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Christopher told him, fortunately in Ibo, that pregnancy could not be covered with the hand.
Obi told him not to be a bloody fool. “Yes, tomorrow morning. Not at the office, no, here. I’m not starting work till next week, Wednesday. Oh, yes. Many thanks. Bye-bye.”
The doctor counted his wad of notes carefully, folded it, and put it in his pocket. “Come back at five o’clock,” he told Obi, dismissing him. But when Obi got to his car he could not drive away. All kinds of frightening thoughts kept crowding into his mind. He did not believe in premonition and such stuff, but somehow he felt that he wasn’t going to see Clara again.
As he sat in the driver’s seat, paralyzed by his thoughts, the doctor and Clara came out and entered a car that was parked by the side of the road. The doctor must have said something about him because Clara looked in his direction once and immediately took her eyes away. Obi wanted to rush out of his car and shout: “Stop. Let’s go and get married now,” but he couldn’t and didn’t. The doctor’s car drove away.
It could not have been more than a minute, or at most two. Obi’s mind was made up. He reversed his car and chased after the doctor’s to stop them. But they were no longer in sight. He tried first one turning and then another. He dashed across a major road and was missed by a huge red bus by a hair’s breadth. He backed, went forward, turned right and left like a panicky fly trapped behind the windscreen. Cyclists and pedestrians cursed him. At one stage the whole of Lagos rose in one loud protest: “ONE WAY! ONE WAY!!” He stopped, backed into a side street, and then went in the opposite direction.
After about half an hour of this mad and aimless exercise Obi pulled up by the side of the road. He felt in his right pocket, then in his left for a handkerchief. Finding none, he rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand. Then he placed his arms on the steering wheel and put his head on them. His face and arms gradually became wet where they came in contact, and dripped with sweat. It was the worst time of the day and the worst time of the year—the last couple of months before the rains broke. The air was dead, heavy and hot. It lay on the earth like a mantle of lead. Inside Obi’s car it was worse. He had not wound down the glass at the back and the heat was trapped inside. He did not notice it, but even if he had noticed it he would not have done anything about it.
At five o’clock he returned to the clinic. The doctor’s attendant said he was out. Obi asked if she knew where he had gone. The girl answered a curt “no.”
“There is something very important that I must tell him. Can’t you try and find him for me … or …”
“I don’t know where he has gone to,” she said. Her accent was about as gentle as the splitting of hard wood with an axe.
Obi waited for an hour and a half before the doctor returned—without Clara. Sweat rained down his body.
“Oh, are you here?” the doctor asked. “Come back tomorrow morning.”
“Where is she?”
“Don’t worry, she will be all right. But I want to have her under observation tonight in case of complications.”
“Can’t I see her?”
“No. Tomorrow morning. That is, if she wants to see you. Women are very funny creatures, you know.”
He told his houseboy Sebastian not to cook supper.
“Master no well?”
“No.”
“Sorry, sir.”
“Thank you. Go away now. I’ll be all right in the morning.”
He wanted a book to look at, so he went to his shelf. The pessimism of A. E. Housman once again proved irresistible. He took it down and went to his bedroom. The book opened at the place where he had put the paper on which he had written the poem “Nigeria” in London about two years ago.
God bless our noble fatherland
Great land of sunshine bright,
Where brave men chose the way of peace,
To win their freedom fight.
May we preserve our purity,
Our zest for life and jollity.
God bless our noble countrymen
And women everywhere.
Teach them to walk in unity
