Alternately, the wrong move would cause Okosene to lose not only the warri game, but also his left hand, his left foot, his left eye and the left-side component of his fertility as well. That the Oba played for the highest stakes possible was more than mere rumor.
Okosene did not fail to note the slight scowl of impatience furrowing the regal brow of the Oba. But he paid no heed to the warning. Warri was a game upon which no time limitations were set. Thus, the Oba, despite his nearly absolute suzerainty, possessed no legitimate power to force Okosene to hurry his move.
Suddenly, as if etched by a bolt of lightning across his consciousness, a propitious gambit revealed itself to Okosene’s questing mind. His hand swooped down swiftly, dark fingers curling in a caress of triumph along the edges of the counter ...
Then several events occurred simultaneously, disastrously – and loudly.
A voice that bore a singular resemblance to the mating call of a she-rhinoceros blared: “Okosene Alakun! Wasting time again!”
A foot hard as the horn of a bull crashed resoundingly against the crude clay warri-board in front of Okosene, sending it sailing in several pieces through the air. The fragments of the board, along with the chips of dried goat-dung that served as counters, bounced crazily long the dusty street of Nyamem, situated on the outskirts of the city of Zamfaru – far, far away from the coral towers of Benan.
Ekpo Essien, the genial beggar and drunkard whom Okosene’s imagination had transformed into the Oba of Benan, scrambled from his sitting posture and fled on unsteady legs.
Very slowly, Okosene Alakun raised his eyes to gaze with passive resignation at the damnably familiar features of Ajema, his first – and thus far only – wife.
Like a rotund monolith, Ajema loomed over her squatting spouse. Hands big as the backside of a pig rested akimbo on hips that would have shamed an elephant. Her cheap zama-cloth wrapper had been strained beyond its limit in several places, revealing bloated expanses of night-black flesh. Like an outsized melon, her head seemed to sprout neckless from her obese shoulders. And the skin on her face was stretched so tightly that the three rows of scars that marked her as a resident of the Zamfaru city-state were nearly undetectable. Small eyes glared ominously beneath the bright gele-cloth that covered her head.
Again, Ajema’s foot lashed out, with a slowness to be expected in someone of her bulk. Okosene evaded the blow with an ease that attested to years of practice. Still squatting, he contrived through an unobtrusive shuffle to creep out of Ajema’s range without needing to stand.
“So,” Ajema sneered. “Playing games again when you’re supposed to be finding me food, you worthless piece of nothing. You’re as useless as a gourd with a hole in it! Where is the corn for my maiwa? Where are the locust-beans for my daddawa-cakes? When was the last time I enjoyed dinya-fruit? Aieee! I starve to death, and my brainless fool of a husband sits playing warri with an even bigger fool of a drunkard!”
“Well, if you hadn’t kicked the board, I would have won enough cowries from Ekpo to buy a calabash of fura ...”
Ajema spat on the ground.
“Fura!” she said scornfully. “Gruel for infants and toothless old hags! Listen well, Okosene Alakun. If you don’t bring me something decent to eat before sundown, I’m going to take you to court for failure to provide for your wife!”
Okosene winced. The act was painful, for it pulled against the Zamfaru face-marks on his skin. Well did he know the penalty for the charge Ajema threatened to press. Indeed, on five previous occasions during the tortuous course of their marriage, he had been pronounced guilty of the offense. And he’d suffered the brutal floggings the law prescribed as punishment.
He stood up.
“I will go out to the bush,” he said. “Perhaps there are guinea-fowl in my snares.”
Ajema’s braying laughter echoed amid the thatched rooftops of Nyamem.
“Haaaahaaaahaaa!” You have never captured even one guinea-fowl in your wretched snares! You’re so lazy, the leopards always get there first. You just want to drink and play games with that good-for-nothing Ekpo Essien, instead of working to put food in my mouth. By Ogolukun of the River, I’m going to ...”
“I have a feeling the snares will hold something more than bones this time,” Okosene temporized. “At any rate, if there are no guinea-fowl to be had, I still have three cowries. That should be enough to buy some alewe-sweets for you to suck on.”
Instantly mollified, Ajema smiled.
“Good,” she said. “Very good. I’ll be waiting at our house. But remember ... be home with some food before sundown – or else.”
“Uh huh,” Okosene muttered absently.
He turned and trotted along the road out of Nyamem, the skin on his back twitching at the memory of old beatings, and his ears tingling at half-heard snatches of conversation. Most of it was about himself and his outsized spouse ... a topic of great entertainment in a town otherwise devoid of diversion.
OKOSENE TRUDGED HALF-heartedly through the bush outside Nyamem. Years ago, he might have muttered curses at the memory of the day he had paid the bride-price Ajema’s father had demanded: one chicken. But with the weight of the law on his wife’s side, Okosene had resigned himself to what had become his principal function in life: feeding Ajema.
Many were the times Okosene wished he could be as free as the guinea-fowl that always seemed to elude his snares. Pushing his way through thick, low-hanging foliage bedizened with iridescent blooms, the dan-Zamfara quickly found that his first two snares were, as usual, empty. Briefly, he considered forgetting about the third, which was located a fair distance farther in
