Stars of the Long Night. Tanure Ojaide

another question from him.

      “What are you waiting for?”

      “He has to grow up first,” Odibo replied.

      “Grow to have a beard before becoming the man he already is? Not nowadays. Let him take a young woman now before he begins to discharge on his bed. He should be doing that already. That's not good for a strong young man. Let the witches not seize upon that to ruin him.”

      Odibo snapped his forefinger and thumb to signal his rejection of such misfortune for his son. Amraibure made a similar sign almost simultaneously as his father.

      Odibo and his son felt they needed no further consultation. After all, the father had thought about this possibility without airing it and his fears had been confirmed. He told the diviner that they had been passing by and he had wanted to stop by and introduce his big son to him.

      “You don't have to go farther than where you find what you seek,” the diviner told him.

      The diviner's riddling words surprised them, as if he was reading their minds, but Odibo felt he did not need to acknowledge what he had come there for, even if the diviner knew without being told. Amraibure had to follow his father's lead as he stepped out and they left for home.

3

      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?”