A. Barrett - Love Is Power, or Something Like That - Stories

The final affront for the old cook was when Perpetua, looking into the kitchen one Sunday morning as he prepared spaghetti and meatballs for lunch, asked him to adjust his menu to allow for Kalabari food. She was still speaking when Yaw Kakari threw down his spatula and flung off his apron, then marched to the master’s study to hand in his resignation. Godspeed refused to accept it, and as a compromise, he warned his wife away from the kitchen.

In the first weeks of their marriage, Godspeed came home from work every evening with a present for his wife: a string of coral beads, a length of akwete fabric, a box of American chocolates. After handing over these gifts and observing in silence her expressions of delight, he would retire to his bedroom to freshen up, and from there to his study. Except when Perpetua, feeling like an intruder, went in to interrupt his work, they would not set eyes on each other again until Yaw Kakari rang the bell for dinner. By the third week after their return from their honeymoon the presents had stopped coming, but the domestic pattern was established.

In this trying time, Perpetua discovered that the one true friend she had was the housemaid, Tenemenam. What drew them together at first was the suspicion the young bride harbored that her husband was getting his sexual needs fulfilled in Tene’s bed. This specter was raised when she disclosed her troubles to her committee of friends. That day, a rainy Monday that seemed perfect for such confessions — rain lashed the windowpanes, lightning seared the cold, heavy air — a deep silence fell on the room after the words left her mouth. Then Tene walked in with a tray of refreshments balanced in her arms. When she left, Judith, one of Perpetua’s oldest friends, cleared her throat and spoke.

“Your husband is fucking that girl, you fool.”

The truth of these words struck Perpetua hard. It was obvious, like day after night, this solution to a conundrum that had given her sleepless nights. An answer that had been there all the while, that greeted her with bogus respectfulness every morning, and served her tea and biscuits with a mocking smile tucked behind that obsequious mask — yet she hadn’t seen it. But her eyes were now opened, the truth was revealed, she could see clearly. Outside, the storm raged on.

Against the counsel of her friends, who urged her to dismiss the housemaid without delay, Perpetua decided to get closer to her rival, to know her better in order to uncover her plan. She set about this task with a resolve that surprised her — one would think she was in love with the man! Her opening move was to insinuate herself into Tene’s confidence. On the Friday after her friends’ visit, which was housecleaning day, she picked up a broom and mop and joined Tene in cleaning the house. The housemaid saw her madam’s action as a roundabout way of expressing dissatisfaction with her work, and so Perpetua’s initial attempts at establishing camaraderie — What’s your favourite color? Who do you think is the better singer, Bobby Benson or Cardinal Rex? Major Nzeogwu has fine eyes, don’t you agree? — were like fetching water from a stream with a raffia basket. But, with persistence, Perpetua prevailed. By the time they moved upstairs to clean the master bedroom, Tene, in fulfillment of a long-held desire to be on convivial terms with a mistress she secretly admired, had capitulated to Perpetua’s overtures.

They chatted as they worked. Then Perpetua — who was carrying a stack of newspapers across the room — said in a low, confidential voice: “Do you know my friend Judith? She was here on Monday, the one wearing those ugly camelhair shoes. Anyway,

Judith is seeing a married man.”

“Chei! Poor woman!”

Perpetua stopped abruptly. The newspaper pile swayed in her arms, then crashed to the ground. She turned to face Tene. “What do you mean, poor woman? Judith?”

“No o! The man wife.”

“I see.” Pe rpetua dipped her head, stared at the floor, and then knelt to gather the newspapers. By the time she rose with the load she had recovered the thread of her thoughts. “Anyway, I’ve warned Judith, one day this thing will blow up in her face.”

“Ah auntie, to tell you truth, all this township women like that kind of thing o. E get this one woman I sabe, she dey do am with her sistah husband. Her own blood sistah!”

“Imagine.”

They were making the bed when Perpetua, having laid the groundwork, began her investigation in earnest. “Tene,” she said, as she stooped to take hold of one end of the sheet, “I want to tell you — take that side, oya, shake! — a secret.” The bed sheet billowed between them. They spread it out and tucked in the edges. “You know I see you as a friend,” Perpetua continued, “so this, what I’m about to tell you, is just between me and you. Understand?”

“Yes, auntie.”

The bed was finished. Perpetua straightened up. Then leaning forward, her gaze fixed on Tene’s face, she said, “My husband has never —” her voice caught with emotion, she cleared her throat, “—seen my nakedness.”

“ No!” Tene exclaimed. “Auntie!”

“Yes,” Perpetua said, staring at the housemaid with an intensity that frightened the girl, “we have never shared a bed!”

Tene slapped her palms together, puckered her lips, and wondered why her mistress gazed at her with that odd expression of disappointment and relief.

Perpetua was confused. What she sought in the housemaid’s face was not what she saw there. She was looking for signs of contrived emotion, but she found none; she had hoped to find glee, but she saw only pity. Still, she reasoned, her failure to find what she wanted only confirmed that her opponent was wilier than she had expected.

Over the following days, all of Perpetua’s efforts to disprove the housemaid’s innocence (one of which was creeping to the door of her husband’s bedroom in the dead of night and crouching there until sleep forced her to stagger back to bed) worked to the opposite effect. By the time she gave up the motive for which she sought out the housemaid’s company at all times of day and night, she and Tene had become friends.

It was Tenemenam who brought an end to the impasse between husband and wife. With the skill of a woman who had bred goats and chickens all her life, and armed with the knowledge that jealousy is one of the foundation stones of love, Tene took on the task of bringing the couple together. She used her intimacy with Perpetua to arouse Godspeed’s curiosity; she led her into displaying signs of affection in his presence — a quick touching of hands, an exchange of smiles, a whispered conference in an open doorway, all of which Perpetua innocently partook in. Curiosity, with time, turned to suspicion, and the bridge between suspicion and jealousy, in matters of the heart, is the imagination, so Godspeed found himself in the ignominious position of jealous husband.

Godspeed got what he sought from marriage: the respectability that comes with renouncing bachelorhood; a connection with a reputable family; a wife who was as pretty as any of those pampered creatures that at the height of his poverty he had in equal measure been intimidated by and attracted to. “But something. . something’s missing.” He admitted this to himself on the first night of his honeymoon, as he prepared to go in to a woman who wasn’t a stranger only because she had said “I do.” That “something” he refused to give the name love. Not love, that indefinable word, that plaything on the lips of adolescents and roués alike. Godspeed was a self-made man — he knew what was what. It was not love that had picked him from the gutter, no.