By Osa Mbonu-Amadi

There was a whole world of difference between Amaka and Ngozi. Amaka was fair in complexion; Ngozi was mahogany dark. Amaka was tall; Ngozi was average in height and petite. Amaka was timid; Ngozi was confident, obviously due to her education.

If Amaka had been alone the day she came to my apartment I would have also tried to take her into my bedroom as I did with Ngozi, though I am sure she would have resisted the move, not because of any moral uprightness , but because of her timidity.

But as I led Ngozi past my sitting room towards the bedroom, she paused in the doorway. I have a habit of keeping the door of my bedroom wide open (without curtain) up till now. “Common,” I urged her, “are you afraid?”

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“Why should I be afraid?” she replied sarcastically, stepping into the room. The only property I kept inside my bedroom were my 6×6 feet bed set in the middle of the bedroom and heaps of books on the floor. I had a mat beside the largest heap of books. On the mat lay my writing materials: notebooks, music manuscripts pens, pencils, sheets of papers bearing completed works, those still in progress, and those of only titles under incubation.

Instead of siting on my “football field” (that’s what my friends used to call my bed made of Mazonia wood) she went and sat down on the mat and started reading some of the things I was writing. That was impressive to me. I can tolerate anything anyone who reads what I write does. Soon we started discussing the content of those write-ups. The most prominent, I can still remember, was one pertaining to the fight I had running with Alhaji Kola Animasaun on the pages of Sunday Vanguard. Alhaji Animasaun had written something that made me angry and I wrote a scathing rejoinder and sent it to him. To my surprise, he published it, with fresh set of argument. I replied again countering his argument and he still published it. So it became a “call & response” song between us.

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Ngozi and I discussed all those things and I found her to posses sharp wits. We also discussed love and relationship. I reminded her that Barrister Jones had introduced her to me to see if I would like her as wife, and that having seen her and interacted with her, I believe she would make me happy as a wife. “What about you, what do you think?” I asked her.

“I am still in school,” she said.

“You should have told Jones that when he was matchmaking us. Or did he tell you he had found a boyfriend for you?”

“You are so confident in yourself. Do people still marry nowadays without having intimate knowledge of whom they want to marry?”

“No, you are absolutely right,” I said, flopping down to her on the mat from the bed where I sat. I grabbed her and started pulling up her skirt. She burst into laughter and tried to get away from the mat but I pinned her down. Together, we struggled like that. I tried to kiss her but she did not allow me.

Somehow she succeeded in getting away from me, gasping and shrieking with laughter. “You are crazy,” she breathed heavily.

But I had been all worked up with all that body contact. Ngozi was alluring. She sat down at one corner of the large bed while I sat at another corner, sober. The tone of my voice changed as hunger mounted inside me. Osa Amadi, the author of Burn Again, came to the fore. I told her that I will love her; that I had seen she was a good girl; that she should go and think deeply about the proposal I was making to her.

My new mood and emotional words sobered her up too. When next I drew close to her and picked up her hands she did not protest. She had good hands and good fingers. All my life, whenever I see a woman, the first thing I always look at are her fingers. I won’t have anything to do with a woman, no matter how beautiful she may be, if her fingers were not dainty. Ngozi’s fingers were long, sensitive and dainty. She allowed me to cuddle her. I guess I must have evoked some deep feelings within her, for she began to relate to me certain private stories about her life – her struggles, pains, and her aspirations. I held her and promised her that I would take care of her.

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Later, I asked her to go and boil some rice. I already had a pot of stew I made the previous day. When the food was ready we sat at the dinning table and ate like husband and wife. It was not until around 4.00 p.m. when she said she had to go. She smothered her clothes with her hands and used my comb to straighten her hairs.

When we walked downstairs she stood at a spot looking. I followed her gaze and saw she was looking at the cars parked in the compound. “Let’s get going,” I told her, walking towards the gate.

She hurried and caught up with me. Before we got outside she asked me: “Don’t you have a car?”

“No, I don’t,” I answered.

Then, Ngozi who had been lively and enthusiastic all day, all of a sudden became crestfallen. She became listless as we walked towards the bus stop. I tried all possible jokes to make her brighten up again, but she remained stone faced.

“When will you come again?”

“Come and pick me up with your car,” she said, surprising me.

“But I told you I don’t have a car.”

“And you want to marry.”

It hurt me, to be candid. It was clearly an indictment. We waited at the bus stop until I saw a taxi and asked her to go inside. She told the taxi driver where she was going and the driver gave me the bill. I paid and they zoomed off. That was the last time I saw Ngozi. I learned she visited Barrister Jones’ wife a few times again, and hinted her that she won’t marry a man that has no car.

I was devastated.

See you next week.