Earlier on the same day Mr. Omo had sent for him to sign certain documents.

“Where is your stamp?” he asked as soon as Obi arrived.

“What stamp?” asked Obi.

“You get B.A. but you no know say you have to affix stamp to agreement?”

“What agreement?” asked Obi perplexed.

Mr. Omo laughed a laugh of derision. He had very bad teeth blackened by cigarettes and kola nuts. One was missing in front, and when he laughed the gap looked like a vacant plot in a slum. His junior clerks laughed with him out of loyalty.

“You think Government give you sixty pounds without signing agreement?”

It was only then that Obi understood what it was all about. He was to receive sixty pounds outfit allowance.

“This is a wonderful day,” he told Clara on the telephone. “I have sixty pounds in my pocket, and I’m getting my car at two o’clock.”

Clara screamed with delight. “Shall I ring Sam and tell him not to bother to send his car this evening?”

The Hon. Sam Okoli, Minister of State, had asked them to drinks and had offered to send his driver to fetch them. Clara lived in Yaba with her first cousin. She had been offered a job as Assistant Nursing Sister, and she would start work in a week or so. Then she would find more suitable lodgings. Obi still shared Joseph’s room in Obalende but would move to a senior service flat in Ikoyi at the end of the week.

Obi was disposed to like the Hon. Sam Okoli from the moment he learnt that he had no designs on Clara. In fact he was getting married shortly to Clara’s best friend and Clara had been asked to be chief bridesmaid.

“Come in, Clara. Come in, Obi,” he said as if he had known both of them all his life. “That is a lovely car. How is it behaving? Come right in. You are looking very sweet, Clara. We haven’t met, Obi, but I know all about you. I’m happy you are getting married to Clara. Sit down. Anywhere. And tell me what you will drink. Lady first; that is what the white man has brought. I respect the white man although we want them to go. Squash? God forbid! Nobody drinks squash in my house. Samson, bring sherry for Miss.”

“Yes, sah,” said Samson in immaculate white and brass buttons.

“Beer? Why not try a little whisky?”

“I don’t touch spirits,” said Obi.

“Many young people from overseas start that way,” said Sam Okoli. “O.K., Samson, one beer, whisky and soda for me.”

Obi looked round the luxurious sitting room. He had read the controversy in the Press when the Government had decided to build these ministers’ houses at a cost of thirty-five thousand each.

“A very good house this,” he said.

“It’s not too bad,” said the Mi

nister.

“What an enormous radiogram!” Obi rose from his seat to go and have a closer look.

“It has a recording machine as well,” explained the owner. As if he knew what Obi was thinking, he added: “It was not part of the house. I paid two-seventy-five pounds for it.” He walked across the room and switched on the tape recorder.

“How do you like your work on the Scholarship Board? If you press this thing down, it begins to record. If you want to stop, you press this one. This is for playing records and this one is the radio. If I had a vacancy in my Ministry, I would have liked you to come and work there.” He stopped the tape recorder, wound back, and then pressed the playback knob. “You will hear all our conversation, everything.” He smiled with satisfaction as he listened to his own voice, adding an occasional commentary in pidgin.

“White man don go far. We just de shout for nothing,” he said. Then he seemed to realize his position. “All the same they must go. This no be them country.” He helped himself to another whisky, switched on the radio, and sat down.

“Do you have just one Assistant Secretary in your Ministry?” asked Obi.

“Yes, at present. I hope to get another one in April. I used to have a Nigerian as my A.S., but he was an idiot. His head was swollen like a soldier ant because he went to Ibadan University. Now I have a white man who went to Oxford and he says ‘sir’ to me. Our people have a long way to go.”

Obi sat with Clara in the back while the driver he had engaged that morning at four pounds ten a month drove them to Ikeja, twelve miles away, to have a special dinner in honor of the new car. But neither the drive nor the dinner was a great success. It was quite clear that Clara was not happy. Obi tried in vain to make her talk or relax.

“What’s the matter?”

“Nothing. I’m just depressed, that’s all.”

Tags: Chinua Achebe The African Trilogy Fiction
Source: readsnovelonline.net