Munachi had a large heart and humane soul that struck me as amazing in a world where there were men sniffing the villages and the streets, like famished dogs, hungering for girls to hang out with, to sleep with and to later dump. No, Munachi was different. And it was not his noble character alone that drove me so helplessly to him. He had broad shoulders and thick, muscly arms that looked like boughs of obeche; and he looked down divinely on me through eyes that bulged mannishly but harmlessly to say ‘I love you’ or to kiss me on the forehead, his most assuring token of love. He was a very handsome man to me. Bearded but clean-shaven. With thick eyebrows. Craggy Adam’s apple. Thick, hard breasts. I always felt I was enjoying a lovely sculpture when I held him close to my body. Munachi.

 

            We loved each other in silence. In words. In glances. In letters. In dance. I was a good dancer – I made perfect use of my lissom waist. And Munachi would have fallen for that when I danced healthily in church during thanksgiving.

 

            As a little girl in the Boys and Girls Brigade, I had noticed Munachi’s charm. Then he was the only Captain in the whole of Obazu. We called him Captain! He was the youthful pride of Holy Trinity Church. And when he was turned out in his dark-blue Boys Brigade cap, white shirt and dark blue trousers, gesturing, walking, staring at people in a very stately manner, I thought he was a true son of Alexander Smith.

 

            Even then I had been attracted to him.

 

But he went on to become the organist of Holy Trinity Church, Obazu. And he played the organ very well.

 

            When he was wooing me and I was proving too slippery to catch, it was his music that had me spread-eagled. Not even his handsomeness. Munachi was very funny. He would carry Holy Trinity’s keyboard to my father’s house and begin playing church hymns. He knew my father liked hymns: so Papa would not give him any opposition. My mother had a suspicious eye.

 

            ‘Munachi, tell me the truth’, she asked him formidably one day. ‘What is all this organ playing in our house for?’

 

            ‘Nothing,’ Munachi chuckled. (I was listening amusedly from my room.) ‘Nothing, Ma. Just playing church hymns for Uncle Moses. Uncle Moses likes hymns.’

 

            ‘For Uncle Moses, eh?’ Mama said, grinning in mock amusement.

 

            ‘Yes, for Uncle Moses.’

 

            ‘Well!’ she said indignantly, ‘Uncle Moses has gone for Parochial Church Committee meeting. He is not in to enjoy your organ music.’

 

            ‘Others can enjoy it, Ma – ’

 

            ‘Others like who?’

 

            Munachi was left tongue-tied, chuckling defeatedly, wringing embarrassed fingers.

 

            ‘Others like who?’ Mama’s voice rose higher.

 

            I had to interfere.

 

            Munachi’s music was sweet and intoxicating like wine tapped from the oil-palm tree.

 

            ‘Mama leave him alone,’ I said. ‘If he has come to play music for us, then there is nothing bad about it. There’s nothing bad about playing church songs in somebody’s house…’

 

            Right there, Munachi and I connected superbly with his rich smile streaming like the Okitamkwu stream in wet season, rushing through Ubakuru village.

 

            He was handsome. He was a musician. And I was already in love with him.

 

            My mother did not stand in our way. She and I had our private discussions in which she said how much she wished a good husband for me. I had finished secondary school. Done a diploma at Alvan Ikoku college of Education and was already a teacher at one secondary school in Obazu. What else would a girl my age be waiting for?

 

            ‘I do not wish to stand in your way, Ezinne’, Mama said to me. ‘I want a husband for you. A proper husband. Proper in word and deed. Someone who can take care of you, love you, protect you. Someone who will not beat you up. Someone who will not bring shame on you.’

 

            I was sure Munachi was a man with all those qualities. And even more.

 

            ‘No, he hasn’t what you think he has,’ Mama said.

 

            ‘Why?’ I asked.

 

            ‘That boy has no proper job.’

 

            ‘But, Mama, it is not right to look down on a man’s little beginnings. He is doing a diploma programme at the college now. Tomorrow may be bright.’

 

            ‘That boy you want to marry smokes like a devil. It is not right. He may be a good musician, but one who has a smoker husband may be widowed young.’

 

            ‘Mama, I will make him stop smoking,’ I said. ‘I have already spoken to him about his habit. And he promises to change gradually.’

 

            ‘Nobody changes a man who smokes.’

 

            Ah, Mama was wrong this time! I had a surfeit of examples to prove to her how wrong she was. I had names to reel off – names of women whose husbands were chain smokers or drunkards but who changed the habits of their men into sweet testimonies. With the power of love.

 

            ‘Mama, have you forgotten Mama Chibuzo, Mama Nkiru, Mrs Irene who told his white chainsmoker suitor to give up smoking or she would not marry him? What of Mama Bomboy? Her husband no longer smokes. I have the power of love, Mama.’ I said. ‘And that man will die if he does not marry me.’

 

            Munachi and I were mad with love for each other. Munachi took me to bars. We ate ugba, fried snails or Congo meat, beef pepper soup – of a kind we called nkwobi. We had beers. He smoked, as usual.

 

            ‘I’m cutting down on my cigarettes, for your sake’, he would say, letting out his beefy laugh sweet like fresh palm wine.

 

            And I would argue blithely with him:

            ‘Not for my sake; it is for your sake.’

 

            ‘Don’t you understand love? I am you and you are me. There is no difference. One plus one is one says the priest!’

 

            We would argue until we agreed.

 

            ‘Yes, it is for both our sakes.’

 

            We did stupid things. Like sleeping in the football field. Under myriads of lamps of stars.

 

            There we looked at the night sky in admiration. We counted the stars. Munachi said they were our sons and daughters.

 

            ‘How many sons will you have for me?’ he asked me.

 

            ‘How many do you want me to? ‘I said, nosing into his gleaming eyes on all fours like a gazelle.

 

            ‘Let’s count the stars,’ he said.

 

            ‘One, two, three, four… Ten, eleven…twenty…twenty-five… Do you still want more?’

 

            ‘Count, count, count,’ he said.

 

            Munachi’s hand went slithering into my gown like a reptile… and I was enjoying it, although fearfully… and in a brief while I wondered what my mother would think of my rude outings… and I would think also of night thieves, night creatures, a stray torchlight that may find us or the profane mpanaka that billowed out black, rude fumes over its yellow-sad fumes; I would think of the pneumonia-laden cold and the soughing, gossipy harmattan winds that threw dust into our eyes…

 

            Shooting stars fireworked our nights.

 

            Munachi liked such nightly beauties, liked the harmattan; he was full of romantic tales, of honeymoons in Africa that could surpass those in America; he said he would love us to get married in a harmattan, that romance was sweetest when near Christmas. I didn’t like the cold and the chapping of lips and heels that attacked me and my mother in the season. We had very vulnerable lips and soles. We avoided talking with our mouths wide open so that our lips would not break. So I blithely whined to Munachi: ‘No, Sweetheart, we won’t get married during the harmattan so that I won’t come out in the photographs, my lips chapped, straining my smiles in pain. No, we can get married during Easter.’

 

            But Munachi kissed my chapped, reddened lips. He sucked them as if there was ice cream in them. ‘All for both our sakes.’

 

            He smoked like hell in those nights; I wondered if he was doing any cutting down at all.

 

            ‘You are smoking too much,’ I would say.

 

            ‘I’m not smoking too much,’ he would say. ‘I’m cutting down. It’s your mind. I’m cutting down for both our sakes.’

 

            I began to love to hear him say ‘for both our sakes’. That gave me a clean sense of partnership. I was not alone after all. The perfume from Munachi’s cigarettes scented the darkness, charmed my nightly fears. His muscly body – his artwork body – embraced me, warmed me. Sweet things.