My mind was in turmoil, I could not believe my ears...”madam’s husband?” my head was beginning to feel heavy, my whole body, except for my legs; they were wobbly and ready to give way for a dramatic slumping. The driver carried my bag into the open booth and searched around with his eyes.
“Oga, na all the load be this? You leave others for inside?” he made to move.
I managed to get into the car and wound down the glass for fresh air, I was beginning to feel nauseous. “Whenever you are done looking for what you did not keep, you will get your silly, miserable self behind the wheels and get me out of this God forsaken place.” I said inwardly as I stretched in the car to contemplate my next line of action, if at all I had any in mind.
My house was neat and tidy in every sense of the word, so I was dead surprised to find out the ground floor of the house was inhabited by my gateman and his family.
“Where is my family?” I thundered. “Where the hell is everybody? What in God’s name is going on here?”
“Oga, madam...madam, madam and pikin them...they go..they ..”
“out with it you idiot!” I threw the glass cup on the table at the nitwit, he ducked and it smashed with a loud sound against the wall. He looked on at me like nothing serious happened. He must have thought in his mind, “well, a leopard will never lose its spots, you will never change.”
I will not deny it, I have always had problem controlling my temper. My son from Emilia has a permanent scar on the left side of his forehead from the rod I hit him with when he found it difficult telling the difference between plier and a spanner, despite my constant repetition of the instruction; “hand me a plier there junior.” I have no regrets whatsoever with my outbursts, sometimes humans needs to be treated like animals before they can act like they should.
“Will you speak now or should I make you?”
He had his eyes on mine; he had never done that before, everything seemed to have changed. He knew how much I detested been looked in the eyes when spoken to. How dare he?
I looked around frantically for something, anything, metal...just about anything solid enough for what I needed it to achieve.
“Oga?...” he called.
I looked up at him, expecting his apologies; that was the only thing that could save him from my wrath at that moment.
“...make you try that thing wey you do again o, if you wake my wife and my pikin wey dey try sleep, you no go like wetin I go do o.”
“hahahahahaa”, I laughed, no, he did not just say that to me in my own...”
“...i go put your bag for visitor’s room in case you wan sleep.”
He continued with my luggage into the visitor’s room and out seconds later and made his way into the master’s room; I watched in silence as he shut the door behind him. My head felt dizzy, spinning...i collapsed on the chair; it was more of shock than exhaustion. My gateman in my bedroom? My wife’s husband? Me? Sleep in the visitor’s room?
“Like hell this has got to stop lest I lose my mind. Get back here Abdu! Get your filthy self out of that room right now!”
I could not remember how long I have been knocking hard against the door of the master’s bedroom, two hours probably. I sat behind the door with my back against it, drained in every way a human could be. There ought to be a reasonable explanation to all this, there must be, and no matter how plausible the explanations might be, I will not forgive Emilia, never! As for Abdu, he is an easy fry. I dialed Emilia’s number, it rang for some time, and she answered her phone.
“Hello, Emilia...” I started with a loud and death threatening voice.
“Hello, please she is fast asleep, call her tomorrow morning, thank you.” The line went dead.
“Hello, hello...”
That wasn’t Emilia at the other end of the line; that was the voice of a sleepy man, deep and calm. ‘What the hell is going on’. I was losing it...i had already lost it.
I awoke to the creaky sounds of opening doors and loud noises of kids like they were right inside my ears. I opened my eyes and allow it adjust to the rays of sun streaming into the house from the opened windows, right there over me were Abdu’s kids, four of them, staring at me and chattering in hausa.
“Kai! Get inside now!” a female voice called and the kids disappeared. I recognized the tiny voice, Fatima, Abdus’s niece; that was how he referred to her until she got pregnant. I looked at my wristwatch, quarter past eleven in the morning. Good God! I had slept off sitting on the ground with my back against the door; almost halfway into Sunday.
“Good morning oga” she greeted.
the memory of the previous night came flooding into my head and I felt my bile pumping.
In the bathroom, I dialed Emilia’s number again, it rang on and on and nobody answered. Finally someone answered and a little adorable voice spoke into the receiver...
“...please call back later, mummy and daddy went outing, please call back later...” and when I thought she was about to hang up...”and please uncle, do not tell mummy I answered her phone cos she has warned me countless times not to do so, and daddy too. Bye.” She hung up.
“Mummy and daddy went outing?” this is sheer madness!, arrant nonsense! What was that little witch trying to insinuate?
I had my shower and changed into a new clothe, I asked Fatima for the car key as Abdu was nowhere to be found and the car, in the garage.
“Since madam dash am the car, Abdu no dey waka go anywhere make him no carry the key for him pocket o.”
“Now it is very clear to me, this is the season of madness in this country. What nonsense are you saying? Oh my goodness! Is this the part where somebody tells me “you just got punked” cos it feels like it...” I went on and on in rage, spitting over Fatima who had already been rolled into a ball with her hands over her head in case of unexpected blow from me. After much ranting, I headed out for Mitch’s restaurant which was about twelve minutes’ drive from my house; I really needed to eat something, not the mess offered me for food by Fatima.
Mitchel had set up the eatery four years after I travelled to the Uk. and two years earlier when I had come back, I was told he had been in France for over six years and counting. I had always liked it in Mitch’s restaurant.
Mitchel and I had always been good friends but our friendship went sour when Emilia picked me over him and it turned bitter when as the only son of my parents I was forced to get married at the age of twenty-two and Emilia had agreed; her step-mother was very much happy to have her away.
I got off the cab just five meters away from the eatery and was shocked to the marrows when I saw him cross the road towards the eatery from the grocery store across...Mitchel Badmos. We hugged and hugged...and hugged; it was a miracle I did not end up with broken ribs considering the fact that he had grown so big and chubby.
“Long time brother, when did you come in? Last I heard, you were in France.”
“You heard right. But I came in three days after you travelled back to the Uk. Oh come on, let’s go in. I do not want to keep my wife waiting, she must be worried by now.
“your wife? You finally agreed to marry at this old age?” we laughed.
“come, she will be so happy to see you. I bring her here every Sunday and cook her something special myself. Come.”
He opened the door and walked in, I followed behind with a big smile. We walked to the private corner he had reserved for his date.
“Hey sweet, look who I ran into outside.” He looked at me. “That’s my wife.”
She looked over her shoulder at us...I stopped on my track, my smile slowly disappeared.
Chidera Reginald....
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