were only meeting each other for the first time.
“To be fair to the university administration, there’s at least one of them who doesn’t look at girls all the time. That is, if his declarations in public are anything to go by, although The Talking Drum is yet to uncover something about him. He is known to make every woman understand he is like bitter kola – not easy to eat…”
“You can say that again,” said Lilly Loveless, about bitter kola.
Bobinga Iroko laughed, crushed another bitter kola delightfully, and ate as if it was the best nut in the world. “And this is what women find intriguing,” he continued of the exception in the university administration. “Each comes determined to change him, to make a difference, but they all end up disappointed, as he is such a staunch Christian, and has made of the Holy Mother his entire obsession. To be frank though, no one quite knows the extent to which his heavenly Madonna could facilitate his ambitions of challenging the ‘Candle Light of the Devil’ on the topmost position at the university.”
“Wow!” said Lilly Loveless. “You really are all for this guy.”
“Not exactly,” replied Bobinga Iroko. “He doesn’t drink, and for someone from Mimboland not to drink, that is very suspect. It is like being big and not being PIP. Many people are good at hiding poisonous ambition until the time is right, then, like an angry mountain, they explode, devastating life and the creative effort of people for miles and miles without end.”
“Is Mount Mimbo volcanic?” asked Lilly Loveless.
“Yes, mildly volcanic, but dangerous enough to us who inhabit its sides.”
“What is PIP again?”
“Party In Power.”
“So everyone who is anyone must be in PIP?”
“What do you think in a country headed by the gifted, the one and only President Longstay?”
Lilly Loveless was tongue-tied.
“PIP means RIP for all else…”
“If you mean whom I think you mean,” began Dr Wiseman Lovemore, who had all along watched in amused silence Lilly Loveless and Bobinga Iroko get along. “I’ve heard a couple of women say he is the way he is because his battery does not charge…”
Just then, Dr Wiseman Lovemore’s cell phone rang.
“I must go,” said Dr Wiseman Lovemore. “Urgently needed at home. My daughter Pinklie has malaria. My wife has travelled.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” said Lilly Loveless, emptying her glass and standing up to go with him.
“No, no,” Dr Wiseman Lovemore protested. “You stay and enjoy yourself. Bobinga Iroko is a good and trusted friend. You are safe with him.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure. We’re used to her having malaria. I know exactly what to do when I get home.”
He left.
This was the first time since her arrival that Lilly Loveless was hearing anything about Dr Wiseman Lovemore’s family. She thought to herself: So he has a daughter, and is married. How interesting! Why has he been so economical with information on his family status? I’ve told him about my parents, my ex-boyfriend and a lot more. But he’s stayed guarded, measuring everything he says like water in the desert. We’ve been everywhere together, save for his home. Of course, I haven’t asked to be taken there. That’s a decision for him to make.
“How well do you know my friend, Wiseman?” Bobinga Iroko asked, as soon as they were alone.
“Not that much. He’s a friend of my supervisor’s. And he has been very helpful in ensuring that I settle in without much pain. He’s arranged for very good and terribly affordable accommodation for me with his colleague Desire, a very friendly woman herself. Desire is such an amazing personality. She’s so friendly that she can enter this place and be friends with everyone within minutes…” Lilly Loveless spoke at length on Dr Wiseman Lovemore and Desire, full of superlatives.
“I’ve known Dr Wiseman Lovemore for years, and we’ve been friends since our secondary school days. He’s very hard-working, but not terribly lucky. It took him years to get his PhD, and it is taking him for ever to change grades. He has been marking time as a lecturer for years. And his scholarly inertia seems to be affecting his social life. His wife, whose highest qualification is a Masters, heads the Department of Rhetoric. She is almost always on a plane to somewhere, to attend one conference or another, and the poor guy is forced to babysit a daughter of whom he seriously doubts he’s the father. He is particularly bitter about the fact that his wife talks openly here and there about her infidelities…”
“His wife is unfaithful?”
“It is the talk of the town. She’s said to be a favourite hunting ground for many, including our very own local champion the Reg, which isn’t surprising, given our penchant for light-skinned women.”
“I now understand why he has never taken me to see his family.”
“The Reg?”
“No, Dr Wiseman Lovemore.”
“He is not a happy man at home.”
“Has he thought of moving out?”
“He thinks it is still possible to patch things up, if only she wouldn’t go around broadcasting their private life at coffee tables and panel discussions at feminist congresses. There are certain things she just shouldn’t talk about outside the home.”
“I do empathise with the fact that he is not happy at home, but you can’t keep your wife from talking to her friends or expressing herself. That’s almost symbolic violence. We survive by discussing our troubles with women friends! And there’s no room for inhibition in scholarship.” Lilly Loveless felt pleased to reproduce her cherished rhetoric in favour of a sister and expert at rhetoric.
“They hardly talk. She at least should talk with him first. Charity begins at home, doesn’t it?”
Lilly Loveless nodded. They at least should talk to each other, try solving their problems themselves, and only after repeated failure at this level should they turn elsewhere for mediation.
“When you visit them as I do,” Bobinga Iroko continued, now drinking directly from the bottle, having inadvertently broken his glass. “You notice the huge chasm between them. He seems to live at the back of the house where there’s the kitchen and she seems to live at the front of the house. Their daughter is often made to serve like a boundary tree between two warring villages.”
“It must be really tough for both of them.”
“What would you say to this: A year ago, she left their marital bedroom, to sleep in the parlour, and sometimes in their daughter’s bedroom.”
“I think that’s completely natural. I know several married couples where he has his room and she has hers. Sometimes they visit each other at night … My mom and dad lived like that for a couple of years before their divorce.”
“No, that doesn’t exist
