I Do Not Come to You by Chance (14 page)

‘No, I haven’t.’

He laughed. The same brief, staccato laugh.

‘If you see that car . . . turn the key in the ignition, then you’ll know what a car really is.’

Then he told me much, much more about his cars. About the ones he used only twice a year and the ones he used once a week. He told me about his frequent trips abroad and how he planned to buy a private jet; about how he was going to take flying lessons so that he could fly his private jet by himself. I sat there, looking and listening without being allowed to contribute a word. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you a man who loved the sound of his own voice.

I stifled a yawn.

The intercom on his desk bleeped. He stopped talking and leaned forward to push a button.

‘Speak to me!’

‘Cash Daddy, World Bank is here.’

The lady’s announcement was punctuated by the bursting open of the office door. Cash Daddy sprang up like a jack-in-the-box.

‘Heeeeeeeeeeee!’ he shouted.

‘Cash Daddy!’ the man who stormed in yelled. ‘It’s just a matter of cash!’

‘Bank! Bank!’ Cash Daddy hailed back. ‘World Bank International! ’

This was obviously one of Cash Daddy’s friends who also suffered from elephantiasis of the pocket. He was wearing a cream suit, a diamond-studded wristwatch, several sparkly chains around his neck, and yellow alligator-skin shoes with white, blue, pink, green, and purple strips across the front. He was holding a gold-plated walking stick and had a unique variety of bowler hat sitting on his head. Both men slapped hands, hugged shoulders, exchanged pleasantries, hailed each other’s nicknames several times. Finally, World Bank perched himself on the edge of Cash Daddy’s desk, with one of his colourful shoes on the seat beside me and the other dangling close to my shin. The navy-blue-suited young man who had accompanied him stood a respectful few paces behind.

‘This is my brother,’ Cash Daddy said, gesturing towards me.

‘Good afternoon, sir,’ I said.

‘Really! No wonder. He looks like you.’

‘Me?’ Cash Daddy replied with horror. ‘God forbid. How can you say he looks like me? Can’t you see how his neck is hanging like a vulture’s neck?’

Both men laughed.

‘He’s a fine young man, he’s a fine young man,’ World Bank said, ‘just that he’s too thin.’

‘He’s a university graduate,’ Cash Daddy replied.

‘Ah!’

They laughed again. Perhaps it was natural to find all sorts of silly things funny when you had a pocketful of cash.

‘I’ve been meaning to stop by for a long time,’ World Bank said, ‘but somehow, things kept happening to prevent me. My wedding is on the twenty-third of August. I decided to do everything on the same day.’

‘You’re a wicked man!’ Cash Daddy shouted. ‘A very, very wicked man! You have money, yet you don’t want to spend it. Why are you running away from throwing three different parties for us? How much is it? Instead, tell me what it will cost, let me pay for everything.’

World Bank guffawed and almost toppled into my lap.

‘Cash Daddy, you know money is not my problem,’ he said, steadying himself with his walking stick. ‘I’m just trying to be wise. I’ve learnt from my experience with my current wives. I don’t want to repeat my mistakes.’

He explained that his first wife always wanted to attend major functions as his companion since she saw herself as the senior wife. She also insisted on being the one to sleep with him in the master bedroom on some nights, when he preferred to have only the second wife in bed with him.

‘I don’t want any of these ones to come into my house and start giving me trouble about who is the senior wife and who is the junior wife,’ World Bank said. ‘If I marry three of them on the same day, they’ll know from Day One that they are all equals.’

‘That’s very smart,’ Cash Daddy said. ‘That’s really very smart.’

World Bank looked hurt.

‘But Cash Daddy, how can you talk like this? You know I’m a very smart man.’

‘Of course, of course.’

They laughed. I wondered how the names of the three brides, the names of their three sets of parents, the names of their three villages . . . would all fit into the traditional wedding ceremony invitation card. World Bank’s cellular phone rang. He looked at the screen and hissed.

‘These people won’t let me rest. One of the girls I’m marrying, the other day, her mother told me she wants a camcorder. Almost every day, she calls to ask when I’m bringing it. I didn’t run away when she told me they wanted to renovate their house, I didn’t run away when she told me she wanted to open a nursery school. Why should I start running away simply because of an ordinary camcorder? ’

‘Just be a man and bear it,’ Cash Daddy said to console him. ‘You know that relatives are the cause of hip disease.’

‘Ah. Cash Daddy, you need to see this girl. She’s just sixteen, but if you see her buttocks . . . rolling! Just give her another two to three years, that body will become something out of this world.’

I coughed. Honestly, a stray particle had found its way down the wrong passage. Cash Daddy misinterpreted.

‘Ah, Kings! That’s true. You’re going back to Umuahia today.’

‘No, no—’

‘Protocol Officer!’

I was jolted. The man reappeared through the door.

‘Yes, Cash Daddy.’

‘Give this man some money.’

He told him how much. My eyes gasped.

‘Cash Daddy, what currency?’ Protocol Officer asked.

My uncle’s phone rang.

‘Give him naira,’ he said, with eyes on the screen.

‘Thank you, Cash Daddy,’ I said. The outrageous nickname had slipped out of my mouth very smoothly.

‘Greet your mummy for me,’ he said and cleared his throat. ‘Hello!’ he said to the person at the other end of the phone. ‘Mr Rumsfeld! I was just about to ring you now!’

In the outer office, I waited by the fax machine near Cash Daddy’s closed door while Protocol Officer whisked out a key from his socks and unlocked a metal cabinet. He withdrew some bundles and started counting. I tried hard not to watch. For solace, my eyes turned to the sheet of paper on the fax machine tray.

Protocol Officer was relocking the cabinet. He inserted some cash into a brown envelope and handed it to me.

‘Thank you very much,’ I said, and stuffed the booty into my trouser pocket.

‘Thank God,’ he replied.

Truly, it is natural to find all sorts of silly things funny when you have a pocketful of cash. All through the journey home, I studied my new shoes and giggled endlessly about the Nigerian astronaut stranded in outer space.

When I showed my mother the envelope’s contents, she raised her two hands up to heaven and sang, ‘Great Is Thy Faithfulness O Lord.’

The Lord’s faithfulness showed up again. Godfrey returned from the post office one morning and started screaming from the kitchen.

‘I passed! I passed! I passed!’

All of us rushed out. He had just received his admission letter to study Electrical Engineering at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka.

I became worried.

It was good that Godfrey had written the JAMB and passed, it was good that he had scored enough for admission into one of the best universities in the country. On the other hand, it was not good that a fresh expense had been introduced into our lives when we were still doing battle with the current ones.

I forced myself to see the cup half-full rather than half-empty.

‘Congratulations,’ I said, grabbing his arm and pumping it up and down.

‘Thank you,’ he said and grinned.

Charity and Eugene joined in his jubilations. While he waved the admission letter high above his head like the captain of the Brazilian football team at the World Cup finals, they clapped their hands and stamped their feet and skipped about the living room.

I felt sorry for all of them.

 

Godfrey accompanied me to the hospital that day.

‘Why don’t you tell your daddy?’ my mother suggested. ‘I’m sure he’ll be very pleased to hear the good news.’

Godfrey rolled his eyes.

‘I’m serious,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t matter whether he’s awake or not. It would be nice if you told him.’

Surprisingly, Godfrey agreed. Today was probably his day off from rebellion. I could understand my mother’s eagerness for her husband to share in the good news. Like all of us, Godfrey was intelligent, but he constantly seemed to have his focus broken by the lesser cares of life such as girls and parties and rap music.

‘Come and sit on the bed,’ my mother said, indicating a small space at the edge of her husband’s mattress.

Godfrey sat. My mother took his right hand and placed it in my father’s right palm, careful not to disturb the wires and tubes. Then she returned to her chair and watched.

‘Go on,’ she said.

‘Daddy,’ Godfrey began awkwardly. He looked at me helplessly and back at our father in bed. ‘I just want to tell you that I’ve got my admission letter into Nsukka.’

He looked at my mother. She jerked her head and twisted her eyes in encouragement. Godfrey twisted his eyes and jerked his head questioningly.

‘Tell him that they gave you your first choice,’ she whispered.

‘Daddy, they gave me my first choice. They gave me Electrical Engineering.’

Godfrey looked at my mother again. I chuckled quietly. My mother threw me a frown. My chuckling diminished to a loud smile. Godfrey’s grace expired.

‘Mummy, I need to go,’ he said, and stood. ‘I want to go and barber my hair before it gets late.’

After he left, I turned to my mother.

‘How come you suddenly think he can hear what we say? Does it mean he’s been hearing everything we’ve been saying all this while?’

‘I know it might not make sense to you,’ she replied with cool confidence, like someone who knew what others did not. ‘But I just felt that something like this should not be left to wait.’ She paused. ‘Sometimes, when I have something very important to tell him, I do it when we’re alone in the middle of the night, when everywhere is quiet.’

‘Maybe I should try talking to him as well,’ I said.

My mother looked searchingly at me. She was not sure whether I was teasing or not.

I sat beside my father on the space that Godfrey had just vacated. I lifted his hand and rubbed the emaciated fingers tenderly. He had lost several layers of tissue, lying there these past weeks. I gazed into his face.

‘Daddy, don’t worry,’ I said, almost whispering. ‘We’ll manage somehow, OK?’

I massaged the hand some more and entwined my fingers in between my father’s own. My mother smiled softly and made a sign. She was going outside, probably to give me some privacy.

‘Don’t worry about Godfrey’s school fees,’ I said after she left. ‘I know the money will come somehow. I know I’m going to start work very soon. It shouldn’t be difficult once I move to Port Harcourt.’

My father continued inhaling and exhaling noisily without stirring. Two days ago, my mother claimed that she had seen him move his right leg sometime during the night, but nobody else had witnessed any other movement.

‘Daddy, please hurry up and—’

A nurse walked in.

‘I saw your mother leaving,’ she said.

‘She’s just gone out briefly. Is there anything?’

‘The doctor wants to see you in his office.’

‘Why?’

‘It’s best if you speak with the doctor directly.’

I hurried out.

When I entered the consulting room and saw the well-dressed, middle-aged physician, my heart started pounding like a locomotive. This particular doctor only made cameo appearances on the ward. Doctors like him had little time to spare on Government Hospital patients who were not paying even a fraction of the fees that the patients in their private practices were. Usually, it was the lesser, hungry-looking, shabbily dressed doctors who attended to us.

‘I’m sorry I don’t have very exciting news for you,’ he began as soon as my behind touched the seat in front of his desk. ‘Your father has been here for a while now and we’re starting to have some challenges with keeping him here.’

‘Doctor, we pay our money and buy all the things you—’ I began.

‘Oh, certainly, certainly,’ he reassured me, nodding his head rapidly. ‘I’m glad to say that we haven’t had that kind of problem with you people at all.’