“She really frightened me. She said I should wait until she is dead, or else she would kill herself.”
Christopher laughed. “There was one woman in my place who returned from market one day and found that her two children had fallen into a well and drowned. She wept throughout that day and the next saying that she wanted to go and fall into the well, too. But of course her neighbors held her back every time she got up. But after three days her husband got rather fed up and ordered that she should be left alone to do what she liked. She rushed to the well, but when she got there she first had a peep and then she put her right foot in, brought it out, and put her left …”
“How interesting!” Obi said, interrupting him. “But I can assure you my mother meant every word she said. Anyway, what I came to ask you about is quite different. I think she is pregnant.”
“Who?”
“Don’t be silly. Clara.”
“Well, well, that is going to be troublesome.”
“Do you know of any …”
“Doctor? No. But I know that James went to see one or two of them when he got into trouble recently. I tell you what. I’ll find out from him tomorrow morning and give you a ring.”
“Not my telephone!”
“Why not? I shall only read out addresses. It’s going to cost you some money. Of course you will say I am callous, but my attitude to these things is quite different. When I was in the East a girl came to me and said: ‘I can’t find my period.’ I said to her: ‘Go and look for it.’ It sounds callous, but … I don’t know. The way I look at it is this: how do I know that I am responsible? I make sure that I take every possible precaution. That’s all. I know that your case is quite different. Clara had no time for any other person. But even so …”
There must have been something about Obi which made the old doctor uneasy. He had seemed willing enough at the beginning, and actually asked one or two sympathetic questions. Then he went into an inner room and when he came out he was a changed man.
“I am sorry, my dear young man,” he said, “but I cannot help you. What you are asking me to do is a criminal offense for which I could go to jail and lose my license. But apart from that I have my reputation to safeguard—twenty years’ practice without a single blot. How old are you?”
“Twenty-six.”
“Twenty-six. So you were six years old when I began to practice medicine. And in all those years I have not had anything to do with these shady things. Why don’t you marry the girl anyway? She is very good-looking.”
“I don’t want to marry him,” said Clara sullenly, the first thing she had said since they came in.
“What’s wrong with him? He seems a nice young man to me.”
“I say I won’t marry him. Isn’t that enough?” she almost screamed, and rushed out of the room. Obi went quietly after her and they drove off. No single word passed between them all the way to the house of the next doctor who had been recommended to Obi.
He was young and very businesslike. He said he had no taste for the kind of job they were asking him to do. “It is not medicine,” he said. “I did not spend seven years in England to study that. However, I shall do it for you if you are prepared to pay my fee. Thirty pounds. To be paid before I do anything. No checks. Raw cash. What say you?”
Obi asked if he wouldn’t take anything less than thirty pounds.
“I’m sorry, but my price is fixed. It is a very minor operation, but it is a crime. We are all criminals, you know. I’m taking a big risk. Go and think about it and come back tomorrow at two, with the money.” He rubbed his hands together in a way that struck Obi as particularly sinister. “If you are coming,” he said to Clara, “you must not eat.”
As they were leaving he asked Obi: “Why don’t you marry her?” He receive
d no answer.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The most immediate problem was how to raise thirty pounds before two o’clock the next day. There was also Clara’s fifty pounds which he must return. But that could wait. The simplest thing would be to go to a moneylender, borrow thirty pounds and sign that he had received sixty. But he would commit suicide before he went to a moneylender.
He had already checked on what was left of the money he took home. He went to his box and checked again. It was twelve pounds in notes plus some loose coins he carried in his pocket. He had given only five pounds for his mother and nothing to his father because he had decided that, as things were, he must find Clara’s fifty pounds quite soon.
It would be pointless asking Christopher. His salary never went beyond the tenth of the month. The only thing that saved him from starvation was the brilliant system he had evolved with his cook. At the beginning of every month Christopher gave him all the “chop money” for the month. “Until the next pay day,” he would say, “my life is in your hands.”
Obi once asked him what would happen if the man absconded with the money halfway through the month. Christopher said he knew he wouldn’t. It was most unusual for a “master” to have so much confidence in his “boy,” even when, as in this case, the boy was almost twice the master’s age and treated him as a son.
In his extremity Obi even thought of the President of the Umuofia Progressive Union. But rather than do that he would go to a moneylender. Apart from the fact that the President would want to know why a young man in the senior service should want to borrow money from a man of family on less than half his salary, it would appear as if Obi had accepted the principle that his townpeople could tell him whom not to marry. “I haven’t descended so low yet,” he said aloud.
At last a very good idea struck him. Perhaps it wasn’t all that good when you came to look at it closely, but it was much better than all the other ideas. He would ask the Hon. Sam Okoli. He would tell him quite frankly what he needed the money for and that he would repay in three months’ time. Or perhaps he should not tell him what he needed the money for. It was not fair on Clara to tell even one person more than was absolutely necessary. He had only told Christopher because he thought he might know what doctors to consult. As soon as he had got back to his flat that evening it had occurred to him that he had not stressed the need for secrecy and he had rushed to the telephone. There was only one telephone for the block of six flats but it was just outside his door.
“Hello. Oh, yes, Chris. I forgot to mention it. When you are getting the addresses from that chap don’t tell him who it’s for.… Not for my sake, but … you know.”