Authors: Wole Soyinka
But one night, Father broke the silence and said, ‘Audu, when will you be moving out?’
Audu looked up, startled by the question. He stalled by taking a sip of water and took an eternity to set down his glass. Then he cleared his throat. ‘In about two weeks,’ he said.
Father continued eating, dolloping tuwo dipped in the vegetable soup garnished with smoked fish. We thought that was the end of the conversation. Then, like Audu, Father had a sip from his glass and cleared his throat.
‘Your brother is thirty years old now,’ he began, addressing no one in particular. Like one of those eccentric poets, he could have been reading a poem to the grasses on the fields. ‘He is old enough to be on his own, start a family, have a decent job . . . but he doesn’t have that because this country is so warped.’ He banged his fist on the table, as if it had anything to do with the country being warped, as if it was part of the problem. He looked at our faces like one waiting to be challenged.
‘Audu ought to be on his own, God knows, because I was not living with my parents when I was his age. And so, if Audu decides to leave this house today, I will not blame him. However, Audu should think about this family also, because leaving so soon after your mother’s death would not seem to me like the right thing to do because your little ones would want you to be around and guide them . . . I would want you to be around and guide them so that they would not feel abandoned, first by their mother, God rest her soul, and then by you.’ He was looking into Audu’s eyes now.
Ladidi coughed once. The sound filled the silence like a single gunshot in the night.
‘This family must not break apart,’ Father continued, this time eyeing me. ‘I will do everything in my power to keep this family intact and so Audu, if you want to leave, feel free and may God be with you but I would also want you to think about what I said.’
Father dipped his fingers in the soup again and continued eating. We were all quiet, looking at Audu, who was looking down at the half-empty plate before him.
‘I understand, Father. I will stay a little longer,’ he said at last.
Father nodded proudly. He reached out and squeezed Audu’s hand and continued eating enthusiastically like one assured of victory in the war to keep his family intact. I did not want to sully his enthusiasm but I knew he was wrong, that he would lose. I had dreamt about it.
In the gloom-filled ambience there was a consolation of sorts. Salia, that glittering heroine of my fantasies, would come with a rainbow-coloured whirlwind in her wake. She would bring smiles and the fragrant smell of happiness. She became a regular visitor to the house, mostly in the evenings when she and Ladidi would retreat to the kitchen and gossip while my sister made dinner.
I would stop by the kitchen entrance, listening to her and imagine that if light had a sound, it would be Salia’s voice. I watched her every gesture, each gaining some amorous dimension and floating in my lovelorn mind. Sometimes she would turn and see me, starry-eyed, looking at her. She would smile and say, ‘Hi.’ My throat would fill with bubbles and I would only manage to nod.
‘Want anything?’ Ladidi would ask.
I would shake my head, my eyes on Salia’s slim neck, her bare shoulders, her graceful hips well positioned on the stool, her sensuous ankle around which was clasped a glittering silver anklet. I would swallow with difficulty and leave. Sometimes, I went to the bathroom thereafter.
Then, one night, Salia decided to sleep over. Apparently, Ladidi had confessed to her that she was frightened of the dark, increasingly so since Mammy’s death. Salia came over with her night things and had dinner with us. She was shy because of Father. And even though not much was said, I think that was the best dinner I had had in a long time. I looked up from my plate periodically to see her. Then everyone else in the room seemed to disappear and I imagined we were alone. She would smile at me. I would smile back. We would have dinner as two lovers.
‘Salt, please,’ Audu’s voice crashed into my daydream. I must have frozen. They were all looking at me – Salia too. She smiled and continued eating. I smiled back, embarrassed.
‘Hey, salt,’ Audu demanded again. There was a hint of mockery in his voice. I passed him the salt and ate, not daring to look up, mindful so as not to repulse her with any of my loose table manners.
She came to the house regularly after that, sometimes spending the night. I did not know exactly how her father approved her visits. He was neither the gentlest of men nor the kindest of fathers. A towering mobile police sergeant with a fondness for drinking, he had a face always begging for a shave and his crooked nose must have been broken in some drunken brawl. His eyes were bloodshot and his lips darkened by tobacco. He would come home, charging on his motorcycle, his rifle slung over his shoulder and drive straight at those who sat under the bushes of Queen of the Night on his facade. Because of the platform and the sweet smell of the bushes at night, lovers made the place a haven. Often, I had fancied myself and Salia under those bushes, whispering sweet, poetic words to each other. Her father would come and chase those unfortunate lovers from his bushes, hurling curses and stones after them. Sometimes however, he would go about his business, not in the least concerned about their amorous presence. Even on such days, it was difficult not to envisage him as the venal officer he was.
Since his first wife fled from him, when Salia and her brother Bala, my friend, had been very young, he had had one other wife whom he had beaten to a pulp once. From the hospital, she had gone back to her parents’, effectively dissolving the marriage. He gave up on marriage and had had a string of girlfriends, some of whom had stayed months in the house and packed out just as unceremoniously as they had been brought in.
Often, I have wondered how something as sublime as Salia could have come out of something as crude as he, or how my personification of love could have been the progeny of as loveless a marriage as her parents had had. But Salia seemed to have handled her troubled childhood with grace as she had everything else. She had been forced to mature early, be wise and prudent and learn to look the other way when her father was at his worst, which, unfortunately, was often.
I happened to be passing by the bathroom one morning when I saw a beige chemise hung out to dry through the half-open door. I had the notion that it would be hers, it must be hers. I pushed the door and went in. It was soft and alluring – silky, just as I imagined her skin would be. It smelt of her; the warm smell of cocoa butter. I crumpled it and tucked it under my shirt and scurried away.
I spread the garment on my bed and imagined her in it, imagined it to be her. I caressed it affectionately as I would her tender skin. I lay on the bed, next to the chemise, dreaming I was lying down next to her, feeling her warm breath on my face, her smooth skin against mine. I imagined kissing her lips, caressing her breasts. It was so real to my mind that I gasped involuntarily and a sublime sensation rippled through my body. I rolled and rolled on the chemise until I was exhausted and fell asleep, dreaming of my dream girl.
‘Hey, what the hell are you doing?’ Audu thundered. I started and discovered I was encumbered by Salia’s beige chemise. I was embarrassed.
‘What the hell were you doing?’ Audu asked again, sniffing me, looking about him.
‘Nothing,’ I said unconvincingly.
‘What do you mean nothing? What the hell is going on here?’
‘I said nothing.’ I struggled into a sitting position fearing he would soon alert the whole house.
‘Whose stuff is that?’ he fingered the chemise, trying to draw it away from me. I held on to it.
‘Let go,’ I gasped. He was stronger and was gaining. I could see the shadow of menace creeping into his scowling face and I knew he would soon resort to underhand methods.
‘Let me have it!’
‘Please, let go,’ I pleaded.
‘What on earth were you doing with it?’ He was still tugging.
‘I said nothing!’
‘You want to be a transvestite, right,
dan daudu,
eh? You pathetic puppy!’
‘No!’
‘Then what in heaven’s name are you doing with ladies’ stuff?’ He grabbed my hand and started twisting my wrist.
‘No!’ I screamed. ‘It fell. I picked it off the ground.’
‘Shameless boy, I will . . .’
‘What is going on here?’ Ladidi’s voice rang with alarm from the door. I looked over Audu’s shoulder at her face, trying to make sense of our dubious entanglement. Audu turned, using his bulk to shield her view so she could not see me trying desperately to wriggle out of her friend’s underwear.
‘What’s happening?’ she asked, suspicion creeping into her voice. She started coming towards the bed.
‘Ah . . . nothing, just rough-housing,’ Audu stammered. He stood in front of her. She tried to look over his shoulders but he was taller.
I got out, crumpled the chemise and tucked it between the bed and the wall and jumped off the bed.
‘There’s something going on and I would like to know,’ she demanded.
Audu held her by the shoulders, pushing her gently backwards.
‘Nothing is going on,’ he said. Looking over his shoulder and seeing that I had concealed the incriminating evidence, he smiled wickedly and let her go. ‘What do you think is going on?’
She looked from me to him. He was smiling and I was sweating. She pushed him aside and came towards me and I feared she would find the underwear.
‘Ladidi.’ Salia’s golden voice floated into the room and filled it with a subtle light. Instead of joy, on that occasion it filled me with dread. She was standing by the door, looking into the room.
Ladidi turned to her.
‘Hi, Audu,’ Salia said.
‘Hello,’ he said. He was obviously enjoying my dilemma and would have done anything to make it last. ‘Why don’t you come in?’
While she weighed the invitation, I prayed she would decline.
‘I was just looking for Ladidi,’ she said.
Ladidi eyed Audu and me with menace before going past Audu and leaving with Salia.
Audu was snickering as he closed the door and turned to me. He looked at my face and broke into a wild laughter that would have startled the night spirits. I never thought I would hear him laugh like that. He fell to his knees, his body jerking, his laughter ringing in my ears. I was, above all, relieved that in his own mischievous way, he had bailed me out. I felt exhausted by my trauma and slumped on the bed. He picked himself from the floor and came and sat next to me, laughing all the time.
‘So, you like her, eh, don’t you?’
I said nothing.
‘But she is older than you, you know, do you think it would work?’ he asked seriously.
I turned my back to him.
‘Hey, come on, I am on your side, you know. I could talk to her for you.’
‘No, thank you.’
‘This is a free offer, you know. Just take it and I will work things out for you.’
‘No.’
He laughed. ‘Well then, if you want to be rolling in ladies’ underwear all your life, fine, but don’t say I didn’t offer to teach you like any decent big brother would do.’
‘I won’t,’ I said, frowning.
He pulled me to him and started tickling me. I did not realise I was laughing at first, perhaps because the sound of my laughter sounded strange even to me. But Audu tickled so hard I was trying to get away, screaming for him to stop and laughing up to the ceiling without inhibition.
When he stopped and we were lying side by side, trying to catch our breath, it occurred to me that I too, and Audu as well, like Princess, had desecrated the memory of Mammy. We had laughed in the house in which she died. And I felt as if I had betrayed her.
But Audu lifted himself on his elbow and said, ‘Wow! It’s been ages since you laughed.’
And he was tickling me again and I was laughing and laughing and laughing.
Stanley Onjezani Kenani
Monsieur Bentchartt’s offices are on Rue de Chantepoulet, on the same side of the street as the Payot Bookshop, which is to the right when coming from the Cornavin train station. If you were the well-fed type intending to burn some fat, you could walk all the way to the seventh floor via a steep, dimly lit staircase. But I chose the easier option, via a lift, as I had no intention of arriving here panting.
In the tiny lift, I stood face-to-face with a petite strawberry blonde whose height matched mine. As is often the case in these parts, you don’t greet or so much as nod, much less smile or arch and collapse your eyebrows or look into the eyes of a stranger, so I minded my business as she minded hers, my eyes pinned on the digital panel that indicated floor numbers as we ascended. You can imagine, then, how awkward it was to find that both of us got out on the seventh floor and came to the same office where, I discovered, she was Monsieur Bentchartt’s secretary returning from lunch.
At once her demeanour changed. She said
bonjour
and showed me a seat as she told me her name – Alina – and I likewise told her mine, Kadam’manja, which she asked me to write down as I had no business card. She attempted to pronounce it loudly, but managed to reach only as far as ‘da’, and gave up. I put it down to my poor handwriting. Alina started flipping through the pages of her diary, eventually stopping at one where her finger jabbed thoughtfully for a moment. ‘From the Irish pub?’ she said.