Jagua Nana by Cyprian Ekwensi

Author:Cyprian Ekwensi
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780241335017
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2018-02-12T16:00:00+00:00

15

By now Bagana had become a chain of rusty-red pan roofs on a horizon dominated by a church steeple and set deep beyond the flat waters of the creek. Jagua’s canoe swung into one of the wide arms of the Niger Delta, heading towards Port Harcourt. It was her way home to Ogabu and Lagos. It was goodbye to Bagana, goodbye to Chief Ofubara, Uncle Namme, Mama Nancy, Nancy Oll, Krinameh, the war drummers. The swarthy face of Chief Ofubara had become even darker as he told her: ‘Remember your promise, Jagua. I already paid the bride-price.’ His voice had been dead earnest.

Jagua held her breast as if that would ease the pain. Now that the canoe was taking her away from Bagana and Krinameh, she began to think of the fishing people with a touch of nostalgia. She would come back to Krinameh, to the spot where the youths had dived in and captured the naked Nancy Oll. This one desire – to come back – kept expressing itself. She could not suppress the montage of jutting rocks, and salt-creeks, and Chief Ofubara’s moustachios and O.H.M.S. decanters and the intertwined legs on the bed, the finger-tips on unshaven jaws and her whispers of ‘I goin’ to teach you about Lagos woman, to make you loss your min’ …’ Now it was she, strangely enough, who was on the verge of losing her head over the Chief.

Suddenly she was seeing Chief Ofubara as the outcast of Krinameh, as a man who was infatuated with her, as a man of her own age and attitudes. She could see that he had never really experienced the sensation of African woman as equal. Jagua treated him as she would treat a brother or a precocious lover in modern Lagos. Her glance stripped him of his title, and he became a man lusting after her; her temper made him her slave, willing to obey her maddest whims merely to restore the smile on her lips.

When the canoe turned the creeks she stood up, nearly upsetting it. The other passengers protested, but Jagua was waving at a Bagana vanishing in the rising heat. ‘Goodbye, Chief! … Expect me! … I mus’ surely come an’ see you again!’

In Ogabu she kept the mammy wagon waiting in the forest lane and ran to her father’s house. The barking of the old watchman’s dog welcomed her. He came out of the hut and brought the dog to heel.

‘Daughter. You back? You stop there long time.’ The sun caught the angles of his shoulders and elbows, the criss-cross wrinkles on his bare skin. His eyes were dancing with delight.

‘Only three week I stay. Where’s Papa an’ Mama?’

‘You’re to be feared!’ He clicked his hands at her, in a gesture of reproach. ‘You won’t even bring down your load, you begin’ ask about Papa an’ Mama! Your Papa still on tour.’

‘I go an’ see dem for Onitsha!’

She ran quickly back to the lorry and jumped in beside the driver. The old man called after her.

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