“I have never known you to notice flowers or women’s clothes and rubbish like that before. What’s the matter.”
“I’m sorry, BB, that’s a lovely dress. And lovely flowers, what are they?”
“Agatha is roasting corn and ube. Would you like some. Or with coconut if you prefer…”
“I prefer both ube and coconut.”
“Glutton!”
“That’s right! Terminal stage when it attacks your grammar! You still haven’t told me what these flowers are. I may not have noticed flowers before but I do now. It’s never too late, is it?”
“No. It’s called hydrangea.”
As I went into the kitchen to open the store for Agatha to get a coconut out I kept asking myself what Ikem might be up to. Was it Chris? Had their relationship, dangerously bumpy in recent months, taken a nose-dive now for the crash? Ikem always avoided complaining about Chris to me. Was he going to break his own scrupulous practice for once? When I returned to the parlour he had lifted the vase of flowers to his nose and was sniffing it.
I ate my corn with ube and he his with ube and coconut in alternate mouthfuls. Outside, the storm raged the way I like my storms —far away, its violent thunder and lightning distanced and muted as in a movie. I would have felt completely comfortable if Ikem had not been behaving a little strangely. Let’s hope it’s the storm, I prayed. Tropical storms can do so many different things to different creatures. That I have known from childhood. My older sister Alice always ran around the yard, if our father happened to be out, singing a childish rain song:
ogwogwo mmili
takumei ayolo!
Finally exhausted she would come indoors shivering, eyes red and popping out, teeth clattering away and make for the kitchen fire. As for me whom she nicknamed salt, or less kindly Miss Goat, on account of my distaste for getting wet, my preference was to roll myself in a mat on the floor and inside my dark, cylindrical capsule play my silent game of modulating the storm’s song by pressing my palms against my ears and taking them off, rhythmically. There was for me no greater luxury in those days than to sleep through nightrain on a Friday knowing there was neither school nor church in the morning to worry about.
“When you were little,” I asked Ikem, “what did you do when it rained like this?”
“But I told you it never rained at all in August. We had a month of dry weather called the August Break.”
“OK! In July then, or September.”
“When I was really little I used to take off my scanty clothes and run into it.”
“Singing ogwogwo mmili takumei ayolo?”
“Did you sing to the rain too?” He fairly jumped with excitement.
“No, but my older sister did.”
“Oh… what did you do?”
“I listened. The rain sang to me.”
“Lucky girl! What did it say, the rain?”
“Uwa t’uwa t’uwa t’uwa; tooo… waaa… tooo… waa Dooo—daaa… Booo—baaa… Shooo—shaaa… Cooo—caaa… Looo—laaa… Mooo—maaa…” “Pooo—paaa,” said Ikem. “Great song!”
“BB, you may be wondering why I am behaving so strangely today. Well, I’ve come on a mission the like of, which I’d never undertaken before… I’ve come to thank you for the greatest present one human being can give another. The gift of insight. That’s what you gave me and I want to say thank you.”
“Insight? Me? Insight into what?”
“Into the world of women.”
I held back a facetious comment trembling on my lip. Ikem’s sudden change and extraordinary manner forbade its utterance. I held back and listened to this strange annunciation.
“You told me a couple of years ago, do you remember, that my thoughts were unclear and reactionary on the role of the modern woman in our society. Do you remember?”
“I do.”
“I resisted your charge…”