Читать книгу Married But Available - B. Nyamnjoh - Страница 8
ОглавлениеLilly Loveless did not wake up until about noon. The unpleasant experiences of Sawang had given her nightmares, pushing sweet dreams of the beautiful moments of Puttkamerstown towards dawn. She lay in bed an extra while, listening to the welcoming sound of music by birds perched on trees just outside the window of her room. This is a real paradise for tropical desires – a place where dreams, reality and fantasies converge, she told herself, getting out of bed with reluctance.
She hurriedly took a shower. Normally, she would dwell in the shower for longer, getting to know and relate to her body, but that must wait for later. She pulled on a pair of white trainers and put on over her head a brown short sleeve shirt, which she decided was best left hanging loose. Then she rushed out of the room and down the stairs to the reception, with her rucksack over one shoulder.
A smiling young man with a sweet face had taken over from the girl of the night before.
Lilly Loveless could see she had missed breakfast. She had also missed an appointment with a possible landlady. Dr Wiseman Lovemore had put her in touch with a colleague of his they met at Mountain Valley last night, who had a Boy’s Quarters to rent, and they had agreed she would pass at 10:30am to see the accommodation.
“Any message for me?” she asked the smiling receptionist.
“Yes, two in fact,” he replied, fetching the messages.
“I suppose I’m too late for breakfast.”
“Breakfast is not part of the room,” the young man explained, “but we can make you breakfast anytime, and charge you accordingly, the same way we do lunch and dinner.”
“Just a cup of strong black coffee will do,” she replied, and made her way to the restaurant, situated by a disused swimming pool.
There she sat and read her messages to the sweet music of the birds.
The first message was by the landlady who, not wanting to interrupt Lilly Loveless’ sleep, chose to leave her cell phone number for her to call and make a new appointment. The second message was a missed call from Dr Wiseman Lovemore. He said he was waiting for the shops to open to pick up a SIM card and prepaid airtime for her before coming. He also wanted her to call him, if possible, to specify how much airtime to buy.
He’ll sort something out, she thought. Any amount of airtime should suffice for a start. She just wanted to be able to call her mom to let her know her daughter arrived safely in Mimboland. The rest could be sorted out later. She decided to just enjoy her coffee and wait for him to come. And, changing her mind about breakfast, Lilly Loveless ordered a Spanish omelette and some toast.
Her mind went back to last night at Mountain Valley, a truly social place which she would like to visit again and again just to watch the comings and goings of men and women, young and old, for drinks and dinner, and for lots more, as was repeatedly whispered in her ear, in a mischievous sort of way, by Dr Wiseman Lovemore. That “lots more,” was what she was here to uncover, understand and perhaps explain, and she would leave no stone unturned to do just that. She remembered asking Dr Wiseman Lovemore where some of the customers who flocked in disappeared to, once they had ordered their drinks and roasted meat or chicken, grilled fish or something else to eat.
Enjoying the way the conversation was going, he expounded: “Like I said before, Mountain Valley is more than just a restaurant or a drinking place. It is also a resting place. The restaurant and bar are a front for the real business of the place, which takes place in the rooms behind – 20 or so in all – for between 3000 and 5000 Mim dollars an hour. The rooms all have fancy names like Bijou, Aroma, Begonia, Blissful, Pure Delight, New Dimensions, Fantasy Space, Passions, Tia Maria, and Simply Gorgeous. And there is always a long waiting list,” he laughed. “Clients who want little more than a quickie can go for half an hour, and pay much less. But that depends on the mood of the guy behind the counter.”
The culture of resting at Mountain Valley, like everywhere else in Mimboland, Lilly Loveless was told, demands that the couple arrive like perfect strangers, and leave like perfect strangers. First, they walk or drive in separately, preferably to a pre-booked room under their aliases if they are regulars or really big guns protective of their identities. Everything is served them in the room, and when they are through, they take side doors, or walk out through the front door, not as a couple, but separately, and at long intervals. If you are not a regular or a big person, and if you have little to fear, then you go through normal registration at the front desk where a key is given to you.
These were early days, but it was her hunch that Dr Wiseman Lovemore was not an easy character to pigeonhole. One thing about him of which she was convinced was his very calculating nature, even when most helpful and friendly.
She recalled how, as soon as they were seated, Dr Wiseman Lovemore opened his bag and handed her a paper that she could almost swear he had brought along to the airport to welcome her with.
“What is it?” she inquired with her eyes, taking the paper.
“Mbomas and Girls in Mimboland: Why Married Men Date University Girls,” he pointed to the title.
She started flipping through the paper, but stopped abruptly. A golden rule in fieldwork: one must not allow the ideas of an insider analyst to influence one’s outlook as an objective observer. She would start her research first, test her own hunches, and then, read the paper with a more critical eye.
Dr Wiseman Lovemore beckoned at the waiter to serve them.
“What do you take?” the waiter asked Lilly Loveless.
“A Baobab for me, hot,” Dr Wiseman Lovemore said, and started an annotated tour of the various beers for Lilly Loveless but was interrupted with: “A Mimbo-Wanda please, well chilled.”
Impressed, he asked her where she knew the beer from.
“Air Mimbo,” she said, flipping through the paper to please her host, but avoiding the contents. “Good title,” she commented. “What did you write this for?”
“Initially for an ‘African Social Problems’ conference in Johannesburg, three years ago.”
“Three years ago?” Lilly Loveless was dumbfounded.
Why was this guy presenting her a paper three years old, in this day and age when old knowledge is no knowledge?
“Do you have the published version?”
“Published what?” Dr Wiseman Lovemore couldn’t believe his ears. “There is no published version,” he added with a sudden laugh. “As a matter of fact, the paper was never presented. It has never been presented. I could say there is a history of misfortune to this paper.”
“How is that?” she asked, perplexed.
“I never made it to the conference in the end, no visa, no sponsorship, no … a catalogue of problems,” he cleared his throat and took a sip from his beer. He resisted the urge to tell her how discriminatory the administration of the university was. He even did not tell her what he loved telling every visiting scholar he met, how unqualified the Vice Chancellor and Registrar (known more as VC and Reg respectively) were to run the university, as, according to him, they owed their positions more to politics than to scholarship, and were determinedly against research and independence of thought. She will have to find out for herself, eventually, that research was most under-funded here at the University of Mimbo, and that the little money that was made available by the reluctant government in Nyamandem, was used by the VC and the Reg to service their appetites, to build a following amongst sons and daughters of the soil, and also to divide and rule amongst ethnic others. In this way, the little crumbs of funding that came through were more a source of conflict and tension, than of any real service to the university and its mission.
He continued with the story of his paper: “Since then, this same paper has been accepted for presentation at three other conferences, but each time, something happens that stops me from going,” he sounded miserable. “The last time, it was the VC – an excruciatingly ordinary-looking vindictive little creature with overbearing breasts the size of Frankenstein pawpaws hanging over the campus like a thunderstorm, as you are going to find out when you meet her – who decried the paper non-scientific, after asking to see a copy. She is a Clinical Psychologist who last read a book or thought a thought when she did her Msc.”
Lilly Loveless listened with curiosity and incredulity. She could see that Dr Wiseman Lovemore had no respect for his boss, but still, why would a VC take an administrative decision on a scholarly paper? What are peers for? Shouldn’t confrontation of ideas be the golden rule of scholarship? Intoxicating! Mimboland is full of Mimbo-wonders, she told herself, playing on the name of the beer she had fallen effortlessly in love with.
“Two months ago, I came closest to finally presenting the paper somewhere. Right here at Mimbo, at a faculty seminar, thanks to a new dean with new ideas about university life.”
“What do you mean?” Lilly Loveless couldn’t understand why he should speak in terms of coming closest to presenting his paper in his own university when that is where he should have started. Isn’t it one’s immediate peers who should tell one how good or bad their scholarly work is? Aren’t they those who, satisfied with your performance at the local level, should encourage you to test the scholarly waters further afield?
“I know,” Dr Wiseman Lovemore smiled. “That’s what one would expect in a normal university.”
“Are you saying Mimbo isn’t normal? That I have come to the wrong place?”
“I’m not saying more than I am saying, which is simple,” he smiled again, took up his glass, tilted it a bit, and looking philosophically into it, went on: “Just when I was about to mount the podium and give the lecture of my life, there was an electricity blackout.”
“What!” she exclaimed. “I can see what you mean when you say you haven’t been lucky with the paper.”
“When power was re-established shortly after, I found myself alone in the Amphitheatre.”
Lilly Loveless couldn’t believe her ears. She almost thought he was joking, but he looked serious. Either he was good at being serious about joking or at joking about being serious.
“Colleagues and students had all seized the opportunity to escape the burden I was about to impose on them in the form of a lecture, was the nagging feeling I had then.”
“You mustn’t blame yourself. How can you call your scholarship a burden? What are universities for?”
“It would appear, at least judging from experiences here, they stand for everything but scholarship. Sometimes I feel students and academic staff are in the way of administration, and research in the way of what everyone seems to prioritize.”
“That’s cynical.”
“But well-founded, won’t you say?”
“No comment.”
“The more I think about it, the more I’m inclined to believe that the problem might perhaps be one of theme.”
“What do you mean?”
“A cursed theme, I mean. Perhaps I am, and I suppose you as well are, interested in a theme which people prefer to act out in private while keeping up appearances in public. So don’t think I joke when I say there is an aura of misfortune around this paper.”
Lilly Loveless felt for him.
“Of course, I’m desperate to be proven wrong,” he smiled longingly, “which is why I was quite excited about your coming, when Professor Dustbin mentioned you, and especially after I read your first email,” he went on.
The waiter returned with another set of drinks, a Baobab for Dr Wiseman Lovemore, which he preferred hot, and a well-chilled Mimbo-Wanda for Lilly Loveless.
They both filled their glasses and formally toasted welcome and good collaboration.
Dr Wiseman Lovemore felt lighter having unburdened himself, at least temporarily, of the curse of his paper. He made clear what he intended to gain from sharing his paper and ideas: “I would like us to co-author something together in this area,” he told her.
She stopped pretending to read, took a sip from her glass, and turned to him, a curious expression on her face.
I am just a beginner, she thought, half flattered, half mystified. Yet here is a whole Dr with many years of university lectureship to his credit already hoping to publish with me, virtually pleading to be considered, even before he has known what I can or cannot offer. She felt pity.
He was serious. “Publishing in Mimboland is extremely difficult,” he proclaimed. “And the only way one can hope to change grades is through seizing opportunities such as this offered by your coming. That is, when one is not a stooge of the party in power.” The pressure to publish or perish was printed on his forehead in bold letters. He emptied his glass as if to say, “You have no choice in this matter.”
Lilly Loveless conceded without thinking things through. She could see she had little choice in the matter, not only because his request reminded her of ethical dilemmas on which she had been grilled by her committee, but especially because he was going to be her host and guide for the next six months in the field.
He thanked her profusely and said she could do with the paper as she liked, as long as their names appeared on the final version together. He didn’t mind being the second author: “Lovemore and Loveless or Loveless and Lovemore, I don’t care, so long as I am published. I simply can’t afford to perish in a den like this.”
That was what she remembered from last evening, at Mountain Valley.
***
Dr Wiseman Lovemore arrived soon after Lilly Loveless finished her breakfast. She noted that he wore the same short-sleeved dark blue button up shirt he had worn the day before. They exchanged greetings. He sat down, adjusted the goggles that covered a third of his face, fitted the new SIM card into her phone and loaded it with airtime. Lilly Loveless thanked him, refunded what he had spent, and asked for receipts and his signature for accounting purposes back home. She had brought along a huge receipt booklet which she intended to fill with signatures to satisfy those funding her fieldwork in Mimboland. Transparent accounting entailed that money should be seen to be well spent, which meant obtaining signatures and receipts even from those who could not read and write. Her phone loaded, Lilly Loveless excused herself and sought privacy at the other end of the pool to call her mom.
She didn’t want to embarrass Dr Wiseman Lovemore with her mom’s silly questions and worries: “What are the people like? … How much freedom does the weather allow you? …Any health problems yet? … Keep your first aid kit handy …. Always carry with you some … Have you been robbed? … Good, thank him for me … Do be careful – you know what I mean, don’t you?”
She tried to reassure her mother, who was more than pleased to hear her daughter’s voice defy the challenges of being in Africa.
“My mom sends greetings,” she told him, following her call. “She says I should thank you for her, for taking care of me.”
Dr Wiseman Lovemore nodded.
“I can relax now that she knows how to reach me,” she said, more to herself. “My mom is very nervous about my being out here. She makes me feel like a two-year-old.”
“It’s understandable. She doesn’t want to lose her daughter to the wild unknown.”
“She has all these strange ideas about Africa.”
“You can’t blame her. Everyone has strange ideas about the unfamiliar.” He wanted to add that even Africans had strange ideas about Africa, but thought that would need some explaining, so he didn’t.
“I see you’d get along very well with my mom. My plan is to persuade her to come and visit, as soon as I am settled.”
“It would be my pleasure to make her feel at home away from home.” Dr Wiseman Lovemore liked the sound of the phrase he had just made.
It struck a cord with Lilly Loveless as well, for she smiled her appreciation.
“Your dad, did you speak to him as well?”
“My dad doesn’t live with my mom. They are divorced. He lives in the same city, with another woman,” Lilly Loveless replied generously.
“Still you should call him to say you arrived safely,” Dr Wiseman Lovemore insisted.
“He doesn’t worry about me the same way mom does, but we are very fond of each other. I’ll call him when I’m settled,” Lilly Loveless would not be drawn.
“So what would you like to do today? Whom do you want to see? Where would you want to be taken? I’m at your disposal.” He was admiring her curly blonde hair as he spoke, but not wanting to give that impression.
Lilly Loveless was far smarter than he imagined. She noticed his eyes behind the goggles hover over her like butterflies in spring.
“First, I’d like to call Desire, your colleague, to make a new appointment to see the studio she is renting out. I missed our appointment this morning. Then, perhaps we could go to the Archives, and to the university. Later in the day, I’d just want us to sit somewhere so I can take down the names of possible people to meet, interview, and so on. In short, I want all the help you can give, but I wouldn’t want to keep you from your work.”
“It’s my pleasure to show you round,” he smiled. “After all, one good turn deserves another. Moreover, if I am to stay in your mom’s good books, that’s what I must do: take good care of her beloved daughter.”
“Thanks. You’re most kind. Much appreciated.” She touched his arm. “A quick call to your colleague, then we can go.”
Lilly Loveless took out her notebook for the number. “Hi Desire… It’s Lilly … Lilly Loveless… I’m sorry I missed our appointment this morning. Could we meet this afternoon? … Yes, 3pm is fine… He knows your place… OK. I’ll ask him to bring me there. … Thanks… Thank you very much… Bye.” Lilly Loveless looked up. “Appointment with Desire at 3pm,” she told Dr Wiseman Lovemore. “She says you could bring me where she lives. But you could just describe to me how to get there…”
“No problem at all,” he interrupted. “How many times am I going to tell you that?” he appeared to take offence. “I’ll take you there, after the Archives.”
She dropped her key at the reception and they walked out to where his car was parked.
“I suggest we walk. The Archives are just a stone’s throw away.”
“Perfect,” she smiled. “I love walking.”
They arrived at the Puttkamerstown Archives, whose surrounding bushes of wild cassava, cocoyam, creepers and crawlers, rodents and reptiles, elephant grass and other plants immediately appealed to Lilly Loveless. She was introduced to the archivist, a friendly old man, weak with the burden of years, who described himself as “a willing horse” and “a forgotten beast of burden”.
Stooped and dented by age, toil and the ingratitude of those who should know better, Prince Anointed was his real name. A pious smile gracing his wrinkled face, he proclaimed with inner pride: “I have worked here since the Muzungu man said farewell to Mimboland.”
He gracefully guided them through the collection, the way he did every single visitor.
“The entire weight of keeping the Archives alive rests on my feeble shoulders.”
There was a sense of ‘these are my babies’ in the way he went through the stacks. Proud as he was of the place, and especially of the efforts he had personally put in to preserve the documents, there was a certain sadness and disappointment in his voice. He was not happy with the uncultured practices of the Ministry of Culture. One could see he was pregnant with disdain for ministerial indifference to the need to preserve history and ensure continuity by documenting the present with care.
“The entire government is most impatient with documentary evidence,” he told them. “I don’t know how familiar you are with Mimboland,” he addressed Lilly Loveless, “but every now and again, you hear strange things about the archives of this or that ministry going up in flames,” he smiled in bitter cynicism.
“Such mysterious fires always coincide with rumoured embezzlement of public funds. To destroy evidence, they don’t mind destroying institutional memory and our public service history. I know of a governor in Zintgraffstown whose first act in office was to clean out the archives for a big bonfire, allegedly because he needed the building so he could receive his mistresses without attracting his wife’s attention.” His look was grim.
Lilly Loveless who could not tell if he was exaggerating or not, said: “A sort of spontaneous combustion of archives. Suspicious, isn’t it?”
Prince Anointed nodded and went on: “All too often, you come across market women and little children selling their goods wrapped in important documents that should be here at the Archives,” he shook his silvery head with disappointment.
“Sometimes, I’m so possessed by fury that I find myself begging for coins from passers-by to purchase these documents from the market women and hawking children for the Archives. I hate to see history killed by callous indifference.”
He told them, as he would anyone who cared to listen, how he came to work at the Archives.
“In the colonial days, Archives and Antiquity was a very important service. There was this Muzungulander anthropologist who took a look at me and said: ‘Young man, I want you to keep records.’ He anointed me an instant gardener of official documents, and would refer to me as ‘the anointed one,’ when he spoke with his colleagues. He entrusted me to his wife, a very nice lady, who was much, much younger then and who has stayed committed to the Archives to date. She taught me everything I know about classifying documents and keeping history alive.”
The couple eventually retired to Muzunguland. Twenty years later, the lady, whose husband had by then passed away, came back to Mimboland for a conference and decided to stop by at the Archives.
“Not only was she surprised to find out I was still there, she wept at the state in which she saw the Archives.”
The roof was leaking, and rainwater and humidity had damaged lots of files. She turned to him, an angry look on her face. She needed an explanation.
“Without funds flowing from the government, and with my salary discontinued, there is little even a devoted mother can do…”
She understood. The theme of the conference she had just attended was all about that: The Missing State in Mimboland.
The government did not seem to notice the Archives. Nor did it bother about an archivist enfeebled by age and misery forced to trek kilometres to work five days a week to classify and register documents, repair files, dust, kill bookworms, chase rats and white ants and cockroaches, and attend to researchers without electricity, water or usable toilets.
He told her, “When I retired 10 years ago, there were at least nine employees. Now I am alone. As you can see some files are lying on the floor, some are not classified, most are at the mercy of rats, and every document is at risk because of the humidity and leaking roof. Even if the resources are there, this place needs at least twenty people to work effectively.”
He came short of adding that her husband would turn in his grave if he knew the state of his beloved Archives today.
“When the grand lady returned to Muzunguland, she raised funds and sent back the dehumidifier, the photocopier and the computer you see over there,” he gestured to machines covered in cobwebs and thick with dust.
“The photocopier has been helpful, but repeated power cuts have crippled it.”
Even the dehumidifier was temperamental, probably for the same reason. The lack of an uninterrupted power supply unit to control surges meant that he could hardly use the computer to ease his work. To make matters worse, a diskette got stuck in the computer.
With a wry smile he concludes: “Mimboland is not interested in heritage and the preservation of records. Some concerned university professors have struggled to have me paid to no avail.” Then, turning to Lilly Loveless, he teased seriously, “It is thanks to the generosity of researchers like you, that the willing horse continues to assume its burdens.”
Lilly Loveless pledged to do her modest best to help Prince Anointed keep body and soul together during her stay. She would also send emails back home to help raise funds for the Archives. She would start with her dad, librarian at the small public library in her hometown and active member of the Muzunguland Public Library Association.
With such music to his ears, Prince Anointed pledged to facilitate her research in whatever way he could, including allowing her, exceptionally, to photocopy outside of the Archives documents of interest to her work.
“Write down your research topic for me, and I’ll start ferreting for you right away,” he told Lilly Loveless.
She did.
Good hearted outsiders always try to help, but our selfishness kills it all, Dr Wiseman Lovemore thought to himself, bitter about a country that had become like white ants to its history.
