‘Christy!’ Donald cried as he came in and saw the young girl sitting in the armchair. ‘I’d given up hope you’d come.’ He sat down in a straight-backed chair facing her, his right hand resting on the crude writing table.
Christy smiled shyly, showing big white teeth that glimmered in the harsh light of the naked electric bulb hanging from the ceiling.
‘I told you I would come today,’ she said in the soft voice of a girl not yet sure of her womanhood. She wasn’t even able to meet his eyes but kept looking either at her lap or the door leading to the bathroom.
‘You did, but I thought you’d come in the daytime.’ The girl was much bigger than he had expected, he thought, as he bent down to remove his wet boots. She was almost as big as himself and she couldn’t be much more than sixteen.
‘I left home very late,’ Christy said.
‘Where did you tell your parents you were going?’ Donald asked.
‘To stay with a schoolmate at Eha-Amufu,’ she answered, looking away as he looked up. ‘If I had arrived here earlier, I would have gone by now; I only wanted to see you … and keep my promise too.’
‘It’s a good thing then you arrived so late,’ he said, getting up and pulling off his uniform. He could see that his undressing embarrassed the girl: she kept her eyes on the tiled floor.
‘I wouldn’t have allowed you to go without spending the night,’ he continued so as to make her think he had not noticed her embarrassment. ‘Have you had anything to eat?’
‘Yes.’
‘What about something to drink?’ He had now changed into a lappa and the top of his pyjamas and was sitting on the single vono bed, at the foot of which was the girl’s chair.
‘I don’t drink.’
‘Surely you’ll have at least a bottle of soft drink while I eat?’
‘All right.’
Donald smiled as he moved back to the straight-backed chair. He uncovered the food that had already gone cold and began to eat. Presently his batman came in and he sent him to the hotel nearby for a bottle of beer for himself and a soft drink for Christy.
As he ate, a small voice inside him whispered that things were going to be more difficult than he imagined. But he ignored it. He felt confident he would succeed. After all, he hadn’t forced her to come to him nor would he make her stay.
For the first time since he came to Nsukka he was glad he lived in this self-contained room, with its bare furnishings: a bed, an armchair, a sidetable, a built-in wardrobe, a table with a chair. There was also a toilet-cum-bathroom attached to the room. So there wasn’t another room to coax anybody from or into which one could run.
The batman soon returned, poured out the drinks, picked up the wet uniform and boots and, wishing them good night, went back to the barracks.
‘How’s your younger sister?’ Donald asked. He had now finished eating and was sitting on the bed holding his last glass of beer.
‘She wanted to come with me,’ Christy said looking anywhere but at him.
‘You told her you were coming to see me?’
‘We don’t hide anything from each other.’
Donald sipped his drink to hide his astonishment. He tried to imagine what the younger sister would be like now. She had been a gawky girl with huge liquid eyes in a small face at the time he met her at Kaduna five years ago. And of the six sisters, she had at the age of ten been the friendliest, the most talkative and the funniest.
‘She said I should ask you when she could visit.’
‘Not till I have arranged what she wants. I said so in my last letter to her. She’s too old to go to a secondary school. What’s her name again?’
‘Veronica. She wants to stay with you till you’ve made the necessary arrangements. She’s tired of Abakaliki. She gave me your address and we planned my coming together.’
‘How big is she now?’
‘Not as big as me. She’s still skinny.’
And Donald remembered when he had been a Warrant Officer Class II teaching mathematics in the Officer Cadet School, Kaduna. He had been one of the youngest WOs then and had owned a beautiful blue Honda motorcycle.
One Sunday evening coming back from Zaria, where he had been spending his weekend, he had raced with a man on a fairly old Enfield machine. The man, who had won the race with ease, had turned out to be Christy’s uncle.
It was through him that he had come to know Christy’s family, a family of women. They had been very nice to him, the way Ibos are when they meet each other far away from home. Only Christy’s eldest sister, Mary, had looked down on him.
‘Do you think there’s going to be war?’ Christy asked suddenly.
‘Why do you ask?’ Donald drained his glass, put it on the table and sat down again.
‘Because of my schooling.’
‘In what class are you now?’
‘Class Four. I hope there will be no war until after next year.’
‘Perhaps there won’t be.’
Donald went into the toilet. It was already past 10 o’clock, and he was eager to go to bed. He was sure if he did not suggest it, Christy would sit there till morning. While drying his hands he saw her underwear, spread on the towel rack. He stared at it in unbelieving silence. Why, the girl’s bust and hip measurements must be in the forties.
He went back into the room, and for the first time really looked Christy over. Yes, now he could see why her measurements were so large.
She was big-boned and about five foot eight inches tall, and she had a full face, strong with every feature in proportion to its size – already a good-sized woman, but she was still shapely with the firm fullness of a young girl.
‘Time to go to bed,’ he said.
She looked at him and then at the bed. She opened her mouth to say something, changed her mind, got up and went to the toilet. When she came out, she went straight to the bed and lay down, facing the wall against which the bed had been pushed.
Donald was nonplussed. He had been prepared to cajole, to plead and even threaten, but not for this dumb act. It was like the sacrificial goat. He sat down on the edge of the bed and called gently: ‘Christy! Christy!! Christy!!!’
‘Yes?’
‘You’ve never looked at me since I came in. Why?’
It took her a long time to answer. ‘I’m afraid,’ she said, her face still to the wall.
‘Afraid? Of me?’
‘Yes.’ She doubled up her well-shaped legs and tried to pull her gown over her knees.
‘Why, Christy?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said simply. ‘I’ve always been afraid of you.’
Donald didn’t know whether to feel flattered or angry, but at least it did explain one thing. When they were at Kaduna, Christy had always avoided him and had refused to go on a ride with him on the Honda, even though her younger sisters often pleaded to go.
He had assumed then that, like her eldest sister, she did not like him, and after some time had given up trying to make her change. Now he knew she had deliberately avoided him. But why was she afraid of him?
‘So, Christy,’ he said slowly, ‘you don’t like me?’
‘I do,’ she said quickly. ‘Otherwise I would not have come.’
He wanted to probe farther but decided to let it go at that. ‘Didn’t you bring a lappa to sleep with?’
‘No.’
‘Here, take mine.’ But, when she said nothing and did not move, he asked, slightly annoyed, ‘Don’t you want it?’
‘What will you wear?’ she asked, her face still to the wall.
‘I have my pyjamas.’
She waited till he had put on his pyjama bottoms and thrown his lappa on her before she got up. She picked up the cloth and, avoiding his eyes, went to the toilet to change.
When she came back with the lappa wrapped tightly over her large breasts and round her, and her shoulders bare, Donald could not help but stare at her. The girl was magnificent … such noble proportions! And inside him he felt the warning of his awakening desire.
Still avoiding his eyes, she folded her dress, put it on the seat of the armchair and lay down, once more facing the wall, her legs doubled up.
This time Donald was determined not to be affected by her actions. He was beginning to get annoyed, and this, coupled with the feeling that her act of naïveté was put on, increased his resolution.
He switched off the light and lay down beside her, his left hand resting lightly on her shoulder. Slowly her warmth began to take possession of his senses. He could not escape it. The bed was too narrow for movement.
She must have felt him for she suddenly straightened her legs and turned over on her stomach, still facing the wall. Then she asked suddenly: ‘How is your wife?’
Donald hesitated before answering. ‘She’s fine,’ he said. ‘Now, what is she up to?’ he asked himself. Why hadn’t she asked him earlier? In his mind’s eye he could see a night of teaching and perhaps preaching in front of him, at the end of which he would get up sleepless, irritated and in a bad mood.
‘Where is she?’ Christy asked in a whisper.
‘At her home town, Onitsha. Why do you ask?’
She pretended not to have heard his question and after a while murmured, as if to herself, ‘I’ve often wondered why you didn’t marry a girl from our town.’
Donald was taken aback. He wondered what she would say if he told her the truth – that he had always thought Abakaliki girls selfish, rustic and more of a bed-mate than the companion he wanted.
No, he didn’t think she would understand that. She would undoubtedly ask him to explain and a lecture was what he wanted to avoid tonight. He kept quiet, hoping his silence would deter her from further attempts at conversation.
But she was not to be put off.
‘Why didn’t you?’ she asked.
‘Perhaps, like you, they were afraid of me. Anyway, I couldn’t get to talk to any of them. I wanted to know the girl I was to marry well.’
This time she fell silent and when she didn’t talk for some time, Donald wondered what she was thinking. He had always found it extremely difficult to read young girls, and that was why he paid attention mostly to those in their late twenties.
With them he could afford to say what he wanted or thought without having to go about it in a roundabout way. But with young girls you never knew what would shock their inculcated prejudices. Before doing anything, however, there was one thing he wanted cleared up.
‘Christy! Christy!!’
‘Uh?’
‘Are you still afraid of me?’
‘No.’
‘Then why have you been facing the wall?’
She didn’t answer and he didn’t press her. Such questions could only be answered by action and so he waited. Presently, to the accompaniment of his beating heart, she turned slowly towards him.
After what he thought was a decent interval, he gently loosened her lappa, letting her large, soft breasts free. Then his hand began to rove up and down her wonderfully soft but firm body, discovering areas that sent electric shocks through him.
‘Oh, Donald,’ she suddenly protested, using his name for the first time. ‘I haven’t done it before. I am frightened.’
‘Don’t worry, Christy,’ he said, holding on to himself hard. ‘I won’t hurt you. I will be gentle. It’ll be painful at first …’
‘Oh oh. I’ll get pregnant.’
‘No, you won’t.’
‘I will!’ she said with conviction. ‘We were taught at school that once a man just touched us that way we’d get pregnant.’
‘But I’m telling you you won’t! I’ll take care.’
‘Supposing you’re not careful enough?’
‘Don’t worry. Nothing will happen. Don’t you believe me? I am not a small boy, Christy …’
‘Oh, Donald! Please. I don’t doubt you, but … but my parents won’t forgive me if anything happens. Please please …’
*
It promised to be a very hot day. The sun had risen early, gobbled up all the mist and now shone from a cloudless sky, its heat like that of a hot water bottle placed next to the skin.
The town of Aku was silent and seemingly deserted. But for the ragged young soldiers strolling in the streets, one would not have thought there was a war on.
The brigade commander stepped out of the Peugeot station wagon, acknowledging crisply the salutes of his headquarters staff. He threw a swift glance at the civilians sitting on a bench in front of the chief clerk’s office.
They were few, he noted gladly, which meant he would be able to get on with his military problems earlier today. The enemy pressure on his scattered troop locations was mounting daily, creating problems that could at best be half solved.
He pressed the bell on his desk as soon as he sat down. The chief clerk, a big, tall sergeant major, answered it.
‘I want to deal with the civilians immediately.’
‘Yes, sir.’
The first two men came from the government and their problems were quickly solved. They were followed by a couple whom the brigade commander took to be husband and wife. After the customary greetings they sat on the straight-backed chairs in front of the commander’s table.
‘Sir,’ began the man, ‘I am Mr Okere. This is my daughter, Mary, a teacher. I am a refugee from Abakaliki …’
‘Yes, yes.’ said the commander with an impatience he could not easily suppress. ‘What can I do for you?’
He could see that Mr Okere was not well-educated; he stumbled over his words and such men, if allowed, often took more than their own time to state their case.
There was no doubt, however, that he was truly a refugee – several days’ stubble on a heavy chin, a dirty old multicoloured agbada without the flowing robe on a short, paunchy, middle-aged body, eyes red-rimmed, probably from sleeplessness, and a badly needed haircut – and one who still retained a dignity about him that showed he had seen better times and had wielded some authority, thus making one instantly sympathetic to his present plight.
‘I need your help, sir.’ Mr Okere said. ‘I’ve come to take my daughter home.’
For a while the commander wondered what that had to do with him, but Mr Okere’s daughter, Mary, soon came to the rescue which, perhaps, was why she had come along.
‘She’s staying here with one of your officers,’ she said, her voice harsh and flat.
She was a neatly dressed little woman whose face had hardened into the dour lines of a pessimist. She was in that indeterminate age between youth and middle-age.
The commander took an instant dislike to her. She represented a class he disliked most – those who, believing themselves infallible, never forgive others’ mistakes, nor tread untrodden paths lest they make mistakes.
‘Well,’ said the commander, ‘what exactly do you mean by staying with one of my officers? Is she the officer’s wife?’
‘No,’ Mr Okere said heavily. ‘The officer is married already.’
‘Oh,’ thought the commander, ‘it’s like that, is it?’ Had the officer not been already married, the position would have been different. He studied Mr Okere closely as he said: ‘I don’t see …’
‘Our religion doesn’t countenance polygamy,’ hard-faced Mary burst out. ‘We are Catholics and my father is a leading person in the parish. It would be a terrible thing if his daughter married a man with a wife, and what’s more, the man is a Protestant. Our priest will never forgive us.’
‘Well, you see, sir,’ said Mr Okere gently, trying to soften his daughter’s statement, ‘the officer didn’t even seek my permission to take my daughter away. And I’m not even sure he wants to marry her.’
‘In that case I might be able to help. What’s the name of the officer?’
‘Donald … Donald Iheukwumere,’ said Mr Okere.
‘What’s his rank?’
Mr Okere hesitated. Either he didn’t know, or he had forgotten. In desperation he looked at his daughter and sure enough she answered: ‘Lieutenant.’
‘Lieutenant Iheukwumere,’ said the commander, surprised. ‘He is one of my best officers. Very hard-working and with lots of initiative. Now, I don’t think he’s the type of person to make a girl stay with him against her will. Won’t you tell me all?’
‘He talked her into going away with him,’ Mary said, ‘and provided her with the necessary funds.’
‘Oh,’ said the commander. He thought for a while and then asked, ‘If you knew that much, why didn’t you try to stop the girl from going away?’
It was Mr Okere who answered sorrowfully, ‘This is not the first time, sir!’
‘We have stopped her more than three times,’ Mary amplified, ‘and even confiscated her dresses and things. But it did no good. This time she left in her staying-at-home dress!’
‘Now, I am not trying to condone this sort of thing,’ the commander said gingerly. ‘But don’t you think the girl really wanted to be with this officer?’
‘That is not the point …’ Mary began.
‘She is too young to make that kind of decision, sir,’ Mr Okere intervened quickly, with a flashing glance of appeal to his daughter.
‘How old is she?’ the commander asked.
‘Sixteen.’
‘And even if she were twenty-one,’ Mary burst out, unable to restrain herself any longer, ‘she can’t marry a married man!’
The commander looked at Mary. He was sure she wasn’t married and she was getting on. And he wondered how people like her got to the stage of stating categorically what others could, or could not, do with their lives. It was playing at God – a favourite pastime.
He could now see he would be wasting his time if he tried to explain to her how the war had changed the attitude of youths to certain supposedly fundamental questions concerning religion and sex.
The war had proved that no matter what one did or worshipped, one died all the same, and more often than not like a rat. Bombs and bullets, like death, were no respecter of persons and seemed to revel in the defacement of sacred objects, the breaking of myths and the uprooting of people.
And like anything guided by an intelligence beyond our control, it defied our own reasoning and assumed the cloak of fate. Why then be held back from enjoying life by senseless taboos? When one wasn’t sure one was not saving oneself for a bullet?
No, the commander thought, Mary would never understand, not even if she was turned into that neuter – a refugee. To her the war was simply a temporary nuisance to be put up with, and then back to the old way of life.
After all, she hadn’t been called upon to do the dying nor to suffer morale-breaking privations. Nor would she have to undergo the deep emotional upheaval young men and women forced out of school by the war now had to go through, often emerging with beliefs and desires pared to the barest minimum.
‘Sir,’ began Mr Okere apologetically, to break the long silence, but he was stopped by the shrill sound of a whistle, and the commander’s orderly marched in and saluted smartly.
‘Air raid, sir,’ he said.
‘Thank you,’ the commander said, standing up and putting on his steel helmet. Outside there was purposeful pandemonium as soldiers and civilians ran for their air raid shelters. Mr Okere stood near the commander, the fatalistic look of one who has been through unmentionable horrors, and to whom the present one was nothing, on his face.
His daughter, however, was another matter. Her formerly hard face had broken up into one of fear and her eyes, suddenly prominent, blinked intermittently, whilst her bony fingers laced and unlaced each other.
The commander took them to his own shelter a few yards from his office, and as they jumped in to the covered four-man trench, a huge explosion shook the ground, followed at ever-decreasing intervals by three more, each sounding nearer than the last and its attendant tremor greater and full of doom. Then, shattering the ensuing silence, came the metallic whine of fast-moving jet aircraft.
‘There they are,’ cried the commander’s orderly, ‘and they are coming this way.’
The commander looked where the orderly was pointing but saw nothing, although the whine of the aircraft was insistently clear.
From deep inside the covered part of the trench came the unmistakable sound of a woman crying.
Just then an explosion ripped the air and the earth rumbled like a troubled stomach. Two silvery birds flashed past overhead, preceded by a sound like trains coupling. The whine that followed in their wake was more of an angry roar except that it bit at rather than hit the ear drums.
The commander straightened up after all sound had ceased. He brushed off his uniform the sand that had come loose from the roofing of the trench. He climbed out of the trench as soon as the all-clear was sounded. That was the third air raid that morning.
Back in the office, he faced a restless Mr Okere and a tear-stained and subdued Mary.
‘Now, let’s get this thing over quickly before those idiots come again,’ he said briskly, suppressing the smile that sprang to his lips as Mary glanced fearfully outside. ‘What is the name of the girl you want, Mr Okere?’
‘Christy.’
‘Right. I’ll send one of my officers with you to see Lieutenant Iheukwumere. I think it’s the quickest way to get the most reliable information about your daughter’s whereabouts; that is, if what you’ve been telling me is correct.’
The commander pressed the bell and told the sergeant major to call one of his staff officers. He briefed the officer on the situation and what action to take and told him to report back as soon as he had completed the assignment.
‘I’m very grateful for your help, sir,’ said Mr Okere as he and Mary got up to follow the officer.
‘Wait till you’ve seen your daughter,’ said the commander. ‘She might have gone elsewhere, you know.’
‘I don’t think so, sir. We got a letter from her three days ago.’
‘How long did you say she’s been with Lieutenant Iheukwumere?’
‘Four months. We did not know she was with him till we got her letter. We had almost given her up for dead.’
‘I see. Well, I hope you find her in good shape. Iheukwumere is stationed in an area that has been bombed many times recently.’
‘Was that where they bombed this morning?’ Mary asked in a strangled voice.
‘I think so,’ the commander answered gently.
‘Then, Father, I won’t …’
A sudden commotion outside, and a staff officer burst into the office looking agitated. He saluted quickly and, fearing a reprimand for having burst in like that, spoke immediately.
‘Sir, a member of the anti-aircraft rocket crew is dead. He was killed by a rocket that misfired.’
‘Oh God!’ cried Mary.
‘Here today, gone tomorrow,’ muttered Mr Okere.
‘Get me the doctor,’ said the commander.
The staff officer returned with Mr Okere some hours later. It was 4 p.m. and the commander was still in his office. One look showed him Mr Okere was not happy.
‘Did you find your daughter, Mr Okere?’
‘Yes, sir.’ He seemed in a hurry to get away.
‘I’m glad. Is there anything else I can do for you?’
‘No, sir. Thank you so much for your help.’
After Mr Okere had gone the commander turned to his staff officer. ‘Did anything happen to Mr Okere?’
‘No, sir, except that we ran into some bombing and shelling, sir.’
‘No, not that. He can take that sort of thing. Was anything wrong with his daughter?’
‘His daughter, sir? Oh yes, sir. She is pregnant.’
‘Pregnant?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘I see. Was she difficult?’
‘No, sir. In fact, she looked happy. She said now no one was going to stop her from marrying the officer.’