Читать книгу Stars of the Long Night - Tanure Ojaide - Страница 13

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Only two weeks after the visit to Ejenavi, Amraibure's encounters with the strange spirit at night had not only reduced considerably but ceased. The diviner had prescribed no medicine to be taken. Nor had he prescribed a sacrifice, which Odibo and his son would have performed enthusiastically with a cock or goat. Amraibure assured himself that his sudden cure was not related to the diviner. Rather, he attributed the welcome relief to his play with Kena and other girls. He had not been able to do anything intimate as he had been imagining, but it seemed the evil spirit had been exorcised. The succubus no longer found her way to his room and bed at night. He no longer went to bed with trepidation of what night would bring to him. To him, night had suddenly taken the scare off its dark mantle.

Now that the nightly experience had stopped, Amraibure felt denied a pleasure he would like to regain in a more normal way. Memories of the dream experience persisted and even tormented him with its denial. He had begun to long for what he used to consider to be a troubling phenomenon. He knew he had to plan to have as soon as possible a young woman as his wife. This had to come gradually but the process had to start immediately. It was only through his own wife that he would be saved from the torments of memories of the strange lovemaking experience, he believed. Those fires raging in his memory had to be doused with water or smothered in one way or another. Only a young woman, a wife, would douse or smother those fires forever.

What Amraibure feared, he loved. He liked facing challenges, human or supernatural, and he knew overcoming them would strengthen him. A man needed to be strong physically and mystically, he believed. Who had defeated him, he yearned to conquer to get even with a rival or an opponent. He would look for a way to get even with Kena, who had dealt him a severe blow. He waited for the time to get even with Kena. If he were to marry her, she would be his wife. That, he hoped, would obliterate the defeat he had suffered at her hands in the past. Time, he felt, would resolve their relationship in which he hoped to have the upper hand. He would not allow the woman to have the upper hand in whatever relationship they had. He knew the champion hunter had to be patient when necessary. He would wait and stalk the antelope until he had cornered the game he wanted in his hunting bag.

Another year passed and he was up to a man who should marry, and Kena was big enough to be a wife, as he saw it. What positive changes waiting could bring! He told himself. Waiting would ripen fruits before they fell down to be picked. In waiting was a spirit that brought maturity to boys and girls. Amraibure was happy that a simple year's waiting had transformed Kena to a young woman who was indisputably ripe for marriage. Nobody would also complain that he was too young to have a woman. He was very mature for the plan he was making. He was now ready for adult life.

And he realized he had to make overtures. In every major decision a man had to implement, he had to test the waters, as he put it. When he thought about marrying Kena, she changed from the aggressive girl whom he had now known for many years into something else. She became more graceful, more beautiful, kinder and gentler than he had known her to be. Sometimes she became the antelope he was hunting in his dreams, but whenever he drew the trigger of his Dane gun, the antelope leaped forward towards him and transformed itself into a beautiful young woman that froze his hands from firing. The Kena of his dream hunt shone with white light around her, as if she was a goddess. Her eyes were starry. He woke after such dreams yearning for her more and more.

He knew of no subtle or indirect ways of making his interest known to her. Both of them had now grown beyond boys and girls who should play on moonlit nights in the street, and so they had lost the freedom of pursuing each other in the half light. They had lost the so-called innocence that young ones playing on moonlit nights possessed that allowed freedom to touch each other. They could no longer be innocent before the eyes of Okpara men and women and so they had to behave differently from the way they used to only a year ago.

Amraibure preferred going straight to the point, rather than suggesting what might not be clearly understood. He had to air out in unmistakable language what was making his heart throb faster than ever in his life. He would not hold in his mouth what was burning in it. He had to spit it out. He waited for an opportunity to talk confidentially with Kena, and it took some time before this happened.

The moment came for the young hunter to test the craft he had been learning and had been anxious to try. But it was not in the bush or forest where the hunter could be free to unleash his skills that the meeting took place. It was not the thick and dark mantle of night that would give them the cover that Amraibure wanted for their tryst.

Alone with Kena in the town's market, where the crowd gave them cover, she waited for why he had asked to talk to her in private.

“Here I am!” she exclaimed, as soon as he arrived at the point of the market they had designated as their meeting place.

“Yes, I have asked you to see me for us to talk,” Amraibure said.

“Tell me what you have been waiting to tell me in private,” she asked him.

“It is about two of us,” he said, and paused to take a deep breath.

He knew he must be the man to boldly propose to the woman his desire for them to be husband and wife. He also realized that he must show courage before the person he wanted to marry by not being shy. How could a shy hunter take home any big game? He asked himself. He summoned the spirit of courage to speak his mind to her. He knew this was a decisive moment in his life and he had to be bold and not stutter to tell his true feelings to Kena. At the same time, he wanted to be calm and measured. He did not want to be seen as nervous by his potential companion for life.

“Kena, I have known you for a long time. You are not only beautiful but also so well behaved. Nobody doubts your good qualities. I have been thinking of you for as long as I have been thinking that I should get married. I love you and will like to marry you. I want to let you know my deep feelings for you before our parents know about my desire to have you as my dear wife,” he told her, as he stood beside her in between stalls of traders, amidst the coming-and-goings and haggling that made the market a noisy place.

As soon as he had finished talking, she burst out laughing. She laughed so hilariously that tears came down her cheeks. A few passers-by in the milling crowd turned to her, but she was not concerned. She knew the people did not know her and so was not bothered by their gaze at her beside a young man.

The tearful laughter struck Amraibure as ominous. He who expected her to accept or reject his proposal was abandoned in a confused plane. Confusion always made him look weak and vulnerable, he had come to realize. But on another level, the laughter could be Kena's own shield against his direct shot, he believed. Girls could be shy, he was learning from experience, but this laughter was no such act. The laughter rang with mockery and with the clarity of a bell.

“Won't you give me time to think about it?” she asked.

“Of course, yes. Think deeply about it,” he answered.

“Is that all you want to say?” Kena asked.

“I will do my best for you and the family we will raise,” he told her.

“I don't know what to say, but I will give you my reply next market day,” she said.

It was on that note that they parted. It was late in the afternoon and the market was gradually losing its crowd of traders and buyers who were on their way out with wares they had bought or left unsold.

Amraibure got neither yes nor no. Kena's instantaneous laughter continued to ring in his head as he went home and for days to come lived with the ringing headache of the young woman's obsequious laughter.

Kena knew that Amraibure was a strong young man, a promising one for that matter, who might live to be great in Okpara and in all Agbon, and it would not be a bad idea being his wife. He danced well, he followed old people to do things, and was respected for the way he carried himself at least before them. The child who respected elders would himself grow to earn respect, she thought. It was with the eyes one could tell the ram that would stand out of a pack, she also believed.

But while it would not be a bad idea to be Amraibure's wife, Kena was not sure she would like to be that woman. Her feelings towards him were not warm enough for somebody she would like to marry and live with for the rest of her life. She could not imagine her conceiving and having a baby or children for him. She could not even imagine their sleeping together as husband and wife and making love. She could not imagine them living in one home. However, she was unsure and would tell her mother at a suitable time.

After two days of delaying and acts of coyness that betrayed her as holding back something important that she wanted to say, she felt she had to break the news of Amraibure's marriage proposal to her mother. It was at night, before she would leave her mother for her bed. She sat beside her mother on the bed.

“Mama, I have something to tell you,” Kena told her mother.

“What did you hear that you want to tell me about?” her mother asked.

“It is not what I heard, but what somebody told me,” she answered.

“What is so special in what somebody told you that you have to tell it to me?” her mother asked.

“You won't believe this but it happened,” Kena said.

“Has somebody asked you to marry him? Who is the lucky man who wants to marry my beautiful daughter?” she asked in a tender manner, stretching her hand to hold her daughter's right hand.

Kena was confused for a moment and could not answer immediately.

“Go ahead and tell me what happened,” her mother ordered in a rather jovial manner.

“Amraibure says he likes me and will like to marry me,” she said.

“No!” her mother said emphatically.

“Why, Mama?”

“Amraibure cannot become your husband,” her mother replied.

This was one of those things for which she said “No!” before reasons of her refusal came to her mind, Kena's mother reflected.

“Amraibure, the shrine boy?” she asked.

“That was when he was small,” Kena said, and felt surprised that she was defending Amraibure.

“But the spirits of past victims do not leave the living alone,” her mother told her.

Kena was quiet. She did not know what to say but would listen to her mother.

“Amraibure has been the priest's help, and those who perform sacrifices are haunted by what they sacrifice. One may think that the chickens, goats, cows, and bulls are dead and have no power, but that is not true. They have spirits, as human beings, and they trouble who slaughter them,” Kena's mother explained to her.

Everybody associated Amraibure with sacrifices and eating the offal of sacrificed animals. Not being a priest, he might not have the immunity against what he had sacrificed over the years. Even those sacrificed to could trouble the carriers of sacrifice when not satisfied with the offerings. Ancestors and gods became more demanding, the more they were served, Kena's mother wondered quietly. However, she felt she must speak out her mind to her daughter.

“Someday the gods would ask for the carrier of sacrifice, if they were not pleased with what they were offered. A dancer can always change steps, as things can turn on their heads,” she now reflected aloud to Kena's hearing.

“The pursuer can become the pursued! The one sacrificing can become the sacrifice! It is like what happens in our waters. The crocodile is often not interested in the worm bait; it is interested in the fisherman himself!” she again told her daughter.

These were reasons Kena could not clearly understand.

Only the day after her conversation with her mother about Amraibure, the young woman dreamed of the young man, who had proposed marriage to her; he was like an incubus pressing her hard. She woke with a shout that also awakened her mother sleeping nearby. There was something cumbersome about Amraibure that Kena started to hate. Within a few days, she had lost the very little interest she had had in Amraibure.

The following market-day, she wound her way to the same spot where they had met the previous one. Amraibure was already there, pricing articles that he would not buy but a strategy to while away time before she arrived. As soon as he saw her, he moved to some space where they could talk and not be disturbed by loud haggling.

“I didn't want to tell you the other time, but I am already given out to somebody else. Don't ask me any questions about it, but I can't marry you.”

“Did you tell your mother?” Amraibure asked.

“It doesn't matter if I told her or not. I won't marry you. She will not give her consent to our marriage anyway. She knows better than me,” she said.

Amraibure stood still, unable to say anything. Kena had again defeated him. What could he do to win her love? He asked himself.

“My mother is waiting for me. I can't stay here with you any longer. Try some other girls around,” she said, leaving Amraibure.

She had concluded instinctively that her fate and Amraibure's were different and she had better go her own way.