Anthills of the Savannah - Chinua Achebe [46]
“When you were little,” I asked Ikem, “what did you do when it rained like this?”
“But I told you it never rained at all in August. We had a month of dry weather called the August Break.”
“OK! In July then, or September.”
“When I was really little I used to take off my scanty clothes and run into it.”
“Singing ogwogwo mmili takumei ayolo?”
“Did you sing to the rain too?” He fairly jumped with excitement.
“No, but my older sister did.”
“Oh… what did you do?”
“I listened. The rain sang to me.”
“Lucky girl! What did it say, the rain?”
“Uwa t’uwa t’uwa t’uwa; tooo… waaa… tooo… waa Dooo—daaa… Booo—baaa… Shooo—shaaa… Cooo—caaa… Looo—laaa… Mooo—maaa…” “Pooo—paaa,” said Ikem. “Great song!”
“BB, you may be wondering why I am behaving so strangely today. Well, I’ve come on a mission the like of, which I’d never undertaken before… I’ve come to thank you for the greatest present one human being can give another. The gift of insight. That’s what you gave me and I want to say thank you.”
“Insight? Me? Insight into what?”
“Into the world of women.”
I held back a facetious comment trembling on my lip. Ikem’s sudden change and extraordinary manner forbade its utterance. I held back and listened to this strange annunciation.
“You told me a couple of years ago, do you remember, that my thoughts were unclear and reactionary on the role of the modern woman in our society. Do you remember?”
“I do.”
“I resisted your charge…”
“It wasn’t a charge.”
“It damn well was! But I resisted. Vehemently. But the amazing thing was that the more I read your charge sheet…”
“Oh my God!”
“… the less impressive my plea became. My suspension from the Gazette has done wonders for me. I have been able to sit and think things through. I now realize you were right and I was wrong.”
“Oh come on, Ikem. You know I detest all born-again people.”
“Don’t be facetious!”
“I’m sorry. Go ahead. What happened?”
“Nothing happened. It simply dawned on me two mornings ago that a novelist must listen to his characters who after all are created to wear the shoe and point the writer where it pinches.”
“Now hold it! Are you suggesting I am a character in your novel?”
“BB, you’ve got to be serious, or I will leave. I mean it. I’m already losing my train of thought.”
“I won’t breathe another word. Please go on.”
“One of the things you told me was that my attitude to women was too respectful.”
“I didn’t.”
“You bloody well did. And you were damn right. You charged me with assigning to women the role of a fire-brigade after the house has caught fire and been virtually consumed. Your charge has forced me to sit down and contemplate the nature of oppression—how flexible it must learn to be, how many faces it must learn to wear if it is to succeed again and again.”
He dug his hand into his shirt pocket and pulled out a folded sheet of paper and carefully unfolded it on his knee. “I wrote this strange love-letter last night. May I read it?” I nodded.
“The original oppression of Woman was based on crude denigration. She caused Man to fall. So she became a scapegoat. No, not a scapegoat which might be blameless but a culprit richly deserving of whatever suffering Man chose thereafter to heap on her. That is Woman in the Book of Genesis. Out here, our ancestors, without the benefit of hearing about the Old Testament, made the very same story differing only in local colour. At first the Sky was very close to the Earth. But every evening Woman cut off a piece of the Sky to put in her soup pot or, as in another version, she repeatedly banged the top end of her pestle carelessly against the Sky whenever she pounded the millet or, as in yet another rendering—so prodigious is Man’s inventiveness—she wiped her kitchen hands on the Sky’s face. Whatever the detail of Woman’s provocation, the Sky finally moved away in anger, and God with it.
“Well, that kind of candid chauvinism might be OK for the rugged taste of the Old Testament. The New Testament required