Stars of the Long Night. Tanure Ojaide

himself in a frenzy to complete orders as if, were he to stop, he would no longer know how to complete the work. Sometimes he stopped when he failed to hear from inside him what should be done. Obie took every carving as if it were the last he would do and gave it all his attention and energy. He was patient with his work because he knew that once the completed carving was taken away, it would tell much about his skill. He believed in the best at all times. He did not have a preference among his customers. Once he accepted a work, no matter from whom, he aimed at the best he could accomplish. He knew that some works were greater than others, but small and big commissions needed his energy and skill to realize in as perfect a form as possible.

      Driven by his tools, he worked and worked until he had drained himself of the secret power that had possessed him. Then he would sleep in the workroom, which was suffused with the aura of the spirits that would be invoked into the masks and figurines. It was as if the ancestors or spirits stalked the wooden works he produced. He spent more time in his workroom than in his main house. The room was crammed with many things, but in that confusion he knew where he placed everything he needed. He always aimed at clearing the room or giving it some semblance of neatness and order, but he never got to achieve this aim. One commission after another, wood on wood, he saw the workroom as a reflection of life. Not everything one wished to do could be completed in a lifetime, he mused. He had a mat, which he rolled out whenever he wanted to steal some time off his work, as he put it.

      He talked to himself, hummed and groaned, as he wielded his double-bladed axe, double-edged knives, scrounges, and sandpaper leaves. He rubbed ant-repelling herbs on his woodwork. He told the wood what he was going to do—raise it from mere wood to a godly status. He positioned the wood for the exercise. In their quiet exchange, the tools did the bidding of his hands, which obeyed some secret power that gave them insight and strength.

      You could hear him cutting wood and smoothing thick and rough surfaces to match his mental picture of what he was creating. There were times he had accidentally cut what he did not intend to. But things fitted even better on such occasions. He believed more than ever on his being driven by a supernatural force to do his work. What looked like an accident was in fact the beginning of a new fashionable trend for him.

      If he did not get the call, he did not work. The call was not difficult for him to interpret. He suddenly became excited and possessed by the spirit of creation. Only then would he take his tools. He did not want to ruin his work when he could not summon powers within him to guide his hands. On such occasions without inspiration, he just cleaned his workshop and tools and went about his life like an idle man looking for something to do. He knew how to wait. He was a wanderer until he heard the call to go home and do what was waiting to be done. A few times in his career, he did not accomplish the commission because he did not have the call by the time the people came back. He knew such people were impatient and told them to go elsewhere because he would not do what did not come from inside him.

10

      The Great Creator made Oyeghe out of the rarest materials and exhausted the best of his craft on her figure. Her smile was a heart-warming sun in the harmattan season. Her oval face had the smoothness of a full moon. There was no unevenness in her body; everything from her toes to her hair fell into place in a harmonious pattern. She had the complexion of Agbon's superior palm oil, a golden type of colour, that was most cherished by men. She had the aura of a goddess, who had come to live in this world in a human incarnation.

      Oyeghe gave the lie to those who saw beauty only in adolescent youth. She was not the type that could be described as an unripe fruit that gave you worries and hurt. Yet she was not in any way close to being old, outworn. She stood in a special age-group that many women would do everything possible to be in but could not achieve because that gift was not accessible to most women. It was this ageless shape that made her shine; the moon in a permanent fullness in the night of Agbon.

      Her body was a shrine dedicated to Olokun, goddess of beauty and wealth. She was the only one of a special kind. Her teeth shone; her eyes had a certain glitter that radiated warmth to those who stood close to her. Her eyelashes were dark and long. The entire frame of her body was so proportionate that people sometimes walked onto trees or knocked themselves against others as they looked at her. When Oyeghe passed, men gazed and marvelled at her beauty, and so many women wished they had her frame.

      At her age, and with the effortless poise, one would expect Oyeghe to have been grabbed as a prize by some fortunate man for a wife. Happy and fortunate would be the man who married her; everyone would think. Blessed would be that home in which she lived; the men, dazed by her beauty, would think. But what would ignite some people could turn others cold. What was an invaluable gift to some would be worthless to others. Not everyone would recognize a goddess in a human shape in the street.

      Oyeghe had experienced marriage in its most cruel condition. Ten years with a man, and yet she remained childless. As a young lady she had heard of the rare case of women who had no menstruation all their lives. She was a normal woman, as she saw herself. There had been no month she did not experience her menstruation, an indication that she was capable of being pregnant, she believed. Yet nothing had come out to show people that she was a fertile married woman. There was no round big belly for her to parade as evidence of her imminent motherhood. There was, despite sleeping with her husband, no nine-month break to her regular menstruation.

      Her husband became anxious after many seasons failed to bring forth seeds planted. Despite the farmers' labour of care, the farm produced no crops. The monthly expectation of sprouting seeds proved futile. Each month's desire to blossom went unfulfilled. And this frustrating situation went on month after month and then year after year. By the eight year Okotete realized how difficult it would be for the marriage to go on without Oyeghe conceiving soon. He who had been called fortunate by every other man for marrying Okpara's beauty now began to see himself as unfortunate. “How come about that you like a spindly tree was able to marry this beauty?” his close friend had asked him after Oyeghe was escorted to his house. He who was the envy of other men became envious of others who married women not physically endowed but who had delivered them three to five children in ten years. Was Oyeghe blessed with only stunning beauty and nothing else? He asked himself many questions that he could not answer because only God knew every individual's fate.

      Meanwhile Oyeghe's mother-in-law had been pushing her son to try other women. “How long does a man live to spend the better days and years of his life waiting for a barren tree to bear fruit?” she would ask her son.

      “I don't think she is barren. Everything is in God's hands,” Okotete would respond.

      “People are talking. Do you know what they whisper about when either of you passes? I did not give birth to you to bear these taunts.”

      “Don't mind what they say about her or me. God gives when he wants,” Oyeghe's husband would tell his mother.

      “You fool! What you have is God's. What you strive for and secure is God-given. You do not stay in one spot in the bush and come back to say that there are no ripe palm-nuts to harvest. You must go round if you are not sick yourself,” she told him.

      Of course, he understood his mother's figurative language. He knew all along what she was driving at.

      “I am not sick. If I were sick, she would have left me the day after we started to live together as husband and wife. I am doing all I can to impregnate her and she is definitely eager to conceive.”

      “Let me tell you. You came from this womb,” she said, pointing to her stomach. “Let me advise you. As the day grows older, so diminishes the freshness of palm-wine. You will not remain young forever. This is the time for you to act,” she concluded in a sober tone.

      Okotete was quiet. He could not interrupt his mother, however painful what she was telling him. Mother was mother and must be respected, he knew very well.

      “A hen incapable of laying eggs might as well be a cock,” his mother went on.

      The mother knew the task she had embarked upon. She knew that despite her son's love for Oyeghe, she could break his resolve with constant salvoes