‘One should remove the hand of the monkey from the soup before it becomes a human hand. The main reason for the meeting is for us to make sure that there’s no problem. He didn’t tell me much, but it looks like there are some places where we’ve made one or two mistakes and he wants us to take it easy.’
His cellular phone rang. I rushed to pick it up from the bathroom mat and held it out to him. Cash Daddy glanced at the screen and made a quick sign of the cross like a priest being pursued by the devil. I knew immediately that it was his wife calling. Something to do with the children. Conversing with his wife was one of those uncommon occurrences when Cash Daddy did more listening than talking.
When he finished, he chuckled, and asked if I had seen the latest photographs of his children. I had not.
‘Ah. I just got them. Come let me show you.’
He led the way out of the bathroom, stopping briefly at the door to scratch the inside of his thigh. He opened his bedside drawer and extracted some photographs. He handed them to me with the sort of smile that you have when presenting a beloved friend with a priceless surprise gift. I tried to appear commensurately keen.
In the first one, the five cherubs and their mother were all dressed up - the two girls in long, flowing frocks, the three boys in black dinner jackets and red bow ties, their mother in a clingy, sparkly red dress that made her look like a tall goldfish. He explained that they had all attended some ceremony in the eldest child’s school. This eldest son was enrolled in an exclusive boarding school in Oxford.
‘He even won an award,’ Cash Daddy beamed proudly. ‘Anyway, I’m not surprised. Whatever the python gives birth to must eventually be long. I know that boy is going to be great in this world. Greater than me even.’
The children all looked like distant cousins of Princes William and Harry. Graceful and illustrious. There was not the slightest trace of that untamed look on their faces, the look that neither diverse currencies nor worldly comforts had quite erased from their father’s countenance. I tried to imagine the distinguished accents that would come forth when they spoke.
Interesting - these offspring of Uncle Boniface, the money-miss-road, were the aristocrats of tomorrow.
Cash Daddy’s voice smashed into my musings.
‘I’ve told you to hurry up and get married,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what you’re waiting for. The advice I always give young men is: once you start making money, after buying your first set of cars, your next investment should be a wife. You should have been married long ago.’
He was right. I should have been married a long time ago. I should also have been working in Shell or Mobil or Schlumberger and coming home to Ola every night. Unfortunately, that was life.
He inspected his physique in the full-length mirror. While he squeezed into a pair of Versace jeans and a silk Yves Saint Laurent shirt, he talked about business and some new ideas.
‘I’m also thinking of employing some more of these young boys who know more about the internet. The only person we have is Wizard. He’s good, but the boy is a thief. He can even steal from inside a woman’s womb without anybody noticing. And two things I can’t stand are people who steal and people who are disloyal.’
He turned away from the mirror and looked at me.
‘What of your brother?’ he asked.
I blinked.
‘I mean Godfrey,’ he clarified.
‘Never.’
‘But he appears quite sma—’
‘Never.’
He must have understood that the matter was very closed. He stopped talking and looked back at his image in the mirror.
My phone rang. It was my father’s third sister’s son.
‘Ebuka, please call me back later. I’m in a meeting.’
‘Kings, go on and take your call,’ Cash Daddy said.
‘No, it’s OK, I can—’
‘Take your call.’
Ebuka needed some money to buy his GCE forms.
‘But I sent you money to buy forms a short while ago,’ I said.
‘Brother Kings, that one was different. That one was for my SSCE. I’ve already bought the form and filled it. If you want, I can bring the receipt for you to see.’
‘OK, come and see me in the house tomorrow evening and collect some money.’
There was no need giving him my address. All my relatives from far and near now knew where I lived. There seemed to be a benevolent fairy whose job it was to pass on my contact details to any two-winged insect that flew past.
‘Brother, thank you very much,’ he said.
Cash Daddy was brushing his eyebrows and flashing his teeth in front of the mirror. His grooming was always lengthy before he got satisfied.
‘Kings,’ he said suddenly, ‘has it occurred to you that I’m now too big to be chasing dollars around? Come.’
He held me by the upper arm and escorted me to the window. He walked very close, almost leaning his chest against my shoulder. For a while, we stood and stared out of the glass panes without speaking. The window overlooked his front gate.
Almost all the buildings on Iweka and on farther streets were in total darkness. NEPA had struck. In the distance, I made out the bright lights of World Bank’s humongous house. Like Cash Daddy, he had a power generator. After a while, I peeped at my uncle. He had a faraway gaze on his face, like an emperor wondering by how much more he should reduce his subjects’ taxes.
‘Kings,’ he said suddenly, ‘do you sometimes feel as if God is talking to you?’
I gave it some thought.
‘No.’
He turned away from the window and looked at me.
‘Kings, don’t you read your Bible?’ He did not wait for a reply. ‘You should read your Bible often and memorise passages,’ he said, shaking his head slowly and wagging his finger at me. ‘It’s very, very important.’
Sermon over, he returned his eyes to the window and took in a deep breath.
‘Kings,’ he exhaled, ‘each time I stand and look out through this window, I feel as if God is talking to me. It’s as if I can hear Him saying that He’s given me the land as far as my eyes can see, just like He said to Papa Abraham.’
He paused and looked at me.
‘Kings, I’ve decided to run for governor of Abia State in the coming elections.’
The fact that I did not drop to the floor with shock was simply supernatural.
Twenty-four
My regular visits to Umuahia came with mixed feelings. A blend of nostalgia about the good old days - the times spent there as a child - and anger about the hard times - our poverty and my father’s illness and premature death. These days, a new feeling had been stirred into the concoction - apprehension about facing my mother.
Heads turned as my Lexus sped through the streets. Eyes followed in wonder and admiration. Without braking, I honked at some pedestrians occupying the better part of a pothole-riddled road. The three men jumped away in fright. My windows were up and the air-conditioning was on full blast, so I could barely make out their invectives.
I noticed that the scallywags had now gone beyond traffic signs and dustbins. There were election posters on the face and torso of the bronze statue in the Michael Opara Square. To think that Cash Daddy’s face would soon be joining them. He had not yet made his gubernatorial aspirations publicly known, so none of his posters were out. If not for the potbellied, important-looking strangers with whom he had been holding endless meetings at the office, I would have assumed he had changed his mind.
I parked beside Mr Nwude’s blue Volkswagen. The back windscreen of the faithful car was completely gone and had been replaced by a cellophane sheet. I made a mental note to greet his family before I left. As usual, I would pretend it was a gift for the children and give them some cash.
As soon as I switched off my engine, Charity screamed. Nanoseconds later, she dashed out of the house.
‘Kings, I didn’t know you were coming today!’
We hugged.
&
nbsp; ‘How’s school?’
‘We’re closing soon,’ she said with excitement. ‘Kings, I’m coming to spend my holidays with you. I’ve already told Mummy and she said it’s OK.’
My siblings could go in and out of my house anytime they pleased without giving me notice. I had reminded them several times.
‘But that means Mummy will be at home alone,’ she said with concern. ‘Eugene is not likely to come back till after Easter.’
‘Don’t worry. We can both drive down to visit her often. What of your JAMB forms? Have you bought them?’
‘Since last week.’
‘OK, we’ll fill them together before I leave.’
I gave Charity the McVities biscuits and the pair of high heels I’d bought for her. She accompanied me to my mother’s bedroom.
‘Mummy, Kings is here,’ she chimed.
As I was about to open the door, Charity held back my hand.
‘Kings,’ she whispered with tilted head and pleading eyes, ‘can I use your phone? Please?’
Two of Charity’s friends had land phones in their houses. Each time I was around, she wanted to ring them with my cellular, never mind that she saw them in school almost every day. I handed her the phone and she scampered back to the living room, gleeful as a fly.
My mother was lying in bed - staring - with her upper body propped up on two pillows. For a widow whose first son had come to visit, her smile appeared some seconds too late.
‘Mummy.’
‘Kings.’
I sat beside her and entered her embrace. Even that was not as cosy as it should have been. Her face appeared more furrowed than on my last visit. She was wearing one of her old dresses stained with the sticky fluid from my father’s unripe plantains. Maybe it was her age, maybe it was her grief, but the hair on my mother’s head was taking its time in growing back. And I could see her scalp clearly through the grey strands. Unlike the former, the new growth was scanty.
‘Mummy, how have you been getting on?’
‘I’m fine.’
With cheeks pressed against her face, I scanned the room with my eyes. Everything was exactly as it had been when my father was alive. His jumper was still hooked to the wardrobe door. His bathroom slippers were arranged neatly at the foot of the bed, as if he were about to step right into them. A half-empty bottle of Old Spice aftershave lotion was sitting beside a half-empty Vaseline hair cream jar on his side of the dresser. In a corner of the room, I sighted the machines I had recently purchased for my mother’s shop. The large, brown cartons were sealed and unopened. I pulled myself away from her and walked towards them. My suspicions were confirmed.
‘Mummy,’ I asked wearily, ‘what about these machines? Haven’t you started using them yet?’
My mother bent her eyes to the floor. She was composing another lie.
When I replaced the television in the house, came back to visit, and saw the old one back in its place, my mother had said it was because she could not figure out how the new one worked. When I mentioned repainting and refurbishing the flat, she had said she preferred if it remained the exact way it was when my father was alive, never mind that I had promised not to tamper with his favourite armchair. When I bought a generator to supply electricity when NEPA took the light, she had said it made too much noise. I hated seeing her put herself through all this just to make a point. Now I watched her struggle to make up another excuse.
She raised her eyes.
‘Kingsley, the only thing that can make me happy is if you get a proper job. You know I’m very uncomfortable with whatever work it is you say you’re doing for Boniface.’
‘Mummy, I’m working and I’m doing this for all of you.’
‘Kings, if you really want to make me happy, you’ll stop it.’
She said the ‘it’ with force. My mother was a person who could provide a euphemism for every embarrassing word that existed. Her cache included at least fifty different replacements for sex and for the various private body parts. She had more for single mothers and divorcees. But when it came to 419, this ability had completely failed her. She never had a name for exactly what it was that she wanted me to stop.
I was tempted to change the topic by telling her that her brother was planning to be the next governor of Abia State, but that would simply be kindling another inferno. On behalf of her absent husband, my mother would probably explode with outrage. It was better to just go straight to the point of my visit.
‘Mummy, I came to let you know that I’m travelling abroad next week. I’m going to London for a meeting.’
‘Is it with Boniface you’re going?’
‘Yes.’
She sighed.
‘How long are you going for?’
‘About a week.’
‘So how do we contact you if there’s something urgent?’
I told her that I would ring Aunty Dimma to check in. My mother had also refused a land phone.
‘Kings, whatever it is you people are doing, please be very careful. Be very, very careful.’
Aha! We were making progress. If she wanted me to be careful, that meant she accepted I was in the speed lane. It was only a matter of time before she completely came around.
‘Of course, Mummy,’ I said.
She sighed the world’s deepest sigh.
Twenty-five
It was my first trip on a plane. I waited for Cash Daddy to settle down into his first class seat and left him with Protocol Officer. Then I walked towards the back to find my own place.
‘Don’t worry,’ Cash Daddy said as I left. ‘Very soon, you’ll be able to join other big boys and fly in style.’
Had I not already seen what first class looked like, I might have thought nothing of it. But when I swept the separating curtain aside, I was startled. The people in economy were packed tight together, like a set of false teeth. After much probing, I found my seat in between two men and settled down to enjoy this new experience. But one of my neighbours refused me the enjoyment. Every few minutes, he would release a silent dose of effluvium, powerful enough to disperse a civil rights protest march. It became worse after the elegant, blond air hostess served minor portions of rice with a suspicious-looking green sauce that tasted like nothing I had ever eaten before. Bland, raw, and chalky. Could this really be the sort of Western diet that my father preferred over African food?
At Heathrow Airport, the immigration queue did not recognise first class or economy so, once again, I was reunited with Cash Daddy and Protocol Officer. The stern immigration officers were scrutinising passports, interrogating coldly, and whispering amongst themselves. Some from our queue were asked to stand aside and wait while an immigration officer took their passports and disappeared. I wondered what they had done wrong. I had heard all sorts of gory stories about desperate immigrants who had their hopes demolished right here at Heathrow - escorted onto the next plane back to Nigeria without even as much as a glimpse of the greener pastures beyond the airport. What if the same thing happened to us? What if they suspected that we were 419ers? I shuddered.
Finally, it was our turn. Protocol Officer quickly stepped forward and handed over Cash Daddy’s passport.
‘How long do you plan to stay in the United Kingdom?’ the officer asked. His teeth were brown and misaligned.
‘Two weeks,’ Protocol Officer replied on Cash Daddy’s behalf. ‘He’s here on holiday.’
The immigration officer stared back into Cash Daddy’s passport. Then he stared directly into Cash Daddy’s face. Cash Daddy glared back. The man shrank and took his stare away. He looked back at the passport and flipped the pages. He cleared his throat, brought out a pair of glasses from his shirt pocket, and looked through his glasses and over them. He cleared his throat again and looked over his glasses again, then through them once more.
He opened his mouth to ask another question.
Cash Daddy stared right into his face.
The man withered.
‘Welcome to the United K
ingdom,’ he said.
Cash Daddy ignored him and strode past. The man spent some extra time staring at Protocol Officer’s passport and asking questions. Many of Protocol Officer’s answers missed the truth by about five kilometres. For some reason, the officer did not think I deserved too much scrutiny. He welcomed me without much ado.
‘Nonsense,’ Cash Daddy said, when I caught up with him. ‘Witches and wizards fly in and out of any country they want to without going through immigration. Why should I be harassed?’
The important thing was that we had made it through.
‘Anyway, by the time I become governor,’ he continued, ‘I’ll have a diplomatic passport so nobody will be able to talk to me anyhow.’
I knew that we were in the white man’s land. Still, I felt a slight shock at seeing so many white people walking about in one place at the same time. It was extremely rare to see a white person on the streets of the average, small Nigerian town. So rare, in fact, that sometimes in Umuahia, people would stop and stare at a white person, some chanting ‘Oyibo’, hoping that the white person would turn and wave.
When I was in primary four, there was a German girl in my class whose father was an engineer with the Golden Guinea Breweries. Several children spent their spare time surreptitiously running their fingers through her hair just to taste the straight, blond strands. Being the cleverest pupil, I was assigned by my teacher the prized sitting position right next to her. Standing up to answer a difficult question one day, I pressed the heel of my shoe against her toes. I just wanted to hear what it sounded like when she screamed.
The driver of the hired limousine also had brown and misaligned teeth. And so did the hotel concierge. My father had not mentioned any such anomaly in his traveller’s tales. How could English people have such bad teeth? Or perhaps these were just immigrants, and not real English people.
After settling into our different rooms, we converged in Cash Daddy’s suite for a final briefing. I and Protocol Officer stood by the bathroom door while Cash Daddy addressed us from the bathtub.
‘Like I told you people, this one is not the type of job that you chop and clean your mouth and shit and it ends there.’
I Do Not Come to You by Chance Page 19
