Anthills of the Savannah - Chinua Achebe [54]
“I never said anything of the sort to you.”
“Chris, you asked me, the girl you want to marry, to travel forty miles at night to Abichi…”
“To Abichi? You didn’t say it was Abichi, did you?”
“That’s not the point. You asked the girl you want to marry to go along and keep all options open. Do you remember that? Well, I’m sorry to inform you I did not take your advice.”
“You are being…”
“Please, don’t interrupt. I go off forty miles to this weird party.”
“BB, you never told me it was to Abichi.”
“Please, let me finish. I am carried off to this strange place and my future husband retires to his bed, sleeps well, wakes up, listens to the BBC at seven, has his bath, eats his breakfast and sits down afterwards to read the papers. Perhaps even take a walk in the garden. It is still only nine o’clock, so perhaps you go to your study and attend to some work you brought home. And then, finally at midday you remember the girl you asked to keep all the options open. You pick up the phone and tell her oh, you’re back!”
“I didn’t want to call earlier if that’s what you are complaining about…”
“I am not complaining about anything. You didn’t want to call earlier. Exactly. You didn’t! You know why you didn’t? Because you didn’t want to find out if I slept in Abichi with your boss.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“You didn’t want to catch me out. Why? Because you are a very reasonable man, Chris. You are a very considerate man. You wouldn’t hurt a fly. Well, I have bad news for you. You are damn too reasonable for this girl. I want a man who cares, not a man…”
“BB, you are out of your mind!”
“She wants a man who cares enough to be curious about where his girl sleeps. That’s the kind of man this girl wants.”
“Well, well!”
“Well, well. Yes, well, well. And about time.”
“Listen BB.” (He took the remaining steps and made to place a hand on her shoulder.)
“Take your hand off me,” she screamed.
“Don’t bark at me, BB.”
“I’m not barking.”
“You are. I don’t know what has come over you. Screaming at me like some Cherubim and Seraphim prophetess or something. What’s the matter? I don’t understand.”
He stood there where the hand he had tried to place on her shoulder had been rebuffed, and gazed down at her. She had now folded her arms across her breast and bent her head forward on her chest as if in silent prayer. Neither of them moved again or spoke for a very long time. Then Chris noticed the slightest heaving of her chest and shoulders and went and sat down on the sofa beside her and placed his left arm across her shoulder and with his right hand raised her chin gently and saw she was crying. She did not resist then as he pulled her to him and reverently tasted the salt of her tears.
As their struggle intensified to get inside each other, to melt and lose their separateness on that cramping sofa, she whispered, her breathing coming fast and urgent: “Let’s go inside. It’s too uncomfortable here.” And they fairly scrambled out of the sofa into the bedroom and peeled off their garments and cast them away like things on fire, and fell in together into the wide, open space of her bed and began to roll over and over until she could roll no more and said: “Come in.” And as he did she uttered a strangled cry that was not just a cry but also a command or a password into her temple. From there she took charge of him leading him by the hand silently through heaving groves mottled in subdued yellow sunlight, treading dry leaves underfoot till they came to streams of clear blue water. More than once he had slipped on the steep banks and she had pulled him up and back with such power and authority as he had never seen her exercise before. Clearly this was her grove and these her own peculiar rites over which