Eighteen

Our house was brimming with condolers. Some I recognised, others I did not. Some came in the morning, some came in the evening. Some brought food items, some cooked what others had brought. We borrowed chairs from our neighbours to accommodate the rising numbers. Those who still did not have places to sit either squatted on the linoleum floor or stood behind the circle of variegated chairs. Each night, there were bodies snoring on the floors and limbs dangling over chairs in the living room.

Every morning, my mother dressed in her dark-coloured wrappers and sat in the living room to accept condolences. Her eyes were always wet and swollen. With each new person that came, she retold the story.

'I usually don't wake up at that time of morning,' she would begin, 'but for some reason, I woke up around four-thirty that day. Then, I noticed that I was feeling a bit cold.'

Her first thought was that her husband would probably feel the chill. She rose from her raffia mat and turned off the table fan. Then she returned to the floor and almost fell back into sleep, but something was nagging. The silence was unusual. At last, it dawned on her. Her husband's respiratory orchestra had stopped playing. There was no rattling, no laboured breathing. My mother sprang up from the floor and crawled towards his bed. She leaned on the edge and tore at the mosquito net.

'I started calling his name and shaking his shoulders.'

Those listening struggled to hold back their tears.

When he did not stir, she repeated his name and shook him again - more violently - hoping that he might even yelp. When he still refused to respond, she flicked on the light and saw the open mouth and half-shut eyes.

'I didn't even know when I started screaming.'

Those listening started crying and wailing.

After my mother narrated this story to my father's sisters, his brothers, her brothers, her sisters, our neighbours . . . Aunty Dimma instructed that it was enough.

'You can't use all your energy to keep telling that story,' she said.

'When another person asks you how it happened, just tell them that you can't talk now.'

Almost all the people who came proceeded on an undeclared competition to see who could wail longer and more bitterly than the other.

'Hewu o!' one woman chanted. 'Onwu, chei! Elee ihe anyi mere gi o?!'

A man staggered into the living room and let out a fearsome yelp.

'Paulinus!' he called. 'Paulinus!' he called again.

The man shook his head and sat while a wrinkled man took his place and launched into the milestones of my father's lifetime.

'Do you remember the day he first came back from London? How his face lit up when he sighted us waiting for him on the dock?'

'Are you telling me?' resumed another male voice. 'How about the day he came to tell us that his wife had had their first son? Do you remember the big smile that was covering his face?'

'Where is the opara?' opara?' the elderly man asked. the elderly man asked.

They all turned and looked at me.

'Hewu!' the man cried. 'He looks exactly like his father. In fact, carbon copy.' the man cried. 'He looks exactly like his father. In fact, carbon copy.'

He was lying. I had my father's hairline and my father's eyebrows, but everything else belonged completely to my mother. Except nobody was sure where I got my small nose from.

'Paulinus was the most intelligent man in our class,' another man said. 'He used to take first position all the time.'

'Do you remember how he used to ask questions about everything as soon as the teacher finished teaching?'

'And he never stopped reading; he always had a book in his hands. Truly, I've never met a more intelligent man in my life.'

The eulogy continued. Ola walked in.

The sun broke through the clouds. For the first time in these series of grievous occurrences, I began to feel that God was truly in His heaven and that all was right with the world. She came over to me.

'Kings.'

I stood.

Two big tears fell from the corners of her eyes to the corners of her pretty lips. I reached out and held her hand. She squeezed it. Suddenly, grief tasted different, as if some saccharine had been stirred in to make it less bitter.

'Let me greet your mummy.'

She knelt on the floor in front of my mother and whispered into her ears. My mother nodded as she had been nodding to everyone else who had been whispering into her ears. From there, Ola went to Godfrey and Eugene and Charity, who were seated around the dining table with a flock of relatives surrounding them. Then she came over to where I was waiting by the kitchen door.

'How are you?' I asked.

'I'm fine. How are you, how are you doing?'

A surge of love overwhelmed my grief. I felt as if everything was almost all right now that she was here. Indeed, it must be true what someone said about love being the cure for everything. Everything except poverty and toothache.

'It's all been quite a shock,' I replied. 'I had no idea he was going to die.'

I retold my mother's story word for word. She cried in all the right places while I squeezed her hand.

'What of plans for the burial?' she asked.

I sighed.

It was vital for every Igbo man to be buried 'well'. The amount required to give my father the sort of send-off that would be deemed suitable for a man of his untitled status would total ten times more than what we had expended on bills for the duration of his hospital stay. Apart from the entertainment of guests for the wake-keeping and funeral, there was a certain amount of livestock and liquor that tradition required us to present to each of the different age grades in our village. There were the expenses for the obituary, the mortuary, the embalmment, the grave, the coffin, and the welfare of guests that would come from far and near. To make matters worse, our house in the village was not yet complete. It was extremely embarrassing for our guests to see my father being buried in a compound with a building that was mere carcass.

'We're waiting to see how much our relatives can contribute,' I replied. 'But whatever the case, the burial has to be very soon because we don't want to spend too much on mortuary fees.'

'Won't there be-'

An elderly woman stepped in and broke into a glum song about how dead bones shall rise again. As she sang, she swayed from side to side and cried. Most of the other mourners joined in with the singing.

'Okpukpu ga-adi ndu ozo, okpukpu ga-adi ndu ozo, okpukpu ga-adi ndu ozo, okpukpu ga-adi ndu ozo . . .'

I wished they would all just shut up and allow us to mourn in peace. Besides, the competition was settled. No one would ever outdo my father's sisters in drama and intensity of mourning.

'I need to go,' Ola said.

'No, stay a little bit longer. I really need you now.'

'I really need to go. I can't stay too long.'

I followed her outside. We walked round to the front of the house. I dragged her into the vestibule that led up to the other three floors of our building. The place was quiet.

'Ola, you probably don't know how glad I am to see you. I've not stopped thinking about you for one single day.'

She threw her eyes to the floor. I touched her cheek with my hand and told her how much I loved her. I told her I understood the pressure she must be under from her mother. I told her that I was moving to Port Harcourt, that I was definitely getting a job soon even though it might not be with an oil company. I told her that she would certainly not regret her decision to wait a little bit longer for me. She may have been listening, she may not.

'Kings, it's too late,' she said when I finished.

'What do you mean "too late"?'

She looked up, she looked sad, she looked afraid.

'I'm sorry,' she said.

'Sorry for what?'

'Kings, I'm getting married.'

Consternation struck me dumb.

'I'm getting married to someone else. Everything has been fixed.' She paused. 'I'm really sorry.'

At what point would Ola smile and confess that this was all part of some expensive joke? Perhaps another side effect of her being a citizen of Venus. Then I stared into her eyes and knew it was no joke. I felt as if I had been stabbed in the back, punched in the eye, struck on the head with a pestle, and bitten in the ankle, at the same time.

'I'm sorry,' she said again.

'What do you mean "everything"? Do you mean the wedding?'

She nodded.

'They've taken wine to my father and he's given them a date.'

I was quiet and kept quiet and continued keeping quiet. But, sooner or later, the ugliness of life loses its power to shock. I became ready to hear the rest.

'So how long have you known this man?'

She sighed, as if she was relieved that we had finally scaled the highest hurdle.

'I met him a while ago,' she said. 'But it wasn't until recently that things became serious.'

Aha! The Dolce & Gabbana wristwatch and the Gucci slippers and the Fendi handbag. The man was clearly very serious.

'Who is he?'

'There's no need-,'

'Just tell me . . . Who is he?'

'What are you doing with that information? Are you going to plant a bomb in his car?'

Aha. The man even had a car. All my feelings rolled up into one tight ball of anger.

'I'm just curious. What's the point keeping it secret? After all, it's not as if you're going to have a secret wedding.'

She shrugged.

'I guess you're right. His name is Udenna. I don't know if you've heard of Ude Maximum Ventures. He's the one that owns it.'

Of course I had heard of UdeMax. His logo was branded on several buses that carried passengers from Eastern Nigeria to Northern Nigeria and back again. His logo was on several of the gwongworos that transported palm oil and tomatoes and onions. Suddenly, my mind stubbed against a rocky thought.

'Ola, did he go to school?'

She refused to answer. I panicked. Most Igbo entrepreneurs of his kind never completed any formal education.

'Wait! You're planning to get married to somebody who didn't even go to school? Ola, what's the matter with you?'

'You know what, Kingsley? I have to leave now. I need to go before it gets dark.'

I was about to bark something else when she pressed something into the palm of my hand. I looked. It was a wad of naira notes.

Haha.

Back in school, Ola often shared whatever little pocket money she had with me whenever I was broke, which was almost always. The difference was that then, the money was not from Udenna's pocket. I pushed the wad back into her hand.

'Please take it,' she insisted.

I shook my head vigorously. Never.

'Kings, please . . .'

I continued shaking my head. She forced the notes back into my palm. I flung them away. She looked hurt. She abandoned the notes on the ground and started walking away.

'Olachi, take that money away!'

She was jolted and stopped in her tracks. She picked up the notes and hurried off. I stared into her back as piercingly as I could without committing homicide.

Two days later, the familiar sounds of grief in our living room were dispelled by the sudden din of commotion outside. Through the open louvers, I saw that a throng of neighbours and passers-by had gathered to watch. It was not often that a convoy of Land Cruisers and CR-Vs blared horns and rumbled engines on Ojike Street.