CHAPTER 13
Julius. What would you like me to tell you about him? He was a person who believed in himself, in the purpose of his existence, in his own good fortune. Julius didn’t like to be alone, he required companionship. He sought out my company, and in many ways, it seemed to me, he had come to depend upon it.
Once we made a trip to the casino. We were together without either of our women. By that time my relationship with Vanessa had shrivelled to virtually nothing and I was still at odds as to how best to conduct myself around Saffia given the unfortunate outcome of my last visit. Julius, unaware of all of this, came to my office looking for entertainment.
We had been drinking. The suggestion was his, as most suggestions were. He grew exuberant under the influence. In that way, as in so many, we were opposites, for drink has always caused me to close in upon myself and, if bothered, I am prone to lash out. Julius felt lucky, and he declared it aloud to the empty street as we stepped out of a bar and headed in the direction of the casino. He stacked his chips on a single number. I spread my chips carefully. The wheel spun. I won, modestly. Julius lost, royally. He celebrated his losses at the bar.
That was the night I learned Julius was an asthmatic. While we were in the casino, something, I forget what, struck him as amusing. He began to laugh. The illness showed in his laughter, laughing was apt to set off an attack. That was why Saffia had looked at him with such concern that first dinner at their house. This time the laugh turned into a cough, he had been coughing a lot recently. The change in the seasons, perhaps. The dust in the air had lessened as the harmattan drew to a close. But the rains brought their own hazards. Spores and pollens filled the air as new life burst forth. Within moments he was wheezing, a see-sawing sound, broken with intermittent bursts of coughing. He reached into his pocket, drew out an inhaler. I was surprised. I suppose in my mind I always thought of asthmatics as carrying considerably less weight than a man like Julius. I remember he had once told me that as a child he had nearly died. I believe he must have been talking about his asthma. He was the youngest, the only boy. I could see it all. He behaved as though the world had been made for him alone, a result of being constantly indulged, no doubt. Or perhaps also for so nearly having left it.
In the weeks that followed I was a guest at their house on two occasions. Both times at Julius’s behest, and at the risk of drawing myself to his attention with a sudden display of reticence, I acquiesced. I could not resist the opportunity to be near her. I sought solace in the very thing that caused me pain.
Saffia’s withdrawal from me took the form of unerring good manners. I alone noticed the way her eyes never sought mine, as they had before, unselfconsciously. And should our eyes meet by chance, her smile never broadened as it used to, but remained fixed in depth and width, quickly supplanted by an offer of more beer, an enquiry as to whether I was being bothered by mosquitoes, a suggestion to visit this place or that place, or meet this person or that person. She asked after Vanessa frequently. It is a way women have, or perhaps learn, of repositioning a man at arm’s length.
On the second occasion I dined at their house, Saffia and I were left momentarily alone at the table. Julius and Ade had set out to fetch more beer. Kekura had disappeared into the toilet. She would not have desired it, this sudden abandonment by the others, but was left little choice but to entertain me. She filled the silence with a question, another one, about Vanessa’s well-being.
‘Well, that’s just it,’ I said. ‘I’m afraid to tell you Vanessa and I won’t be marrying after all.’
‘Oh.’ She was genuinely taken aback by this, as of course she would be. Wary still, though. ‘I didn’t realise. I mean I didn’t know you two were engaged.’
‘No, of course you wouldn’t. And we weren’t, not formally. I had hoped it would be so; Vanessa decided differently.’
‘You should have come to see me.’ Her face was full of concern.
‘I did. I mean I tried. But your aunt … It wasn’t the right time.’
A white lie. Essential to our friendship, to the delicate negotiations that kept it within the framework of the acceptable. I watched her face as the shades of knowledge deepened, the shift in emotions, the flare of relief, the flush of embarrassment that came with the realisation she had mistaken the purpose to my last visit.
‘Perhaps I could talk to Vanessa.’ She was keen to help now.
‘Thank you, Saffia. But I don’t think it would do any good. Any good at all.’ I shook my head and stared down at my plate. A moment of silence. From somewhere in the back of the house came the singing of the cistern. ‘There’s just one thing.’ One last tap, I couldn’t resist but drive my advantage all the way.
‘Of course.’
‘If you wouldn’t mind, I’d prefer we kept it between us. Not even Julius.’
‘No, no. Don’t worry. You won’t have to put up with any of Julius’s teasing.’ She leant across and squeezed my forearm.
Friendship restored.
Moments later Kekura appeared, attending to the buckle of his belt and waving his damp hands in the air to dry them. I watched Saffia, who sat, the shadow of a crease upon her brow, still trying to compute what I’d told her and most of all, I suspect, the fact that she had apparently been wrong about my motives. Ah, the vanity of women! She’d allowed herself to believe I was attracted to her and so the freshness of relief contained a chill of rejection.
June. And the rains had settled into their stride. The water ran off the hills and out to sea staining the blue with a dark shadow of silt. In those hours in the late morning and afternoon when the rain let up and the sun shone, you could see the hills above the city, vibrant and green. With the students revising or else in exams, and many lectures and classes consequently suspended until the new academic year, the campus had the atmosphere of a seaside town out of season. With the exception of the holidays, this was the time I enjoyed the most. Space to think, time alone. These were the things I cherished. Not so Julius who, without the daily performance of his lectures and the adoration of his students, seemed bored.
I was at work, once more, on a paper for publication in the faculty journal. This time I had taken stock of my conversation with the Dean and come to the conclusion he was inviting me, if one could put it like that, under his wing — to become his protégé. In addition I had absorbed his advice over the choice of subject for my paper. We had spoken once more on the topic; he had passed me in the corridor, ‘Ah, Cole!’ and ushered me into his office. I was gazing at the objects on his desk, fixing them in my memory. Onyx paperweight. Pen stand. Ivory letter-opener. Nameplate. The Dean stood facing the window, his stiff little buttocks pointed at me.
‘Are you a political man, Cole?’
I answered, honestly, I believe, that I was not.
‘Good. In my view the job of we academics is to provide the perspective of the past. Leave the present to others.’
I mumbled a demurral, adding that surely the study of one period did not preclude the simultaneous study of another.
‘I’m not suggesting anything of the sort,’ the Dean had answered, somewhat testily. ‘I’m saying we are historians, that’s what we are.’
‘Of course.’ Frankly, I had no wish to get into a row. I needed several more publications to my name to stay on track to tenure. If the Dean offered me an administrative post as well, so much the better.
‘A university is a place of learning, not of politics. And I like to run a tight ship. You see what I’m saying, Cole?’