Читать книгу Married But Available - B. Nyamnjoh - Страница 10
ОглавлениеMountain Valley was full when they arrived. Dr Wiseman Lovemore recognised a couple of his female students sitting some tables away from the main entrance, but they avoided looking in his direction. To keep them comfortable, he opted for a table at the far end, where he sat with Lilly Loveless, back to the students.
“I spotted two students of mine as we walked in,” he told Lilly Loveless.
“Smart move to sit away from them,” she stole a look in the direction of the girls. “Do you know those men who they’re drinking with?”
“No, but the number plates of the flashy cars over there would suggest they are from Sawang. Customs officers or treasurers, probably.”
“Why customs officers and treasurers? What’s so special about them?”
“They are the ones with the money, lots of bribes to spend. Their appetites are big and greedy. They are the engine of the national corruption machine for which we are world famous.”
Lilly Loveless was familiar with the yearly Transparency International corruption indexes, in which Mimboland was invariably amongst the world’s most corrupt countries and most difficult places to do business. Busy-ness was about the only business possible in Mimboland, she had read. From businessmen to politicians through intellectuals, civil servants, the police, military and general public, everyone was busy making money without producing money. Until now, she had thought this assessment was a bit exaggerated by the Muzunguland newspaper that had carried the story.
“When the world calls Mimboland a tropical paradise for parasites, the treasurers and customs officers are those who benefit the most, after President Longstay and his ministers.”
Just then, the waitress came up to them and took their orders.
“They are amongst the hottest on campus,” Dr Wiseman Lovemore told Lilly Loveless about the girls.
“What do you mean?”
“Going after men, who are known locally as Mbomas.”
“What is Mbomas?”
“It is a long story,” Dr Wiseman Lovemore began. He told her how many years ago the Mim dollar was radically devalued by 100 per cent, causing lots of hardship among Mimbolanders whose salaries, for the civil servants amongst them, had just been slashed by over 50 per cent. The times were tough, and few could make ends meet. Most men and women lowered their standards and tastes for one another, but even then, men would say to one another: ‘Can anyone afford a deuxième bureau these days when things are so hard?’ And the answer, of course would be: ‘No way, unless of course na njoh bureau.’ Deuxième bureau means a woman on the side, and ‘njoh’ means for free.
Then there were all these rumours.
In Sakersbeach rumour rose and spread to the effect that foreign businessmen from a neighbouring country were using magical powers to shrink or steal sexual organs of local men, just by shaking hands with them. ‘Penis snatching,’ they called it. Some of the allegations even made their way to court, despite the reluctance of the latter (modelled on Muzungulander legal systems) to deal with cases of witchcraft where there is often little “concrete evidence” and proof “beyond any reasonable doubt”. Curiously there were no parallel rumours about shrinking or disappearing women’s genitals. It was said that Mimboland men, in fear that their women would all be food for rich foreign business tycoons, could not ignore such a development. Hence no stone could be left unturned as concerned Mimbolander men sought to put a halt to this. Foreigners had to conform and live peacefully with their impoverished hosts or leave the country. The stories were widely reported and widely believed, and Mimbolanders warned not to shake hands with foreign businessmen.
Around the same time, it was rumoured that two girls at the University of Asieyam in Nyamandem had fallen victim to a foreign tycoon with lots of hard currency to spend. The girls were said to have gone out with him for a good time, and to have returned with him to his posh residence in the Beverly Hills area, where he had chosen one of them with whom he retired to bed. But instead of making love to the girl, he had opted for a full meal by swallowing her after transforming himself into a boa constrictor, known locally as Mboma. By the time the other girl found out, her friend had been swallowed right down to her legs, stopping short of her anklets. She stormed out and alerted the police who upon investigating, discovered that it was common practice with this man to make a meal of those he lusted after. The story was widely disseminated by the famished press and also by word of mouth and Radio Trottoir, but generally taken for granted.
“Since then, all sugar daddies or sweat mamas are called Mbomas,” Dr Wiseman Lovemore concluded. Then something struck him: “But all of this is in my paper,” he added proudly, unsettling dandruff as he scratched his unkempt hair.
“Yes, of course,” said Lilly Loveless, as she desperately tried to mask the fact that she had not read his paper yet. “It is all there in your paper, well articulated. I just wanted to hear you tell me about it in person.” She fidgeted with her glass, uncomfortable to be lying to a man with eyes magnified by such oversized goggles. How she wished he wouldn’t ask to discuss his paper further.
Just then, a journalist well known to Dr Wiseman Lovemore walked in, spotted them, and started coming to their table. “There’s a friend of mine, the funniest man in town. He has these outbursts of laughter that are so infectious you can’t avoid laughing with him. He is coming to join us.”
Lilly Loveless saw a tall, lanky, extra-dark skinned man dressed in a lovely colourful embroidered short-sleeve shirt. He held an unlit cigarette in his left hand and a newspaper under his left armpit. Mid forties or thereabouts was her estimate of his age. She was drawn to his eyes, which stood out so much that the rest of his face, with the exception of his unusually long ears, seemed to fade away.
“Hi, Dr Lovemore,” he shouted, holding out his right hand. “When are you going to start loving less?” he asked, jokingly.
Lilly Loveless exploded in laughter, wondering what the guy would say when he found out her name.
“Young lady,” he addressed her, shaking her hand. “It is no laughing matter. Tell your friend to love less,” he burst out laughing himself, as he took a seat. “The hazards are just too many.”
“I’ll tell him,” said Lilly Loveless, light-heartedly. She could see this guy would be fun.
“Iroko, meet Lilly. Lilly, meet Iroko,” Dr Wiseman Lovemore cut in.
“Lilly, sweet name,” said Iroko. “But what kind of introduction is that?” he reproached his friend. “Lilly what?”
“I am Lilly Loveless,” she laughed.
“No kidding! I like that. You must tame my friend here.”
Dr Wiseman Lovemore laughed. “She is not my girlfriend…”
“Who said anything about girlfriend?” Iroko interrupted. “To love less, you need a therapist not a girlfriend.” Then turning to Lilly Loveless, he said, “Lilly, by the way, I am Bobinga Iroko, senior journalist with The Talking Drum, the one and only newspaper in Puttkamerstown worth writing home about. In most parts of Mimboland, it is not the cock which wakes you up in the morning; it is newspaper vendors screaming ‘The Talking Drum, The Talking Drum’.”
“Pleased to make your acquaintance,” said Lilly Loveless, shaking hands with him again, thinking, I have probably shaken far more hands in my short stay in Mimboland than I have in all my life in Muzunguland.
The waitress returned with the drinks, and went back with Bobinga Iroko’s order.
“Now Lilly,” Bobinga Iroko began, holding her right hand, “tell me your surname.”
“I told you already.”
“You mean Loveless?”
She nodded.
“Loveless? … Your name? … For sure?”
She nodded again.
“Why would your parents do a beautiful girl like you a disservice of such magnitude by having a name like that?”
“I came too late to influence the naming of my dad,” she giggled. “But I do remember asking him why his parents gave him the name. Being a librarian, he looked up the name, traced it in the family to a time when there was so little love in the world that people thought, would this child survive in a loveless world?”
“Amazing coincidence: Loveless meets Lovemore. What does that yield?” He laughed mischievously, before adding: “Don’t tell me just yet. I am an investigative journalist.”
He took out three bitter kolas from his pocket and offered one to Dr Wiseman Lovemore, who declined, saying: “You know I don’t like bitter kola.”
“He doesn’t like bitter kola,” Bobinga Iroko mocked.
“Why?” Lilly Loveless asked, accepting the curious-looking nut herself.
“He’s never had any experience in bitterness,” replied Bobinga Iroko, jokingly. “His life so far has been a bed of roses.”
“Don’t. He’s certainly getting there.” Lilly Loveless interjected without thinking. And when she stopped to think, she couldn’t figure out what made her say it. Fortunately, neither Bobinga Iroko nor Dr Wiseman Lovemore paid her statement much mind or asked her to explain what she meant.
Lilly Loveless took a bite at the kola and winced. The nut tasted like rubber and was bitter as hell. She spat out, and Dr Wiseman Lovemore spoke just in time to avoid a comment by Bobinga Iroko.
“Bobinga Iroko has been my friend for years,” said Dr Wiseman Lovemore, addressing Lilly Loveless. “But each time I’m with him, I feel no need for sports, because the laughter he induces is enough exercise. The worst moments I have with him are actually the best in the world. A very jocular fellow he is.”
“You’ve made him blush,” said Lilly Loveless, as Bobinga Iroko covered his face with his hands in pretentious shyness.
Bobinga Iroko’s drink arrived. “She knows how to have fun at the job, and delivers service with a smile,” Bobinga Iroko complimented the bar girl, his thirsting eyes drowning themselves in her good looks.
Lilly Loveless insisted on paying for the beer. “The drinks this evening are all on me,” she told them.
“Literally or metaphorically?” asked Bobinga Iroko.
“Literally and metaphorically,” replied Lilly Loveless.
“Regardless of whether I literally finish a crate?” Bobinga Iroko teased.
“Regardless of whether you finish two crates,” Lilly Loveless challenged.
“So what are you doing in Puttkamerstown?” Bobinga Iroko asked, taking to her sense of humour and suppleness of mind.
“I’m doing research for my doctorate on sex, power and consumption, using Puttkamerstown as my field location.”
“You Muzungulanders study funny themes. I’ve always thought the PhD was a serious degree. Something to confer power, the power to pull others down. I can assure you that no one in this country would sponsor a study like yours, let alone award a degree to someone who works on a theme that trivialises science. Given our development needs, we go for hardcore science, not soft-core gimmick.”
Lilly Loveless could not tell whether he was serious or had gone back to his joking mode, so she chose to ignore his comment.
“What exactly do you want to study about sex?” Bobinga Iroko was curious.
“In a nutshell, how it shapes and is shaped by power and consumption,” replied Lilly Loveless. “But to get there, I’m interested in everything to do with sex, from love to marriage and divorce, through affairs, cheating, promiscuity, and so on.”
Bobinga Iroko laughed mockingly – kikikikikikiki – before saying, “Cheating, philandering and sexual promiscuity are and always have been the tango in town, the tonic to help people bear relationships that would otherwise be too burdensome to even contemplate. Monogamy is incredibly boring, and this is as true of here as it is of where you come from, whether or not polygamous marriages are formally recognised by the state. If you want fidelity, love is not the game for you. Only a moralising hypocrite or an idle social scientist would think of wasting money on a silly study like yours.”
Lilly Loveless smiled, instead of being irritated or embarrassed. She couldn’t help feeling that Bobinga Iroko was being playfully unpleasant, as his expressive face and eyes displayed warmth that spoke of a man with a good heart, someone who would not go out of his way to hurt a researcher he had barely met.
“Thank goodness DNA paternity tests are not as commonplace as they are dangerous,” continued Bobinga Iroko, “else men would be shocked to know how their wives lead them to take perfect strangers for their offspring. Fortunately, social fatherhood is what matters, as the child belongs to he who owns the bed. I don’t need a study to know this.”
“Lucky you,” said Lilly Loveless, still smiling, a bit awkwardly.
“Perhaps you have a point,” Bobinga Iroko conceded.
Lilly Loveless sat up, all ears.
“It is not because cheating is the order of the day that people are necessarily honest about it. The natural tendency is to forget the speck in our own eye as we dramatize the speck in the eye of our neighbour. We forget to know that each time we point a finger at someone, three fingers are pointing at us.”
Lilly Loveless felt relieved, somehow. It is more than discomforting to have your research written off by locals with opinions on what good research should be.
“OK, let me contribute to your research all the same, for what it is worth,” Bobinga Iroko took her hand, his eyes virtually kissing hers. “We Mimbolanders believe in infidelity, but we also believe in lying to protect our marriages and relationships. Look over there.”
She stretched her neck like a giraffe.
“You see that man sitting with that girl, tiny like a broomstick?”
Lilly Loveless spotted the couple.
“The wife died of chronic gonorrhoea, chronic syphilis, and chronic AIDS, consumed by the recklessness of a penis to which she came as a virgin and stayed faithful, while her husband visited everything in a skirt. Mimboland condoms are spectacularly uncomfortable. They spoil the sex, and I can well understand why a man like that was at war against condoms or why Muzungulanders like you prefer to import their own condoms.”
Lilly Loveless was speechless. Bobinga Iroko certainly knew how to shock.
He was just beginning.
“See that battered car over there?” he pointed.
“It belongs to someone, a colleague actually, in a way, who has made a habit of living above his means, because he believes in keeping up appearances. He doesn’t accept advice.”
“What a pity,” said Lilly Loveless.
“A pity indeed, for many are the times I have told him that having a second hand Pajero is like getting married to a retired prostitute – more headache than service.”
This guy has no inhibitions, whatsoever, Lilly Loveless concluded. He’s good.
“And that brand new Prado over there, still without number plates: Johnny-Just-Come,” he indicated the car with his troublesome forefinger.
Again, Lilly Loveless nodded, curious for what bombshell he was about to release.
“50th birthday present for Dr Simba Spineless, the Reg of Mimbo, by the fellow who has won every single contract at the university since he was appointed Reg by presidential decree 20 years ago in place of someone with real ability. It is one of many rewards that come his way for running the institution extraordinarily badly.”
Lilly Loveless’ eyes dilated with surprised curiosity. “Dr Simba Spineless has been Reg for 20 years?”
“Absolutely,” said Bobinga Iroko. “And he was not a nonentity before that. His bread was buttered even before his father, politically very well-placed in colonial times, had met his mother.”
“How is that possible?”
“Don’t tell me you haven’t done sociology, or that you’ve forgotten the doctrine of your forefather, Charles Darwin,” remarked Bobinga Iroko, feigning surprise.
Lilly Loveless smiled, meaningfully.
“He seldom reads nor writes in any scholarly sense,” Bobinga Iroko criticised. “When he does, he prefers his manhood to do the thinking and the writing.”
This man is incredible, thought Lilly Loveless, but I like him for that.
“And he is unbelievably vain and hopelessly incompetent as he would rather stammer his way to hell than allow talent to shine,” Bobinga Iroko continued. “He is a perfect example of what is wrong with Mimboland when it comes to public service: Between word and action, between concept and reality, between desire and gratification stand a wide, deep chasm and a thousand and one obstacles.”
“It must be these qualities which the President finds irresistible,” Lilly Loveless ventured, then immediately apologised. Although Bobinga Iroko and Dr Wiseman Lovemore were not the company to be cautious about, she knew she must avoid airing her opinions or taking sides on sensitive local issues during her fieldwork.
“With a big fancy car like that and in his position, the Reg doesn’t need words to sleep with a woman,” Bobinga Iroko laughed cynically.
“How is that?” asked Lilly Loveless.
“The car speaks for itself, so all he needs to say to any woman he wants is: ‘enter we go’” Bobinga Iroko explained. “And for a man who stammers the way he does, the car is a real speech enhancer.”
“There’s no such thing as romantic language with him?” asked Lilly Loveless.
“Romantic language is for the poor,” Bobinga Iroko mocked, “those who are always suffering from an over-inflation of empty words. Power and money open doors that most can only dream of; they are the poetry of the dumb, the humour of those too busy or too important to flatter, the corrector of those ordinarily too ugly to be noticed. With the rich and powerful, it is all about instant gratification.”
“Isn’t that too hard?”
“The only thing too hard is their sex drive, which they use as evidence of the opportunities and impunities of wealth and power,” said Bobinga Iroko. “Thus the Reg’s persistent erections are as rock-hard as they are reckless. They’ve always been, only more so today with the advent of Viagra – ‘the secret weapon to empower little warriors of love’, that has made horizontal jogging his favourite sport. He is convinced women worship rock solid hardness and the prospect of all-night staying power that come with the feeling of bigger, wider and fuller that he believes he induces. He has a queue of university girls at his service every day, and is known to be familiar with many more resting places than meet the eye,” he pointed to his eye, as if to say, even for the investigative journalist that he is. “He knows how to keep himself busy enjoying small small things; each time he settles on one, he is consumed by an obsession of covering the face, hammering the base and hoping for the best. He is well reputed to pay girls with university petrol coupons, which the girls are forced to exchange for cash at various filling stations.” Then, as if he didn’t want anyone to overhear him, he whispered, “The Talking Drum is building a dossier on him, and we’ve made friends with all filling station attendants to take down the names of all the girls who come with petrol coupons to convert into cash.”
“Why are you doing it?” Lilly Loveless asked.
“Because we are a newspaper with a social responsibility mandate,” he replied. “And because we believe that the petrol coupons are meant for the university to function properly,” he added. “The man’s cell phone, bought and serviced by the university, has more room for the cell phone numbers of girls and female colleagues than it does for the numbers of his male administrative colleagues, deans and lecturers.” He spoke with such conviction that Lilly Loveless was amazed.
“And there’s another reason, which should please you, I believe. We want to render his poor wife a service. The fellow is known to have far more children out of wedlock than he can recollect. We don’t want his legitimate wife and children to suffer…”
“What does his wife do?”
“Her name is Victoria Aa-Shing. She’s also an academic. She used to teach at the university as well. But too many fights pushed the man to engineer her transfer to Nyamandem, under the fake pretext of a promotion to head the directorate of Degree Equivalence at the Ministry of Knowledge Production. Now he is free to go and come from home as he likes, except for the weekends his madam is around, or during public holidays when a former maid of theirs, with whom he has a child as well – the child that pushed his wife to push the maid out of the house several years ago, keeps an eye on him… It is an irony, as she had employed the services of the mannish-looking nanny precisely to stop him from playing hanky-panky with the maid in her absence. But when Dr Simba Spineless is determined to think with his penis, he thinks with his penis. He begs to differ with those who insist there must be more to a woman than being a writing pad,” laughed Bobinga Iroko.
“There is nothing the wife hasn’t done to stop him from noticing and embracing the charms of other women,” he continued. “She has framed and displayed photos of their happiest moments, told him stories about the pleasant past, cooked him his favourite dishes, spiced his meals with popular love charms, and loved him the way she believes no other woman can. But he is what we call ‘woman wrapper’, a man who darts from one woman to another like a nectar-seeking bee. Even then, she would rather give up on life than on her marriage: ‘I cannot back down now, no matter how unwanted he makes me feel,’ she tells her sympathetic academic sisters who in turn scream: ‘Men – terrible creatures!!!’”
Bobinga Iroko was certainly the investigative journalist he claimed to be. Or was he more of a rumour monger? Where did he come by his damning details on the private lives of others? Did those eyes and ears of his see and hear beyond the ordinary? These, of course, were questions Lilly Loveless could only ask herself in silence. She however wondered what Bobinga Iroko would say to her mom’s famous cautionary words: ‘the one who gossips to you about others, gossips to others about you.’
“What we hate most about him is the air of impunity he carries around. If only he were a bit modest, even his staunchest critics that some of us are would understand him and soften up,” said Bobinga Iroko.
“So he is a sort of arrogant bastard?” asked Lilly Loveless.
“Much worse, I assure you,” said Bobinga Iroko. “You need to see him. Imagine what he would say in the hearing of his own wife: ‘The mistake men make is to give all their love to one woman. This contradicts even the eating habits of the most poor amongst us. We all eat a variety of foods every week. Why should it be any different with love and loving?’”
“And what does his wife do?”
“What can she do? He threatens her with having the yam and the knife, and she knows just what he means. This is a lion’s den and he is one of the master lions. What I can’t understand is what women find irresistible in this master lion. I’ve always heard what makes a man appealing is good looks, sincerity, honesty, humour, intelligence, passion and tenderness. I’m yet to be convinced he has any of these qualities. And don’t tell me beauty is in the eyes of the beholder.”
“Bobinga Iroko,” Lilly Loveless said, a note of tenderness in her voice, “have many people told you that you have a sharp, impressive and sympathetic mind?”
“A few,” he replied. “But I’ve learnt not to trust what people tell me, until I know what they’re sniffing for.”
“So what am I sniffing for?”
“You tell me.”
“Nothing. Just your sharp, impressive, sympathetic, creative, rebellious mind. With a dish like your mind, I could eat until my tongue complains.”
“You see what I mean? Because you desperately want such a mind, you are determined to find it in the first man you meet in Mimboland.”
“You are not the first man I’ve met in Mimboland.”
“Really? How unfortunate. I was beginning to think of me, myself and I…”
“That proves my point…”
They both laughed knowingly and toasted their glasses. Dr Wiseman Lovemore could see the two were really getting to know each other. From the way they talked, no one would imagine they were only meeting each other for the first time.
“To be fair to the university administration, there’s at least one of them who doesn’t look at girls all the time. That is, if his declarations in public are anything to go by, although The Talking Drum is yet to uncover something about him. He is known to make every woman understand he is like bitter kola – not easy to eat…”
“You can say that again,” said Lilly Loveless, about bitter kola.
Bobinga Iroko laughed, crushed another bitter kola delightfully, and ate as if it was the best nut in the world. “And this is what women find intriguing,” he continued of the exception in the university administration. “Each comes determined to change him, to make a difference, but they all end up disappointed, as he is such a staunch Christian, and has made of the Holy Mother his entire obsession. To be frank though, no one quite knows the extent to which his heavenly Madonna could facilitate his ambitions of challenging the ‘Candle Light of the Devil’ on the topmost position at the university.”
“Wow!” said Lilly Loveless. “You really are all for this guy.”
“Not exactly,” replied Bobinga Iroko. “He doesn’t drink, and for someone from Mimboland not to drink, that is very suspect. It is like being big and not being PIP. Many people are good at hiding poisonous ambition until the time is right, then, like an angry mountain, they explode, devastating life and the creative effort of people for miles and miles without end.”
“Is Mount Mimbo volcanic?” asked Lilly Loveless.
“Yes, mildly volcanic, but dangerous enough to us who inhabit its sides.”
“What is PIP again?”
“Party In Power.”
“So everyone who is anyone must be in PIP?”
“What do you think in a country headed by the gifted, the one and only President Longstay?”
Lilly Loveless was tongue-tied.
“PIP means RIP for all else…”
“If you mean whom I think you mean,” began Dr Wiseman Lovemore, who had all along watched in amused silence Lilly Loveless and Bobinga Iroko get along. “I’ve heard a couple of women say he is the way he is because his battery does not charge…”
Just then, Dr Wiseman Lovemore’s cell phone rang.
“I must go,” said Dr Wiseman Lovemore. “Urgently needed at home. My daughter Pinklie has malaria. My wife has travelled.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” said Lilly Loveless, emptying her glass and standing up to go with him.
“No, no,” Dr Wiseman Lovemore protested. “You stay and enjoy yourself. Bobinga Iroko is a good and trusted friend. You are safe with him.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure. We’re used to her having malaria. I know exactly what to do when I get home.”
He left.
This was the first time since her arrival that Lilly Loveless was hearing anything about Dr Wiseman Lovemore’s family. She thought to herself: So he has a daughter, and is married. How interesting! Why has he been so economical with information on his family status? I’ve told him about my parents, my ex-boyfriend and a lot more. But he’s stayed guarded, measuring everything he says like water in the desert. We’ve been everywhere together, save for his home. Of course, I haven’t asked to be taken there. That’s a decision for him to make.
“How well do you know my friend, Wiseman?” Bobinga Iroko asked, as soon as they were alone.
“Not that much. He’s a friend of my supervisor’s. And he has been very helpful in ensuring that I settle in without much pain. He’s arranged for very good and terribly affordable accommodation for me with his colleague Desire, a very friendly woman herself. Desire is such an amazing personality. She’s so friendly that she can enter this place and be friends with everyone within minutes…” Lilly Loveless spoke at length on Dr Wiseman Lovemore and Desire, full of superlatives.
“I’ve known Dr Wiseman Lovemore for years, and we’ve been friends since our secondary school days. He’s very hard-working, but not terribly lucky. It took him years to get his PhD, and it is taking him for ever to change grades. He has been marking time as a lecturer for years. And his scholarly inertia seems to be affecting his social life. His wife, whose highest qualification is a Masters, heads the Department of Rhetoric. She is almost always on a plane to somewhere, to attend one conference or another, and the poor guy is forced to babysit a daughter of whom he seriously doubts he’s the father. He is particularly bitter about the fact that his wife talks openly here and there about her infidelities…”
“His wife is unfaithful?”
“It is the talk of the town. She’s said to be a favourite hunting ground for many, including our very own local champion the Reg, which isn’t surprising, given our penchant for light-skinned women.”
“I now understand why he has never taken me to see his family.”
“The Reg?”
“No, Dr Wiseman Lovemore.”
“He is not a happy man at home.”
“Has he thought of moving out?”
“He thinks it is still possible to patch things up, if only she wouldn’t go around broadcasting their private life at coffee tables and panel discussions at feminist congresses. There are certain things she just shouldn’t talk about outside the home.”
“I do empathise with the fact that he is not happy at home, but you can’t keep your wife from talking to her friends or expressing herself. That’s almost symbolic violence. We survive by discussing our troubles with women friends! And there’s no room for inhibition in scholarship.” Lilly Loveless felt pleased to reproduce her cherished rhetoric in favour of a sister and expert at rhetoric.
“They hardly talk. She at least should talk with him first. Charity begins at home, doesn’t it?”
Lilly Loveless nodded. They at least should talk to each other, try solving their problems themselves, and only after repeated failure at this level should they turn elsewhere for mediation.
“When you visit them as I do,” Bobinga Iroko continued, now drinking directly from the bottle, having inadvertently broken his glass. “You notice the huge chasm between them. He seems to live at the back of the house where there’s the kitchen and she seems to live at the front of the house. Their daughter is often made to serve like a boundary tree between two warring villages.”
“It must be really tough for both of them.”
“What would you say to this: A year ago, she left their marital bedroom, to sleep in the parlour, and sometimes in their daughter’s bedroom.”
“I think that’s completely natural. I know several married couples where he has his room and she has hers. Sometimes they visit each other at night … My mom and dad lived like that for a couple of years before their divorce.”
“No, that doesn’t exist here in Africa.”
“I admit my knowledge of Africa isn’t that great, but I’d be surprised if Africa is that different from Muzunguland,” she replied, taking care not to sound as if she wanted to pick a quarrel on the rampant attitude (often informed by assumptions of superiority, she was convinced) of ‘Africa is not like your Muzunguland’ that she encountered almost every day.
“That’s exactly what she would say, has always said. It must be something Muzungulander … how you are brought up, perhaps,” observed Bobinga Iroko.
“What do you mean? Is Dr Wiseman Lovemore’s wife a Muzungulander?”
“What did you think? He hasn’t told you that his wife is half white, half black? Only half as white as you, but Muzungu all the same?”
“No, he’s told me very little about his family situation, like I said.” Lilly Loveless was still to come to terms with what she had just heard. Dr Wiseman Lovemore, married to a Muzungu? He didn’t come across that way. How interesting… “When did they marry? How did they meet?”
“That, you’d have to ask him.”
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be discussing his private life in his absence.”
“As I was saying,” Bobinga Iroko went on, “if and when she speaks to him, her words are harsh. They burn his heart like vomit from the belly of the mountain.”
“Instead of just listening to her words, he should listen to her actions. If she didn’t care, would she still be sharing the same house with him? I bet she buys all the groceries and does all the cooking. You talked about words. What soft words does he say with her? What has he done to lure her back some nights? Why should we take those acts for granted?” Lilly Loveless was all too conscious of springing to the defence of a sister without any real knowledge of the facts of the case.
This, Bobinga Iroko picked up on. “You talk as if you’ve been there and know who does what, and who says or doesn’t say what. You may have some wise words, but you don’t really know what it’s like.”
“Maybe so,” she conceded. “All I know is that it seems God gives us this funny thing we call love, then he seems to sit back and enjoy watching what we’ll do next …”
“He also gives us investigative journalists to document what we do next, and with whom,” he laughed, and screamed for the waiter to replenish the drinks.
They drank and chatted deep into the night. Lilly Loveless learnt a lot.
Bobinga Iroko told her more about Dr Mukala-Satannie, how he came to write his column for The Talking Drum, and how he got offered part-time lectureship at the university. Dr Mukala-Satannie was unemployed back home in Muzunguland. He had completed a PhD on Karl Marx at a time when everyone was saying farewell to Marx. He used to give free public lectures to interested students and the clientele of a pub next to the university that awarded him a degree that could not be listed on the stock exchange.
It was at those lectures that he met a young, beautiful woman who had a soft spot for philosophy. She had just completed a Masters programme on Sustainable Philosophies of Environmental Management, and had been offered a very good job in Mimboland, with the Mimbo Forest Conservation Project, funded and managed entirely by Muzungulanders. The unmarried young woman feared being lonely in Africa.
When Dr Mukala-Satannie heard of her prospective fat expatriate salary, and especially of the fact that her husband could earn an unemployment allowance as well as live prosperously above the infectious misery of Africans, he said to her jokingly: “Why not marry me? If it works, fine, if it doesn’t, you could always repatriate me.”
She took him seriously. Tall, huge, imposing and instinctively aggressive, he was just what she needed to feel safe in Mimboland, where men were rumoured to have an aggressive desire for unattended women.
She was flattered when he discouraged her from wearing makeup, saying: “There’s no need seeking to enhance what is already perfect.”
They hastily married, and left for Africa.
Three things he remembered to bring along: The writings of Karl Marx which he hoped to invest in every African he met; Cuban cigars which he had accumulated over the years, stolen off his stepfather’s impressive collection of the finest Habana without him noticing; and different whiskies, brandies and wines to keep him going. He once described himself as a man who had reconciled capitalism with communism in his personal life, the only place where such reconciliation was possible, by making his “determined communist mind pregnant with material ambitions”. His mastery of Karl Marx struck an instant chord with the provocative and recalcitrant head of Political Science at the University of Mimbo. With an understaffed department and plethoric student numbers, the head of Political Science had little difficulty making a case for Dr Mukala-Satannie to be recruited as a part-time lecturer… The conversation was no doubt interesting, but Lilly Loveless was dying to go to bed.
“I should be heading home,” she told Bobinga Iroko, yawning. “Could you point out where to get a taxi to where I live?”
“I’m not too drunk to drop you off,” he replied, standing up, his half finished bottle ignored. “Let’s go.”
It was difficult to say whether Bobinga Iroko’s sobriety was literal or figurative, but Lilly Loveless was trusting enough to entrust herself to him.
“Just a moment,” she said and went over to the two students of Dr Wiseman Lovemore, who were still there with the men. She introduced herself as a friend of Dr Lovemore’s, and as a researcher, although she stayed deliberately vague on what she was researching. She gave them each her complimentary card, at the same time as she complimented their beautiful hairdo and lovely outfits. Then said she would very much love to meet and discuss with them at their convenience. They exchanged phone numbers. Against the first Lilly Loveless wrote “Fancy”, and against the other “Goodness” – the names the girls gave her.
“I’ll call you,” she told Fancy and Goodness with a giggle.
“Enjoy the rest of your night,” they giggled back, sizing her up. Something about the way they exchanged looks told her what exactly they meant.
She looked at Bobinga Iroko who was watching the starry skies and smiled, broadly.
As Lilly Loveless drove home with Bobinga Iroko, her thoughts were much less of the rest of the night than of the mysterious Mrs Lovemore.
She determined to meet her by hook or by crook.
