No Longer at Ease

by Chinua Achebe

  He had a wash and changed his clothes. Then he sat down on the sofa and for the first time felt really tired. Another thought occurred to him. Christopher might be able to give him useful advice. He got into the car and drove off, not knowing definitely whether he was going to Christopher’s or Clara’s. But in the end it was to Clara that he went.

  On his way he ran into a long procession of men, women, and children in white flowing gowns gathered at the waist with red and yellow sashes. The women, who were in the majority, wore white head ties that descended to their back. They sang and clapped their hands and danced. One of the men kept beat with a handbell. They held up all traffic, for which Obi was inwardly grateful. But impatient taxi drivers serenaded them with long and deafening blasts of their horns as they slowly parted for them to pass. In front two white-clad boys carried a banner which proclaimed the Eternal Sacred Order of Cherubim and Seraphim.

  Obi had done his best to make the whole thing sound unimportant. Just a temporary setback and no more. Everything would work out nicely in the end. His mother’s mind had been affected by her long illness but she would soon get over it. As for his father, he was as good as won over. “All we need do is lie quiet for a little while,” he said.

  Clara had listened in silence, rubbing her engagement ring with her right fingers. When he stopped talking, she looked up at him and asked if he had finished. He did not answer.

  “Have you finished?” she asked again.

  “Finished what?”

  “Your story.”

  Obi drew a deep breath by way of answer.

  “Don’t you think … Anyway, it doesn’t matter. There is only one thing I regret. I should have known better anyway. It doesn’t really matter.”

  “What are you talking about, Clara? … Oh, don’t be silly,” he said as she pulled off her ring and held it out to him.

  “If you don’t take it, I shall throw it out of the window.”

  “Please do.”

  She didn’t throw it away, but went outside to his car and dropped it in the glove box. She came back and, holding out her hand in mock facetiousness, said: “Thank you very much for everything.”

  “Come and sit down, Clara. Let’s not be childish. And please don’t make things more difficult for me.”

  “You are making things difficult for yourself. How many times did I tell you that we were deceiving ourselves? But I was always told I was being childish. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. There is no need for long talk.”

  Obi sat down again. Clara went to lean on the window and look outside. Once Obi began to say something, but gave it up after the first three words or so. After another ten minutes of silence Clara asked, hadn’t he better be going?

  “Yes,” he said, and got up.

  “Good night.” She did not turn from her position. She had her back to him.

  “Good night,” he said.

  “There was something I wanted to tell you, but it doesn’t matter. I ought to have been able to take care of myself.”

  Obi’s heart flew into his mouth. “What is it?” he asked in great alarm.

  “Oh, nothing. Forget about it. I’ll find a way out.”

  Obi had been shocked by the crudity of Christopher’s reaction to his story. He said the most uncharitable things, and he was always interrupting. As soon as Obi mentioned his parents’ opposition he took over from him.

  “You know, Obi,” he said, “I had wanted to discuss that matter with you. But I have learnt not to interfere in a matter between a man and a woman, especially with chaps like you who have wonderful ideas about love. A friend came to me last year and asked my advice about a girl he wanted to marry. I knew this girl very very well. She is, you know, very liberal. So I told my friend: ‘You shouldn’t marry this girl.’ Do you know what this bloody fool did? He Went and told the girl what I said. That was why I didn’t tell you anything about Clara. You may say that I am not broad-minded, but I don’t think we have reached the stage where we can ignore all our customs. You may talk about education and so on, but I am not going to marry an osu.”

  “We’re not talking about your marriage now.”

  “I’m sorry. What did your mother actually say?”

  “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.”

  Christopher told him, fortunately in Ibo, that pregnancy could not be covered with the hand.

  Obi told him not to be a bloody fool. “Yes, tomorrow morning. Not at the office, no, here. I’m not starting work till next week, Wednesday. Oh, yes. Many thanks. Bye-bye.”

  The doctor counted his wad of notes carefully, folded it, and put it in his pocket. “Come back at five o’clock,” he told Obi, dismissing him. But when Obi got to his car he could not drive away. All kinds of frightening thoughts kept crowding into his mind. He did not believe in premonition and such stuff, but somehow he felt that he wasn’t going to see Clara again.

  As he sat in the driver’s seat, paralyzed by his thoughts, the doctor and Clara came out and entered a car that was parked by the side of the road. The doctor must have said something about him because Clara looked in his direction once and immediately took her eyes away. Obi wanted to rush out of his car and shout: “Stop. Let’s go and get married now,” but he couldn’t and didn’t. The doctor’s car drove away.

  It could not have been more than a minute, or at most two. Obi’s mind was made up. He reversed his car and chased after the doctor’s to stop them. But they were no longer in sight. He tried first one turning and then another. He dashed across a major road and was missed by a huge red bus by a hair’s breadth. He backed, went forward, turned right and left like a panicky fly trapped behind the windscreen. Cyclists and pedestrians cursed him. At one stage the whole of Lagos rose in one loud protest: “ONE WAY! ONE WAY!!” He stopped, backed into a side street, and then went in the opposite direction.

  After about half an hour of this mad and aimless exercise Obi pulled up by the side of the road. He felt in his right pocket, then in his left for a handkerchief. Finding none, he rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand. Then he placed his arms on the steering wheel and put his head on them. His face and arms gradually became wet where they came in contact, and dripped with sweat. It was the worst time of the day and the worst time of the year—the last couple of months before the rains broke. The air was dead, heavy and hot. It lay on the earth like a mantle of lead. Inside Obi’s car it was worse. He had not wound down the glass at the back and the heat was trapped inside. He did not notice it, but even if he had noticed it he would not have done anything about it.

  At five o’clock he returned to the clinic. The doctor’s attendant said he was out. Obi asked if she knew where he had gone. The girl answered a curt “no.”

  “There is something very important that I must tell him. Can’t you try and find him for me … or …”

  “I don’t know where he has gone to,” she said. Her accent was about as gentle as the splitting of hard wood with an axe.

  Obi waited for an hour and a half before the doctor returned—without Clara. Sweat rained down his body.

  “Oh, are you here?” the doctor asked. “Come back tomorrow morning.”

  “Where is she?”

  “Don’t worry, she will be all right. But I want to have her under observation tonight in case of complications.”

  “Can’t I see her?”

  “No. Tomorrow morning. That is, if she wants to see you. Women are very funny creatures, you know.”

  He told his houseboy Sebastian not to cook supper.

  “Master no well?”

  “No.”

  “Sorry, sir.”

  “Thank you. Go away now. I’ll be all right in the morning.”

  He wanted a book to look at, so he went to his shelf. The pessimism of A. E. Housman once again proved irresistible. He took it down and went to his bedroom. The book opened at the place where he had put the paper on which he had written the poem “Nigeria” in London about two years ago.

  God bless our noble fatherland

  Great land of sunshine bright,

  Where brave men chose the way of peace,

  To win their freedom fight.

  May we preserve our purity,

  Our zest for life and jollity.

  God bless our noble countrymen

  And women everywhere.

  Teach them to walk in unity

  To build our nation dear;

  Forgetting region, tribe or speech,

  But caring always each for each.

  London, July 1955.

  He quietly and calmly crumpled the paper in his left palm until it was a tiny ball, threw it on the floor, and began to turn the pages of the book forwards and backwards. In the end he did not read any poem. He put the book down on the little table by his bed.

  The doctor was seeing new patients in the morning. They sat on two long forms in the corridor and went in one by one behind the green door blinds of the consulting room. Obi told the attendant that he was not a patient and that he had an urgent appointment with the doctor. It was not the same attendant as he had met on the previous day.

  “What kin’ appointment you get with doctor when you no be patient?” she asked. Some of the waiting patients laughed and applauded her wit.

  “Man way no sick de come see doctor?” she repeated for the benefit of those on whom the subtlety of the original statement might have been lost.

  Obi paced up and down the corridor until the doctor’s bell rang again. The attendant tried to block his way. He pushed her aside and went in. She rushed in after him to protest that he had jumped the queue. B
ut the doctor paid no attention to her.

  “Oh, yes,” he said to Obi after a second or two’s hesitation as if trying to remember where he had seen that face before. “She is at a private hospital. You remember I told you some of them develop complications. But there is nothing to worry about. A friend of mine is looking after her in his hospital.” He gave him the name of the hospital.

  When Obi came out, one of the patients was waiting to have a word with him.

  “You tink because Government give you car you fit do what you like? You see all of we de wait here and you just go in. You tink na play we come play?”

  Obi passed on without saying a word.

  “Foolish man. He tink say because him get car so dere-fore he can do as he like. Beast of no nation!”

  In the hospital a nurse told Obi that Clara was very ill and that visitors were not allowed to see her.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  “Did you have a good leave?” Mr. Green asked when he saw Obi. It was so unexpected that for a little while Obi was too confused to answer. But he managed in the end to say that he did, thank you very much.

  “It often amazes me how you people can have the effrontery to ask for local leave. The idea of local leave was to give Europeans a break to go to a cool place like Jos or Buea. But today it is completely obsolete. But for an African like you, who has too many privileges as it is, to ask for two weeks to go on a swan, it makes me want to cry.”

  Obi said he wouldn’t be worried if local leave was abolished. But that was for Government to decide.

  “It’s people like you who ought to make the Government decide. That is what I have always said. There is no single Nigerian who is prepared to forgo a little privilege in the interests of his country. From your ministers down to your most junior clerk. And you tell me you want to govern yourselves.”