Married But Available

by B. Nyamnjoh

  Lilly Loveless took a bite at the kola and winced. The nut tasted like rubber and was bitter as hell. She spat out, and Dr Wiseman Lovemore spoke just in time to avoid a comment by Bobinga Iroko.

  “Bobinga Iroko has been my friend for years,” said Dr Wiseman Lovemore, addressing Lilly Loveless. “But each time I’m with him, I feel no need for sports, because the laughter he induces is enough exercise. The worst moments I have with him are actually the best in the world. A very jocular fellow he is.”

  “You’ve made him blush,” said Lilly Loveless, as Bobinga Iroko covered his face with his hands in pretentious shyness.

  Bobinga Iroko’s drink arrived. “She knows how to have fun at the job, and delivers service with a smile,” Bobinga Iroko complimented the bar girl, his thirsting eyes drowning themselves in her good looks.

  Lilly Loveless insisted on paying for the beer. “The drinks this evening are all on me,” she told them.

  “Literally or metaphorically?” asked Bobinga Iroko.

  “Literally and metaphorically,” replied Lilly Loveless.

  “Regardless of whether I literally finish a crate?” Bobinga Iroko teased.

  “Regardless of whether you finish two crates,” Lilly Loveless challenged.

  “So what are you doing in Puttkamerstown?” Bobinga Iroko asked, taking to her sense of humour and suppleness of mind.

  “I’m doing research for my doctorate on sex, power and consumption, using Puttkamerstown as my field location.”

  “You Muzungulanders study funny themes. I’ve always thought the PhD was a serious degree. Something to confer power, the power to pull others down. I can assure you that no one in this country would sponsor a study like yours, let alone award a degree to someone who works on a theme that trivialises science. Given our development needs, we go for hardcore science, not soft-core gimmick.”

  Lilly Loveless could not tell whether he was serious or had gone back to his joking mode, so she chose to ignore his comment.

  “What exactly do you want to study about sex?” Bobinga Iroko was curious.

  “In a nutshell, how it shapes and is shaped by power and consumption,” replied Lilly Loveless. “But to get there, I’m interested in everything to do with sex, from love to marriage and divorce, through affairs, cheating, promiscuity, and so on.”

  Bobinga Iroko laughed mockingly – kikikikikikiki – before saying, “Cheating, philandering and sexual promiscuity are and always have been the tango in town, the tonic to help people bear relationships that would otherwise be too burdensome to even contemplate. Monogamy is incredibly boring, and this is as true of here as it is of where you come from, whether or not polygamous marriages are formally recognised by the state. If you want fidelity, love is not the game for you. Only a moralising hypocrite or an idle social scientist would think of wasting money on a silly study like yours.”

  Lilly Loveless smiled, instead of being irritated or embarrassed. She couldn’t help feeling that Bobinga Iroko was being playfully unpleasant, as his expressive face and eyes displayed warmth that spoke of a man with a good heart, someone who would not go out of his way to hurt a researcher he had barely met.

  “Thank goodness DNA paternity tests are not as commonplace as they are dangerous,” continued Bobinga Iroko, “else men would be shocked to know how their wives lead them to take perfect strangers for their offspring. Fortunately, social fatherhood is what matters, as the child belongs to he who owns the bed. I don’t need a study to know this.”

  “Lucky you,” said Lilly Loveless, still smiling, a bit awkwardly.

  “Perhaps you have a point,” Bobinga Iroko conceded.

  Lilly Loveless sat up, all ears.

  “It is not because cheating is the order of the day that people are necessarily honest about it. The natural tendency is to forget the speck in our own eye as we dramatize the speck in the eye of our neighbour. We forget to know that each time we point a finger at someone, three fingers are pointing at us.”

  Lilly Loveless felt relieved, somehow. It is more than discomforting to have your research written off by locals with opinions on what good research should be.

  “OK, let me contribute to your research all the same, for what it is worth,” Bobinga Iroko took her hand, his eyes virtually kissing hers. “We Mimbolanders believe in infidelity, but we also believe in lying to protect our marriages and relationships. Look over there.”

  She stretched her neck like a giraffe.

  “You see that man sitting with that girl, tiny like a broomstick?”

  Lilly Loveless spotted the couple.

  “The wife died of chronic gonorrhoea, chronic syphilis, and chronic AIDS, consumed by the recklessness of a penis to which she came as a virgin and stayed faithful, while her husband visited everything in a skirt. Mimboland condoms are spectacularly uncomfortable. They spoil the sex, and I can well understand why a man like that was at war against condoms or why Muzungulanders like you prefer to import their own condoms.”

  Lilly Loveless was speechless. Bobinga Iroko certainly knew how to shock.

  He was just beginning.

  “See that battered car over there?” he pointed.

  “It belongs to someone, a colleague actually, in a way, who has made a habit of living above his means, because he believes in keeping up appearances. He doesn’t accept advice.”

  “What a pity,” said Lilly Loveless.

  “A pity indeed, for many are the times I have told him that having a second hand Pajero is like getting married to a retired prostitute – more headache than service.”

  This guy has no inhibitions, whatsoever, Lilly Loveless concluded. He’s good.

  “And that brand new Prado over there, still without number plates: Johnny-Just-Come,” he indicated the car with his troublesome forefinger.

  Again, Lilly Loveless nodded, curious for what bombshell he was about to release.

  “50th birthday present for Dr Simba Spineless, the Reg of Mimbo, by the fellow who has won every single contract at the university since he was appointed Reg by presidential decree 20 years ago in place of someone with real ability. It is one of many rewards that come his way for running the institution extraordinarily badly.”

  Lilly Loveless’ eyes dilated with surprised curiosity. “Dr Simba Spineless has been Reg for 20 years?”

  “Absolutely,” said Bobinga Iroko. “And he was not a nonentity before that. His bread was buttered even before his father, politically very well-placed in colonial times, had met his mother.”

  “How is that possible?”

  “Don’t tell me you haven’t done sociology, or that you’ve forgotten the doctrine of your forefather, Charles Darwin,” remarked Bobinga Iroko, feigning surprise.

  Lilly Loveless smiled, meaningfully.

  “He seldom reads nor writes in any scholarly sense,” Bobinga Iroko criticised. “When he does, he prefers his manhood to do the thinking and the writing.”

  This man is incredible, thought Lilly Loveless, but I like him for that.

  “And he is unbelievably vain and hopelessly incompetent as he would rather stammer his way to hell than allow talent to shine,” Bobinga Iroko continued. “He is a perfect example of what is wrong with Mimboland when it comes to public service: Between word and action, between concept and reality, between desire and gratification stand a wide, deep chasm and a thousand and one obstacles.”

  “It must be these qualities which the President finds irresistible,” Lilly Loveless ventured, then immediately apologised. Although Bobinga Iroko and Dr Wiseman Lovemore were not the company to be cautious about, she knew she must avoid airing her opinions or taking sides on sensitive local issues during her fieldwork.

  “With a big fancy car like that and in his position, the Reg doesn’t need words to sleep with a woman,” Bobinga Iroko laughed cynically.

  “How is that?” asked Lilly Loveless.

  “The car speaks for itself, so all he needs to say to any woman he wants is: ‘enter we go’�
�� Bobinga Iroko explained. “And for a man who stammers the way he does, the car is a real speech enhancer.”

  “There’s no such thing as romantic language with him?” asked Lilly Loveless.

  “Romantic language is for the poor,” Bobinga Iroko mocked, “those who are always suffering from an over-inflation of empty words. Power and money open doors that most can only dream of; they are the poetry of the dumb, the humour of those too busy or too important to flatter, the corrector of those ordinarily too ugly to be noticed. With the rich and powerful, it is all about instant gratification.”

  “Isn’t that too hard?”

  “The only thing too hard is their sex drive, which they use as evidence of the opportunities and impunities of wealth and power,” said Bobinga Iroko. “Thus the Reg’s persistent erections are as rock-hard as they are reckless. They’ve always been, only more so today with the advent of Viagra – ‘the secret weapon to empower little warriors of love’, that has made horizontal jogging his favourite sport. He is convinced women worship rock solid hardness and the prospect of all-night staying power that come with the feeling of bigger, wider and fuller that he believes he induces. He has a queue of university girls at his service every day, and is known to be familiar with many more resting places than meet the eye,” he pointed to his eye, as if to say, even for the investigative journalist that he is. “He knows how to keep himself busy enjoying small small things; each time he settles on one, he is consumed by an obsession of covering the face, hammering the base and hoping for the best. He is well reputed to pay girls with university petrol coupons, which the girls are forced to exchange for cash at various filling stations.” Then, as if he didn’t want anyone to overhear him, he whispered, “The Talking Drum is building a dossier on him, and we’ve made friends with all filling station attendants to take down the names of all the girls who come with petrol coupons to convert into cash.”

  “Why are you doing it?” Lilly Loveless asked.

  “Because we are a newspaper with a social responsibility mandate,” he replied. “And because we believe that the petrol coupons are meant for the university to function properly,” he added. “The man’s cell phone, bought and serviced by the university, has more room for the cell phone numbers of girls and female colleagues than it does for the numbers of his male administrative colleagues, deans and lecturers.” He spoke with such conviction that Lilly Loveless was amazed.

  “And there’s another reason, which should please you, I believe. We want to render his poor wife a service. The fellow is known to have far more children out of wedlock than he can recollect. We don’t want his legitimate wife and children to suffer…”

  “What does his wife do?”

  “Her name is Victoria Aa-Shing. She’s also an academic. She used to teach at the university as well. But too many fights pushed the man to engineer her transfer to Nyamandem, under the fake pretext of a promotion to head the directorate of Degree Equivalence at the Ministry of Knowledge Production. Now he is free to go and come from home as he likes, except for the weekends his madam is around, or during public holidays when a former maid of theirs, with whom he has a child as well – the child that pushed his wife to push the maid out of the house several years ago, keeps an eye on him… It is an irony, as she had employed the services of the mannish-looking nanny precisely to stop him from playing hanky-panky with the maid in her absence. But when Dr Simba Spineless is determined to think with his penis, he thinks with his penis. He begs to differ with those who insist there must be more to a woman than being a writing pad,” laughed Bobinga Iroko.

  “There is nothing the wife hasn’t done to stop him from noticing and embracing the charms of other women,” he continued. “She has framed and displayed photos of their happiest moments, told him stories about the pleasant past, cooked him his favourite dishes, spiced his meals with popular love charms, and loved him the way she believes no other woman can. But he is what we call ‘woman wrapper’, a man who darts from one woman to another like a nectar-seeking bee. Even then, she would rather give up on life than on her marriage: ‘I cannot back down now, no matter how unwanted he makes me feel,’ she tells her sympathetic academic sisters who in turn scream: ‘Men – terrible creatures!!!’”

  Bobinga Iroko was certainly the investigative journalist he claimed to be. Or was he more of a rumour monger? Where did he come by his damning details on the private lives of others? Did those eyes and ears of his see and hear beyond the ordinary? These, of course, were questions Lilly Loveless could only ask herself in silence. She however wondered what Bobinga Iroko would say to her mom’s famous cautionary words: ‘the one who gossips to you about others, gossips to others about you.’

  “What we hate most about him is the air of impunity he carries around. If only he were a bit modest, even his staunchest critics that some of us are would understand him and soften up,” said Bobinga Iroko.

  “So he is a sort of arrogant bastard?” asked Lilly Loveless.

  “Much worse, I assure you,” said Bobinga Iroko. “You need to see him. Imagine what he would say in the hearing of his own wife: ‘The mistake men make is to give all their love to one woman. This contradicts even the eating habits of the most poor amongst us. We all eat a variety of foods every week. Why should it be any different with love and loving?’”

  “And what does his wife do?”

  “What can she do? He threatens her with having the yam and the knife, and she knows just what he means. This is a lion’s den and he is one of the master lions. What I can’t understand is what women find irresistible in this master lion. I’ve always heard what makes a man appealing is good looks, sincerity, honesty, humour, intelligence, passion and tenderness. I’m yet to be convinced he has any of these qualities. And don’t tell me beauty is in the eyes of the beholder.”

  “Bobinga Iroko,” Lilly Loveless said, a note of tenderness in her voice, “have many people told you that you have a sharp, impressive and sympathetic mind?”

  “A few,” he replied. “But I’ve learnt not to trust what people tell me, until I know what they’re sniffing for.”

  “So what am I sniffing for?”

  “You tell me.”

  “Nothing. Just your sharp, impressive, sympathetic, creative, rebellious mind. With a dish like your mind, I could eat until my tongue complains.”

  “You see what I mean? Because you desperately want such a mind, you are determined to find it in the first man you meet in Mimboland.”

  “You are not the first man I’ve met in Mimboland.”

  “Really? How unfortunate. I was beginning to think of me, myself and I…”

  “That proves my point…”

  They both laughed knowingly and toasted their glasses. Dr Wiseman Lovemore could see the two were really getting to know each other. From the way they talked, no one would imagine they were only meeting each other for the first time.

  “To be fair to the university administration, there’s at least one of them who doesn’t look at girls all the time. That is, if his declarations in public are anything to go by, although The Talking Drum is yet to uncover something about him. He is known to make every woman understand he is like bitter kola – not easy to eat…”

  “You can say that again,” said Lilly Loveless, about bitter kola.

  Bobinga Iroko laughed, crushed another bitter kola delightfully, and ate as if it was the best nut in the world. “And this is what women find intriguing,” he continued of the exception in the university administration. “Each comes determined to change him, to make a difference, but they all end up disappointed, as he is such a staunch Christian, and has made of the Holy Mother his entire obsession. To be frank though, no one quite knows the extent to which his heavenly Madonna could facilitate his ambitions of challenging the ‘Candle Light of the Devil’ on the topmost position at the university.”

  “Wow!” said Lilly Loveless. “You really are all for this guy.”

  “Not exactly,” replied Bob
inga Iroko. “He doesn’t drink, and for someone from Mimboland not to drink, that is very suspect. It is like being big and not being PIP. Many people are good at hiding poisonous ambition until the time is right, then, like an angry mountain, they explode, devastating life and the creative effort of people for miles and miles without end.”

  “Is Mount Mimbo volcanic?” asked Lilly Loveless.

  “Yes, mildly volcanic, but dangerous enough to us who inhabit its sides.”

  “What is PIP again?”

  “Party In Power.”

  “So everyone who is anyone must be in PIP?”

  “What do you think in a country headed by the gifted, the one and only President Longstay?”

  Lilly Loveless was tongue-tied.

  “PIP means RIP for all else…”

  “If you mean whom I think you mean,” began Dr Wiseman Lovemore, who had all along watched in amused silence Lilly Loveless and Bobinga Iroko get along. “I’ve heard a couple of women say he is the way he is because his battery does not charge…”

  Just then, Dr Wiseman Lovemore’s cell phone rang.

  “I must go,” said Dr Wiseman Lovemore. “Urgently needed at home. My daughter Pinklie has malaria. My wife has travelled.”

  “Oh, I’m so sorry,” said Lilly Loveless, emptying her glass and standing up to go with him.

  “No, no,” Dr Wiseman Lovemore protested. “You stay and enjoy yourself. Bobinga Iroko is a good and trusted friend. You are safe with him.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’m sure. We’re used to her having malaria. I know exactly what to do when I get home.”

  He left.

  This was the first time since her arrival that Lilly Loveless was hearing anything about Dr Wiseman Lovemore’s family. She thought to herself: So he has a daughter, and is married. How interesting! Why has he been so economical with information on his family status? I’ve told him about my parents, my ex-boyfriend and a lot more. But he’s stayed guarded, measuring everything he says like water in the desert. We’ve been everywhere together, save for his home. Of course, I haven’t asked to be taken there. That’s a decision for him to make.