by B. Nyamnjoh
Lilly Loveless listened without saying much in return until her curiosity was caught by a range of houses where several lit kerosene lamps were hanging on door posts.
“What are those lamps for?” she asked.
“Those?” smiled Bobinga Iroko. “They are signposts by night butterflies, inviting men to come and sample their wares,” he explained. “‘Ma skin di itch for come,’ is what the lamps are saying to those who understand their language.”
“How ingenuous!” replied Lilly Loveless. “It reminds me of the red light district back in Bruhlville. Do they ever run out of fuel, those lamps?” she asked.
“As long as there’s no catch, the lamps stay fuelled,” said Bobinga Iroko. “They are like the bait of the fishermen. You don’t expect a catch if your hook is baitless, do you? And once you’ve caught something, you save the rest of your bait for next time. So when we are coming back from the nightclub, you’ll be able to determine who has been lucky for the night, from whose lamp has retired.”
“Fascinating,” said Lilly Loveless, remembering to make notes as soon as possible while the ideas were still fresh in her mind.
Black & White was already bustling with young men and women when they got there. Bobinga Iroko paid for two tickets and the muscular bouncers in dark sunglasses tore the tickets and let them through the narrow entrance.
The dance floor was active and the song couldn’t have been better timed. In the song, the singer, a man, wants to know what love is. The woman replies “there’s no such thing as love”. Shocked, the man asks what she means. “Love is what you tell the person you are with. Today it is me, tomorrow it is her. But when I watch your actions, I’m a fool to treasure your words.”
Very profound, Lilly Loveless noted, and asked Bobinga Iroko for the name of the artist. They spotted a place to sit at the far end, from where Lilly Loveless could watch the dancing, pick up tips about the dance steps before venturing onto the floor. Only too aware of the comment she got in Sunsandland when she instinctively attempted to respond to the wild frenzy of African drumming – ‘If you were dancing for survival, you’d die before the day breaks,’ her partner had mocked – Lilly Loveless was cautious not to rush into things.
Song followed song. Some, Lilly Loveless could follow, others she didn’t understand.
“What is the singer saying about breast milk?” Lilly Loveless asked Bobinga Iroko, her attention drawn to a tune that made people rush to the dance floor.
“He is one of our naughtiest musicians. He claims he can’t do without breast milk He likes sucking inspiration from women. Just can’t get enough of what’s inside them! Be careful if he puts his tongue to your tit! His lips will soon be around you and he’ll suck and suck and suck. If we were to caricature him, he would have the biggest jaws of anyone in Mimboland. Suckling is essential to his ability to survive, you see, and flourish as an artist. He’s an adult suckler, a forever suckler. For him, suckling must be better than sex!”
“I shan’t flash my tits at him.”
“You don’t need to flash to have him coming.”
“He sounds desperate. What is his name?”
“I shan’t tell you,” said Bobinga Iroko. “You need all the protection you can get,” he smiled.
“Bobinga Iroko, you are fun to be with,” said Lilly Loveless with playful sincerity.
It didn’t take them long. Soon they were up, dancing to a wide variety of music forms from the rich menu served by the versatile DJ.
Bobinga Iroko explained the music forms and the contents of the songs to Lilly Loveless as they danced. She insisted they dance next to the table where they sat and where she had her notebook ready, so she could note down from time to time what he told her about the music.
Lilly Loveless noticed right away that the music was different from what she had fallen for in Sunsandland. It was gentler and softer, and the drumming wasn’t the same intense, intoxicating frenzy. But the themes were just as rich.
Bobinga Iroko was a casual and relaxed dancer, quite unlike the vigorous, suggestive styles of the others on the floor, which he dismissed as nothing but perpendicular expressions of horizontal desires. He responded well to the rhythm, and did the occasional wriggle and what he termed “balle à terre”: wriggling until you touch the floor with your bum. But he didn’t overdo anything, unlike others who turned, twisted, wriggled, jumped and pulled themselves so vigorously and with such repetition that they took all the joy out of dancing, as far as he was concerned.
Lilly Loveless could fit in both ways, but as a beginner and new to the music, she preferred Bobinga Iroko’s soft and gentle self-assured style.
The music poured out. Lilly Loveless paid particular attention to songs on the theme of love, power and consumption, and couldn’t believe her ears when virtually every song had something to do with one or all of these aspects of her research. There was the song about a certain Masa Ngongari, who feels that he is smarter than most, and is chasing after someone’s wife whom he falsely claims is his cousin. The man tells him “locot”, for he doesn’t understand this type of cousin. In a similar song a man warns: “watch out, don’t touch my cat… If you touch my cat, don’t touch its tail.”
A woman cries out: “I have seven lovers, all desire me, what am I to do?” A fourth song claims: “Man is the belly and the under belly, and all is won”. A perplexed man screams: “Frankly I am baffled when you say you no longer know me: what’s your thong doing at my place?” A woman challenges: “It’s you who said you can… here I am, show me that you can…” Someone wonders: “Why are so many women fighting for him?” A man replies: “For his Stick of Authority. They are dying to feel within the commanding fullness of him.”
In another song, a lousy lover leaves a girl totally disappointed, and instead of owning up to his worthlessness in matters of life and death, tries to wriggle himself out of his inadequacies by complaining the girl’s perfume “smelt like grilled fish”. There was a lovely song with the phrase: “The husband of another is sweet … the wife of another is sweet…” The drunken voice of a woman calls out: “Darling, I love you… take me, I’m yours…” The woman continues: “What do you want me to say for you to touch me, to embrace me? ...showme red, make love to me…”
A sweet melodic voice is disarmingly modest in her request for: “Just a little love”, in a song – Ndolo – that filled Bobinga Iroko with reminiscences he declined to share, offering instead, to dance to it chest to chest with Lilly Loveless, his eyes firmly closed. This was followed by a succession of sweet, slow, glowing Zouk, freshly delivered from the Caribbean like early morning roses from the Botanic Gardens. Bobinga Iroko didn’t explain much; their enthusiastic embrace of the music did the talking.
Then there was the rawest, crudest, most uninhibited bunch of them all. One, whose songs were very popular, judging from how many times they were played, was luring in his provocativeness and irresistibly obscene. In one song he describes himself as “the defence lawyer for women”, but proceeds in the same song and others to invite men to “inject”, “pump”, “pierce”, “drill”, “fill up”, and, like the praying mantis, “kill this evening” and “finish off” the very same women he loves and protects.
In another a young woman is crying out “it hurts… it hurts very, very much…” but can’t resist inviting the man to be more venturesome in the way he explores and switches on her buttons. While embracing her invitation, the man playfully labels her “aratatata chop die”.
A woman in yet another song, impatient with a man’s attempts at foreplay, screams: “No begin tune ma bobi like radio, slap me kanas for las.”
A man menaces: “Since I see a well packaged ndombolised derriere, if you joke, I’m going to inject you…”
The music made Lilly Loveless recall a paper she had read by an astute observer of men and women at play. The paper was about a society where people are easy prey to generalised promiscuity engendered by poverty and beleaguered desire. The author talk
ed of “phallocracy or the dictatorship of the penis” being the order of the day, stretching from the helm of state through universities and schools down to the ghettoes and villages. In that society, the pride that came with having “an active penis” was enormous and to be dramatized daily, as men championed their pleasure through subduing women.
Most of the songs were interspaced by the names of people, whom Bobinga Iroko explained to Lilly Loveless were big men who had probably paid the artists some money to sing good things about them, so they could be even bigger men. Music to these men was a signpost on which to advertise their prominence, ambitions and desires.
In one song, a young man who has lived through the thick and thin of the ghetto, finds reason to celebrate the appointment of his brother into ‘very high office’. The appointment is an opportunity not to miss, given how much his brother has struggled and sacrificed to be appointed: His brother has been to see renowned pygmy witchdoctors to grease his way and fortify him, and has gone through most trying experiences such as crossing dangerous rivers and sleeping for days with his nose dipped in water. He even danced naked, feet in fire, with old chimpanzees, not to mention the barks of trees, herbs and concoctions which he has eaten and drunk. It had been rumoured several times before, but nothing came through. Today, rumour has been transformed into noble truth by a presidential decree broadcast on state radio and television.
The young man envisions his brother’s appointment changing his life in a big way – ‘my life is going to change’, ‘at last I am going to relax’ like a baobab of achievement and power, as ‘suffering has ended’. The days of trekking, sandwiches, and struggle in overloaded taxis are over. He anticipates riding in his own car, an air-conditioned Mercedes, going into the inner cities to fetch vulnerable girls – especially those who turned him down when he was nobody – who can’t resist anyone with a car.
He also looks forward to winning tenders, which he has no intention to honour, given the protection he is sure to receive from his brother in high office. He would move up to live with those in beautiful residential areas, keeping his old friends and relations at a distance. He would limit access to his cell phone, and employ a stern guard to keep visitors at bay with false accounts of his whereabouts. At last he would be able to travel abroad to see beautiful sights, indulge in delicacies such as smoked salmon, and shop in hard currency. It is going to be hectic, as he spoils himself by association with power, privilege and comfort.
On the dance floor, Lilly Loveless could almost read people’s fantasies in their faces, in their wriggles, and in the way they moved their bodies… In her notebook she noted: ‘This place is pregnant with desired meaning and the meaning of desire.’ Even Bobinga Iroko said as much, in his usual provocative, disdainful and investigative manner: “What rules this land of Mimbo is not the Longstays who keep re-inventing sterility. What rules it is the Mimbo in all and sundry or what you see on the dance floor: ambitions of the body and the body of ambition.”
Girls – young, younger and youngest bubbled with desire. They danced with men of all shapes and sizes like butterflies celebrating an early arrival of spring. There were older women as well, but the tensions of age and aging did not quite let them enjoy the music, at least so claimed Bobinga Iroko, who shared a story on this with Lilly Loveless.
“Nightclubs are not places for women like those,” he pointed at two amply bulky women more than half eaten up by age, giving the music their best on the dance floor in the company of an equally elderly man whose attention was completely consumed by the surrounding nimbleness of youth.
“I see nothing wrong with them,” Lilly Loveless countered. “They are enjoying themselves.”
“With a man who is enjoying himself without them,” Bobinga Iroko chuckled. “Look where his eyes are looking.”
“But that doesn’t mean that he is not enjoying their company.”
“You are just arguing for the sake of argument.”
“I’m serious…”
In a lighter mood, Bobinga Iroko asked: “What is the difference between a girl of 8 or 18 and a woman of 28, 38, 48, 58, 68 or 78?”
“I don’t know, you tell me,” Lilly Loveless said, casually, not knowing what he was up to next.
“One of our politicians recently said the difference was ‘bobi tanap’ and ‘bobi don fall’, comparing the first to the opposition and the latter to the ruling party.”
“What did he mean by that?”
“Firm upright inexperienced tits, as opposed to tits flattened or ironed by age, practice and motherhood.”
“Was he of the opposition or the government?”
“He was the opposition in government.”
“And you, what do you think the difference is between 8 and 78?”
“I read on the Internet that at the age of 8, you take her to bed and tell her a story.”
“At 18…?”
“You tell her a story and take her to bed.”
“28...?”
“You don’t need to tell her a story to take her to bed.”
“At 38…?”
“She tells you a story and takes you to bed.”
“48…?”
“She tells you a story to avoid going to bed.”
“What about at 58…?”
“You stay in bed to avoid her story.”
“At 68…?”
“If you take her to bed, that’ll be a story!”
“And at 78, both the bed and the woman are dead and buried?”
“Exactly! What story? What bed? Who the hell are you?”
Listening and dancing to Mimboland’s rich and fascinating music on social virtues (love, honesty, hard work, etc.), social ills (jealousy, corruption, prostitution, etc.) and power relations between men and woman and at various levels of society, Lilly Loveless reached an instant decision. She’d have to look into how these themes are captured in popular music, and would recruit a research assistant to collect and transcribe relevant popular songs for her.
She submitted herself to the music, and to the Mimbolander sense of spectacle. The large mirrors on the walls produced and reproduced images of her, Bobinga Iroko and others locked in ecstasy.
“Listening to Petit Pays,” said a young girl in her teens, probably, “makes me feel all charged up.”
Lilly Loveless could say the same, for the music was indeed luring and electrifying in its suggestiveness.
The pleasures were profound, beyond words.
The night was long and consumed by excitement.
There were mixed fillings of drinks, but no mixed feelings.
The enjoyment was total.
There was kissing… with Bobinga Iroko… much kissing.
“One needs to be kissingly close to notice that you are yet to have your wisdom tooth,” Lilly Loveless whispered.
“And one needs that experience to know just what an excellent kisser you are,” replied Bobinga Iroko, blissfully.
Well before the time the sun kissed Mount Mimbo good morning with its baby rays, the buyam-sellams, bus drivers, taxi men, bendskin riders, truck pushers, travellers and other early risers in Puttkamerstown could see Bobinga Iroko’s Toyota Hilux stagger into town as if it had refilled at the bar, not the filling station. They looked in wonderment at the excited car exciting everything along its way.
7
Britney quickly thumbed at the keys of her cell phone in response to a text message she had just received: ‘University closed down due to student riot, till God knows when. Problems with fence VC is building. More later. Love you.’
She was eager to impress Lilly Loveless who was raiding the magnificent Puttkamerstown Botanical Gardens with her digital camera, repeatedly whispering ‘tropical paradise’ with almost every shot she took. Finally satisfied she had captured every plant and flower that caught her fancy, including several shots from varied positions of the thorny imposing ‘lover’s tree’ at the centre of the Gardens, Lilly Loveless joined Britney on the bench wher
e the latter was sitting, hungry to start.
“My ears have been filled. Ready for me to fill yours?” asked Britney. Lilly Loveless smiled in anticipation of what Britney had gathered since their last meeting over a week ago.
Although Lilly Loveless woke late after the night of dancing, musical and self exploration with Bobinga Iroko, she had made sure she stopped by a shop for cold juice, water and biscuits, which she brought along in an environmentally friendly plastic bag.
Britney was sitting beneath two flamboyant trees that met overhead, listening to the musical concert of a multitude of colourful birds in the trees. She sat with her beaded purse on her lap, her notebook grasped in her hands and her knees turned in, ready to share. Lilly Loveless simultaneously appreciated the morning breeze and noticed Britney’s flower print dress, sleeveless and tight fitting on top then flowing to her ankles as she sat. Did their meeting place influence Britney’s choice of attire or was it a complete coincidence? Lilly Loveless wondered.
Britney waited patiently for Lilly Loveless to open two bottles of juice, ready her recorder and open her notebook. When she could tell Lilly Loveless was all ears, she began.
“Let me start with two letters I collected from a classmate of mine on my way here, who, frustrated by a recent experience with a married man in Sawang, does not have a kind word to say about men right now,” began Britney.
“Go right ahead,” said Lilly Loveless.
***
“The girl is called Veronique, She writes: ‘Good morning Darling, How are you doing? And your business? I hope you find time to rest a bit. My Darling, I miss you terribly, I think of you every day. I’m already quite embarrassed passing at the telephone booth every time to find out if you have called, only to be told no message.
“‘I really used to love it when we saw each other regularly, when you used to tell me your beautiful stories. Even more, I used to adore your smile and especially your beautiful lips that made me always want to kiss you everywhere. Darling, I feel good with you. By your side, I momentarily forget about everyone surrounding us. You therefore can imagine how much pain your absence is causing me. You see, you promised to let me know whenever you were in town. But, since we last saw each other, something has changed. You could even call me from Sawang, just to let me know you are also thinking of me. In any case, you could call just to say good morning or good evening, and insist that the message be transmitted to me.