Married But Available

by B. Nyamnjoh

  “Forgive you? What for?” Lilly Loveless was still perplexed Amanda-Hope should keep apologising and asking for forgiveness.

  “I had done something he didn’t like, and he had asked me to write three emails to him to earn his forgiveness.”

  “Sounds like someone who got a kick out of emails,” said Lilly Loveless.

  Amanda-Hope did not comment, but carried on: “He even used to think of me on important feast days. He would call or email, to leave a message wishing me well. That was the case one Christmas day or was it Valentine’s Day? I had neglected checking my mail, because I didn’t expect he would write, just to be proved wrong. When I discovered he had written, my joy was over the top. I was even happier when he called, so I wrote to tell him how much his little gestures meant to me.”

  Amanda-Hope sorted the mails until she found the one in question. It read:

  “‘Hello Coeurdelion,’ I wrote. ‘Talking to you today was really nice. We seem to always have something to talk about, and very comfortable talking about everything too. Your friendship means more than you can ever guess. Thanks! Hope you will reply. This email address has been inactive for sometime. Have a nice day today. I didn’t check my mail on Valentine’s day because I thought that my dear sweet friend is somewhere, probably busy with friends and loved ones to give me a thought, but I was wrong. I accidentally opened my mail the day after to find a most beautiful mail and most beautiful thoughts for Valentine and always. Thanks!!!. Sure my day will be happy, you do spring me up with your mails and calls. Still don’t understand why, but sure happy about that. May your year be filled with joy and laughter.’”

  “He was leading you on all along,” said Lilly Loveless. “And to turn around and try to wriggle himself out completely, is totally irresponsible and unfair.”

  “I can even swear that once before, things had reached such a crescendo that I found myself writing things that could only have been felt and shared by the both of us,” Amanda-Hope agreed. “Otherwise, how would you situate a mail like this one: ‘Although I will die of guilt if I attempt it, the simple truth is that I want you very much and I want to make love to you. I hope this is not too much for you to swallow, but that is how I feel. Since you promise to keep my secrets with you, I sincerely hope that this huge confession will go to the deepest part of your heart.’ The email was written shortly after a call towards the end of which I was actually devastated. I could not explain what came over me. My body started shaking and I cried my eyes out without knowing why. I told him: ‘You know we are both happily married and want to remain that way, but wanting another, even for a brief moment is what I can’t understand.’ I cried because I was confused. I love my husband very much, he loves his wife very much and I love him very much. I asked myself repeatedly: Does this make sense? Since we promised to remain friends, maybe with time I will get over this. I hope sooner than later, before we hurt ourselves.”

  “And how did things evolve from there?” Lilly Loveless was curiosity personified.

  “The relationship was never meant to be,” said Amanda-Hope, “at least, not in the sense that I might have hoped. The tap of the water of life I had aspired to and dreamt about in fear dried up, all of a sudden. No longer would he answer my calls or reply to the mails and SMS I sent him. I clearly remember the last mail I sent, a mail which he ignored like all the others, and since which he has not been in touch, except, of course, in my dreams.”

  “You continue to dream about him?”

  “Oh yes, big time. I look forward to my dreams the same way others look forward to their emails and phone calls.”

  Amanda-Hope read out the mail, her voice slow and deliberate, as if to reconstitute the emotion that provoked its initial composition: ‘Hello my dear sweet friend,’ she read, ‘Have I said thank you for being a sweet friend lately? Don’t think so. Thank you so much for being you and for your ready smiles, spontaneous and uncensored calls, and chat, and for being very original. Very few people are like you, believe that. No hang-ups, not even trying to act polished, not even thinking of what people might think for being you and being playful. You are a darling. Why am I writing such mail to you, you might wonder? I don’t really know, just out of sincere appreciation for you and your friendship, perhaps. By the way, you were drinking red wine in my dreams last night. I wonder what the celebration is? And you were very happy too. Anything good? Care to share?’”

  “You really were swept off your feet by this man, weren’t you?”

  “Like you said before, these things happen.”

  “Yes, they do.”

  “In brief, that is my story with Coeurdelion, the affair that never was. Otherwise, I’m very happy with Herbert, my darling husband. Once in a while, I try to push him to do with me the things I have only dreamt doing with Coeurdelion. One day I had this funny experience with my husband…”

  “What? Please tell.”

  “I looked at Herbert lovingly and said ‘talk to me’.

  “He looked surprised, ‘I am talking’, he replied.

  “‘Not in that way, I want you to talk to me raw and hard, as if you are making love to me, or as if you were talking to a perfect stranger out there you’d just met.’

  “‘If it is to just talk to you, no problem, but to talk raw and hard, that is a different matter altogether. I’m not cut out for that.’

  “‘Just give it a try, you may like it.’

  “‘No, I don’t think so. I’m too old to act stupid.’

  “‘The problem is that you are too self-conscious and too uptight, it will do you a lot of good to loosen up and act differently once in a while.’

  “Herbert kept quiet and looked at me suspiciously.

  “‘OK, let me teach you how to talk hard and raw to a woman.’

  “‘OK, I’m listening,’ said Herbert, still looking embarrassed.

  “‘Just close your eyes and pretend you are alone with me. What are you doing now? I want you to place your hand on my shoulders to draw me closer to you so that my breast can sink into your chest like the quills of a porcupine injecting pleasure not pain. I want you to feel the softness of my breath and the softness of my lips. I want to sit sideways on your lap, to feel you going inside me, growing bigger and bigger as you explore the fullness of the colonial territory of which you are governor general...’

  “Herbert cut in, ‘I think you’ve gone crazy. I better get the doctor here fast.’

  “‘Never mind the doctor. I think we are all crazy, but we all end up pretending we are not. But sometimes we wonder what goes on behind closed doors. Remember Fela Kuti’s Na Poi, your favourite music when we first met and you were still wooing and tantalizing me with your creative imagination? Whatever happened to those days of spontaneity and unpredictability?’

  “‘Count me out of that crazy stunt,’ Herbert snaps.

  “‘My friend, relax. I know you love the real thing, how come you find it very difficult to imagine it and be naughty, even for a second? I told you to think for a moment that you were with a perfect stranger who has just caught your fancy, and whom you are determined to do all to have…’ “‘Hmm, is that what you do when I travel? When I’m on mission? Next time you’re coming with me. I’ll ask my mom to come and stay with the children. I just can’t sit by and watch you get any crazier.’

  “‘Never mind, my friend. It’s not what you think. Anyway, it’s a free world. It’s good you don’t know what goes on in my mind.’

  “‘I think you’re either watching too many blue movies or that somebody is putting ideas in your mind. It will be interesting to know what goes on in your mind.’

  “‘That is not possible, my friend, not in the way you are going about it. Just relax and go to sleep.’

  “I wished Herbert goodnight, kissed him and turned to the other side of the bed with a mischievous smile, but with Coeurdelion on my mind, actively present in his absence.”

  “That’s amazingly creative,” said Lilly Loveless. “You’
ve got a most fertile mind.”

  “At the end of the day, Herbert has been and remains my darling husband. You know, when I was about to marry him 15 years ago, my parents objected to the idea.”

  “Why?”

  “Because they could not comprehend why I should pick a ‘hungry looking’ young man, straight from the university, over dozens of others – ‘money miss roads’ struggling to convince my parents with expensive gifts and sweet talk.”

  “So why did you choose him over all the other guys with money?”

  “Somehow, I don’t know at what point I realised that money is not everything, but thank God I did before it got too late. I would have been a very unhappy person if I had married any of them. I still stumble on them, once in a while. Some even go to the extent of buying stupid gifts for my children. The bottom line is that I don’t envy them or their wives. I really wish them and their narrow attitude to love and marriage, all the luck.”

  Even before Lilly Loveless could thank her for a rich and insightful meeting and for so graciously making herself available despite her many duties, Amanda-Hope stood up.

  “Sorry, I have to go,” said she. “Sunday afternoons are very busy for us women here in Puttkamerstown. There’re lots of meetings to attend, people to see, and activities to plan for the week. I wish you well with your research, and do call if you need any more information.”

  She rushed to her car and drove off, leaving Lilly Loveless behind to change into a cute flowery light-red bikini and savour the inviting, newly constructed swimming pool.

  25

  The strike has been raging on for over five months. Bobinga Iroko and The Talking Drum have termed it the longest ever in Mimboland. Lilly Loveless does not remember ever reading of a strike as long as this in the history of Muzunguland. Clashes have multiplied between students determined to assemble and to express themselves, and the police determined to enforce an order banning public gatherings. The casualties have been enormous. Students have been killed. Others shot and wounded, brutalized and hospitalized. Female students have been raped with relentless brutality. The student leadership blames the police, gendarmes and soldiers, who in turn blame the students and the West Mimboland Liberation Movement (WMLM), which they believe has infiltrated the University of Mimbo and school campuses throughout West Mimboland. The WMLM, which believes in the value of West Mimboland traditions and in the power to create, affirm, live, value, and promote qualitative difference, is said to scare stiff President Longstays’ regime. More students and unidentified persons have been rounded up with relish by the police, convinced as they are that a lady gendarme was stripped naked, raped and dragged along the streets by rapacious students, to the applause of an uproarious crowd of delinquents who have pledged to make nonsense of the university authorities and their great ambitions.

  Dr Wiseman Lovemore and other detained lecturers have now been accused, but still not formally charged, of being the brains behind the movement and the strike. They are said to question the current boundaries of the United Republic of Mimboland: Why did President Longstay and his supporters insist on putting together what God and the colonizing Muzungulanders have always wanted asunder? President Longstay, who is believed to be always right even in his kingly new clothes, is said to be particularly rattled by this treasonable conduct. Instructions have been dispatched to ensure that the traitors are brought before him, and imprisoned next door to his almighty office, under the special oversight of the republican rottweilers of his Maximum Security Prison in Nyamandem.

  With the active assistance of the VC, the state has flexed its almighty muscle on all those “nurturing a culture of lawlessness” at the University of Mimbo. In her most recent riposte, the VC has hit out at reckless vandalism by students, rumour mongering and back stabbing by post-seeking members of staff ready to kill to be appointed, and the disappointing sense of ingratitude she gets from all those for whom the university has done so much. She concludes, fuming with the anger of one born to be right: “Persons come and go, but institutions remain,” pointing an accusing finger at the university staff union which she believes has always been hostile in its preference for hooligans over refined, disciplined minds. “I refuse to bend over backwards to pat on the back people who mean no good. How can they criticize and run down the regime with such alacrity and impunity? How dare they seek to bite the finger that feeds them?”

  No sooner was the VC’s statement released than the rottweilers of the regime were summoned to act. According to Bobinga Iroko and The Talking Drum, Dr Wiseman Lovemore and his purportedly guilty colleagues of the staff union and a good number of allegedly subversive students were secretly transferred by night from Puttkamerstown to Nyamandem just hours after the statement by the VC was read on radio. No one knows for sure what their charges are, and when The Talking Drum dared to report on it, the active ears and eyes of the state in Puttkamerstown dilated with rage, raiding kiosks, vendors and the offices of the newspaper, seizing and burning every copy they could find. “That’s how they vandalise our souls, rape our hearts and inflame our dreams,” wept Bobinga Iroko. “Theirs is the argument of force, and not the force of argument. But we are determined, one and all, to die fighting for our heritage and right to dignity,” He pledged: “The Talking Drum must continue to inspire the weak and the defenceless of West Mimboland.”

  The atmosphere is very tense, and Bobinga Iroko and his fellow journalists have sent out emails, SMS, faxes and letters drawing the attention of the diplomatic community and the outside world to the excesses and impunities of Longstay and his government. They are waiting, desperately, for signs of hope. But danger lurks in the air for Bobinga Iroko. A couple of days ago, he renewed Lilly Loveless’s fear for his safety when he told her how someone high up in the corridors of power, a college friend, warned him. “Iroko! Iroko! Iroko!” the man called his name on the phone and said: “How many times did I call you?” “Three times,” replied Bobinga Iroko. And the man told him: “Tradition, religion and even common sense tells us that once a person’s name is mentioned three times, it means that it is a serious business, or that the person is in big trouble.” When Bobinga Iroko asked him to explain what he meant, he said: “A word to the wise is enough,” and dropped the phone before Bobinga Iroko could tell him: “The fowl that feasts on the intestine of another should know its turn is next.”

  Bobinga Iroko is stubborn in his determination to fight until Dr Wiseman Lovemore and all those who have been detained without trial and now illegally transferred to the regime’s notorious maximum security prison in Nyamandem are released. He has planned a journey of protest to Nyamandem in the coming weeks and Lilly Loveless has offered to accompany him.

  As for Desire, Lilly Loveless’ landlady, five months without teaching and having to worry about university committees and the dictatorship of the central administration, have given her a singular opportunity to organize and attend to her personal affairs. She has been on and off from Puttkamerstown, and Lilly Loveless can’t believe her luck to be finally able to talk with her in depth, and especially to interview her about her experiences with love and loving.

  “These visits to my home village have been simply brilliant,” Desire tells her. “Until the strike, I truly had no idea how packed full of stress I was. Now that I’ve actually relaxed, it feels really good… Wow. I do not remember feeling this good in ages. Going to the village and relaxing in between meeting my folks have been everything that I could have asked for.”

  “I can see you badly needed a holiday,” Lilly Loveless agreed. “I know how stressful teaching can be, having served as a graduate assistant myself.”

  “I know what you mean,” said Desire. “Assisting or teaching from the bottom is not always easy. All the donkey work gets dumped on you. At the university, being just a mere lecturer, my days are long and hectic, so are my weeks. When things are normal, my days and weeks there melt into the next to such an extent that I keep becoming confused as to whether it’s this
or that month, if it’s the end of the month or the beginning.”

  “You must have a lot on your plate,” empathised Lilly Loveless.

  “Yes, so many things, I tell you,” Desire agreed. “You know we are terribly poorly paid and heavily overworked at the university. So, in addition to slaving away, under-resourcedly teaching students who don’t really want to learn but who are all keen to graduate, one must think of other ways of making ends meet.”

  “So what else do you do?”

  “Consultancies, of course. There are lots of NGOs interested in poaching our brains for a fee, and a good fee for that, compared to the miserly salaries we are paid by the state.”

  It wasn’t exactly consultancies or hardships at the university that Lilly Loveless wanted to hear about Desire, but she had to give the impression of being interested for the sake of the interview. So she listened on, as Desire expressed her frustrations with her life as a lecturer, and the catalogue of things she did to make ends meet at the margins. When Desire finally got round to addressing the theme of love, Lilly Loveless was so relieved that she interrupted as little as possible, afraid as she was, to derail Desire with interjections.

  So Desire told her story like someone giving a lecture on a theme she knew well:

  In an ideal world, love should be about companionship, deep and multifaceted connections between two individuals beyond sexual attraction. It is mutually satisfying. To use a commonly used, perhaps confusing, word: chemistry – there must be chemistry between the two people. The individuals are concerned about each other. They derive satisfaction from giving and receiving pleasure to and from each other. Love is about openness, honesty and mutual support, whatever the demands or situation. Ideally, this kind of relationship is so satisfying that both parties should be content. They seek to protect the status quo and improve on it if possible.