CHAPTER FOUR

During the summer holiday, Charles expected with all eagerness to hear Vivian’s response about his marriage proposal to her. He knew intimate things about her since he started courting her; her sobriety, gentleness and sincerity; and she would complement him as a partner in establishing a home. He knew that Vivian had already accepted him and his warm request but one thing he could not affirm was whether Vivian’s parents would acknowledge his passionate desire to marry their daughter.

Charles had known her kind of person. In the first place, she was not corrupt and did not move in company of those modern girls on campus. She retained her virtue that nature entrusted to her. Charles knew that she was one of those virgins in society. He knew she was one of the most timid girls on campus. His ambition in life was to marry such type of girl who hadn’t been wild. He disliked marrying campus girls who smoke and drink. He feared in his life that if any man falls into danger of marrying a class of smoking and drinking woman, the first thing would be that she would not be at home to keep home. She would be walking from one party hall to discotheque. Sometimes, these classes of girls seldom bear children for their husbands because of their regular abortions. He knew that this class of girls would appreciate any constitution that legalizes abortion and lesbianism.

While Charles was deeply analyzing her personality, he remembered one undergraduate who was impregnated by a rough male of the institute. The girl aborted her twin babies and threw them into the dustbin. The next day she put on her pairs of trousers and was seen dancing ecstatically with her male friends in the disco hall. The memory of this abortion had every moment of the day set the blood stream of Charles high. That was the reason why Charles swore like a pagan never to marry any rough girl.

Charles understood that his parents had warned him seriously not to marry any outcast or a criminal. They warned him also not to marry a prostitute because they detested prostitution. They considered a prostitute to be equivalent to a criminal. His father in particular had warned him and told him that if a man marries an outcast or any street class, she would bring ill fortune to the entire family, and that she would abridge the prosperity and destiny of the husband, and in other words, nobody knew if she would bear children to her husband. Most often the husband would die during her courtship or after their wedding because she possesses many demons.

For these warnings of his father, he had wondered whether Vivian was an outcast or one with demons. His father’s teaching taught him that an outcast was abhorred in the society; not acceptable particularly in his own family.

He knew that it was a taboo in his community to marry an outcast. But no matter how people segregate them in marital enjoinment, he did not want to get into their depraved minds and view his marriage with her from their perspective. He definitely did not like the feeling that he saw things in ways other people could, that he sensed things that were beyond ordinary understanding. That sense was part of what had made him so good at rejecting colour bar or segregating human beings. He actually believed that human beings are the same, white and black, brown and yellow.

One thing that he was sure of was that Vivian wasn’t an outcast from the inquiries he had made about her trend, and family background. Though even if she was, it was irrelevant to him. He knew that she knew no man; she was a virgin. Though he knew before he could marry her, she must be tested for her virginity. If she is not a virgin, she must make known to him and the public, who broke her virginity, or she would be brought out to the public and stone to death by the hands of the angry mob.

He said that the next thing that would prevent him from getting married to Vivian was if she had married before. Legally, he said, ‘it’s abominable to remarry a married woman, who might have divorced her husband through court injunction. He wondered what might have brought so much court litigations on marriage cases that he often heard. He personally learnt that most of the court divorce cases were the fault of these modern women, who would marry today and the next day flirt with other men while with their legal hubbies. They are those women whose first love to their husbands died. He knew that when a woman’s love to a man expires, she could do unpleasant attitude.

Charles had proved that if a woman has a husband, she is bound by the law to her husband, to live clean as long as her husband lives. If her husband is living and she marries another man, she would be called an adulteress. Her husband has every legal right to divorce her if she is a flirt. He would give her a certificate of divorce for the fact that she sold her vow to another man, who had no legal right with her. Charles considered these dubious acts as the brunt on marital vows.

He remembered how his uncle’s wife, who lived with him for so many years and bore him three boys and two girls, poisoned his food, and he died. She quickly packed up her traps and personal belongings and eloped to a far country side with a handsome man with slick haircut, and straight shoulder abandoning her little children. The man was financially qualified when contrasted with her ex-husband, and in due course, the man wedded with her the second time.

Unfortunately, the daughter of this woman met a man first week of their freshman year and they talked about living together. She was fairly hot and heavy with this man for a while, but they split when she started smoking, drinking and prowling around hideous places. She had no husband after that. She remained like a nun in a nunnery. And she later became a paid stripper in Hollywood.

He had wondered why such flirty living had been adopted by the modern women. He reasoned that if the modern women could act in such putrid characteristics, they were teaching evil lessons to their children, and to the teeming population of the generation ahead, who would learn their dubious lives. He remembered decades ago when a married woman and spinsters stood trials for virtuousness.

In retrospect, Charles condemned her action to leave home, abandon her children to baby sitters and becomes independent to pick up a paid job when she had not been granted the legal right to vote or wear Police or Army uniforms and stay on the road all night long. These were those days when she could not usurp the office of a man. Today, she claims authority: she is the justice of the federation, the magistrate, an attorney, a governor, a president, head of educational department, teacher, factory directress, ministerial head, reverend doctor, and a thick politician. She can vote and be voted for and could brag about: “what a man can do, a woman can do it.”He could hear his father saying one time, “that no matter what women claim or how they usurp the offices that belonged to men, she won’t climb a palm tree or tap palm wine.”

Charles noticed that when he passed out from secondary school and looked for a job, he found out that there were five thousand women working in a certain plant he went to submit his resume. He found out that those women were street prostitutes and married women with children. One man he was familiar with took his wife out there and worked her up with a board, and then he wanted to kill her when he saw her pulling with the head of the board. Another man went to shoot a man who took his wife to Hollywood and another man cutting and fighting a man he saw pulling with his wife in the plant site. Charles always heard his father saying, “Put the woman back in the kitchen where she belongs, then everything will be all right. But you put her out there in the public work, she is gone. The modern women snicker up their nose and say “There is nothing to that.”

Charles had observed that Vivian might not be too harsh like most of these modern classes of women. She would not be a miserable and obnoxious creature or disrespectful. She would be a meek and an obedient wife, not a domineering female, not a violator of the supreme laws that guide the marital laws. She would be well respected in the neighbourhood, honored in society. She would be a kind of a wife that bridles her tongue; not an insolent gossip or a quarrelsome woman in the community of friends but a woman whose character would stand as a symbol of geniality. He observed that she would be for him a perfect example of a virtuous woman.

He thought about how our nation has come so little until they have even taken the jobs away from the men, and put women out here in these places and talk about men being so short, because they got women out there in their jobs. That is a disgrace to any nation. Though he argued one time with a friend whom he told that sometimes some women should work, if they got sick husbands; yet if they don’t have to, they shouldn’t do it. Their place is at home, their little castle that is exactly where they should be.

Charles had suggested that after Vivian’s academic career in the university, he would not allow her to go into any private or government work. After her graduation, she would hide her degree certificate in the box and stay at home and be preoccupied with domestic drudgery. He would not allow her to join this working class of modern women who left their husbands’ houses and worked in both government and private offices. She would be a kind companion to him, and that if she would prove to be virtuous wife, he would be more to her than seven husbands.

Charles was really confounded why she was called names on campus as timid girl; what was that timidity in a girl to marry was his previous desire. He had thought in himself that her four years in English Language degree curriculum would broaden her trivial intellect and wipe out completely her uncivilized attitude and put her into competence with other well informed classes of female graduates. He further said that “wisdom is a thing impacted by learning and learning itself brushes timidity.”

Her present timidity gave him a sense of continuous possession of her to be his bride who would shoulder the qualm involved at home during his absence. Charles said that after the wedding, she would live a life of joy painted in the gayest definition and he would treat her with indulgence. She would be made to give way from the luscious talks from those township women whose modesty was thrown to the dust; and she would avoid their descriptions of engagement with men who poke nose to others.

Charles had also said: “I would give her an undeniable proof of considering her desires as dispensable orders. If she understands to abide in the unity of the existence of our new union, she would bear me a resemblance and nurture my children. She would not betray the trust she had on me to any other male. My entire accumulated wealth, and parental legacies would be her possession and inheritance, and she would be empowered to get access to them. She would effectually carry out my order in my absence and then settle with my laws. She would not violet the accord of peace in the family hood...

She would avoid a little confusion she found in me and endure any of my violent agitation in order to forestall peace and tranquility. She would on her side be self-devoted to all the regular wife’s business at home: the washing of her husband’s garment, the keeping clean of her children’s wears, the washing of dirty utensils, the sweeping of rooms, the cleaning or sweeping of the compound, the preparation of meals to the husband and children, and showing great love to her groom whenever he returned from the day’s work and terrible heat of the sun.

If I meet unhappy pawns of oppression of circumstance, she would bear it with me. If I become poor like a pauper, she would bear my wretched condition. If I become happy, she would jubilate with me. If I become sad, she would be angry and ready to comprehend what caused my aggravation; she would not be a kind of woman that laughed in counterfeited glee while her groom was in sorrowful state and irritation. She would be a true wife, not cultivating materialism; she would not be heady and arrogant. She would not live in pleasure while her husband is alive; her love and admiration would extend to her husband’s kin; she would not be a detester of persons, but one whose total motive would be to entertain strangers in his absence.”

Charles had meditated and suggested these comparisons to be the qualifications of the kind of a woman he had ever longed for and searched in the country to marry. He felt so sure that Vivian met the requirements to be his new companion. He then felt she fitted his purpose for considering her for marriage. Since she met the requirements he desired of, he would automatically pave his way to accomplish the rules and native regulations for their wedding ceremony.

All these while he was courting her, he ignored any form of criticisms that had been deepening for days, from foes who did not like Vivian. He did not need anyone to attack her personality. He ignored every assassination of her character by her friends who she felt most akin to. He ignored any attack of her parental background, either. He closed his ears to any form of criticism and said, that “criticism is always welcomed when a man wants to marry any timid girl.”

After many weeks, Charles informed his friends in his town about his arrangement to marry a girl whom he admired. He expressed his mind and explained to his friends about his newly engaged spouse; how she looked like, how her face dazzled like a moon that shines in the pitch dark of the night, how her body was finely formed and vigorously made. How her eyes were in its sockets and her pupils black and white, her eyes sparkling like the reflection of rays on a metallic substance, chin that is more of a grace; for her complexion was of the brownest like the red Indian, not of that dusty dun colour that excludes the idea of freshness, but of that clear olive glows which was glowing with life, dazzled perhaps not lesser than fairness. The hair on her head, being too long, tied, fell lower on her back in long and loosely braided. If she laughed, millions of people would admire the whiteness and strong formation of her teeth, if she kept mute, millions of people would admire her wonderful silence. If she becomes sad, the community of ardent friends would want to comprehend the cause of her sorrow and pain.

But one vital thing that Charles was very curious to know about, was the compromising settlement of marriage that would be reached between Vivian and her parents, which would enhance and set the pace for their enjoinment to matrimonial bloc and bliss. Their favourable response would satisfy his curiosity; as a result he envisions good possibility in their response. If they refute his request, it then means that his total plan to marry her had gone into the deep sea, and if they acknowledge his request, any controversy towards his union with her had been aborted, and he would quickly pay all the price and problems associated with marital bloc.

This time, he thought with a sudden jolt, he had not received Vivian’s letter he anticipated. There was no mail from the “snail mail-runner.” It has been days he last sent her anything and he wondered if perhaps her parents’ refusal to acknowledge his request had finally bored her enough to send him on his way. He was interested in receiving her letter to know her parents’ decision on their high-handed plan. The passionate desire to receive an assuring letter from her haunted him all the day and he looked frustrated, as if he were missing something that was right in front of him. And, worse, he was afraid if Vivian would be able to convince her parents on their matrimonial plan.