“So they said. But you have a meeting of Umuofia people?” It was half-question, half-statement.
“Yes. We have a meeting. But it is only once a month.” And he added: “It is not always that one finds time to attend.” The fact was he had not attended since November.
“True,” said his father. “But in a strange land one should always move near one’s kinsmen.” Obi was silent, signing his name in the dust on the table. “You wrote to me some time ago about a girl you had seen. How does the matter stand now?”
“That is one reason why I came. I want us to go and meet her people and start negotiations. I have no money now, but at least we can begin to talk.” Obi had decided that it would be fatal to sound apologetic or hesitant.
“Yes,” said his father. “That is the best way.” He thought a little and again said yes, it was the best way. Then a new thought seemed to occur to him. “Do we know who this girl is and where she comes from?” Obi hesitated just enough for his father to ask the question again in a different way. “What is her name?”
“She is the daughter of Okeke, a native of Mbaino.”
“Which Okeke? I know about three. One is a retired teacher, but it would not be that one.”
“That is the one,” said Obi.
“Josiah Okeke?”
Obi said, yes, that was his name.
His father laughed. It was the kind of laughter one sometimes heard from a masked ancestral spirit. He would salute you by name and ask you if you knew who he was. You would reply with one hand humbly touching the ground that you did not, that he was beyond human knowledge. Then he might laugh as if through a throat of metal. And the meaning of that laughter was clear: “I did not really think you would know, you miserable human worm!”
Obi’s father’s laughter vanished as it had come—without warning, leaving no footprints.
“You cannot marry the girl,” he said quite simply.
“Eh?”
“I said you cannot marry the girl.”
“But why, Father?”
“Why? I shall tell you why. But first tell me this. Did you find out or try to find out anything about this girl?”
“Yes.”
“What did you find out?”
“That they are osu.”
“You mean to tell me that you knew, and you ask me why?”
“I don’t think it matters. We are Christians.” This had some effect, nothing startling though. Only a little pause and a slightly softer tone.
“We are Christians,” he said. “But that is no reason to marry an osu.”
“The Bible says that in Christ there are no bond or free.”
“My son,” said Okonkwo, “I understand what you say. But this thing is deeper than you think.”
“What is this thing? Our fathers in their darkness and ignorance called an innocent man osu, a thing given to idols, and thereafter he became an outcast, and his children, and his children’s children forever. But have we not seen the light of the Gospel?” Obi used the very words that his father might have used in talking to his heathen kinsmen.
There was a long silence. The lamp was now burning too brightly. Obi’s father turned down the wick a little and then resumed his silence. After what seemed ages he said: “I know Josiah Okeke very well.” He was looking steadily in front of him. His voice sounded tired. “I know him and I know his wife. He is a good man and a great Christian. But he is osu. Naaman, captain of the host of Syria, was a great man and honorable, he was also a mighty man of valor, but he was a leper.” He paused so that this great and felicitous analogy might sink in with all its heavy and dreadful weight.
“Osu is like leprosy in the minds of our people. I beg of you, my son, not to bring the mark of shame and of leprosy into your family. If you do, your children and your children’s children unto the third and fourth generations will curse your memory. It is not for myself I speak, my days are few. You will bring sorrow on your head and on the heads of your children. Who will marry your daughters? Whose daughters will your sons marry? Think of that, my son. We are Christians, but we cannot marry our own daughters.”
“But all that is going to change. In ten years things will be quite different to what they are now.”
The old man shook his head sadly but said no more. Obi repeated his points again. What made an osu different from other men and women? Nothing but the ignorance of their forefathers. Why should they, who had seen the light of the Gospel, remain in that ignorance?