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September 3, 2000, Tuesday 16:26

Caesar Clark looked thoughtfully at the face of the pool of tea in his mug.

"So, Dad do you feel lonely?" he asked casually.

Edward Clark looked up from his own brew and stared pensively at his son. Looking rather miniature in his huge, white wooly sweater, he looked like a wizened old professor with his gray flecked hair and glasses.

"Of course I am, Edwin" he answered a bit defensively, "London isn’t exactly a place of warmth."

Caesar glanced at the icy rain lashing ruthlessly against the double-glazed windows and he had to agree.

"Why don’t you get yourself a woman, dad? Before you freeze to death."

Barrister Clark’s small spectacles nearly fell into his cup of tea.

"Edwin! I’m surprised at you. I’m not even officially divorced from your Mom yet."

I was certain it was not the beer, I was keeping count. The waiter just replaced the fourth and from experience, I required twice that to knock me off. So effectively, I was not drunk or so I thought, but I felt myself floating softly like a piece of paper blown by a whirlwind, ascending unsteadily, the rest of the world as I knew it at a standstill, like I would when I was eight bottles up.

Perhaps it was her voice, not trained like a master singer’s, something between tenor and soprano, almost coarse yet melodious, at least to me. She was singing a popular song by a white singer, either Celine Dion or Mariah Carey, I wasn’t thinking straight- it didn’t matter. What mattered was the sound in modulated wave lengths from the loudspeaker causing a tingle-almost a tickle on my ear drums, my entire anatomy quivering, like her every word, from that love song was to me.

Looking at your severely cracked full-length mirror situated adjacent your iroko-strong but old door of your equally severely tattered one-room apartment, standing as naked as your shattered soul, made you reflect upon your life.  Two days ago, you came back from a failed job interview.  The day before that, you were on your way to another job interview which never was because there was a riot at the venue.  You are an ardent reader of job offer ads and of literary arts on national dailies and you have travelled twice to the west to answer job offers, returning back with empty promises.  You feel that your creative writing career is ebbing because inspiration comes and goes like tiny ulcers.  You are an English graduate of five years and counting, of Enugu State extraction.  The institution of graduation is immaterial.

A repeated harsh pummeling of the narrow zinc gate into my fathers little compound brought first my mother and then my old grand mother out of their huts into the main compound. It was the wee hours of the day, too early a time to have a visitor. I lay in bed in that no-longer-asleep, yet not-quite-awake state, certain that who ever were at the gate had no good news.     

       
“Where is your husband?” the visitor asked rather rudely ignoring both mother and grand mother’s greetings. The voice was unmistakably that of Obong Attah, the richest merchant in the whole of my village. He owned a big shop at the market square in which virtually everything essential for life was on sale, from cooking ingredients and stockfish to drug tablets and dry gin. He also owned an old open lorry Long Jorni with which he conveyed these essential goods from the big market in Uyo once every week to our little village. His lorry was also my villages only link with the outside world, so it’s weekly trip to Uyo and back was usually an event people looked forward to especially the petty traders and those who had the privilege of having close relatives in the city who they went to visit once in a while.