“How you go know? You no fit know.”
There is a car coming into the driveway and I go back to the window to see. No, it’s only one of the people in the flats, but I stay at the window all the same and watch the car creep towards the common garage building on the right. One of the brake lights shows a naked white bulb in a broken red casing. So it was Mr. So Therefore, the notorious Posts and Telegraphs man in the next flat. He crawled through the third door. Perhaps he will beat his beautiful wife tonight; he hasn’t done it now in months. Do you miss it then? Confess, you disgusting brute, that in
deed you do! Well, why not? There is an extraordinary surrealistic quality about the whole thing that is almost satisfyingly cathartic. I start hearing it in my dream and then pass into a state of half-waking, and stay there for the rest of the act because he always chooses that hour when sleep is at its most seductive—the hour favoured also by the most discriminating armed robbers. And in the morning I find myself wondering how much of it had happened and how much I had dreamt up on my own. I ran into them once the very next morning on the short walk to the garage and they were so outrageously friendly and relaxed! She especially. I was dumbfounded. Later I hear how a concerned neighbour once called the police station—this was before I came to live here—and reported that a man was battering his wife and the Desk Sergeant asked sleepily: “So Therefore?” So, behind his back, we call him Mr. “So Therefore.” I can never remember his real name.
Elewa is still equitably cursing her woman’s lot and me. I shall say nothing more, just sit here on this window-sill and keep a lookout for the taxi which is taking much too long to appear. I wonder why. At this time of night you can generally get them to come within the hour.
“Imagine… To put a girl for taxi at midnight to go and jam with arm robbers in the road.”
“You know very well, Elewa, that there are no more armed robbers in Bassa.”
“The woman dem massacre for motor Park last week na you killam.”
“Nobody will kill you, Elewa.”
“Nobody will kill you Elewa. Why you no drive me home yourself if say you know arm robbers done finish for Bassa. Make you go siddon.”
“I can’t take you home because my battery is down. I have told you that twenty times already.”
“Your battery is down. Why your battery no down for afternoon when you come pick me.”
“Because you can manage a weak battery in the daytime but not at night, Elewa.”
“Take your mouth comot my name, ojare. Tomorrow make you take your nonsense battery come pick me again. Nonsense!”
She is turning really aggressive. If I didn’t know my Elewa I would be really worried. But she will call me first thing in the morning; perhaps during my nine o’clock editorial conference. The first time we parted in this kind of mood I was convinced I had lost her for good. That was the night I first tried to explain my reason for not letting her sleep in my flat. I should not have bothered with reasons at all if she hadn’t kept saying I had another girl coming, that was why. “Your compliment to my stamina notwithstanding,” I said totally and deliberately over her head, “the reason is really quite simple. I no want make you join all the loose women for Bassa who no de sleep for house.” She stared at me with her mouth wide open, quite speechless. Thinking to press home my point and advantage I said something like: “I wouldn’t want a sister of mine to do that, you see.” She fired back then: “Anoder time you wan’ poke make you go call dat sister of yours, you hear?”
When we parted I thought we were through. But next morning in the middle of my editorial conference my stenographer came in from the outer office and asked me to take a call.
“Who is that?” I asked angrily.
“A certain girl,” he said, in his stupid officialese.
“Tell her to call again whoever it is. Oh, never mind I’ll take it. Excuse me gentlemen.”
It was Elewa asking if I would take her to the beach in the afternoon to buy fresh fish from fishermen coming ashore before the “thick madams” of the fish market had a chance to gobble up everything. “I go cook you nice pepper soup, today,” she said.
In the end the taxi does appear and I grab my torchlight and take her down our unswept and unlit stairs. Whenever I go up or down those stairs I remember the goat owned in common that dies of hunger. The driver opens the rear door from his seat. No interior light comes on. I flash my light where it ought to have been and see a few tangled wires. To reassure Elewa I make a show of studying the driver’s face in the light of my torch. The driver protests:
“I beg make you no flash light for my eye. Wayting?”
“I want to be able to recognize you in the morning.”
“For sake of what?”
“For nothing. Just in case.” I move to the front of the car and flash the light at the registration number.
“Na him make I no de gree come for dis una bigman quarter. Na so so wahala.”
“Do you know it is an offence to operate a vehicle without interior lights according to the Criminal Code chapter forty-eight section sixteen subsection one hundred and six?”
“Na today—even na jus’ now as I de come here de light quench out.”
His lie is as good as mine but I have an advantage: I know he is lying; he doesn’t know I am, and he is scared.
“OK. Tomorrow morning, first thing, make you go for mechanic fixam proper.”
“OK, oga.”