Dangerous Love (27 page)

‘It's your father who is mad!' he said. ‘Is that how you talk to your elders?'

‘Foolish old pensioner. Look where you're going.'

The old man stared at Okoro and shook his head pitifully, a ridiculous expression on his face. He had deep wrinkles and a sad, defeated mouth. He dragged up his voluminous trousers, shook his head again, and went on. Okoro started laughing, and then he stopped. He became thoughtful. He watched the sad old man who was drunk that early on a Monday morning. He didn't take his eyes off the man till he was completely lost in the crowd.

Buses came, people surged. The buses filled, turned, and sped off.

‘So how's your painting?'

‘Bad.'

‘We have faith in you, you know.'

‘Sure.'

‘You have a strange talent. I liked the drawing you did of Dele. He said he would frame it. You made him look young and confused.'

‘Sure.'

‘Now you are saying it.'

‘What?'

‘Sure.'

‘Oh that. It's infectious.'

‘How are you getting on with your stepmother?'

Omovo said nothing.

‘All right. Bad question. Have you heard from your brothers?'

At that moment a blue danfo bus, old and flaking, swerved near them. Dust rose in the air. Omovo roused himself and dashed for it. He made for the front seat but a man, whose breath stank of sardines, got there first. Omovo struggled for the back and secured a seat close to the sliding door. He saw Okoro belatedly struggling to get on.

‘The bus don full!' the conductor shouted. ‘Na when chop don finish nai una go rush. People who no get eye for back. Go on driver, go on!'

Omovo, through the little window, said: ‘Hi, sucker.'

Okoro smiled sheepishly. ‘You bastard,' he replied.

The bus sped on towards the Apapa Wharf. It seemed they would arrive in a short while. But they soon slowed down. The driver took all sorts of trenchant short-cuts, all manner of abominable traffic risks, forced his way in front of other cars, but in the end, like everyone else, he was trapped in the intractable morning traffic congestion. Omovo, looking out of the window, forefelt the insinuations of another tedious day. He was conscious of revolt simmering within him at the remembrances of the tensions in the office. The mists had cleared completely. Omovo stared at the faces of the passengers. Faces carved on the bitter wood of harsh realities. The faces of those who worked hard at what does not give them pleasure. Faces like masks. Omovo did not look forward to the day's work.

He arrived late at the office. As he went down the corridor to his department he felt betrayed by his footsteps. He stood outside the office door for a moment, staring at the sign which read CHEMICALS. Bracing himself, he reached for the door handle and went in. It was cold inside. The air conditioning had been turned up to the limit. He shivered.

The moment he entered he felt hostility settle on him. At first no one acknowledged his presence. As he went towards his table he passed the office supervisor and said, rather too brightly:

‘Good morning, Akapko.'

The supervisor, lifting his head slowly from a thick file he had been studying, stared frostily at Omovo.

‘
Mr
Akapko, if you don't mind,' he said, in a grumpy voice.

‘Good morning,
Mr
Akapko.'

‘Much better. From today I want everybody in this department to treat me with respect.'

‘Did you have a good weekend?' Omovo asked, smiling.

The supervisor ignored his question and returned to the study of his file. He had been with the company for over twenty years, had started out as a messenger and risen slowly up each rung, and recently had been made a supervisor. It was the crowning achievement of his life. It gave him the pass to eat in the senior staff canteen and the entitlements of a car, expenses and housing allowance. He didn't want his juniors to forget the fact that he had arrived, but arriving had not taken from him his ingratiating attitude to his superiors. He looked up after a moment. He had the face of a gnome, a face full of suffering, with its dust-beaten beard and hungry whiskers. He said:

‘The manager wants to see you.'

‘What for?'

But before the supervisor could reply the door to the general office opened and Simon, the office typist, came in. He was carrying a pile of typing paper and office requisitions. When he saw Omovo standing near the supervisor he let out his peculiar brand of whooping laughter.

‘Our painter has at last arrived.'

‘Hi, Simon.'

Simon laughed again. ‘Did you hear him?' He said to the office at large. ‘“Hi Simon”.' He went round to his table and put down the things he was carrying. ‘What's his excuse this time? Don't tell me he's been boozing all weekend. I won't believe it.'

Simon had the vivacity of a cricket and a perpetually famished look. He was lean and alive and full of the kind of humour that seemed to have equal measures of spice and malice. He had an extraordinary face, generously endowed with wrinkles, pimples and spots. He had lively eyes but when he was sombre his hangdog expression, his haunted look, made him seem like one who carried on his face all the woes of his life. When he laughed he looked funny, in spite of the fact that his face took on the quality of crumpled brown paper.

‘Shut up, Simon,' the supervisor said.

Omovo went to his desk and brought out his file on the allocation of chemicals to companies. Simon made another remark about his lateness. He was in the mood for teasing. Omovo ignored him. He wanted to get through each day of office routine with the minimum amount of aggression. This meant that he didn't participate, and resented obeying orders. His detachment alienated him, made him vulnerable.

‘Honestly!' continued Simon. ‘You are the only person I know in this department who can come late on Monday and not be scared. Ten years I have worked in this bloody company, and I've never been late on a Monday.'

The supervisor shouted: ‘Shut up, Simon. Get on with your work. It's not your business. And besides the manager wants to see him.'

‘Supervisor wetin!' Simon replied. ‘You are shouting at me now but after work we will be drinking from the same bottle. Know your people, honestly!'

The supervisor smiled and went back to his file.

Omovo studied his files. Customers would soon start pouring in, each clamouring for attention, for priority treatment, each with complex requests, each with complaints. He had yet to count the chemicals that had come in that morning. He brought the relevant cards from the cabinet under his table and was sorting out the ones he needed when he heard Simon, in the mood to irritate, say:

‘So, painter, what made you come late, eh?'

‘I woke late. I had problems catching a bus.'

‘So that's all you can dream up? You are in trouble. Wait till the manager sees you.'

‘Simon, sit down and work,' came the supervisor. ‘You have your own problems.'

‘Supervisor wetin!' replied Simon a little loudly.

Chako, who was the manager's secretary and the oldest member of staff, banged on the table. He had been so silent that no one had noticed him up to that moment.

‘Simon, you fool, you are disturbing my concentration!' he shouted.

At the moment of being disturbed he had been studying the football coupons, hidden under a file, with abnormal industry. He had been playing the pools religiously for twenty years. He had never won a penny and had never given up hope. Every Monday he started afresh. He was a very religious man, in the sense that he attended an Aladura church regularly, and believed in the tenets of his church. In his middle forties, he dressed impeccably but with an outrageous sense of colour combinations. He had quick movements and an oddly twisted face. The curious thickness of his nose, with its entangled filaments of hair, was well suited for, or a result of, his endless snuff-taking. He always looked rough-shaven, as if his hair was wholly resistant to razor blades, and was stricken with a permanence of shaving rashes. He was something of a character in the department. Not even one with the hardiest perversity could fail to tolerate him, if only for his eccentricities and for his antiquity – he had been in the company from its beginnings. Upon banging the table and securing the silence he wanted, he resumed his concentration on his pools forecasts, circling, arbitrarily, the numbers 6, 26 and 36.

But the silence was temporary. Simon was not through.

‘Honestly, Chako. Anyone looking at you will think you are conscientious. We all know what you are doing.'

‘Mind your business.'

‘You are doing your PhD in coupon philosophy, after studying for twenty years.'

‘Shut up. I warn you.'

‘Have you ever calculated how much you have spent on that useless thing?'

Omovo went on with his records. When he had sorted out the cards he needed for the morning's count, he stowed the rest away and stood up.

The supervisor said: ‘Have you seen the manager yet?'

‘No.'

‘What are you waiting for?'

‘He can't,' Chako protested. ‘The manager is on the phone.'

The supervisor, entering into the prevalent mischievous mood, stared at Chako. ‘I wonder why I share the same office with you riff-raffs,' he said.

Simon rattled away at the typewriter. Chako went back to his football coupon, circling the numbers 7, 27 and 37. He settled back in his chair and began to count with his fingers.

‘Look at him, look at Chako,' the supervisor said to Simon. ‘He's really serious this week-o. If he can study like that, eh, why shouldn't he pass any exam, eh?'

Simon looked up, ‘You can say what you want. But when he hits that jackpot don't go near him-o. Even his Aladura church won't make that mistake.'

When Chako heard that last sentence he flung back his chair, stood up and launched into torrential abuse. He was quite incoherent. He shouted in fits and jerks, mixing English with his native Igbo. When he was angry, he developed a pronounced stammer which the others found comic. The supervisor picked up a file and hid his face. Simon masked his laughter beneath the clatter of his typing. When Chako had spent himself he settled down, put away his football coupons, and busied himself with a customer's letter.

His timing was impeccable. The door behind him opened and the manager stepped out and scanned the office.

‘What's going on?' he asked in Igbo.

The office answered him with silence. He was short and well-built, though in the past, much to his chagrin, he had often been mistaken for a clerk. It was rumoured that he had risen so high, and so fast, with the help of the company's mafia. The truth was that he was a graduate and had recently returned from England, where he had worked in the chemicals arm of the parent company. But like most men who have been surprised by power, and maybe to compensate for his lack of stature, he couldn't tolerate silence.

‘I said what's the matter here?' he said again, in Igbo, his voice booming.

The office stayed silent. Everyone was still. Omovo had, unfortunately, been caught standing up, on his way to the warehouse.

‘Good morning, sir,' he said and made for the door, treading as self-effacingly as possible.

‘Omovo, don't try to escape. Come and tell me why you were three hours late this morning.'

‘I couldn't help it.'

‘And why, if I may ask you, couldn't you help it, Mr Omovo?'

Simon began to type furiously, as if the words were running away with him. He had an expression of studied concentration on his face. The supervisor, engrossed in some recent shipping documents, turned the pages over with noticeable rapidity, his fingers tapping a thoughtful rhythm on his table. Chako, with a bedraggled kola-nut between his lips, ruminated over the customer's letter. Omovo turned the cards in his hands.

‘I woke late, was caught in the rush... it was hard to catch buses... my shirt is torn, I mean my buttons...'

‘I see.'

‘The rush was terrible this morning.'

‘So you keep saying. But everyone in this office, apart from the supervisor and myself, comes from Ajegunle. And they get here on time. Besides, what's to stop you from tearing off your own buttons?'

‘I wouldn't...'

‘Shut up! Listen, young man, you are the most frivolous, unserious, uncommitted, conscientious, and insubordinate member of this department. Look at the rest of them.' And the manager indicated the office at large.

Simon impressively ripped the sheets from the typewriter. Then he read through what he had written. The supervisor picked up a ball pen, turned one of the pages of the shipping documents, wrote a comment on it, and then turned to ask the manager a relevant question about the recent shipments of liquid chlorine. The manager gave a lengthy and resonant reply. Chako, working his mouth, nodded vigorously at something significant he had noticed in the customer's letter. The manager turned to Omovo and was about to speak when Chako blew his nose, the sound of which was like wood being briefly sawn. Simon resumed typing.

‘This is an efficient team. You're the odd one out. Always loitering. Consider this your fourth and final warning.'

Omovo stared at him. For the first time he noticed the leer that lurked on the manager's mouth. The manager, obviously disturbed by Omovo's cool reception of the threat, fingered his tie, and strode back into his office.

Chako brought out his football coupons, fished out another kola-nut from under his typewriter, and proceeded to chew. Simon stared at the calendar with the picture of a generously breasted semi-nude white woman on the wall opposite. Then, grumbling that the office was too cold, he brought out his tea bread and fetched himself a glass of water. He kept dipping the bread in the water as he ate. The supervisor brought out his pocket calculator and, with a hungry studiousness, began to work out how much his salary, his overtime, his allowance and other invented expenses would amount to on payday.