‘Ahh, les Nigerians, ils ont de l’argent avec le pétrole, n’est-ce pas?’ Salamatou rubbed her fingers together indicating money. ‘Why you are not together? Did he ask you to marry?’
‘No. It just didn’t work. Cela n’a pas marché.’ Vanessa shrugged her shoulders.
‘Alors, il faut te trouver un mari. Quel est le genre que tu préfères?’ Salamatou asked.
‘You mean, how he looks?’
‘Oui,’ Salamatou nodded.
‘Well, how about someone like Sembène?
‘Sembène?’
‘Sembène Ousmane.’
‘Mais oui et tu le connais, non?’ You know him so now you must show him you love him,’ Salamatou said excitedly.
‘No, I was only joking,’ Vanessa laughed. ‘He’s very handsome, but not the man for me. Too many women like him and that can be a problem. Besides, he’s too famous.’
‘So that says you still love the Nigerian.’ Salamatou replied, holding the mirror for Vanessa to view her finished hair. ‘Alors?’
‘It’s beautiful. C’est très jolie.’
‘Non, non, non. I don’t talk about your hair! I speak about your man. You love him still, non?’
‘Who?’
‘Le Nigerian.’
‘Ouff. It’s finished. C’est fini. Jeexna!’ Vanessa added, remembering one of her words in Wolof.
Salamatou laughed. ‘Non. You say ‘jeexna’,’ for example, if you finish with something, like I finish to plait your hair. But if you finish with a man, then more better to say sanu digg’nte jeexna.’
‘Sanu digg’nte jeexna,’ Vanessa repeated.
She said it so well and with such conviction, that they both started laughing. It was good to laugh, but later that night Vanessa went back to her flat and wept. It was the first time in many months that she’d cried over Tayo.
Chapter 21
Tayo sat in his armchair with his eyes closed and feet resting on his leather pouffe as he listened to Coltrane’s Love Supreme. He looked forward to Sunday mornings when the house was quiet and he could reflect in peace. He stood up and walked to the bookshelf in search of an exemplary text. Last week his publishers had phoned to congratulate him on his manuscript. They were planning a sizeable print run of his history of Nigeria, the largest, they said, of any third-world history book, and naturally he felt pleased. All that remained to be written was the preface, but what did one say in a preface? He flipped through several books and then traced his finger along the mahogany bookshelf in search of one of his favourites, and there it was: The Open Society and its Enemies. He wondered how often a preface was overlooked in a reader’s eagerness to hurry on and read the rest of the book. And here was Popper’s preface, two in fact. Tayo nodded to himself, dwelling for a moment on the line that spoke of the need to break from the customary deference shown to great men. He reached for pen and paper and carried the books to his desk.
For years now, Tayo had been writing about Nigeria’s problems. He believed that greed and mismanagement were the root causes of oil corruption and a broken civil service. He also believed that the West, through the World Bank in particular, exacerbated his country’s problems, but he was cautious with this argument knowing its potential to detract from what could be done at home. He was also determined never to treat Nigeria’s problems as insurmountable and in 1984, when others were saying that the country’s many cultures and ethnic groups were never meant to co-exist, Tayo disagreed. He had no patience for the afro-pessimists, whom he saw as lending credence to the many racist historians of Africa. Instead, he maintained that in spite of his country’s numerous coups and despots, events could still change for the better. History, as Popper argued, was not deterministic. Tayo decided to acknowledge him in his preface, alongside colleagues and friends, not forgetting family of course.
The book would be dedicated to Vanessa, and to his father. To his father, for being a tireless civil servant in pursuit of a better Nigeria. Tayo shifted in his chair, sensing that something had fallen from his trouser pocket. He reached down, expecting to retrieve pound notes, but instead found a sheet of paper in his wife’s handwriting. It was yesterday’s shopping list, scribbled on medical paper advertising an unpronounceable medication. ‘Wretched pharmaceutical companies,’ he muttered to himself. Wouldn’t it be better if companies handed out free medicines instead of useless bits of paper promoting fancy, experimental drugs? This was yet another of Nigeria’s problems — the questionable role of multinationals. He read the list:
Maggi cubes
Corn oil (large size)
Tomato puree
Treetops squash (mango or lemon)
Ribena
Bournvita
Lipton’s tea
Quaker oats
Margarine (Flora)
Babybel Dutch cheeses (pick coldest)
Dairylea cheese
Wall’s ice cream
Golden syrup (not local brand!)
Omo
Lux, and 1 bar Imperial Leather
Not many husbands helped with domestic chores, but Tayo felt it only fair. After all, his wife worked out of the home just as much as he did, more if you counted her night shifts. Like most professionals, they employed a house servant and gardener, but some things they preferred to take care of themselves. Most Saturday mornings, she gave him a list and he did the shopping at Kingsway, while she haggled with the traders selling fresh fruit and vegetables in the car park outside. She enjoyed bargaining and was good at it; he was not — hence his relegation to Kingsway.
Usually, after the food shopping, his wife would stop at Challenge Christian bookshop and he would use this time to browse arts and crafts displayed in the stalls across the street. She didn’t like him buying from these traders, whom she claimed inflated their prices for tourists, but occasionally he chose something small, some glass beads or a leather bag, for his daughter. He knew the prices were high, but they were still far cheaper than the imported trinkets sold in Kingsway’s household section. He never made a fuss about this to his wife, but he didn’t like it when Nigerians shunned local products, preferring to import all manner of things like Quaker oats and golden syrup bearing the royal stamp of approval: By Appointment to Her Majesty the Queen. Tayo shook his head at the hypocrisy of it all, wishing his wife could see things his way, yet he knew he was being unfair, petty even, to criticise her. If she wanted her few overseas luxuries, so be it. She worked hard for them.
Tayo stretched his arms out in front of him, interlaced his fingers, and pushed them out further to loosen his muscles. Yesterday, after shopping, he had gone with Kwame and David to the abattoir to buy half a cow. Kwame White and David Wiseman were neighbours who, like them, lived in the new university homes on the Bauchi road — identical four-bedroom bungalows with sizeable back gardens. They’d spent a pleasant afternoon at Kwame’s house cutting the meat and portioning it into plastic bags for the women to freeze, but today Tayo was feeling the after-effects of their work. Every arm muscle ached, which made him doubly glad for the day of rest.
The older he got, the more he looked forward to the peace and quiet of Sunday mornings. Did he miss going to church? Not really. He still believed in God, or at least in the existence of a supernatural being, but he’d grown disenchanted with organised religion. He disliked the newer services and found it embarrassing to watch people crying and confessing their so-called sins in public. He viewed the speaking in tongues with great suspicion and did not care much for St. Mark’s congregation. It seemed church members worried more about displaying the latest fashions and the newest German cars than in humbly worshipping God. His family had taken issue with him: he hardly attended services so how could he know what congregations were like? So Tayo had learnt to keep his views to himself and while his wife and daughter worshipped at church, he played his records and read the papers. These days he listened less to Highlife and the jazz of his youth and more to the jazz of artists like Coltrane, whose music he was listenin
g to now as he scanned the local papers. He bought Punch and New Nigerian out of habit and always with the hope of finding something worthwhile in between the excess of advertisements, obituaries, memorials and other social announcements. The more serious international paper, The Weekly Guardian, he saved for last. It kept him abreast of international news with a selection of articles sourced from Le Monde, The Guardian, and The Washington Post.
Tayo realised that he must have drifted off to sleep. The papers had slipped from his lap and the family was back. Kemi waved her Sunday school colouring in front of his face.
‘Do you like it, Daddy?’
‘It’s beautiful.’ He smiled, preparing to add it to his already large collection of fishermen, shepherds, and babies in mangers.
‘Not the colouring! My autograph.’ Kemi pointed to her name scribbled in joined-up letters. ‘I’m going to save it,’ she announced, whisking the paper from Tayo’s hands and skipping off to her room.
‘Miriam?’ Tayo called, wondering where she’d gone.
He stood up and went to the bedroom where he found her changing out of her Sunday clothes into a looser fitting dress. He slipped his arms around her waist, hoping for a few moments of intimacy, but Miriam wriggled free, intent on getting dressed. Tayo sighed, wondering why he bothered. There’d been a time when she would lean back in his arms and be affectionate and playful. He thought of those days as he went to look for a jacket.
It was a tradition in the Ajayi household to have lunch at Yelwa Club one Sunday a month. It was one of the few surviving country clubs established by the British in colonial times and was located on the outskirts of Bukuru, a thirty-minute drive from the Ajayi home. Tayo frequently took younger lecturers, and sometimes students, to the club for a peaceful drink or a stroll around the grounds. He liked to play squash there too, but Sundays at Yelwa were always reserved for the family and today they would be meeting the Abubakars. On their drive to the club, Tayo had hoped to listen to the news, but he was out-voted. He never won when Miriam and Kemi were both in the car.
‘Lets play the Wombles music,’ Kemi clamoured from the back seat. ‘Please Daddy! Please Mummy! Pleeeeeease!’
So they listened to the Wombles for a while until Tayo could stand it no longer and Miriam changed the cassette to one of her American gospel tapes. Tayo didn’t mind gospel, but found the musical arrangement irritating when it hopped haphazardly from slow to fast tracks. Albums should either be fast or slow, he mused as he swung the wheel to avoid a pothole. They had taken the Jos-Miango road, passing the Nasco biscuit factory and the Coca-Cola bottling plant. Most of these factories were closed at the weekend, but a few factory chimneys still spewed their dirty gases, staining the sky brown.
‘Are you okay, Miriam?’ Tayo asked, knowing that the factory emissions made her nauseous. She’d wound up her window and was caressing her stomach.
‘I’m fine,’ she replied, resting a hand on his knee.
He squeezed the hand and massaged her fingers. Miraculously, after all these years, Miriam’s belly was full again with a child. So many miscarriages and now this. He gave her hand another squeeze. When people asked him if he wanted a baby girl or a baby boy, he would always say that he hoped simply for a healthy child, but truthfully, he wished for a boy. With a son he could play football and build model ships. His boy would be studious like his daughter, but also a sportsman. He had already thought of names: Adeniyi Oluwakayode Pele. Adeniyi after his father and Pele, of course, after Pele. He’d even thought of adding Segun to the names in honour of his own country’s footballer, Segun Odegbami. And wasn’t that the beauty of giving many names to one’s child? But of course, they could not all revolve around sports.
When they arrived at the Club, Tayo parked the car in the shade of the frangipanis. It was the coolest spot and close to where they would eat.
‘Ranka dede,’ Ibrahim called out in greeting as they entered the lounge.
‘Sanu,’ Tayo replied, smiling at the waiter’s exuberance.
‘Make I go get drink sah?’ Ibrahim asked.
‘Yes, the usual.’ That meant a Dubonnet for him, Fanta for Miriam and a Sprite for Kemi.
In Tayo’s seven years of coming to Yelwa Club, little had changed. The sweet and spicy aroma of curry always hung in the air, accompanied by the clatter of pots and pans from the kitchens in the back. There was also the put-put sound from people playing pool in an adjoining room and the steady whirr from overhead steel fans that blew a gentle breeze. The décor too remained the same — velvet settees, leather-topped side tables, withering cacti and African violets in clay pots. There were also two oversized pictures hanging from the wall: one of Her Majesty the Queen, the other of President Shagari. Through the open doors Tayo could hear the faint sounds of excited children playing by the pool. Miriam and Kemi stood up to go outside while he waited for the drinks. He watched them leave and then gazed for a moment at the President’s picture. Others had preceded this President behind the same glass frame, and Tayo hoped that sooner rather than later, this one too would be replaced. While he had celebrated Nigeria’s return to civilian rule, Tayo now believed that the only way to bring his country back to its senses was to install the military — not forever, but for a short while to restore law and order.
‘Professor Ajayi, my honourable good friend,’ Yusuf’s voice rang out across the lounge.
‘My honourable good friend,’ Tayo answered, standing up to greet Yusuf, whose stomach was what greeted people first these days — a decidedly large and unorthodox beer belly.
People joked that Yusuf’s size came with the good life. He had recently been appointed District Manager for NEPA, while his wife held a senior position at NTA. However, life for the Abubakars was not as easy as it looked from the outside. They had lost their first two children to sickle cell anemia, and for a long time didn’t know whether the youngest two would suffer the same fate. Thankfully, Isaac and Dari were healthy. Yusuf embraced Tayo in his dashiki, and then moved on to greet others whom he recognised in the lounge.
Tayo marvelled at Yusuf’s temperament — always jovial, and seemingly at ease in any setting. By the time Yusuf had dispensed all his greetings, the whole room smelt of his cologne. He’d made his mark. Yusuf knew everyone in Jos: from the Lebanese to the Indians, the British and most of the Nigerians. One minute he could be heard speaking Pidgin, then Hausa or English (with the Yorkshire accent he’d never lost), and even some Yoruba these days, depending on who happened to be around. And it wasn’t just linguistics that Yusuf juggled so smoothly, but everything, it seemed to Tayo, right down to the clothes he wore. Today it was a dashiki, but he might just as easily have donned a safari jacket or a three-piece suit.
Yusuf had the sort of personality that Tayo associated with those best attuned to life in Nigeria, that seamless ability for social metamorphosis, which Tayo often envied. Cultural juggling did not come naturally to Tayo, and Miriam was always reminding him of that fact, saying that he was far too English in the way he dressed, in the music he listened to, and in his preference for speaking English rather than Yoruba. He took it as teasing even though it sometimes felt like a series of rebukes. And it wasn’t just Miriam, but his brothers and sisters (even Bisi) who told him he had too much oyinbo mentality for his own good. Yet for all his so-called Western thinking, he refused to leave Nigeria to live abroad. Nigeria was home for his soul, if not entirely home for his mind. His friends and family maintained that in the past he’d been more carefree, but he disagreed. Except for his approach to religion, he remained the same. It was society, he told them, not he, which had changed.
‘Look at you, my dear, you’re looking splendid,’ Joy complimented Miriam, spotting her as she returned with Kemi through the back doors.
‘Is that so? But I’m tired sha,’ Miriam replied, grasping the sides of her abdomen.
Her stomach was big like a watermelon, and it made Tayo anxious. He worried, as he had done when she was carrying Kemi, that her slende
r frame would not withstand the pregnancy.
‘How many months is it now?’ Joy asked.
‘Five,’ Kemi answered for Miriam, before dashing back outside to play with her friends.
Tayo remembered how Miriam had at first wanted to keep it a secret from Kemi until the pregnancy became visible. He did not hold strongly to these cultural beliefs but played along for Miriam’s sake; although in the end there was little they could hide from their curious six-year-old.
‘Professor Ajayi is a very lucky man,’ Yusuf chuckled, grasping Tayo again by the shoulders. ‘You’re looking stunning, my dear Miriam.’
As does Joy, Tayo thought wistfully, finding Joy carefree and sensuous in the way that Miriam used to be.
The one o’clock gong sounded, and Tayo led both families to the long table where waiters in white suits and red cummerbunds were serving the guests white basmati rice and bright yellow curry. It was then self-service from a line of silver trays, each with its own condiment — shredded coconut, green pickles, purple onion rings, sultanas, tangerine segments, sliced banana, and tomato. Soft white rolls were brought to the table with shavings of butter floating in ice water to keep them from melting.
‘You know there’s going to be a coup soon,’ Yusuf announced when everyone was seated.
‘But until the BBC says so, it’s all rumour,’ Tayo asserted, smiling to himself at this unconscious borrowing from his father. He remembered Baba saying it on the weekend of Nigeria’s second military coup, and he had wondered then whether Baba really believed that the first accurate news would come from the BBC, or whether he’d made the announcement to distract the men from their anxieties.
‘We just need a strong ruler,’ Yusuf broke into Tayo’s thoughts. ‘Someone who can bring discipline to this country. Corruption. That’s the problem with this place — corruption. Wallahi!’ Yusuf pounded the table with his fist. ‘We need a dictator. Like Rawlings. Even Idi Amin,’ he added, shaking his arm to straighten the Rolex that hung loosely around his wrist.
In Dependence Page 13