Married But Available

by B. Nyamnjoh

  ***

  The surging cacophony of music penetrated the silence of their back room, like a river that had overflowed its banks.

  “This is unbearable,” Lilly Loveless complained, gathering her things. “Do you think we could move somewhere else?”

  Britney took a quick look at her watch. It was 10:30am. “Let’s try Mountain Valley,” she suggested. “At this time of day, it should be quiet for us to work.”

  Lilly Loveless paid for the drinks.

  After a fifteen minute taxi ride, they arrived at Mountain Valley and spread their things out on one of the many empty tables.

  A waitress came and insisted they buy drinks, to be allowed to sit and work.

  “We patron no like make people dem just come sit no drink, no chop,” she told them, making it clear that she was simply implementing instructions.

  “I am a regular customer here, don’t you know me?” Lilly Loveless protested playfully. Then to Britney she asked: “Same thing?”

  “Same thing,” Britney replied.

  “One Pamplemouse, one Mimbo-Wanda, both cold,” she ordered.

  The waitress left and was soon back with the drinks, accompanied by a tiny bowl of roasted groundnuts.

  ***

  Britney resumed. Her second interview was about Pius Toktok, “a man who had worked for several years as a journalist with Radio Mimboland International in Nyamandem. During this time he had gained the interest of the local population because of his mastery of the language and style of broadcasting. Then he decided to leave for Puttkamerstown, in quest of a Masters degree at UM to be able to gain a promotion at his job. This meant he had to be away from his family in Nyamandem for the best part of two years. It also meant, given his popularity as a seasoned broadcast journalist, that he would be easily recognizable and admired, especially amongst us girls.

  “Pius Toktok was almost past middle age. Soon after his arrival at the university, he fell for a student of History, Beatrice. She was an aspiring journalist herself, spoke with affectation, and had a soft spot for language well articulated. Whether or not this would have been enough for a relationship, I don’t know. But what I know is that the relationship started when Pius Toktok showed signs of being financially upright and thus Beatrice didn’t hesitate to open when he knocked at the door of her heart with affection. Like most Mboma relationships, this one was not really open. It was discreet. Only the neighbours around Beatrice had an idea of this affair, as Pius Toktok would drive late in the night into the mini-cité where she lived. More often than not he made sure he left her room before the light that announces the break of day. Unfortunately for Pius Toktok, the news of his infidelity soon reached his wife in Nyamandem.”

  “Nothing can hide forever under the searchlight of the tropical Sun, as Bobinga Iroko would say,” said Lilly Loveless.

  “Absolutely,” agreed Britney. “Upon hearing the unpleasant news, Mrs Toktok, herself a beauty still in her twenties, made a surprise visit. She made sure she had a good description of Beatrice before leaving Nyamandem. When she got to the mini-cité where Beatrice lived, late that night, she went to her room and knocked at the door. Pius Toktok and Beatrice were at home and, of course, in bed. With the small piece of cloth that he wrapped round his waist, Pius Toktok made straight for the door unsuspicious. To his greatest surprise, he beheld his wounded wife who roared into the room and seized Beatrice by the throat. A big fight broke out amongst the three. Guilt rendered Pius Toktok speechless before his wife. The shouting and wailing drew the attention of the neighbours who rushed out of their rooms to rescue the situation. It took them time and persistence to stop the fight and separate the women. There had been slapping, biting and tearing of clothes – so much so that the two ladies were half naked. Soon afterwards, there was a serious exchange of unpleasant words. Pius Toktok’ wife did her best to crush her husband with words in the face of the crowd. Same treatment for Beatrice who felt really bad as the crowd was full of her university mates, who could not understand what Pius Toktok had seen in her modest looks to risk his marriage. It was an experience that marred her entire stay at the university, as each time she was seen around campus, fellow students would shout ‘husband snatcher international’, pointing insultingly in her direction. Many were surprised by the strength of character she displayed by not abandoning her studies after what happened rapidly became a life in hell for her. The relationship with Pius Toktok didn’t outlive the incident. Whatever has happened between Pius Toktok and his wounded wife, I have not succeeded in finding out, but it doesn’t seem he completed his studies at UM.”

  ***

  Lilly Loveless was pleased with the way Britney had conducted the interviews so far. They would provide some insights, she was sure. But she would have to tell her to be meatier in the data she collects, and to watch her personal views, in future interviews. It was better to have fewer and richer interviews, than many sketchy encounters. She thanked Britney, paid for the drinks and they separated, with Britney going off to conduct more interviews.

  Lilly Loveless on the other hand went to the Archives where PrinceAnointed was waiting for her with files to photocopy. She collected the files – mostly newspaper reports on sexual scandals and rumoured affairs in official circles in colonial times and the immediate post-independence period. She gave him Mim$200,000 to help him out for the month, and was about to leave when a visibly touched Prince Anointed, tears in his eyes, held her hand and said:

  “An angel has made an appearance in hell.” He rubbed and caressed her hand with gratitude, graciousness, integrity and dignity. “I can’t begin to thank you enough for this,” he was now holding the money in both hands. “I haven’t seen anything like this for God knows how long.”

  “It’s my pleasure,” Lilly Loveless didn’t want him to make too much of the gesture. “Whatever one can do to help out now and again to keep hope alive one will do.”

  “What do I give you in return? Thank you is hardly enough…”

  “You’ve already done enough for me”, Lilly Loveless looked at the files she was carrying appreciatively.

  “Wait a minute.” Prince Anointed searched his trouser pockets. “I found this in my personal archives at home,” he said, handing her a piece of paper.

  “What is it?” she asked, opening the folded paper. She could see the age on the paper.

  “It’s something I wrote about money, when I was still a boy,” he told her. “I didn’t know I still had it. In fact, I had completely forgotten I ever wrote something like that.”

  “As a boy? Amazing!”

  “That’s the power of preserving documents.”

  “You are absolutely right. I hope there were many more like you.”

  “You can take the piece along. Photocopy it, so at least you have something by me, not simply something preserved by me.”

  “I certainly will.” Lilly Loveless thanked him for the gift and left, touched.

  Her curiosity couldn’t wait. As soon as she was out of the Archives, she read the piece:

  ‘Money, You’re impossible.

  ‘I’m always counting it and saving and wanting more of it, but it never seems to satisfy my needs. Every time I get it, it isn’t enough. I want more! More! More! Every time I do get it I don’t know what to do with it. Mom says save it for something you really want. Dad says save it for school. But I say, spend it. Now! Then just when I’ve decided what to buy I find something better. Money! You’re Impossible.

  ‘The little paper monster that everyone wants, that everyone likes, that everyone treasures. It crawls in people’s ears and up to their brains and then it does its disastrous work. It fills people with awful feelings of greed, disgust and jealousy. And then it leaves without fulfilling so many needs. Money! You’re Impossible.’

  How apt! And a relevant gift too! Lilly Loveless went back into the Archives to thank Prince Anointed once more, and to invite him for a drink at a place of his choice after work.

  6


  The next day Bobinga Iroko appeared abruptly, and insisted Lilly Loveless should come along with him to Sakersbeach, where he had an appointment to interview a heavyweight politician for The Talking Drum. He promised to show her the lovely beach if she came. “Lots of opportunity to sunbathe,” he added, which was enough to persuade her. To Lilly Loveless, the beach was the most romantic place in the world. She couldn’t wait to kick off her shoes and bury her feet in the warm sand of the beach that she had heard so much about. There was another reason though. He would miss his appointment if he sat down to tell Lilly Loveless of developments. Better to do so in the car, on the way to Sakersbeach, was his idea.

  Lilly Loveless quickly assembled a towel, sun protection cream, her digital recorder and camera, her iPod, and other things she thought she would need in Sakersbeach.

  “I haven’t seen or heard from Dr Wiseman Lovemore for days. Is he OK?” she inquired, getting into the passenger seat of Bobinga Iroko’s secondhand double-cabin Toyota Hilux pickup. She noticed he was wearing a similar flowery well-embroidered shirt to the one he wore when they met the first time at Mountain Valley, which she told him she liked. If her mom was here, she would have jumped to conclusions, for she was used to saying in response to her childhood question on what love was: ‘Love is when you tell a guy you like his shirt, then he wears it every day.’

  “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” said Bobinga Iroko, turning the ignition.

  “Is anything wrong?”

  “Lovemore is under detention…”

  “What for?”

  Bobinga Iroko told her the story. The night a week ago when Lovemore left abruptly following a phone call, was when he was picked up by the police. “The maid made the call under duress, forced to lie that Lovemore’s daughter, Pinklie, had suffered a critical malaria attack that needed urgent attention.” When Dr Wiseman Lovemore hurried home, two policemen greeted him with handcuffs. They took him to the police station where he was detained, charged with instigating rebellious students to vandalise the Reg’s car, and also for being one of the masterminds behind student unrest at UM. The police played back a recording of him making injurious statements against the VC and Reg in an argument he had with a colleague, Dr Nosewordy Boiboibambeh, about the strike.

  “When I went to see him upon learning of the detention, his spirits were not too low. ‘Being incarcerated and in pain proves I’m useful,’ he told me. But he was very disappointed that Dr Nosewordy Boiboibambeh, a colleague of his at the university with whom he quarrelled recently had secretly recorded their exchange and handed the tape to the university administration for whom he was spying. The police are now hanging onto every critical word he uttered in the tape as evidence that Lovemore is guilty.”

  Lilly Loveless remembered the passionate exchange between Dr Wiseman Lovemore and one of his colleagues. She was sure that was the Dr Nosewordy Boiboibambeh in question, for the man had left in fury and in a hurry. But how could a colleague, an intellectual and an academic do a thing like that? She was baffled.

  “What could he have said that was so injurious?” she asked.

  “The details are scant, but he is said to have gone beyond the limits of acceptable criticism. Dr Wiseman Lovemore is not one to be suffering from too much respect for his boss. So you can well imagine what he must have said.”

  “We need to get him released. Have you tried finding out how to go about this?”

  “The police don’t want to hear the word ‘bail’ mentioned in connection with Dr Wiseman Lovemore. They’ve been instructed to treat him as a dangerous element to be watched closely.”

  “Do you think he is guilty? Did he instigate students to burn down the Reg’s car? What truth is there to the allegations?” Lilly Loveless was full of questions. She felt guilty that it was only now she was learning of Dr Wiseman Lovemore’s detention. Why didn’t Desire tell her? Then she remembered that Desire wasn’t around, that she had said something about taking advantage of the strike to rush to her home village upcountry to attend to some urgent matters.

  “There’s something fishy about the arrest. I know that the VC and Reg are above Senate in their prerogative to bite and blow with impunity, but what I can’t understand is why his fellow critical colleagues at the university are being so silent. Am I to believe that we are living in the company of cowards who only pretend to stand up for things? One thing I can assure you though, The Talking Drum is leaving no stone unturned to get to the bottom of the matter, especially in the light of certain things we have uncovered…”

  “What have you uncovered?” Lilly Loveless was curious, as always, whenever she was in the company of this indomitable Bobinga Iroko who seems a step ahead of everyone.

  He recounted how the same night that Dr Wiseman Lovemore was arrested, at exactly midnight, the VC and the Reg, each dressed only in underpants, had driven to the University Junction, parked their cars and headed for the main gate of the university. With them were two men dressed to look like elephants, carrying two dark clay pots, two shovels and two machetes, and pulling along two dogs, two goats and two cocks. When they arrived at the main gate, the goats, the dogs and the cocks were slaughtered over the VC and the Reg who were lying across the gate as instructed by the elephant men. Some of the blood was collected in a clay pot, mixed with herbs contained in the other, and given to the VC and the Reg to drink and to say their wishes as they drank. “We want the cam-no-gos to leave us alone. We want them to leave our land,” they screamed in unison. The elephant men quoted a proverb which warns the calabash never to have anything to do with a stone, for any contact between the two is likely to hurt the calabash only.

  The VC and the Reg each angrily voiced instances when they had suffered the fate of the calabash, and beat their chests triumphantly for instances when they had been the stone. A common bitter disappointment to both of them was the recent rejection of their applications for promotion to associate professorship, by the National Universities Promotions Council chaired by a cam-no-go who had the audacity to record in the minutes: “These two applicants do not qualify to be even the senior lecturers that they currently are. Neither has published a scientific paper in the past ten years, nor has taught a course. For twenty years, their intellects have proved most underequipped for any serious scientific exploit. To promote them therefore, would be a further disservice to an institution that is already choking from their ill-advised appointment to its helm.” For this reason the VC, a Clinical Psychologist with an Msc to show for it, had missed becoming associate professor, and had sworn to make mince meat of all cam-no-go who dared to cross her path. She had felt so embittered that she would have done something rash and desperate, had her sister not taken her to discover a women only club in nearby Sawang – run by a certain Helena Paradise, ‘the ultimate in women’s liberation’ – specialising in turning stress into pleasure, where she was told: ‘after this, you’ll never want a man again’. As for Simba Spineless the Reg, a PhD in Geography and Volcanology had threatened to erupt in war “against the ingrates that suck our native soil dry with greed like leeches.”

  After incantation upon incantation, the elephant men then proceeded to dig a big grave in which the slaughtered goats, dogs and cocks were buried alongside an exercise book and a ball point pen.

  According to Bobinga Iroko, the students who witnessed this ritual were at the offices of The Talking Drum first thing in the morning. They narrated what they had seen and heard, and were ready to sign the story themselves as proof of its authenticity.

  The elephant men reassured the VC and the Reg that what they had buried “will numb every student and member of staff who thinks evil of you.” Before leaving the scene, the elephant men promised to intensify their magical powers to ensure that “our daughter and our son, and all those who mean them well, are protected by our native soil from all cam-no-gos.”

  “What are cam-no-gos?” Lilly Loveless asked.

  “These are a skin rash that itches like
mad,” Bobinga Iroko laughed. “You scratch and scratch and scratch, but the itches go nowhere.”

  “So the VC and Reg have been attacked by this skin rash?” Lilly Loveless was baffled.

  “Yes, and it disturbs them like hell,” he continued to laugh.

  “Really?” Now Lilly Loveless knew that Bobinga Iroko was in his joking mode.

  “Yes, and embarrassing too. At parties and official functions the cam-no-gos do not allow the VC and Reg to do their jobs. They attack, and the VC and Reg would scratch and scratch to no avail. They can’t even take their fingers from their skins to take a drink or something to eat. It is terrible, because the cam-no-gos make them feel like going naked, and grating themselves against a rough surface till they find satisfaction.”

  Lilly Loveless finally understood the metaphor. “So people have borrowed from this skin rash to refer to others they don’t like?” she asked.

  “That’s right. Cam-no-gos are people whom the sons and daughters of the native soil consider a pain in the arse.”

  “You mean ethnic-others?”

  “Yes, ethnic-, regional-, and whatever others… Anyone not perceived to belong really.”

  “Isn’t that rather parochial and dangerous?”

  “That is the way those who run this country have fought to ensure that we remain forever divided. They’re out to mar, not to make.”

  “It’s like racing where angels fear to tread.”

  “Exactly, this is whywe say, Mimboland na Mimboland.”

  Bobinga Iroko told Lilly Loveless that the story was front page news in The Talking Drum. Unfortunately, there were no photos to clinch the case.