I had been trying to sleep for an hour or so when I heard a scratching at my front door. It wasn't quite a knock, but it definitely wasn't a pussycat either. So I opened the door. Young Bona was standing there, still in the green overalls he wore at the Fridge Repair Shop where he was serving the final year of his apprenticeship. I looked back at my clock - it was almost midnight. The street behind him, which led towards the Village Square, was as empty as a cemetery. I hope no problem, I said to him.

No problem, Sir, he told me.

He was the only person who called me 'Sir' in Ikerre village. It made me uncomfortable. And it was nearly midnight, anyway. He could say 'no problem' a hundred times but, nonsense and tenpence! I wasn't a child. People don't go visiting at midnight unless a crisis was keeping them awake. My own problems had already extinguished my sleep; adding another man's woes to the elephant on my head-pan was an expressway to the Benin Asylum.

Yet, this was Bona. He was an age-mate of my first son, Abel; but where Abel had already done three years in prison, Bona had never put a foot wrong in his life. He lived with his young wife of twelve months in a one room apartment behind the post office. He did have a personality flaw though: a shyness so crippling that it approached disability. There he was now, wringing his hands at my doorway. And I realized that when a person like Bona scraped together the gumption to knock on my door, it was wickedness to turn him away. Reluctantly, I let him in.

He sat down opposite me. I folded my arms, looked at his mouth and waited. This was not the time for silly small-talk. Slowly, he cracked the knuckles of his eight fingers, one after the other. He paused. I watched his mouth patiently. He cracked the knuckles of his thumbs. I put my feet in my slippers, looked up at his mouth and waited.

I'm sorry I'm coming late like this, Sir, he said eventually. Then he started on his fingers again.

I saw that this thing wasn't going to work. I sighed: Bona, it is twelve midnight, Ikerre people will think I'm starting a wizards' coven in my house. What's the problem?

It's about my wife, Iqua.

I nodded quietly; inwardly, I began to boil. I gripped my thighs but my legs were shaking furiously all the same. Yet, it wasn’t anger winding me up; it was shame. Didn’t he have ears, this idiot gaping earnestly at me? Couldn’t he hear the silence in my house? Ma’Abel’s snores were notorious in the whole of Ikerre-Oti, did he think she had been suddenly healed? Was he so stupid that even momentous items of gossip - like Ma’Abel’s desertion - escaped him completely? Why did he come to me for matrimonial advice, whose wife was at that very moment sleeping in a vulcaniser’s bed?

I‘m in no mood to settle quarrels. I warned.

We’re not quarrelling, Sir. It’s just that she’s leaving with the agent at six o’clock tomorrow morning...

What agent is that? Where’s she going?

She’s going to Rome with the Recruitment Agent from Benin.

A bucket of cold water poured over my shame and my legs stopped shaking. I see. I said. I looked at my slippers. I slipped my feet from them. I arranged them carefully, side by side. The right slipper was slightly longer than the left. Just like Iqua; she was slightly taller than Bona. She was slightly shyer as well, which was incredible, coming to think of it... Such a slight whisper of a woman... I looked up - but my eyes slipped over his shining, earnest face and hit the hole in the corner of the ceiling. I had punched it many years ago to let the TV aerial wire through. Now it was a rats’ highway; their dirty feet had marked a distinct brown lane on the yellow paint between the window sill and the ceiling. I forced my eyes down to Bona’s face. He was looking at me with that attention you only find on faces waiting for an oracle to speak. For God’s sake, what does this idiot want from me?

What do you want from me? I asked him.

Your advice, Sir, he said; his voice was very, very solemn. You know that of all the people in this village, it is your advice I respect most. Should I let her go, or not?

I put my feet inside my slippers once again. I rose; I found a dry kolanut lobe which I shared with my nocturnal guest. I scratched my head as we chewed the bitter fruit. I scraped at the farmer’s grime under my fingernails. I sighed many times as the minutes passed. Where could I start to tell such an innocent about the facts of life? The farthest I had ever travelled from Ikerre-Oti was Kano, but in my better years I never missed an issue of the Daily Times; and I tried not to let the same conman take me twice.

I knew a few people who had been hired by the Recruitment Agent. He stopped at Ikerre-Oti once or twice a year. He stayed at the Goodnight Inn on Katai Road and trawled the streets for talent: people strong and hard-working enough to be trained as ‘housekeepers’ and ‘chambermaids’ for foreign hotels. He interviewed both men and women of all ages - although the successful ones were invariably young, attractive, and female. In the past he had found very few recruits in Ikerre-Oti. But Bose had gone along with him the year before. For forty years, Bose’s mother had fried akara on a brazier at the junction of Nkisi Street and Katai Road. Yet, within two months of Bose leaving Ikerre-Oti, her mother had retired from the fast-food business. All she did these days was collect weekly Western Union messages from her daughter in Italy.

I had known that the Recruitment Agent would get a warmer reception this year, ever since I saw Bose’s storey building growing near the stream. It was nearing completion after only nine months. What I had never suspected was that Iqua of all people would be in the running.

I thought she was doing well at the seamstress’. I murmured.

The Recruitment Agent said she could be earning a hundred and fifty times more, Uncle Jumai, one hundred and fifty times more. They will do the visa, they will do the plane ticket, they will do everything: Iqua can be sending back Western Union within three weeks!

I scraped at my finger nails. I asked him: Did he tell you the kind of job she will be doing?

Yes sir, and we really don’t mind it. We’re not proud people, Uncle Jumai, it is better we swallow our pride and do the menial things that people are looking down on, and get a better tomorrow. Look at the house that Bose is building! Within nine months...

Leave the house that Bose is building! Let us talk about the job that Bose is doing!

Bona shrugged: Just eight hours a day - and they pay overtime. - and they have housing allowance! Her whole salary...

Let’s leave her salary for now! Let’s talk about the job! You know that people will talk, you know that people will laugh...

Bona shrugged again. After a long time he managed to say, They’ve been laughing at me all my life anyway. Let them laugh a little longer, Uncle Jumai, let them talk. After all, nobody is laughing at Bose anymore.

I took a deep breath. Don’t you know that... forget all this nonsense about ‘chambermaids’ and ‘housekeepers’... your Iqua won’t be mopping hotel floors. She will be working on the beds... and she won’t be wearing hotel uniforms... in fact, she won’t be wearing anything at all!

In the silence, what sounded like a grandfather rat strolled across the length of my ceiling. When it had made itself comfortable in the other side, Bona shifted in his chair. He seemed to be embarrassed on my account. That’s the funny thing about shy people. They are embarrassed for themselves, and when rats disgrace you, they will also be embarrassed for you as well... Then he said: We’re not children, Uncle Jumai, everybody knows that Bose can’t build a house in one year from a housegirl‘s salary.

That was when I realised that his embarrassment had nothing to do with the rats in my ceiling. I tried to speak, but he cracked the knuckles of four fingers at once and shrugged bravely: After all, it doesn’t have a meter.

There was a small click as my clock struck 1 am. I saw that this nonsense had to end immediately. I pushed my feet into my slippers, What advice did you want from me? I asked him.

Do you think she will forget me? My friends at the workshop are saying that she will. They are saying that women get there and forget their husbands immediately. That they marry Europeans and...

My legs began to shake again. Was I now the Ikerre-Oti expert on the Desertion of Wives? Were Ikerre people using Bona as bait to twit me? I stood up furiously, the angry words jumping to my mouth... then I saw his face... and I realised that this stupidity came from deep, deep within his very soul. My anger tripped over into a very deep pity. You don’t need to worry about that. I told him gently. Iqua will never forget you.

He stood up as well, smiling with relief, You really think so? he asked.

I nodded as I held my front door open for him. The shy idiot stepped outside and paused on my threshold. He took a deep breath and said, proving that while shyness was a curable condition, there was no hope for idiocy: This your compound is very large Uncle Jumai, will you want to sell part of it?

If I punched him at that point, Ikerre people will ask what the quiet Bona could ever have said to warrant such a treatment at 1 o’clock in the morning. So I held myself and said quietly; Try the Igwe’s palace, I think he mentioned to me that he will sell at the right price. Then I shut the door on his face and went to bed. An hour later I was still staring sleeplessly into the darkness. I was the disoriented chorister who had sneezed in the pew and found himself singing from a different page of the hymnal, out of sync with the rest of the choir. How had I become the innocent, relative to Bona of all people?

In the ceiling, a multitude of tiny feet scurried to and fro. The grandfather rat had roused his family.

© 2004 Chuma Nwokolo, Jr.