Even as they were descending the steps, Jagua heard the loud crash. She knew her door was being bashed in. She stopped and clenched her fists. She started back for her room.
‘I goin’ back!’ she cried, suddenly bursting into tears. ‘I goin’ to fight dem. Dey got no right!’
Rosa seized her. ‘You done gone crase? Dem will jus’ kill you for nothin’.’
Jagua rolled on the floor, crying aloud: ‘I done die! … I done die, finish! …’ And it was Rosa who hailed the taxi that took them to safety. ‘Don’ cry,’ Rosa said, placing an arm round her.
Jagua followed Rosa to the outskirts of Lagos, to the slum of slums, a part of the city which she had often heard of, but had never visited. They changed direction at least three times and passed by an open expanse of ground where cattle were being bought and sold by men in white gowns and white caps. Then the taxi took them over a wooden bridge and after it had put them down they walked along a sandy road for ten minutes, carrying their suitcases on their heads.
As soon as they entered the house painted grey and red on the outside, Jagua took off her shoes and held her burning feet. Rosa lived in a room of her own where she said she paid two pounds a month rent. Filth was scattered everywhere in the surroundings. They could still hear the buzzing and the humming of the market which they had just passed.
‘You kin stay with me till everythin’ die down,’ Rosa said.
Jagua looked at the degradation. Bare floor which came off in powdery puffs if you rubbed your foot too hard. The bed was in the same room, wooden, with a mattress stuffed with the kind of grass cut by prisoners at the racecourse. Rosa had become – like many women who came to Lagos, like Jagua herself – imprisoned, entangled in the city, unable to extricate herself from its clutches. The lowest and the most degraded standards of living were to her preferable to a quiet and dignified life in her own home where she would not be ‘free’.
How am I better? Jagua thought. She ought to have remained in Onitsha with Brother Fonso and tried to become a Merchant Princess. Or better still, she ought to have married Chief Ofubara. Even before that, before she came to Lagos, she had a real husband. She thought of him now. She thought of her whole past life, sitting there while Rosa went into the back of the house and came in and asked her if she would like bitter-leaf stew with pounded yam or rice with pork.
‘We got plenty pork here,’ Rosa boasted.
‘So ah see,’ Jagua said absently.
‘Gunle is a fine place.’ Rosa was making lame excuses for her depraved surroundings. ‘No one kin disturb you. My man use to come here an’ spen’ time. He done go back to de College. He’s passin’ out dis year … Dis place is not like Central Lagos where everybody poke nose in your business. I go an’ come as I like.’
She bustled back to the kitchen. Jagua could see her putting a pot on the wood fire. The pot was propped on three stones and Rosa shot back her big buttocks and drew up the cloth between her knees and fanned the fire. Her shoulders had become bigger and smoother since she left Jagua and Jagua wished she were as carefree as Rosa. Youth was on her side.
‘Too much bad luck in me life,’ Jagua mumbled.
She thought of the time when she was living in Eastern Nigeria, long before she went to Ghana, before she thought of coming to Lagos to live, before she met the late Freddic Namme. She was Jagwa then. In her early thirties.
She was an only daughter. Her father doted on her. In his Godly way he wanted her to marry a serious man from the village. Poor Dad. He was only a catechist at the time, although he struggled hard and later became a pastor. The husband he approved of said he worked in the Coal City. He had come to Ogabu on leave and he noticed her and wanted to take her back with him as wife.
Jagua was fond of changing her clothes often, and – in those early days of make-up – of painting her face. Every few hours she went down to the waterside and took off her clothes and swam in the clean cool water. The boys used to hide and peep at her breasts and hips. She knew it and always teased them. All the girls in her age-group had married and had children but she had resisted to the last, hoping ever, for some eminent man to come along to Ogabu to marry her. To the shock of the villagers she wore jeans and rode her bicycle through the narrow alleys of Ogabu and talked loudly and her laughter was throaty so that the men drew to her side and wanted her. She considered herself above the local boys, most of whom she had bedded and despised as poor experience.
The Coal City man pressed home his claim, and he paid the bride price of one hundred and twenty pounds; so the marriage was concluded and later on they went to the church and her father gave her away with his blessing to the Coal City man. God knows, she wanted to settle down and become the good wife. But she was bored. She was Jagwa, and the man was not Jagwa-ful. His main interest was his petrol-filling station and garage. He was up early and he went there to supervise the selling of his petrol and to make entries in his books. Often when she got there, she found him sleeping on the bare office table. He soon had a chain of filling stations all over the city and was able to buy a small car. But he never took her to parties, and would not dress well, for fear the money would leak away. In no way did his ideas of living attract her. She found that she had obeyed her parents but now they were not there to see her misery and they would never understand her longing, the hot thirst for adventure in her blood. She refused to adapt herself to his humdrum life and she wondered how she had been able to remain with him as she did for over three years. What grieved her most was that no child came. His mother and father and brothers and sisters came and made a fuss about it, and told him to take a younger wife as Jagua was too old. At first he did not listen to them, but after a time he began to weaken. Jagua knew that he took periodical leaves to his hometown to look at some maiden who had been procured for him; she heard also that they brought him brides to the petrol-filling station. She took the blame for sterility, and it was becoming a thing between them.
One day when he went to his filling station, leaving the house to her, she dressed up and walked into the streets. She was passing by the Railway Station and on a sudden impulse she went in and asked for the timetable. A young man smilingly told her when the next train would be leaving for L-A-G-O-S. Lagos! The magic name. She had heard of Lagos where the girls were glossy, worked in offices like the men, danced, smoked, wore high-heeled shoes and narrow slacks, and were ‘free’ and ‘fast’ with their favours. She heard that the people in Lagos did not have to go to bed at eight o’clock. Anyone who cared could go roaming the streets or wandering from one night spot to the other right up till morning. The night spots never shut, and they were open all night and every night; not like ‘here’ where at 8 p.m. (latest) everywhere was shut down and the streets deserted, so that it looked odd to be wandering about.
When she came away from the railway counter, Jagua felt a sudden uneasiness. There was something sinful in her act, and from that moment on, she began to look at her man with a detached air. To her, he was good as dead. Dead and buried in her heart though he did not know it. She gave him her body, and thought instead of the slim young men in the dark bow ties and elegantly cut lounge suits.
She cooked for him, but longed for quiet restaurants where the lining was velvet and the music was soft and wine glasses clinked and men spoke in whispers to girls who burst suddenly into outraged laughter but were devils in nylon skins. She stopped taking treatment from the doctor who was giving her something to make her pregnant. Her husband found out and when they quarrelled she was glad. She waited for him to leave for the filling station. They had not been on speaking terms for two whole days. She caught the train and it was too slow for her mood, taking three days to drop her into Lagos.
She knew no one and was glad when a young bandleader picked her up and housed her for a time. His friends called him Hot Lips because of his manner of playing the trumpet and the scars on his lips. He had no money but he had style in all he did. When he introduced her to girls who came to see him, she saw that her ideas were out of date. Her manner stamped her as ‘Provincial’ and this bandleader must be keeping her for some reason, but not for her smartness.
Standing in Tinubu Square, she would see the elegant Lagos products step smartly by, hanging on the laughing hands of their young men, and she would want to be like them. She remembered the morning when she was walking down the street, going from shop to shop. Being followed was something new for her then. She did not know why they did it in Lagos. As she turned the corner into William Street, they came quickly to her.
‘We live for Ikoyi,’ they said, after greeting her. ‘Our master – a white man, jus’ come out from England. He lef’ him wife for dem country. ’Es lookin’ for some fine lady, special.’ They looked at her with approval. She was Jagwa: nothing exaggerated, the earrings, painted cheeks and lips, the cut of the Accra-style printed blouse and sarong-type wrapper, the smooth shoulders elastic and supple in the sun; the toes, waxed and peeping through high-heeled shoes. And when she walked, t
hey whistled. ‘He will treat you fine, is a very kind man,’ said the second one.
She observed that they were both dressed in white shirts and white trousers, starched and dazzling. She concluded that they must be servants of some highly-placed official. She weighed the situation. If she could break away from Hot Lips and live all by herself in a room of her own, she would be able to buy many of the fine things in the shops and make herself even more Ja-gwa.
‘What time he want me?’ she asked.
‘Is better for night time. If you tell me where you live—’
‘No, no! Ah live wit’ some man. But I kin meet you somewhere, some place …’
Could it be true? Suppose there was some big practical joke in it somewhere? But Jagua believed in daring. If the worst happened, at least she could still find her way back to Tinubu Square. They later picked her up by the taxi park and sped to Ikoyi. When she stepped out of the taxi she glanced round her with breath suspended. She had never in her life dreamt of being in such dazzling surroundings. The deep soft carpets and well-padded chairs were things she saw in films. As she sat down the boys brought her something to drink and with trembling fingers she took the glass from the tray and sipped at the red liquid. Her head seemed to spin round. She lit a cigarette and the white man leaned over the enormous radiogram and put on a long-play record of some Nigerian music. His name was John Martell and he told her that his wife was in England. He had come out to work with a firm of builders. If she pleased him, he would treat her well.