“Princess, still don’t know how to return people’s phone calls.”
“You haven’t been honest with me Mervyn.”
He stood still for a moment, gathering himself. As he blew air through his lips his chest rose and fell like a balloon beginning to deflate.
“Okay, let’s go to mine where we can talk.”
“No.”
“Come on it’s me; you telling me you can’t come to my house now?”
We walked to a Caribbean restaurant a couple of streets down. All the way I said nothing, waiting. He brought out his chequered handkerchief to pat his forehead.
Other than a couple at the bar area the restaurant was virtually empty and smelled of spices. It had wooden floors, dim lights and colourful paintings. Reggae music played low and soft like a lover’s stroke. You could see out onto the street from where we sat. Mervyn’s gaze loitered a little too long on the outside scene. He may have sensed what was coming, maybe not the exact nature of it, but he knew I meant business. Neither of us wanted to eat. He ordered vodka, I ordered water.
Tell me what happened.
He supressed an agitated sigh.
You know what your mother was like Joy.
No, tell me.
She was vicious that evening, she said things, accused me.
Of what?
Of seeing another woman.
Were you?
No, I’m a man who flirts a lot; I can’t help it I’m wired that way. Why did you keep it from me?
Your mother thought it best you didn’t know about us.
And this had been going on for?
Years.
Even while your wife was alive?
Yes.
I stayed absolutely still for a minute because I needed to.
So?
I went out, took a walk around to cool off man, I came back the basement door was open and there she was. It was so strange to see her dead, I swear I never touched her; I loved her. You saw the medical examiner’s report.
You left her there.
I don’t know where my head was at. I panicked. To find her like that, it was a shock, too much.
He looked me dead in the eye then. I wanted to tell you.
No, no, no, no, no. I stopped him. All at once I felt faint and sick. He was showing who he really was to me. The way he’d always been there, in the background and his boys, always there too. How could I not have seen it? I realised the night I found my mother dead I never called the ambulance. Mervyn had. After the screaming dial tone and the voice that replaced it zapped down the line and his trembling fingers hung up the receiver, he hit the ground, running away from us, my mother reduced to a dirty dead secret. I’ll never ask by how much time I missed him.
I left him there at the cliff edge, to untangle the knot stretching back many years.
Then there she was, wearing the purple scarf from Mervyn’s. Why in death was my mother Queen becoming real again? My glass feet broke repeatedly on the pavement. Heartbeats were gunshots fired in my chest. She was high up above, a fevered angel sleepwalking on the wings of planes.
Peter Lowon Journal Entry, July 1964
Now that it is two years since General Akhatar has been pronounced the new minister of defence under military rule, and I am a General in my own right, my marriage has become a shell. I wanted it all, but it is never as you expect it to be. Still, I cannot bring myself to tell Felicia the one thing she wants to know. Instead, I have picked seedless fights over the years. If she cooks I tell her the eba is too hard, that her soup tastes flat. I shout her down over the dining room table on days she attempts to sit with me the way a good wife does. And wish aloud she’d cease breathing instead of asking me endless questions while she watches in horror. One night she came home late smelling of beer after running around with some of these Lagos women. I called her a prostitute and threw her out, while Queenie slept soundly. After her staying with a friend for three days, I demanded she come home, accused her of abandoning her duties as a wife and mother and of attempting to embarrass me. I have become another type of man in my own home and I don’t know how to stop being him.
Felicia and I sleep in separate bedrooms. I have never experienced a lonelier feeling than the sound of her footsteps heading towards her bedroom, where the only comfort that awaits her is an empty bed. I am punishing both of us; I wonder why she stays. I kept my promise and she has a clothing boutique in Lagos where through my connections some high profile clients flock. She spends her days there, running it with her cousin’s help. Felicia and I will not have any more children; I have resigned myself to it, despite always wanting more. Queenie deserves a brother and sister; she has asked me about it many times. I always give her the same answer, ‘When the time is right.’ Knowing that time will never come.
His name is Ben Okafor. He is a journalist with The Nigerian Trumpet, a parasite whose big shot father owns the paper amongst other ventures. I first received a call from him some weeks ago. He told me he wanted to do a lifestyle profile on generals in the military, a series that would run over a few weeks.
Initially I said no. No warning bells went off. For a while I heard nothing, and then more phone calls, he became persistent, falling just short of harassment. It was after the call from his father, a friend of the President that I agreed to see him, sweeping aside my worry. I met him on neutral ground, in an eatery with the smell of meat pies and baked bread in the air. The place had fewer people than chairs, and the walls were a pale yellow as though they had turned sickly from all the stale conversations. It was deliberately low key.
Okafor was younger than I expected, an Ibo in his mid-to-late twenties. He was a very handsome man, 6’2in tall with a practiced braggadocio and an air of wealth. I hated him on sight. He had on cream pressed linen trousers, brown sandals with his toes peeking out and a multi coloured shirt. Tucked in his shirt pocket was a pair of dark sunglasses; a cigarette dangled from his mouth. He waved me over on arrival, his lean, sculpted face breaking into a smile, pumping my hand warmly as though I was a long lost friend, his features drawn into a kind of welcome. He had a neat trick of smiling without any warmth appearing only to have moved his lips. Okafor jumped from one comment to another as though they were hot coals, touching on traffic on the way in, why I’d chosen this particular place to meet, offering me a cigarette then smiling ruefully and asking if a woman had anything to do with my decision after informing him I’d quit years ago. He had a dynamic energy, even doing simple things like patting his shirt pocket for his wallet before fishing it out from a green satchel that slumped against the leg of his chair. I tried to steady my shaky hands under the table, tried to control the heat spreading through my bloodstream. I felt naked, vulnerable. Why had I agreed to do this? This was a bad idea. I should never have folded under the pressure. I drummed my fingers on the table, nerves jangling. I must admit I embraced the small relief when Okafor stood abruptly to grab two malt drinks from the fridge at the side, before handing it to the woman at the counter who opened them with a gleaming silver opener.
For a moment, I pictured Okafor holding that opener, scraping my insides with it. He set our drinks down, folded his rangy body in the seat opposite me. The questions came quickly. What made a man like me join the army since I did not strike him as the army type? Why had I had such a quick progression up the ranks? How come everybody he spoke to about me divulged the same things? Good, fair, proud hardworking family man. Nothing to the contrary, as though I’d carefully presented the same image to everyone? I smiled when he said this. Inside I thought, don’t let this parasite see you crack! Stay calm Peter, stay calm. I adjusted myself, pulled my body upright, something I find myself doing in an uncomfortable situation. Okafor had grabbed a worn, small writing pad and a broken pen that had seen better days. “Sir I’m interested in true portrayals,” he said. “Fair ones, despite what assumptions you may have about me being a spoiled, rich boy. This is not play for me. I am not amusing myself till the next thing comes along.”