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Obi told him it was not possible. “In the first place I don’t give scholarships. All I do is go through the applications and recommend those who satisfy the requirements to the Scholarship Board.”
“That’s all I want,” said the man. “Just recommend him.”
“But the Board may not select him.”
“Don’t worry about that. Just do your own …”
Obi was silent. He remembered the boy’s name. He was already on the short list, “Why don’t you pay for him? You have money. The scholarship is for poor people.”
The man laughed. “No man has money in this world.” He rose to his feet, placed the wad of notes on the occasional table before Obi. “This is just small kola,” he said. “We will make good friends. Don’t forget the name. We will see again. Do you ever go to the club? I have never seen you before.”
“I’m not a member.”
“You must join,” he said. “Bye-bye.”
The wad of notes lay where he had placed it for the rest of the day and all night. Obi placed a newspaper over it and secured the door. “This is terrible!” he muttered. “Terrible!” he said aloud. He woke up with a start in the middle of the night and he did not go to sleep again for a long time afterwards.
“You dance very well,” he whispered as she pressed herself against him, breathing very fast and hard. He put her arms round his neck and brought her lips within a centimeter of his. They no longer paid any attention to the beat of the high-life. Obi steered her towards his bedroom. She made a halfhearted show of resisting, then followed.
Obviously she was not an innocent schoolgirl. She knew her job. She was on the short list already, anyway. All the same, it was a great letdown. No point in pretending that it wasn’t. One should at least be honest. He took her back to Yaba in his car. On his return journey he called on Christopher to tell him about it so that perhaps they might laugh it off. But he left again without having told the story. Some other day, perhaps.
Others came. People would say that Mr. So-and-so was a gentleman. He would take money, but he would do his stuff, which was a big advertisement, and others would follow. But Obi stoutly refused to countenance anyone who did not possess the minimum educational and other requirements. On that he was unshakeable.
In due course he paid off his bank overdraft and his debt to the Hon. Sam Okoli, M.H.R. The worst was now over, and Obi ought to have felt happier. But he didn’t.
Then one day someone brought twenty pounds. As the man left, Obi realized that he could stand it no more. People say that one gets used to these things, but he had not found it like that at all. Every incident had been a hundred times worse than the one before it. The money lay on the table. He would have preferred not to look in its direction, but he seemed to have no choice. He just sat looking at it, paralyzed by his thoughts.
There was a knock at the door. He sprang to his feet, grabbed the money, and ran towards his bedroom. A second knock caught him almost at the door of the bedroom and transfixed him there. Then he saw on the floor for the first time the hat which his visitor had forgotten, and he breathed a sigh of relief. He thrust the money into his pocket and went to the door and opened it. Two people entered—one was his recent visitor, the other a complete stranger.
“Are you Mr. Okonkwo?” asked the stranger. Obi said yes in a voice he could hardly have recognized. The room began to swim round and round. The stranger was saying something, but it sounded distant—as things sound to a man in a fever. He then searched Obi and found the marked notes. He began to say some more things, invoking the name of the Queen, like a District Officer in the bush reading the Riot Act to an uncomprehending and delirious mob. Meanwhile the other man used the telephone outside Obi’s door to summon a police van.
Everybody wondered why. The learned judge, as we have seen, could not comprehend how an educated young man and so on and so forth. The British Council man, even the men of Umuofia, did not know. And we must presume that, in spite of his certitude, Mr. Green did not know either.
