BOB
EJIKE
My
closest friends and associates, who shared the burden of my affair with Bernadine
and knew my exploits with her, keen on ridding me of her stress and turbulence,
continued to make quirky attempts at matching me with ‘suitable’ ladies. These
encounters were not without complications as the matchmakers sometimes gave my
potential partners my phone number without my permission, and the prospective
partners tired themselves out calling my number, even when I was with Bernadine.
I had a hard time explaining to Bernadine what was going on. One of the girls
even went to an amazing point. That was Nelly, a product of my friend Neman’s
latest attempt at setting me up with a cohort of his. Nelly was slim with beautiful long legs and a
not-so-pretty face, but she had a well-shaped, attractive body. Nevertheless, I
had reasoned that replacing one distraction with another was not a logical
solution. Nelly started visiting the studio without being escorted or invited,
and staying too long. I tried to shake her off courteously but it proved
impossible. On two occasions however I had to take her to lunch, out of sheer courtesy
because she had stayed until lunchtime and I did not think it was in good taste
to leave a visitor hungry while I went out to eat, even an uninvited guest. But
Nelly interpreted this polite gesture as a show of affection and thereafter
commenced making arrangement for me to meet her family as a first step toward
our marriage!
Nelly would not take no for an answer and in
the middle of my protestation she called her aunty, the all-important Ssenga,
(the first daughter of a girl’s father’s family, who pulled the lips of her
regenerative organ from childhood until it elongates and becomes acute and
intensely satisfying to men folk, taught her sexual acrobatics, and
traditionally took charge of her initial marital preparations), and fixed an
appointment. I called her several times to assure her that she was wasting her
time and that of her aunty, but she still went ahead with her weird marital
arrangements, just like in a comedy. I had dumped Nelly in the bottom of the
heap and forgotten all about the strange matrimonial preparation, when she
called me on D-day. And where was I? I was sitting in the sofa in sister’s
parlour while Bernadine was dressing up in her bedroom, getting ready for us to
go out. The maid had run away with Doric’s money and most of Bernadine ’s
clothes.
I answered the phone before I saw the number,
then I recognized the voice. Nelly sounded desperate as she related, ’my elder
sister and her husband are waiting. We are waiting for you. You need to bring
one of your friends and some money to buy rice, bread, butter, sugar, Matoke
and other presents for my Ssenga’
I
just cut the line thinking that there must be a simpler way to get a man to
shop for your family, and fell into irrepressible snigger. Bernadine came into
the parlour, having donned a beautiful yellow dress and gray shoes, and
inquired. ‘Who was that on the phone? What’s so funny?’
I
tried to make a joke out of the bizarre situation. ‘You can’t imagine it but I
am supposed to be getting married today’
She
did not find my joke funny at all. ‘What, with whom?’ She asked, alarmed.
‘With
some girl that I barely know’ I retorted, still laughing.
There was no iota of amusement in her face.
‘If you barely know her, how did she get your phone number? Please tell that to
Karungi. Girls don’t get married to men
they barely know nowadays’ she rejoined and added, ‘tell me what was
going on between the two of you and how long it’s been going on, to what extent
you two went, where you went together and everything you did before you started planning to marry her and
proposed to her’
‘Me
propose to her?’ I was still grinning defensively as I relayed the story of my
encounter with Nelly to Bernadine, not excluding the two occasions that I took Nelly
to lunch, because I could not tell Bernadine
anything that did not correspond
to the truth.
‘You
can tell that to Karungi. Maybe she will believe you! Bernadine charged, ‘you
took her to lunch twice. A man doesn’t take a woman to lunch twice if he is not
interested in her or at least the thing between her legs. So while I am in
school slaving for our future, you engage in sharing gastronomic pleasures with
other women’
‘Oh
please darling, don’t take it that way. You know that I will never cheat on
you’ I pleaded.
‘Then
prove it’ she dared me with a protective proprietary tone, then staked her
claim on me in rusty iron. ‘Call the desperate, impoverished whore and tell her
you are not going to marry her, not now, not next year, never. Because you have
another girl, a nice, pretty girl that’s your
fiancée who you are in love with, whom you are going to marry….Ok?’
‘Okay’
I agreed and dialed Nelly’s number. Nelly’s voice came on the phone and I
started explaining as gently as I could ‘Look Nelly, I really have to tell you
this. It is a man that proposes marriage to a woman and not the other way
round. As you know, I have not proposed marriage to you, so I do not see why I
should come with you to meet your family, bringing presents and all that, when
I have not asked for your hand in marriage. Again we do not know each other. I
just met you, barely two weeks ago and I don’t understand how you expect me to
marry a woman that I have only just met. So please call your people and tell
them that I am not coming. Thank you, but please do not come back to my
studio…….’ I was still talking on the phone when the parlour erupted with Bernadine’s
anger which she vented on me with a well delivered blow to my bent back. The
pain shot into my spinal cord, momentarily blinding me. She had come under the
full submission to her anger and jealousy, and was set to land me a second
blow, her eyes blazing, becoming red hot balls of covetousness, her nose
flaring angrily as she hollered with a rage-sharpened voice. ‘I told you to tell
her that you will never marry her, that you have a fiancée, me! And it is me
you are going to marry, not her, Banange! Isn’t that simple enough? But instead
you are sweet-talking her, telling her that….’she mimicked my speech, ‘that you
did not propose to her, that you two have not really known each other long
enough to get married and you are making excuses for your absence, which means
she still has hope of being your wife if only she gives you time to get to know
her and become the one that proposed to her. Tell her you won’t ever marry
her…..or I kill you!’ Her balled fist was raised above her head as she bounded
furiously after me. I ran from her, yelling in mortal horror, darting into
various corners of the parlour in anticipation of the quick descent of another
deadly jab, mentally revisiting the instant revenge of the adolescent girl from
her hometown, Fort Portal, who had knifed her teenage boyfriend to death for
merely dancing with another girl in the discotheque, hoping not to be the next
victim of extreme Toro jealousy.
Bernadine tore after me belligerently and I
sprang from her, still speaking to Nelly on the phone. ‘Nelly, I am never going
to marry you! I am not in love with you. In fact, I hate you! You are a
thieving, manipulating, bitch, trying to make me buy undeserved presents for
your aunty and your family members. I have a beautiful, intelligent and loving
fiancée to marry, so do not call my number again and do not show up in my
studio ever again, for your own sake, because if my fiancée sees you in my
office she is going to pour acid on that ugly face of yours and even that your
tricky aunt won’t want you!’ I closed the phone as Bernadine caught up with me
on the sofa, and asked Bernadine. ‘Is that okay?’
She
stopped in the middle of a punching movement. ‘You just saved your foolish
life’ she declared and we both laughed riotously in total abandon, embracing
each other gently, then tightly. I deliberately omitted the story of another
teenage girl that had tricked me to her house on my first day of my meeting
with her and got her Ssenga to commence marital arrangements immediately. Bernadine
would have said that even Karungi would
not believe that I had not led her on, as girls of nowadays never married men
the day they met them. What did a girl really know about the desperation,
cunning, and ploys of other girls? Did
they divulge their trade secrets to their concurrence? Only a man to whom it is
directed could know how far a woman could go to achieve her objective, and this
information was hardly ever divulged to other women because women tended to
think of themselves as one homogeneous entity and had a binding espirit de corps
that was easily offended by such demeaning exposures. This was perhaps why they
saw all the men in the world as being just another homogeneous entity.
BOB
EJIKE
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