“There is a seat,” she called out.
I sat down facing the approaches to the house. Soon I heard her coming, her slippers clapping against the soles of her feet; and she was humming a tune.
I turned my head and our faces met. She stopped dead at the doorway.
“Good morning, Mrs Nanga,” I said.
“What do you want here?” Her Adam’s apple was agitated by a hard swallowing.
“I only come to say good-bye,” I said, getting up.
“I do not need your good-bye, do you hear me? And you may thank your personal spirit that there is no strong man in the house. That is why you can sneak here in the noonday. . . .”
“Pardon me—” I began, but was not allowed to finish.
Mrs Nanga had suddenly and dramatically raised her voice so the entire village could hear and was calling on all the gods of her people to come and witness that she was sitting in her house, as a weak person was wont to sit when her tormentor, to show how strong he was, brought a fight to her very doorstep. . . . I heard most of this recitative on my way to the car. I had begun the retreat as soon as she had removed her head-tie and girdled her waist firmly with it pulling the two ends as I had seen Edna’s father pull his rope.
As it was nearly midday I drove from Mrs Nanga’s house to the Anata Mission Hospital to waylay Edna. After more than an hour in my car I did what I should have done in the first place. I decided to go to the Women’s ward. But the gateman refused to let my car through. I didn’t mind that but I certainly minded his rudeness—and told him so. All he had to do was tell me politely that cars were not allowed in the hospital unless they were carrying a patient. Instead he shouted at me like a mad dog and said, pointing at the notice:
“Abi you no fit read notice?”
“Don’t be silly,” I said, “and don’t shout at me!”
“Be silly!” he shouted. “Idiot like you. Look him motor self. When they call those wey get motor you go follow them comot? Foolish idiot.”
I parked my car outside the gate and went in, deciding to ignore the man who had not ceased shouting.
“Na him make accident de kill them for road every day. Nonsense!”
As I approached the wards the man’s shrill voice rang in my ear pronouncing one evil wish after another. I reflected on the depth of resentment and hatred from which such venom came—and for no other reason than that I owned a car, or seemed to own one! It was depressing and quite frightening. And when I got to the ward and was told with pointless brusqueness by a girl-nurse that my patient had been discharged yesterday I felt really downcast. As a rule I don’t like suffering to no purpose. Suffering should be creative, should give birth to something good and lovely. So I drove from the hospital to Edna’s place, although her father had told me three days earlier never to set foot in his house again. And for the first time since my return from Bori my luck was on. Edna was in and her father was out. But apparently he had only gone behind the compound—presumably to ease himself. Edna pleaded with me to go.
“No,” I said.
“He will kill you if he finds you here.”
“That would be wonderful,” I said in English.
“I will come to your place to see you if you go now.”
“You can’t because I leave Anata tomorrow morning. I have been dismissed from the school. How is your mother? I’ve just been to the hospital to see her.”
Edna’s eyes darted from me to the door of the middle room, from which I imagined her father would appear, and darted back again. She was literally shaking with fear. Somehow I was enjoying her terror. It was as though I was drunk—with what I couldn’t say.
“Please, Odili,” she said again, with tears in her voice.
“Say ‘please, Odili’ one hundred times and I shall go,” I said, throwing my limbs in all directions for relaxation.
“Oh, you think it is a laughing matter. All right, sit there.”
She sat down on the other hard chair and folded her arms under her perfectly formed breasts.
“Please, Odili,” she said, getting up again quickly and wringing her hands.
“One!”
“What is all this?” she said in despair.
“Minus one.”