Dangerous Love (39 page)

‘What are you looking at? Hurry! I don't have all day. Or do you want me to bribe you first, eh?'

Omovo grinned. ‘That won't be necessary,' he said.

‘Good.'

‘Because you and your girlfriend can drink piss – and enjoy it!'

The rep's mouth hung open in astonishment.

‘And watch your mouth. A fly might dive into it,' Omovo added.

Without awaiting a reply he pushed on. He left the offices and said goodbye to the gateman. He didn't feel so sad any more. He felt brave. Outside, the dense heat startled him. The smell of diesel oil rose from the overflowing gutters. There were traffic jams on all the roads. Two men were fighting near a shoe shop. He noticed a policeman secretively accepting a bribe from a defaulting taxi driver. There were many flies and midges in the air. But he felt the double liberation of having quit work and of recovering from his fever.

He stopped outside Valentino's Restaurant. He had always gone past it, looking in wistfully. The windows were tinted and it seemed plush inside. He had always wanted to go in and order himself a lavish three-course meal. For the first time he had enough money. ‘Why not now?' he thought. He pushed open the doors and went in.

The air conditioner blasted cold air in his face. The restaurant was as comfortable as it looked. It was elaborately decorated. Bad paintings hung on the semi-marbled walls. The lights were blue, the music tinkled from the ceiling and there was a glass goldfish tank. There were armchairs, sofas, and cushion chairs covered with imitation velvet materials. He found a table and sat. A waiter soon came over.

‘What will it be, sir?'

‘I haven't looked at the menu yet.'

‘Take your time, sir.' The waiter, a middle-aged man in a blue and red uniform, bowed away stiffly.

The menu was almost entirely alien to him. He was a little confused by the exotic food names. Starters: pâté maison, mushrooms a la Grecque, stuffed courgettes. He decided to skip the starters. Main courses: poussin chasseur, tournedos maison, escalope de veal à la crème, entrecôte poivre, eminces de cabestu, scampi Provençale, avocado vinaigrette, pizza, chicken salad, jollof rice and pounded yam. He cursed his poor knowledge of international cuisine. And yet he didn't want to settle for the merely familiar.

‘Have you made up your mind now, sir?' the waiter said, mysteriously reappearing in the midst of his confusion.

‘Oh yes. Emm. I'll have pizza, chicken salad and jollof rice.'

A mocking smile crossed the waiter's face. ‘Any wines? Starters? Sweets?'

‘Sweets? What sweets? Oh. No sweets for me.'

‘Fine, sir. Wines? Starters?'

‘No starters.'

‘Can I suggest the stuffed courgettes, sir?'

‘Nothing stuffed for me, thank you.'

The waiter coughed. Discreetly. ‘Wines, sir?'

‘Wine?'

‘That's right, sir.'

‘Emm. Red wine. No, white wine. Cancel that. Just a glass of water, please.'

‘Just water.'

‘That's right.'

‘Fine.'

‘And please…'

‘Yes, sir?'

‘I am not a sir.'

‘As you please.'

The waiter bowed away. Omovo gave a sigh of relief. He had begun to sweat. As he sat waiting for the food he remembered something Dele had said:

‘If you ever despair of going abroad, just step into a good restaurant and you are as good as there.'

He smiled at the memory. Who despairs of going abroad? he thought. He wondered if Dele had gone to the USA. He wondered how Okoro, who desperately wanted to join him, was taking it. He thought about how intensely the new symbol of progress had become going abroad – to the USA, to London, or Paris. He didn't have the desire to go abroad. He wanted to stay home and bear witness. His brothers had both gone: if he went too who would keep the home front? Who would provide the continuity? Besides: where would he go, what would he do, who would pay his college fees? He envied the solidity that could belong to people like Keme: that of knowing the landscape, being seasoned by it, wrestling with its changes, watching its unfolding history, staying the course. It was the solidity he needed – that of working a fruitful but demanding tract of land. Yes. He would set his sails to the fortunes and rigours of art. He would grow in the landscapes, earth himself. How was he to know that he had chosen the most terrible path?

He looked around at the other clientele. A group at a big table caught his interest. Three white men seemed to be having a confused discussion with two Nigerians. They mixed badly. The white men were lightly dressed. The Nigerians wore suits and ties and they sweated. They were businessmen. The white men sat in a semi-circle and wholly dominated the table. They crowded the Nigerians with words in strange accents and with the tone of their voices. They were all sunburnt and they spoke loudly, in the manner of people who think that what they have to say is intrinsically interesting. Omovo picked up bits of their conversation and was amazed. One of the white men had come to work with an oil company. He said:

‘Our people still think of you as savages. You are remarkably civilised.'

One of the Nigerians, who obviously hadn't understood what was said, burst out laughing. The other one said: ‘Pardon me?'

The second white man, Scottish, was returning home.

‘Had enough of this place. It's a mess. You could run your country better,' he growled.

The first Nigerian laughed again, beating his hand on his thigh. The second one looked away.

The third white man was a journalist. He wore a massive wrist watch. Turning to his companions, a bored disdainful expression on his mean face, he said: ‘I've come to write about the English abroad. For
The Times,
you know.'

‘What about the natives?' the oil worker asked.

‘Who? Oh them. They've got their independence now. They can take care of themselves.'

‘But their country is a mess.'

‘Still very civilised though. A friendly people.'

The Nigerian businessmen smiled through the exchange as if they were being polite at uncomprehended jokes. They kept looking around the restaurant as if they hoped someone who knew them would see them in their elevated company. And when they spoke, trying as they were to sound like the white men, they got their accents mixed up. The whole exchange at the table was composed entirely of misunderstandings. It was only the embarrassed laughter of the more unctuous of the two businessmen that relieved the uneasy atmosphere.

By the time the waiter brought Omovo's food he was furious. He burnt with rage. He thought about Ifeyiwa and the border clashes involving her village, how the ancestors of these white men had created the problem a hundred years before. He wondered at their insolence, their arrogance. Their exchanges had all but destroyed his appetite. Who despairs of going abroad? he asked himself again. If the white men were so insensitive in other people's countries how would they be in theirs? He was furious and he wanted to get up and scream at them, insult them, but managed to control himself with a great effort of will. His hands trembled. He drank the glass of water and breathed deeply. When the moment passed he tried to concentrate on the food. He was disappointed with the pizza, which he couldn't finish. In the end he ate very little. He ordered a Chapman. He drank and tried not to listen to the loud voices from the other table. Suddenly he wanted to escape, to get some air. He called for his bill.

When he saw it he could have fallen off his chair. The bills came to a fifth of his salary. With a set face he collected his change. The waiter stood beside his table longer than necessary, attracting attention to him. The white men stared at him. Omovo ignored them. He wiped his mouth with the serviette and smiled at the waiter. As he got up one of the businessmen released again his explosive laughter. The white men looked at one another, bewildered.

The journalist said: ‘I might put in a word or two about their sense of humour.'

‘You need one in a place like this,' the Scotsman said. ‘Or you'd go bloody bonkers!'

The quieter businessman said: ‘When I was in London...'

The whole table, indeed the whole restaurant, went silent.

‘…I saw a fat woman dragged across the road by a small dog.'

The voices resumed their conversation. The pointless remark was ignored. The waiter blocked Omovo's exit. His neck retained its stiffness, his eyes were determined, and he stared at Omovo. When Omovo dropped twenty kobo on the plate the waiter smiled.

‘I hope you enjoyed the dish – sir?'

Omovo, convinced that the waiter had rigged the bill, swearing that he would never eat there again, fled from the restaurant with the supercilious voices of the white men ringing in his ears.

As he went home, he felt himself sweating. When he got to the Apapa residential area he found that he had to struggle against the current of the second wave of the ‘exodus'. The workers were pouring out for their afternoon and night shifts. He pushed against the grain of the people, against the mass of the crowds. He felt their urgencies, their violences, their fears. It took him a long time to get to Waterside. The crowd pushed him this way and that. He watched their faces, noted their infinite permutations of resilience and suffering. He noted the muscles beneath their clothes, the shapes of noses, the shadings of eye colours, the ruggedness of their jaws, the curious stains on faded shirts. He looked at the affluent surroundings, and through the well-cut hedges and whistling pines he saw the expatriate white kids watching the crowd through binoculars, secure on their balconies.

As he struggled against the waves of bodies that could easily have trampled him underfoot, he felt his armpits getting wet, felt his shirt sticking to his back, felt the dampness of his socks. Then he felt something drop on his shoulder, a wet weight. He looked and saw birdshit. He glanced upwards and saw nothing in the immediate expanse of the sky. He felt marked in some way. It was a very bright afternoon.

When he got home from the office, Blackie met him in the sitting room.

‘Do you know Ifeyiwa has run away?' she asked, gently.

Omovo's face contorted. He felt sick. ‘When?'

‘No one knows. Her husband thinks it was this morning. He came to look for you. I hope say he no go make trouble.'

Omovo was silent.

‘She was a fine girl.'

‘She was unhappy.'

‘Why?'

Omovo didn't say.

At the backyard the compound people were gathered. Takpo was wailing about Ifeyiwa's abandonment. His voice quivered. Tuwo was trying to comfort him with proverbs. The women advised him to go after her and ‘iron' things with her parents. It was a noisy gathering; everyone contributed their opinion of where she might have gone, what should be done. Some suggested he go to the police. Others thought he should be patient. Omovo, unfortunately, went past on his way to the toilet. There fell an immediate accusatory silence. All the faces turned on him, the eyes bored into him. Someone said:

‘Men of the compound! Watch your wives-o! There are thieves around-o!'

Someone else said: ‘Hah, quiet people are the most dangerous.'

Takpo pushed through the gathering. The women screamed. The men tried to hold him back, but he shook them off. He stood very close to Omovo, their faces almost touching. He breathed heavily into Omovo's nose. He smelt of ogogoro. His eyes were bloodshot and wide open, his mouth twitched. His face was pitifully shrunken.

‘Omovo?'

‘Yes?'

‘My wife don run leave me, you hear? Ifeyiwa has run away, you hear?'

‘Yes.'

‘She run away and leave me one small note on paper, you understand? You see what you've done to my life? You see wetin you don cause, eh?'

Omovo was silent. He lowered his head.

‘I saw both of you when you entered that house. I saw you with my own two eyes, you hear me so? You see what you've done to me, eh?'

Omovo moved backwards.

‘Okay, I'm an old man. Now I'm finished. Are you satisfied, eh? Are you? So what did both of you plan, eh? What's the plan?'

Omovo shook his head. Takpo continued, blasting his hot breath at Omovo.

‘Do you know how much I paid on that girl's head, eh? If you sell all your things you can't pay her bride price. I try to make her happy, I try everything, I gave am money, I buy am jewellery, I open shop for am, I give am gold, I buy am books, I look after am as if she be princess. But look now. Because of you she take my money, took all my money, took all the things I do for am and then she run away. You see what you've done to my life, eh?'

Omovo stayed still. He held his breath. He was baffled.

Takpo turned to the crowd, raising his hands, lifting his voice, in gestures of great agony. ‘How can a man know what's in a woman's mind, eh? How? How can a man understand a woman, tell me-o! I want to know!'

He turned back to Omovo. ‘All that time she was with me, all that time it was you, YOU, she was thinking of, eh? Maybe that's why she refused to be pregnant! What was your plan, I want to know! I want to know…'

Suddenly, overcome by anger, Takpo fell on Omovo and slapped him, kicked him, scratched him, spat on him, wailing like a madman. Omovo bore it all without moving or flinching. Takpo began lashing out with his fists and shouted: ‘I'm going to kill you! I'll hire people to kill you! Bring back my wife-o! Bring her back!'

The compound men swarmed in and pulled them apart. Omovo bled from the wound on his forehead. Long scratch marks ran down his cheeks. He went to the bathroom and washed his face. Then he went past the crowd again to his room. He sat and stared out of the window.

He sat motionless for a long time. The voices died down in the backyard. But Takpo went on shouting. After a while his voice also quietened. On an impulse Omovo got up and packed a bag. He, too, would go away. Some time ago Keme had given him the name and address of a friend's family in B–, a seaside town outside Lagos, who might rent him a room. Omovo had often told of his need to find somewhere outside the city where he could paint.