Fourteen
This time around, I paid meticulous attention to
my appearance. I slipped my feet into my new pair of Russell &
Bromley shoes and rummaged through my shirts. Most of them were
dead, had been for a very long time. They only came alive when Ola
wore them. She used to look so good in my clothes. Back in school,
Ola would take my dirty clothes away on Friday evenings and return
them washed and ironed on Sunday evenings. One day, while putting
away the freshly laundered clothes, I noticed that a shirt was
missing. Assuming that Ola had mistakenly packed it up with her own
clothes, I made a mental note to ask her to check. Next day at the
faculty, she was wearing the missing item. Seeing my shirt on her
gave me such a thrill. Since then, she borrowed my shirts from time
to time. In fact, she still had one or two with her.
Finally, I made my choice. It would have to be the
shirt I wore for my university graduation ceremony. The blue fabric
had been personally selected by my mother. She had sewn the shirt
herself.
There were nine men and five women waiting at the
office gates. Cash Daddy’s security man recognised me from my
previous visit.
‘Cash Daddy has not reached office this morning,’
he said.
He advised me to go and seek him at home.
‘Please, where is his house?’ I asked.
‘There’s nobody who doesn’t know Cash Daddy’s
house,’ he replied with scorn.
‘Please, what’s the address?’
He snorted with more scorn. He did not know the
house number, but he knew the name of the street.
‘Once you enter Iweka Street, you will just see the
house. You can’t miss it.’
I looked doubtful.
‘You can’t miss it,’ he repeated.
I flagged down an okada and took off.
Indeed, I knew it as soon as I saw it.
Two gigantic lion sculptures kept guard by the
solid, iron entrance. The gate had strips of electric barbed wire
rolled all around the top, which extended throughout the length of
the equally high walls. Altitude of gate and walls notwithstanding,
the mammoth mansion was visible, complete with three satellite
dishes on top.
I pressed the buzzer on the wall. The gateman
peeped through a spy-slide in the gate. Before he had a chance to
question me, a voice boomed from an invisible mechanical
device.
‘Allow that man to come inside my house! Right
now!’
I was jolted. The gateman was unperturbed. He
unlocked the gates and showed me inside.
The vast living room was a combination of parlour
and dining section. There was a winding staircase that escalated
from behind the dining table to unknown upper regions of the house.
Everything - from the leather sofas, to the humongous television
set, to the lush, white rug, to the vases on the bronze
mantelpiece, to the ivory centre table, to the electric fireplace,
to the high crystal chandeliers, to the dining set - was a tribute
to too much wealth. I almost bowed my hands and knees in
reverence.
A well-fed man standing by the door asked me to
sit. Then he opened a huge refrigerator. Like the one in the
office, this one was stacked with all manner of drinks.
‘What would you like to drink?’ he asked.
‘Nothing. I’m fine, thank you.’
There were two framed photographs of Cash Daddy
hanging on the wall above the television screen. One was taken,
apparently, while he was playing golf. In the other, he was sitting
on a magnificent black horse. How on earth had my uncle managed to
manoeuvre his super-size onto the narrow saddle?
There were five young, equally well fed men sitting
around the dining table. They ate silently, but eagerly, making
sloppy, kissing sounds as they licked their fingers.
Shortly after I sat down, Protocol Officer - the
very same one of the other day - descended the stairs.
‘Cash Daddy is ready to see you,’ he said, and
waited.
I stood up quickly and joined him at the foot of
the staircase.
‘Good morning,’ I said to the feeding men as I
walked past.
The tantalising aroma of edikainkong and onugbu
soups whispered to me from the huge tureens before them. The men
grunted nonchalantly.
Protocol Officer led the way. At the third-floor
landing, he opened one of the doors and entered a large bedroom. He
continued to where two men were standing beside another open door
within the room. The men shifted to create space for me in the
narrow doorway.
Inside, Cash Daddy was crouched on the toilet seat.
Apart from the boxer shorts rolled around his ankles, he was as
naked as a skinned banana. Imagining that I had barged in on a most
private moment, I muttered an apology and was turning to leave,
when his voice flashed like lightning and stopped me in my
tracks.
‘Kings, Kings! How are you? How is your daddy
doing?’
I ducked my eyes and replied that my father was
still in hospital.
‘What of your mummy?’ he continued. ‘I hope you
told her that I greeted her.’
‘Yes, I told her. She said I should thank you very
much for your gift.’
He ignored me and spoke to the other men,
apparently continuing with a discussion that had begun before I
arrived.
‘Don’t forget that we’re supposed to see Police
Commissioner by Monday. Make sure you don’t forget. When one sees a
dog playing with somebody it’s familiar with, it looks as if the
dog can’t bite. I don’t want the type of situation we had the last
time to happen again.’
I tried taking advantage of this diversion to make
my escape - and bumped into Protocol Officer, who was firmly
entrenched in the getaway route behind me. I gave up and stood
still. Cash Daddy was still speaking.
‘That seven hundred and fifty-five thousand dollars
has to be ready before weekend. There are some things I can afford
to play with but not things like this. Have you made arrangements
with—’
Cash Daddy broke off his speech. He contracted his
facial muscles and made a low, grunting noise. He relaxed his face
again and took in a deep breath. I heard the dull thud of solid
hitting the surface of water. This process was repeated three more
times before he was finally satisfied. Then he stood up, yanked
some tissue from the roll strapped to the wall, bent slightly
forwards, and wiped. Cash Daddy tossed the used tissue into the
toilet bowl and flushed. Before continuing with what he was saying.
Starting from exactly where he had stopped.
‘. . . with Sonny and Ikem about the government
official we’ll need for the Japan transaction?’
The man on my right confirmed that the arrangements
had been made. From the corners of my eyes, I looked at each man
standing beside me. None of them appeared to be the least bit
discomfited.
The stench had started disorganising my brain
cells, when Cash Daddy pulled up his shorts and made his way
towards the door. Honestly, it is such a pity that some people just
never learn. The number of times my dear mother had berated Uncle
Boniface in the past for using the toilet without washing his
hands. We parted to let him through and followed into the
bedroom.
The bedroom had the exact same personality as the
living room. A wide canopy bed, plush sofas, humongous television,
huge refrigerator, crystal chandeliers, exotic vases, elegant
photographs of him taken in different poses and at different grand
events. A closed-circuit television screen that showed coverage of
several different parts of the house, in different segments of the
large screen, stood directly opposite the bed. Cash Daddy planted
himself on the thick mattress, lifted a handset from the bedside
stool, pressed a button, and yelled into the mouthpiece.
‘Bring my food! Right now!’
A fat man on one of the CCTV screen segments went
into action in what looked like the kitchen. Another one of the
screens clearly showed the front gate and everybody coming in or
walking past. Aha! Via his CCTV, Cash Daddy must have sighted me
coming into the house and then yelled his instruction to the
gateman, using this same handset.
Cash Daddy stretched out his chunky legs and
slapped a harmonious tempo on his belly with his hands.
‘I’m so hungry,’ he announced. ‘Kings, sit
down.’
I sat in the chair directly in front of him, while
the other men remained standing by the bed in silence. Suddenly, he
stopped the music he was making with his belly and looked as if
seeing me for the first time. He frowned.
‘Kingsley.’
‘Yes, Uncle?’
‘What is this you’re wearing?’
I scanned myself in utmost terror. What could it be
this time?
‘Kingsley, am I not talking to you? What is this
thing you’re wearing?’
My brain was as blank as an empty bottle.
‘Kingsley.’
‘Yes, Uncle?’ I whispered.
‘Are you sure it’s not a carpenter that constructed
your shirt? You’d better be careful.’ He raised his index finger
and wagged it at me. ‘Be very, very careful. One day you’ll be
walking down the street and the police will just arrest you because
of the way you dress. It’s only the fly that doesn’t have advisers
that ends up in the coffin with the corpse. Don’t say I didn’t warn
you.’
The fat man arrived with a tray of food which he
placed on one of the side stools. He readjusted the stool to suit
Cash Daddy’s position on the bed.
‘Do you want to eat anything?’ Cash Daddy asked. He
did not wait for me to answer. ‘Cook, bring this man some rice,
chicken, goat meat, beef . . . Just bring him everything you have
in the stew.’ He turned to me. ‘I want you to eat well. You’re too
skinny.’
I did not bother telling him that there was nothing
he could do for me in that area; I was destined for perpetual
skinniness.
Cash Daddy plunged into his meal.
‘Go,’ he said to the waiting men.
His rice bowl, as large as a bathroom washbasin,
was filled to the brim. The rice was served with a bowl of tomato
stew, a separate bowl of assorted meat, and a one-litre packet of
Just Juice. He held his spoon like a shovel and clanged his teeth
against the steel each time he shoved food into his mouth. While he
chewed, I could look right into his mouth and watch the entire
process of the solid rice granules being crushed. With his free
hand, he pushed the pieces of meat to the very back of his mouth
and tore them apart with his molars. Then he spat the unconquerable
bones straight into the tray with such noise and force that no
doubt was left that his upbringing had definitely been
lacking.
‘How is your daddy?’ he asked, after a particularly
loud belch.
In a few sentences, I told him everything the
doctor had said and the reason for my visit.
As I was speaking, my uncle continued giving full
concentration to his feeding without looking at me. At some points,
I wondered if he was even listening at all.
It turned out that he was, because when I finished,
he started relating his comprehensive thoughts about how he was
sure the nurses intentionally kept a patient in a coma for longer
than necessary so that it would look like they were busy earning
their wages. While he was talking rubbish, my eyes strayed to the
array of shoes somewhere on the other side of the room. I was
mesmerised for just five seconds. Still, he caught me.
‘What are you looking at?’ he asked.
I panicked. Had he realised that I was not really
listening to him? How was I going to escape from this latest
trouble?
‘Are you looking at my shoes?’
I felt as awkward as a cow on ice. I did not
reply.
‘You haven’t even seen anything.’ He laughed. ‘If
you go into the next room, every single thing there is just shoes.
And not one pair of them costs anything less than a thousand
dollars.’
I kept looking at him.
‘Go on. Go out and look. I know you’re hungry, but
after looking, you can come back and finish your rice.’
I put down the tray with my half-eaten meal on it
and left. My uncle was right. The entire space was covered from
wall to wall with racks. Each rack harboured shoes of a different
shade and different make. There were green shoes and yellow shoes,
and red shoes and turquoise shoes. Every single member of the class
Reptilia must have been represented in that collection. I
finished looking and returned to the bedroom.
‘Have you finished looking at my shoes?’
‘Yes, I have.’ Then as an afterthought, ‘Thank
you.’
He nodded heartily and began another marathon
monologue about his footwear. From there, he extended to the topic
of his wristwatches and then to his designer clothing.
When his three bowls had nothing left in them but
stubborn bones and fingerprints, my uncle lifted the Just Juice
packet and poured the liquid directly into his mouth, pausing from
time to time to spread his mouth open and belch out a noise that
sounded like a frog in heat. I half-expected him to gobble up the
empty packet as well. Instead, he flung it onto the tray. Then he
shouted for Protocol Officer, who came and doled out some money
retrieved, this time, from inside the wardrobe. I received the
naira notes thankfully and left.
The next day, my father was transferred to the Abia
State Teaching Hospital, Aba. A week later, he awoke.