BEFORE WE WERE FOREVER

What She Finally Said

They walked together along the same road that bordered the Rwang family compound, the evening settling into its familiar orange and violet, and Talatu did not speak again for several minutes, gathering, Davou understood, whatever careful thoughts she had evidently been preparing for some time.

“I have watched you for nearly two years now,” she said finally. “The fence. My sisters, safely escorted to more church functions than I can properly count. The quiet, steady way you have simply continued showing up, without pressing me, without repeating a proposal I asked you to set aside. I want you to know that I have noticed all of it, Davou, even during the months I said nothing directly about noticing.”

“I hoped you had,” Davou said, carefully, not yet trusting himself to properly hope for what her tone seemed to be building toward.

“I also want you to know,” she continued, “that I did not make my decision about Yakubu based on any deficiency in his own character. He is a genuinely decent man. I simply found, across these past two years of watching both of you, that I trusted your particular quality of patience more completely than I trusted his more immediate, more easily performed attentiveness. Poetry is a lovely gift, Davou. A mended fence, sustained across two years without complaint, tells me something a book of poetry never could.”

“What does it tell you?” Davou asked, though he suspected, with a rising hope he was only beginning to properly permit himself, that he already knew the answer.

“That you are the kind of man who does the necessary, unglamorous work of loving someone properly, rather than simply performing the more visible, more immediately rewarding gestures,” Talatu said. “I do not think that quality announces itself quickly, in a single afternoon or even a single season. I think it only reveals itself over considerable time, through considerable testing. I believe, having now tested it as thoroughly as I know how, that you have actually passed.”

“Are you telling me yes?” Davou asked, his voice carrying more vulnerability than he had permitted himself to show her in the entire preceding two years.

“I am telling you,” Talatu said, with the same careful, deliberate honesty that had characterized every one of their exchanges since that first wedding afternoon, “that I am finally ready to properly court you — openly, with my family's full knowledge and blessing, rather than simply observing you from a careful distance. I am not yet telling you yes to marriage. That answer, if it comes, will require its own proper season of consideration. But I am telling you yes to beginning that consideration honestly, which I believe is considerably more than I have offered you until this exact evening.”

It was, Davou would reflect for the rest of his life, one of the most significant sentences anyone had ever spoken to him, delivered with a plainness that stripped away every romantic embellishment he might once have hoped for and replaced it with something he came to value considerably more: an honest, hard-won trust, built patiently across two full years, that he understood, even in that moment, he would spend the rest of his life working to properly deserve.

“Thank you,” he said, simply, unable to find any grander words equal to the moment.

“Don't thank me yet,” Talatu said, though her tone carried real warmth beneath its characteristic dryness. “We have not yet properly begun. I suspect, knowing my own father's particular thoroughness, that the actual courtship ahead of us will test your patience rather more than these past two years already have.”

She was, as it turned out, entirely correct. It would be another full year — a year of formal visits, careful negotiations between families, and Bulus Rwang's own exacting, protracted assessment of a son-in-law he intended to approve only once every reasonable doubt had been properly addressed — before Davou Yilkes and Talatu Rwang would finally, properly marry, exactly three years after a foolish, premature proposal at a wedding that had never actually been his own.

CHAPTER 6

Bulus Rwang's Considerable Thoroughness

“Her father did not simply grant permission. He conducted what I have since come to think of as the most thorough professional examination of my entire life, considerably more rigorous than any actual employment interview I ever sat for.” — Davou

The formal courtship, once Talatu had properly opened the door to it, proceeded under the exacting supervision of Bulus Rwang, a man whose reputation for careful judgment Davou now discovered had been, if anything, understated by the wider neighborhood's gossip.

“You will visit on Sundays, after church, and on one additional weekday evening of my choosing,” Bulus informed him, during the first formal meeting convened to establish the terms of the courtship, delivered with the brisk efficiency of a man laying out conditions rather than requesting agreement to them. “You will not visit unannounced. You will not walk with my daughter beyond the compound's immediate vicinity without one of her sisters present. And you will submit to my own questions, at a time and pace of my choosing, regarding your character, your finances, your family's standing, and your intentions, in whatever detail I consider necessary.”

“I understand, sir,” Davou said, understanding perfectly well that the arrangement, however restrictive, represented considerable progress from the two years of careful, undeclared observation that had preceded it.

The questions, once they properly began, proved every bit as thorough as promised — Bulus inquiring into Davou's employment prospects with the clerical service, his family's financial standing, his own personal habits regarding drink and temper, his church attendance, his relationship with his own parents and siblings, and, on one memorable occasion, his precise plans for supporting a family should his current clerical position ever prove insecure.

“You ask a great many questions, sir,” Davou observed once, with more boldness than he had previously risked, several months into the formal courtship's careful proceedings.

“I have one daughter left to properly settle,” Bulus said, unmoved by the mild challenge. “Her two elder sisters are already married, to men I examined with equal thoroughness and have had no cause to regret approving. I do not intend to relax my standards simply because my youngest daughter has taken rather longer to arrive at this stage than either of her sisters did.”

“May I ask, sir, what specifically you are testing for?” Davou asked. “I would find it useful to understand what standard I am actually being measured against.”

Bulus considered the question with evident approval at its directness. “I am testing,” he said finally, “whether you are the kind of man who remains steady when nobody is specifically watching to reward the steadiness. Any man can behave well during a formal Sunday visit, knowing his future father-in-law is assessing him. I am considerably more interested in how you behave during the considerable stretches of ordinary time in between — whether you continue the same quiet service you began with that fence, or whether that service quietly stops now that you believe you have secured my daughter's attention.”

It was, Davou reflected, exactly the right question to ask, and one he was fortunate to have already been answering honestly for two years before the formal courtship even properly began — the fence repairs had continued, unprompted, whenever new sections required attention. The escort duties for Talatu's younger sisters had never once lapsed, formal courtship or not. He had, without fully realizing he was doing so, already been passing Bulus Rwang's actual test for the better part of two years before the older man had ever framed it explicitly.

“I have noticed,” Bulus said, some months later, during one of their now-regular Sunday conversations, “that you have not once, in all this time, asked me directly when I intend to finally approve the marriage.”

“I did not think it was my place to press you toward a timeline of your own choosing,” Davou said. “I have decided that if I am asking your daughter to trust my patience, I ought to extend you the same courtesy.”

Bulus studied him for a long moment, something that might, in a less formidable man, have been the beginning of a smile. “That,” he said, “is precisely the correct answer. You may consider yourself formally approved, Mr. Yilkes. I will speak with your own family about proper arrangements within the month.”