Stars of the Long Night. Tanure Ojaide

from friends and family members followed. These people came indirectly to test Okotete's readiness to listen. A few did not tell their minds because they surmised that the man was not ready to listen to them insult his wife, and they knew that by insulting his wife they were also insulting him.

      Others felt their advice was sought and so gave it. Had he asked his wife to see the famous healer in Agbarho? That healer knew so much about what delayed women from conceiving. Why had he not asked Oyeghe to join the Igbe sect? Many women who found it difficult to conceive joined that sect and within a year began to parade their big round bellies before the doubting public. Other advisers mentioned herbalists or diviners who cracked the riddle of some women's seeming barrenness. Once the riddle was cracked, such women, even at an advanced age, within a year or two came for thanksgiving with their bouncing babies. There was no problem that seemed so intractable for the healers, others suggested.

      Nobody asked Okotete to do anything. It was always, “Ask your wife.” Agbon was a land in which women were blamed for whatever went wrong in the family. If the man did not progress in his life, his wife would be accused of witchcraft and of causing the man's wretchedness even if he were lazy. If a couple failed to have children, the wife was blamed for it. Nobody cared to blame the man even when Agbon folks knew that many men had wax sperm that could not impregnate women however often they made love with their wives.

      Healers, masseurs, and diviners were abundant and were known to have successfully helped some women seeking conception. Each boasted of his special talent at cracking difficult cases and talked as if he could work miracles. Oyeghe overheard folks talking about these healers, and some talked as if deliberately at her to hear. Some older women proffered their advice on what a young woman should do or where to seek assistance on matters of getting pregnant.

      And so Oyeghe went to a masseur highly recommended to her. When she arrived, there was a line of women waiting to be attended to. She discovered that her problem was not unique; there were many women like her who came to seek help to conceive.

      Her turn came and she went into the consultation room. The masseur was a bare-chested hairy man who struck her immediately as someone too young for that serious profession of helping married women to conceive. Within minutes, her doubts were confirmed. In the process of examining her body to know that every part of her as a woman was complete or right, he began fondling her breasts beyond the professional limits that she expected a healer to go. Utekpe would have got more intimate with her if she had not shown disapproval at his methods of checking her problems. She had heard stories of masseurs telling their gullible patients that they had to insert some medicines into their womb. They had used unorthodox methods to do this, but the women did not protest. These masseurs had ended up themselves impregnating the women. Such women, happy to be conceived, had kept quiet and had carried some other men's children for their husbands who had been anxious to have children anyway.