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“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.
