Jagua Nana

‘Tomorrow, I mus’ be goin’ back …’

He jumped in his seat. ‘Nonsense! You not going anywhere! Not while I live. Don’t you like it here? You must follow me back to Krinameh. I’ve already paid your bride price!’

‘You can have de money back.’ Her fingers sought the catch of her handbag. Chief Ofubara restrained her.

‘Wait!’

‘Is all you thinkin’ about! You think you kin buy me with money? Am a free woman. An’ I already sleep wit’ you ten night an’ give you experience of Lagos woman dat you never dream! …’

‘I’m sorry, Jagua! … I’m only jokin’ … Now, Jagua, what are you going to do about your fiery temper?’ He held her arm tightly. The drumming and the laughter, the shouting and the cheering insulated them in a private world.

‘You kin have your money back, Chief Ofubara. But you mus’ promise me about Bagana.’

‘That’s settled, Jagua. David Namme’s going to be Yaniba of Bagana. We’re going to draft a letter to the Government and recognize him … already the people of Bagana promise they’ll give me some trading agencies and financial help with education and medical work.’

Jagua sat on the edge of his chair. ‘You see now! I already tol’ you. Is pride dat killin’ you two family. If to say you still prouding, where you will get all dis?’

‘I have you to thank, Jagua.’ He tapped her arm. ‘Come with me, Jagua, and let’s talk seriously.’

‘You done gone crase about me?’ She giggled, showing all her teeth. That night, Jagua was looking as beautiful as she had ever been in her life.

She walked beside him. The moonlight had a yellowness that gilded everything it touched. He was talking earnestly as they approached the beach-side but she manœuvred him to the bathing-place where she had forced Nancy into the lagoon and pursued her into the Krinameh rocks. The coconut palms spread their dark fronds into the face of the moon. She looked beyond the haze and saw Krinameh. She remembered the silk-lined bedroom, the O.H.M.S. evenings, and the days when the Councillors came in and Chief Ofubara introduced her to them as ‘my special visitor from Lagos’. How the men laughed and told Chief Ofubara not to deceive them, to speak up like a man if he had married a Lagos queen, so they could come and drink his O.H.M.S. She would gladly go there and live with him. He seemed to see things in her own way. He listened to her advice; he appreciated her. He would solve the problem of her life. But was there sufficient urge?

He broke into her thoughts. ‘That’s Krinameh over there; and you can join me and be very happy there …’

She knew he had the money to lavish on her. If he could casually fling away one hundred and fifty pounds he also had some gallantry. She leaned against him.

‘I confuse. I don’ think I fit to say anything till ah reach Lagos. After!’

‘Then you’ll come back to Krinameh?’ He gripped her hands. ‘You’re not deceiving me – you’re speaking the truth?’

‘Ah goin’ to come back.’ She walked away from him with a wiggle of her hips, striking a pose. ‘I think you wan’ me – not so?’

He came towards her, hands outstretched. Jagua walked into his arms and he lifted her joyfully.

‘You’ll come back to me – promise.’

‘I already tol’ you. Or you don’ trust me?’

He set her down. In silence they walked towards the palace. A chorus of female voices came floating towards them on the thin veils of the night. Jagua remembered that she must go to bed early, so as to leave early tomorrow morning. She would not be able to keep the all-night vigil of the joyful Baganans.

At the entrance to the palace gate, Jagua saw a woman who seemed to be waiting to speak to them. It was Mama Nancy. She must have watched their going and now was making sure of seeing their coming.

‘De harlot woman!’ she said aloud. ‘De shameless harlot woman! She sleepin’ with de Papa, an’ she lyin’ to de Pickin’, and she don’ care nothin’. De harlot woman! You goin’ to die wretched! Vulture will chop you eye!’

‘Ma Nancy, you talkin’ to me?’ Jagua flared, leaping towards her enemy. Chief Ofubara restrained her.

‘Try to act like a queen! Ignore her!’

Jagua struggled, but the Chief’s grip was unshakeable. She could do nothing but yield. Mama Nancy’s curse followed her, rising louder and louder but the drumming suppressed the vitriol in her words, neutralizing their sharpness.

15

By now Bagana had become a chain of rusty-red pan roofs on a horizon dominated by a church steeple and set deep beyond the flat waters of the creek. Jagua’s canoe swung into one of the wide arms of the Niger Delta, heading towards Port Harcourt. It was her way home to Ogabu and Lagos. It was goodbye to Bagana, goodbye to Chief Ofubara, Uncle Namme, Mama Nancy, Nancy Oll, Krinameh, the war drummers. The swarthy face of Chief Ofubara had become even darker as he told her: ‘Remember your promise, Jagua. I already paid the bride-price.’ His voice had been dead earnest.

Jagua held her breast as if that would ease the pain. Now that the canoe was taking her away from Bagana and Krinameh, she began to think of the fishing people with a touch of nostalgia. She would come back to Krinameh, to the spot where the youths had dived in and captured the naked Nancy Oll. This one desire – to come back – kept expressing itself. She could not suppress the montage of jutting rocks, and salt-creeks, and Chief Ofubara’s moustachios and O.H.M.S. decanters and the intertwined legs on the bed, the finger-tips on unshaven jaws and her whispers of ‘I goin’ to teach you about Lagos woman, to make you loss your min’ …’ Now it was she, strangely enough, who was on the verge of losing her head over the Chief.

Suddenly she was seeing Chief Ofubara as the outcast of Krinameh, as a man who was infatuated with her, as a man of her own age and attitudes. She could see that he had never really experienced the sensation of African woman as equal. Jagua treated him as she would treat a brother or a precocious lover in modern Lagos. Her glance stripped him of his title, and he became a man lusting after her; her temper made him her slave, willing to obey her maddest whims merely to restore the smile on her lips.