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Obi’s plan to pay fifty pounds into her account had come to nothing for various reasons. One day he had received a registered parcel slip. He wondered who could be sending him a registered parcel. It turned out to have been the Commissioner of Income Tax.
Marie advised him to arrange in future to pay by monthly installments through his bank. “That way you don’t notice it,” she s
aid.
That was, of course, useful advice for the next tax year. As for the present, he had to find thirty-two pounds pretty soon.
On top of it all came his mother’s death. He sent all he could find for her funeral, but it was already being said to his eternal shame that a woman who had borne so many children, one of whom was in a European post, deserved a better funeral than she got. One Umuofia man who had been on leave at home when she died had brought the news to Lagos to the meeting of the Umuofia Progressive Union.
“It was a thing of shame,” he said. Someone else wanted to know, by the way, why that beast (meaning Obi) had not obtained permission to go home “That is what Lagos can do to a young man. He runs after sweet things, dances breast to breast with women and forgets his home and his people. Do you know what medicine that osu woman may have put into his soup to turn his eyes and ears away from his people?”
“Do you ever see him in our meetings these days?” asked another. “He has found better company.”
At this stage one of the older members of the meeting raised his voice. He was a very pompous man.
“Everything you have said is true. But there is one thing I want you to learn. Whatever happens in this world has a meaning. As our people say: ‘Wherever something stands, another thing stands beside it.’ You see this thing called blood. There is nothing like it. That is why when you plant a yam it produces another yam, and if you plant an orange it bears oranges. I have seen many things in my life, but I have never yet seen a banana tree yield a coco yam. Why do I say this? You young men here, I want you to listen because it is from listening to old men that you learn wisdom. I know that when I return to Umuofia I cannot claim to be an old man. But here in this Lagos I am an old man to the rest of you.” He paused for effect. “This boy that we are all talking about, what has he done? He was told that his mother died and he did not care. It is a strange and surprising thing, but I can tell you that I have seen it before. His father did it.”
There was some excitement at this. “Very true,” said another old man.
“I say that his father did the same thing,” said the first man very quickly, lest the story be taken from his mouth. “I am not guessing and I am not asking you not to mention it outside. When this boy’s father—you all know him, Isaac Okonkwo—when Isaac Okonkwo heard of the death of his father he said that those who kill with the matchet must die by the matchet.”
“Very true,” said the other man again. “It was the talk of Umuofia in those days and for many years. I was a very little boy at the time, but I heard of it.”
“You see that,” said the President. “A man may go to England, become a lawyer or a doctor, but it does not change his blood. It is like a bird that flies off the earth and lands on an anthill. It is still on the ground.”
Obi had been utterly prostrated by the shock of his mother’s death. As soon as he saw a post office messenger in khaki and steel helmet walking towards his table with the telegram he had known.
His hand trembled violently as he signed the receipt and the result was nothing like his signature.
“Time of receipt,” said the messenger.
“What is the time?”
“You get watch.”
Obi looked at his watch, for, as the messenger had pointed out, he had one.
Everybody was most kind. Mr. Green said he could take a week’s leave if he wished. Obi took two days. He went straight home and locked himself up in his flat. What was the point in going to Umuofia? She would have been buried by the time he got there, anyway. The thought of going home and not finding her! In the privacy of his bedroom he let tears run down his face like a child.
The effect of his tears was startling. When he finally went to sleep he did not wake up even once in the night. Such a thing had not happened to him for many years. In the last few months he had hardly known any sleep at all.
He woke with a start and saw that it was broad daylight. For a brief moment he wondered what had happened. Then yesterday’s thought woke violently. Something caught in his throat. He got out of bed and stood gazing at the light coming in through the louvres. Shame and guilt filled his heart. Yesterday his mother had been put into the ground and covered with red earth and he could not keep as much as one night’s vigil for her.
“Terrible!” he said. His thoughts went to his father. Poor man, he would be completely lost without her. For the first month or so it would not be too bad. Obi’s married sisters would all return home. Esther could be relied upon to look after him. But in the end they would all have to go away again. That was the time the blow would really fall—when everyone began to go away. Obi wondered whether he had done the right thing in not setting out for Umuofia yesterday. But what could have been the point in going? It was more useful to send all the money he could for the funeral instead of wasting it on petrol to get home.
He washed his head and face and shaved with an old razor. Then he nearly burnt his mouth out by brushing his teeth with shaving cream which he mistook for toothpaste.
As soon as he returned from the bank he went and lay down again. He did not get up until Joseph came at about three in the afternoon. He came in a taxi. Sebastian opened the door for him.
“Put these bottles in the fridge,” he told him.
Obi came out from his bedroom and found bottles of beer at the doorstep. There must have been a dozen. “What is that, Joseph?” he asked. Joseph did not reply immediately. He was helping Sebastian to put them away first.
“They are mine,” he said at last. “I will use them for something.”
Before very long a number of Umuofia people began to arrive. Some came in taxis, not singly like Joseph but in teams of three or four, sharing the fare among them. Others came on bicycles. Altogether there were over twenty-five.
The President of the Umuofia Progressive Union asked whether it was permissible to sing hymns in Ikoyi. He asked because Ikoyi was a European reservation. Obi said he would rather they did not sing, but he was touched most deeply that so many of his people had come, in spite of everything, to condole with him. Joseph called him aside and told him in a whisper that he had brought the beer to help him entertain those who would come.
