too much of the gesture. “Whatever one can do to help out now and again to keep hope alive one will do.”
“What do I give you in return? Thank you is hardly enough…”
“You’ve already done enough for me”, Lilly Loveless looked at the files she was carrying appreciatively.
“Wait a minute.” Prince Anointed searched his trouser pockets. “I found this in my personal archives at home,” he said, handing her a piece of paper.
“What is it?” she asked, opening the folded paper. She could see the age on the paper.
“It’s something I wrote about money, when I was still a boy,” he told her. “I didn’t know I still had it. In fact, I had completely forgotten I ever wrote something like that.”
“As a boy? Amazing!”
“That’s the power of preserving documents.”
“You are absolutely right. I hope there were many more like you.”
“You can take the piece along. Photocopy it, so at least you have something by me, not simply something preserved by me.”
“I certainly will.” Lilly Loveless thanked him for the gift and left, touched.
Her curiosity couldn’t wait. As soon as she was out of the Archives, she read the piece:
‘Money, You’re impossible.
‘I’m always counting it and saving and wanting more of it, but it never seems to satisfy my needs. Every time I get it, it isn’t enough. I want more! More! More! Every time I do get it I don’t know what to do with it. Mom says save it for something you really want. Dad says save it for school. But I say, spend it. Now! Then just when I’ve decided what to buy I find something better. Money! You’re Impossible.
‘The little paper monster that everyone wants, that everyone likes, that everyone treasures. It crawls in people’s ears and up to their brains and then it does its disastrous work. It fills people with awful feelings of greed, disgust and jealousy. And then it leaves without fulfilling so many needs. Money! You’re Impossible.’
How apt! And a relevant gift too! Lilly Loveless went back into the Archives to thank Prince Anointed once more, and to invite him for a drink at a place of his choice after work.
The next day Bobinga Iroko appeared abruptly, and insisted Lilly Loveless should come along with him to Sakersbeach, where he had an appointment to interview a heavyweight politician for The Talking Drum. He promised to show her the lovely beach if she came. “Lots of opportunity to sunbathe,” he added, which was enough to persuade her. To Lilly Loveless, the beach was the most romantic place in the world. She couldn’t wait to kick off her shoes and bury her feet in the warm sand of the beach that she had heard so much about. There was another reason though. He would miss his appointment if he sat down to tell Lilly Loveless of developments. Better to do so in the car, on the way to Sakersbeach, was his idea.
Lilly Loveless quickly assembled a towel, sun protection cream, her digital recorder and camera, her iPod, and other things she thought she would need in Sakersbeach.
“I haven’t seen or heard from Dr Wiseman Lovemore for days. Is he OK?” she inquired, getting into the passenger seat of Bobinga Iroko’s secondhand double-cabin Toyota Hilux pickup. She noticed he was wearing a similar flowery well-embroidered shirt to the one he wore when they met the first time at Mountain Valley, which she told him she liked. If her mom was here, she would have jumped to conclusions, for she was used to saying in response to her childhood question on what love was: ‘Love is when you tell a guy you like his shirt, then he wears it every day.’
“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” said Bobinga Iroko, turning the ignition.
“Is anything wrong?”
“Lovemore is under detention…”
“What for?”
Bobinga Iroko told her the story. The night a week ago when Lovemore left abruptly following a phone call, was when he was picked up by the police. “The maid made the call under duress, forced to lie that Lovemore’s daughter, Pinklie, had suffered a critical malaria attack that needed urgent attention.” When Dr Wiseman Lovemore hurried home, two policemen greeted him with handcuffs. They took him to the police station where he was detained, charged with instigating rebellious students to vandalise the Reg’s car, and also for being one of the masterminds behind student unrest at UM. The police played back a recording of him making injurious statements against the VC and Reg in an argument he had with a colleague, Dr Nosewordy Boiboibambeh, about the strike.
“When I went to see him upon learning of the detention, his spirits were not too low. ‘Being incarcerated and in pain proves I’m useful,’ he told me. But he was very disappointed that Dr Nosewordy Boiboibambeh, a colleague of his at the university with whom he quarrelled recently had secretly recorded their exchange and handed the tape to the university administration for whom he was spying. The police are now hanging onto every critical word he uttered in the tape as evidence that Lovemore is guilty.”
Lilly Loveless remembered the passionate exchange between Dr Wiseman Lovemore and one of his colleagues. She was sure that was the Dr Nosewordy Boiboibambeh in question, for the man had left in fury and in a hurry. But how could a colleague, an intellectual and an academic do a thing like that? She was baffled.
“What could he have said that was so injurious?” she asked.
“The details are scant, but he is said to have gone beyond the limits of acceptable criticism. Dr Wiseman Lovemore is not one to be suffering from too much respect for his boss. So you can well imagine what he must have said.”
“We need to get him released. Have you tried finding out how to go about this?”
“The police don’t want to hear the word ‘bail’ mentioned in connection with Dr Wiseman Lovemore. They’ve been instructed to treat him as a dangerous element to be watched closely.”
“Do you think he is guilty? Did he instigate students to burn down the Reg’s car? What truth is there to the allegations?” Lilly Loveless was full of questions. She felt guilty that it was only now she was learning of Dr Wiseman Lovemore’s detention. Why didn’t Desire tell her? Then she remembered that Desire wasn’t around, that she had said something about taking advantage of the strike to rush to her home village upcountry to attend to some urgent matters.
“There’s something fishy about the arrest. I know that the VC and Reg are above Senate in their prerogative to bite and blow with impunity, but what I can’t understand is why his fellow critical colleagues at the university are being so silent. Am I to believe that we are living in the company of cowards who only pretend to stand up for things? One thing I can assure you though, The Talking Drum is leaving no stone unturned to get to the bottom of the matter, especially in the light of certain things we have uncovered…”
“What have you uncovered?” Lilly Loveless was curious, as always, whenever she was in the company of this indomitable Bobinga Iroko who seems a step ahead of everyone.
He recounted how the same night that Dr Wiseman Lovemore was arrested, at exactly midnight, the VC and the Reg, each dressed
