‘Look at that,’ she had said, pointing to the side mirror. ‘It’s as good as a photograph. You know, for that clothes company?’ Her dark skin was shining against his pale leg, the colours in stark contrast.
‘Benetton,’ he responded, stroking her cropped pubic hair. He had laughed in appreciation.
He smiled now at the memory. He felt complete in her company, as if she brought something to his life that otherwise could not be filled. And yet, when they were apart, he was filled with sadness, a nagging fear about the future. He knew he was falling in love with her. And yet Abayomi remained an enigma, an unnerving contrast of intimacy and reserve. He had thought that perhaps the problem lay in his ignorance, in the gulf that separated his world from hers. He had spent some time on the internet, running searches on aspects of Nigeria. But the politics was hopelessly confusing and the huge variety of languages and peoples meant that the simplest searches threw up a massive number of hits. The websites varied from tourist-style hype at the wonders of the country to untranslated Igbo and Yoruba sites selling clothes and electronic equipment. Several searches ended up at semi-pornographic sites, one of which had immediately inundated his computer with pop-ups. As desperately as he deleted them, new ones appeared, each more lewd than the last. Eventually he had turned off his computer in fright.
Perhaps it was the not knowing that made her so attractive, he mused. But there was a more insidious side to his fantasies about Abayomi, which also troubled him. When he let his thoughts wander, reconstructing the movement of their bodies together, it was never enough for him to stay with their playful touchings. The reality seemed too superficial and his visions needed to go further, pushing inexorably towards full intercourse. Beneath his captivation lay something ungratified and gnawing. He could not gauge why it was so important; the sexual satisfaction he enjoyed could not be any more absolute. It had, he felt, to do with her control and the subtle maintenance of a commercial transaction that lay between them, although on the last occasion she had not asked for money and he had not thought to offer.
Richard’s solitude was disturbed by the dogs returning from their walk with Amanda. They bounded through the open gate and caught sight of him, immediately charging towards him. One pushed its muddy face into his crotch, smearing the side of his work trousers with dirt. He pushed the animal away, only to be set upon by the other one, rubbing its hair across his knee. The remains of his beer toppled over, running into the grass.
‘Oh, for fuck’s sake,’ he muttered, aware that Amanda was approaching. ‘Hello dear,’ he said more brightly.
Fortunately, the dogs spotted a sparrow hopping on the coping next to the pool and rushed off in pursuit. Amanda walked towards him, her body stiff. She gave a short smile, but her eyes seemed cold. Richard could tell immediately that something was wrong. The kiss on his cheek was unaffectionate. He felt a flutter of adrenaline as anxiety kicked in. Did she know about Abayomi? How could she have found out? Was it simply her intuition? And what would he say if she asked that most dreaded of all questions? His mind was already filling with half-formed replies as she pulled away from him.
‘A good day?’ she asked. The question was almost rhetorical and Richard only answered with a slight nod of his head. She smelt of floral perfume and spearmint chewing gum. She had perspired on her walk and strands of displaced blonde hair stuck to her forehead and temples. He steeled himself for the next question. She was staring at him, as if searching for an answer even before she asked. He needed to stand up, he felt, in order to meet her at the same level. He started to move forward on his seat.
‘Richard.’ Here it came. He slunk back in the chair. ‘Richard. I need you to be honest with me when I ask you this. Just tell me, without any lawyer’s tricks.’
He thought to protest the jibe, but there was nothing playful in her demeanour. This is the real thing, he thought. He must not panic, he knew, but his heart was pumping hard. It was difficult to think clearly and it worried him that he was seated. He felt like immobile prey in front of her.
‘Just tell me honestly. Did you know about David and this ridiculous pole-dancer?’
Richard felt a rush of warm blood across his chest. He hadn’t realised that he had been holding his breath. David Keefer and his Russian stripper. A smile of relief started to form but shrank in the face of his wife’s bitter glare.
‘Did you know anything about this? Did you go to that club where she worked? Did you, Richard?’ Instead of waiting for a reply, Amanda unburdened herself. ‘I can’t believe that he would be so stupid. Stupid! Do you know that he’s left Charmaine? She’s devastated of course, poor woman. I mean, it’s just so demeaning. It’s bad enough when they run off with the secretary. Or the effing typist from the typing pool. But, for God’s sake, Richard, a Slavic pole-dancer! It really is too much. What the bloody hell is he thinking?’
Richard nodded and clucked in agreement. But just as he thought that this might be enough, she turned on him again. ‘Richard?’ She said it slowly, as if his name was itself a threat.
‘Christ, Amanda. I can’t believe that David would be so stupid. It’s … abominable. I had no idea he was planning to leave Charmaine for this … stripper.’ Even as he said it, he realised that he had stumbled onto a path of disclosure. It was too late to pull back; the only route to safety was to seek out her sympathy. ‘You know, I’ve wanted to talk to you for a while now. About David. But, well … David swore me to secrecy.’ Amanda’s face hardened in anger. ‘Wait, hear me out. David let slip about this infatuation. I was horrified, of course. But he made me promise that I would keep it to myself … and in exchange for my loyalty he absolutely vowed that he would break it off and stop seeing her. I had no idea that it was continuing … or, my God, that he planned to leave Charmaine.’
Richard paused to assess his wife’s reaction. He could see that he still had work to do. She glared at him disapprovingly.
‘It’s been so unbearable for me,’ he went on, almost believing his lie. ‘You have no idea. I found out about her just before that dinner party. And then I had to hold a conversation with Charmaine, knowing all the time that David was … carrying on. God, it’s an impossible situation. When your friendship puts you in conflict with … your morals, with what you know is right. I was so angry with him.’
The words nearly stuck in his throat and he felt a terrible shame well up. But he continued undaunted: ‘That’s why I behaved so badly at the dinner party. I wanted to apologise properly to you, to explain, but I couldn’t. David was beside himself. He felt guilty and sorry for messing things up for me. He told me he was ending it. But now it seems he …’ His voice tailed off in what he hoped was a convincing display of bewilderment.
Amanda seemed to have softened a little, although she made no move towards him. She pursed her lips in thought, as if considering her verdict.
‘Hmm … I don’t know, Richard. Charmaine is also our friend. I’m not sure that loyalty between men overrides decency and honesty between spouses. I understand that David put you in a difficult position. I just don’t know that you made the right choices on this one. Either way, I think you must talk to Charmaine, so that she understands.’
Amanda whistled to the dogs and started back into the house. He felt his body heave with relief. How had his life suddenly ended on a knife-edge? That he had to resort to such theatrics to escape detection?
‘And, Richard,’ Amanda stopped and turned back to look at him. ‘Don’t you dare go anywhere near that club again.’
I
FASEN COULD NOT
touch Abayomi through the thick glass. The surface was streaked with the fingerprints of prisoners who had sat in the same chair, skin pressed to the cold barrier, seeking out their wives and girlfriends. The thickness of the glass gave the room behind her a greenish hue, like the inside of an aquarium. He was relieved in a way not to be able to touch her. He would have been unable to grasp her hand, to soil her with his filth. The violation in the prison cell had changed everything. He had returned to the communal cell hours after the incident, but had not eaten properly for days, pushing at the stodgy food with no appetite. The warders screamed at him and refused to let him exercise outside, but he could not bring himself to eat. Still they woke him early in the morning, clanging metal plates against the bars. The communal cell was always musty and over-warm from the body heat of the men. The toilet smelt foul and added to the sickly air that hung over them like a warm, damp blanket. Ifasen huddled on his rubber mattress and waited until all the other prisoners had finished their food and had been taken outside. He was too ashamed, and afraid, to take off his clothes to shower and he was aware of his own offensive odour trailing after him like a shadow.
The violation had brought an impenetrable wall down around him. He remained motionless on his mattress until forced to stir. He moved about in a daze, jostled from one place to another within the awaiting-trial section, saying nothing. The moment he was left alone, he came to a standstill, lingering in one place, staring absently through the barred windows. On one occasion he had stood like that for over an hour until one of the warders had shoved him along the passage. He walked until he was pushed no further and inertia quickly consumed him again. The moment Ifasen stopped being part of the jostling frenzy of the section, he became invisible. He receded until he became nothing more than a piece of broken furniture, something that occasionally got in the way and had to be kicked aside, but which otherwise served no purpose. Even the warders seemed to stop noticing him after a while and he moved about the confines of the section like a ghost.
Now he sat, untouchable and mute, separated from the only person who could help him. Abayomi clutched the plastic chair as if on a roller-coaster ride. She jumped at the sudden noises around her, the bark of the warden, the clang of the gates, the scrape of the chair legs on the cement floor. Her head turned from one side to the other as people entered and left the room, and she watched them with suspicion and alarm.
Ifasen waited silently. He had never seen her so out of place, so lost in her surroundings. He wanted to hold her, to tell her that it would be all right. But his body seemed to fester from within. He knew in his heart he would never be able to hold her again, not in the unrestrained way that he had held her when they had first crept into bed together. Then he had been happy just to press her body to his and feel her breathing, his ear on her chest, listening to her heartbeat. He had loved her then more completely than he had believed possible. He knew that he would never love again, not Abayomi or anyone else. To love another person required an internal balance. To love without reservation required him to present his unprotected self to his lover, without fear. Those days were gone. His core had been torn from him, physically and abusively ripped out, leaving him off-balance and injured. He was no longer clean. At his centre there was nothing but an infected pustule. He could feel the contamination growing deep in his abdomen, a tumorous growth that made his stomach hard and filled his throat with bile. It was not the biting pain he felt when he moved, or the aching pressure when he sat down, or the clammy discomfort of his broken nose; rather it was the knowledge and its irrefutable memory that shadowed him wherever he went, that ruined him.
He would tell Abayomi nothing of his rape. He did not know how to formulate the necessary sentences. What could he say to explain it to her? The vileness of the words that he would have to use made it impossible. It would remain his terrible secret for ever. It would be easier to tell her that he had strayed, that he had contracted the disease from another woman, than to admit to the brutality of the truth. To share his humiliation with her would demean him further. He should take his own life, he knew. But the vision of Khalifah, fatherless and alone in an unforgiving land, hovered. Merciless.
Abayomi looked up at him, sensing that he had made a movement towards her. But he had just lifted his finger and dabbed at his mouth. It was obvious that he had been beaten: his nose was swollen, and his lip was still crusted with blood. His eyes seemed not to see as he looked down at his fingers, searching for blood from his mouth. The gesture was so pathetic that Abayomi started to weep. Ifasen watched the tears drip like pearls from her face, but he could not bring himself to say anything.
Abayomi found her voice first: ‘I am so sorry, Ifasen. I am so sorry, my husband. My special husband, I love and cherish you so. I am so sorry. I gave our savings to Sunday. He was at court to pay your bail. He said he paid it. But … I am so sorry, my beautiful husband …’
‘But my wife,’ Ifasen managed, ‘what happened to our money? I did not get bail. I stayed here.’
There was no answer. Abayomi’s face was stricken with guilt, deep lines cutting into her forehead and the sides of her mouth. They fell silent again, staring past one another.
To stop the tears, Abayomi started to talk again. ‘I went to Auntie’s naming ceremony. They named the child Orobola Adamu. His homeland name is Oluwa. These are good names, Ifasen.’
‘These are good names,’ Ifasen repeated, speaking slowly, as if formulating the words was physically painful. He seemed almost surprised to hear the sound of his own voice. ‘These are fine names for a young boy, Okeke. I am pleased that you were there.’ His voice was flat and without intonation. He could feel that it made his speech sound insincere. He meant what he said, but he did not have the energy, or something more subtle – the will, perhaps – to sound more interested.
He longed to present her with his youthful, brooding strength. When they had first met, she had been in the last grade of high school and Ifasen had been a student teacher. He had never taught her class, but the moment he had arrived on their campus he noticed that she became aware of him. His tall frame had immediately attracted her attention and he caught her observing him in serious debate with other young teachers, wrangling over issues of philosophy and history as if his views might have an impact on world affairs. He argued like the leader of a major political party, rather than an apprentice teacher of history at a secondary school. But his fervour was infectious. Soon he had a band of students and teachers engaged in fierce debate during their lunchtime breaks. More learning happened over lunch than in a whole morning of tuition, one of the senior teachers had quipped. But there was much truth in the comment, as discussions ranged from contemporary politics and economics to religion and more esoteric philosophies. Abayomi kept her distance for a while, observing the growing group of debaters with interest. But once she joined in, her impact on Ifasen was immediate. Her dry and irreverent challenges intrigued him. He started to engage with her directly during these meetings, asking her opinion and often supporting her views. He only realised later that his interest in her must have been obvious to everyone in the group – the way he listened to her and smiled when she spoke. He had tried to keep his feelings in check, aware of his position as a teacher at the school. But he soon realised that he had fallen hopelessly in love with this elusive and confident student.