‘He’s in England now, reading de law. And you kin taste what ’e use to chop every night before he come back an’ marry me proper.’
‘You be real Jagwa,’ said young Dennis, and the words were sweet in her ear. ‘You deal with men who got class.’
‘Is late now,’ she said. ‘You sleepin’ here? Or …’
‘No. I only stoppin’ with you for some time.’
‘Why you not sleepin’? You want to scratch me, den when my body get up you lef’ me an’ go? Is because of your gal? Why you tell me you don’ love her? You fear her! … One day I mus’ go and see dat Sabina. I wan’ to know what she like.’
She felt his eyes like two hot loaves of coal from a blacksmith’s forge. The white-hot eyes of desire followed her as she bolted the door and slipped behind the mosquito net.
17
The day Rosa came, Jagua was sitting in the kitchen turning over a huge lobster in the frying pan. The kitchen was enveloped in grey suffocating smoke and anyone who passed by caught a whiff of the peppery and appetizing aroma of the lobster. Jagua liked showing off her cooking. She had just come in from the once-in-four-days market by the lagoon, and the greens and tomatoes, the fresh fish and the plantains, were stacked in a basket at her feet. She heard a noise, and looking up, saw this young woman heaving her suitcase up the stairs.
‘Ah wait, wait, wait. I don’ hear no news from you, so ah come. Am never get any place yet. Remember as you promise to fin’ me place when we meet in de Tropicana?’
‘Ah remember. Put your box in de parlour. I busy cookin’.’
Without ado, Rosa pushed her suitcase against a wall, came into the kitchen, took the knife from Jagua’s hands, and began cutting up the meat. Then she ground the pepper, and the egusi, the tomatoes and the krafish for the stew, wiping her hands on her cloth and singing to the rhythm of the grindstone. Jagua liked her cheerfulness instantly. Rosa could be arrogant – with the looks she had. But instead she chose to be friendly and to show respect for someone older and more experienced than she was. Jagua smiled at her. True, she did not look very attractive now – in the kitchen and without make-up. But she had a certain elegance and Jagua had seen her at the Tropicana and she knew that men liked her small, rather slim figure. At first, Jagua was shamelessly jealous of her. But soon she began to see her as someone who could be a useful partner. She visualized something akin to ‘retirement’ and ‘pension’ on Rosa’s work.
After one week, Rosa was still trekking the streets and searching for lodgings. Jagua did not complain because she had always wanted a companion since Freddie left, and Rosa seemed to her to be the right kind, though she could not always trust her women friends.
Sometimes Rosa brought in a man – in the afternoon, when Jagua was away. Jagua had often seen her flourishing the money which she took great care to put away because she had not yet collected enough to ‘advance’ a landlord with six months’ rent on a room. One of these young men Jagua observed again and again – always in his college blazer, no matter how stifling the heat.
One afternoon, when Jagua was at home resting, she heard Rosa coming in with the young man in the blazer. Jagua slid down from the bed and put on her clothes. The young man looked to her like one of the Lagos intellectuals. She could have sworn that he attended the British Council Lecture Freddie had taken her to hear. He wore his hair high and talked grammatically. Jagua had grown
to know his face now and to accept him as Rosa’s young ‘steady’. Nervously Rosa sat with him for a while and Jagua could feel that Rosa wanted her out of the way.
What to do, Jagua wondered. Yes. She would go and see a young man, herself. Young men were becoming the thing, and with Freddie 4000 miles away, Dennis Odoma of the trinkets would serve. She would go down to Obanla where Dennis lived and see his group – the taxi driver and the gorgeous gal frien’ and the whole group he had talked about. She felt a new thrill in knowing that young Dennis who called her Ma and bedded her, giving her trinkets, was perhaps a dangerous criminal. But she could not see him with a policewoman’s eyes. To her, he was a strangely disturbing young man with grandiose ideas of his attractiveness and power. Thieves usually rested in the afternoons, so she might just be lucky to meet them at home.
She got off the bus at Yaba and walked through a grove of trees to Obanla where in a derelict unlighted part of Lagos, Dennis lived. When she knocked at the door, a girl, slim, in tight jeans and tighter T-singlet, answered. Jagua guessed that this must be the girl Dennis had talked about.
She was chewing gum, splitting it with a rhythmic click so that her teeth – big pearls – flashed periodically. ‘Who you want?’ Her skin was oily with cream and her hair had been newly dressed and glossy black. She was all lips, soft, aggressively kissable.
Jagua instantly felt an outsider. ‘I wan’ Dennis.’
‘He busy. What you want him for?’
‘Jus’ to see am.’
Jagua stood looking beyond Sabina at the long corridor which all the rooms faced. There are places in Lagos City where any strange person – black or white – may not go without being instantly identified as a stranger and his movements watched minutely until he leaves. Obanla was one such place. As Jagua stood there she saw doors opening and shutting all along the corridor. Heads peeped out and vanished once again. All was silence. She was the stranger here among Dennis Odoma’s thieves. Yet she had been told that Obanla was the home of a number of highly reputed practising barristers, engineers and business men. These were the men who shrouded the underworld character of Obanla in a respectable cloak. She had been told that no one living in Obanla had ever complained of losing anything to the thieves. In fact, the story went that any of them who dared to steal in Obanla was punished by the gang for breaking the code. The corridor seemed to get darker with the silence.
‘Wait me,’ said the girl.
She turned her full back on Jagua. It was a back filled with lust. She did not have big hips, her hips were merely out of proportion to her slimness. The jeans clung tight and when she walked, each tremendous lobe of her buttocks contracted against the garment, just failing to rend it before the weight shifted to the next foot. She walked slowly, elastically and with enraging self-consciousness. Jagua felt a rush of jealous blood to her eyes. Oh, for youth! When she was younger, girls like these could never dare hold a candle to her in looks or in lust appeal. But she had to admit that Dennis had made a juicy choice, someone from the new generation.
A moment later, Dennis appeared, smiling. Behind him were three men. ‘You come to see us today, Ma!’
‘De gal sed you busy.’
‘Oh, Sabina? Don’ min’ her … Come inside.’
He wore a texan shirt, very narrow trousers and Italian shoes. He had grown whiskers since she last saw him and his breath smelled of home-distilled gin, reminding her of Bagana and Krinameh without the decanters of the Victorian showpiece. The room in which he led her smelled even more strongly of O.H.M.S. At first she could not see clearly but soon her eyes grew accustomed to shapes and objects and it was like being in an expensive shop. She made out the radiogram standing in the corner and saw one of the men loading ten records into it. Soon the craziest High-life record began to blare from the instrument. A drink was pushed into Jagua’s hands. The girl in the tight jeans began dancing, contorting her body into lascivious postures, her lips agape, her eyes shiny and transported with ecstasy. She was wriggling alone and Dennis paid no attention to her. One of the men shuffled towards her and seized her, himself contorting to her rhythm.
Dennis bowed over Jagua’s hand and with his fingertips took her and danced with dignity and respect. ‘Me and my friends, we talking when you knock.’
He showed her his special group of friends. One of them was the taxi driver. He pointed at him, sitting dazed in a corner, a mere shape. He had been out all night, Dennis told her. This taxi driver had a wife who was extremely beautiful. She had once won a beauty contest, she had seen the world; but now she decided to settle down with a taxi driver. Was that not funny, Dennis asked her? A beauty queen marrying a taxi driver, he laughed.