She stared at him, her body shaking with fear and anger. “What is it you would make of me, Doro? Your dog? I cared for you. It has been lifetimes since I cared as much for a man.”
He said nothing.
She stepped nearer to the bed, looked down into his expressionless face, pleading herself now. She did not think it was possible to move him by pleading once he had made up his mind, but so much was at stake. She had to try.
“I came here to be a wife to you,” she said. “But there were always others to cook for you, others to serve you in nearly all the ways of a wife. And if there had not been others, I know so little of this place that I would have performed my duties poorly. You knew it would be this way for me, but still you wanted meand I wanted you enough to begin again like a child, completely ignorant.” She sighed and looked around the room, feeling as though she were hunting for the words that would reach him. There was only the alien furniture: the desk, the bed, the great wooden cabinet beside the doorakas, it was called, a Dutch thing for storing clothing. There were two chairs and several matsrugsof heavy, colorful cloth. It was all as alien as Doro himself. It gave her a feeling of hopelessnessas though she had come to this strange place only to die. She stared into the fire in the fireplacethe only familiar thing in the roomand spoke softly:
“Husband, it may be a good thing that you’re going away. A year is not so long, or two years. Not to us. I have been alone before for many times that long. When you come back, I will know how to be a wife to you here. I will give you strong sons.” She turned her eyes back to him, saw that he was watching her. “Do not cast me aside before I show you what a good wife I can be.”
He sat up, put his feet on the floor. “You don’t understand,” he said softly. He pulled her down to sit beside him on the bed. “Haven’t I told you what I’m building? Over the years, I’ve taken people with so little power they were almost ordinary, and bred them together again and again until in their descendants, small abilities grew large, and a man like Isaac could be born.”
“And a man like Lale.”
“Lale wasn’t as bad as he seemed. He handled what ability he had very well. And I’ve created others of his kind who had more ability and a better temperament.”
“Did you create him, then? From what? Mounds of clay?”
“Anyanwu!”
“Isaac tells me the whites believe their god made the first people of clay. You talk as though you think you were that god!”
He drew a deep breath, looked at her sadly. “What I am or think I am need not concern you at all. I’ve told you what you must dono, be quiet. Hear me.”
She closed her mouth, swallowed a new protest.
“I said you didn’t understand,” he continued. “Now I think you’re deliberately misunderstanding. Do you truly believe I mean to cast you aside because you’ve been a poor wife?”
She looked away. No, of course she did not believe that. She had only hoped to reach him, make him stop his impossible demands. No, he was not casting her aside for any reason at all. He was merely breeding her as one bred cattle and goats. He had said it: “I want children of your body and his.” What she wanted meant nothing. Did one ask a cow or a nanny goat whether it wished to be bred?
“I am giving you the very best of my sons,” he told her. “I expect you to be a good wife to him. I would never send you to him if I thought you couldn’t.”
She shook her head slowly. “It is you who have not understood me.” She gazed at himat his very ordinary eyes, at his long, handsome face. Until now, she had managed to avoid a confrontation like this by giving in a little, obeying. Now she could not obey.
“You are my husband,” she said quietly, “or I have no husband. If I need another man, I will find one. My father and all my other husbands are long dead. You gave no gifts for me. You can send me away, but you cannot tell me where I must go.”
“Of course I can.” His quiet calm matched her own, but in him it was clearly resignation. “You know you must obey, Anyanwu. Must I take your body and get the children I want from it myself?”
“You cannot.” Within herself, she altered her reproductive organs further, made herself literally no longer a woman, but not quite a manjust to be certain. “You may be able to push my spirit from my body,” she said. “I think you can, though I have never felt your power. But my body will give you no satisfaction. It would take too long for you to learn to repair all the things I have done to itif you can learn. It will not conceive a child now. It will not live much longer itself without me to keep watch on it.”
She could not have missed the anger in his voice when he spoke again. “You know I will collect your children if I cannot have you.”
She turned her back on him, not wanting him to see her fear and pain, not wanting her own eyes to see him. He was a loathsome thing.
He came to stand behind her, put his hands on her shoulders. She struck them away violently. “Kill me!” she hissed. “Kill me now, but never touch me that way again!”
“And your children?” he said unmoved.
“No child of mine would commit the abominations you want,” she whispered.
“Now who’s lying?” he said. “You know your children don’t have your strength. I’ll get what I want from them, and their children will be as much mine as the people here.”
She said nothing. He was right, of course. Even her own strength was mere bravado, a façade covering utter terror. It was only her anger that kept her neck straight. And what good was anger or defiance? He would consume her very spirit; there would be no next life for her. Then he would use and pervert her children. She felt near to weeping.
“You’ll get over your anger,” he said. “Life will be rich and good for you here. You’ll be surprised to see how easily you blend with these people.”
“I will not marry your son, Doro! No matter what threats you make, no matter what promises, I will not marry your son!”
He sighed, tied his cloth around him, and started for the door. “Stay here,” he told her. “Put something on and wait.”
“For what!” she demanded bitterly.
“For Isaac,” he answered.
And when she turned to face him, mouth open to curse both him and his son, he stepped close to her and struck her across the face with all his strength.
There was an instant before the blow landed when she could have caught his arm and broken the bones within it like dry sticks. There was an instant before the blow landed when she could have torn out his throat.
But she absorbed the blow, moved with it, made no sound. It had been a long time since she had wanted so powerfully to kill a man.
“I see you know how to be quiet,” he said. “I see you’re not as willing to die as you thought. Good. My son asked for a chance to talk to you if you refused to obey. Wait here.”
“What can he say to me that you have not said?” she demanded harshly.
Doro paused at the door to give her a look of contempt. His blow had had less power to hurt her than that look.
When the door closed behind him, she went to the bed and sat down to stare, unseeing, into the fire. By the time Isaac knocked on the door, her face was wet with tears she did not remember shedding.
She made him wait until she had wrapped a cloth around herself and dried her face. Then with leaden, hopeless weariness, she opened the door and let the boy in.
He looked as depleted as she felt. The yellow hair hung limp into his eyes and the eyes themselves were red. His sun-browned skin looked as pale as Anyanwu had ever seen it. He seemed not only tired, but sick.
He stood gazing at her, saying nothing, making her want to go to him as though to Okoye, and try to give him comfort. Instead, she sat down in one of the room’s chairs so that he could not sit close to her.