‘Wat you mean, is only Nancy? Nancy not woman, yet? She no reach for sleep wit’ you and born pickin’?’
‘I comin’ up to explain, Jagua. Have patience – is nothin’. Nothin’ at all. I comin’ up to explain.’
7
Freddie walked quickly to his room and threw the armful of shopping on his bed. Knowing how very sensitive Jagua was about her age, he felt now he should at least have spared her the challenge and the humiliation of being compared with the teenage Nancy, daughter of her rival Mama Nancy. And this at a time when she had sacrificed so much for him too.
At her door, he hesitated and listened. Voices drifted to his ears. He heard the sound of glass on glass. He knocked and the door opened. To his shock he was greeted by a strong smell of beer and for a moment could not see round the room through the fumes of cigarette smoke recalling the atmosphere of the Tropicana. Then the smoke cleared a little and he saw the three men in the room; men whom he had never seen or met before. He identified their kind instantly: the influential men of Lagos. Private business men, perhaps; dabblers in party politics, almost certainly. They were in the same age-group as Jagua, men in their early fifties, and what they lost in youthful virility and attractiveness they made up by lavishing their money on women like Jagua Nana, on letting their tongues run away with them in recalling fanciful accounts of their prowess with women in distant lands. The sight of those three men drinking ice-cold beer and lounging carelessly in the chairs of Jagua Nana threw a mist of anger between him and Jagua. He pushed past her into the room. Jagua introduced them as ‘three men just back from Ghana and Overseas’, but Freddie had already taken in the situation with the intuition of a lover and he was not deceived. No one told him they had come for the woman Jagua. Living in Lagos had taught him that this was the way it worked. The men came to a woman like Jagua, in the daytime, socially. Then individually they sneaked back at night or in the morning when the office workers were poring over their files beneath waving overhead fans. At such times they drank beer and paid for the ‘love’ they bought. Freddie took this visit by the three men as a survey of Jagua’s residence, and no matter what they did to disguise their intentions, he stuck to his co
nclusion and it made him see all their actions in an angry light.
It did not once occur to him that he had no right to be resentful, that as a poor teacher he could not even begin to think of buying Jagua half the luxuries with which these men pampered her. But that did not ease the pain. In a city where money was the idol of the women, an idol worshipped in every waking and sleeping moment, sentiment was a mere pastime. And to Jagua, Freddie classified as sentiment.
He looked at her now, the ways she was dressed to sell her body, so that these men could see for themselves and inflame their senses with what they saw: the smooth round arms, the long neck, the smooth well-moulded calves. And when she bent forward to fill a man’s glass with beer, raising the glass from the little stool and tilting it so that it did not froth too much as she poured the beer from the bottle, her breasts hung down pendulously. He could see them clearly in the nylon brassiere inside the loose transparent blouse. He noticed too with a jealous twinge that she had groomed her hair, combing it straight backwards and decorating it with a gold band. She looked to him not more than thirty now.
He excused himself and shut the door behind him. Jagua wrenched it open and pulled him in, leading the way to the bedroom. She told him she did not know the men and had never seen them before they turned up that afternoon, looking for someone who had lived at this same address before she moved in. But how, Freddie asked her, could they have missed their way into this – her own particular room? And knowing they were in the room why did she have to call him up to face the humiliation of knowing his rivals?
‘Sorry, Freddie,’ Jagua said. ‘I done nothin’ with them. I tell you, I don’ know them.’ She opened the cloth which she had tied sarong-wise, folded it back again round her hips. Freddie caught a flash of her beautiful legs. ‘You think I will tell you lie?’ She looked at him fully.
He knew she was lying. ‘You will finish your lies when I come back.’ He saw the spark of fear in her eye and knew he was master of the situation.
The conversation of the men in the other room came faintly to them. Freddie heard the phrase ‘When I was in England’ leap suddenly out of the general chatter. He knew then that he had assessed them right. They were trumpet-blowers out to impress Jagua. ‘Been-tos’ who had been in England and acquired professional skills were regarded with great favour by the women. And since Jagua did not have a man of her own, why wouldn’t they show her how superior they were to other men in Lagos. That phrase awakened nothing but anger in him. He was angry because – rightly or wrongly – women like Jagua automatically became the property of men like the three in the room. He was angry because he had already known his true position with Jagua. But now these men focused it for him.
He was the glamorous young man in Jagua’s life, the lover of the elderly beauty who must not press forward when those who paid for her luxuries were around. There was nothing he wanted more now than to take his proper place. To remain in the background till they were gone; and then – for his sporting spirit – he would be allowed to play as much the lover as he chose.
He made abruptly for the door. Jagua held his sleeve. ‘Freddie, you goin’? Listen, when de strangers leave, I will come an’ explain.’
He did not answer. He did not want her explanation. She was still talking when he strode across the sitting room, holding his breath against the pungent fumes of smoke.
His room was at the back, on the ground floor: one of ten rooms which bounded a narrow corridor. Each floor had a communal cooking place, a bathroom and a lavatory pail. There was a small yard at the back where the children played and hawkers came in with their wares and wood was split and gossip exchanged. The owner of the building was a retired Civil Servant who erected it out of his accumulated savings over a thirty-year period of service. Freddie was tired of taking complaints to him, because he did not believe in spending any more money to maintain the house. He simply sat there in his own room and parlour, gazing out of the window and into the street, waiting for the end of the month when about one hundred and twenty pounds would be paid to him.
Freddie returned to the comfort of his own room and tried to compose his thoughts in the stifling air that exuded from the hot cement walls. He put aside his shopping and took a book from the shelves. He sat down in a low chair, turning the pages casually and thinking of Jagua. The noisy rhythm of children drumming and singing in the street, the chugging of a railway engine, the harsh triumphant laughter of a man winning his game of draughts under the mango tree outside … he felt them all and hated them because he felt powerless to control them now that he wanted some peace. Above them all the mocking voice of Jagua kept imposing itself on these noises, and suddenly he felt the sharp pain of degradation by the Syrian from the Tropicana who knew he could ‘get’ Jagua because he had the money and therefore insulted him; the false superiority of the three men now in her room; the torture of being held in sexual bondage by a woman very much older than he was, more cunning and more ambitious and infinitely more possessive. But if he decided to break away from her, he would be losing his chance to go abroad and study. Such a time did not come twice in a lifetime to a Nigerian.
He heard a knock at his door and Jagua came in. She put a hand on his head and he quickly shook it off. ‘Freddie, you vex, not so. I sure you misunderstan’ de whole ting. I goin’ to show dose people some place.’
He did not say a word. She went to the door, and from there said: ‘I goin’ to show dem some place in Lagos an’ I soon come back, so I kin clear de whole misunderstandin’.’
Suddenly he seemed to notice her dress for the first time. She had changed and she had thickened the make-up on her face. The eyebrows were marked out sharply in wide sweeping arcs that extended the natural curve by an inch on either side of the cheek. She looked like one of the masks from a collection Freddie had seen in the museum sometime. She obviously did not know how she had cheapened herself, for she gave him one of those coquettish glances with the word whore written in them.
‘Jagua, how you dress so loud? Because of de three men who ‘been-to’ England? You sure you coming back dis night?’
‘Jus’ now.’ She smiled. ‘I only goin’ to show dem some place, den I come home! What I got to waste time dere for? I got plenty to do in de house.’
Freddie began to laugh, a laughter that mocked himself too. ‘Jagua, who you tryin’ to deceive? I know you goin’ to do business widde men.’
‘Never!’ She came towards him. ‘Ah swear Freddie! So you don’ trust me?’
‘Swear proper, Jagua.’
She put a finger on her tongue and raised the finger to the sky. ‘If I goin’ to do business widde men, when I reach de main road, make motor kill me dead. You satisfy, now?’
‘Jagua.’ Freddie rose from the deep chair. ‘One of my frien’ tell me say you done begin stroll in de night. You doin’ what dem call solicitin’. You strollin’ so de white men kin pick you up in de car and take you home. You fit swear say dat one is lie, too? I hear dis long time, but I jus’ keep quiet, because am only poor teacher who got no money to maintain Jagwa woman.’
‘Lie, Freddie! Wicked lie! I never done no solicitin’.’
Freddie raised his hand in warning. ‘Jagwa, one of dese days we goin’ to prove all dis thin’. Mind you, Jagwa, I don’ care de hell what you doin’. Is not today me and you been goin’ steady. But what use to anger me: you tryin’ to show me you be virgin. You never known anodder man in dis Lagos, or anywhere you go but young Freddie Namme. Das what use to make me vex too much.’ He caught the merest flicker of doubt in her eye.
‘I mus’ go now. De people waitin’ for me.’ She twisted the door knob. ‘In de name of God, I done no solicitin’. Don’ lissen to dem, Freddie. In dis Lagos, people mus’ poke nose. Dem never try mindin’ dem own business.’