‘Thank you very much,’ I replied. It was always best to repay evil with good. Besides, it could not have been any easier for Columbus; what right did the rest of us have to complain?
‘Congratulations, my brother,’ several panic-stricken visa seekers mumbled as I walked past.
I left the building elated. An American neuroscientist was very willing to invest in a Ministry of Education contract, and this new mugu sounded like another long-term dollar dispenser. The packaging was getting to a stage where I would need to schedule a meeting with him in Amherst, Massachusetts.
I walked past some other embassies on my way to the car park at the end of the crescent. Even the embassy of Bulgaria gates were besieged with long queues. The US and the UK - and perhaps Ireland - were understandable, but why on earth would anyone want to run away from Nigeria to Bulgaria? As I reached the car, I heard someone shouting my name.
‘Kings! Kings!’
I turned. In that instant, I forgot all the sinister plots I had devised in murderous daydreams. All the diabolical strategies I had composed in midnight moments of pain and anger vanished from my mind. I beamed like a little boy lost who had just been found by his mother.
I ran screaming towards the sweet sound of my name.
‘Ola! Ola!’
We rushed into each other’s arms. We hugged like old friends. I looked her over from head to toe.
‘Wow! Ola, you look . . .’
I stopped. She was as fat as a dairy cow. There were light green stretch marks tattooed into her swollen cleavage.
‘You look lovely,’ I said, and that was the truth.
‘I had two babies, that’s what happened,’ she replied with a satisfied smile. ‘You, how are you?’
‘I’m fine.’ I could feel myself still grinning stupidly. ‘Honestly, you’re the very last person I imagined I would bump into today. I just came for my American visa interview.’
She nodded.
‘I came to renew our British visas - me and my children.’
‘Wow. Ola, it’s so good to see you. Why don’t we sit somewhere and have a proper chat. I hope you’re not in a hurry.’
She agreed. We walked around in search of somewhere to hang out. The complex housed a number of shops, business centres, and eating places, but most of the restaurants were dingy - obviously designed with only the waiting drivers in mind. Suddenly I remembered that times had changed. Ola and I did not have to put ourselves through this.
‘Why don’t we go somewhere nice in town?’ I asked. ‘We could go to Double Four or Chocolat Royal. Or wherever else you want.’
I was bold to throw the offer open. Unlike those days, now I could afford it.
‘No, I’m OK with anywhere here,’ she said and smiled. ‘I’m not that hungry, anyway.’
We chose the least dingy restaurant of them all. The air smelt of a mixture of fresh fish and locust beans. Large and small flies buzzed and perched about with alarming sovereignty and audacity. A sweaty, matronly waitress who looked like she knew all the flies by name galumphed to our table. Eating anything in that place would have been like signing a treaty for the invasion of my digestive system.
‘I’ll have a Coke,’ I said.
‘Diet Coke for me,’ Ola said.
I handed the matron the highest denomination naira note I had in my wallet. She grumbled and dug into her belly region in search of some change.
‘You can keep the change,’ I said, loud enough for Ola to hear just in case she had been distracted.
‘Thank you, Oga!’ the matron beamed. ‘Oga, thank you very much!’
‘Kings, Kings,’ Ola joked. ‘You’re now a big boy.’
I smiled. The drinks arrived immediately, served directly from the bottles, with a suspicious-looking straw sticking out from the neck.
‘But Kings, if anybody had told me that somebody like you would ever do 419,’ Ola continued, ‘honestly I would have said it’s a lie.’
Strangely, this was the first time someone who knew me, someone whom I did not work with, had told me to my face that I was a scammer. Nobody ever mentioned it. Even my mother, despite all her misgivings, was still in the realm of hunting for euphemisms. There was something emancipating about the way Ola had put the elephant right on top of the table. I would not have to spend our time together being furtive.
‘I wonder who’s been telling you these things,’ I said with mock shock.
Ola laughed.
‘How won’t I hear? You know Umuahia is a small place. When a maggot sneezes, everybody hears, including people outside the town. Anyway, I hear you’re still humble and level-headed. Unlike many of these other loud 419 guys.’
I sniggered.
‘Ola, the things that change us are quite different. I always find it funny when people say that money makes people proud. If you check it, poor people are some of the proudest people in this world.’
My father, for example.
Ola kept quiet. Then she nodded.
‘I agree with you, you know. Poor people can be soooo proud. There was a time back in school . . . that time I joined the Feed the Nation people . . . I don’t know if you remember?’
Like almost everything else about her, I remembered it clearly.
‘When we used to go out every Sunday to feed poor people in the streets. One time, there was this man who came and asked us for his own pack of rice and sachet of water. We gave him. Then he asked us to give him another one for his wife.’
They asked the man to go and bring his wife; they were only supposed to feed those physically present. He explained that his wife was ill. They asked him to imagine what would happen if everybody collected an extra portion for a spouse who was ill. There would be nothing for those who actually came.
As Ola spoke, a huge fly came and took up residence on her left ear. I wanted to stretch out my hand and frighten it away, but for some reason, I did not.
‘Do you know that the man got so angry with us?’ The fly ran away but returned almost immediately. ‘He told us that we were insulting him, that we were calling him a liar. That did we think it was a big deal that we were giving him food?’
Then he flung the rice and water on the floor in front of them and stormed off.
‘Can you imagine?’ she concluded.
She had narrated the story to me the very same day it happened. Still, I shook my head and tut-tut-ed in all the right places as if I were hearing it for the first time.
‘Like I said before, I’m quite surprised that somebody like you is doing 419. You used to be so soft and innocent. How do you cope with swindling all those white people of their money? Don’t you feel guilty?’
I shrugged. The fly left her ear at last.
‘Well, I guess I just don’t think about it too much,’ I replied.
‘But how can you not feel guilty?’
She appeared truly bemused. What was there to be guilty about? Was anybody feeling guilty about the artefacts and natural resources pilfered from Africa over the centuries? My mugus were merely fulfilling their role in the food chain.
‘So how’s married life?’ I asked, changing the topic.
‘Oh, everything is fine,’ she replied quickly. The smile that should have accompanied her voice came some nanoseconds after she had spoken. ‘My husband opened a new headquarters in Enugu, so we moved from Umuahia almost immediately after we got married.’
She paused.
‘The kids and I will be leaving for London by next weekend.’ Her face lit up with excitement; emotion had now returned. ‘We’ll be there for about two weeks and then we’ll go on to America.’
She rhapsodised some more about the forthcoming holiday trip. I asked her what she was doing at present. All the excitement left her voice in a deep sigh.
‘My husband doesn’t want me to work. He wants me to just stay at home and take care of the kids and it’s really frustrating. Everybody has tried talking to him but he’s been adamant.’
Apparently, the man’s decision had taken her by surprise. I could have warned her for free. His actions perfectly fitted the profile of the average, uneducated Igbo entrepreneur.
‘What type of job would you have wanted to do?’ I asked.
‘I’d like to work in a large organisation . . . Something related to my degree. Or maybe just get one of these bank jobs that everybody seems to be getting these days. Anyway, I’ve already made up my mind. As soon as my youngest child starts school, I’m going to look for a job.’
‘What if your husband says no?’
She frowned.
‘Kings, leaving my brain to lie fallow is too high a penalty to pay for maternity. God knows I won’t allow that to happen.’
Good luck to her. The best the man would probably ever allow her was a boutique where his friends’ wives could go and purchase expensive shoes and bags.
‘How old are your children?’
She smiled.
‘Ah, I have some pictures here.’
She dipped into her Louis Vuitton handbag and whipped out a batch of photographs.
‘These are from the birthday party of my first child.’
I inspected each photograph. There was a shot with the two children sitting in front of a huge Spiderman birthday cake with their mother and a man who, by the proud smile on his face and the way his hand was clasped around Ola’s ribs too close to her breasts, appeared to be their father. Hopefully, my face did not betray my shock. Poor Ola - her husband was unpardonably ugly, as if he had done it on purpose. As if he had gone to a native doctor and asked for some juju that would make his face hideous. Where was I to start? Was it the square eyes or the spacious nostrils, or the puckered face or the quadruple chin? The man was a veritable troglodyte.
Fortunately for the children, their mother’s genes had won the battle. The outcome could win a Nobel Prize for Nature. Ola’s children were all quite handsome - saved, delivered, from their father’s DNA. At that moment, I decided that if losing Ola to this man meant that the human gene pool had discontinued some frightful traits and produced a better-looking hybrid, then I was glad to have made my noble contribution to the advancement of humankind. I handed back the photographs.
‘You have very lovely kids,’ I said.
Like all proud mothers, she smiled as if she had been waiting all the while to hear me say just that.
‘And they are American citizens,’ she added. ‘They were born in the US.’
I smiled louder, to prove that I was happy for her.
I asked about Ezinne, about her other sisters, and about her mother. She asked about my mother and my siblings:
‘How’s your uncle . . . Cash Daddy? I still find it difficult to believe that he’s actually contesting for governor.’
I smiled. She laughed. Then, we were silent for a while. Sitting in front of her like that reminded me of old times, of how much I used to love being with her.
‘So are you seeing anyone?’ she asked suddenly.
I could not look her in the face.
‘Not really.’
‘Not really, how?’
‘I’m not in any serious relationship.’
‘How come?’
‘How come not?’ I forced a smile.
How was I supposed to tell her that while she was busy popping babies and growing fat, I was paying dollars for sex?
‘I don’t really have the time,’ I lied.
‘Time? Why? Are you burying your head in your books again? What? Are you doing a postgraduate course?’
Haha.
I sighed.
‘Ola, right now, I’m not thinking about any of that. I look at my siblings and I’m satisfied that they’re doing well and it makes me content with being the sacrificial lamb. I don’t mind setting aside—’
‘Kings, it’s not worth it.’
The force of her words, though quietly rendered, could have smashed a hole right through the Great Wall of China.
‘Kings, you can’t set aside your goals and convictions just for the sake of your family or any other people. Take it from me, I know what I’m talking about.’
We went back to silence again, both of us deep in thought. I had spent my childhood daydreaming about my future as a scientist. Ola knew this. My name was going to appear in my children’s science textbooks. I was going to be known all over the world because of my inventions. Top on my list, I once told her, was an electric fan that also ran on batteries so that the mosquitoes would not bite even if NEPA took the light in the middle of the night.
A wave of depression came over me. Ola was right. This was never the life I had planned.
Suddenly, it struck me. Inside all those layers of fat, the Ola I loved was still there. She had a way of getting to me, of making me think differently. She had seen me at my lowest and at my highest, at my best and at my worst. And I had not been able to talk to any other person with such easy freedom in a long time - with honesty, with confidence, without apprehension. Ola was my soul mate. Unlike my mother, she understood without being judgemental.
‘Ola . . .’ I paused. ‘Maybe if I had you by my side, things would be different. Maybe you’re what I need.’
She remained quiet. Abruptly, she stood and said that it was time for her to leave. She had not touched her Diet Coke. I had not touched my Classic Coke.
‘Ola,’ I said.
I reached out and held her hand. The warmth of her soft palm was as delicious as a forbidden fruit. I felt a slight tingling run down my spine. Still holding her hand, I asked if we could arrange to meet some other time. She did not respond.
‘Even if it’s just to talk,’ I added. ‘Even if it’s just for a meal. You know I always dreamed of taking you out to somewhere nice and expensive but I never had the chance.’
Ola continued being quiet. After a while, she pulled her hand away and shook her head. In desperation, I cast off all restraint and said it.
‘Ola, I still love you.’
She did not appear startled or repelled.
‘I’ve never stopped—’
‘Kings, let’s not start something that neither of us can finish,’ she said quietly.