I Do Not Come to You by Chance - By Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani Page 0,14
and stood. She accompanied me outside, maintaining a pace or two behind me. When I slowed down for her to catch up, she slowed down. When I stopped and looked back, she stopped and looked askance. Outside the hostel, she halted. I stood with arms akimbo like an angry school headmaster and walked back to where she was standing. The girl needed a severe talking-to.
‘Now listen to me,’ I began. ‘I can tell everything is not all right. If there’s something you need to get off your chest, why not just let it out? There’s never been anything we couldn’t talk about with—’
‘Kingsley, I really don’t think you should come and see me again.’
My mouth fell wide open. I completely forgot that I had been in the middle of a speech that was designed to bring about world peace.
She hesitated and looked away.
‘Right now I just need to focus. I’m really under pressure.’
I sighed. Of course. Her schoolwork was bothering her. Sometimes, project supervisors could drive you up the wall and right into the concrete. Ola was so engrossed in her work, she did not want to be distracted by romance. I looked at her with awe; she had just inspired me with fresh admiration.
‘Ola,’ I said in the most understanding of tones. ‘Take it easy, OK? Just let me know when you’ve finished your project and I’ll come and visit you. OK?’
‘Kingsley . . .’ she began fiercely.
From her face, I could tell that she was composing a different sentence.
‘You’d better know that my mother is very unhappy with you,’ she said eventually.
‘Unhappy with me? Why?’
She averted her eyes.
‘Kingsley, I have to go. Have a safe trip.’
With that, she turned and disappeared inside.
Back at the motor park, I located the vehicle going to Umuahia. The station wagon had almost filled up, when a haggard woman approached. Her bony body was outlined under an oversized blouse that was drawn in at the waist. A grey skirt fell to the middle of her legs, her feet were clad in rugged bathroom slippers. She poked her thin face into my window and informed us that her husband was in very poor health.
‘My brothers and sisters,’ she pleaded, ‘I have nine children and hunger is threatening to kill us. My husband has been very sick for over a year and we have no money for the operation.’
She said that we - those of us in that vehicle - were their only hope of survival. If we would only chip in some funds.
‘My brothers and sisters,’ she begged, ‘please nothing is too small.’
Around her neck hung a cloth rope attached to a photograph of her husband. In it, the sick man was lying on a raffia mat on the cement floor. He was stark naked and his ribs were gleaming through his skin. There was a growth the size of two adult heads, shooting out from between his bony legs. The faded photograph dangled on her flat chest as she stretched a metal container into the car and jangled the coins that were inside.
As soon as I saw the photograph, it hit me.
I realised what had been missing from Ola’s room, what it was that had been nagging at me all the while I was there. All my photographs - all three of them - had vanished from her room.
Four
The local 7 o’clock news was usually a harmless serving of our state governor’s daily activities - where he had gone, what he had said, whom he had said it to. The national 9 o’clock news was different. It always reported something that infuriated my father.
‘They’re all illiterates!’ he ranted. ‘That’s the problem we have in this country. How can we have people ruling us who didn’t see inside the four walls of a university?’
Two days ago, it was the allegation that one of the prominent senators had falsified his educational qualifications. He had lived in Canada for many years, quite all right, but the University of Toronto had no record of his attendance. Yesterday, it was the news that the Nigerian government had begun a global campaign to recover part of the three billion pounds embezzled by the late General Sani Abacha administration. About $700 million discovered in Swiss bank accounts had already been frozen. Today, it was the news that one of the state governor’s convoys had been involved in a motor accident. This was the fourth time this same governor’s convoy had been involved in a fatal car crash.