by E. C. Osondu
“I was right about her being interested in you; otherwise why would she request for your picture without sending you hers?”
“This shows that women all over the world are coy. She was only being cunning. She really wants to know what you look like before she gets involved with you.”
“You should go and borrow a suit from the schoolteacher and go to Sim Paul’s Photo Studio in the morning when he is not yet drunk and let him take a nice shot of you so you can send it to her.”
“How about you borrow the schoolteacher’s suit and Ambo’s shirt and Dennis’s black school tie and Lucky’s silk flower-patterned shirt and Sim Paul’s shoes and tell the schoolteacher’s wife to lend you her stretching comb to straighten your hair if you can’t afford Wellastrate cream; then you’ll be like the most handsome suitor in the folktale.”
“Who is the most handsome suitor?” Onwordi asked. “I have never heard that folktale.” Jekwu cleared his throat, took a sip from his ogogoro and Coke, and began his story.
“Once in the land of Idunoba there lived a girl who was the prettiest girl in the entire kingdom. Her beauty shone like the sun, and her teeth glittered like pearls whenever she smiled. All the young men in the kingdom asked for her hand in marriage, but she turned them down. She turned down the men either because they were too tall or too short or too hairy or not hairy enough. She said that since she was the most beautiful girl in the kingdom, she could only marry the most handsome man. Her fame soon got to the land of the spirits, and the most wicked spirit of them all, Tongo, heard about her and said he was going to marry her. Not only was Tongo the most wicked, he was also the most ugly, possessing only a cracked skull for a head. He was all bones, and when he walked, his bones rattled. Before setting out to ask for the hand of the maiden in marriage, Tongo went round the land of the spirits to borrow body parts. From the spirit with the straightest pair of legs, he borrowed a straight pair of legs, and from the one with the best skin, he borrowed a smooth and glowing skin. He went round borrowing body parts until he was transformed into the most handsome man there was. As soon as he walked into Idu on market day and the maiden set eyes on him, she began following him around until he turned, smiled at her, and asked for her hand in marriage. She took him to her parents and hurriedly packed her things, waved them good-bye, and followed the handsome suitor.
On their way to his home, which was across seven rivers and seven hills, she was so busy admiring his handsomeness that she did not grow tired and was not bothered by the fact that they were leaving all the human habitations behind. It was only when they crossed into the land of the spirits, and he walked into the first house and came out crooked because he had returned the straight legs to their owner, that she began to sense that something was wrong. And so she continued to watch as he returned the skin, the arms, the hair, and the other borrowed body parts, so that by the time they got to his house, only his skull was left. She wept when she realized she had married an ugly spirit, but she knew it was too late to return to the land of the living, so she bided her time. When Tongo approached her for lovemaking, she told him to go and borrow all the body parts he had on when he married her. Because Tongo loved her headstrong nature, he agreed. Each time they made love, he went round borrowing body parts, and when they had a child, the child was a very handsome child and grew into the most handsome man.”
We all laughed at the story and advised Onwordi to work at transforming himself into the most handsome man. Ambo advised him to dress in traditional African clothes as, from what he knew about white people, this was likely to appeal to her more.
“So what are you going to do?” we asked Onwordi, but he only smiled and held his letter tightly as he drank.
The next time Music Time in Africa was on the air, we had our pens ready to take down the names of pen pals, but the few that were announced were listeners from other parts of Africa, and we all felt disappointed.
We waited for Onwordi to walk in with a letter, but he did not for quite some time. We wondered what had happened. When he finally walked in after some days, he looked dejected and would not say a word to any of us.
“Hope you have not upset her with your last mail?” Lucky said. “You know white people are very sensitive, and you may have hurt her feelings without knowing it.”
“This is why we told you to always let us see the letter before you send it to her. When we put our heads together and craft a letter to her, she will pack her things and move into your house, leaking roof and all. As the elders say, when you piss on one spot, it is more likely to froth.”
“But exactly what did you write to her that has made her silent?” Lucky asked. Onwordi was silent, but he smiled liked a dumb man who has accidentally glimpsed a young woman’s pointed breast and ordered more drinks. “Or have you started hiding her mail from us ? Maybe the contents are too intimate for our eyes. Or now that you have become closer, has she started kissing her letters with lipstick-painted lips and sealing the letters with kisses?” Ambo teased. But nothing we said would make Onwordi say a word.
ONWORDI WALKED INTO Ambo’s shop after a period of three weeks, holding the envelope that we had become used to by now and looking morose. We all turned to him and began to speak at once.
“What happened—has she confessed that she has a husband, or why are you looking so sad?”
“Has she fallen in love with another man? I hear white women fall out of love as quickly as they fall in love.”
“If you have her telephone number, I can take you to the Post and Telegrams Office in Onitsha if you have the money and help you make a call to her,” Ambo suggested.
Onwordi opened the envelope and brought out a photograph. We all crowded around him to take a closer look. It was the picture of the American girl Laura Williams. The portrait showed only her face. She had an open friendly face with brown hair and slightly chubby cheeks. She was smiling brightly in the photograph. Our damp fingers were already leaving a smudge on the face.
“She is beautiful and looks really friendly, but why did she not send you a photograph where her legs are showing? That way you do not end up marrying a cripple.”
Onwordi was not smiling.
“So what did she say in her letter, or have the contents have become too intimate for you to share with us?”
“She says that this is going to be her last letter to me. She says she’s done with her paper, and she did very well and illustrated her paper with some of the things I had told her about African culture. But she says her parents are moving back to the city, that the farm has not worked out as planned. She also said she has become interested in Japanese haiku and is in search of new friends from Japan.”
“Is that why you are looking sad, like a dog whose juicy morsel fell on the sand? You should thank God for saving you from a relationship where each time the lady clears her throat, you have to jump. Sit down and drink with us, forget your sorrows, and let the devil be ashamed,” Jekwu said.
We all laughed, but Onwordi did not laugh with us; he walked away in a slight daze. From that time onward we never saw him at Ambo’s shop again. Some people who went to check in on him said they found him lying on his bed with Laura Williams’s letters and picture on his chest as he stared up into the tin roof.
Copyright
VOICE OF AMERICA. Copyright © 2010 by E. C. Osondu.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition © SEPTEMBER 2010 ISBN: 978-0-062-02030-7
Many thanks to the fine publications in w
hich these stories first appeared: Agni, Vice Magazine, Fiction, Stone Canoe, Skive, Guernica, New Statesman, Atlantic, Weaverbird Collection, and Kenyon Review.
FIRST EDITION
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Osondu, E. C.
Voice of America: stories / E.C. Osondu.—1st ed.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-06-199086-1
I. Title.
PR9387.9.O856V65 2010
823′.914—dc22
2010005729
10 11 12 13 14 ID/RRD 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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