauty, for she was

dressed exquisitely. A long string of ji gida cascaded down

her neck, and she wore some of the beads on her wrists.

This woman whom everyone around him was calling the

daughter of the High One – Adaego and Adaora. Would it not

be the worst disgrace to have, in the midst of all these

people, remained seated? So he followed her to wild cheers.

The things they said as she and he left came to him like a

big joke of fate.

‘See him, a worthy man deserving of such a

woman!’ one man said.

‘Nwokeoma!’ another praised.

‘Enyi-

kwo-nwa!’ one woman cried. A man standing in plain clothes

by one of the tall standing fans at the end of every two rows

gave him the greeting of chiefs by extending his hand

against his. In shock, as much as with reluctance, he

knocked the back of his hand against the man’s three times.

‘Congrats!’ the man whispered. He nodded, and his hand, as

if it had suddenly acquired a mind of its own, patted the

man on the shoulder. It occurred to him then that things

were happening too quickly – as if his body parts had

mutinied against him and formed a defiant confederacy

devoid of his control.

With every step, his hand locked in hers, Ndali led him

further and further into transgression. But he could do

nothing, for the whole party, spread around the spacious

front area of the compound, had now turned to them, andOliver De Coque himself had paused
his music to give a

passing greeting: ‘See the future oriaku and her man

walking by with great strides.

’ To which Ndali waved – and

he waved, too – at the crowd of dignitaries, rich men and

women, chiefs, doctors, lawyers, three men who had flown

in from two of the white people’s countries, Germany and

the United States (one of whom had brought a white woman

with yellow hair), Chuwuemeka Ike, one senator from Abuja,

a representative of the state governor, Orji Kalu. He, a

Church Rat – a man who raised domestic fowls for a living

and cultivated tomatoes, corn, cassava and peppers, killed

red ants and poked sticks into the faeces of yard fowls for

worms – had waved at these dignitaries.

They passed so many people on the way into the house.

Amongst them were two women who were looking in a

mirror, applying powder to their faces; a man (one of the

ones from overseas) in dazzling white bari ga and a red ozo

cap, smoking from a pipe; a policeman with an AK-47 who

stood with his gun pointed upwards; two young girls of

puberty age, in flowing gowns, looking in a phone under the

shelter of the huge veranda with Roman columns; and a

bow-tied boy whose shirt had been soaked in Fanta.

Once inside the house, Ndali pressed her lips on his

sweating cheek. It was what she did in lieu of locking

mouths with him whenever she had painted her lips a darker

shade of pink or red.

‘Are you enjoying yourself?’ she said, and before he could

speak, she said,

‘You are sweating again! Did you bring a

handkerchief?’

He said no. He wanted to say more, but she’d turned into

the house, and he followed her. Once in, he found Chuka

standing midway on the flight of stairs, visibly astonished to

see him there. Words hung, dazed, on his lips as they

passed Chuka.

‘What is it, Obim? Nonso?’ she said after they had passed

Chuka, stopping again, this time in a small room where

shelves of books split the room into four rows.‘Nothing,

’ he said.
‘Water, can you give me water?’

‘Water? Okay, let me bring it.

’ At the threshold, she said,

‘My brother, did he do anything to you?’

‘Me? No-oh, no, he didn’t.

She stayed her gaze on him for a moment, as if

unbelieving, then she left the room. Once she was gone, he

nearly wept. He sat without realising it on a small reclining

couch that spun, rapidly, and faced the window. He saw

now, from the vantage of a hawk paused on a thermal, the

party. Osuofia was dancing, interrupting Oliver De Coque

every now and then. Chukwu, this is how things sometimes

happen to humans: a man becomes afraid of something like

this, of being shamed in public, and this fear becomes his

undoing. For the state of anxiety is a seed-bearing one.

Every occasion pollinates it, and with every action, a seed is

begotten. When a word is used that might elicit an

unhealthy response, and in the presence of people, he may

lose composure and his limbs may quiver. Thus, every inch

of the way, propelled by the state of his fragile mind, he

does things that worsen his situation rather than redeem it.

He is punished by his own self, as if engaged in a continuing

act of unintended self-flagellation. I have seen it many

times.

Now firmly in this anxious state, he was so deep in

thought that Ndali’s footfalls startled him. He took the cup

and drank until it emptied.

‘Okay, Obim, let’s go out now. They will soon call us.

‘Ndali, Ndali!’ her mother called, with a clatter of feet in

the living room.

His heart dropped. I felt pressured to do something, so I

flashed in his mind that he be not afraid. Do as much as you

can to hold up against these people . To this he tapped his

feet on the floor, and the voice of his head said, I will not be

afraid .

While I was communicating with my host, Ndali was

saying to her mother: ‘Ma, ma-Mommy! I’m coming out

now.

’ To which the woman responded,

‘Ngwa, ngwa, quick,

’in a voice hardly audible over Osuofia’s, which came from

the speakers outside the house.

‘Let’s go now,

’ Ndali said, and she took his hand.

‘It is our

turn to sit at the High Table.

’

He wanted to speak, but all he was able to muster was a

muffled ‘Oh’

. As if something had wheeled him there, he

found himself in the living room face-to-face with Chief

Obialor, who was dressed in magnificent regalia – a red-

coloured long and flowing isiagu – and brandished an ivory

tusk. On his red cap were two kite feathers, tucked into both

sides of the cap – the way the old fathers dressed. For they

believed that birds were a symbol of life and that a man who

has succeeded in this world has acquired feathers and, in

the proverbial sense, become a bird. His wife who marched

beside him wore similar prints on her body and beads

around her neck – just as the great mothers did. She held a

hand fan, and the bangles on her wrist were innumerable.

When Ndali and he came up to her parents, he bowed

before them both in greeting as Ndali genuflected. Her

parents smiled back as her father waved his staff and her

mother waved her fan in the air. Chukwu, after all that

would happen afterwards, my host would always remember

how her parents had seemed to show no sign of displeasure

at the sight of him during the encounter.

My host, in a state of internal fluster, merged with what

was a procession, stepping slowly towards the door of the

entrance to the mansion like one being dragged along by

invisible ropes. He marched along with the man from

Germany, a country of white people, and his white wife, who

was dressed like the daughters of the great mothers. Beside

them was Ndali’s uncle, the famed doctor who’d sutured

blown-out limbs during the Biafran War, waving his staff

whose top bore an elephant figurine. Outside, Osuofia was

shouting into the microphone, his voice amplified by the

speakers: ‘Now they are coming out, they are coming – the

celebrant and his family!’ My host followed them with the

lightest foot, carrying his body as if it were a walking bag ofpus kept alive only by Ndali’s hand in
his, until they entered

the arena to the noisy cheering and applause of the crowd.

He danced with them lightly, even as Chuka, with scorn on

his face, constantly came within an inch or two of him.

Increasingly, his fear was inflamed and he did not want to

proceed. So he withdrew his hand when they began filling

the seats in the front row under the awning where the

dignitaries were seated behind the High Table and

whispered ‘No, I can’t, can’t, no’ into Ndali’s ear. She held

on but as Osuofia began calling on her, she left him and sat

in the very first row with her family members and other

high-calibre guests. He hurried into the first empty seat

behind them.

Egbunu, the slighted man – he is one who has felt himself

disrespected by someone beneath him. Such a man has, by

stroke of luck, or by hard work, or by strong bargaining by

his chi, obtained good fortune or influence. And now, having

measured his wealth or influence against those of others, he

sees any raising of the hands by those of less estate as a

slight to which he must respond. For to be challenged by a

man of less fortune disrupts the equilibrium of his mind and

infects his psyche. He must restore this quickly! He must

strike at the thing that has caused that shift. This must be

his response. Although such men were few in the times of

the fathers – mostly because they feared Ala’s wrath – I

have seen it many times amongst their children. I had seen

the sign of this state of mind in Chuka, so I was not

surprised when, just as my host sat down, one of the

cameramen came to him and whispered into his ear,

‘Bros,

Oga Chuka say make you follow me.

Before my host could make sense of it, the man had

begun walking away as if it were a given that he’d do as

he’d been told. That in itself brought a lash of fear upon his

back. If the messenger had relayed his message with such

confidence, without any doubt that the order would be

obeyed, how powerful must his master be? How mighty his
wrath? He rose and followed the man as quickly as he could,thinking that everyone must have
seen that he was the odd

one at the High Table who was now paying for his brazen act

of transgression. The man circled the house, past a

gathering of women cooking stew and a mighty pot of rice.

They walked swiftly past a group of sweating men unloading

crates of drinks from the inside of a van. Then they passed

through a small gate, beside which was a guard hut – a

small room. The man turned and pivoted to the outpost.

‘Enter here, Bros.

It is in circumstances such as these that I often wish that a

chi had more power and could defend his host through some

supernatural means. It is at times like these that I also wish

my host was wise in the ways of agbara and afa , like the

dibia who was my host more than three hundred years ago.

That man, Esuruonye of Nnobi, had reached the prime of

human superabilities. He had been so strong, so potent in

divination, that he was deemed ok ala-mmadu, ok ala-mmuo .

Esuruonye was able to strip himself of his flesh and become

a discarnate being. I saw him twice invoke the mystical ekili

and ascend into the astral plane so that he was able to

travel in the batting of eyelids to a distance that would have

taken him two market weeks to reach were he to walk and a

full day were he to go in a car. But my present host, like

others of his generation, was helpless in a situation like this

– as helpless as a cockerel in the eye grip of a hawk. He

merely entered the house with the mysterious man who had

given him the instruction.

Another fellow, with the build of a wrestler, stood inside

the room, wearing a deep frown on his face. A blue

sleeveless shirt hung around the man’s body, embossed

with the image of an explosive in motion, its coloured sparks

like paint stains all over the shirt.

‘Na the man wey dey

disturb Oga’s party be this?’ the brawny man said in the

broken version of the White Man’s language.

‘Na him,

’ the cameraman said from outside the small

room.

‘But Oga say make we no touch am. Just give am

work make im do.

’‘No problem,

’ the heavy man said. He pointed at a blue

khaki shirt and pair of trousers, the kind my host had seen

the gateman wearing, and said,

‘Wear that.

‘Me?’ my host, with a furiously palpitating heart, said.

‘Yes, who else dey here? Look – er, Nwokem, I don’t have

time for questions, oh. Biko wear that thing may we go.

Ijango-ijango, at times like these my host’s mind always

failed to provide an adequate answer to the questions.

Should he argue with this man? Certainly not: he would get

his head split open. Run? Certainly not. He possibly could

not run faster than this individual. Even so, if he ran he

faced the possibility of going back to the party to face more

humiliation. The best thing to do was yield to the orders of

this strange person who, without warning, had assumed

lordship over him. So in submission, he took off his gown

and new plain trousers and put on the regalia of the

gateman.

Satisfied, the brawny man said,

‘Follow me.

’ But what he

meant was ‘Walk in front of me.

’ The horsewhip the man

took with him as they walked – what was it for? Could it

come down on his back any time? The fear of the possibility

of this was overwhelming. The man and he walked all the

way back the way he and the cameraman had taken earlier,

only now he was dressed differently – stripped of the regalia

of the dignified, clothed in the garments of the lowly, and

reduced to his true status. The phrase where you belong

came into his head with such force that he was convinced

someone had whispered it into his ear right then. As they

passed, he saw that the food was being dished into plastic

bags and that the van was driving away. He heard Ndali’s

father’s voice, unmistakable over the speakers, as they

passed behind the awnings, hidden behind the backs of

people who stood on the edge of the pavilions, until they

reached the gate.

‘Join the gatemen,

’ the brawny man with the whip said,

pointing to the gate.

‘This is your job.

’AGUJIEGBE, it was here that Ndali would find him later,

drenched in sweat, directing the surfeit of cars that poured

in and out of the compound, finding parking spaces, settling

disputes, and helping unload and take into the house some

of the gifts some of the guests had brought (a bag of rice,

tubers of yams, cases of expensive wines, a television in a

box … ), and once, when the ribbons fastened around the

statue of the lion snapped, he and one of his colleagues

adorned the statue with new ribbons.

When she saw him, he had no words for her – for such is
the kind of thing that gouges words from within a man, and

leaves him empty. Thus he could not even answer the

questions,

‘Who did this to you? Where is your dress? Where

– what?’ He had merely said, in a voice that seemed as if it

had grown old in the time he’d served at the gate,

‘Please

take me home, abeg you in the name of the almighty God.

The party was still in full swing and Oliver De Coque was

making unintelligible sounds akin to those made by termites

crawling on dead wood and the crowd was braying like

senseless lambs. All of it, all of them were blown away as his

van lurched out of the gate. Memories completely random,

moments past – as if fanned by some orchestrated wind –

blew into his mind and replaced them. He paid no heed to

Ndali who wept all the way as he drove slowly through the

noisy streets of Umuahia. But even in his tombed silence, he

was well aware, as I could see, that she, like him, had been

gravely wounded.

CHUKWU, what had been done to him was so painful that he

could not shake a single detail of it out of his mind.

Memories of the events persisted, like insects around a glob

of sugarcane, crawling into every crevice of his mind, filling

him with their black fragrance. And Ndali had cried much of

the night until he made love to her and she slouched into

slumber. Now the night had deepened, and he lay on the

bed beside her. By the dim light of the kerosene lantern, he

gazed into her face and saw that even in sleep, he could seesigns of anger and sympathy –
things that were often

difficult to find on her face. His father had once told him that

a person’s true countenance at a given moment is that

which remains on their face while in an unconscious state.

Earlier, while he worked at the gate during the party, he’d

thought of how to repay her brother for what he had done to

him. But he realised he could not have. What could he have

done? Hit him? How can one hit the brother of the woman

one loves so much? It occurred to him, again, that things

could only go one way any time he met Chuka. He can only

be hit; he cannot hit back. Like craven blacksmiths, Ndali’s

family had forged a weapon out of his desire, from his heart,

and against this weapon he could not contend.

Yet, Egbunu, he knew that the only possible solution – that

he should leave her and end it all – lay in the centre of the

room of his thoughts, gazing at him with its dim face and

cruel eyes. But he kept looking past it as if it were not there.

And it persisted. He began to ponder instead the itinerant

fear that now returned to him – the fear that in the end,

Ndali would be frustrated and leave him. Ndali herself had

raised this question earlier, just before she fell asleep.

‘Nonso, I’m afraid,

’ she’d said suddenly.

‘Why, Mommy?’

‘I’m afraid that they will succeed in the end and make you

leave me. You will, Nonso?’

‘No,

’ he’d said, much louder than he intended to,

vehemently.

‘I will not leave you. Never .

‘I just hope you will not leave me because of them,

because I will not let anyone choose who to marry for me.

I’m not a child.

He had said nothing else but instead recalled the moment

when, while directing traffic at the gate, the man who’d sat

beside him under the party tents had seen him on the way

out and been bewildered. The man wound down the tinted

glass of his Mercedes-Benz and cocked his head towards the

front seat.

‘No be you sidon there with me before?’ He found

no words.

‘You are – what? A gateman?’ He shook his head,but the man laughed and said something he
could not make
out, then wound up his window again and drove out.

‘Are you sure, Nonso?’ Ndali said, her voice tense.

‘That is so, Mommy. They won’t. They cannot,

’ he said,

and his heart palpitated at the violence with which he’d

spoken. He did not know, Egbunu, that fate was a strange

language which the life of a man and his chi are never able

to learn. He raised his eyes to her again and saw a tear

sliding down her face.

‘Nobody can make me leave you,

’ he

said again.

‘Nobody.