Jagua Nana

by Cyprian Ekwensi

  ‘You be fine boy. Wha’s your name?’

  ‘Dennis. Dennis Odoma. I got a group of frien’. We use to do business togedder. You know what ah mean. Business. Sometime we can get trinket like dis three times in one week, is all by lucky. One of my frien’, he’s de taxi driver. And de odder three, dey are de business men. De agent.’ He laughed and struck a pose. ‘When we get somethin’, sometime dem can travel far to Port Harcourt or Onitsha to sell de thin’ and return for Lagos in two-three day. And de Police will be wastin’ de time here for Lagos … Am de leader. When I get somethin’ like dis dat I like I keep it for myself … I also got one gal frien’, Sabina. Phew! She’s too fine, but I like big woman like you, to keep for outside. I never seen wonderful woman like you. As you walk, is wonderful. As you dress, is Jagwa-ful.’

  Timidly he placed a hand on her left shoulder. She put her hand over his and lifted it to her breast. She could feel the shiver of fire run through him.

  ‘You like me, so? You like Jagwa-woman? Jagwa woman cos’ plenty money. You be only small pickin’ of yesterday. Jagua woman is for men in de Senior Service. For Contractor and Politician. You ever see Jagua woman with young man like you who don’ put on tie? You just put on shirt and trousers and you don’ wear robe, or gold chain round your neck and you come to me and say, I like Jagwa woman. Dem don’t like Jagwa woman with sweet-mouth. I already got one boy who talk sweet-mouth. You just come late, so you mus’ bring somethin’.’

  ‘I like you, Ma. You fine too much.’

  ‘I fine, but I mus’ pay mah rent! I fine, but I must chop and wear fine cloth.’ She leaned against him.

  ‘I love you, Ma.’ She felt his hot hand, massaging her left breast. He leaned on her hair, smothering it with kisses.

  ‘Gently, don’ rough me. Senior Service man never use’ to rough lady. Contractor never use’ to rough lady. Jagwa woman must be handle’ gently, with respect.’

  ‘Yes, Ma. But your breast stand like dat of virgin.’

  ‘Like your gal frien’ breast?’

  ‘Fine pass! Fine pass my gal frien’ breast. I love you, Ma. Since I seen you … Since you comin’ to de Tropicana with one young man.’

  ‘Freddie, my darlin’ Freddie. He gone to U.K. for study de law.’

  ‘Since dat time, I been like you, but I fear—’

  ‘What work you doin’ in Lagos?’

  ‘Ah got no work. Am an independent man.’

  ‘And you got money to give Jagwa woman?’

  ‘I love you, Ma. God kin help me fin’ somethin’ to please you. If you like de trinket, Ma … You kin take am.’

  ‘I tenk you,’ said Jagua. She took out the box again and ran the tips of her fingers over the glittering surfaces. She put the earrings on and admired them in the mirror. ‘Tell me, Mr. Dennis. I no understan’ de kind of business you say you an’ your friends doin’. I mean, you tell me about your frien’ who drive taxi and the other frien’ that he got, and you tell me about your gal friend, but … I begin to wonder. Tell me true, Dennis.’ She took his head in her hands and kissed his lips. ‘What kind business you doin’? If you breakin’ house, is no shame. I know plenty people who’s in de business. Dem gather in de Tropicana. Yes, I use’ to see dem. If is so, den when you got gold like dis one, you kin bring and we kin do business. You see?’

  ‘Yes,’ murmured Dennis, seeking another kiss.

  ‘You kin come here. I will give you small sweet somethin’. I know what you want! An’ you kin get am from me, sweet pass your gal frien’ who got no experience of de men. I will give you sweet somethin’ to turn your head, you kin almos’ drive your gal frien’ away! Have no fear, you safe wit’ me. Your gal frien’ will not know. Even self, your wife! She kin see me and we pass an’ salute, and she kin not know. Das what Jagua woman is for. She kin keep de secret of de men, and nobody fit find out. You hear dat. You safe with me, if you give me what I want.’

  ‘Ah promise.’ She kissed him with fire on her lips. His hand went limp under her chemise for a moment. Then the strength returned and he tore it open and saw the Venus of a body. ‘God done make you Jagwa.’

  ‘Gently!’ whispered Jagua. ‘I been dancing dis night. I jus’ return from travel, an’ I tire. I tell you, I be woman for Senior Service men; and Contractor and—’

  ‘I won’t handle you rough, I promise. True!’

  She liked the dark frown on his face. ‘Freddie never rough with me. Freddie’s a gentleman.’

  ‘Who’s Freddie? Oh, you mean de man in Englan’? Yes, I use to see you and him in de Tropicana, and I always jealous.’

  ‘He’s in England now, reading de law. And you kin taste what ’e use to chop every night before he come back an’ marry me proper.’

  ‘You be real Jagwa,’ said young Dennis, and the words were sweet in her ear. ‘You deal with men who got class.’

  ‘Is late now,’ she said. ‘You sleepin’ here? Or …’

  ‘No. I only stoppin’ with you for some time.’

  ‘Why you not sleepin’? You want to scratch me, den when my body get up you lef’ me an’ go? Is because of your gal? Why you tell me you don’ love her? You fear her! … One day I mus’ go and see dat Sabina. I wan’ to know what she like.’

  She felt his eyes like two hot loaves of coal from a blacksmith’s forge. The white-hot eyes of desire followed her as she bolted the door and slipped behind the mosquito net.

  17

  The day Rosa came, Jagua was sitting in the kitchen turning over a huge lobster in the frying pan. The kitchen was enveloped in grey suffocating smoke and anyone who passed by caught a whiff of the peppery and appetizing aroma of the lobster. Jagua liked showing off her cooking. She had just come in from the once-in-four-days market by the lagoon, and the greens and tomatoes, the fresh fish and the plantains, were stacked in a basket at her feet. She heard a noise, and looking up, saw this young woman heaving her suitcase up the stairs.

  ‘Ah wait, wait, wait. I don’ hear no news from you, so ah come. Am never get any place yet. Remember as you promise to fin’ me place when we meet in de Tropicana?’

  ‘Ah remember. Put your box in de parlour. I busy cookin’.’

  Without ado, Rosa pushed her suitcase against a wall, came into the kitchen, took the knife from Jagua’s hands, and began cutting up the meat. Then she ground the pepper, and the egusi, the tomatoes and the krafish for the stew, wiping her hands on her cloth and singing to the rhythm of the grindstone. Jagua liked her cheerfulness instantly. Rosa could be arrogant – with the looks she had. But instead she chose to be friendly and to show respect for someone older and more experienced than she was. Jagua smiled at her. True, she did not look very attractive now – in the kitchen and without make-up. But she had a certain elegance and Jagua had seen her at the Tropicana and she knew that men liked her small, rather slim figure. At first, Jagua was shamelessly jealous of her. But soon she began to see her as someone who could be a useful partner. She visualized something akin to ‘retirement’ and ‘pension’ on Rosa’s work.

  After one week, Rosa was still trekking the streets and searching for lodgings. Jagua did not complain because she had always wanted a companion since Freddie left, and Rosa seemed to her to be the right kind, though she could not always trust her women friends.

  Sometimes Rosa brought in a man – in the afternoon, when Jagua was away. Jagua had often seen her flourishing the money which she took great care to put away because she had not yet collected enough to ‘advance’ a landlord with six months’ rent on a room. One of these young men Jagua observed again and again – always in his college blazer, no matter how stifling the heat.

  One afternoon, when Jagua was at home resting, she heard Rosa coming in with the young man in the blazer. Jagua slid down from the bed and put on her clothes. The young man looked to her like one of the Lagos intellectuals. She could have sworn that he attended the British Council Lecture Freddie had taken her to hear. He wore his hair high and talked grammatically. Jagua had grown
to know his face now and to accept him as Rosa’s young ‘steady’. Nervously Rosa sat with him for a while and Jagua could feel that Rosa wanted her out of the way.

  What to do, Jagua wondered. Yes. She would go and see a young man, herself. Young men were becoming the thing, and with Freddie 4000 miles away, Dennis Odoma of the trinkets would serve. She would go down to Obanla where Dennis lived and see his group – the taxi driver and the gorgeous gal frien’ and the whole group he had talked about. She felt a new thrill in knowing that young Dennis who called her Ma and bedded her, giving her trinkets, was perhaps a dangerous criminal. But she could not see him with a policewoman’s eyes. To her, he was a strangely disturbing young man with grandiose ideas of his attractiveness and power. Thieves usually rested in the afternoons, so she might just be lucky to meet them at home.

  She got off the bus at Yaba and walked through a grove of trees to Obanla where in a derelict unlighted part of Lagos, Dennis lived. When she knocked at the door, a girl, slim, in tight jeans and tighter T-singlet, answered. Jagua guessed that this must be the girl Dennis had talked about.

  She was chewing gum, splitting it with a rhythmic click so that her teeth – big pearls – flashed periodically. ‘Who you want?’ Her skin was oily with cream and her hair had been newly dressed and glossy black. She was all lips, soft, aggressively kissable.

  Jagua instantly felt an outsider. ‘I wan’ Dennis.’

  ‘He busy. What you want him for?’

  ‘Jus’ to see am.’

  Jagua stood looking beyond Sabina at the long corridor which all the rooms faced. There are places in Lagos City where any strange person – black or white – may not go without being instantly identified as a stranger and his movements watched minutely until he leaves. Obanla was one such place. As Jagua stood there she saw doors opening and shutting all along the corridor. Heads peeped out and vanished once again. All was silence. She was the stranger here among Dennis Odoma’s thieves. Yet she had been told that Obanla was the home of a number of highly reputed practising barristers, engineers and business men. These were the men who shrouded the underworld character of Obanla in a respectable cloak. She had been told that no one living in Obanla had ever complained of losing anything to the thieves. In fact, the story went that any of them who dared to steal in Obanla was punished by the gang for breaking the code. The corridor seemed to get darker with the silence.

  ‘Wait me,’ said the girl.

  She turned her full back on Jagua. It was a back filled with lust. She did not have big hips, her hips were merely out of proportion to her slimness. The jeans clung tight and when she walked, each tremendous lobe of her buttocks contracted against the garment, just failing to rend it before the weight shifted to the next foot. She walked slowly, elastically and with enraging self-consciousness. Jagua felt a rush of jealous blood to her eyes. Oh, for youth! When she was younger, girls like these could never dare hold a candle to her in looks or in lust appeal. But she had to admit that Dennis had made a juicy choice, someone from the new generation.

  A moment later, Dennis appeared, smiling. Behind him were three men. ‘You come to see us today, Ma!’

  ‘De gal sed you busy.’

  ‘Oh, Sabina? Don’ min’ her … Come inside.’

  He wore a texan shirt, very narrow trousers and Italian shoes. He had grown whiskers since she last saw him and his breath smelled of home-distilled gin, reminding her of Bagana and Krinameh without the decanters of the Victorian showpiece. The room in which he led her smelled even more strongly of O.H.M.S. At first she could not see clearly but soon her eyes grew accustomed to shapes and objects and it was like being in an expensive shop. She made out the radiogram standing in the corner and saw one of the men loading ten records into it. Soon the craziest High-life record began to blare from the instrument. A drink was pushed into Jagua’s hands. The girl in the tight jeans began dancing, contorting her body into lascivious postures, her lips agape, her eyes shiny and transported with ecstasy. She was wriggling alone and Dennis paid no attention to her. One of the men shuffled towards her and seized her, himself contorting to her rhythm.

  Dennis bowed over Jagua’s hand and with his fingertips took her and danced with dignity and respect. ‘Me and my friends, we talking when you knock.’

  He showed her his special group of friends. One of them was the taxi driver. He pointed at him, sitting dazed in a corner, a mere shape. He had been out all night, Dennis told her. This taxi driver had a wife who was extremely beautiful. She had once won a beauty contest, she had seen the world; but now she decided to settle down with a taxi driver. Was that not funny, Dennis asked her? A beauty queen marrying a taxi driver, he laughed.

  ‘We jus’ passin’ time, till night come.’

  At that moment they heard the sound of a police siren just outside. Instantly the boys dispersed into their various rooms. Jagua saw Sabina leap into the next room and pull up a ladder from somewhere. Up the steps she climbed, lithe as a cat, and vanished through a hatch in the roof. Even the record player had stopped, the record jammed in it.

  The sliding panel glided with precision into place and the ceiling assumed its normal shape. The rooms were all empty and the luminous eyes were trained expectantly on the door. Only Jagua and Dennis remained in the room. They sat tense while police boots thudded on the pavement outside. There were at least twelve uniformed men and they showed Dennis the search warrant. The whole village had come to the door to watch them.

  Jagua admired the nerve of Dennis. He remained calm and completely unflustered. ‘Upon Information Received’ the policemen had come to Obanla to search the lodgings of Dennis Odoma and his friends. They took down all the boxes, opened them and looked inside, threw around the photographs, asked questions, then all went back into the Black Maria and drove off.

  Before the van had turned the corner, panels began to slide. The taxi driver was the first to come into the room and hand over a small packet to Dennis who handed it over to Jagua with a smile.

  ‘Das what dey lookin’ for,’ he said. ‘You know what to do with dis.’

  Jagua tore away the wrapping. The gold trinkets sparkled even more elaborately than those Dennis had given her the other night.

  ‘Wonderful! I goin’ to take dem to goldsmith to buy an’ melt. An’ you kin have de money.’

  ‘Das alright! You don’t charge me commission?’

  Jagua laughed. ‘Plenty time. Make we sell de thin’ first’.’

  The taxi driver gripped Dennis by the arm. ‘Masta … Masta, what about tonight? What time you wan’ me for bring de taxi?’

  ‘Is better we leave after twelve o’clock night,’ Dennis said.

  The taxi driver looked anxious. ‘Is too early. I tink de bes’ time is two o’clock midnight, so dat de shop kin close and de night watchman begin feel sleep. You know dem use to keep late in dat area of Lagos. Plenty pub-houses.’

  Jagua realized that they were planning a raid. She gathered from their talk that it was a shop they were going to burgle: not for goods, but for money. The taxi driver kept reminding Dennis that he had actually seen the shop owner put away at least £1000 in notes, in a strongbox and that he was sure the strongbox ‘slept’ in the shop. They talked cold-bloodedly, not minding the presence of Jagua.

  Jagua had the sensation of a man who has suddenly opened the door of a strange room and found a man and woman in bed, naked and intertwined. The difference lay in her being unable to shut the door quickly enough on what she had seen and heard. Consequently she remained with her self-inflicted embarrassment.

  From one of the rooms, a woman was shouting abuses at the taxi driver, projecting her voice so that it came vividly into the room and became a presence. She was calling him lazy and useless, threatening to pack her things and leave him. It was the taxi driver’s wife, Dennis explained. She was in a fighting mood because she had been wanting to buy an outfit costing £100 but the taxi driver could not find the money. The outfit had been described as a funeral-cerem
ony dress, and the woman was bound to attend as she was the most important relation of the dead man.

  ‘Thief that you are!’ came the abusive words in Yoruba. Jagua looked at the face of the taxi driver. She saw on it the fear of a man who feels too small for the woman he has taken. ‘I left all better men to come and marry you, you’re not glad! You should rejoice! … This is how you make me go naked every day while other women dress up and I feel shame and cannot show my face where they are. Rogue, that you are! You must get me that £100 if not go to the shop yourself and buy me the Asho-Ebi. If you don’t buy it, there are men who will, you hear that! Don’t think you’re the only one I hope upon, you idiot! When a beauty queen like myself come to this wretched house and sleep with dirty man like you, who get nothing in his pocket, you think my life is finished …’

  Dennis turned his face in the direction of the noise which had become unbearable. ‘You there, Bintu! … Shut up there, you hear? We got a decent lady here. You disgracin’ we before her!’

  ‘Useless man!’ went on the voice. ‘You drive taxi from morning till night! You carry women free and dem give you no money. You’re only splitting their legs in their rooms. When you do that whose going to buy de petrol? Useless ass!’

  Jagua saw the manner in which Dennis left the room. She heard a door slam, heard the sound of blows and the whimpering of the woman. A moment later, she raced out in her chemise, her face swollen and the Obanla crowd again gathered at the door to see. The taxi driver held Dennis by the arm. ‘I beg you. Leave her. If you follow de mouth of woman, you will commit murder. Let her talk! Is good for her. She’s me own wife, and is me she cursing.’

  ‘Come on! Get back into de room!’ shouted Dennis. Jagua saw him in a new light, as one to whom all the gang showed respect. ‘An’ if I hear anodder word from you, I come inside an’ kill you!’

  Sabina came towards Dennis, wiggling her full hips. She slipped her hand under his arm and rubbed her small hard bust against him. She led him back to the room where Jagua waited patiently.