Things did not improve. In the first few weeks of the new year, it could be seen that Ali was trying. He made his visits to Esi’s more regular, and stayed as long as he could, whenever he was around. It was almost like before they got married. But he really could not keep it up. Too soon, things returned to the pattern of the very recent past.
Ali phoned regularly to announce his imminent departures. He phoned from the different cities and towns inside and outside the country to which he travelled. He phoned to report his arrivals. In between his travels, he phoned regularly when the telephone lines permitted. He and Esi always had good telephone conversations.
He also sent gifts. And what gifts! He brought her gold bangles from the Gulf States and succulent dates from Algeria (or was it Tunisia?). He brought her huge slabs of chocolates from Switzerland, and gleaming copper things from Zambia and Zimbabwe. He brought her shimmering silk from the People’s Republic of China, the Koreas and Thailand. Indeed, he virtually made a collector of the world’s textiles out of Esi as her wardrobe literally overflowed with different types and colours. From West Africa itself she got gorgeous adires from Nigeria, as well as other fabrics from Mali, Sierra Leone and the Gambia. These were all various shades of blue extracted from the wild indigo plant and either put on comfortably coarse traditional weave, or on imported fabrics of programmed softness and perfected sheen. From the Soviet Union, Ali brought Esi some very special amber-inlaid wrought iron jewellery as well as the cutest matroshkas for Ogyaanowa. Then, since he seemed to have made it a policy to bother with only Japanese electronics, he brought her from other technologically advanced environments, their ethnic goods and local crafts. Or if they were manufactured goods, then they would be peculiar to the place and unrivalled anywhere else in the world: household linen and native American jewellery from the United States, beer mugs from Bavaria. Through the gifts, Esi saw the entire world from her little bungalow. What she did not seem to see much of was the skin of the man behind the phone calls and the gifts. The explosion occurred somewhere towards the end of their third year of marriage. Esi decided she was just fed up. For weeks she had not seen Ali. So one day when the gate had been open and she had heard a car drive up, she peeped at it through the curtains. It was early afternoon of a weekday and she had just come in from work herself. She was only dressed in a single piece of wrapper. When she realised it was Ali, she didn’t bother to go and change. She just met him at the front door with, ‘Ali, I can’t go on like this.’
With one hand clutching some parcels and his briefcase, he tried to grab her for an embrace with the other hand, even before he had entered the sitting room completely. But Esi would not let him. And since he was carrying too many things and one hand was completely occupied, she could easily wriggle free.
‘I said I can’t go on like this,’ she repeated. Ali seemed to have heard her this time. He dumped everything in a nearby chair and moved towards her. But Esi quickly moved back and kept walking backwards and away from him like a child who had done wrong and earned a whipping. Or rather, as if Ali carried some dangerous contamination and had to be kept as far off as possible. Ali noticed it all and stopped in his tracks, hurt.
‘Esi, you say you can’t go on like what?’
‘Like ... this,’ she said shrugging her bare shoulders. Almost as if her condition of being scantily dressed and barefooted early on a tropical evening was a symbol of the condition of their marriage, and therefore his fault. ‘This is no marriage.’
‘What would you consider to be a marriage?’ He asked, his voice full of genuine puzzlement.
‘I don’t know,’ she replied. And she was being genuine too. ‘But if this is it, then I’m not having any of it,’ she added with such chilling finality that for a little while, Ali really did not know what to say. Then he turned, went back to the chair and picked up only his briefcase and turned to leave.
‘If that’s how you see it, then I’m going
‘Home!’ Esi finished the sentence for him with something of a flourish, like a victory declaration. ‘Well, just go “home” to your wife and children and leave me alone,’ she told him, more quietly.
Ali was clearly confused. For a moment or two he shuffled on the same spot; then he opened the front door and went out. He must have gone straight into his car and turned on the ignition. Soon Esi heard the car move away. She collapsed into a chair, her eyes shining while a headache began to work its way up from the back of her neck.
About three months later, Esi phoned Opokuya at the hospital. Opokuya noticed immediately that her friend’s voice sounded extremely tired. This was a new Esi she was teaching herself to get used to. The first time Esi told Opokuya about the break up, she could hardly speak for the suppressed tears and sniffling. Opokuya had already learned that Esi and Ali were through, that the marriage was ‘comoi, kaput, finished, kabisa.’ Opokuya had not been at all surprised. But she had pretended that she was. If you don’t tell such truths easily to yourself, then how can you tell them to your best friend? So calling up her composure and good sense, she told Esi that she was terribly shocked by the news.
‘Are you sure of what you are telling me?’ she breathed into the phone. ‘What has happened? … When did it happen?’
Meanwhile, Esi was laughing hysterically.
‘Opokuya my sister, just tell me that you told me so!’ she screamed.
Opokuya could only do the best a phone would permit. She begged Esi not to distress herself. Because everything would work out in the end. At this, Esi laughed harder. Eventually, Opokuya promised to go over and see her at the next available opportunity. Esi seemed to be immediately comforted by that. She calmed down and even managed to remember to tell Opokuya that the next time she was at the bungalow, she could drive the car away, because in the course of the year she had got it repaired and repainted, and now it was looking really good. Opokuya was so excited at the news that waiting through the next few days was pure torture.
Opokuya wanted to come that evening or the next, but something always cropped up at home or at work. So that whenever she was really free, it was always too late and too dark. But today she was determined to see Esi and to take away the car, even if she got there at midnight. She had been on a morning shift, but whoever should have come to relieve her in the afternoon had been so late that she had virtually done the afternoon too. Of course, she had told herself that she was not going to mind. That apart from depriving her of a good break, it suited her fine. When the night shift came, she would go straight to Esi’s.
But things turned out even better for her. The afternoon person came eventually, very late for work, but quite early for Opokuya’s plans. So she arrived at Esi’s at virtually the same time as Esi had herself just got home from work.
They went indoors together and had a little chat. Esi made tea for Opokuya and fixed a drink for herself. Or a series of quick drinks. When Opokuya commented on it, Esi flared up asking her what was wrong with one having a drink or two after work. Opokuya was finding it all distressing. But there was nothing she could do to help her friend. She secretly wished Esi would weep or do whatever else would get some of the tension out. But she also knew that her friend was not the weeping kind.
Eventually, Esi gave the car keys to Opokuya, who was so thrilled that she nearly flew out of the door. But then something occurred to her and she looked sharply at Esi.
‘But Esi. .. eh ... don’t you need your old car yourself? I mean isn’t Ali … taking the new one back?’
Esi understood. ‘No, it’s all right. Ali says the car is mine ... So you just go and enjoy your car!’
Opokuya released a huge sigh of relief.
The evening ended up being one of the vary rare times the friends had been together, and yet after a while they did not seem to have much to talk about. This was due to the fact that Esi was still feeling low over her problems with Ali, and Opokuya was too excited at the immediate prospect of having her own car. Which meant that Esi wanted to be alone, and Opokuya was in a hurry to be gone. Finally, Opokuya managed to leave Esi, and get into the car. She drove away. It was dusk, but too early to switch on the car’s headlamps. In any case, for all the clarity of her vision and the confidence of her steering, Opokuya could have been driving on the motorway at high noon.
Esi stood in the space left by her old car and listened to its engine as it wheezed away. She forgot that it was quite late, and she should go and lock the gate. Instead, she turned and went indoors. She shut the front door behind her and made straight for her bedroom and her bed. She sat down. Then to her own surprise, she started to weep. Nothing violent: just two tears rolling quietly down her cheeks.