CHAPTER 5
When Teju was driving home that evening, he could feel the visceral elation which absorbed him ever since sunrise, had not deflated a dime. In fact, it had been intensified by the tickling prospect of meeting the person who was responsible for his excitement.
This sort of atmosphere engulfing him with such energy was not a common spectacle during these hard times of economic backwardness. Many a time, he had driven home frustrated by his work. He was a man who took his work a little too seriously for his own good. There was a time he had been issued a query for the second time in just one month, a negative feat within the shortest period.
Any sensible salary-earning employee, whether in the public sector or private, knew queries were agents of disadvantage to one’s career. They triggered variations of mishaps like career-stagnancy, or even, if the earnest need arose, official and legitimate dismissal.
Teju’s reaction to failure had always been drastic; such was expected from first-class graduates like him who detested being smeared with failure.
Simi had always been entrusted with the duty of pacifying him during such times. Flavoursome foods, especially favourites, and good sex were what it took to seduce an African man from his distress to his happiness, and Simi seemed to have mastered this art for his sake. This time around, the atmosphere was alien from the one he had grown accustomed to.
The radio’s volume was high. He was listening to Fresh FM, and Davido’s hit song Aye was blaring out with a soft unremitting sibilant sound, with a bass beat that went deep to the bottom of his empty belly. He also hummed and sang to the tune with an odd vigour—singing when he knew the lyrics, and humming when he didn’t.
An Okada man dashed from behind him and overtook him all of a sudden. His motorcycle was so close to Teju’s car, he almost stomped on his brake.
Another Okada man followed closely before he could recover from his shock as if they were in a race. He quickly swerved away from the impending collision, not minding whoever was coming from the other lane. Due to the power outage of the streetlights, the road was dark, only the headlights of vehicles and motorcycles coursed through the darkness, and for a moment, Teju did not know what was happening.
He yelled a few cuss-words in Yoruba, and something about most Okada men being uncircumcised baboons unleashed to terrorise commuters on the roads with their reckless and rush-to-an-immature-grave commuting.
The sound from the radio set drowned his yelling. He could hear the violent and unsympathetic hooting of other vehicles from behind. Teju glanced at his side mirror before he turned on the road and accelerated.
His shoulders had already been so tight they ached. He let the music dissolve his tension from other people’s recklessness. He jerked. Teju had almost paid for it. Who would take the blame if he knocked off a poor Okada man from his Okada?
The song had reached its best part, and he was compelled to join in singing to the tune, munching the words where the lyrics were unclear.
After some minutes, another hit song from Kizz Daniel, titled Laye was booming from the radio. Then something occurred to Teju. He stopped singing so he could contemplate. Going home empty-handed in such time full of joie de vivrewas lame, and being lame was very much unlike him.
A part of him wanted to paint the evening with a wowing colour, which could send a paralysis commonly caused by surprises through Simi’s body and soul. If it wasany other day, he would not give it a chance. The easiest thing would have been to push the idea away. However, his mind reverted to the time he had shown Simi the ring presently on her finger.
After brooding over for several weeks on how to propose to her without giving her a chance to say no, Teju had decided to do it in a slightly dramatic way that had practically met her unguarded.
It was three years after bagging his Master’s Degree in Business Administration from the University of Ibadan, and two years after securing his present job. Four years she had been his girlfriend, so he had arranged a date in one of the most expensive restaurants in Ibadan. There was nothing like economic recession then, and he’d had no reason to be careful with his spending.
He’d never asked if Simi had expected him to propose that day, but he had tried as much as possible to conceal any act that could ignite such suspicion by coming twenty minutes late to the restaurant and casting no special airs. Although, he had tried to look smart in his satin suit with a lighter shade of grey colour; Teju had notsurrendered to the temptation of wearing a tie, even though all indications had pointed to the fact his dressing up would be complete with a black or gold-coloured tie.
Simi had not been looking too bad either. She had newly braided hair. Shewore a blue silk dress loose from the waist downwards, and she sat down soundlessly.
It had suggested she was neither excited nor expectant to Teju’s relief. He had heard and read several ways men proposed to their girlfriends, and he had also seen a couple in movies. The man might genuflect before his girlfriend and present the ring, or he might blindfold her before presenting it as a ‘surprise’. There was also a notorious way a man could propose, implanting the ring in the drink, cocktail or ice-cream of his girlfriend.
Teju had ordered a bottle of Carlos Rossi wine and had gulped a few glasses in-between his meal. He suddenly dropped his wine glass on the table and held his neck with his two hands, making a choking sound as though he was being strangled.
Simi sprang from her chair.
“What’s wrong? Are you okay?” she said, her voice ridden with terror.
But he did not respond, he kept wringing his neck, breathing hard and loud, rolling his eyes and clutching at the table, then crashed out of his chair to the floor.
Simi, other customers, and waiters rushed from their tables and posts at him.
Before long, Teju had been in Simi’s arms, fighting for breath, writhing and twitching violently in her arms. She was crying, still calling for help as people ran from pillar to post, struggling with their phones.
He could not have denied his surprise at the way Simi had cried so passionately, as though the best thing she’d ever had was imminently dying before her very eyes.
The timely arrival of an ambulance in the country would be a miracle. In fact, if an ambulance had arrived so fast, one had to be a Thomas for a moment, and make sure the ambulance was real by having a touch on it first. Or to be sure it was not just a decoy, and therefore become a victim of kidnappers, one had to examine and cross-examine the authenticity of the handlers of such ambulance. It was a bad idea to wait for an ambulance, so someone volunteered his car to take Teju to the nearest hospital, but before they grabbed and carried him, he vomited a ring from his throat, so it seemed.
“Would you marry me?” he asked, holding up the ring towards her. He was still in her arms, and her face turned from a hot incandescent ember of coal into a glitzy caret of black diamond.
That had been a dream come true, and a good recompense for his dramatic performance. Althoughshe had reserved every right to be livid with him for raising such a terrifying false alarm, it was clear she had been caught red-handed by surprise. It had been unfeasible for her to conceal.
She had said a lot of yeses so rapidly Teju had lost count, and Simi had kissed him.
The waiters and customers who had been put off the grid earlier, all smiled and gave both of them an ovation—a warm gesture that drew the curtain for his dramatic proposal.
Simi had later commended him for being unpredictable, for coming out of the blue for the first time. She had said she loved guys who were, and who could never be completely known. She loved unforeseen surprises.
Teju remembered the look she usually put on when she was surprised, a look that always had him believing she had seen a burning bush which remains untouched by fire.