She had been using lack of money as an excuse to postpone getting pregnant again. But there was money, plenty-plenty money, he insisted, and therefore no need for clumsy prophylactics or enforced abstinence. There are men who force their wives. Daddiji was not capable of this. Besides, Isa still wanted him, he could sense it when he held his hand above her skin like a dowser. And yet she pushed him away whenever he reached for her at night.
‘No! We’re not ready.’
‘I am certainly ready, and if I can just…ah, yes, you are quite ready, too.’
Her eyes slid shut deliriously. She shoved his hand away. ‘We have to be careful.’
‘We are careful. Full of care. Look at how much care I have for you, just look.’
‘We have other cares, too.’ She tore her eyes from his erection. ‘Naila’s education—’
‘Naila is four, Bella. And must we be million-billionaires to have another child?’
‘All you think about is money.’ Isa blew at the hair that had fallen over her eyes. ‘You sit in your shop all day counting out your money and then you come home and fill our daughter’s head with this “kwacha, ngweeee!” nonsense. Do you think you’re teaching her business? Do you think this is business too?’ She wrapped a hand cruelly around his member. ‘You cannot put a price on everything!’
‘Can’t I?’ He smiled grimly and placed his hand on her breast.
They glared at one another, each gripping the other’s pound of flesh. Then their anger burst, releasing an energy that swirled quickly into desire. As always, much sighing and capitulation followed. Isa simply couldn’t help the way her lust bloomed like a lotus flower on the surface of some internal swamp. At least this time she managed to get a condom on him first – or so she thought.
* * *
A few days later, Daddiji was sitting at the head of the dining table when he felt a tickle under his palm. He lifted his hand and found a white card taped to the arm of his chair. Chair K50,000, it said. He glanced at Naila, who shrugged. Daddiji decided to ignore it and reached for his Coca-Cola. As he sipped, he caught a flash of white at the bottom of the glass. He went cross-eyed trying to make it out through the bubbles. He swallowed and raised the glass to read the tag taped to its base. Tumbler K1,000. Daddiji lowered his glass and looked around. They were everywhere. Little Naila watched as he walked around the dining room, collecting the diaspora of labels, detaching them from lamps and curtains and books until he had a heap of price tags – or were they receipts? He sat down as Isa came in.
‘We are making a point?’ he asked her wryly.
Isa said nothing as she took her seat but her lips twitched smileward. Sibilla, oblivious, came in with a steaming bowl of pasta and set it on top of the tags like they were a new sort of trivet.
The next day, more tags appeared around the house: on utensils and decorations and pillows, attached with string or Sellotape or a staple. Daddiji had to admit, his wife had a good business sense – the prices were the right value. He would know, having purchased these things, after all. He thought he understood Isa’s message: ‘Life costs too much to bring another child into it!’ To convey his response – ‘Love is free. Your efforts to block it are what is expensive!’ – he taped a tag of his own on the packet of condoms in the drawer of her bedside table, capping the price with an exclamation mark.
It was a nice piece of rhetoric but Daddiji’s victory didn’t last long. Isa had two advantages over him: time on her hands and the need to be right, a need so intense that it often surpassed the original argument. Soon there was an infestation of numbers, everything in the house labelled with a price. The family lived like this for a time, as if the home were an extension of Daddiji’s shop. They ate supper with labelled forks off labelled plates, swilled their drinks from labelled glasses. They brushed their teeth with tagged toothbrushes, laid their heads on priced pillows. The price tags flapped and flickered in the windy nights of dry season.
One night, Daddiji dreamt that they were chasing him, diving at his head, flocking onto his hands, biting his palms – a lifetime of papercuts in one