Married But Available

by B. Nyamnjoh

  “Sounds nice,” said Lilly Loveless, jotting down and underlining the phrase in her notebook.

  “She advised me that love in real life is a mixture of lies and if I did not master how to play the game I might end up suicidal. When I asked her if she wanted to get married in future, she said her would-be husband would have to convince her that he would not be unfaithful. Even more, he must be capable of changing her perception because presently she enjoyed her tricks more than love.”

  “Hmmm…” said Lilly Loveless, “an interesting case.”

  ***

  “There’s the case of Glenda, too,” said Britney, easing into her next story. “Glenda is a student at UM. She comes from a family which could have been termed rich but for the fact that her father respects very much one important cultural value of Africa: that of having many children which entails financial responsibility.

  “Glenda has had two ambitions in life. First of all she wanted to present herself anywhere as beautiful despite the fact that beauty itself is relative. She intended to do this with all the artificial cosmetics and Muzungu fashion money can buy. Her preferences were so sophisticated that she didn’t stand a chance just with the money given to her by her parents.”

  “So she thinks she can buy beauty?” asked Lilly Loveless rhetorically. “What’s her second ambition?”

  “Travelling abroad,” said Britney. “Previously, she believed her father could sponsor her to study in Muzunguland. That is, until she grew up and discovered a string of so called ‘illegitimate children’ coming to the house and sharing with them the modest household cake.”

  “So how does she intend to manage?” asked Lilly Loveless, “go by boat or trek through the Sahara, and at whose cost?”

  “She since transferred the responsibility of going abroad to her boyfriends whom she generally calls her fiancés. This ambition drew her to Mathias, her friend’s husband and a businessman in Sawang. He gave her a lot of money in what is commonly known as ‘encouragement fee’, a sort of knock on the door to her heart, and promised her a holiday in Muzunguland. Mathias also promised to sponsor her Masters programme at a university in Muzunguland.”

  “A full package deal,” said Lilly Loveless as she wrote notes.

  “Little did she know,” explained Britney, “that she had over demanded from Mathias who now intended to drop her at the first opportunity. Then came the long vacation, during which Mathias had promised to take her to the dream of her life, Muzunguland. Instead, Mathias travelled with his wife and phoned Glenda telling her he could not do otherwise because his wife had insisted on coming along. Glenda received the phone call with a shock. She was too jolted to say a thing, so she promised to call the next day. After releasing a good amount of tension, she couldn’t stand it till the next day. So in the evening, she dialled Mathias and lavished a handful of insults at him and then got the unexpected result of her life.”

  “What did he do?”

  “Mathias told her to go to hell and never to come between him and his wife.”

  “Wow. She must have been terribly disappointed.”

  “Glenda could not believe it, but her friends believed it for her and so took time to make her understand until she finally changed her mind about the threats to Mathias.”

  “Good old friends who can tell you like it is and pick you up,” commented Lilly Loveless. This was yet another example of women joining forces in solidarity with a sister in difficulties, she wrote in her notebook. But men being what they are, it is difficult to make them change their minds when they believe they’ve got what they wanted and must move on, she added.

  “You might not be surprised to know that Glenda has picked up another guy, a flying-shirt who recently graduated from the university and is doing a Masters programme at a university in Muzunguland. She says this guy is preparing financially to let her come over.”

  “So she continues her deep water fishing for opportunities to fish in foreign waters,” commented Lilly Loveless.

  “However, Glenda says that if she goes abroad, she’s never going to stay for long with this guy. She’s going to look for someone who is older and richer – a Muzungu preferably, whom she might end up marrying. ‘You don’t go to a restaurant only to eat what you cook every day,’ she says. She sometimes calls herself ‘Lady Luck’, so I wish her the best of luck,” said Britney, wrapping up.

  “Glenda seems to be just as much an economist as Michele,” suggested Lilly Loveless.

  Britney got up when she heard a knock at the door. She directed the gentleman from room service to their small table on the balcony. He set down his trayful and Britney extended enough Mim dollars to cover their lunch and a tip.

  Britney narrowed her eyes and said, “Let me tell you about Karina.”

  “I’m all ears,” said Lilly Loveless.

  “After many years of marriage, one day, as if stung by a bee, Karina’s husband, in his 50s, married a second, much younger wife. Karina, who was in her early 40s, tried to live with the situation but finally tired of it and left her husband. She moved into an apartment, leaving the house they had built and shared as they raised their children together. Their children are now grown.

  “Karina took on a boyfriend more or less her own age, who eventually moved in with her. Her husband continued with his young wife, showing her off around town and making Karina feel terrible as the woman who couldn’t keep her husband. Things went along like that until one day seven years later Karina received an urgent call from her husband on her cell phone. He explained that he had just been bitten by a serpent and wanted to die in her arms. He was in tears.”

  “Hope not crocodile tears,” said Lilly Loveless.

  “Luckily, Karina had been trained as a nurse. She asked her husband if he could drive. He said he thought he might be able to. She told him to gather up the cash in the house as quickly as possible and drive carefully to the hospital. He did just that and Karina saved his life, and to this day he is still living – with his second wife.

  “But I have the feeling,” added Britney, “that Karina will soon chase away her boyfriend and rejoin her husband in their house. And he’ll be real careful about how he deals with her.”

  “Why would he go back to a woman he has left?” asked Lilly Loveless.

  “Because he hasn’t found in the new woman what he was looking for when he left her?”

  “Which is?”

  “Do I know? If really I could say what men look for in women, I’d set up a business counselling women what to do or not to do to get and keep their men,” replied Britney.

  “You really know how to dig out stories.”

  “That’s what you paid me for, isn’t it?”

  “You’ve been like a flashlight to me over the last few months,” complimented Lilly Loveless, “exposing the unseen and the unsaid, sending my thoughts spiralling this way and that way, and bringing out significant lessons even in the shortest of your stories. I am truly grateful.”

  “Thank you. But I didn’t tell you about Berthy yet,” said Britney, determined to empty her basket of stories.

  She got up and carried their lunch tray out into the hallway and brought the vase of daisies to the small table between them.

  ***

  “Berthy has always been disappointed in love,” began Britney, once again, as Lilly Loveless switched into her deep listening mode. “So much so that she had vowed never to show a gentleman that she loves him. She was determined to frustrate men just as she herself had been frustrated. Coming from a well-to-do family she strongly believed most men dated her because they were interested in her money and because she often spent a lot on such relationships.”

  “A rare story about a Mbomese from Britney,” remarked Lilly Loveless.

  Britney smiled and continued. “Thus, when she met Vammbolt she knew she had caught another animal in her trap. However, Vammbolt turned out to be the most loving and caring man she had ever dated and she soon found herself deeply in love wit
h him. She dated Vammbolt for one full year and then he proposed to marry her. She accepted, and he was encouraged to approach her mother. Vammbolt told Berthy’s mother, ‘I have fallen in love with your daughter, and she has fallen in love with me. I have come to see if you’d have any objection if we get married.’ The mother was very sceptical, perhaps because of the way men had come and gone in her life. All she told him was, ‘Your ways and standards do not convince me that you are the type of man I want for my daughter’, leaving him in doubt as to what exactly she meant.”

  “They both must have felt terribly disappointed,” said Lilly Loveless. “Better to marry the man who loves you than the one your mother loves, won’t you say?”

  Britney continued, “Just that same year Vammbolt was called by his elder brother to fly over to Muzunguland without any delay because his application for a job there had been accepted.”

  “Poor Berthy, what happened to her?”

  “Vammbolt finally left for Muzunguland and on that same day Alan, an earlier suitor of Berthy landed. Alan presented so many gifts to Berthy and proposed to marry her but she refused. He explained the situation to her mother and pleaded that she should help him. The mother, willing to venture this time, tried and failed because Berthy claimed she already had a husband. So Alan gave up.

  “While Vammbolt was in Muzunguland he constantly wrote and sent gifts to Berthy and her mother who had been forced to accept the situation. Vammbolt finally proposed the day he would like to marry Berthy. Official arrangements were being made by parents of the couple, who had finally swallowed the fact that marriage sometimes has to do a lot less with birds of the same feather flocking together than with love.

  “The day Vammbolt came back to Mimboland, with the intention of leaving in a fortnight, he went shopping with his would-be wife. That is when they met Alice who was also buying a few items from a supermarket. Berthy made the necessary introduction and Alice asked them when they would like to visit her. They gave her a date and left, wishing goodbye to her.”

  “I smell trouble,” said Lilly Loveless.

  “And there, indeed, was trouble,” agreed Britney. “From the first day that Vammbolt saw Alice, he had made up his mind to take her to bed but he had no idea that Alice had just finished her Masters programme and believed that she was a good match for Vammbolt who had the same degree and had already got a job. Thus she did not see his marriage with Berthy as one that could yield any fruits because Berthy had dropped out of school when she failed the advanced level two times. ‘Marriage being first and foremost about clout than about love, Vammbolt can’t be for my friend,’ Alice resolved. She hated the fact that despite her superior education, she was not as successful with attracting men as was Berthy.”

  “That birds of a feather thing again,” remarked Lilly Loveless. “Everyone is sizing up everyone else as they scheme to position themselves in relationships,” she added and noted in her notebook.

  “Yet, Berthy had even considered Alice as a possible bridesmaid, a sign that she hardly knew her friend.”

  “”Haven’t you heard that bridesmaids are there to protect the virginity of the bride?”

  “Not in this case. There was no virginity to protect.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “One thing Berthy had never revealed to Vammbolt was the fact that she had a little daughter called Sheila. When Alice discovered this, she revealed it to Vammbolt, told him that Berthy was a flirt and had aborted many times while he was in Muzunguland. She said Berthy did not even know the father of her child and that was why her parents adopted the child at birth.”

  In her notebook, Lilly Loveless noted the curious usage Britney made of the word ‘flirt’, which was not the same thing as teasing and tantalizing men but never going to bed with them. Berthy was more than just a flirt in that she went to bed with the men she teased and tantalized. Here was a clear case of the domestication of a word that made evident the importance of marrying text to context.

  “Vammbolt was totally confused at first because Alice was not only beautiful but he had a feeling that what she was saying was true. He had made love to Alice twice at her place and on that count knew that Alice was a better choice for him than Berthy. What surprised him most was that Berthy and Alice were very good friends and he did not understand why Alice should betray her friend to such an extent until the day he proposed to marry Alice and she accepted without any delay.”

  “A real stab in the back,” said Lilly Loveless.

  “However, that very evening that Vammbolt learned of Berthy’s secret, he called her into his room and told her that for so long she had kept a secret to herself because he was only a boyfriend but now that he was to be her husband he would like to know. Berthy understood that Vammbolt must have learned of her child and immediately told him everything. What was interesting was that Sheila was with her father.”

  “So she knew the father after all,” said Lilly Loveless.

  “That very evening Vammbolt warned Berthy never to visit nor discuss any of their plans with Alice because she was the girl who betrayed her but he advised her to visit Alice once in a while and pretend as if her marriage with Vammbolt was seemingly never going to take place.

  “Vammbolt also visited Alice and told her he was struggling to get her visa because the one he had made contained Berthy’s name. He told her that immediately they finished with it they would marry quietly and leave without even informing anybody.

  “However, Vammbolt spent his time at the Muzunguland Embassy preparing a visa for Berthy. He finally booked a flight on the day he was to marry Berthy so that when they left the courtroom they could immediately leave for Muzunguland.

  “Two days before the day he was to marry Berthy, he went with Alice to a hotel in Sawang and booked a room for two days. The first night he slept with Alice and then told her he was going to see his grandmother in the village to say farewell. That he would be back early in the morning so they could certify their marriage and leave for Muzunguland by 2pm.

  “All the time that Vammbolt spent with Alice, he told Berthy he was struggling to make her visa. He also told Berthy that Alice had gone to the village and had promised to be back only on their wedding day.”

  “Taking advantage of both women, eh?”

  Britney ignored the remark. “So when the day came Alice was waiting in her hotel room for Vammbolt to take her to court while Vammbolt was getting married to Berthy.

  “Brilliant,” replied Lilly Loveless, before thinking if the problem was more Alice than Vammbolt.

  “Immediately after the marriage the couple and their parents came over to Sawang. While they were feasting and waiting for the flight, Vammbolt left them to meet Alice in the hotel. He told her of a delay in granting her visa, so he had shifted the flights to 4pm. He settled his bills at the hotel and left a Mim$10,000 note in Alice’s purse. He went out claiming that he was going to bring in some court personalities so they could sign their marriage certificates at the hotel.

  “Vammbolt and Berthy left the airport at 2pm. A member of the hotel staff came to clear out Alice from the room. Just as he had knocked the door, entered and was about to explain to Alice, her cell phone rang. It was Berthy calling to tell Alice that she was on her way with her husband to Muzunguland.”

  “That was cruel,” said Lilly Loveless.

  “Cruel?”

  “In a way the phone call was not necessary.”

  “Necessary or not, until today Alice is paralysed because of the shock she had when she heard the news.”

  “Isn’t this Vammbolt man what you call feyman?”

  “You know about feymen? Where from?”

  “I’ve read a few things here and there about these fraudsters who want to outsmart everyone. Was he clean shaven?”

  “Yes, why do you ask?”

  “Feymen are said to be almost always without any hair on their heads or chins, always neatly dressed and often in suits, as they are keen on creating the impr
ession of being too concerned with doing business and striking deals to attend to such banalities as combing hair…”

  “Wow” said Britney. “Unfortunately, I don’t know much about them, although I do agree that many bushfallers end up falling by the wayside in terms of morality and uprightness.”

  “Alice has moved on, I hope.”

  “When her sister told me the story she concluded that Alice has decided to be wicked to everyone because she believes men are very wicked.”

  “Hmmm,” uttered Lilly Loveless, “her own wickedness bred wickedness, didn’t it?”

  “As we say in Mimboland, man ye man na man ye man. And man wey he shit for ye road, make ye no talk say ye don mash shit.”

  “Na true,” said Lilly Loveless, show-offishly.

  Britney took out her gloss and started applying it to her lips. Lilly Loveless had never seen her do this before. She watched, mesmerized. Britney returned the gloss to her bag and asked what Lilly Loveless was staring at.

  “Your impressive lips,” she replied without hesitating.

  “Really?” asked Britney, bringing her eyelashes together in disbelief.

  “Yes,” said Lilly Loveless pensively. “Look at this.” She dug in her bag for a notebook, with a red cover. Britney had noticed it in her bag before but had never seen her open it.

  Lilly Loveless opened the red covered notebook slowly, sparking Britney’s curiosity. She fingered through until she came to a particular page and started reading. First the date, which was several months earlier, and then something about Britney’s lips.

  Britney couldn’t believe her ears. “You wrote that about my lips?”

  “Of course I did, you think someone else wrote it?”

  “No, of course not. I’m just surprised to learn about your secret notebook. Let me see it,” said Britney, extending her hand.

  Lilly Loveless hesitated.

  “Don’t ,” said Britney, “I don’t want to read your secrets, at least not now, just turn it to the first blank page and hand it to me.”

  Lilly Loveless considered for a moment and accepted, and handed over her pen as well.