Dangerous Love (34 page)

It was dark. The silence was punctuated by the trilling of crickets and the syncopated croaking of frogs. It was very dark and Ifeyiwa felt overpowered by the smell of the earth and the herbaceous fragrance of undergrowth. Her husband told her to get down from the motorcycle and he hid it behind some bushes with the practised motions of one who has rehearsed his plan beforehand. Ifeyiwa was terrified to the point of stiffness. She saw dread everywhere. She saw masks and demons in the darkness. The palm trees weaved. The crickets seemed to trill louder. The croaking of frogs became unbearable. She heard strange whispers in the leaves and was dimly comforted to hear a car driving slowly down the road, its engine spluttering. When the car increased speed she lost heart. It occurred to her to run to the road and scream for help, and attempt to stop the passing car. But she knew that no one in their right mind, in a time so rife with armed robbers, would stop at a place like that even for a woman. It was too obvious a device. They would sooner run her over than stop.

‘Come here, you educated fool!' her husband shouted somewhere in the darkness.

She didn't move. She tried to locate his position. She waited, tense, like a trapped animal. He leapt on her from behind, held her, and pushed her up the path. She stumbled and he went on pushing her. She regained her balance and hurried on blindly ahead, the darkness like a wall constantly melting before her. Her heart pounded. Her eyes were wide open. Every sound in the dark made her tremble. She kept looking back and when they came to a clearing where light shone down from a distant top-floor window in the barracks she saw that her husband's face had become impenetrable. The night had lent him a mask. His eyes were very bright. He kept opening and shutting his mouth.

When they got to the clearing he told her to stop. The moon came out. The clearing had stakes and sticks all about the place. She couldn't tell if it was a discarded farm, a rubbish dump, or a ghetto graveyard.

‘Are you afraid?' he asked in a quiet, murderous tone.

She said nothing.

‘Are you frightened?'

Still she said nothing.

‘I see. So you are not afraid?'

He brought out a pocket knife and flicked it open. It flashed terror through her and she stepped backwards. He caught her. She said, desperately, hurriedly, her eyes widening:

‘Yes, yes, I'm afraid.'

He chuckled. Then he laughed. Then he stopped.

‘What are you going to do to me?' she asked.

His eyes were very bright. His hands trembled. He opened his mouth and shut it.

‘Do you want to kill me?'

Silence.

‘Do you want to stab me?'

‘What if I say yes?'

Silence. Then: ‘What are you waiting for? Should I take off my blouse? Do you want to stab my stomach or my breast or my neck?'

Silence.

‘Just tell me where you want to stick the knife and I'll help you. I'm tired of this life anyway.'

More silence.

‘What are you waiting for? Do it quickly before I catch cold.'

His hands trembled pitifully. The wind stopped blowing. The crickets seemed to have a moment's respite. The trees stopped swaying. The night became darker, the silence deeper.

The wind rose again. Ifeyiwa shivered. Her husband's teeth chattered. Their clothes were whipped into a frenzy. The palm trees swayed like soft-limbed zombies in a nightmare. The frogs croaked persistently. In the darkness, his voice rising, her husband said:

‘I want to kill you. I do everything for you. I'll do anything for you, and yet you treat me badly. You treat me as if I am a toad. I love you more than anything in the world, but I want to kill you. What haven't I done for you, eh? I give you a roof over your head, I buy you clothes, I feed you, I work myself to death because of you, I protect you. Because of you I have to pay protection money to an organisation. And in spite of all this you don't behave like my wife. You don't like me touching you. After all this time you are not even pregnant.'

He paused. He played with the knife, drawing closer to her. His face became more definite the longer she stared at him. He was a complete stranger, his face a mask of bitterness and agony.

‘I don't know what you do to your stomach. But the other day I looked through your things and saw some pills. Why don't you want my child? Am I deformed? Am I that ugly? Am I a snake, a toad, a goat, a rat, eh? I am a man and I want children. I didn't marry you only for decoration, you know. What wrong have I done you, eh? Is it because I am a bit old? Am I the first old man to marry a young wife? And anyway I am not that old, as you know. I can do it better than any young man, and for longer. Age is experience. Age is wisdom and power. Your trouble is that you have no humility, you're too proud for your own good. Your people told me you were a nice girl, shy, well-behaved, respectful. I don't see any of this. Your people asked a lot of money for you – I paid. I had an expensive wedding for you in the village. I brought you to the big city. Your people are wretched people, dying off one by one, and here you are making yanga, being proud, and only because you went to secondary school. Am I a snake, a toad, that you have to treat me like this? And to add insult to injury, today I saw you and that boy going into the room of a prostitute…'

He broke off. He made a strange loud noise. He opened and shut his mouth several times like a beached fish, like a man in the throes of lockjaw. Then he began to weep again. The tears glinted down his face. His body jerked spasmodically. Then he burst into a strange confession.

‘I've always been lonely,' he said in a strangled voice. ‘Always fought alone. My father had nineteen children by five wives. My mother died when I was a child. My father grew to hate me. It was his wives who made him hate me. They were jealous because I was the eldest. I grew to hate my father back. His wives caused it all. It got so bad I used to run away from home. When they caught me and brought me back he whipped me till I pissed and shat on myself. I was ill for a week. I nearly died. He was a wicked man, a cruel man, confused, a failure. He couldn't support his children and one by one we escaped from the village. Because I escaped first and set a bad example I hear that he cursed me. Of all my brothers I am the most backward, struggling like a madman every day of my life. I have done almost every kind of business. I have been a cement trader, a beggar, a farmer, clerk, lorry driver, a garri trader, and in none of them have I succeeded. The same bad luck followed me. When my father died I was happy. I thought my bad luck would end. I did not go home for his funeral. I sat here and got drunk. Since then things cleared up for me a little. I opened a shop. I was careful. I gave no credit. I became a hard man. I've got money now. Plenty of money. But I don't let anybody know. I pretend I am poor. I live here in the ghetto, pretending, doing my business. Nobody stands in my way. I've learnt to survive by being ruthless and tough. But if you scratch me you will find I am a good man, a kind man, my blood is good, my spirit is good. If you stay with me longer, if you get to know me better, you will be surprised. But look at me. I look older than my age. You will be surprised how young I really am...'

His voice trailed off. It became cold. The wind blew harder. Ifeyiwa kept shivering. Her husband wiped the tears from his face.

‘I am begging you. Begging you. Just tell me one thing...'

Ifeyiwa opened her mouth. It was dry. No sound came out.

‘Did he do it to you, did he? Did he do that thing to you, eh, did he?'

‘No.'

‘Answer me truthfully. I am a man. I can take it. Did he do it, did he do it to you?'

‘No.'

He did the strangest thing. He lunged at her with the knife. She jumped aside. He turned, started towards her, screamed an incoherent exclamation in his language, and then stopped. He stretched both hands and sent a searing cry up to the heavens. She had never heard such an animal cry before. It was scary. He was like a completely unbalanced actor, bungling his part, and playing out his deepest fevers.

‘All I want is for you to love me a little. A little. Love me like a wife, an ordinary wife, a dutiful wife. Give me a chance. Give me luck and children. Help me fight these battles, eh. Love me like a good wife. Don't make me a laughing stock, don't let me look like a fool in the eyes of this wicked world…'

His voice changed. ‘You must promise me now, here, that you will be a good wife, honourable, dutiful, and that you will never look at that boy again, never speak to him, never go to that compound, never write him letters, never think about him, and that you will stop taking those pills, and before this year runs out you will be pregnant for me...'

Ifeyiwa caught her breath. Her hands went to her breasts.

‘Or I will kill you here now.'

Ifeyiwa stepped backwards.

‘If you try to run you are finished.'

She froze.

‘If I kill you here, now, what can you do, what can anyone do, can anyone help you, can that boy help you now, eh?'

There was a short silence. Then he laughed. His demonic laughter became a wail. He bared his teeth, clenched his fist, and began to wrestle wildly with the air, madly, as if he had adversaries everywhere in the darkness, as if he were fighting a legion of spirits. She realised how utterly drunk he was, how possessed. Then suddenly, as he wrestled with the demons, he began to cry out, his thighs quivering uncontrollably.

‘Cramp! Cramp!' he said in a low voice.

This had often happened to him while he made love to an ever-resistant Ifeyiwa. It had gripped him now and his legs shook, he gnashed his teeth, pounded his fists on his shaking thighs, and called on Ifeyiwa to help him wrestle with the real devils in his body. The knife fell from his hand. He bent over, then he dropped on the ground and she went and began to massage his thighs, rubbing them gently, drumming on them, while he wailed and jerked and contorted his face.

When the cramp in his thighs eased he got up and began to pace up and down tentatively. The wind went wild. The branch of a tree cracked somewhere in the distance. And then the rain began to fall. At first it pattered on them like bean seeds. The drops became larger. Then it pelted down on them, lashing the trees, whipping up mud on the path. The rain fell on them without mercy, calmed the tremors of his thighs, and they ran to the motorcycle. He rode with terrible difficulty, wobbling along the expressway. The rain smashed down on them, the wind blew them one way and another, and the journey was so rough that they nearly got blown off into the gutter. But the downpour was a passion that soon shrieked itself out. By the time they got back home the rain had stopped but they were thoroughly soaked.

They said nothing to each other on the way. It was near midnight when they arrived. The lights had been seized. Ifeyiwa felt that the night had changed her in some way. She felt as if a door which she never knew existed had opened within her. She felt curiously light and freed of something.

When she got off the motorcycle, filled with a hard-edged sense of joy, the first thing she did was to light a kerosene lamp. Then she rushed to the backyard to check on the dog. The backyard was soggy. The chaos of plates, buckets and potties had been knocked about and the rain had beaten the mud onto them. She checked the kitchen front and everywhere else she could think of. But the dog wasn't there. It had disappeared.

Omovo, returning from his aimless wandering, didn't rouse himself when the wind rose. He didn't quicken his pace when it began to rain. He welcomed the downpour. It cooled his agitated spirit. It washed away his excess of feeling. He felt the rain as an undeserved benediction. But when it suddenly stopped he was disappointed.

The lights had been seized by the time he got to the patch of bushes. And when he saw a man standing where the bushes ended he knew the man had been waiting for him. He knew without being afraid or curious. He was tired. He knew Ifeyiwa's husband would do something and he was almost glad that his waiting would soon come to an end.

He looked backwards and saw another man. They both closed in on him. They both wore masks, the terrifying masks of funeral spirits. It didn't occur to him to cry out. He knew on a night like that no one would come to his aid. The ghetto-dwellers would cover their ears with their pillows, grateful that the night had found a sacrifice that wasn't them or their children.

The men drew closer.

‘What do you want?'

They pressed towards him, implacably.

‘What do you want from me?'

He moved forward carelessly. One of the men hit him. He made no effort to defend himself. The punch caught him on the chest. His hat flew off. He groaned. Then he began to cough violently. The pain galvanised him. He kicked the man behind him. The man was so stocky that the kick didn't move him. It unbalanced Omovo instead. He tried a karate chop, but something went wrong. His spirit was wrong. A solid punch landed on his shaven head. Another one sank into his stomach. He felt sick. Something twisted inside him. His vision went strange, as if his eyes had been switched round. He sank to his knees. He felt his head wrenched sideways with barbaric force. He hit the ground like a slippery log. Lights probed his skull. Fists hammered down on his body. He curled himself into a ball. They went on kicking him. He felt the flesh of his face burst open. He passed out into a dark realm. He floated back to consciousness, like a shade over a red sea, and in the silence he heard a man say:

‘Don't ever see her again, you hear?'

Another voice said: ‘Next time run far from another man's wife.'

And another: ‘If you want a wife go and marry your own.'

The first man: ‘Fool!'

The second: ‘Bastard like you. Thief! Adulterer!'

Feebly he still tried to fight. He struggled to stand up. He staggered first to one, then to the other. He offered them his face. He seemed to want to be beaten senseless. He urged them on. Egged them. Goaded them with words. The men seemed to fear his sudden, self-destructive madness. One of them pushed him. He fell. They laughed derisively.