Girls at War (3 page)

Up to last night everything had been “moving according to plan,” as Roof would have put it. Then he had received a strange visit from the leader of the POP campaign team. Although he and Roof were well known to each other, and might even be called friends, his visit was cold and business-like. No words were wasted. He placed five pounds on the floor before Roof and said, “We want your vote.” Roof got up from his
chair, went to the outside door, closed it carefully and returned to his chair. The brief exercise gave him enough time to weigh the proposition. As he spoke his eyes never left the red notes on the floor. He seemed to be mesmerized by the picture of the cocoa farmer harvesting his crops.

“You know I work for Marcus,” he said feebly. “It will be very bad …”

“Marcus will not be there when you put in your paper. We have plenty of work to do tonight; are you taking this or not?”

“It will not be heard outside this room?” asked Roof.

“We are after votes not gossip.”

“All right,” said Roof in English.

The man nudged his companion and he brought forward an object covered with a red cloth and proceeded to remove the cover. It was a fearsome little affair contained in a clay pot with feathers stuck into it.

“The
iyi
comes from Mbanta. You know what that means. Swear that you will vote for Maduka. If you fail to do so, this
iyi
take note.”

Roof’s heart nearly flew out when he saw the
iyi
; indeed he knew the fame of Mbanta in these things. But he was a man of quick decision. What could a single vote cast in secret for Maduka take away from Marcus’s certain victory? Nothing.

“I will cast my paper for Maduka; if not this
iyi
take note.”

“Das all,” said the man as he rose with his companion who had covered up the object again and was taking it back to their car.

“You know he has no chance against Marcus,” said Roof at the door.

“It is enough that he gets a few votes now; next
time he will get more. People will hear that he gives out pounds, not shillings, and they will listen.”

Election morning. The great day every five years when the people exercise power. Weather-beaten posters on walls of houses, tree trunks and telegraph poles. The few that were still whole called out their message to those who could read. Vote for the People’s Alliance Party! Vote for the Progressive Organization Party! Vote for PAP! Vote for POP! The posters that were torn called out as much of the message as they could.

As usual Chief the Honourable Marcus Ibe was doing things in grand style. He had hired a highlife band from Umuru and stationed it at such a distance from the voting booths as just managed to be lawful. Many villagers danced to the music, their ballot papers held aloft, before proceeding to the booths. Chief the Honourable Marcus Ibe sat in the “owner’s corner” of his enormous green car and smiled and nodded. One enlightened villager came up to the car, shook hands with the great man and said in advance, “Congrats!” This immediately set the pattern. Hundreds of admirers shook Marcus’s hand and said “Corngrass!”

Roof and the other organizers were prancing up and down, giving last minute advice to the voters and pouring with sweat.

“Do not forget,” he said again to a group of illiterate women who seemed ready to burst with enthusiasm and good humour, “our sign is the motor-car …”

“Like the one Marcus is sitting inside.”

“Thank you, mother,” said Roof. “It is the same car. The box with the car shown on its body is the box for
you. Don’t look at the other with the man’s head: it is for those whose heads are not correct.”

This was greeted with loud laughter. Roof cast a quick and busy-like glance towards the Minister and received a smile of appreciation.

“Vote for the car,” he shouted, all the veins in his neck standing out. “Vote for the car and you will ride in it!”

“Or if we don’t, our children will,” piped the same sharp, old girl.

The band struck up a new number: “Why walk when you can ride …”

In spite of his apparent calm and confidence Chief the Honourable Marcus was a relentless stickler for detail. He knew he would win what the newspapers called “a landslide victory” but he did not wish, even so, to throw away a single vote. So as soon as the first rush of voters was over he promptly asked his campaign boys to go one at a time and put in their ballot papers.

“Roof, you had better go first,” he said.

Roof’s spirits fell; but he let no one see it. All morning he had masked his deep worry with a surface exertion which was unusual even for him. Now he dashed off in his springy fashion towards the booths. A policeman at the entrance searched him for illegal ballot papers and passed him. Then the electoral officer explained to him about the two boxes. By this time the spring had gone clean out of his walk. He sidled in and was confronted by the car and the head. He brought out his ballot paper from his pocket and looked at it. How could he betray Marcus even in secret? He resolved to go back to the other man and return his five pounds … Five pounds! He knew at
once it was impossible. He had sworn on that
iyi.
The notes were red; the cocoa farmer busy at work.

At this point he heard the muffled voice of the policeman asking the electoral officer what the man was doing inside. “Abi na pickin im de born?”

Quick as lightning a thought leapt into Roof’s mind. He folded the paper, tore it in two along the crease and put one half in each box. He took the precaution of putting the first half into Maduka’s box and confirming the action verbally: “I vote for Maduka.”

They marked his thumb with indelible purple ink to prevent his return, and he went out of the booth as jauntily as he had gone in.

“Have you written to your dad yet?” asked Nene one afternoon as she sat with Nnaemeka in her room at 16 Kasanga Street, Lagos.

“No. I’ve been thinking about it. I think it’s better to tell him when I get home on leave!”

“But why? Your leave is such a long way off yet—six whole weeks. He should be let into our happiness now.”

Nnaemeka was silent for a while, and then began very slowly as if he groped for his words: “I wish I were sure it would be happiness to him.”

“Of course it must,” replied Nene, a little surprised. “Why shouldn’t it?”

“You have lived in Lagos all your life, and you know very little about people in remote parts of the country.”

“That’s what you always say. But I don’t believe anybody will be so unlike other people that they will be unhappy when their sons are engaged to marry.”

“Yes. They are most unhappy if the engagement is not arranged by them. In our case it’s worse—you are not even an Ibo.”

This was said so seriously and so bluntly that Nene could not find speech immediately. In the cosmopolitan atmosphere of the city it had always seemed to her something of a joke that a person’s tribe could determine whom he married.

At last she said, “You don’t really mean that he will object to your marrying me simply on that account? I had always thought you Ibos were kindly disposed to other people.”

“So we are. But when it comes to marriage, well, it’s not quite so simple. And this,” he added, “is not peculiar to the Ibos. If your father were alive and lived in the heart of Ibibio-land he would be exactly like my father.”

“I don’t know. But anyway, as your father is so fond of you, I’m sure he will forgive you soon enough. Come on then, be a good boy and send him a nice lovely letter …”

“It would not be wise to break the news to him by writing. A letter will bring it upon him with a shock. I’m quite sure about that.”

“All right, honey, suit yourself. You know your father.”

As Nnaemeka walked home that evening he turned over in his mind the different ways of overcoming his father’s opposition, especially now that he had gone and found a girl for him. He had thought of showing his letter to Nene but decided on second thoughts not to, at least for the moment. He read it again when he got home and couldn’t help smiling to himself. He remembered Ugoye quite well, an Amazon of a girl
who used to beat up all the boys, himself included, on the way to the stream, a complete dunce at school.

On the second evening of his return from Lagos Nnaemeka sat with his father under a cassia tree. This was the old man’s retreat where he went to read his Bible when the parching December sun had set and a fresh, reviving wind blew on the leaves.

“Father,” began Nnaemeka suddenly, “I have come to ask forgiveness.”

“Forgiveness? For what, my son?” he asked in amazement.

“It’s about this marriage question?”

“Which marriage question.”

“I can’t—we must—I mean it is impossible for me to marry Nweke’s daughter.”

“Impossible? Why?” asked his father.

“I don’t love her.”

“Nobody said you did. Why should you?” he asked.

“Marriage today is different …”

“Look here, my son,” interrupted his father, “nothing is different. What one looks for in a wife are a good character and a Christian background.”

Nnaemeka saw there was no hope along the present line of argument.

“Moreover,” he said, “I am engaged to marry another girl who has all of Ugoye’s good qualities, and who …”

His father did not believe his ears. “What did you say?” he asked slowly and disconcertingly.

“She is a good Christian,” his son went on, “and a teacher in a Girls’ School in Lagos.”

“Teacher, did you say? If you consider that a qualification for a good wife I should like to point out to you, Emeka, that no Christian woman should teach. St. Paul in his letter to the Corinthians says that women should keep silence.” He rose slowly from his seat and paced forwards and backwards. This was his pet subject, and he condemned vehemently those church leaders who encouraged women to teach in their schools. After he had spent his emotion on a long homily he at last came back to his son’s engagement, in a seemingly milder tone.

“Whose daughter is she, anyway?”

“She is Nene Atang.”

“What!” All the mildness was gone again. “Did you say Neneataga, what does that mean?”

“Nene Atang from Calabar. She is the only girl I can marry.” This was a very rash reply and Nnaemeka expected the storm to burst. But it did not. His father merely walked away into his room. This was most unexpected and perplexed Nnaemeka. His father’s silence was infinitely more menacing than a flood of threatening speech. That night the old man did not eat.

When he sent for Nnaemeka a day later he applied all possible ways of dissuasion. But the young man’s
heart was hardened, and his father eventually gave him up as lost.

“I owe it to you, my son, as a duty to show you what is right and what is wrong. Whoever put this idea into your head might as well have cut your throat. It is Satan’s work.” He waved his son away.

“You will change your mind, Father, when you know Nene.”

“I shall never see her,” was the reply. From that night the father scarcely spoke to his son. He did not, however, cease hoping that he would realize how serious was the danger he was heading for. Day and night he put him in his prayers.

Nnaemeka, for his own part, was very deeply affected by his father’s grief. But he kept hoping that it would pass away. If it had occurred to him that never in the history of his people had a man married a woman who spoke a different tongue, he might have been less optimistic. “It has never been heard,” was the verdict of an old man speaking a few weeks later. In that short sentence he spoke for all of his people. This man had come with others to commiserate with Okeke when news went round about his son’s behaviour. By that time the son had gone back to Lagos.

“It has never been heard,” said the old man again with a sad shake of his head.

“What did Our Lord say?” asked another gentleman. “Sons shall rise against their Fathers; it is there in the Holy Book.”

“It is the beginning of the end,” said another.

The discussion thus tending to become theological, Madubogwu, a highly practical man, brought it down once more to the ordinary level.

“Have you thought of consulting a native doctor about your son?” he asked Nnaemeka’s father.

“He isn’t sick,” was the reply.

“What is he then? The boy’s mind is diseased and only a good herbalist can bring him back to his right senses. The medicine he requires is
Amalile
, the same that women apply with success to recapture their husbands’ straying affection.”

“Madubogwu is right,” said another gentleman. “This thing calls for medicine.”

“I shall not call in a native doctor.” Nnaemeka’s father was known to be obstinately ahead of his more superstitious neighbours in these matters. “I will not be another Mrs. Ochuba. If my son wants to kill himself let him do it with his own hands. It is not for me to help him.”

“But it was her fault,” said Madubogwu. “She ought to have gone to an honest herbalist. She was a clever woman, nevertheless.”

“She was a wicked murderess,” said Jonathan who rarely argued with his neighbours because, he often said, they were incapable of reasoning. “The medicine was prepared for her husband, it was his name they called in its preparation and I am sure it would have been perfectly beneficial to him. It was wicked to put it into the herbalist’s food, and say you were only trying it out.”

Six months later, Nnaemeka was showing his young wife a short letter from his father: