Jagua Nana

by Cyprian Ekwensi

  A car had stopped. A white face was peering at her and horns were sounding all round. One of the men inside the car began to wave and to shout at Jagua. She walked on. The white man’s car had held up the traffic and now the horns were blowing louder and the air became a loudspeaker from the rehearsal of the giants. To make things worse the road was ‘one-way’ and one part of it had been dug up. The other side had been piled high with huge pipes for the Public Works Department. The white man simply had no choice but to drive straight on till he found a clear space – some hundred yards off – or obstinately hold up the traffic till he had spoken to Jagua. He had swallowed the bait completely. Jagua smiled to herself.

  ‘Going my way?’ Jagua heard him yell from the din.

  She shook her head. The white man leaned further out of the car, his hair darker than the gleaming black limousine. ‘Come with me – to Tropicana – come for a drink!’

  She could well go and it might represent a victory – something to show off to the other girls, especially on a dry night like this. ‘No sah! I jus’ comin’ from dere. Drive on! You soon meet odder women plenty!’ She was tickled.

  The car revved up and slowly moved away. Another girl who had been standing in the shadows came out and looked with some surprise at Jagua. She was small and sweet and rather new to Jagua. ‘What de white man tell you? Why you don’ follow am? He be rich man, you see de car? He for give you plenty money.’

  ‘Lef’ me. I tire.’

  ‘Person who findin’ money cannot tire in dis Lagos. De month done reach twenty-hungry. You got boy friend who jealous?’

  ‘Boy frien’?’ asked Jagua. ‘What boy frien’ got to do wit’ dis one?’ She looked at the face of the girl; heart-shaped it was very beautiful. She was entering the trade young. ‘Ah never seen you before. You use to come Tropicana?’

  ‘Sometime … My name be Rosa. I use to see you in de Tropicana? Not you be Jagwa Nana?’

  ‘Yes. Rosa, my dear; ah use to be careful about dose men with car. Dem too fool woman.’ The wind had begun to stir and she looked at the sky. ‘I hope de rain no go fall because I wan’ to take foot reach house. De night still young.’

  Rosa studied the sky. ‘No. Rain no go fall. Jagwa, I sure dat you let dat man go because you be rich woman. If is me—’

  As they stood arguing, another car stopped within reach. Both of them saw the blaze of red rear lights. The man at the wheel pointed instantly at Jagua and Jagua walked towards them, feeling strangely elated.

  ‘Rosa, excuse me. Ah goin’ to see what dem want.’

  She thought at first that she saw two heads but when she approached she was certain it must have been the shadows and the poor light playing tricks.

  ‘Good evenin’.’ She leaned into the car.

  The man’s bow tie was dark and his hair odorous in a manly way. He was a Nigerian of some class, she could see that. The lights of passing cars shone on his dark eyebrows and strongly defined nose. ‘I – I always see you standin’ here – every night when I’m going home. I work at the airport …’

  Jagua laughed. ‘I waiting for somebody, das why ah standin’ there.’

  ‘Every night? Who you be waiting for? Not me, I hope? Well, jump in, le’s go.’

  She did not answer for a moment. She had seen another car stop in the distance. The other girl – Rosa, was racing towards it.

  ‘Where you live?’

  ‘Ikoyi.’ He held the door open. ‘Get in, we go there.’

  She drew in her breath. ‘Ikoyi.’ That was the Government Reservation where the white men and the Africans high up in the civil service lived. Ikoyi where the streets were straight and smooth, where they played golf on the open sands: a reservation complete with its own police station, electricity base, motorboat beaches, a romantic place. This man must be set high up on the ladder, because an Englishman she used to know lived there in a flat by the lagoon.

  ‘I got mah own place,’ Jagua said. A gentle wind began to stir carrying with it a damp smell. ‘If you wan’ to see me, you mus’ come dere. I never sleep in anodder man house.’ In that interval she could hardly understand the reason why she hesitated. But the novelty of the strange man’s house was there: perhaps he was some youngster whom she could bewitch and sap, draining the pennies out of his purse. Certainly his new car suggested a possible victim. If he insisted she would go to his flat, but she would not remain there till morning. She might on getting there, discover that he was a married man whose wife had gone away for a holiday. Then Jagua would see his wife’s wedding picture on the radiogram. She would wear his wife’s dressing gown, bathe in the same bath, be fussed over by husbandly hands. In that brief interval the make-believe would be sweet and when the morning came she would be paid off; discreetly or degradingly depending on the finesse of the man. In the cold streets she would once again revert to what she was, and who cared? The real wives were no better than she was. In her make-believe she could claim these various men as husbands for a time. The wind blew dust against her skirts and into the car. Better to go with this man, poor though he looked (the good-looking Nigerians were always poor, she knew) than to hang about and earn nothing this night. She thought of the countless girls now in the Tropicana, showing off, casting aside offers until the rain came as it did now, pelting down, hurrying them off to their empty beds.

  The door opened wider and she went inside. The car moved forward. She looked at the young man, but he only smiled and said: ‘Get up, Freddie. You owe me ten shillings! I won the bet! I think I told you I saw her?’

  Jagua nestled closer to him. ‘What you say?’

  ‘Freddie, get up now! You owe me ten shillings!’

  The truth dawned on Jagua. She stared about her. From the back seat came Freddie’s voice. ‘Wait. You’ll get your money.’ Jagua saw his head rise as if actuated by a spring.

  ‘I told you I knew her beat,’ the young man went on. ‘But you never believed.’

  ‘You were quite right, oh God, you were! Now I should chop her head off with an axe.’

  Cold chilling streams of sweat ran down Jagua’s back. She could not look back because her eyes no longer focused. The young man beside her, the instruments in the car, the street lights, all swam in circles. Her head was splitting. Why had Freddie humiliated her so? Freddie, the one man who must never see her in so shameful a light.

  They must have talked to him; egged him on till he took to sneaking on her. These Lagos people would never mind their own business. The car stopped, but the circles still swam before her eyes and she did not even know that it was not Ikoyi but the front of where she lived in Lagos. She got down. She saw Freddie get down too and thank the driver. She followed Freddie into the room. He sat on the bed. She was too terrified to sit beside him. He held his head in his hands and massaged his eyes and cheeks the way he always did when anger blinded him.

  ‘Jagua, I sure say you know I don’ want you again.’

  She sat silent.

  ‘You never tell me true word one day. One day, jus’ one day! Only lies, all de time! You say you love me, but you sleepin’ with any man you see and you takin’ dem money. You cryin’ you cannot conceive chil’, but you keep spoilin’ you blood with rotten nonsense. You say you wan’ to be my woman. And you run after any man with car or money! True, I no understand all dis. Me, young man like me! Is no wonder dem say dat you take magic and witch-craft to hold me. Dem say you give me juju to chop. Das why I can’t see anodder woman but you. Das why you treatin’ me like boy who got no sense.’ She saw genuine tears in his eyes and she knew that when that happens to a man, the wound has gone deep. But she could not go near him. She had become unclean. For once she actually felt unclean and he was to her a god with the power to pass judgement. ‘What you wan’ from de worl’, Jagua? You jealous, but you no fit to keep one man. You no fit take your eye see money in a man hand. You mus’ follow any man who give you money. Whedder he get disease or not. So far as he got money. You mus’ go to Tropicana every night.
You must feel man body in your belly every night. Any day you don’ see anodder man private you sick dat day. If dat be de kin’ of life you choose, why you wan’ me den?’

  He talked on and she resigned herself to the lash of his derision and the acid of his condemnation.

  She could not get herself to leave Freddie until well into the morning hours and when she tried to lie beside him on the bed, he jumped down and spread a mat on the floor and lay there. ‘Don’ come near me, Jagwa; you smellin’ anodder man smell!’

  She was afraid. Never had she known Freddie to refuse her. She got out of the bed and looked at the long-limbed but tense body on the floor. ‘Freddie! … Freddie, I beg you …’

  She saw him stiffen. ‘Don’ come near me.’ The words terrified her. She threw herself on him. ‘Kill me, make we two die together – now!’ At that moment, she meant it. There was nothing she could have wished better than for Freddie to shoot her or stab her or in some violent way shatter the degradation on her head. Even as she thought of it, she received it – in the face.

  Freddie had struck her. It was deliciously painful. Freddie ripped open her dress and pushed her against the wall. She yelled for help, opened her mouth wide and screamed – at three in the morning. The piercing note carried farther than the whistle of a railway engine. No one came. Freddie’s hands had become claws trying to tear out her windpipe. Other hands had begun pounding on the door. She heard the stampede on the other side. Help had come. She screamed, but it was not a scream that came out. Freddie was crashing her head against the door now. But the door was caving in, and suddenly it burst and there were strangers in the room. She was whimpering and she was gloriously naked. She clung to her rags.

  Before they could say anything she had slipped away and climbed the stair to her room. She heard Freddie ordering the strangers out of his room. With her door bolted behind her she listened to the chatter. But after a while it died down and she presumed that everyone had gone to bed. She sat in an armchair, rolling her head from side to side. The bitter side of a woman’s life, she thought. Young Freddie – twenty-five – trying to discipline her, a woman of forty-five, simply because they had shared the same bed. She could go now to the Police Station and report and he would be charged with assault. She could even say he was trying to rape her. She rolled her head from side to side, and the tears rolled off her cheeks. But what would be the result? She still loved Freddie. He had the right to be jealous. He had the right to flog her – it was her choice. She must take all it implied, and not only the sweet part.

  In the early hours of the morning, just before she dropped off to sleep, she heard a car parking outside. A man came to her door and knocked and later on she could hear his footsteps on the stairs, going out.

  When she awoke, she heard not a sound in the whole house. She yawned and rolled out of bed. Yesterday seemed so far away, and her throat was as uncomfortable as a blocked pipe can be. She felt thirsty, but knew she could not drink. She slipped her painted toenails into slippers. She could see her own oily face with the swollen lips and black eyes in the mirror opposite the bed. This mirror which she had placed in that position in the room, gave her an exciting view of her own feet and of the feet of the men as they made love to her. And when she rose she would turn first to the left, and pat her wide buttocks and turn to the right and pat her tummy. She never failed to revel in the beauty of her body. The superb breasts, God’s own milk to humanity, the lovely shoulders, and the skin, olive-orange, in the manner of the best Eastern Nigerian women. But on this morning, the stiffness was in her joints and her temper was strained.

  A sudden glare of light reminded her that Lagos had been awake for a long time. The men were already at work. Freddie must have gone to school too. Freddie. What had come over him last night? She must find some way of making amends. She would go and cook him a nice meal, and when he returned from school she would dress herself well and tempt him into lying with her. After that, she would beg him to forgive her.

  She went downstairs. The air was thick with the smell of diesel oil from the buses; cycle bells were jangling, and the trains were shunting away at the railway yard; in the streets the hawkers were yelling their wares, weaving songs around simple commodities. Freddie’s door was open, but this was nothing. He usually left it open when he went to school.

  But when she got to the door she found nobody in the room. No furniture, not a sign that the room had ever been tenanted. She looked round for Freddie’s servant.

  ‘Sam! … Samuel! …’ And when he did not answer: ‘Mike! … Michael! …’ Her servant came and she asked: ‘Mike, where’s Freddie and Sam?’

  ‘Dem done pack away, Madam.’

  ‘He tell you where he go?’

  ‘No, Mah. When he come back in de mornin’ he call one taxi and de taxi pack all his thing and go. You been sleepin’ all de time, Ma, so I no worry you because I think say you mus’ know. But, Ma, I hear say he gone to meet him brodder.’

  Jagua held on to the wall. ‘So Freddie done gone and lef’ me, like dat? Oh, Lord! …’

  She kept walking round and round the corners of Freddie’s room and crying but the room could tell her nothing.

  She tried to trace him in Lagos but failed. In desperation she went to the school where he taught, but the Principal of the National College told her he no longer taught there. He had resigned some time ago. The rumour was that Freddie had begun to teach in some night school in the suburbs of Lagos while preparing for an important examination. She came away feeling that she had been done. Obviously, with all his silence, and his gentlemanliness, Freddie had been planning this move for a long time.

  One day she heard his name mentioned. It was in the Tropicana and they said his name had appeared among the three hundred names printed in the Daily Sensation. He had been awarded a Government Scholarship, and the flying date was put against his name. She felt like one betrayed, the victim of an incalculably mean trick. At that particular moment, if Freddie had confronted her, she would gladly have shot him.

  She ordered a double whisky. She had begun to drink furiously again. Her body wanted fiery drinks at this time. She lit a cigarette – one of the chain, endless and enslaving. The burning weed smouldered, the fumes of smoke issued from two nostrils like the twin exhausts of some ancient car. The whisky came on a tray and she heard the waiter call her ‘Madam’. She knew the hypocrisy behind it all. He wanted some of her money. She picked up the change which he had carefully arranged on the tray, leaving him the shilling. Immediately she had downed her double whisky, she ordered another. Life was short, she told herself. Lagos was full of men. Even if Freddie fled to England, eventually he must come back home to Nigeria – to Lagos. They must meet face to face. He could not get away from his own spiritual beginnings in this simple manner. Only young men deceived themselves they could. She had lived almost twice as long as Freddie and she knew that the process was not as simple as he imagined.

  She could not think of him without bitterness, and the bitterness carried nothing but depression. She must get away from the Tropicana atmosphere. The ‘beat’ would be a good place to go now. She collected her bag and slipped away.

  As she approached the roundabout she prayed that a white man should stop his car and hail her. She would not hesitate to enter the very first car that whistled at her. She walked, dancing her hips, flexing her breasts. And whenever she heard an engine sound and saw the approaching beams of light, she deliberately crossed the road, turning her smile into the headlights and crying: ‘Leeft!’ The exercise liberated something in her. The blue mood lifted. She thought of Freddie at the airport on his way to England. How revealing it would be if she went there – uninvited – and found Nancy Oll in tears, and Mama Nancy, and Freddie’s ‘good friend’ who had planned the trick of catching her on the ‘beat’.

  She would go; and she would go, dressed to kill. Another car was approaching. She crossed the road, smiling and crying: ‘Leeft! …’ But the car accelerated, and Jag
ua melted back into the hedgerow.

  10

  Jagua had been standing at the bus stop for over thirty minutes, and no bus passed her way. She saw a lone man snorting along in a Pontiac and waved. The big red lights glowed in the tail. At the wheel was a man whom she had often seen at the Tropicana. She knew he was some kind of Party Agent, but little else.

  ‘You wan’ leeft?’

  ‘I goin’ to de airport. Ah don’ know whedder you kin—’

  He held the door open for her. ‘I know you’re Jagwa. You may not know me, I’m Taiwo, Secretary of OP 2. But they use’ to call me Uncle Taiwo.’ He roared with laughter and said, ‘Jump in!’

  ‘Tenk you, sah.’ The seat enveloped her in comfort.

  He drove very fast because the night was coming and the airport was some twenty miles off. By the time they got there a belt of blue smoke was creeping down from the mountains. Jagua knew that soon it would smother up the planes and darken the faces of the petrol boys.

  Uncle Taiwo parked the Pontiac under the mango trees. There were already over three hundred cars parked in rows, from little two-seaters to the eight-seater limousines used by Party People like Uncle Taiwo.

  Jagua was wearing a very tight skirt and when she got out a group of jobless boys whistled. Some shouted, ‘Jagwa! …’

  She pretended not to notice, though inwardly she felt pleased. She knew there was nothing very Jagwa about her bright printed cotton blouse, although her breasts were almost half exposed. She was very conscious of them. She always wore blouses which showed the skin above her breasts and on her arms and shoulders because she knew her best points. Her skirt was split half way up the left thigh, so that when she walked, much of her leg showed. She had taken care to sweep back her hair and knot it at the nape of the neck. This ‘hair’ cost her 30s. at the Department Store.