A Bit of Difference (23 page)

“Because Paris turns out to be more disastrous than their relationship. Only people in books and films want to go to Paris. The only reason I want to go there is to get my scenes right and finally send off this bloody manuscript, if anyone will care to read it. It's not that I'm moaning or anything. It's not that I even care. It's just that I can't get anyone to take a look at what I've done so far. Just take a look at it. And I've been working hard, harder than I have ever worked before. You understand?”

“I understand.”

“So suddenly I am an ‘African' writer. Suddenly it's the only way I can get ahead in this business, and I can just sense there is going to be an interest in African literature because of this prize. I can just feel it, but it won't be real, if you know what I mean. It will all be about trying to fit into the African literature scene and you either exploit what is going on or you don't. That's all I'm saying. See?”

“I see.”

She thinks of Dára, who crossed over by pretending to be a street child.

“Love is not trivial,” she says. “Love can be dangerous. Love can be deadly in this day and age, and there are casualties, so write your story. There is no need to fear.”

“You're good to me,” he says.

She finds African literature preoccupied with politics in a way she never was. The fact was she accepted the civil war was the only reasonable option for Nigeria, and from then on witnessed a parade of military and civilian rulers: cowards, reformers, sexual deviants and murderous juju disciples. They were like the stars at night to her. She couldn't deny their significance, but she was hardly dazzled by them. There were times she thought she ought to take more interest in what they were doing, but the death toll from the civil war and years of political unrest combined could not add up to the number of casualties from AIDS, so perhaps her concerns over what was happening between chicks and guys were not so misplaced after all.

“You know I had an HIV test yesterday?”

“Excuse me?” he says.

“I'm fine. But I promised myself I would tell you to get tested.”

“Why?”

“I just thought I should.”

“Why me, I mean?”

“Why not you?”

“Because
you're
all right?”

She did not mean to be smug.

“I'm telling you as a friend.”

He laughs. “I'm not sleeping with you!”

“It's not by force, Bandele.”

“I should hope it's not ‘by force.'”

“Don't do it, if you don't like.”

“I don't like. So how was Nigeria for you?”

She rolls her eyes. “Fine.”

“Must have been.”

He is smiling and so is she.

“
Agbaya
,” she says.

“Pardon?”

“You heard me, so you can pardon, pardon all you like. Grow up.”

“Who is he, then? Why do I think he is a doctor, or a lawyer, or an accountant, with a name that begins with ‘Ade' or ‘Olu' or ‘Ola'?”

“Get off my line.”

She disconnects him. He and his Camillas and Felicities. He will not stop her from being a conduit.

He almost puts her off calling Subu, whom she was saving for later because she expects Subu to be more difficult to persuade. Subu is still at work when she calls.

“Shoe Boo,” she says.

“
Na wa
,” Subu says. “So you can't call somebody when you get into town?”

“My sister, I've been through a turbulent, torturous, tumultuous period of trial and tribulation.”

“What happened?”

“I had an HIV test yesterday.”

“Why?”

“Don't worry, I'm fine.”

“Thank God. What did you do that for?”

“I had to know.”

“Know what?”

“Forty is fast approaching and I may have to be artificially inseminated someday.”

Subu laughs. “You're not serious.”

“It's true. We have to start thinking about these things. You should do it, too.”

“Do what?” “Get tested.”

“Why?”

“To know your status.”

Subu hisses. “You're not serious.”

“What? Everyone should know.”

“What if I'm positive?”

Deola snaps her fingers. “I reject that in the name of Jesus!”

“Silly girl,” Subu says. “Where do you even go to get tested?”

“To a doctor, or a clinic.”

“Me, go to a clinic?”

“I went to one.”

Subu laughs. “You're a bad girl!”

She tells Subu what happened at the clinic. “I couldn't even walk straight. I almost collapsed. I thought, what will I do? How will I tell my mother?”

Subu sighs. “As for me, my mother would be the first person I would tell. I would tell her to get herself here as fast as possible, with her holy water, novenas, candles, all of it. She can come and pray for me.”

Subu's mother is a veteran at prayer, and she loves rituals. She doesn't care what Christian denomination they are from. She was in London when Deola and Subu got their exam results. They went to Leicester Square that night to buy
The Times,
where the PE II results were published. Newspaper vendors started selling copies around midnight. Before they left, Subu's mother made them kneel down in Subu's flat and she prayed while touching their heads.

“Merciful Father,” she began. “King of Kings, Lord of Lords, the God of all possibilities, let your children rejoice in the land of the living, in Jesus' name.”

Her prayer was eloquent, but it made no sense chronologically. Their papers had already been marked.

“I actually prayed to be used as a conduit,” Deola says, scratching her thigh.

“Really?” Subu says. “Maybe you will soon start coming to fellowship with me?”

“That I can't promise. But come…”

“What?”

“Doesn't it make more sense to pray before the fact rather than after?”

“Before and after.”

“You are covered on both ends, then,” Deola says. “Nobody can pray like your mother.”

She calls herself a skeptic, yet she has never taken the time to read a holy book. She tried to read the Bible, but she couldn't get past the “begats.”

Subu is traveling to Shanghai again this month. She is still considering buying a flat there and will make up her mind on her trip. Deola feels honored. Subu doesn't normally reveal her plans in case someone gets jealous and jinxes her. She may believe in Jesus Christ, but she also believes in the evil eye.

“I don't have any plan to be artificially inseminated,” Subu says. “But with all these long-term investments I'm getting into, maybe I should get tested.”

“Promise?”

“Only if you promise to come to fellowship with me.”

“That can't happen.”

“You know there is no hope for you?”

“I know.”

Normally, Deola would ask, “How would you know?” and that would be the beginning of a religious war between them.

Tonight she lies on the couch listening to the CD until the final song, “Don't Go to Strangers.” She thinks of Wale again. His composure hides his sense of humor. He might come across as dull. She indulges herself this way, examining him from different angles, and plays the song over and over, telling herself this is due to her loneliness in London. She hopes that by morning, he will be as stale to her as the song will inevitably sound.

She goes to bed early and not until the purgatory hour does she begin to worry, when she wakes up after dreaming that everyone at her father's memorial is lying dead in the garden. Her fridge is humming and a car roars past on the main street. Her bedroom is not entirely dark: the gaps in her curtains allow some moonlight in. She senses a sympathetic presence, which may or may not be her father's. She is virtually asleep again when she imagines the consequences of one of her friends getting a positive result. Her duvet gets hot, her stomach pulsates and her skin moistens. She says a prayer, raps her knuckles on her headboard and buries her face in her pillow.

z

This week she has dinner with Anne Hirsch at a pizzeria. The pizzeria, on Baker Street, has spaghetti Western posters and blown-up black-and-white photographs of Hollywood stars like Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Gina Lollobrigida and Sophia Loren. Dean Martin is singing “
Volare
.” On the table is a candle inserted into a wine bottle covered with an avalanche of melted wax. The atmosphere is camp.

“I can't get away from American pop culture,” Anne says. “I turn on the television in my hotel, and it's all garbage.”

“American culture is everywhere,” Deola says. “It's your biggest export, come to think of it.”

“No,” Anne says. “That would be war and violence.”

Anne flew in on Monday. She is returning to Atlanta in the morning. A waiter comes to their table to ask what they would like to drink.

“Wine for you?” Deola asks Anne.

“Water will be fine.”

“I'll have water, too, thanks,” Deola says to the waiter.

The waiters here pretend to be harried to create an Italian ambience. This one keeps twitching. He has blond highlights in his hair.

Afterward, Anne explains, “I'm a teetotaler for now. You know Ali and I are trying for a baby.”

“Yes,” Deola says.

She would classify this as personal information, but Deola has known colleagues to confide with her at office functions, only to walk past her in the office the next day.

“We've decided that I'm carrying,” Anne says. “My insurance coverage is better. In the States, we don't have a national health service as you have over here. I think I mentioned that Ali is a florist, didn't I?”

“You did.”

Deola also remembers that Anne will take any opportunity to apologize for America. She seems to admire the English, though. Another waiter returns with their drinks and takes their orders. Anne nods as if she is in the presence of a lecturer as he goes through the menu mispronouncing dishes like
prosciutto funghi e panna
and
pomodorini rucola e prosciutto
. She playfully changes her “tomay-to” to “tomah-to” and finally orders a pizza Margherita, so Deola orders a pizza Napoletana.

“Markeriter,” the waiter says, scribbling. “Naplitaner.”

Other customers in the pizzeria are seated around circular tables similar to theirs. They are well dressed. They would have been called yuppies back in the eighties and are reappearing in London under a European guise.

Anne is eager to tell Deola about Dára's botched interview. She stares through her contact lenses as she justifies why she thinks he ought to be dropped as a spokesperson.

“He was specifically asked about AIDS in Africa and he said, and I quote, ‘Polygamy helps. When men have several wives, they don't sleep around.'”

Deola laughs. “I don't know about that.”

“I thought, how sexist.”

“He must have been drunk or high.”

“I can't even begin to get my head around it. It makes me very nervous about what he might come up with next.”

Deola tries to understand Dára's reasoning. He probably came up with any answer he could think of. In Nigeria, no one would have paid him any mind, as a college dropout. Overseas, people are asking for his opinions on Africa.

“Don't you have polygamists in the Bible Belt?” she asks.

Anne nods. “They practice it as part of their religion, but in the States, a man cannot legally be married to more than one woman at a time.”

“Not even Muslims?”

“I'm sure they have ways of getting around the law and you can't stop people from cohabiting.”

Deola pushes the ice in her glass into the water. “In Nigeria, Muslims are free to practice polygamy. It is legal under customary law.”

Anne shrugs. “Religion and culture, they're one and the same. How was your trip there anyway? Kate says you were concerned about one of the NGOs you reviewed.”

Kate Meade had to go home after work. Her daughter had a stomachache. Whenever her daughter falls sick, so does her husband. Deola is beginning to think he is a saboteur not an inventor.

“I was concerned,” she says. “The CEO wants to raise money for a community. Her VP, who is from the community, is interested in microfinance. I thought that was a good idea.”

“Yes, but that's a shift from what we do. Personally, I think microcredit is a wonderful idea and it's catching on, but within Africa we focus on charity.”

Of course, Deola thinks. LINK is not in the business of making their beneficiaries look self-sufficient. They must evoke sympathy to raise money. This is how charity works. No one gives money to people they are on par with, so someone has to be diminished in the process.

“It would be nice, though,” she says, “to show communities like that in a more encouraging light.”

“The reality is,” Anne says, rearranging her fork and knife, “these communities are at risk and someone has to respond to their immediate needs.”

“But the aim is to enable self-sufficiency in the long run, isn't it?”

Deola asks only because she expects an accusation like, “It is all right for you to say that.”

“I guess,” Anne says, “but you would have to be involved in fieldwork to fully understand how bad things are. Women and children are especially vulnerable in Africa. Mothers become sex workers and they pass the virus to their babies. Babies die before they reach their second birthdays. Grandmothers are raising orphans. It is awful what is going on. It makes you so angry.”

Deola interprets this as, “Shouldn't it make you angry?” It makes her sad. It also makes her scared, too scared to dwell on how much Africa suffers, and it has the same paralyzing effect on her as selfishness would. She does not represent Africa and Anne does not represent the West, but Anne swings easily from guilt to having a monopoly on compassion.