had talked, how their relationship had been like an artless flow with little input from them, or at least from him. The relationship had happened to him.
‘It was all too rushed for you, wasn’t it?’ Susan said. She came and stood by him. She had regained her composure; her chin no longer quivered. ‘You didn’t get a chance to explore, really, to see more of the country like you wanted to; you moved in here and I’ve made you go to these ghastly parties with people who don’t much care about writing and African art and that sort of thing. It must have been so awful for you. I’m terribly sorry, Richard, and I do understand. Of course, you must see a bit of the country. Can I help? I have friends in Enugu and Kaduna.’
Richard took the glass from her, put it down, and took her in his arms. He felt a faint nostalgia at the familiar apple scent of her shampoo. ‘No, I’ll be all right,’ he said.
She didn’t think it was really over, it was clear; she thought he would come back and he said nothing to make her think differently. When the steward in the white apron opened the front door to let him out, Richard was light with relief.
‘Bye, sah,’ the steward said.
‘Goodbye, Okon.’ Richard wondered if the inscrutable Okon ever pressed his ear to the door when he and Susan had their glass-breaking rows. He once asked Okon to teach him some simple sentences in Efik, but Susan had stopped it after she found them both in the study, Okon fidgeting as Richard pronounced the words. Okon had looked at Susan with gratitude, as if she had just saved him from a mad white man, and later, Susan’s tone was mild when she said she understood that Richard didn’t know how things were done. One couldn’t cross certain lines. It was a tone that reminded him of Aunt Elizabeth, of views endorsed with an unapologetic, self-indulgent English decency. Perhaps if he had told Susan about Kainene, she would have used that tone to tell him that she quite understood his need to experiment with a black woman.
Richard saw Okon waving as he drove away. He had the overwhelming urge to sing, except that he was not a singing man. All the other houses on Glover Street were like Susan’s, expansive, hugged by palm trees and beds of languid grass.
The next afternoon, Richard sat up in bed naked, looking down at Kainene. He had just failed her again. ‘I’m sorry. I think I get overexcited,’ he said.
‘May I have a cigarette?’ she asked. The silky sheet outlined the angular thinness of her naked body.
He lit it for her. She sat up from under the cover, her dark-brown nipples tightening in the cold, air-conditioned room, and looked away as she exhaled. ‘We’ll give it time,’ she said. ‘And there are other ways.’
Richard felt a swift surge of irritation, towards himself for being uselessly limp, towards her for that half-mocking smile and for saying there were other ways, as if he was permanently incapable of doing things the traditional way. He knew what he could do. He knew he could satisfy her. He just needed time. He had begun, though, to think about some herbs, potent manhood herbs he remembered reading about somewhere, which African men took.
‘Nsukka is a little patch of dust in the middle of the bush, the cheapest land they could get to build the university on,’ Kainene said. It was startling, how easily she slipped into mundane conversation. ‘But it should be perfect for your writing, shouldn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ he said.
‘You might like it and want to stay on.’
‘I might.’ Richard slid under the covers. ‘But I’m so pleased you’ll be in Port Harcourt and I won’t have to come all the way to Lagos to see you.’
Kainene said nothing, smoking with steady intakes, and for one terrified moment, he wondered if she was going to tell him that it was over when they both left Lagos and that, in Port Harcourt, she would find herself a man capable of performing.
‘My house will be perfect for our weekends,’ she said finally. ‘It’s monstrous. My father gave it to me last year as a bit of dowry, I think, an enticement for the right sort of man to marry his unattractive daughter. Terribly European when you think of it, since we don’t have dowries, we have bride prices.’ She put the cigarette out. She had not finished it. ‘Olanna said she didn’t want a house. Not that she needs one. Save the houses for the ugly daughter.’
‘Don’t say that, Kainene.’
‘Don’t say that, Kainene,’ Kainene mimicked him. She got up and he wanted to pull her back. But he didn’t; he could not trust his body and could not bear to disappoint her yet again. Sometimes he felt as if he knew nothing about her, as if he would never quite reach her. And yet, other times, lying next to her, he would feel a wholeness, a certainty that he would never need anything else.
‘By the way, I’ve asked Olanna to introduce you to her revolutionary lecturer lover,’ Kainene said. She pulled her wig off and, with her short hair worn in cornrows, her face looked younger, smaller. ‘She used to date a Hausa prince, a pleasant, bland sort of fellow, but he did not have any of the crazed delusions she has. This Odenigbo imagines himself to be quite the freedom fighter. He’s a mathematician but he spends all his time writing newspaper articles about his own brand of mishmash African socialism. Olanna adores that. They don’t seem to realize how much of a joke socialism really is.’ She put the wig back on and began to brush it; the wavy hair, parted in the middle, fell to her chin. Richard liked the clean lines of her thin body, the sleekness of her raised arm.
‘Socialism could very well work in Nigeria if done right, I think,’ he said. ‘It’s really about economic justice, isn’t it?’
Kainene snorted. ‘Socialism would never work for the Igbo.’ She held the brush suspended in mid-air. ‘Ogbenyealu is a common name for girls and you know what it means? “Not to Be Married by a Poor Man.” To stamp that on a child at birth is capitalism at its best.’
Richard laughed, and he was even more amused because she did not laugh; she simply went back to brushing her hair. He thought about the next time he would laugh with her and then the next. He found himself often thinking about the future, even before the present was over.
He got up and felt shy when she glanced at his naked body. Perhaps she was expressionless only to hide her disgust. He pulled on his underwear and buttoned his shirt hurriedly.
‘I’ve left Susan,’ he blurted out. ‘I’m staying at the Princewill Guesthouse in Ikeja. I’ll pick up the rest of my things from her house before I leave for Nsukka.’
Kainene stared at him, and he saw surprise on her face and then something else he was not sure of. Was it puzzlement?
‘It’s never been a proper relationship, really,’ he said. He did not want her to think he had done it because of her, did not want her asking herself questions about their relationship. Not yet.
‘You’ll need a houseboy,’ she said.
‘What?’
‘A houseboy in Nsukka. You’ll need somebody to wash your clothes and clean your house.’
He was momentarily confused by the non sequitur. ‘A houseboy? I can manage quite well. I’ve lived alone for too long.’
‘I’ll ask Olanna to find somebody,’ Kainene said. She pulled a cigarette from the case, but she didn’t light it. She put it down on the bedside table and came over and hugged him, a tremulous tightening of her arms around him. He was so surprised
