THE TORN VEIL 2

Page 2

I say you can keep your twenty-five pounds, fifty pounds or hundred pounds. I will have nothing to do with it. I will not be paid off.'

What! What! Come! Come! Don't do anything rash.'

If you dare touch me I shall strike your face.'

Strike your master, your husband? Are you mad ?'

I shall leave this house.'

If you dare to disgrace me by leaving the house before I am ready for you to go, there will be trouble. I do not intend to put up with a willful woman. What is my sin after all ? I only want to become a decent and respectable member of society. If you leave this house without my knowledge and permission, I shall claim every penny I have spent on you since I married and lived with you these ten year; and not only that but I shall claim all the presents I have given to your parents and other relatives. You know our Native Customary Law.'

Yes I know your Native Customary Law is a grave to bury woman alive, whilst you men dance and beat tom-tom on top of the mound of earth.'

You are absolutely impossible,' and Kwame strutted out of the room looking very much like an offended turkey-cock.

Akosua rushed to her bedroom, locked her door, flung herself face downwards on the bed and wept as if her heart would break.

I must go, I must go,' she muttered.  Akosua's mother was dead but her father, Kofi Asare, was alive. He was a well-to-do cocoa farmer and had made a good match and married a 'scholar'.

I wonder what he will say,' thought the poor girl.

Crying won't help, I must do something. She feverishly packed her belongings and those of her children. In a short time the three tin boxes, two baskets and two pans were neatly done up.

The children will soon come from school and when he leaves for Kumasi tomorrow we will go away.'

Kwame was still in a mood of righteous indignation when he took the train for Kumasi the next day. He thought: I have  brought Akosua to her senses; what is the world coming to when a cloth woman begins to get indignant because a Christian gentleman and scholar wants to marry a frock lady in church ?'

Kwame Asante, like many of our men, had floundered in his sense of values; the  western impact on his mentality had sent it all askew. He would have been very much surprised if an outspoken friend had told him that he was neither a Christian nor a gentleman, and that Akosua had far finer instincts and culture than he; but fortunately for him his friends could not see farther than himself - so he was happy in his good opinion of himself.

His nephew Quao, who met him at the railway station three days later, on his return to Accra, gave him the news that his wife had gone away with the children.

Kwane felt a fool and he intensely disliked the feeling. He sent two telegrams to his father-in-law asking that Akosua should be sent back immediately. Not the slightest notice was taken of him; then he sent two middle-aged women to go for her, but they returned without her.

His friends consoled him, over drinks and local cigars.

Don't you worry, man, a woman, a cloth woman, they are so many; and even if she were a frock lady- what is a woman?' squawked Wilson-Addo, a notorious woman-chaser,' who spent all his savings paying out 'pacification' money.

I can't understand Akosua's behavior at all; I was only teasing her that I might marry a lady one of these days, but nothing serious at all,' lied Kwame. It is amazing what lies husbands tell at the expense of their wives.

Of course , if she doesn't return I shall have to marry, for I certainly cannot live without a woman in the house.

TO BE CONTINUE ......

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