Married But Available

by B. Nyamnjoh

  “Wow. That’s potent stuff,” said Lilly Loveless, writing frantically.

  “So on that Sunday morning Barbie said she had decided to visit me because something was up. She gave me three letters to go through. The first was a letter from her boyfriend working in Nyamandem and the others were letters from him to two other girlfriends at UM.”

  “Really?” said Lilly Loveless, “How’d she come by them?”

  “I asked Barbie the same thing. She said the sender did not advise the person who carried the letters on how to distribute them. So the person gave hers and begged her to distribute the other two because he was travelling the next day out of Puttkamerstown.”

  “I hope she didn’t do what I am thinking – open the mails of the other girls?” Lilly Loveless anticipated.

  “Barbie knew one of the girls whose letter she had with her so she begged me to accompany her to the girl’s house. We met Cynthia in her room. She gave us food and we ate. Obviously she had no idea that Barbie was also going out with her boyfriend. She read the letter silently and asked Barbie if she knew anyone going to Nyamandem so that she could reply. Barbie said she had no idea because the letter was given to her along the way by a student. She asked Cynthia if she knew the girl who owned the other letter but she didn’t. So we left her and she thanked us for bringing the letter.”

  “Barbie played it cool,” said Lilly Loveless.

  “Exactly. It was interesting to me that during this visit she behaved so well that no one could have even imagined that she was boiling with anger like the belly of Mount Mimbo.

  “After two days Barbie told me that someone directed her to Lucy’s room, and she went and gave her the third letter. Lucy was so happy when she read the letter and asked her if she knew of Denis, her boyfriend. Barbie said she didn’t know much about him but they had met once at an occasion in Nyamandem. They discussed other matters and then she left her but this time Barbie told me that from the way the girl behaved she believed she had an idea that she was also dating Denis.

  “When I asked Barbie what she was going to do, she told me she had already replied to Denis’ letter and had told him that when he visits Puttkamerstown he should go and stay either with Cynthia or Lucy because she will not accept being among his harem.

  “I had never met Denis and had no idea that Smith, my next door neighbour was a friend of Denis. Flying-shirts, whatever their differences, tend to stick together when it comes to girls, and often tell one another this: ‘In our lives girls may come and go, but true friendship stays for ever.’ This is especially the case for those of them who attended the same secondary or high school.”

  “That’s interesting,” commented Lilly Loveless. “It basically boils down to: we shall do with girls as we please, but must never let them do with us as they like.”

  “Something like that,” agreed Britney. “When Barbie came to my room and went to chat with Smith, I often believed it was because they were reading the same subjects at the university. The day Denis reached Puttkamerstown, I knew he wanted to beat Barbie because I heard someone threatening and talking aloud in Smith’s room. Then I knew it was him when Smith told him that he should lower his tone because his neighbour is Barbie’s friend. By then I had no idea that Barbie had already made the other girls understand that there were more than four girls who claimed Denis was their boyfriend.

  “When I went to Barbie’s room and asked her to take off, she accepted because as she explained, Cynthia, Lucy and herself already knew what was going on, and Denis was more beast than man when he was angry. Barbie told me that she was sure Denis had gone to Cynthia and Lucy, and had been rejected and also told the story. So Denis was conscious of the part she had played and was certainly going to hunt for her.

  “Barbie disappeared from her room for four days. She gave me one of her keys and each day I went there to ventilate the room, I met threatening notes deposited by Denis.

  “On the third day Smith inquired from me about Barbie’s whereabouts. I told him Barbie had gone for the weekend and I had no idea when she would come back because she went right to Nyamandem. He told me Denis was Barbie’s boyfriend from Nyamandem and as I had Barbie’s key I could give it to him. I refused, claiming that anybody could as well come to me as Barbie’s boyfriend. From then on they started suspecting me and when Denis looked at me, it seemed as though he was going to strangle me.”

  “So you wanted to make them understand that if boys can stick together, girls can stick together even better?”

  “Yes, if we really want to,” said Britney. “On the fourth day, I saw Denis off alongside Smith. Denis claimed he was returning to Nyamandem because he was already late for work. I had no idea that Smith and Denis had decided that he should change his residence so that maybe if Barbie was around, she would come out.

  “When I returned, I rushed to where Barbie was hiding and told her Denis was gone. As she was going to her room, I went to mine, took my siesta, got up and took a bath. Until I reached Barbie’s door, I didn’t know that I was to bathe twice that afternoon. When I climbed on Barbie’s veranda, I saw Denis’ shoes near the door. He had certainly removed them because of the carpet. As I went behind the house I met Barbie’s neighbour coming out of the common toilet. I asked her about Barbie and she said she was not back. So I knew at once that Denis had no idea who had opened Barbie’s door.

  “I was so tensed. I went to relieve myself in the bath. Then I saw Barbie’s towel. I called her and she let me in. She had no idea Denis was waiting for her in her room. So I gave her my shoes which were too small for her but she managed to wear them, my face cap and my blouse. She took someone’s skirt from the lane and left for her hiding place again. I was left with my shorts, a towel I wrapped round me, and slightly oversized bathing slippers. So I took the soap dish, the bucket and having washed my legs, arms and face, I dashed out of the bath. I left the bathing items outside but for the towel and was singing one of Tracy Chapman’s songs when I suddenly stopped, pretending to be surprised seeing someone’s shoes at the door. As I entered the house, someone lunged for me but stiffened when he discovered he had made a mistake.”

  “It must have been some sort of comfort to find that people like Denis make mistakes,” remarked Lilly Loveless.

  “Absolutely,” Britney agreed. “Later Denis explained everything to me and lied that someone had told him that Barbie had just been dropped off by a taxi and so he decided to call round again. He assured me he was never going to harm Barbie but I knew him too well to accept his assurance. Denis finally left for Nyamandem very disappointed.”

  “That’s what you mean when you say, ‘united we stand divided we fall’”, said Lilly Loveless, proud to remember a popular Mimboland adage.

  “Smith has never known of the plan and Barbie is staying with a friend now. Come next semester she is going to change her room. Denis has lost Lucy and Cynthia as well. To date, he keeps threatening Barbie. And that’s all I know about the situation,” said Britney to pre-empt any questions from Lilly Loveless. “But Barbie is clearly onto something with her approach to Women’s Studies, and I wish her well. In a way, she reminds me of Adapepe.”

  “Britney,” said Lilly Loveless, preparing nonetheless to ask a question, “With all of this going on around you and with your evening work and with this work you’re doing for me, how do you find time for your studies?”

  “Remember,” she replied, “my boyfriend is in Muzunguland and that helps. Moreover, where there’s a will there’s a way. Isn’t that what you say?”

  Lilly Loveless laughed, her mind going back to Martin, who had corrupted the saying to ‘where there’s a willie there’s a way’, in those days in their relationship when such jokes used to make her find him funny. He was a charming bartender in those days – which he combined with his studies at the University of Bruhlville, and in no time, had served his way to her heart with his lovely, well-balanced mixtures of Bloody Marys and Angel’s Kisses, of which she was often drunk.<
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  ***

  “I have another story about another university friend and it also involves letters.”

  “OK,” said Lilly Loveless, “let’s get on with it.” Britney waved for the pineapple seller who, after a short while, returned with two halves of well cleaned pineapples carefully wrapped in plastic paper. Lilly Loveless was impressed with the efforts at cleanliness by the seller. Eating the pineapple gave them a foretaste of the fruits they bought earlier to take home.

  “Sophie is a friend of mine, right here at the University of Mimbo, so more than a classmate to me. Her husband, Stephen, works in Nyamandem as a secret agent who hires himself out to those who want secrets investigated.”

  “I hope he doesn’t start practicing his professional skills on his own wife,” Lilly Loveless anticipated, as she was used to doing.

  “Sophie’s relationship with him has really deteriorated. All of a sudden, her husband with whom she has had three children does not want to see anything good about her anymore.

  “He claims he has been spying on his wife, and is determined to teach her and her ‘rotten’ family a big lesson.”

  “He calls her family rotten? Isn’t that too harsh?”

  “I can’t believe the sort of letters he writes to her. A few days ago she shared one with me in which he accuses my friend of deceit, the quest for wealth and the good life. He insinuates, perhaps to frighten her out of her wits, that my friend has infected him with HIV, because of the promiscuous lifestyle she has developed.”

  “Maybe he gets ideas from his work as a private investigator,” conjectured Lilly Loveless.

  “The letter is very threatening,” continued Britney. “He accuses her of prostitution, of having in her the gene to harlot and to pretend. ‘You are and have always been an ashawo international,’ he bleats, even though he is known to dangle his manhood like a bell in front of every woman who crosses his path. And proceeds to catalogue all those he believes she has had or is having an affair with. The list is long and ridiculous. He accuses her of relationships with lecturers in order to obtain what he dramatically refers to as ‘sexually transmitted marks.’ She flirts with taxi men, sleeps with classmates, is hungry for everything in trousers, and keeps running around men of substance for money in exchange for sex. Yet the money never seems enough. For all these years, ‘you have exploited me under the pretext of marriage.’ He adds: ‘How sure am I that the children you claim are mine are in fact mine? When I look into their eyes, there is nothing in them that smiles daddy.’

  “He even writes that Sophie is a disgrace to her mother and her father and to Mimboland. ‘You disgrace the Darlin’ Jehovah you pretend to worship morning and evening seven days a week.’ He singles her father out for praise: ‘He is a humble, nice and God fearing man not aware of all the bad things you do with your mother’s blessings. Your bad luck started when you sold our wedding gifts for cash and looked at my best man with unforgivable yearning in your eyes.’

  “He brands Sophie dull, claims his brain to be far too much for her, and ridicules her efforts to make him feel inferior by insinuating he reasons like a goat. ‘Who has goat brains? Me who has found out all your dirty secrets or you who allow worthless men to use you like toilet paper? Your self-esteem has vanished and you have forgotten that when a lioness carries herself as a she-goat, a he-goat will woo her.’ Only a brainless girl like her, he continues, would trust the very people who are leaking information about her. ‘Wickedness is what you have in abundance, not brains. I am not the least jealous of you Sophie and will never be. I just pity you because you have derailed. You are living in a dream world.’

  “To be honest with you, I don’t believe a word of all the insults he lumped on my friend.

  “And there’s no doubt he is still in love. Sophie showed me a letter he forged and sent someone he believed she’s having an affair with. I copied out the letter: ‘Dear Polycarp,’ he wrote, impersonating Sophie. ‘Forget about everything we have had in common since we knew ourselves. At the age of 53 one can judge the type of person you are. All you know is sex, sex, sex. Do you think that is what we eat? You went as far as boasting how you adore sexing me at the balcony, in a boat in Sakersbeach, in the tea plantation, in Mountain Valley, everywhere, from behind like a dog and in toilets. I am afraid you are sub-human, you are an ape, you are evil and diabolic and everything around you is satanic. Just leave me alone with my husband. Thomas and I are legally married and nobody will separate us. Forget about everything that has happened between us. End of story, no regrets.’

  “Sophie can’t stand the guy anymore. He is not the Thomas she married.”

  “He does sound paranoid,” said Lilly Loveless, still admiring how Britney got any intellectual work done with all she described happening around her. “I hope her life is safe with him.”

  “Why shouldn’t she be?” Britney forbade the thought. “Sophie is a smart girl, and God loves her. Nothing evil shall come her way.”

  The vendor asked if they wanted another drink, hinting that if not, they might want to turn their stools over to some paying customers. “I’m after cash, girls, and not chatty beauties. I can’t eat beauty or words now, can I?”

  “Just a minute more,” negotiated Britney with a nod of her head and a big smile, satisfied with the pineapple she had just eaten. “I have a surprise,” she said to Lilly Loveless. “I collected some love letters for you.”

  “Really?” asked Lilly Loveless expectantly.

  “They were faxed to my friend’s 14-year-old daughter Lizzy, from a young boy in Kutim. She couldn’t care less about him and so readily surrendered the letters to me.” Britney withdrew them from her purse and handed them to Lilly Loveless. “I have an exam on Monday where I take some computer skills classes, so I have to go study,” said Britney. “You can look over the letters whenever you get a moment. I don’t need them back, the same way the girl didn’t need them.”

  She was about to leave when Lilly Loveless insisted on going along. “I’ll read the faxes in the taxi and we could continue chatting till where you are going, then I’ll leave you to study in peace and proceed to the Archives or something.”

  “OK then,” said Britney.

  The vendor served drinks to two men who had already taken their places at the counter.

  ***

  Once in the taxi, Lilly Loveless read the letters:

  ‘Lizzy, I’ve chosen you; oh I don’t know when it happened. Perhaps in the swimming pool, when we sat face to face and eye to eye, I had a flash in my head. It was the first time I ever had it. I didn’t know what happened to me, Now think, I’m sure, as my mother is mine, loving you began to put my heart in a high voltage like a nuclear station. Don’t you love a guy with nuclear power?

  ‘Lizzy, Girl, when I first saw you it was love at first sight. We’ve been going out now for about six months, six days, six hours, six minutes and six seconds by my Rolex, and I still feel the same. You’re my queen, and this love is true, every sunset makes me think of you. You are the sun in my life. By the way, why do we say the sun is rising instead of saying that this part of the earth is turning to meet the sun? I’ll never forget what you mean to me because I love you. Coming straight from the heart of Fabrice.

  ‘Lizzy, I know I haven’t said it much before. Well, it’s because, see, I get all choked up inside. It just doesn’t wanna come out. I don’t know. So no matter what happens, always remember... (You know the end!) Oh! This love is becoming an obsession (4 and 3/4 times in a day I think about you). In fact don’t forget to go to Pizza Hut this afternoon. I thought I’ve got an idea. Come with me to the Burger King, after, we’ll go to the movies. I’ll buy your ticket and also pay your Hotdog. See you and more this afternoon, Fabrice. Call me after 11 o’clock in the morning.’

  Lilly Loveless noted that the last fax did not come through as clearly as the others:

  ‘Lizzy, Je t’envoie ce gentil fax pour te dire… You know I think to myself what would life be que je
pars prématurément à Muzunguland. Without you baby. On all the good times that we… D’autre part je pensais aussi au RV du … I can’t picture myself without you Baby. BMW, ma mère est bien d’accord. You gotta lovehold. You gotta a lovehold that’s … De plus, après avoir discuté au BURGER on … So strong I need you to carry on … aurait peut être pu arriver chez toi. Au fait, si … I love you. I like you more than the word… I wanna be your favourite innerwear. Tu veux que je te ramène quel film que ce soit Love (horreur, policier, Action, Comédie?!) fais moi signe ce matin. J’aurais aimé t’écrire certaines phrases, mais je pense à tes soeurs qui pourraient lire ce fax, Then this is the problem. De la part d’un copain qui cherche le diamant de ton coeur avec la torche. There is something about your lovin I can’t understand everything you do keeps me lovin you. There’s no way that I could ever try to breakaway. Fabrice.’

  ***

  “You mentioned ‘sexually transmitted marks’ a while ago, how common is that as a phenomenon at the University of Mimbo?” asked Lilly Loveless, through with reading Fabrice’s inflated letters.

  “It is very common, especially between male lecturers and female students. There are some girls who use their good looks to charm everything around campus, including success at exams. They are known as ‘the survival of the prettiest club’. I remember how one once tried to recruit me with the words: ‘It baffles me to even imagine that a pretty girl like you would waste your time reading for an exam.’”

  “How sad,” said Lilly Loveless.

  “But there are lecturers as well, who force themselves onto you regardless of what you feel or want. If a lecturer admires you and you don’t have any feelings for him, and make this known, you are in deep trouble,” said Britney.

  “In what way?”

  “In every way. The lecturer, even if he is in a junior position, has the power of life and death over the student. If he hates her, he can give the student the lowest mark in class, even when she has written the most brilliant essay. And if he likes her, he can make her the best student in his course even when she is the dullest. That’s the power of the male lecturer. It is the power of the mark, not that of the wallet or of good looks.”