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“Nonsense!” said Obi. “That’s what I call colonial mentality.”
“Call it what you like,” said Joseph in Ibo. “You know more book than I, but I am older and wiser. And I can tell you that a man does not challenge his chi to a wrestling match.”
Joseph’s houseboy, Mark, brought in rice and stew and they immediately fell to. He then went across the street to a shop where iced water was sold at a penny a bottle and brought them two bottles, carrying all the way and back a smudge of soot at the tip of his nose. His eyes were a little red and watery from blowing the fire with his breath.
“You know you have changed a good deal in four years,” Obi remarked after they had been eating for a while in silence. “Then you had two interests—politics and women.”
Joseph smiled. “You don’t do politics on an empty stomach.”
“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.
