Going from the Lagos mainland to Iboyi on a Saturday night was the going from a bazaar to funeral.

And
the vast Lagos cemetery which separated the places helped to deepen this feeling. For all its luxurious
bungalows and flats and its very extensive greenery. Iboyi was like a graveyard. It had no corporate
life--- at any rate for those Africans who live there. They did not always lived there, of course. It was
once a European posts ‘ had been given houses in Iboyi. Obi Okonkwo, for example lived there, and as
drove from Lagos to his flat he was struck again by these two cities in one. It always reminded him of
twin kernels separated by a thin wall in a palm-nut shell. Sometimes one kernels was shiny-black and
alive, the other powdery-white and dead.

‘What is making you so moody?’ He look sideways of Clara who was ostentatiously sitting as far away
from him as she could , pressed against the left door. She did not answer. ‘Tell me, darling,’ he said,
holding her hand in one of his while he drove with the other. ‘Leave me, ojare,’ she said, snatching her
hand away.

Obi knew very well why she was moody. She had suggested in her tentative way that they should go to
the films. At this stage in their relationship, Clara never said: ‘Let us go to the films. ’She said
instead ;’There is good film at the Capitol. ‘Obi, who did not care for the films, especially those Clara said
good, had said after long silence: ‘Well, if you insist, but I’m not keen. ‘Clara did not insist, but she felt
very much hurt. All evening she had been nursing her feelings. ‘It’s not to late to go to your film ; said
Obi capitulating, or appearing to do so. ‘You may go if you want to go, I’m not coming’ she said. Only
three days before they had gone to see ‘a very good fil’ which infuriated Obi so much that he stopped
looking at the screen altogether, except when Clara whispered the one explanation or another for his
benefit. ‘That man is going to be killed; she would prophecy, and sure as death, the doomed man would
be shot almost immediately. From downstairs the shilling-ticket audience participated noisily in the
action.