14

Ojo was an area of narrow streets that crossed each other’s path forming a crucifix wherever they met. Many of these streets were lined with cars and the spaces between were filled with traders and their wares. The place was a vibrant open market where you never knew what you could find. Brown, rusted, caved-in roofs of the igloo-like houses filled the landscape like giant art installations. It was in this area that Desire walked in search of Ireti, looking at every street name until she found “Balewa Street” on a black signpost with white lettering. It was a blind alley with several houses, whose landlords, she learnt, were descendants of a settler. Desire stopped at a chemist two houses from the one she would later discover was Ireti’s. A girl of about 13, with a mole on her lower lip, was in the shop watching a black-and-white 12-inch Sony television.

‘Condom,’ her voice was low. She felt unsure, but she looked straight at the girl’s face to keep up her act of defiance.

‘Na you wan use am?’ the girl asked with her focus on the television screen.

Desire scanned the scanty shelf of medicine in the shop and replied with a lilt in her voice, ‘Yes-o. Bring two packs.’

‘How many?’

‘Two packs,’ Desire made a V sign with her fingers to indicate two and then slipped them into her bag as the girl returned to watching the drama on TV.

Ireti’s house was also an old rectangular bungalow with walls that wore a navy-blue paint. She walked straight through the door, and down the passage of rows of opposite rooms in the house, moving past buckets of water placed at doorsteps, kerosene stoves on wooden tables and raffia brooms leaning against the walls. When she reached the second to last door, she knocked. She didn’t know which of the rooms was his, but she concluded that being a university politician, he would not rent a room at the entrance of any place, for his own security. ‘Who be dat?’ That was not his voice, and sure enough, the door of the room was swung open by a man in underpants.

‘Wetin happen?’

‘Good evening, sir. Is Ireti in?’

‘Ireti? Who be Ireti?’

‘He is a LASU student…’

‘Na him tell you say dis na him room? Waka from hia!’ He eyed her with sleep-burdened eyes that were swollen and mtssshed at her. His mouth remained in a pout and a bulb of spit hung from the middle of his lower lip.

‘You wan make I woz you.’ He tightened his fist, folded it under his armpits and spread his legs apart, observing her till she sensed that he wouldn’t budge unless she left his doorstep. As she walked away from him, she felt him still standing there with lasting disdain. She didn’t turn to look, even when his door slammed shut. Unsure of which door to try next, she returned to the front of the house to see if she would find any clue or someone who could help.

There was a woman with a baby strapped on her back with aso oke cloth, sitting on the porch. ‘Well done ma.’

‘Wehdone.’

‘I am looking for a friend. He is in LASU.’

The woman took a long look at her, and broke into a smile that disappeared just as quickly as it had appeared on her lips. ‘You for greet when you dey enter? You studen-shildren sef. You no know say when you enta house, you go greet? Anyhow, that man no well like dat.’

There was a soft note in her voice which was not pity. The woman looked up at Desire, and asked, ‘Who you say you dey find again?’

‘Ghandi Reloaded,’ she said, and then thinking they may not know him by that name added, ‘Ireti. Student, LASU.’

‘De Presido? Ha, na dat room,’ she stood up, pointed in the direction of the room and turned back in an instant to her chore of picking beans on a tray Desire had not noticed. Desire thanked the woman and walked to the door, catching her breath before she knocked like she was stroking a beloved’s skin. There was a poster, bearing “GHANDI RELOADED FOR PRESIDENT”, and a picture of Ireti in a suit and tie, pasted on the door. She had missed it earlier.

Desire stopped to listen. She heard more than one voice inside the room. She considered turning back and stood by the door in deep thought.

‘You sure say na Ireti you come see?’

Desire did not turn to the woman, yet she knew she stared, so she called out and didn’t knock, ‘Ireti. Are you in?’

‘Yes? Come in.’

She opened the door and faced three men turning to look at her. A small fluorescent scattered its light over everything in the room. She recognised two of them from the classroom incident.

‘O-baby!’ the one she didn’t know greeted her with so much familiarity she nearly asked if they had met somewhere before then. He stood up and met her by the door. With one hand holding one of her shoulders and the other grabbing her hand for a handshake, he said, ‘Hope you didn’t have trouble locating this place.’

‘I found it, that’s what matters,’ she said with a shrug.

‘Ireti has not been able to sleep or eat or drink-o,’ he laughed as he spoke in small bits, so that it seemed that he was holding back something more thunderous. This made it possible for him to speak as he laughed, ‘So, do you want to drink, tell me and I will provide it for you. Ireti means a lot to me, and I am ready to give you anything you want.’

‘Hmm.’

‘Hmm what? I say anything? Meanwhile, are you campaigning for us among your friends?’

The more he talked, the more Desire wondered how long she could keep up being polite enough not to wipe off some of the spit he sprayed on her face as he spoke to her. He was one of those people who gathered saliva in their mouth when they spoke, so that every time he opened his mouth it flew about and settled on whatever was closest to him. He also turned out to be the one who talked the most of the lot.

Desire stood in front of him, but stared at Ireti with intensity, hoping that he would say something that would make him stop talking. The small talk on school politics continued, until Ireti’s feigned coughing and the dragging of her feet on the floor, signified to his friends that they needed to leave the room.

The spittle-mouthed friend dropped his hand from Desire’s shoulder and said, ‘We’ll see you again. It was nice talking to you.’

‘Mmm,’ she nodded and he gave her a full smile before leaving with the others who made excuses about how they needed to rush off to finish one thing or the other.

‘How’re you doing?’ Ireti asked as the last of his friends left the room.

‘Fine! Fine!’ She surveyed the room, then its floor which was covered with a flower-patterned linoleum carpet. The mattress was on the floor, covering a part of the exposed cement floor. A few metres from the bed, a Tiger fan blew from a corner of the room where the unruly wires of several rechargeable lamps were plugged into an adaptor. The 14-inch Sony television on the carpet carried a CD player. There were some old newspapers on the floor. The sub-headline of the one on top caught her attention: “FREE AT LAST”.

Desire didn’t need to read the rest. It was a story on Prof’s release from prison. She wondered why Ireti would be interested in his story. So many people had lost interest in Prof.

‘Come and sit here,’ Ireti patted a spot on the bed for her. His eyes had remained on her all this time. She stirred from inspecting the room and moved to his side of the bed. She waited for him to touch her and twice she lifted her eyes with the hope that she would catch him staring, but his eyes remained fixed on the floor. The one time she kept eye contact, he was watching her with something close to pity.

Desire stood up and began to strip until the only piece of clothing on her was her cotton panties. She leaned against him and raised his head to meet hers, but he turned his face away. She shook her head and walked to the other end of the room.

‘I’m ready,’ she said, folding her arm over her breasts.

It took some seconds again before Ireti walked across the room to her. It was just a few metres wide, but his heavy breathing and the friction of his feet on the rubber carpet made the room seem like many kilometres from end to end. ‘Come,’ Desire felt like she was watching herself speak, and she wanted to see to the end of what this other version of her was up to.

Ireti stood before her, his eyes fixed on what she thought was her groin—only to discover it was her navel.

‘That’s a neat cut. It’s like a button.’ He then looked away and stared again at his feet. Desire walked over to the mattress and lay on it. She faced upward, turning sometimes to look at his fluttering eyes, which he continued to avert from her as he struggled out of his clothes. He took off everything except his boxers.

‘Won’t you remove that one?’ she attempted a giggle, but her voice got caught in her throat.

He stood in front of her again and cast a sheepish look at her. She could feel goose pimples rise on her arms.

‘What is it?’ she stammered.

He said nothing and tugged at the boxers but did not remove them. She didn’t know what it was, but she could see he was fastened to the spot by fear, and just as suddenly, like someone who had received a quick reproach, he headed for the door. Desire sat on the bed. She felt nervous and waited for him to return. When he did not, after a few minutes, she considered going after him. Just then, he trudged into the room, the smell of cigarettes following him. He sat on the carpet.

‘What?’ this time Desire made sure her voice was firmer than earlier on. Ireti shook his head so uncontrollably that she sat up on the bed in haste.

‘What is it?’

He just kept shaking his head and after a while he said in a voice that sounded like a father calming a troubled daughter, ‘You remind me of—’ He followed this with a long sigh, staring at her navel, ‘Stand up. Dress up.’

Desire saw how he looked away anytime she tried to look into his eyes. She wondered if this timidity was genuine or just an act. She looked at him, now standing limp against the wall. His boxers had slipped down his waist a little and his hands were placed over his groin. He looked like a shy, young boy trying to hide his erection from the glare of girls. There was fear in his eyes.

He started in a voice that came like a car failing to start, ‘I can’t do it to you,’ he looked into her eyes as he spoke, but kept his hands over his penis. She saw him struggling to hold back the tears. Desire clasped his hands within hers.

‘Why? It won’t stand, or point, or what?’ She stared at his lower abdomen to assure herself that what she saw was an erection, where his hands still covered his penis.

‘Are you afraid? Is it that you can’t do it with a woman, is it me, or what?’ She searched her mind for things she had read on impotence in men.

He smiled. ‘You want to play doctor now, right?

Desire pressed on, ‘Do you feel guilty that you’re cheating on your girlfriend?’

‘I am a politician, I am part of the student parliament. I can be with anyone I want, but…’

Their eyes met, and he realised that his words seemed banal and tangential.

They stood watching each other as their breathing became heavier.

‘Oh! You’re gay, and you think I’ll…’

‘I think you’ll what?’ he raised a brow. He angled his head and she felt his eyes settle on her. She felt there was more undressing to be done beyond her naked state. She lowered her head and her lips twitched.

‘Are you…’ she stopped talking and looked down at the mattress. She looked at his hands over his boxers and realised that he was hiding his inability to be aroused.

‘Not now.’

‘Why is it not now?’ Desire did not look up when she said this to him. ‘Not even an erection. Is it that bad? Am I—’

Ireti was silent but placed a middle finger on her lip to keep her from saying more. ‘It’s not you.’ He placed his right hand over a birthmark which was right under her navel. It was a scrap of lumpy flesh, as big as a peanut. For some reason, she thought of her mother’s birthmark. Desire turned her eyes away from the birthmark to a soiled piece of a rag wrapped around the cupboard at the extreme end of the room. She could not understand what was happening at that moment. He had acted so much like a playboy and was now playing an altar boy checking his actions before the priest.

Desire looked up at Ireti’s face and said, ‘I thought you wanted it.’ She stopped as her voice shook when she spoke. The first feeling of shame came over her as she began to feel the weight of her actions.

‘You don’t want me, Desire.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘Get dressed, oya—next time.’ Something in his eyes told her there was never going to be a next time.

She sighed and sank to the ground, picking up her clothes, one after the other. Her shame multiplied and she regretted the words she had spoken to him in the class. She thought of Prof in that moment and felt shame descend on her all over again.

Desire dressed and sat on the bed. She wished she had not come to see him. She tried to talk, but found she could not. ‘I’m alright. I came to you, right? I’m not sick, okay? I just want you to take me.’ Her voice sounded distant to her.

Ireti sat by her side on the bed, scratched his head and faced the floor, ‘I don’t feel right about this.’

She swayed from side to side. She had never done something like this in her life and the more she was rejected, the more she wanted the ground to swallow her. He was the first man she had undressed in front of, for sex. She had seen men unclothe her with their eyes many times and did not understand why this one was dressing her up with his.

‘Well. You know—’ he lifted his eyes from the floor and put on a T-shirt over his boxers.

‘I think it’s time to go home,’ he rubbed his hands together, trying to break up the moment.

‘There’s got to be some reason. Tell me something,’ she said, and then she felt more self-loathing and changed tack. ‘It is past seven.’

‘Or you can sleep here tonight. My friends and I would look for somewhere else to sleep.’

‘Seven is late? I think I should just go,’ she said quietly.

‘Do you want to talk? Just talk. We can undress and hold ourselves and just talk.’

She looked at him and shook her head, slowly at first and then vigorously, his words irritating her more as she considered them. She covered her face with her hands and promptly pulled on her trousers, ‘I’ll leave now.’

Before they stepped outside the room, he stopped her by the door and said, ‘I’m sorry.’

Desire shook her head and as she felt the bile rise up her throat she asked, ‘Just like that? Who does that?’

‘Please…’

Desire sighed, ‘You’re sorry?’ She turned towards the door and he changed the subject like they hadn’t seen each other naked just a few minutes earlier.

‘Why do you live so far away from school? It is like living in the dark. You never get to hear anything until you are in school the next day. So, is it, eh… independence? Solitude? Or circumstance?’

Desire looked up at his face and shook her head but said nothing.

‘Talk to me. You know why I gave you my address? You didn’t look like the words you spoke. I just feel something about you, and as you undressed, I saw it wasn’t sex.’

‘Mtssssh,’ she kissed her teeth and added, ‘Seer!’

‘I don’t want us to start with sex. I feel like something is about to be sacrificed.’ He stopped and laughed, ‘You know another girl won’t pass through this room without a whip from my big man here.’ He looked down at his groin as he spoke and laughed, ‘I don’t know, but I just…’

‘You just… feel sorry?’ Something in her gave as she spoke.

She stayed silent until they got to where his friends sat outside, playing a game of draughts. Mr. Spittle-mouth was the first to notice them, ‘Now-now-now? You people have finished?’ he said with a laugh and added, ‘Babeee! Stay over now,’ he pleaded.

‘I live in Jakande Estate, in Abesan.’

‘Where’s Abesan?’

‘In Ipaja.’

‘Ipaja?’

‘I need to go. My roommate will be expecting me,’ she said to them.

‘Na wa-o! Why would you go to a far-far place like that to get accommodation?’

Ireti took Desire’s arm from where it lay idly by her side and tucked it into his. Desire caught another friend wink at him and follow it with a shout of, ‘Ireti baba! Ghandiiiii! Ghandiiii Reloaded!’

‘Come visit soon,’ one of them said to her and the others fell about laughing.

She removed her arm from his and walked swiftly ahead.

At the bus stop, he said to her, ‘You’ll be fine. Sex is itself an anxiety. Sex cannot cure nervousness. It’s like trying to end your woes over a bottle of beer.’

‘Are you also a psychologist?’ She smiled, and trying to push away her shame she said, ‘I saw newspaper cut-outs of Prof Eni, the activist, in your room. Do you know him?’

He ignored her question and pointed, ‘See that bike man wants to kill himself, who drives like that?’

‘What has that got to do with the question I asked you?’

He tried to respond but he stammered for a while, before he said, ‘Well, it is a piece of paper.’

‘You look a lot like him. I was just wondering if you—’

He interjected before she concluded her question, ‘You know why I didn’t… do it?’

‘Why?’ She tried to sound quite unconcerned.

But she felt her anxiety must have shown as he lowered his voice further when he said, ‘My mum did not finish her university because she was impregnated in her second year, and it all appeared like history was about to repeat itself.’

‘I got some condoms!’ She lowered her voice as a passer-by looked at them. A car passed and she saw the deep hurt as its lights flashed from his face and tried to figure out what she saw in his eyes.

‘Well, that has passed now. Maybe another time. Meanwhile, you really think I look like Prof? People say I should meet him. I heard he is out of prison now. I don’t know how to. Everyone always says I look like him,’ and with a brief pause he said, ‘I’m just trying to put his life together. You know… find out what made him who he is and all that what-not.’

‘Is that all?’ she said, not fully convinced, but glad that he finally answered her question.

‘I keep staring at his picture all the time, trying to find the resemblance. Anyway, it’s good to look like him, you know, he is known for his integrity. I just want to know more, at least about the man I look like.’ He laughed, turning to face Desire and asked, ‘Seriously, how do you go to a man who never knew you all his life and say—“Hello, I’m the result of a one-night-stand you had years back”?’

He became still and looked up at her face with both relief and a plea on his face. This was how she realised it was not something he wanted to say. Ireti turned away. Desire stared at him with her mouth wide open.

‘Is he?’

‘Please,’ he whispered. ‘You… Please,’ he said again, and she watched his face and the way it seemed as if his cheek was being pulled apart, yet he still managed a glint in his eyes as he spoke. ‘Please, don’t tell anyone. I don’t even know if I want to meet him—I want to, but then I don’t want to. You know that tired saying, of letting sleeping dogs lie. I want to heed it.’

‘Does he know?’

‘Please, don’t talk about it.’

‘Should we go back to the house and talk about it?’

‘No! I was just talking nonsense,’ he snapped.

She turned away, a little disappointed at his words because in her head she was already thinking of sharing the news with Prof, wondering about his reaction and if it would end his decision to live in a dark room, or cause him to stop her from seeing him. With these thoughts in her head, she spotted an okada man making a sign to her asking if she wanted his services. She flagged him down and jumped onto the back of the motorcycle. Before the machine roared off into the night, she beckoned for Ireti to come closer. She left him with the words, ‘I will see to your father.’

She tapped the okada man lightly on the shoulder, indicating he should move. She did not turn to see what Ireti’s face looked like, to say goodbye or see him wave, if he did. When she arrived at the estate, it was almost 11pm. She could not go to see Prof.