Dangerous Love (24 page)

Uncle Maki, moving his lips wordlessly, waving the red umbrella around, looked absolutely stunned at the torrent of insinuations.

Omovo's father finished by saying: ‘And to make matters worse you come here, wake me up, and abuse my wife in front of the people of the compound!'

Uncle Maki made a brave effort to speak, but the compound men had begun pushing him. Their eyes were red and their fingers itched for some action.

‘Go!'

‘Yes, leave!'

‘Leave before we roast you alive.'

‘Leave with your stupid umbrella,' the men said.

Uncle Maki pushed them back. Then facing Omovo's father, waving the umbrella menacingly, he said: ‘Let no one touch me. I am just coming from church and I don't want trouble.'

‘Then stop waving that thing in my eyes. Or you want to blind me?'

Completely misunderstanding Omovo's father's mood, unaware of his depression, his financial pressures, his acute sense of betrayal, Uncle Maki said: ‘It's my umbrella. I'll do what I want with it.'

Omovo's father's voice changed. ‘Is that so?' Then snapping his fingers commandingly, he said: ‘Blackie, go fetch my machete.'

Blackie went into the sitting room. Omovo ducked back in. He heard her fumbling around the cupboards. Then he heard her footsteps go past. When he looked again his father was holding the machete.

‘Useless relatives!' he was saying. ‘Thieves and gossips. Pharisees! Troublemakers! Hypocrites!'

Omovo felt trapped. He couldn't just watch helplessly and he couldn't go out then because, with his father now riding his favourite grievances, his presence would only be inflammatory.

‘Don't call me a hypocrite! And I am not a Sadducee!'

‘Pharisee, I said.'

‘Eh, I am not a Pharisee. I am a good Christian and I pray to my God every day.'

‘And then on Sunday, when God is resting,' Tuwo added drunkenly in his most artificial accent, ‘you go and make trouble with your umbrella!'

The men burst out laughing. Uncle Maki raised the sharp point of the umbrella at the men in an aggressive gesture.

‘You want to fence, eh?' Tuwo said.

‘Don't mind him,' someone else put in. ‘He wants to jump fence with his old umbrella.'

‘You want fence with machete, eh?' Tuwo continued.

The assistant deputy bachelor, balancing his bottle of beer in one hand, knocked the umbrella from under his nose with the other. It hit the wall near Omovo's father. There was a strange silence as Omovo's father gave a cry of indignation, lifted the machete high, and held it frozen in the air. Everyone stayed still. Then, suddenly, Uncle Maki's wife cried out. Omovo's father, letting out air and shouting ‘hypocrite' at the same moment, swung the machete at the umbrella. The crowd scattered. The men yelled. The women screamed. The umbrella was knocked clean out of Uncle Maki's hand and it flew open as it touched the ground. The men burst out laughing again. The umbrella was a sorry object, in tatters, rickety, stained with rust, full of holes. Uncle Maki picked it up and kept trying to shut it, but it kept flying open. Eventually his wife came and seized it from him and snapped it shut in a single gesture. Then she began to push her husband out of the compound.

At first he didn't want to leave. He talked. The men talked back. They began to squabble. One of the women said that it was Sunday and matters should be settled ‘amicably'. Blackie hissed and went into the sitting room and followed the proceedings from the window. The men crowded Uncle Maki, who made vague threats at Omovo's dad. Another voice said something which was lost in the confusion. Uncle Maki made another vague comment about money owed him from the distant past by Omovo's father. Silence followed as the fact was digested. Omovo's father erupted again and lunged in Uncle Maki's direction, but was restrained by Tuwo. Uncle Maki began to leave the compound, dragged by his wife who abused him for all the fuss he had started in the name of an innocent visit.

Meanwhile Tuwo finally managed to get the machete from Omovo's dad. As soon as Uncle Maki left the compound, under a hail of biblical abuse from Omovo's father, and blamed by his wife, the men started to chant the compound's work songs, praising and teasing their ‘Captain'. Omovo's father, having made his arresting public gesture, stormed to his bedroom. Omovo was obliged to hide again. When he reappeared, with the intention of going out now that things had settled, he saw that Tuwo had brought the machete in. He gave it to Blackie, and lingered. Her face was overcast. Omovo hurriedly passed them and went to meet his talkative relations.

‘Eh-heh!' cried his uncle when he saw Omovo. ‘This is the person I came to see! I didn't come to visit that witch who drove my sister to her death and that man who asks me to leave the dirty parlour he calls his house…'

Omovo stamped his foot and shouted: ‘For God's sake, Uncle, you are insulting my own father, you know!'

There was an ugly silence. His relations looked dourly at him, then looked away. His uncle tramped out of the compound front, stumbling over an empty Coke can. The crowd watched for a while and, seeing that the afternoon's drama had ended, returned to their various chores and recreations.

Omovo stood still for a while, allowing his anger to settle. Then he followed his uncle. In the middle of the street his uncle, his uncle's wife, and their three children were waiting. His uncle stood away from his irritated wife. He kept readjusting his coat, which was tight at the armpits, the material frayed and scuffed. He sweated profusely. His white shirt was covered in patches of wetness. His baggy trousers, his dusty black shoes with the sole of his right foot coming away, his frayed umbrella, his kola-nut-stained underlips, the parting in his hair and the pietistic bearing of his head made of him a picture of stiff-necked provinciality.

His wife and children also looked self-consciously attired, as if they had brought clothes out of the bottom of boxes, meant only for special occasions. His wife's face was sweaty and serious. She wore a gash of cheap lipstick, with cheap beads round her neck. The powder had run on her face. She wore a green blouse, a multi-coloured wrapper, and carried a black handbag. The strap of her slippers had burst and she walked uncomfortably. The two children, clinging to their mother's wrapper, looked miserable and hungry. They were barefoot.

Omovo greeted the wife and children. They greeted him back, somewhat sulkily. Omovo desperately wanted them to simply disappear. He hadn't seen them in years and when he did they always managed to drive him to extremes of distraction. His uncle said in a tone of complaint:

‘We were just coming from our church meeting, we were passing your place and I said as it is Sunday we should just come and see how you are. Then I received that nonsense.'

Omovo said nothing – he merely gritted his teeth.

‘You are here in this hell, eh, and you don't come and visit us. But when we come and visit you we receive all that nonsense.'

‘Dat's enough, hah!' his wife said. ‘Can't you leave something alone sef?'

‘Why? The man called me a thief.'

His wife sucked her teeth. ‘You talk too much sef. Ah-ha! You go and visit and then begin to quarrel with your in-law's wife, ah wetin!'

‘Look, Ester, shut your goat mouth, you hear!'

Omovo stopped listening to them. He fell back behind them and began to concentrate on things around him. He temporarily retreated into another state of being, soaking in phenomena, looking at the street with the eyes of a stranger. A Mini drove past and filled the air with dust and smoke. The sun burnt in the clear sky. The ground was so hot that Omovo could feel the heat through his sandals. He wondered how the children bore it. There were heat-mists in the air and the faces of passers-by looked hollow and dried up.

He wanted to be away from his relatives. They made the heat get on his nerves. Their presence intruded on the revelatory moment that seemed about to break on him. Frustrated, he kept fretting with his fingers. And as he looked at the street with the eyes of a stranger, trying to keep the frustration at bay, possibilities of observed details that could be turned into art kept presenting themselves to him. The yellow scumpool, dense with effluvium. The askew lines of sun-bleached stalls. The face of a child absorbed in its play. Birds dipping past him. Suddenly a swell of rapture, of golden joy, burst on him from within. And for a moment nothing seemed ordinary. His mind stilled a bird's passage through space. It became a black flash of the extraordinary. He saw the white quills within its black ruffs and saw its feet tucked beneath its quivering tail. When he looked down he saw that he had just missed stepping onto a lump of excrement on the ground.

‘So, Omovo, how are you, eh?' his uncle said, slowing down.

‘I'm fine.'

‘How fine?'

‘Fine. Okay. Well.'

‘Is it true you've got a job?'

‘Yes.'

‘Good. Where?'

‘At a chemical company.'

‘That's nice. When?'

‘Six months now.'

‘Is that so? Good. Is that why we don't see you any more, eh? Now that you are earning money you begin to avoid your relations, eh?'

‘That's not true. I've been very busy.'

‘Too busy to come to church and worship God. Too busy to come to our town's meeting and make your contributions. Too busy to visit us, eh?'

‘Things are hard.'

‘But you said things are fine.'

‘They are hard.'

‘But you've got a job, a roof over your head, you're not married, have no children and things are hard?'

‘Yes.'

His uncle gave a short laugh. ‘Ester,' he called, ‘are you hearing what Omovo is saying?'

‘Yes. Yes.'

He turned back to Omovo. ‘So what wrong have we done that you don't want to come and see us, eh?'

‘Nothing.'

‘We are your people, you know.'

‘I know.'

‘Come and visit us from time to time.'

‘I will.'

‘Fine.'

They walked in silence. Then Omovo said: ‘How are the children?'

‘As you see them.'

‘And how are you?'

‘I can't complain. Our life is in God's hands.'

‘Is work well?'

‘I can't grumble. What God gives we are grateful to receive.'

Another silence. His uncle brought out a filthy handkerchief, blew his nose so hard it sounded like a faulty musical instrument, then he stared at Omovo and drew closer to him. Omovo could smell the camphor balls on his coat and his hair oil.

‘Omovo,' he said. ‘Are you all right?'

‘I'm fine.'

‘Are you sure?'

‘Yes.'

‘And they are not doing anything bad to you in the house? Your father's wife, I mean.'

‘I'm okay.'

‘And nothing bad has happened?'

‘I'm well.'

‘So why did you shave your head, eh? People only do that in mourning or when something bad has happened.'

‘Uncle, it was an accident.'

‘Accident?'

‘A mistake. The barber was a fool.'

‘Are you sure?'

‘Yes.'

‘It's not that you've been thinking too much about your poor mother?'

Omovo suppressed an irritated gesture. ‘Of course I think about my mother.'

‘Thank God.'

‘But that's not why I shaved my head. It was a mistake.'

‘You said so. But you look old and tired. Lean. If your mother saw you now she wouldn't stop crying. She suffered so much because of you, her children. So much. Bore so much. Fought so much. She was a brave woman. She wanted to make sure all of you led a good life. But if she saw how things…'

‘Uncle, please!'

‘Believe me, if she saw how things have become...'

‘Please!'

There was a short silence.

‘Do you hear from your brothers?'

Perversely, Omovo replied: ‘No.'

‘What sort of life is this, eh? But we mustn't complain. Poor boy. Who can tell what this life will bring, eh? Things used to be so good for all of you. We thought your father would be a big businessman with plenty of money. A man who would help us all. You used to live in Yaba, then you moved to the best part of the city. Then when your mother died things began to go badly. What a life! Your brothers were driven out into the world. No news from them all this time. Ah! You must be very lonely in that house. It's clear your father doesn't care about you. He's only got eyes for his new wife. She has dragged him down. Why not come and stay with us instead of suffering where you are?'

‘Thank you, Uncle, for asking. You are kind. A true Christian. But I can't accept your offer.'

‘I understand. We are poor. We live in one room in a worse part of Lagos than this.'

‘It's not that.'

‘I know we are poor. Can't give you a room of your own. You would have to sleep on the mat with the children. But it's better than hell.'

‘Thank you, Uncle.'

‘If you change your mind...
'

‘I will remember.'

His uncle shook his head pityingly. ‘Your mother was a good woman. A very kind woman. Died just like that. And meanwhile your father was busy with another woman. Honestly. Poor boy...'

His uncle carried on in the same vein, endlessly, as if he wanted the entire planet and the sandy road to bear witness to the depth of his sympathies. Omovo, forcing down the screaming in his mind, said in a gentle voice:

‘Uncle, you are wounding me.'

His uncle didn't seem to hear him.

‘I know how you feel. I do. So you have not heard from your brothers. You were all so lucky as children. Sent to good schools. We thought you would become lawyers, doctors, engineers. Ah! Only God almighty knows where your brothers are now. America, England, Ghana? What are they doing? Who knows how much they are suffering in some strange country? They could even be dead, God forbid…'