I Do Not Come to You by Chance (30 page)

It was not until about noon the following day that I was finally able to lift myself out of bed and answer my phone. It was my mother.

‘Kingsley!’ she said with fire in her voice.

‘Mummy.’

‘You’re still sleeping?’

‘I’m a bit tired,’ I mumbled.

‘Kings, are you well?’ she asked with concern.

‘I’m fine.’

‘What’s the matter? Are you sure—’

‘Mummy, I’m fine.’

She paused. She remembered why she had called. Her voice resumed its initial fire.

‘Kingsley, why didn’t you tell me?’

‘Why didn’t I tell you what?’

‘I saw on the news last night that Boniface is contesting for governor. Is it true?’

Agreed, the Nigerian media were experts at conjuring headline news out of incidents that never happened, but surely my mother must have seen Cash Daddy declaring his good intentions to the world with his very own mouth.

‘Yes, he’s contesting.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me in advance?’

‘I didn’t? I thought I did.’

‘No, you didn’t.’

‘Oh.’

There was a pause.

‘Kings, have you started looking for another job?’

‘I’m working on it.’

‘That’s what you told me the last time.’

‘Mummy, I’m working on it.’

‘Where and where have you applied to?’

‘Different places.’

‘Does it mean not one of them has called you in for an interview yet?’

‘Mummy, you know how Nigeria is.’

‘Kings, please, please, please. Find a proper job. I don’t understand this so-called work you say you’re doing for Boniface. You know Nigerian politics is very dangerous.’

‘Mummy, I’m not in any way involved in his campaign. Stop worrying yourself unnecessarily.’

‘There’s no way you can be working with him and not—’

‘Mummy, I need to go now. I’ll talk to you some other time.’

‘Remember you promised your fa—’

It was only a matter of time before she would come round. I returned to Camille. In a short while, I forgot everything about my dead father and my worried mother. I was transported to another galaxy.

Mr Edgar Hooverson’s was a typical case of gambler’s fallacy. Every additional payment had simply increased his commitment, the need to win money had kept him going.

But at last, all the mind-bending was taking its toll. After paying $16,000 for lawyer’s fees, $19,000 for a Change of Beneficiary Certificate, $14,500 for Security Company Tariff, $21,000 for Transfer of Ownership, $11,900 for courier charges, $23,000 for Customs Clearance, $17,000 for Hague Authorisation, $9,000 for ECOWAS Duty, and $18,700 for insurance fees, his enthusiasm had started waning. The time was ripe to release the $58 million into his care.

My friend, Edgar, then sent me an email.

I had no reason to doubt Mr Hooverson’s experienced-ness as a businessman. He might even have been one of the most brilliant. After all, there were people renowned for their ability to remove tumours from tricky crevices in the human body, who were useless at changing their car tyres. Others could interpret every formula that Newton and Einstein had come up with, but could not tell the beginning or the end of the stock market. Any intelligent, experienced expert could become a mugu. It was all about the packaging.

The date that Mr Hooverson had chosen - just a few days before Charity’s matriculation - was actually not convenient for me. But our associates in Amsterdam advised that it was risky to postpone the meeting; Mr Hooverson’s desperation was dead ripe. Pity, I would have to rush back so soon. It would have been nice to check out all the outlandish stories Cash Daddy had narrated about the Red Light District in Amsterdam.

In Amsterdam, after checking into my hotel, I met my associates in a nearby cafe. Either of them could have been the Jude who had been in touch with Mr Hooverson.

They laughed when I would not take off my coat.

‘You should have worn a lighter coat,’ Amuche said. ‘This one you’re wearing is meant for the peak of winter.’

‘Anybody seeing you would know immediately that you’re a Johnny-just-come straight off the boat,’ Obideozor added.

‘I don’t think you people understand what I’m going through here,’ I said and shivered.

Both men laughed without control.

After a life of sweating it out in the blazing heat of tropical West Africa, nothing could have prepared me for the plummeting temperatures of this, my very first winter on earth. Suddenly, bits of puzzling information started making sense. At last, I understood the necktie - an item of clothing that had never previously made the slightest sense. I now knew that boots were more than a fashion statement. They were a lifesaver. And as the cold November air charged through the broad entrances to my nostrils, I remembered something my father had once said.

‘The white people’s narrow nostrils and pointed noses are not just to help them speak with a nasal accent,’ he had said. ‘It’s to help protect them against the cold.’

I rubbed my palms vigorously and wished that my nose was more pointed. My two associates continued being amused. I and Obideozor finished our cups of tea and headed out.

‘I’ll be waiting for your call,’ Amuche said.

 

We had planned everything right down to the smallest detail. I was the one to knock. The face that peeped out of the narrow space beside the open door when I did was exactly the same as the one in the Jpeg that Edgar Hooverson had sent.

‘Mr Hooverson?’

‘Yes?’ he replied sternly, like a female post office clerk.

‘Aluta Continua!’

His smile opened up like an umbrella. He pulled the door all the way. In his neat, old-fashioned suit, Mr Hooverson could easily have passed for a Baptist minister. He was a tall, handsome man who looked as if he had recently started feeding too often and too well. I was not quite sure about his age. He looked slightly older than a secondary school principal, but much younger than a grandfather. I noticed that his fingernails were bitten halfway down to the cuticles.

‘I’m Shehu Musa Abacha. This is Dr Wazobia. He was my late brother’s trusted chemist.’

Mr Hooverson’s smile flickered. He looked unsure of this new character. His mouth opened to ask a question; I grabbed him into a tight embrace.

‘Thank you,’ I said with tears in my voice. ‘Thank you very, very much for all your help towards my sister and my family.’

It is amazing the things we never know about ourselves, the skills that situations and circumstances drag out of us. In all my six years of secondary school, nobody had ever considered me for a single part in the yearly Inter-House Drama Competition. They said I was too set in my personality, they said I could not act. Now, here I was giving a performance that was on a par with any of Denzel Washington’s.

‘It’s my pleasure,’ he replied and hugged me back.

We remained in each other’s arms for several seconds. The whole thing had a certain United Nations touch.

‘My sister Mariam asked me to apologise for not being able to meet you herself,’ I said, as we went into the room.

‘Oh, I perfectly understand. I understand about the horrible situation in your country. It’s really very sad.’

I moved on to stage two.

‘When my sister rang the security company yesterday just to make sure that everything was in order, they told her that the only thing remaining is an anti-terrorist certificate.’

‘What! They never told me anything about that!’

‘I think it’s something new they just started implementing,’ Dr Wazobia said.

We told Mr Hooverson that we had raised $5,000 of our own money for the anti-terrorist certificate, and would pay the remaining $10,000 when the consignment arrived.

‘Oh, great,’ he sighed.

‘But they said we can only have part of the delivery until I pay them the remaining.’

‘How much would that be . . . Part of the delivery?’

‘It’s one of two trunk boxes,’ I replied. ‘That comes to exactly half of the $58 million.’

I could see the mathematics going through his head. Half of $58 million dollars was still over $25 million.

‘That seems like a perfect idea to me,’ he said and nodded. ‘Once we have the first trunk, we can then pay from that for the second trunk . . . Everyone is happy!’

I dug into my pocket and brought out an envelope of cash. I counted out fifty $100 bills in full view of everybody and handed them to Dr Wazobia, who then left to pay the anti-terrorists. He was supposed to return with the certificate, which we would then take to the security company. Then we would receive our trunk of millions.

Mr Hooverson and I were now alone.

‘How’s your sister doing?’ he asked in a tone of utmost concern.

My reply painted as pathetic a picture as I could conjure. Grunts of different shapes and sizes escaped from Mr Hooverson’s lips. By the time I finished, he was clutching his chest with grief. Did I say Denzel Washington? Make that an Eddie Murphy or an Al Pacino.

‘How sad,’ he said. ‘How very, very sad, I would have loved to pop over to Nigeria quickly and see her, but I need to be back in the US as soon as possible. I left him at home.’

While speaking, he reached into his wallet, extracted a photograph, and passed it on to me. I stared at the muscular, jet-black creature.

‘Is this your dog?’ I asked.

Mr Hooverson glared at me as if I had just called his mother a hermaphrodite. The skin on his face changed from the colour of boiled chicken to the colour of a baboon’s buttocks.

‘Don’t call him a dog!’ he howled with uncharacteristic, un-good-Samaritan-ish vexation. ‘His name is Kunta Kinte!’

My heart went pit-a-pat. Rapidly, I calculated how many leaps and bounds would get me to the door.

‘Kunta Kinte’s been through a lot,’ he said in a much softer voice. ‘He gets very agitated when I’m not at home. My new wife is really mean to him. She never lets him sleep in our bed.’

I was still clutching my heart between my teeth. My mind was already halfway down the valley of the shadow of death. I recalled all those stories about Americans who suddenly whipped out guns from grocery bags and started shooting everyone in sight. And from what I had seen on television, every American had at least one firearm. What if Mr Hooverson had come along with his gun? Would he shoot me if he happened to find out right here that all this was a scam? Would he shoot himself afterwards or live to tell the story? Would the shooting event make it to CNN or BBC? Would it be on the NTA 9 o’clock news?

What would my mother say when she saw it? I started losing weight right there in my seat.

Mr Hooverson went on to narrate several stories about the dog, describing Kunta Kinte’s good qualities, remembering with tears in his eyes the day he lost him and later found him in the garden shed. I listened on with sweet patience, but in my mind I had started throwing huge boulders at him. At long last, I could take it no more. I had never been one to shine at small talk, but I decided to try.

‘Do you have any children?’ I asked, hoping that this would lead to a more tolerable topic.

‘Kunta Kinte is my only child,’ he replied tenderly. ‘One of the reasons why I’m looking forward to this money coming in is so I can leave him something to live comfortably on even if something was to happen to me. I’m thinking of a trust fund in his name.’

God being so kind, right then, Dr Wazobia rang my cellular phone.

He informed me that the person at the anti-terrorist office was insisting on the complete $15,000 before he could issue the certificate. I threw a tantrum over the phone.

‘What sort of rubbish is this? Mr Hooverson has come all the way from America to help us and now this! Can’t you explain to them that we’ll give it from the one in the trunk?’

I continued the heated talk while Mr Hooverson looked increasingly worried.

‘Let me see what I can do,’ he finally said.

He rang someone in the USA and asked them to wire money, quick. The person appeared reluctant. Mr Hooverson insisted that it was an emergency. After a brief argument, the savage in him burst through the Caucasian coating.

‘Just do it!’ Mr Hooverson howled, punching the arm of his chair until it groaned.

That was one thing I loved about these Yankee Doodles. They had a way of getting things done.

 

The next few hours were a rush of dramatics. I accompanied the mugu to a nearby cash machine and stood respectfully aside while he punched in his pin. When would this sort of technology reach my dearly beloved Nigeria? These cash machines were like gods standing right there in the streets, answering the cries of the needy at the press of a button.