AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Ah, no, Oga, Master. E no be like dat I beg. I go pay end of mont prompt.” He then reverted to Ibo. “Our people have a saying that a debt may become moldy but it never rots. There are many people in this department, but I did not go to them. I came to you.”
“That was very kind of you,” said Obi, knowing full well that the point would be missed. It was.
“Yes, there are many people here, but I did not go to them. I take you as my special master. Our people have a saying that when there is a big tree small ones climb on its back to reach the sun. You are a small boy in years, but …”
“O.K., Charles. End of December. If you fail I shall report the matter to Mr. Green.”
“Ah! I no go fail at all. If I fail my Oga, who I go go meet next time?”
And on that rhetorical note the matter rested for the moment. Obi looked at Charles’s letter again and saw with wry amusement that in the original manuscript he had written: “My request from you is only 30/—(thirty shillings)”; he had then crossed out only, no doubt after mature deliberation.
He shoved the letter back in the drawer to spend the night with the insurance notice. There was nothing for it but to go to the bank manager tomorrow morning and ask for an overdraft of fifty pounds. He had been told that it was fairly easy for a senior civil servant, whose salary was paid into the bank, to obtain an overdraft of that order. Meanwhile there was little point in thinking about it anymore. Charles’s attitude was undoubtedly the healthiest in these circumstances. If one didn’t laugh, one would have to cry. It seemed that was the way Nigeria was built.
But no amount of philosophy could take his mind right off that notice. “No one can say I have been extravagant. If I had not sent thirty-five pounds at the end of last month
to pay for mother’s treatment in a private hospital, I would have been all right—or if not exactly all right, at least above water. Anyway, I’ll pull through,” he assured himself. “The beginning was bound to be a little difficult. What do our people say? The start of weeping is always hard. Not a particularly happy proverb, but nonetheless true.”
If the Umuofia Progressive Union had granted him four months’ grace things might have turned out differently. But all that was now past history. He had made up his quarrel with the Union. It was quite clear they had meant no harm. And even if they had, was it not true, as the President had said at the reconciliation meeting, that anger against a kinsman was felt in the flesh, not in the marrow? The Union had pleaded with him to accept the four months’ grace from that moment. But he had refused with the lie that his circumstances were now happier.
And if one thought objectively of the matter—as though it related to Mr. B. and not to one’s self—could one blame those poor men for being critical of a senior service man who appeared reluctant to pay twenty pounds a month? They had taxed themselves mercilessly to raise eight hundred pounds to send him to England. Some of them earned no more than five pounds a month. He earned nearly fifty. They had wives and schoolgoing children; he had none. After paying the twenty pounds he would have thirty left. And very soon he would have an increment which alone was as big as some people’s salary.
Obi admitted that his people had a sizable point. What they did not know was that, having labored in sweat and tears to enroll their kinsman among the shining élite, they had to keep him there. Having made him a member of an exclusive club whose members greet one another with “How’s the car behaving?” did they expect him to turn round and answer: “I’m sorry, but my car is off the road. You see I couldn’t pay my insurance premium”? That would be letting the side down in a way that was quite unthinkable. Almost as unthinkable as a masked spirit in the old Ibo society answering another’s esoteric salutation: “I’m sorry, my friend, but I don’t understand your strange language. I’m but a human being wearing a mask.” No, these things could not be. Ibo people, in their fair-mindedness, have devised a proverb which says that it is not right to ask a man with elephantiasis of the scrotum to take on smallpox as well, when thousands of other people have not had even their share of small diseases. No doubt it is not right. But it happens. “Na so dis world be,” they say.
Having negotiated a loan of fifty pounds from the bank and gone straight to hand it over to the insurance company, Obi returned to his office to find his electricity bill for November. When he opened it he came very close to crying. Five pounds seven and three.
“Anything the matter?” asked Miss Tomlinson.
“Oh, no. Not at all.” He pulled himself together. “It’s only my electricity bill.”
“How much do you find it comes to a month?”
“This one is five-seven and three.”
“It’s sheer robbery what they charge for electricity here. In England you would pay less than that for a whole quarter.”
Obi was not in the mood for comparisons. The sudden impact of the insurance notice had woken him up to the real nature of his financial position. He had surveyed the prospects for the next few months and found them pretty alarming. At the end of the month he would have to renew his vehicle license. A whole year was out of the question, but even a quarter alone was four pounds. And then the tires. He could possibly postpone renewing them for another month or so, but they were already as smooth as the tube. Everyone said that it was surprising that his first set of tires did not give him two years or even eighteen months. He could not contemplate four new tires at thirty pounds. So he would have to retread his present set, one at a time beginning with the spare in the boot. That would cut the price down by half. They would probably last only six months as Miss Tomlinson told him. But six months might be long enough for things to improve a little. No one told him about income tax. That was to come, but not for another two months.
As soon as he finished his lunch he immediately set about introducing sweeping economy measures in his flat. His new steward boy, Sebastian, stood by, no doubt wondering what had possessed his master. He had started off his lunch by complaining that there was too much meat in the soup.
“I am not a millionaire, you know,” he had said. God knows, Clara used twice as much meat when she made the soup herself! thought Sebastian.
“And in future,” Obi continued, “I shall only give you money to go to the market once a week.”
Every switch in the flat lit two bulbs. Obi set about pruning them down. The rule in future was to be one switch, one bulb. He had often wondered why there should be two lamps in the bathroom and lavatory. It was typical Government planning. There was no single light on the flight of concrete stairs running through the middle of the block, with the result that people often collided with one another there or slipped one step. And yet there were two lamps in the lavatory where no one wanted to look closely at what one was doing.
Having dealt with the lamps, he turned to Sebastian again. “In future the water heater must not be turned on. I will have cold baths. The fridge must be switched off at seven o’clock in the evening and on again at twelve noon. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir. But meat no go spoil so?”
“No need to buy plenty meat at once.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Buy small today; when he finish buy small again.”
“Yes, sir. Only I tink you say I go de go market once every week.”
“I said nothing of the sort. I said I would only give you money once.”
