The next week, I went to Betty’s party. The house was already full of guests when I arrived, and I was greeted at the door by Iris, Betty’s daughter, who was in reality the host of the party, since everyone present was either her friend or linked to her projects in Nigeria. I was meeting Iris for the first time but soon enough was floating in her company, moving with her from one guest to another. There I was, ‘Frank Jasper, the published author’, leaning into her, shoulder to shoulder, like childhood friends. She filled the room with her presence, her light-grey dress cut just above the knee, tailored to match her frame. Her guests didn’t care who I was but flashed their teeth and shook my hand, their heads cocked or slightly tilted – ‘Ah, a writer’ – and carried on with their conversations. The simple fact that I was a writer was sufficient reason for me to be there, even if no one actually wanted to talk to me. I looked the part as well, wearing a second-hand shirt missing a button at the top, baring a sparsely hairy chest, which all added to my charm and character as a creative type. The guests were mostly Europeans and Americans stationed in and around Port Jumbo for one reason or another, ‘expats’ as they called themselves, in their mid- to late thirties, with ivory-white teeth and smooth skin. A dangerously tanned redhead with wine glass in hand was saying something about her ex-boyfriend – ‘He was a complete cunt’ – but swiftly gave me an innocent look when Iris and I approached. A heavyset woman with green eyes, looking awkward and out of place with a dusty brown fanny pack strapped to her waist, introduced herself as Doris, a South African conservationist working at a local wildlife sanctuary. I wanted to ask a question or two but Doris exuded a confusing mixture of skittishness and coarseness that forced me to move along. When I landed in front of Mr Maduka, the other Port Jumbian present, I suddenly began to feel the weight of my odd presence at the gathering. He was standing alone by the window, overdressed in a three-piece suit that did little to conceal his enormous stomach. He pinned me down with his stern stare, and instead of shaking hands and moving on like the rest, he ran his eyes from my worn-out leather belt to my beaten-out-of-shape shoes (passed down from my grandfather). Then, in earshot of everyone, he boomed, ‘So you are a writer, eh? A novelist, eh? What have you written?’
‘What have I written?’ I asked back.
I could hear the hostility in his voice. He didn’t wait for an answer from me. He charged on, parting his legs for balance, as though to wrestle me to the floor, and started peppering me with more questions.
For a second I began to imagine what he was up to. It occurred to me that he wasn’t asking these questions for his own sake but for the benefit of those around us, perhaps to unmask me as an impostor, and in doing so remind me that my type – visibly lacking the material lustre of the moneyed sort – does not mingle with ‘expats’.
Iris had been sucked away by the redhead and her animated account of her ex. And as these things tend to happen, a centripetal force drew to the scene the person I least wanted to see me humiliated: Betty. She was just in time to hear Mr Maduka unleash another question: ‘Have you read Pascal Nwabuko?’
I haven’t and won’t, I almost blurted out. But before I could gather the courage to reply, Betty was already speaking.
‘A fantastic writer,’ she cried. ‘I read his novels before leaving Boston.’
‘He’s the best African writer of our time,’ Mr Maduka added, turning towards Betty and offering a smile, unleashing a layer of charm he hadn’t shown me. ‘You know,’ he boomed, ‘Nwabuko might just be the new Chinua Achebe, and I’m sure he’ll make the Booker shortlist this year with his new novel.’ Then he turned to me, resuming his contemptuous demeanour. ‘What do you think, eh?’
Before I could speak he moved on to some other subject, dropping names of other known African writers. I scanned the room for Iris, caught her eye, and excused myself from the company of that confidence-busting idiot, who, I later gathered, was an investment banker with strong ties to a scandalous oil company.
‘Have you been up to the balcony?’ Iris asked when I reached her.
‘No, I haven’t,’ I replied, relieved to be far from Mr Maduka.
‘It’s nice up there around this time,’ Iris said, inching away from the redhead and her break-up story. ‘I’ll show you.’
We walked up and with each step the wine-fuelled murmur of voices faded. I began to feel like myself again, free to remain in my head.
‘A perfect view,’ I said. From where we stood the cacophony of city traffic was a muffled hum, almost like the sea when heard at night from a distance.
‘Indeed,’ Iris said, closing her eyes and drawing in a lungful of air.
I surveyed the row of rooftops and saw a number of small shacks tucked between and behind fancy houses. Turning to the left, down below, I saw a group of men in the garden of Iris’s house, four of them, clutching their beer like lucky charms from distant lovers. It wasn’t hard to figure out who they were: drivers who chauffeured the expats around and beyond the city. I could see how they bore their important jobs in starched and neatly ironed shirts and trousers, in polished leather shoes, with clean-shaven faces that nevertheless betrayed years of suffering. They seemed satisfied where they were, outside, while the young expats wined inside. At least they weren’t commercial taxi drivers battling thugs, fumes and the stench of drunken passengers.
As I was looking, a young maid brought them a tray of barbecued chicken skewers. The men released a little cheer, leaped off their chairs and pounced on the tray. Relaxing again, they planted their lustful eyes on the poor girl as she retreated, tracking her rear until the door snapped shut. Iris had seen this too.
‘My mother can’t stop talking about your novel,’ Iris said. ‘Looks like you’ve got yourself an American fan.’
Self-conscious, I stared down at my feet. When I glanced up I saw an undecipherable grin on her face. I summoned the courage to speak. ‘I guess that’s the point of writing, the hope that somewhere, somehow, a reader will enjoy the work.’ I was paraphrasing a line I’d read or heard somewhere.
‘She thinks you’re a talented writer,’ Iris said. ‘She knows her stuff, having tried her hand at it.’
‘I’m flattered,’ I said, easing into my best conversation mode, resisting the urge to ponder the last bit about her mother’s attempt at writing. A failed writer with an instinct for good writing? I wasn’t sure if Iris was being ironic or condescending or both.
‘And she does run a book club back home,’ Iris added.
‘I see. What kind of books do they read?’
‘They just pick from the Times bestseller list or anything on Oprah.’ She said this with a little shrug and her lips signalled something I couldn’t decipher.
‘So you’ll apply, right?’
‘Apply for what?’ I asked.
‘The writing programme in Boston?’
‘Oh, well,’ I said, avoiding her eyes, ‘I’m still thinking about it. Sounds like a great opportunity.’
‘Let me know if you do apply,’ she said. ‘I probably won’t be back there for a while but you never know, I may be around to welcome you.’
‘I’ll let you know,’ I said, and asked how long she’d lived in Port Jumbo.
‘Almost three years now,’ she answered, ‘on and off. Funny that I’ve been here for that long and hardly know the city.’ She looked out to the horizon, as if to scan the entire city and shrink it into a small screen.
The sliding door opened and Doris, the South African conservationist, stepped out, looking like she’d just run a marathon. She planted herself between us, her back facing me, and proceeded to give Iris a long hug. An exotic fragrance that I couldn’t place filled the air.
‘You’re missing the action,’ Doris said, still with her back to me.
‘I’ll be down in a bit,’ Iris replied.
When Doris returned downstairs, Iris said, ‘That’s Doris for you, always making sure I’m OK.’
‘I suppose that’s what friends are for,’ I said, shocking myself with my ability to carry on this sort of conversation. I thought of wheeling the conversation back to where we were, to Iris’s hint at seeing more of the city, the real Port Jumbo, outside the cocktail bars and fancy restaurants where expats went to mingle. Perhaps I could show her around. But I couldn’t picture her in the places where I went: waterside bars with wooden walls and giant speakers blasting out songs at the entrance as the river washed up near the door; or those makeshift restaurants that popped up after dark to support a nightlife that the likes of her would not see until they really went looking. I avoided the subject.
‘Why Nigeria,’ I asked, ‘and not, say, South Africa or Kenya?’
‘Good question,’ she began, and then paused as if to organise her thoughts. She held the railing with both hands, pushed back and looked at me, all in one quick and elegant movement. ‘Why Nigeria,’ she repeated and turned around to lean into the railing, folding her arms. ‘You know, I’ve never given it a thought. I worked in Botswana for a year and lived in Zimbabwe for a few months. At this point it doesn’t really matter where I am in Africa.’
A thought crossed my mind: she could be a spy. I took a new look at her, trying to spot one thing that would confirm my suspicion. I wanted to ask about her job in development consulting, the nature of which her mother had mentioned the other day: meetings with top government officials, public–private partnership programmes that gave her access to leaders of industry, travel to state capitals around the country and consulting trips across West Africa. I felt a small palpitation as I tried to formulate a question that could lead to an unspoken gotcha moment.
The maid appeared behind us and informed Iris that it was time to head out to the French restaurant a few blocks away. So they had plans for dinner elsewhere? I had no idea. ‘I thought it was only drinks and snacks?’
Iris turned smoothly and said, ‘Oh, it must have skipped my mother’s mind, but you’re welcome to join us.’
I declined. How in the world would I be able to afford dinner at a French restaurant in Port Jumbo? And why suffer the humiliation of Mr Maduka’s reaction if he saw Iris or her mother paying for my dinner? I had a few deadlines to meet, I lied. An essay to finish for a local magazine, which made sense to her since I was, after all, a writer.
‘We could hang out next week or the week after,’ she said, ‘if you’re free.’
I pulled out my phone. ‘Let me see what I have this month,’ I said, as if I had anything going on. I found no major commitments ‘the week after next’ in my non-existent calendar. I agreed to meet.
On the way downstairs, walking behind her, I had a quick look at the half-open bedroom to my right and saw a sprawling bed with light-blue sheets, tidy and illuminated by a calming florescent bulb. I spotted Doris’s fanny pack at the head of the bed.
Downstairs, I emptied my glass of wine in one savage gulp, said my goodbyes, and left.
I took a bus to Morgan Street – named after John Morgan, the Scottish poet and missionary – and walked towards Morgan School, founded and managed for years by the same poet.
I turned right and walked the length of the eastern promenade, listening to the ocean and hoping to somehow overcome the anxiety that had accumulated during the evening.
At the Brass Street intersection, I saw two men playing cards in front of Bartho’s Pepper Soup Joint. I took an empty plastic chair and sat where I could watch the players and also see the ocean across the promenade. They asked if I wanted to join. I declined and bummed a cigarette from the one who had invited me to play. The sound of drums and trumpets and horns could be heard in the distance, coming from the far right side of the promenade. A parade. Soon they’d approach and linger, then head into the city. It could be one of many things: a funeral, a coronation, a political rally. I wasn’t in the mood to endure the noise up close.
I stood up and left the card players and ended up at the seedy SoSo Bar at the top of Brass Street. It was still early evening and from here, looking out the window, I could see the sun reaching down to the ocean, growing larger as it made its grand departure.
I ordered a bottle of Heineken and drank slowly, mindlessly watching the silent television as the loud music punched my ears senseless.
I knew that in a few hours the bar and the other bars on Brass Street would transform into outdoor restaurants, with tables out on the street, putting an end to traffic, and certain types of city creatures would emerge: workers from the factories, the unemployed with no hope of employment but a robust appetite for cheap liquor, the young and restless with more energy than society was willing or capable to harness, prostitutes who made no effort to disguise what they were selling. All united by some unrestrained quest for pleasure, rebelling against the new middle classes and their moral pretensions.
It was my first visit to Brass Street in a long time. I’d been a regular when I was at university, and had spent even more time there when I began work on my novel. Recalling those nights, and unsure of what to make of my experience at Iris’s place, I decided to wait for darkness to fall, to drown myself in what the night would offer. And when it was time, I found myself outside, sitting at a table on the kerbside, with three heavily rouged women who were already plastered when they joined me. They were loud but so was everyone else around, voices competing with the speakers pumping from all sides. The ladies told jokes about ‘last night’ and I laughed as if I cared. The one to my left kept slapping my lap as she spoke and the one to my right would lean into me as she laughed. For a second nothing existed outside that moment. Not my novel. Not the possibility of going to America. Not my job at the post office. I wanted the night to go on until my breath was no more. But somehow, as the night pressed on, and as the ladies talked among themselves and laughed and drank, I heard a voice rising from that beautiful chaos: ‘So, Frank, tell me about yourself. Do you have family here?’
I finished my drink and stood up forcefully, staggering back, stirring a minor protest from the ladies. ‘Where you dey go, fine boy?’ they asked. I said, ‘I dey go piss for that corner.’
I caught the sound of my own voice, how it stood apart from theirs. I knew that they, with their trained eyes, saw through me and could tell that my dalliance with the night did not evolve from the same depths as theirs. I saw pity in their eyes. I distanced myself from the table and began to walk away, faster than necessary.
It was nearly 2 a.m. when I got home.
I flung myself onto my bed.
I drifted in and out of sleep and finally found myself wide awake at 5 a.m.
That voice returned to me again: ‘You know, I bet they’d be interested in your work. I know they’ll be happy to have a writer from Africa. You should look it up and tell me what you think. I’m more than happy to put in a word for you.’
I stood up and went to the empty bookshelf where I kept my cigarettes and lighter. I took a stick and went to the window, pushed it open.
The city was quiet, amplifying my thoughts. I was considering Betty’s suggestion. What would I propose to write, and what would I say in my personal statement? How personal should the personal statement be? I’d have to seek reference letters from my publisher and also from my boss at the post office. The former would happily oblige. The latter had no idea I was a writer. There would also be visa issues to sort, which meant that I would have to gather documents to prove my citizenship and also guarantee that I would return after the fellowship.
And as I listened to the silence outside, I saw the bright colours of autumn, the spectacular conflagration of trees singing the end of summer. I’d ‘seen’ it in books, the magic of watching snow fall from grey skies in winter, the fog in early spring. I might as well apply. No harm in that. A wave of certainty crashed through me. I tossed the cigarette and went back to bed.