Free No Longer at Ease by Chinua Achebe Page B

when the Government haddecided to build these ministers’ houses at a cost of thirty-five thousand each.
    “A very good house this,” he said.
    “It’s not too bad,” said the Minister.
    “What an enormous radiogram!” Obi rose from his seat to go and have a closer look.
    “It has a recording machine as well,” explained the owner. As if he knew what Obi was thinking, he added: “It was not part of the house. I paid two-seventy-five pounds for it.” He walked across the room and switched on the tape recorder.
    “How do you like your work on the Scholarship Board? If you press this thing down, it begins to record. If you want to stop, you press this one. This is for playing records and this one is the radio. If I had a vacancy in my Ministry, I would have liked you to come and work there.” He stopped the tape recorder, wound back, and then pressed the playback knob. “You will hear all our conversation, everything.” He smiled with satisfaction as he listened to his own voice, adding an occasional commentary in pidgin.
    “White man don go far. We just de shout for nothing,” he said. Then he seemed to realize his position. “All the same they must go. This no be them country.” He helped himself to another whisky, switched on the radio, and sat down.
    “Do you have just one Assistant Secretary in your Ministry?” asked Obi.
    “Yes, at present. I hope to get another one in April. I used to have a Nigerian as my A.S., but he was an idiot. His head was swollen like a soldier ant because he went to IbadanUniversity. Now I have a white man who went to Oxford and he says ‘sir’ to me. Our people have a long way to go.”
    Obi sat with Clara in the back while the driver he had engaged that morning at four pounds ten a month drove them to Ikeja, twelve miles away, to have a special dinner in honor of the new car. But neither the drive nor the dinner was a great success. It was quite clear that Clara was not happy. Obi tried in vain to make her talk or relax.
    “What’s the matter?”
    “Nothing. I’m just depressed, that’s all.”
    It had been dark in the car. He put an arm round her and pulled her towards him.
    “Not here, please.”
    Obi was hurt, especially as he knew his driver had heard.
    “I’m sorry, dear,” said Clara, putting her hand in his. “I will explain later.”
    “When?” Obi was alarmed by her tone.
    “Today. After you have eaten.”
    “What do you mean? Aren’t you eating?”
    She said she did not feel like eating. Obi said in that case he too wouldn’t eat. So they decided to eat. But when the food came they merely looked at it, even Obi, who had set out with a roaring appetite.
    There was a film show which Clara suggested they should see. Obi said no, he wanted to find out what was onher mind. They went for a walk in the direction of the swimming pool.
    Until Obi met Clara on board the cargo boat Sasa he had thought of love as another grossly overrated European invention. It was not that he was indifferent to women. On the contrary, he had been quite intimate with a few in England—a Nigerian, a West Indian, English girls, and so on. But these intimacies which Obi regarded as love were neither deep nor sincere. There was always a part of him, the thinking part, which seemed to stand outside it all watching the passionate embrace with cynical disdain. The result was that one half of Obi might kiss a girl and murmur: “I love you,” but the other half would say: “Don’t be silly.” And it was always this second half that triumphed in the end when the glamor had evaporated with the heat, leaving a ridiculous anticlimax.
    With Clara it was different. It had been from the very first. There was never a superior half at Obi’s elbow wearing a patronizing smile.
    “I can’t marry you,” she said suddenly as Obi tried to kiss her under the tall frangipani tree at the edge of the swimming pool, and exploded into tears.
    “I don’t understand you, Clara.” And he