An Orchestra of Minorities

by Chigozie Obioma

  ECHETAOBIESIKE, the confidence he’d arrived with, like an egg in a calabash, was already broken by the time he sat at the table with the family. Ndali had met him at the door and told him, in frantic whispers, that he’d come late. “Fifteen minutes!” Then she reached to his back and removed something he’d not imagined could be there: a feather. Even I had not seen it. He almost wept as she crumpled the white feather into her palm, pointing him towards the dining room. “Is that all?” he said. In whispers she asked why he held the suit, and he raised it up towards her face, gesturing for her to smell it.

  “Jesus!” she said. “Don’t wear that smelling thing. Nyamma! Give it to me.” She took it from him and folded it, then handed it back to him. “Keep it in your hand throughout, you hear me?”

  The grandeur of the living room defeated him. Never had he dreamt that such lighting could exist. He didn’t know that someone could have a sculpture of the Madonna inside a house. The marble on the flooring, and the design of the ceiling, these were beautiful beyond words. There were chandeliers and mantelpieces, articles I had seen in homes when my former host Yagazie was in Virginia, in that land of the brutal White Man. If the house struck him with such awe, it was without doubt that the people who owned it would do even more damage to his composure. So when he saw her father, the man appeared huge to him. The man’s fair complexion was spotted with reddish blotches that reminded him of the musician Bright Chimezie. He found some comfort in her mother, for her face was the exact replica of Ndali’s. But when her brother walked down the stairs, he wished he’d not come. He looked like black American musicians—with a nicely trimmed hair on the side of his face that traced down to his jaw and a broad, pink-lipped mouth held between a heavy mustache and beard. In response to his “Good afternoon, my brother,” the man gave him only a grin.

  They sat at the table as the maids served different foods on trays. With every passing moment, my host noticed one more thing that further damaged his confidence, so that by the time the food had all been served and they sat down to eat, he was already vanquished. When the first question came, he struggled to form words and dithered for such a long time that Ndali spoke in his stead.

  “Nonso runs a poultry farm the size of this entire compound all by himself,” she said. “He has a lot of chickens—agric fowl—and also sells them in the markets.”

  “Excuse me, gentleman,” her father said again, as if she had not spoken at all. “What did you say you do?”

  He made to speak, his voice starting to stutter, for he was truly afraid, then he stopped. He looked at Ndali, and she met his eyes.

  “Daddy—”

  “Let him answer the question,” her father said, turning to his daughter with a countenance that did not conceal his anger. “I asked him, not you. He has a mouth, or not?”

  He was worried by Ndali’s confrontation with her father, and from under the table, he touched her with his leg to make her stop, but she pulled her leg away. In the small silence that descended, his voice broke out.

  “I am a farmer, a poultry farmer. And I have land where I grow maize, pepper, tomatoes, and okro.” He looked up at her—for he had come prepared to use a tool she had supplied him with—and said, “I am a shepherd of birds, sir.”

  Her father gave his wife what my host thought was a puzzled look that filled my host with the dread that he may have misspoken, and his feeling in this moment was like that of a man whose extremities were bound and was then thrust naked into the central arena of a village, with nothing to hide himself. Without intending to, he saw that he’d turned to her brother, on whose face he found the impression of muffled laughter. He became frantic. This thing Ndali had told him, how could it be wrong? She’d said it sounded fancier, and it did—to his ear, at least.

  “I see,” the father said. “So, gentleman, shepherd of birds, what education do you have?”

  “Daddy—”

  “No, Ndi, no!” her father said in a raised voice. A strained vein became visible on the side of his neck like a blow-induced swelling. “You must let him speak, or this meeting is over. You hear?”

  “Yes, Daddy.”

  “Good. Now, gentleman, ina anu okwu Igbo?”

  He nodded.

  “Should I speak it, then?” the father said, and a piece of the chopped vegetable clung to his lower lip.

  “No need, sir. Speak English.”

  “Good,” the father said. “What is your level of education?”

  “I have completed secondary school, sir.”

  “So,” the father said as he gathered pieces of chicken flesh onto the prongs of his fork. “School cert.”

  “It is so, sir. Yes, sir.”

  The man gave his wife the look again. “Gentleman, I don’t mean to embarrass you,” the father said, letting his voice fall from the height to which he’d pitched it. “We are not in the business of embarrassing people; we are a Christian family.” He pointed around to an étagère placed on the glass-covered bookcase on one side of the room, which held various paintings of Jisos Kraist and his disciples.

  My host looked up at the étagère, nodded, and said, “Yes, sir—”

  “But I have to ask this question.”—“Yes, sir.”—“Have you considered that my daughter here is a soon-to-be pharmacist?”—“Yes, sir.”—“Have you considered that she is now completing her bachelor’s in pharmacy and will so proceed to do her MPhil in the UK?”—“Yes, sir.”—“Have you considered, young man, what kind of future you, an unschooled farmer, will have with her?”

  “Daddy!”

  “Ndali, quiet!” her father said. “Mechie gi onu! Ina num? A si’m gi michie onu!”

  “Ndi, what is this?” her mother said. “Iga ekwe ka daddy gi kwu okwu?”

  “I’m letting him speak, Mommy, but do you hear what he is saying?” Ndali said.

  “Yes, but keep quiet, you hear?”

  “I do,” Ndali said with a sigh.

  When her father began to speak again, the words came to my host again in a glut, each running into the other and the other.

  “Young man, have you thought about it thoroughly?”—“Yes, sir.”—“Deeply about what kind of life you will have with her?”—“Yes, sir.”—“You have, I see.”—“Yes, sir.”—“And you think it is the right decision to marry such a woman who is so high above you, who wants to be her husband?”—“I know, sir.”—“Then, you must go and think about it again. Go and see if truly you deserve my daughter.”—“Yes, sir.”—“That is all I will say to you.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Her father rose in a slow, heavy manner, with his body pitching against the table, and left. Her mother followed moments later, shaking her head with a countenance my host would reckon later to have been pity towards him. She headed first to the kitchen, carrying empty plates stacked together. Ndali’s brother, who had not said anything but had made his resentment known by laughing at every answer my host gave, rose shortly after his mother. He lingered for a while on his feet while he took a toothpick from the casing, stifling a laugh.

  “You, too, Chuka?” Ndali said in a voice that dripped with sobs.

  “What?” Chuka said. “Er-er, er-er, don’t even call my name here, oh. Don’t tell me even a single thing! Is it me that asked you to bring a poor farmer home?” He laughed, jerking. “Don’t you mention my name again, there, oh.”

  With that, he, too, headed his father’s way, on a flight of stairs, the toothpick held between his clenched teeth, whistling a tune as he went.

  Ijango-ijango, my host sat there, rendered inutile by shame. He fixed his eyes on the plate of food in front of him, most of which he’d barely touched. From the upstairs, he heard Ndali’s mother say to her husband in the language of the eminent fathers, “Dim, you were too harsh on that young man, er. You could have said these things in a way that didn’t sound that harsh.”

  He looked up at his lover, who remained where she was, rubbing her right hand over her left. He knew that she was feeling a pai
n that was as deep as his. He wanted to comfort her, but he could not lift himself. For such is the state a man enters when he has been disgraced: inaction, numbness—as if he has been tranquilized. I have seen it many times.

  His eyes fell on the large painting of a man gently ascending into the sky over what seemed to be a village with the rest of the people of the village looking up in his direction and pointing at him. Because his mind sometimes bore strange convictions, he did not know why he thought for a moment that this man who was levitating into the sky was my host himself.

  It was with a mighty effort that he rose and touched Ndali on the shoulder and whispered in her ear to stop crying. He pulled her gently up, but she struggled, her tears mixing with saliva that slid slowly down her dress.

  “Leave me, leave me,” she said. “Leave me alone. What kind of family is this, er? What?”

  “It is okay, Mommy,” he said with his lips unmoved so that he wondered how the words had come out of him.

  He rested his hands on her head and gently traced his fingers down her neck. Then he bent forward and, sinking his head towards her mouth, locked her in a kiss. Before they walked out of the house, he threw a gaze at the painting for one last time and noticed what had not occurred to him the first time: that the people in the lower end of the painting were cheering at this man who was ascending into the sky.

  CHUKWU, I have seen firsthand what shame can do to a man. As it often does, it filled my host with an oppressive fear, the fear that he would lose Ndali like most of the things that had once been his. It grew in the days following, during which she made efforts to force her family to reconsider, but failed. Those days stretched into weeks, and it became clear by the third that nothing would change their minds. When Ndali came back from a quarrel with her parents, he resolved to change things himself and do something. Rain had fallen all morning, but by noon the sun had risen. She came directly from school in Uturu, filled with bitterness. He was out on the small farm when she drove onto the path flanked on both sides by farmland. He was at the farthest end of the farm, where his father had erected a fence which had partly crumbled under the heavy rainfall of the year the White Man refers to as 2003. Two feet from the fence was a long gutter that ran through the street, and beyond this was the long main road. As he watched her step out of the car towards the house, it occurred to him that she had not seen him. He dropped his hoe, and the head of the yam for which he had been digging a hole, and ran to the house.

  He entered still wearing his dirty visor, a soiled shirt, trousers, and farm slippers covered with loam and other weeds he’d pruned off the land.

  He found her with her face buried on her wrist, facing the wall.

  “Mommy, kedi ihe mere nu?” he said, for in the moment of tension, he reached for the language to which he was much accustomed. “Why are you crying, why are you crying, Mommy? Er, what happened?”

  She turned to embrace him, but he stepped away from her because of his farm clothes. She stopped an inch from him, her eyes deep red.

  “Why are they doing this to me, er, Obim? Why?”

  “What happened, er? Tell me what happened.”

  She told him about how her father had asked her if she was still seeing him and had threatened her. Her mother had intervened, saying the man was being too harsh, but her father continued unhindered.

  “It is well,” he said. “It will be well after everything.”

  “No, Nonso, no!” she said, slapping the wall with her palm again. “It will not be well. How can it be well? I am not going back to that house again. I am not. Over my dead body. What kind of family is this?”

  His heart swirled within him at her rage. He did not know what to do. The old fathers, in their magnanimous wisdom, say that a person saves himself in the process of saving others. If she cannot be saved from a situation such as this, which has held them bound like invisible leashes, then he, too, cannot be saved. And it won’t indeed be well. He watched her walk a few paces towards the door, stop, and put her hand on her chest. Then she turned back to face him. “I have—I have brought a few of my things, and I am staying here. I’m staying here.”

  She opened the door and stepped out of the house. He followed her out to the front porch and looked on as she opened the boot of her car and returned with a shiny Ghana-must-go bag. Then, from the backseat, she took out a pair of shoes and a nylon bag. He watched her with a certain joy, inwardly happy that he finally had a companion.

  But for much of that week, her phone rang again and again, sometimes for extended periods. And each time, Ndali would look at its face and say to my host, “It is my dad,” or “It is my mum.” And every time he would beg her to answer the call, but she wouldn’t. For she was strong-willed like most of the great mothers. She would merely hiss at my host’s entreaty and turn her attention to something else, like one beyond reproach or beyond the fear of reproach. My host admired this in her. Whenever she did this, at such moments he’d think about a similar trait in his mother.

  In the middle of the second week, her parents came to look for her at school and waited outside her classroom, but she ignored them and walked away with her classmate Lydia. After she told him this, he began to fear that she was starting to resent her family for his sake. Even though he increasingly sought to salvage the situation as days passed, he could not deny that her love for him seemed to grow stronger in those days. For it felt as though she’d culled her love away from everyone else and bequeathed it all to him. It was during this time that twice, while they made love, she wept. It was during these days that she baked him a cake, wrote him a poem, and sang for him. And once, while he was asleep, she unhooked the catapult from the wall and rushed out to the yard with it and scared away a prowling kite. And part of him sought to prolong those days, for although they were not yet married, it felt to him as though they were. He wished that he would take the center of her life, dwell around the boundaries, and seal up the limits. This woman, whom he’d always feared he could never have but who was now his, he could not afford to lose. Yet his fear of what she was doing grew alongside the blossoming of his affection for her, and her affection for him.

  It was during this period that she traveled to Enugu with him. He’d woken early that memorable morning of life to find her dressed, in an ankara print gown and a calico head scarf, stirring tea in a cup while looking through the poultry record book on the table.

  “Are you going somewhere, Mommy?”

  “Good morning, dear.”

  “Good morning,” he said.

  “No, I’m going to Enugu too.”

  “What? Mommy—”

  “I want to come, Nonso. I am not doing anything here. I want to know everything about you and about the fowls. I like it.”

  He was so taken aback that he struggled to find words. He looked on the dining table, and there he found one of the plastic crates, its dozen egg-holding cups nearly filled with eggs.

  “Those ones are from the broilers?”

  She nodded. “I collected them around six o’clock. They are even still laying more.”

  He smiled, for one of the things she loved the most about tending his poultry was collecting the eggs. She was fascinated by the phenomenon of egg laying, how rapidly it occurred in chickens.

  “Mommy, okay, but Ogbete market is—”

  “It is okay, Nonso. It is okay. I am not an egg. I have told you—I don’t like you treating me like I’m an egg. I’m like you. I want to come.”

  His eyes fell hard on her face, and he saw in her eyes that she meant it. He nodded. “Okay, let me baff, then,” he said, and rushed off to bathe.

  Later, they dropped off the eggs at the restaurant down the street, and he promised to come for his pay on his way back from Enugu. As they drove on the highway, he could tell that he’d never felt such joy while traveling before. On the bridge over the Amatu River, she revealed to him how after the night he first found her on that bridge, she was still greatly heartbroken. She went to Lagos to
stay with her uncle for two months, and while there, she frequently thought of him. And every time she did she would laugh at how strange he was. He in turn told her about how he’d returned to the river to look for the fowls but couldn’t find them, and how he had been angry at himself.

  “I was thinking the other day,” she said, “how a man who loves fowls so much could do that. Why did you?”

  He looked at her. “I don’t know, Mommy.”

  Once he’d said those words, it struck him that he might know why she loved him: because he’d rescued her from something. And like his gosling, also taken under his care. This thought was enunciated so loudly in his mind that he looked at her to make sure she did not hear it. But her eyes were out the window, looking at the other side of the road, where the thick forest had given way to the scattered habitation of a village.

  At the market in Enugu, he introduced her as his fiancée to a gleeful reception by his acquaintances. Ezekobia, a feed seller, gave them palm wine to drink, the drink of the gods. Some of them shook hands with him and embraced her. My host’s face was lit with a flaming smile the entire time, for the blank wall of the future had suddenly become emblazoned with warm colors. It was almost full sun when they left the market, carrying the things they had bought.

  He and Ndali purchased ugba from a roadside hawker near the garage where they parked the vehicle. Ndali, soaked in sweat, bought a bottle of La Casera. She had him try it, and it tasted sweet, but he could not describe what it tasted like. She laughed at him.

  “Bushman. It is apple taste. I’m sure you have never eaten apple before.”

  He shook his head. They had loaded a new cage, and two bags of broiler feed, and a half sack of millet, and were now sitting in the van, about to return to Umuahia.

  “I am not Oyibo. I will eat my ugba as correct African man.”

  He unwrapped the food and began putting handfuls into his mouth and chewing in a way that made her laugh.