Chapter Twenty One

“Bloody well, keep your body!” It was a next connubial step up; they visited his mother’s station. “Blow it!” SonOfMan hissed again.

Lights were dimmed and they were under the covers normally, but she coiled up facing the other side, and giving him her back.

He had made no effort to touch her, because he could hold his cool just about any urge and in under any circumstance. He had nurtured himself to fall for sexual urge only at will. He had learned how to caution his wayward cock courageously, and float his pride admiringly, while leaving the portion of inner-self feverish to that seduction.

But tonight his training failed him. He was too angry to let her get him whipped that way. Angry and… disappointed. She had sworn to hold away her sexual passion for him, that was obvious. “Don’t be such an awful punisher; why not be a little hot and bitchy for me? I mean like these models on screen that have missed their lovers?” he hissed the more.

MyAngel gave a gleeful laugh; “Oh—huh; tell me you’ve had that filthy dream to fuck nasty arse in magazines and on screen?” She mocked heartlessly. “But that’s not healthy, you know.”

“What are you saying this? We ought to need each other!” He wasn’t in real sense imitating mischievous men in their naughty dreams of fucking R and B bitches. Or when he read the article in a magazine they contained, he wanted his fiancée to be exactly like hot arse. The point was, if his lady had started seeing lovemaking as an unnecessary nasty thing, then love with all intents and purposes should be seen as a questionable dull thing. “You’re my fiancée, you owe me that duty.”

“WyiWorri, you’re in violation, let me help you understand this before we have a big problem,’’ she said almost. “Here’s a woman, not a sexpot, nor a receptacle, but a woman who clearly has her centre in herself. Your fiancée or not, this is my shaping decision and l… have… come… to it.”

“Dumebi, you know, that style doesn’t best communicate the insight… the power and right that we’re brought into touch with this union. Love, which gives energy and direction to our complement and blissfulness, has lost the power to do so; maybe you never loved me,” he decried.

“Maybe… if you think I’m just for sex.”

“No, don’t just get me that way,” he debunked. “You know that I should question this come up frigidity?”

“Is that so?” she intoned. “Anyway, even us women, if we’re honest we’ll agree that we’re in some way like that… a mystery to us; not only to men.”

“Dumebi, you’re into it; I’m only calling like someone aspires to be an ideal partner, to be my soul, to comfort and nurture me with the necessary love. Inspire me, seduce me. We supposed to have same intuition, then I need you; allow us to feel and to relate and to listen to it. Make it sure you’re the best for me.”

“You know what? Sometimes I think for us women, how all the psychology about us has come from men, who call us beguilingly, be our this, be our that. But these are mere mental visions of women, which spring from men’s needs… men’s canal needs, of course.”

“No, you got it all wrong; they rather spring from men’s needs in their sense of incompleteness… visions which necessitated the institution of the first union of Garden of Eden… visions which see women as the complementary.”

“Show ooo! How all too easy it is for women to be pulled in this logic; but that’s not what we’re just like. It’s either accepting it and playing the role of a sex object, or, WyiWorri, saying no. And this second alternative often seems attractive and dignifying to me.”

Caveat… this was a pointing signal. “Let me tell you, Dumebi,” he said—of course, nothing again to be guarded, she was fake, and like a stopgap, she had out-used him; “Whether the second alternative seems attractive or dignifying, it seriously pervades the code of love of union… complementary and clingy love of union. Take a cop of that!”

MyAngel was picking her belongings when SonOfMan woke up. There was the impression that she had earlier swept the compound, and even washed the plates in the kitchen to make readiness. The mark of icy Coventry was there in her attitude. He could still observe in the air, the gruff sell-out she finally dropped last night. It saddened; very painful, nevertheless. He felt he would lose her like losing an arm, if she was gone. He had forced something about himself to really make her different from other women. Something about him that was direct and honest to feel heartbroken, even with her imposture and duplicity.

He shook the thought out of his head, and rolled out of the bed. He didn’t want to feel the stupid way about the hypocrite anymore. And he didn’t try to feel that way until she left the room—the house—in that incommunicado way, and he followed her closely behind, and then gave her only half of her transport fare back to Lagos. Why he did that was what he couldn’t tell now, only he wanted her to survive that journey scarcely. Though he knew even without the half he gave, she would always survive the journey.

After SonOfMan had had something to eat, and one or more cans of beer to hold heart, he set himself hovering over his table to put down the latest. As usual, he browsed through the earlier notes to fix sequentially the concatenation.

But this time he read en passant thinking how he would rather confront Double-chief, the arch rival—knowing this move had backings based on circumstantial hypothesis, and strange dreams, no matter how dependable and categorical. He was sweepingly taken up with the thought that he became telepathic with this Double-chief.

At least the next happening confirmed that. SonOfMan picked his phone and a male strange voice sounded from it.

(Please sir, you’re Mister Wyi?)

“Maybe, anything I can help?”

(Yeah… a great deal.) The caller swallowed conspicuously. (I’m Double-chief if you mind.)

“Double-chief… you…” SonOfMan couldn’t stop that impulse.

(Yeah, man; but perhaps you help me this way… with this question.)

“Come on,” SonOfMan held himself.

(Mister Wyi, you’re a corps member serving in Ondo State, and Dumebi is your sister?)

“Maybe she’s kind of my sister, but I was a corps member rather; through with the National Assignment sometime around July last year.”

(Okay—thank you)

Double-chief had ended that call before SonOfMan thought what if Dumebi wasn’t kind of his sister, would it have made Double-chief have antagonistic possessive urge to disclose his intimacy with her?

Anyway, it wasn’t so inept. The ‘Maybe’ answer was a suspense worrying food for the curious mind. He would call again; SonOfMan resisted the urge to call him back. He however stored the number.

He was closing up the today’s note about five hours later when the inscription Double-chief calling danced on the screen of the cell phone.

“Yes… Double-chief.”

(This Dumebi, who’s kind of your sister—how close?) Double-Chief paused convulsively. (Man, I… I… mean, can someone from you marry someone from her?)

“Why blooming ask?” SonOfMan couldn’t hold out some imprecation. “Is there any fellow you know who said he’s from me, and who wants to marry her, and you feel like to make inquiry for him, or he himself sends you?”

(Nah—nah, Man.) Double-Chief denied. (You’re this fellow, and I want to warn you out.)

“Wait a minute! I know you’re not sounding stupid?”

(Stupid? Nah, man! She’s my wife, and I’ve gone for her dowry. I’ve known her family for this purpose, okay?) Double-chief rattled on; (You know what? I’m from far Ngookpala in Imo State, but I’ll tell you what here. I know all her siblings, I know her mother and I know her uncle, who stood for her late father. I know her relatives and I know all of them just for this conjugal union with her. I just called Frank her elder brother now, because I have expected her back to Lagos.)

Ngookpala in Imo State—Ngookpala! That name—that town—was really telling another revealing thing. ‘Thank you Jesus’, SonOfMan even ventured a pray. “Look, Double-chief, it’s high time you stopped being stupid. Dumebi you’re talking here is my fiancée; get that!” he shouted.

(It can’t be, Man.)

“Well, Double-chief, we’ve done our little wedding there in the altar of God.”

(I said it can’t be; who knows? Her people didn’t know! The public didn’t hear!)

“Alright, we actually did it in our own private way; but what matters is the presence of God there.”

(Nah, man, what matters is taking her people along… her people’s support… their blessings! That’s the tradition for picking a wife!) Double-chief was shouting his head off over there. (We have their approval, and would have their blessings, but we’re taking our time. We want our wedding to be one in town. She’s so beautiful and deserves high celebration, so we wouldn’t hurry it… but two times we almost had it in haste, then we didn’t again; but I’ve taken the marriage list, and would have to clear everything remaining on her dowry.)

“Then you’re yet to finish the dowry, but you claimed she’s your wife?”

(Yeah, she lives here with me in my house, and I said two times I almost did everything, but two times we cancelled it.)

SonOfMan was half-prepared anyway, so he said; “Double-chief, do you like trepidation around sense of fluster?”

(That’s an odd question, Man.)

“And you do?”

(Nah, don’t think I do, but perhaps I can manage some… in moderate dose anyway.)

“Moderate dose?”

(In short, I never wished trepidation around my love with my wife, Dumebi.)

“But something balefully unnerving there, actually made you start worrying about me?” SonOfMan said.

(Of course Man, I have some pointing evidence about your dalliance with my wife… yeah; that’s my only concern.) Double-chief paused, then as if he had some thought he finally asked; (Why do you however ask?)

“Because Double-chief, you’re going to kick up a lot of it in a few days if you want to.”

(I… don’t quite understand.)

That was Double-chief’s reply, but he would. SonOfMan would make him. “Maybe you try come down home here one of these days, and meet this guy, Mister Wyi, over a round table. Men understand… they always understand each other over a round table, right?”

Double-chief took some thoughtful time. (Right Man, have something to take me down to Owerri in next two days… that’s weekend, that’s deal.)

“Good… deal.”

SonOfMan dropped his handset over the table, but thinking, ‘of course I have some pointing evidence about your dalliance with my wife…’