‘So what’s the problem?’
He proceeded to enlighten me. It was a long, sad tale of under-staffing, low government funding, and insufficient facilities. By the time he finished, I felt guilty about us dragging our minor troubles all the way here to compound the hospital management’s own.
‘I’m sorry, but we can no longer manage your father’s care,’ he concluded. ‘I would suggest we transfer him to the Abia State Teaching Hospital, Aba. That’s the only way I can assure you that your father will get the best care he needs at this time. They have better equipment than we do.’
Instinctively, I perceived that this transfer entailed much more than moving my father from one bed to the other.
‘How much is it going to cost?’ I asked.
‘Well, there’s quite an expense involved,’ he sighed. ‘Fuelling the ambulance to transport him to Aba, hiring the specialised personnel to accompany him on the trip, renting whatever equipment they might require on the journey . . . To cut a long story short, the transfer would cost lot of money.’
He gave me a tentative estimate. The amount nearly shattered my eardrums. I made it clear to the doctor that we could not afford it. He sympathised profusely. Then he assured me that there was no remote possibility of receiving any one of those services on credit.
‘I’ll give you some time to think about it,’ he said. ‘Then let me know what you want us to do. I’ve given you my professional opinion, but at the end of the day, he is your father. It’s your call.’
I sat in front of him for a while, staring at the opposite wall without seeing anything, silently marvelling at the gravity of life in general. Then I thanked him for this update and for his sensitivity in choosing to break the bad news to me - first - without my mother present.
Fourteen
This time around, I paid meticulous attention to my appearance. I slipped my feet into my new pair of Russell & Bromley shoes and rummaged through my shirts. Most of them were dead, had been for a very long time. They only came alive when Ola wore them. She used to look so good in my clothes. Back in school, Ola would take my dirty clothes away on Friday evenings and return them washed and ironed on Sunday evenings. One day, while putting away the freshly laundered clothes, I noticed that a shirt was missing. Assuming that Ola had mistakenly packed it up with her own clothes, I made a mental note to ask her to check. Next day at the faculty, she was wearing the missing item. Seeing my shirt on her gave me such a thrill. Since then, she borrowed my shirts from time to time. In fact, she still had one or two with her.
Finally, I made my choice. It would have to be the shirt I wore for my university graduation ceremony. The blue fabric had been personally selected by my mother. She had sewn the shirt herself.
There were nine men and five women waiting at the office gates. Cash Daddy’s security man recognised me from my previous visit.
‘Cash Daddy has not reached office this morning,’ he said.
He advised me to go and seek him at home.
‘Please, where is his house?’ I asked.
‘There’s nobody who doesn’t know Cash Daddy’s house,’ he replied with scorn.
‘Please, what’s the address?’
He snorted with more scorn. He did not know the house number, but he knew the name of the street.
‘Once you enter Iweka Street, you will just see the house. You can’t miss it.’
I looked doubtful.
‘You can’t miss it,’ he repeated.
I flagged down an
okada
and took off.
Indeed, I knew it as soon as I saw it.
Two gigantic lion sculptures kept guard by the solid, iron entrance. The gate had strips of electric barbed wire rolled all around the top, which extended throughout the length of the equally high walls. Altitude of gate and walls notwithstanding, the mammoth mansion was visible, complete with three satellite dishes on top.
I pressed the buzzer on the wall. The gateman peeped through a spy-slide in the gate. Before he had a chance to question me, a voice boomed from an invisible mechanical device.
‘Allow that man to come inside my house! Right now!’
I was jolted. The gateman was unperturbed. He unlocked the gates and showed me inside.
The vast living room was a combination of parlour and dining section. There was a winding staircase that escalated from behind the dining table to unknown upper regions of the house. Everything - from the leather sofas, to the humongous television set, to the lush, white rug, to the vases on the bronze mantelpiece, to the ivory centre table, to the electric fireplace, to the high crystal chandeliers, to the dining set - was a tribute to too much wealth. I almost bowed my hands and knees in reverence.
A well-fed man standing by the door asked me to sit. Then he opened a huge refrigerator. Like the one in the office, this one was stacked with all manner of drinks.
‘What would you like to drink?’ he asked.
‘Nothing. I’m fine, thank you.’
There were two framed photographs of Cash Daddy hanging on the wall above the television screen. One was taken, apparently, while he was playing golf. In the other, he was sitting on a magnificent black horse. How on earth had my uncle managed to manoeuvre his super-size onto the narrow saddle?
There were five young, equally well fed men sitting around the dining table. They ate silently, but eagerly, making sloppy, kissing sounds as they licked their fingers.
Shortly after I sat down, Protocol Officer - the very same one of the other day - descended the stairs.
‘Cash Daddy is ready to see you,’ he said, and waited.
I stood up quickly and joined him at the foot of the staircase.
‘Good morning,’ I said to the feeding men as I walked past.
The tantalising aroma of edikainkong and onugbu soups whispered to me from the huge tureens before them. The men grunted nonchalantly.
Protocol Officer led the way. At the third-floor landing, he opened one of the doors and entered a large bedroom. He continued to where two men were standing beside another open door within the room. The men shifted to create space for me in the narrow doorway.
Inside, Cash Daddy was crouched on the toilet seat. Apart from the boxer shorts rolled around his ankles, he was as naked as a skinned banana. Imagining that I had barged in on a most private moment, I muttered an apology and was turning to leave, when his voice flashed like lightning and stopped me in my tracks.
‘Kings, Kings! How are you? How is your daddy doing?’
I ducked my eyes and replied that my father was still in hospital.
‘What of your mummy?’ he continued. ‘I hope you told her that I greeted her.’
‘Yes, I told her. She said I should thank you very much for your gift.’
He ignored me and spoke to the other men, apparently continuing with a discussion that had begun before I arrived.
‘Don’t forget that we’re supposed to see Police Commissioner by Monday. Make sure you don’t forget. When one sees a dog playing with somebody it’s familiar with, it looks as if the dog can’t bite. I don’t want the type of situation we had the last time to happen again.’
I tried taking advantage of this diversion to make my escape - and bumped into Protocol Officer, who was firmly entrenched in the getaway route behind me. I gave up and stood still. Cash Daddy was still speaking.
‘That seven hundred and fifty-five thousand dollars has to be ready before weekend. There are some things I can afford to play with but not things like this. Have you made arrangements with—’
Cash Daddy broke off his speech. He contracted his facial muscles and made a low, grunting noise. He relaxed his face again and took in a deep breath. I heard the dull thud of solid hitting the surface of water. This process was repeated three more times before he was finally satisfied. Then he stood up, yanked some tissue from the roll strapped to the wall, bent slightly forwards, and wiped. Cash Daddy tossed the used tissue into the toilet bowl and flushed. Before continuing with what he was saying. Starting from exactly where he had stopped.
‘. . . with Sonny and Ikem about the government official we’ll need for the Japan transaction?’
The man on my right confirmed that the arrangements had been made. From the corners of my eyes, I looked at each man standing beside me. None of them appeared to be the least bit discomfited.
The stench had started disorganising my brain cells, when Cash Daddy pulled up his shorts and made his way towards the door. Honestly, it is such a pity that some people just never learn. The number of times my dear mother had berated Uncle Boniface in the past for using the toilet without washing his hands. We parted to let him through and followed into the bedroom.
The bedroom had the exact same personality as the living room. A wide canopy bed, plush sofas, humongous television, huge refrigerator, crystal chandeliers, exotic vases, elegant photographs of him taken in different poses and at different grand events. A closed-circuit television screen that showed coverage of several different parts of the house, in different segments of the large screen, stood directly opposite the bed. Cash Daddy planted himself on the thick mattress, lifted a handset from the bedside stool, pressed a button, and yelled into the mouthpiece.
‘Bring my food! Right now!’
A fat man on one of the CCTV screen segments went into action in what looked like the kitchen. Another one of the screens clearly showed the front gate and everybody coming in or walking past. Aha! Via his CCTV, Cash Daddy must have sighted me coming into the house and then yelled his instruction to the gateman, using this same handset.
Cash Daddy stretched out his chunky legs and slapped a harmonious tempo on his belly with his hands.
‘I’m so hungry,’ he announced. ‘Kings, sit down.’
I sat in the chair directly in front of him, while the other men remained standing by the bed in silence. Suddenly, he stopped the music he was making with his belly and looked as if seeing me for the first time. He frowned.
‘Kingsley.’
‘Yes, Uncle?’
‘What is this you’re wearing?’
I scanned myself in utmost terror. What could it be this time?
‘Kingsley, am I not talking to you? What is this thing you’re wearing?’
My brain was as blank as an empty bottle.
‘Kingsley.’
‘Yes, Uncle?’ I whispered.
‘Are you sure it’s not a carpenter that constructed your shirt? You’d better be careful.’ He raised his index finger and wagged it at me. ‘Be very, very careful. One day you’ll be walking down the street and the police will just arrest you because of the way you dress. It’s only the fly that doesn’t have advisers that ends up in the coffin with the corpse. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.’
The fat man arrived with a tray of food which he placed on one of the side stools. He readjusted the stool to suit Cash Daddy’s position on the bed.
‘Do you want to eat anything?’ Cash Daddy asked. He did not wait for me to answer. ‘Cook, bring this man some rice, chicken, goat meat, beef . . . Just bring him everything you have in the stew.’ He turned to me. ‘I want you to eat well. You’re too skinny.’
I did not bother telling him that there was nothing he could do for me in that area; I was destined for perpetual skinniness.
Cash Daddy plunged into his meal.
‘Go,’ he said to the waiting men.
His rice bowl, as large as a bathroom washbasin, was filled to the brim. The rice was served with a bowl of tomato stew, a separate bowl of assorted meat, and a one-litre packet of Just Juice. He held his spoon like a shovel and clanged his teeth against the steel each time he shoved food into his mouth. While he chewed, I could look right into his mouth and watch the entire process of the solid rice granules being crushed. With his free hand, he pushed the pieces of meat to the very back of his mouth and tore them apart with his molars. Then he spat the unconquerable bones straight into the tray with such noise and force that no doubt was left that his upbringing had definitely been lacking.
‘How is your daddy?’ he asked, after a particularly loud belch.
In a few sentences, I told him everything the doctor had said and the reason for my visit.
As I was speaking, my uncle continued giving full concentration to his feeding without looking at me. At some points, I wondered if he was even listening at all.
It turned out that he was, because when I finished, he started relating his comprehensive thoughts about how he was sure the nurses intentionally kept a patient in a coma for longer than necessary so that it would look like they were busy earning their wages. While he was talking rubbish, my eyes strayed to the array of shoes somewhere on the other side of the room. I was mesmerised for just five seconds. Still, he caught me.
‘What are you looking at?’ he asked.
I panicked. Had he realised that I was not really listening to him? How was I going to escape from this latest trouble?
‘Are you looking at my shoes?’
I felt as awkward as a cow on ice. I did not reply.
‘You haven’t even seen anything.’ He laughed. ‘If you go into the next room, every single thing there is just shoes. And not one pair of them costs anything less than a thousand dollars.’
I kept looking at him.
‘Go on. Go out and look. I know you’re hungry, but after looking, you can come back and finish your rice.’
I put down the tray with my half-eaten meal on it and left. My uncle was right. The entire space was covered from wall to wall with racks. Each rack harboured shoes of a different shade and different make. There were green shoes and yellow shoes, and red shoes and turquoise shoes. Every single member of the class
Reptilia
must have been represented in that collection. I finished looking and returned to the bedroom.
‘Have you finished looking at my shoes?’
‘Yes, I have.’ Then as an afterthought, ‘Thank you.’