GRADUATION DAY BY BOB EJIKE

GRADUATION DAY

BY BOB EJIKE

An excited crowd had gathered noisily around the motorcycle taxi park. A mad man was tittering in manic delight as he openly raped a prostitute on the wall while she struggled noisily to free herself and the hordes of commercial motorcyclists applauded, repeating the same phrases, but all I could hear was the word ‘Malaya.’‘What are they saying?’ I inquired.‘They are saying, the prostitute has AIDS’ Peter explained.

 

  I woke up thinking about my triumphant last journey to Daniele’s school and a judder of expectancy rippled inexplicably through my body as I remembered that this was her graduation day and I was supposed to drive sixty miles to pick her from her school. I immediately dialed Daniele’s number. There was an unusual delay, then her voice came alive on the phone.

‘How are you angel?’ I asked.

‘Fine’ she affirmed.

‘What time should I come and pick you?’ I inquired.

Another odd delay reigned, followed by an uncomfortable and alien timber of voice. ‘Don’t worry; my sister is coming to pick me.’

A puzzled moment passed, for I had taken it as a given that on leaving school my  young and beautiful virgin princess whom I had put through high school would walk into my life without encumbrances and compensate me for my years of monk-like devotion with unrestricted unimaginable pleasures. But I knew I had no option but to accept love’s variables. I managed to stutter. ‘So we see when you arrive?’

‘Sure’ she agreed and without waiting for me to say anything more, hung up.

I stared at my phone for a long unbelievable while, silently acknowledging the unusual state of the situation. I felt a sudden eruption of panic and mentally battled to maintain my calm. I told myself this was a young girl. Her family could decide to pick her from school at her graduation and there was nothing wrong in that, and she would have no choice in such matter anyway. I took my briefcase and entered the back seat of the vehicle. Peter, my elderly chauffeur, was waiting for me behind the steering. ‘Studio’ I instructed, and he started the engine and moved. Lawrence, my gate man, ran from the gate shed and opened the gate as his radio chuntered away.

The Monitor, the opposition newspaper boldly proclaimed that the opposition party would win the next election by a tsunami.  I flipped the pages and read the papers as Peter drove.  At a crowded junction the traffic slowed to a halt.  Loud music boomed from locals as young people thronged the bars and restaurants. Men sold roasted and fried meats from tables outside the locals and others sold cigarettes and condoms from open showcases.  Motorcycle taxi riders ferried passengers swiftly past vehicles, old white sex tourists strolled hand in hand with their young black lovers, with knapsacks on their backs, holding maps, tourist guides and phrasebooks,    and a bearded white man who had been reduced to skeleton, sauntered aimlessly about. An excited crowd had gathered noisily around the motorcycle taxi park. A mad man was tittering in manic delight as he openly raped a prostitute on the wall while she struggled noisily to free herself and the hordes of commercial motorcyclists applauded, repeating the same phrases, but all I could hear was the word ‘Malaya.’

‘What are they saying?’ I inquired.

‘They are saying, the prostitute has AIDS’ Peter explained and released an indecipherable exclamation in his local language, still laughing at the weirdly complicated situation. The traffic soon resumed and we turned left at Ggaba Road and headed towards Kansanga. A flight of bats exploded above a big tree, some of the strange animals hanging upward. We passed the International University and the well known Chicken Tonight fast food restaurant and other less-known eateries, bars and nightclubs that populated Ggaba Road; formidable women in orange uniform swept the roadsides in front of the market, the scores of kiosks and colorfully painted shops that littered the sides of the road with bamboo brooms. Skinny, smartly uniformed security guards trekked to work, automatic rifles slung on their shoulders. We eventually arrived at Buziga Hill. Carly my manager was waiting for me at the studio. As soon as I settled in he told me. ‘Sir, all the papers carried our story. I think that does it. Look Boss, we have covered all the major nightclubs, discos and bars, even the beaches all have your music and they are playing it and people are enjoying it. The radios and television stations are airing it. The video clubs have it now. So we give two months, then we go in for the kill. We get into the prime time, Top Ten, high profile radio and TV programs, magazine front-page coverage and then the corporate sponsors will come struggling for you and the big shows will be ours for grabs and we shall become rich’

‘Yes’ I gave an approving nod to his tactically clever showbiz plan, thinking how much it sounded like a fairy tale.

Carly bristled with enthusiasm as he proceeded with the persuasiveness of a seasoned marketer. ‘But it will cost us money. We need to get the electronic and print media on our side. We need to put them in our pocket. Record TV, NBS, WBC,NTV, UBC, GTV, TOP Television, EAT, Simba FM, Dembe FM, Star FM, KFM, Beat FM, Capital FM, Metro FM, Radio Sapiensa, Radio One, KIU Radio, CBS Radio. We need to pocket all of them. You have to be visible and audible everywhere all at once to be a firmly established act. We need a coordinated and concerted action……A big bang!’ Carly’s eyes lit up as he rose and bopped up and down, staring into his envisioned prosperous future, fired up with the certainty of its attainment.

‘You will have it’ I assured him sagely, giving way to his magnificent judgment and clapping him on the shoulder. The poor soul had worked with unreserved zeal and seen innumerable sleepless nights to get me where I was now in the music industry of his country, against the wishes of most of his nation’s artistes and industry stakeholders who saw me as an intruder who had come from my country to take away their national franchise, and he needed just a little more effort and financial support to fulfill the demands of his big ego, to launch the first triumphant foreign act here.  ‘Carly, when will it be?’

‘We still need to consolidate some important nightclubs. Let’s give it about a month and a half so that our present effort will be fully diffused for maximum publicity effect before the Big Bang.’ He laughed delightedly, contentment twisting his lips.

We proceeded to work, labored catatonically, lost in the rapture of manic activity. It was not until Monday morning that I become utterly conscious of the fact that Daniele, my sweet heart, had not called me throughout the weekend. Insane ideas of various magnitudes invaded my brain. Maybe she had died or had an accident and was fatally injured and hospitalized or she had been locked away by her overly protective family, forced into marriage with some rich old man in a distant desert country, or sold into sex slavery in ice-cold Northern Europe. My shaky fingers dialed her number on my cell phone. To my relief she answered the phone.

‘Angel, how are you?’ I asked hopefully.

‘Fine’ came her brief reply.

‘Where are you?’

‘Home’

‘Why haven’t you called me?’

‘I’ve been busy’

‘Busy with what?’

Her voice soured, becoming inexplicably hostile. ‘Look, I am tired. I have no strength for argument’ she snarled.

‘Argument? Who is arguing? Who wants an argument?’ I was thunderstruck with astonishment.

Unbelievably, the line went dead before I could say another word. I dialed again but she did not answer. I was puzzled but controlled myself. I tried again after about thirty minutes to no avail, then I decided that she must have been under stress from her final exams, to give her some time. I went to work and poured my spirit and energy into it, refusing to think about Daniele, believing that she would soon get back to her normal nice self and call me. But the expected call never came. I stretched my endurance, refusing to allow the sneaking sensation that something really bad was afoot to take hold. By the end of the week my fortitude was at its limits. At length, my grit spent, presentiments sneaked in like a nocturnal serpent. All efforts at self-reassurance collapsed. Taut with foreboding, I called Daniele. Her line opened. There were loud, merry, youthful male and female voices in the background.

‘Angel, how are you?’ I inquired, trying not to betray my anxiety. A stretch of silence followed.

‘Fine’ she sounded excited as if she had won the raffle.

‘You haven’t called me and I haven’t seen you since you returned from school.’ I reminded her as nicely as I could, immobilizing preoccupation fogging my mind.

‘I told you I’ve been busy’ she snapped irritably.

‘Too busy to see me for a few minutes?’ I probed anxiously. Another stretch of fatalistic quiet invaded. Waves of worry washed over me, parching my throat.

‘Yes.’ She answered and cut the line. The ominous implication of her action stared me in the face. I dialed her number again but she did not answer. I repeated the process until a recorded message told me that the number I was calling was not available at the moment, advising me to call again later. Daniele had switched off her phone on me! I tried hard to control myself, rejecting the thought that our affair had hit a rocky patch, and returned to my work, but kept dialing her number whenever I had some free time. She never picked or returned my calls. Apprehension started growing within me, my breath quickening, my heart racing irately, my stomach clenched excruciatingly, sweat breaking out of my forehead. I ringed inwardly, became jittery with presentiment. A hind glance at the most recent developments in our affair quailed me mentally. The present status quo was simply unbelievable and I silently prayed that this was some kind of a joke.  A wave of horror shook the foundation of my being, churning my guts, my breathing coming in gasps as I helplessly viewed the pathetic reality that was befalling our auspicious love affair. I tried to remain in control of myself, fighting back the tears that were welling up within my chest. I examined the intent behind her recent actions and they gave me no consolation. I sat in the reigning silence, staring bleakly at the wall, utterly abandoned in the world; life leaking out of me, for my love for Daniele ran very deep, deeper than the Victoria Lake and wider than all the great lakes. I searched for some kind of solace from somewhere, but it eluded me. I found only incipient unease and began to feel ill in the pit of my stomach, the possibility of Daniele walking out on me after two years of weighty emotional and financial sacrifice brought thrills of horror into my blood. My heart shriveled with terror  and incapacity as the stark reality gaped back at me that I had been defrauded for two years and dumped by this teenage girl to whom I had been benevolent, whom I had done no wrong, only good. I summoned great energy and refocused my mind on my work, hoping for some kind of miracle to resolve the debacle.

After three weeks of trying in vain to reach Daniele, I grudgingly acknowledged that our affair was over, and the harsh realities finally unveiled themselves that in spite of my experience, fame, talent, intelligence, class, education and international exposure, I had been used and discarded by some obscure, local, teenage girl from some secluded, unnamed village in some retarded nation in some remote jungle. I had spent the last two years advising, consoling, feeding, clothing, beautifying, maintaining and educating her at exorbitant costs and at the cost of my personal and professional advancement, on her pretense of love, bogus romance and a litany of false nuptial promises, only to be ditched without cause, without any provocation whatsoever. After all the sacrifices, I was getting nothing but a broken heart and a ruptured bank account in return. I had lost my money, time and energy, and most irritatingly I had lost my dignity and self-confidence. It was hard to imagine that Daniele had taken me for a fool and had been tricking me all this time. She had taken advantage of me because of my blind and deaf love for her. She had played on my emotions, taken me for a ride and robbed me blind for two long years. A text message from her soon confirmed my fears. It read: I am sorry but there are so many things happening in my life right now. I really think I am not good enough for you. You deserve a better girl than me. Bye.

My stomach tightened into a knot as I reread the confirmation of my undoing.  Disappointment wracked my body and my head exploded with an unknown red mist of festering fury, followed by a splitting headache that hammered in my temple, locks of sweat breaking out in my face, nibbling down my lips. I mulled over the calculated calumny. It was not so much for what she took away from me materially, but the fact that she had meticulously planned my wholesale deception and thoroughly swindled me for so long without my ever giving a thought to the possibility that this whole affair could have been an emotional scam, that I was maddened. I reflected regretfully on all the time I had wasted, the hopes she had raised within me while she was fully conscious of the fact that she would eventually dash them, for in her regard, money had always meant very little to me. Her career and welfare had been a predetermined certainty in my scheme of things, even superseding my own well-being and professional aspirations. Every effort at contemplation increased the magnitude of my disgrace and my mass gradually dissolved into spells of hysterical lamentation, my ears filled with loud hissing dissonance. My head was on fire and seemed to be breaking into bits; melancholy wound itself around my being as I folded over in total anguish.

 I made to pack the pieces together as I rose to my unsteady feet and stormed out of the house without remembering to lock the doors. I hurried blindly to the tree-lined garden where my three vehicles were parked. ‘The keys’ I demanded from Peter, lengthening my hand, my eyes flaming maniacally. I must have looked a suicide, for Peter refused to hand over the keys.

‘I will drive you sir’ he offered tersely.

‘No. I will drive myself’ I insisted, my hands trembling with shock and ferocity.

‘No. I will drive you sir’ he persisted; his voice raised brashly, his eyes deadened with diffidence.

‘The keys!’ I growled, jerking a finger in his direction, attracting my two security guards.

‘I don’t have them sir’ he lied, unaffected by my stance of authority.

‘But I gave them to you, Peter!’ I screamed, my livid finger still pointing at him.

‘I will drive you, sir. It is my job to drive. I get paid for driving. So you have to allow me to do my job sir’ he maintained. I knew there was no point arguing further. He was putting his job on the line, ready for me to fire him if I so desired, and even in my crazed state I knew he was doing it for my safety. Reluctantly, I got into the backseat.

 ‘Where are we going sir?’ Peter asked as he entered the auto, brought out my bunch of keys from his pocket, inserted the car key into the ignition and started the engine.

‘Kisugu’ I mumbled and as he revved the automobile it occurred to me that I did not know where Daniele was living. In our two-year affiliation she had never bothered to show me her home not to talk about taking me there, and I had given the glitch little consideration, putting it down to our generational diversity and waiting patiently for her to grow into maturity. Now she had grown and chosen to run away from me, after all my long and agonizing waiting and profligate spending. Why?

‘Boss, is it that young girl of yours?’ Peter inquired in a calm voice.

‘Yes’ I confided and broke down, terminating my self-destructive implosion as my weeping could no longer be contained within my body. It overflowed, tearfully, shamelessly, my tears hot and despondent, scalding my face, my sobs escaping in waves of self-deprecation.

‘I am sorry, sir. Remember I informed you. These girls are no good. They would have been even fairer if they just took your money. But they take your money and break your heart, and at your age you shouldn’t expose yourself to such hazards. But you are still lucky. When you end an affair with a woman here and you are still alive to tell the story, consider yourself lucky’

‘But she didn’t cheat on me. She quit’ I wept inconsolably in a fixed monotone.

‘It’s the same thing Boss. Either she cheats on you before quitting or she cheats on you after quitting, meaning she quit so she can have the freedom to cheat on you and avoid your reaction, which means cleverly  cheat on you and get away with it. It’s the same thing, there is no difference. The final result is that she has left you and is now enjoying herself in the arms of other men. She is probably cheating on you right now.  She has taken all your money for her education, terminated her affair with you after you educated her and started another one with a younger man who will then enjoy the fruit of your labour. It is very unfair.’

Peter drove past Kisugu and as I started protesting, he advised. 'Boss, no need. If a woman doesn’t love you, the earlier you leave her alone the better, no matter how much you spent on her, before she gives you high blood pressure or stroke and leaves you paralyzed and bedridden, or poisons you or kills you with AIDS which she got from her other lovers. It is better you leave her as quickly as possible so you can have a clear mind to search for the one that loves you, because she is out there waiting. There are many, many beautiful and better girls that need a rich, handsome and caring mature man like you. They even call me and disturb me to get them to you but I didn’t want to bother you. Forget that girl with demonic eyes. Did you ever notice her eyes? I just looked at them once and I knew that she was evil. Only a devilish mind can manifest in such dangerous eyes. As long as you are with the girl that doesn’t love you, you will never see the one that loves you.’

We carried on towards the airport; I could hardly see the brightly colored, storey buildings clustered with commercial products, the elegantly dressed workers boarding and dismounting from township mini buses at crowded bus stops or the tireless pedestrians heading in various divergent directions, some carrying loads in their hands and others on their heads. We passed markets, towns and isolated beaches where people were fishing, lounging, and swimming. My mind involuntarily returned to the Ugandan Embassy in Rome as I recalled the day I had gone there to make enquiries about life in Uganda and my entry visa, after I had made the decision to transfer to the East African country. I remembered the haggard, skinny white man with unkempt beard and a beaklike nose, sitting in a bench in the reception as the big black woman at the desk whose designation I was unsure of related the paradisal prosperity of Uganda and the boundless generosity of her people.

‘What about the night life, how is the night life in Uganda?’ I had inquired, because of my inclination towards entertainment, but the lady must have misunderstood the motive for the question to be quest for social and carnal pleasure and a need to know how the local women were, for she eyed me disapprovingly and advised. ‘When you get to Uganda, face your business and avoid the women like the plague, so that you don’t regret ever going there.’ She looked furtively around her and feeling safe enough to continue, lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. ‘The major problem you will have in Uganda is the women. They are very beautiful but most unstable. A strange combination: highly flirtatious and at the same time very possessive. If they don’t kill you with AIDS, they will stab you to death or deform you with acid, out of jealousy if you as much as touch another woman, and if you show them love they will mesmerize you with their beautiful bodies, and please do not underestimate us, we are naturally gifted in taking away a man’s heart and all his money.’

‘If they don’t get you, you will live forever’ rang the tattered white man, like a chorus to her speech.

I turned and demanded. ‘Why do you say that, sir?’

‘It’s obvious, isn’t it? I wasn’t like this when I went there!’ He bellowed and started crying like a motherless child.

We slowed down just before the security posts at the airport at Entebbe, reversed into the opposite lane and headed back to Kampala. In 44 minutes within which I was much relaxed, we came close to the Clock Tower. To the right beyond the other track of road heading to the airport, there was a big market by the roadside with dozens of women carrying bulky containers the size of two suitcases on their heads. I had not noticed the market when we passed earlier and I had never noticed it before, though I had passed it countless times.

‘What are they selling?’ I asked Peter.

‘Grasshoppers’

‘Only?’

‘Only’

‘All that’

‘All that’

I marveled at the huge piles of hopping insects that filled up the field, wondering how they captured them in such large numbers. I had never gotten around to successfully eating roasted crickets, a delicacy in these parts. The first time I tried it I nearly threw up, so I gave up altogether. Peter drove around Kampala for another hour before he brought me back home as I struggled unsuccessfully not to think of Daniele.

That night my eyes did not wink. My mind was engrossed with reminiscences of my romantic misadventure of the last pair of years, my meeting with Daniele, that fiery look in her deformed, oversize eyes which I had found romantic rather than lunatic. Had she really manifested any interest in me that day of our first meeting or had she called me later only because of the generous tip I had given her for the telephone call?  I recalled the crass ravenousness with which she used to grab things she did not really need when I took her shopping for provision each vacation ending, the scarcely concealed victorious smile on her face each time we were leaving the supermarkets with overloaded trolleys. It was not that I could not imagine that she was also shopping for her acquaintances on my account, just that it was a drop in my relatively vast financial ocean. I could afford to give her all she was taking and the things she deemed luxury were peanuts to me. So I let her have them. But she reckoned that I was a fool, believing that that was the only possible reason for my uncontrolled liberality.

 I mentally returned to my long drives to distant nondescript Luweru, wretched Wobulenze, obscure Katikamu, to her hypocritical 7^th Day Adventist College, on that long winding road that led to the fringes of Northern Uganda, Gulu and The Sudan. I wondered what could have ever made me risk my life on that road if not for Daniele. I routinely turned down music concerts in such areas even though such rejections had adverse effects on my showbiz rating.  I considered my time, fuel consumption and money on these mercy junkets as I recalled the ‘innocent’ young girl that was crying on the phone when I was out of the country, claiming that she would be barred from taking her final exams if I did not remit money to her. I pictured myself in the bank in Lagos glaring aggressively at the clerk that had negated my attempt to remit money to Daniele. I had glowered at him with much disdain, ready to pounce on him.  I must have looked like a madman in that bank. I had barely noticed that everyone was staring at me. Could anyone of those shocked spectators have guessed that I was just a puppet being manipulated from far-flung East Africa?

 I pictured the ‘naïve’ teenage girl whose tears had made me abandon my building project in Lagos to get on the next available plane on that precarious flight back to Addis Ababa, en route to Kampala, traversing half of the great African continent, to ensure that her academic career was not disrupted. The same young woman that later called to rouse me in the early hours of the morning and mandated me to go and queue up by the Clock Tower to send her money, little more money, but always money from my pocket, which involved queuing fastidiously for hours to do her will, to dispatch the money with which she was now frolicking with other youngsters while refusing even to talk to the man who provided it on the phone. To think that she had planned all this well in advance, knowing all the sequences, all the turns and bends, infusing and controlling the suspense, maintaining the flow of events, masterminding all the high and low points of it, meticulously executing her inventive plan of leading me on and robbing me blind in the name of love, knowing all the time that nothing would work between us. I was just the unfeeling embodiment of a financial institution to be mindlessly drained and discarded. She had planned it all and carried it out from the very beginning to the dastardly end, like a film director executing a script, but she was also the scriptwriter, the master planner, this innocent-looking girl whom I could have been charged for attempting to defile, had defiled and dumped me without second thought. She had scrupulously plotted my massive extortion; maybe even from the very first day we met on Kisugu Road, and executed it conscientiously over two long years. It was simply unbelievable.

 But the signs had started manifesting subtly around her pre-graduation period, the hints were stealthily sipping out that she was not as committed to me as I was to her.   I mentally scrutinized our close association and concluded that it had been if anything, lopsided. Daniele had always been the one running the affair, with little non-monetary input from me, and we had been reading her script all the while. The insipient secrecy and recourse to abstinence were her ideas, not mine, and they were not for any legal, moral, religious or romantic intent, nor were they for our mutual interest.  The sacrifice of abstinence was understandable for the first year since we were legally bound to it, but beyond that, its continued observance was her design and did not represent my interest. In fact, it was, viewed from a simplistic perspective, exploitative. Her eventual surrender and offer of herself had been solely a result of her own devise, made out of fear, with the objective of placating me for lucre. A wave of memory brought back the selfish determination with which Daniele always got me to do her bidding. The sheer inconsideration that was frequently involved in her demands which I had never had the unmitigated gall to examine critically. She had drawn me into the route to her school and I got used to it and made it my regular weekend itinerary. I cumulatively calculated the kilometers I had driven all the times that I had traveled on that winding, lonely road to Wobulenze. It was awfully long, and again I wondered what else could have exposed me to that hazardous highway, driving past all those isolated forests, farmlands, village settlements, marshes, banana, tea and coffee plantations, bushes with grazing cows, and confronting huge trucks and goods lorries that lunged towards me, routinely risking my life. It was hard to conceive of the fact that I had done all that for a girl who did not minimally care about me, who cared only for her personal gains.

I remorsefully recognized that Daniele and I had not really been lovers in the typical sense, that I was just the personification of a detached institution that paid her bills with paternal commitment, took care of her needs with avuncular consideration, kept her company with quality time and supported her juvenile development with seasoned counsel, to which she felt that she owed no obligation or loyalty whatsoever, perhaps out of original selfish design or as a result of the gulf between our ages. This generation gap was the excuse I had mentally apportioned to some of the obvious incongruities of our affair, like the fact that in two years of relating with each other I was still oblivious of her address and she had not made any effort to introduce me to any member of her family. That would be right for the first one year of our liaison when she was legally underage and upping her age for me. I comprehended in that breathtakingly lucid moment that it was not likely that it was for reason of our age gap that she had distanced me. Age disproportion seemed more an excuse for her to perpetrate a wrong as it had been for me an excuse to ignore the wrong. During the second year of our liaison nothing stopped her from coming out of the woods and taking me to meet her family if she had been really serious with me. Uganda was one country where young girls proudly dated older men and nobody bothered as long as they were within the legal dating age. I did not think her family would be different from the vast majority of their people who saw age as being insubstantial in romantic relationships, some of who regarded men as having no age at all, as long as they could maintain their women and give them dignity. Whatever it was that motivated her to plan and carry out the extensive exploitation of my time, emotions and resources, I resented it profoundly because she had utterly negated my mental ability and showcased my gullibility.

Carly’s dry laughter reechoed in my brain, ‘sir, you are even a bigger fool than I thought you were. Don’t tell me you are doing all this, making all these costly expenses, all these risky sacrifices of quality time and business prospects and capital for a girl that isn’t even sleeping with you. We have been here for centuries and we know these people. You are living in a crazed illusion and you are surely being used and emotionally manipulated. It is their perfected art; no one beats them at that. One day that girl is going to walk. I bet my life on it. She found a foreign fool, that’s what they survive on. No man from here will ever fall for such an obvious, cheap trick. Travel all that way to and fro to pay school bills and maintain a girl when you aren’t even touching her pants, on a promise of future love and marriage? Why can’t she give it to you now? Something she has between her legs which she doesn’t have to go and borrow from anyone, and she is telling you that it will be yours in future; meanwhile she is taking your hard-earned money now. Why can’t she give you hers now? There is only one reason. She has no intention of ever giving it to you. You are really, really out of your mind. Listen, Boss, one day she is going to stab you in the back and run. Remember I warned you. If you know what is good for you, put all your money, time and energy into saving this sinking ship that you built, before you go down with it, and there will be no young  beauty anywhere in sight.’

Then it dawned on me for the first time that it was my link with Daniele that had dealt the final blow that wrecked my commercial studio, that if I had concentrated all my efforts and directed all my time and wherewithal into the enterprise, it could have been salvaged. It might not have become suddenly lucrative but it would have stayed afloat with a possibility of complete revival and continued to give me some income, dignity, relevance and influence within the entertainment industry. But I had let it die because of my desire to sustain my affinity with Daniele.

 I had assumed that she was of a different breed. She had even offered herself to me that day she had arrived clandestinely from her school to spend a week with me. She had disrobed and implored me to get physical with her. I it was who had refused. Or did she just play on my passion? Had she always known that because I loved her so much I would never penetrate her under those rash conditions, that I believed her virginity to be sacrosanct and to be surrendered to me under the most graceful and honorable of circumstances? My eyes started opening to the shock of the fact that she could actually have been acting on that fateful day and had had no intention of sleeping with me. How come I had not understood it then? It seemed quite obvious now.  She had not done an HIV test for a long time and she knew my rigid rule regarding that. She was aware that I would never get down with a girl who had not been recently tested for HIV and found to be negative, not even with ten condoms affixed. She knew that I would never enter her under those conditions. She had only been acting. I wondered why I had not recognized that with all my years of experience in auditioning actors. Obviously her body had taken flame on me, sending vital parts of my brain to sleep, and I was only seeing her external beauty but never analyzing the intentions behind her actions and utterances. In that lightening second the reason why she had been avoiding certain destinations with me emerged. Daniele had been simply avoiding being openly identified with a man she already knew that she would throw overboard when he finished training her. Since her set objective had been as it strongly seemed, to discard me after using me, the last thing she would have wanted was to become publicly identified with me and be known to have had a boyfriend, more so a much older one that could even pass for a young sugar daddy in some eyes, and leave her precious personality in disrepute. Such a finding could jeopardize her plan for the man of her future. The one she planned to give her heart and the knowledge I had painstakingly paid for, if he wasn’t there already, how could I tell?

I imagined Daniele, the girl I loved with all my heart, for whom I would climb Mount Ruwenzori without ropes and swim the source of the Nile blindfolded, plotting my exploitation with her young, spoilt high school friends who had been feeding fat on my provisions. What would they be calling me? Most probably a disdainful or derisive, ‘Old Man.’ They would probably laugh and say this one has more cash than brain.

 My choreographer Neman’s coughing laughter filled the room as his voice reverberated in the emptiness. ‘A girl from Toro. They are full of surprises and intrigues. They survive on those. We live with them so we know them. Sir, you are a visitor so you allow their beauty to blind you. We don’t.’ His mocking amusement crammed my head. These unpleasant recollections stood between me and my work and sleep for eight days and nine nights. On the tenth day the world capsized and sank.

BOB EJIKE

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