CHAPTER ELEVEN
Obi realized that he was as perturbed by Della’s humiliation as he was by his wife’s sheer refusal to return back to his house. It troubled him that he’d lost Della as a friend because he was more interested in her friendship than he was in her body because of the fact that since his marriage to the beautiful singer who was the fantasy of every man and every sexually confused woman in the country, he’d never looked at another woman.
There was nothing they had that his wife couldn’t give to him, but in Della’s case, she’d been unaware that he was married, and that was why she couldn’t keep her hands off him at that party, and Adamma had witnessed it all. Now, Della wanted to have nothing more to do with him because of her firm belief that he had deliberately tripped on her gown. And it was just as well, he thought; he didn’t want her cloying attention and it was good that they’d broken up after years of dating. But he hadn’t wanted them to break up in that horrible way.
Rejection loomed desolately in his mind, and he realized that he’d lost a lot, and it was all because of Adamma. He began to marvel at how she could effortlessly map out roles for the people in her life to play, and how they pandered to her whims with animal stupidity. He was now in her world, trapped in an endless maze of corridors which she’d left for him to explore, and he was doing so.
Four months had swept past since their encounter at the Hilton club, and the date was moving forward inexorably towards their two years marriage anniversary. He wanted to meet her and talk to her privately again, but it was impossible. At that time she’d met with him at the Hilton club, she’d met him because she’d wanted to talk to him; at least she told him that much on the day he’d managed to get her on the phone.
But now, that kind of chance encounter was impossible and could not be repeated; she saw to it that she was surrounded by people wherever she went, and there were security men who guarded her house_ they were all strong and uniformed, with guns dangling from their belts, and had barred him from entry when he tried to visit her. He’d left messages with her secretary, asking her to call him, but she greeted him with stony silence. He’d sent her several emails; none were answered, and it was as if she was playing with him, making him look stupid, and he didn’t want to fight her publicly.
He didn’t know if he loved her, hated her, or merely wanted to assert his male superiority and manhood over her. But in that last aspect of his thoughts, he’d failed dismally because she’d made it public that she was now living away from him. It had been during the official press conference she’d done at the Nigerian Television Authority for her latest seventeen-track album that she’d announced to a nationwide audience that she was no longer living with her husband. Furious, he’d driven to her house the following day to confront her but had been told by the placid-faced guards that she’d left earlier that day for a tour to promote her new album. The album became a continental best-seller within a week.
The sensation of being an entirely helpless puppet with Adamma pulling the strings fuelled his rage against her. While he’d been making plans to bring her home, make adequate preparations for her comfort, and even come to an understanding with her to see if they’d stop their fights, she’d broken loose from him and gone ahead to announce to the world that she was an independent woman who could do whatever she pleased.
And, because of her stupidity in thinking that she could just ridicule him and go free, she had to be suitably punished. He had to see her pleading with fear, her face a mask of worry. She was almost thirty_ she’d clock thirty in a few weeks’ time, while he would turn thirty-six, and their children would be turning twelve, but she had destroyed everything. At the Hilton club, when she was kissing him, it was as if she was subjecting him to some kind of test, and he’d failed, so she had fled.
He no longer wanted her, he told himself, though deep within himself, he wanted to chain her down to his side. And he still wanted his kids back in his arms, but he felt that it was highly unlikely because he felt certain that his wife had turned them against him. He also felt an arching deep within his heart, that there was a part of him that was missing.
His office door slammed and he looked up, watching as Hope walked gracefully into the room. Her lime-green suit fitted her like a second skin and was accentuated by the small dab of green eye shadow she’d used to highlight her eyes. She barely looked forty, he thought to himself, though she’d recently celebrated her fiftieth birthday party. She moved into the chair opposite him and settled herself comfortably on it, her eyes regarding him warily.
‘Tell me how you’re enjoying your life, my dear boy,’ she said, using the favorite term she often used on him when he was still a little boy but which she used now only when she had very important she wished to discuss with him. ‘I mean, after that woman had poured such scorn on you on TV, you know . . .’
He knew what she meant; after all, his mother seemed to hate Adamma now with a frightening intensity. He sighed. ‘Yes, after what she’s done to me, life has suddenly become so boring and everybody seems to be blaming me for the way I let her slip through my fingers. They all think I’m a fool. Her bitchy secretary called two weeks ago, telling me that she’s getting ready to press for a divorce and would discuss the matter with me whenever they were ready for me. And do you know what that means? The bitch will be pressing for a huge settlement_ she is a big celebrity, and would claim that her reputation would be badly affected, so she might try and lay claim to half of my wealth!’
Hope leaned back in her chair, a smile wreathing her face as she brushed imaginary specks of lint from her suit. ‘Well, you have the money, so no need sweating yourself to death. And what about the kids_ will you press for their custody?’
Obi banged his fists on the tabletop with frustrated anger. ‘Come on, mother!’ he growled. ‘You know how it is; you know how it’s meant to be. The kids grew up under her guidance, and so the courts will automatically let her have them. But I am not ready to let her go yet. She wants everything to be played according to her tunes, but I still want my share in the lyrics; she cannot just dictate to me.’
The smile Hope had been wearing disappeared from her face, to be replaced by look of harsh determination. Her eyes narrowed to a hard stare sharp enough to cut bone and she leaned forwards, her lips compressed in a grim line, and then she spoke. ‘I know what you want, son; you want to get even with Adamma. You want to punish her for what she’s done to you; she dangled her beauty before you, baiting you with her powerful looks that cannot be ignored, and then she withdrew herself from you, aware of her powers and how she can use them. Well, I can help you get her back so you can do whatever you want with her; however, no matter what you do, I want you to keep her clear of my house.’
Obi tore his gaze away from his contemplation of the tabletop so he could frown questioningly at his mother. He wanted to ask her a question, but the look on her face stopped him from saying anything. Rather, his mind dwelt on the possible reasons pertaining to why his mother would show such interest in his wife, and then he remembered: Adamma had a past life which was shrouded in mystery, and Hope had the key to unlocking that past. But why would his mother choose to get herself entangled with the ex-hooker who had more plans and agendas up her sleeves than an army general?
He leaned forward, and his eyes clashed with his mother’s. ‘Tell me, mother,’ he said, and his voice had dropped to a conspiratorial whisper. ‘Tell me what you know about the enigmatic woman who’s been a nagging worry to me?’
‘She was a striptease and a whore at a nightclub over a decade ago. She worked there as their most popular girl, and then she left there and became a musician with Dan’s help.’
Obi waved impatiently and bade her to continue. ‘I know that, mother. I was aware of that fact a long time ago. What else do you know about her?’
Hope smiled, but there was something cruel about her smile that chilled her son’s blood. ‘My dear, I think you’ll love this. Her parents were related to each other; what that means is that Adamma and her elder sister were the products of an incestuous relationship. Her father had loved me and had wanted to marry me but she’d pried him away from my arms, and even though their family had serious inhibitions about their relationship, they disappeared together and started a family together_ Adamma and her dead sister were the products of that union.’
‘No!’ Obi breathed incredulously, his eyes widening with shocked disbelief. He refused to accept what his mother wanted him to accept, but then, Hope couldn’t possibly be lying. Or, could she?
Hope nodded, satisfied with herself. ‘Yes, dear,’ she said, patting Obi’s arm. ‘They were conceived out of incest. Even her maternal grandmother has seen her songs and has refused to acknowledge the girl as her offspring. Let me explain. Adamma’s grandmother had married two husbands_ her first husband died in a hunting incident but by then she’d given birth to the angel-faced devil who took my lover away from me. She married subsequently, but it turned out that her second husband had adopted a son before he married her. And these two youngsters fell in love after I’d met and fallen in love with the guy; they wanted to get married. Everybody refused.’
Obi frowned as he drummed his fingers thoughtfully on the tabletop. ‘But there is no incest involved; not in the real sense of the word. There was no blood relationship between them.’
Hope nodded. ‘Yes, there wasn’t, but the point is the union fell in within the statutorily prohibited degree of consanguinity and affinity. It would make such a huge scandal, she might even commit suicide.’
Snapping open her bag, she extracted a stack of photographs which were bound together by a brown ribbon and gave them to Obi. He glanced through them all, the expression on his face thoughtful. They were pictures of a much younger Adamma, and they were the story of the life she’d lived inside the clubs. There she was singing, dressed in a gown that barely covered her prized assets which were now earning her so much accolades; there she was again, seated on the laps of a middle-aged man, giving him a lap dance; and there she was, standing in the middle of a raised dais, money spread out all around her_ she was nude, and had stripped off her clothes when the money her audience were tossing at her was substantial enough.
Obi smiled, but it was a smile that was devoid of warmth as he stared at the pictures that was spread on the table before him. He was holding the key to his wife’s past life in his hands; it was the weapon that would destroy her if he ever made them public_ all he had to do was to spend less than an hour before a computer, and then all hell would break loose. He’d ruin her public image irreparably if he ever flung those pictures at the thousands of people who idolized her.
‘My dear, you now know what to do,’ Hope said, and he looked up at her and saw the triumph in her face. ‘You hold a deadly weapon in your hands. Destroy that woman, or I will.’
Rising to her feet, Hope turned round and sauntered and sauntered out of the office with the feline grace of a cat, watched by her son. And then he smiled victoriously to himself, a wave of happiness intermingled with a touch of sadness engulfed him as he conjured up images of what his wife’s reaction would be when he went to her and waved the pictures in her face and told her what he’d heard from his mother.
There was really no incest involved due to the fact that there was no blood relationship between them in any way, but it would be utterly scandalous if the news ever came out; people would never ask questions as to what had really transpired. He was really sorry about her life and the fact that she’d really suffered to get to her current position and station in life, but due to the way she’d cut him off as if he was some inconsequential riffraff, he had to use whatever way imaginable and get her back into his arms. She wanted him to come to her groveling on his knees, asking for forgiveness_ from what? But he wasn’t going to do that. She belonged to him, and he’d blackmail her back into his arms and make her be what he wanted her to be to him.
The seedy world of prostitution she’d been steeped in during the time of her youth would be used as a weapon against her now that she was in the prime of her life. Her past would serve as a curse to her and would be the means through which he’d bring her back to his life and into his bed, and this time, nothing would make him free her.
And with the myriad of facts he now knew about her, there was no way she could escape from him. Not even the battery of assistants and security personnel she’d surrounded herself with would help her this time around. He had the single-minded focus of a super computer, and he’d really turned his attention towards getting her back to his house. Now, she was his, and there was no way he’d ever let her go again. He had to give her a reason to stay; he had to make her understand that there was nothing she could say or do to make her escape from him; she could not bargain for her freedom because there was nothing for her to bargain for. She was his, and there was nothing to be done about it.
The days all passed into a blur constant blur of boredom for him. Working himself tirelessly from morning to night no longer had the therapeutic effect it usually had on him like it used to, and he found himself attending luncheons and dinner parties where stupid matchmaking madams constantly and shamelessly besieged him from every angle, thrusting their lamb-brained daughters in his face with whom he could practically hold no conversation with due to the fact that they had zero intelligence in their brains. And then he stopped attending these lunches and stopped accepting invitations. Since he couldn’t be stimulated intellectually by any of them the way his wife stimulated him with her sharp wits and her intelligence, he found out that all such pursuits had lost their flavor for him.
The one subject that haunted him with unwavering tenacity was the subject of his wife’s life. He had to admit to himself that she had an appeal that made her irresistible, and there was a goddess appeal about her that was completely unique. And she’d dared him in many ways, as if she wanted to know what his reaction would be. Oh, he would retaliate in his own way, of course; that was what he was preparing for.
He’d stared at one of her pictures that adorned the east wall of his office every morning when he came to work, and he would nod with approval at how stunning she looked. To his eyes, she was so beautiful, sculpted to physical perfection; she was a dangerous woman who knew the type of power she had and yet never hesitated to use it to her advantage.
Even now, several years after their first encounter, he still could not erase the memory of how she’d looked at him as their eyes had locked together; it was as if at that very moment, she’d branded him as hers. And he’d known that she was a load of trouble, but like the fool he was, he’d fallen for her anyway, just the great men of the world had fallen for the stunning women who had subsequently destroyed them.
One day, after he’d returned from a board meeting with the staff of one of his establishments, he took his car keys, got into the machine, and then he drove out into the traffic, knowing what he must do; what he had to do. He wanted to know Adamma better; he wanted to understand the real reason why she’d gotten herself steeped in the seedy world of the Lagos night life; he wanted to understand how she’d made her meteoric rise to stardom in spite of all the odds that had been against her. There was a choking curiosity within him to know more about her than he already knew, and he knew that if he didn’t seek the answers to the numerous questions he had about her, then he’d never rest.
He drove to Ajegunle, one of the shocking slum areas of Lagos state, to the Happy Day club where his wife had started her history; the place where his life with her had begun on that fateful night, nearly thirteen years ago. And when he got to Ajegunle, his mind still tuned to Adamma, he drove through the dirty streets for twenty minutes before he finally eased the car into the grounds of the club. He smiled, remembering how it had looked the only time he’d visited it years ago; it hadn’t changed much.
As he approached the steel entrance doors, the door eased open and a freakishly tall girl, with an olive complexion and was dressed in a skimpy nothing gown that defied decency stepped out. She was pretty, though her beauty had hardened, and her face broke into the hard welcoming smile only a whore knows how to give, contriving to appear eager to please.
‘Are you in for a drink, or is there something else you’d like?’ she asked, looking him over expectantly.
‘If you can answer one or two questions, then you’ll earn yourself a drink,’ Obi told her, smiling back at her.
Her smile disappeared so fast, there was no expression waiting to cover the ensuing blankness. She now looked wary, and when she spoke, her voice was hard and flat. ‘What kind of questions do you want to ask?’
‘How long have you been working here?’
‘Three months. Why are you interested in knowing how long I’ve worked here?’
‘Sorry, but you cannot help me,’ Obi said pleasantly, and then he made to walk past her, but she caught his arm, her fingers clamping down hard on his wrist. He paused to look at her and she returned his look boldly, her eyes challenging him.
‘Try me,’ she urged softly, ‘I may not have spent a long time here but at least I know everything that goes on here. It is the only way for us to survive; we keep our ears open. I’d be a fool to shut my eyes to everything that goes on here, and besides that, I need your money. Tell me what you want to know.’
The determination in her voice left no room for any arguments, and Obi decided to test her and see whether she truly had her ears to the ground as she claimed to do, he said, ‘Ok, that’s fair. I need information about a girl who’d worked here as a singer and a dancer several years ago_ almost twelve or thirteen years ago. She was very popular then, and I am quite sure that there must be someone who’d remember her quite well. I am looking for such a person.’
He was unprepared for the slow smile that spread across her lips, and then broadened into a grin. She said, ‘I will definitely not know anything about such a person, but there’s a man who can help you. Since you say she was very popular back then, he must know her. However, if he doesn’t, then there is no other person to help you. Follow me.’
And she turned and headed back the way she’d come from, walking leisurely but swiftly. She led him into the club, and he was engulfed by the smell of cheap beer and cigarette smoke. There was a fair sprinkling of people in the club’s interior, but Obi knew that the club would be full to the point of overflowing at night when the singers and the strippers would be performing their act, and men and women would come in, seeking to buy sex from the willing sex workers. That was the way it was in this city; there was nothing that could not be bought by the persons with the money to buy it, provided that the price was right.
She led him across the dance floor into a dimly lit corridor that had doors scattered to its left and right corners. The girl led him down the long floor, and then she stopped before one of the doors and stopped, turning back around to look at him. She then knocked, jerking the doorknob back and easing the door open to reveal the interior of what looked like an office.
‘We call him Daddy here,’ she said, giving Obi a lopsided glance that made him feel like a freak for coming here to unearth the ghosts of Adamma’s past life. She continued. ‘He loathes talking about his girls, but if you rub his back well enough and give him a good reason to talk, then he will talk.’
Obi smiled his thanks, his fingers reaching into his jacket pocket for his leather wallet. He contrived to look charming and thankful as he started to pull out some bills from it, but the girl laid her arm on his, stilling his movements. She said, ‘I am sorry, but I do not accept charity; I like to earn the money I have, and I haven’t done anything to earn this money.’ She smiled at him, and then she turned round was gone.
Obi was puzzled by her frankness and warped sense of morality, but he said nothing as he walked into the room and eased the door shut quietly. The room was decorated in shades of green and brown’ there was a brown Persian carpet that was spread on the floor; it was worn but neat; the walls were painted a dull green color that matched the green wallpaper, and there were pictures of famous foreign pop stars, actresses, and nude girls that adorned the walls like trophies the room’s occupant had won.
On the other side of the room, facing the door was a huge mahogany desk whose color blended in with the color of the grey-haired, impassive-faced man that reclined behind it on a swivel chair. At a rough guess, he could be fifty, or sixty, or even seventy; the flash of intelligence in his silvery eyes made it almost impossible to tell.
Obi advanced towards the man. ‘I am sorry for barging on you like this, but I was thinking that maybe, you can help me,’ he said, stopping before the desk and looking into the man’s oddly disconcerting eyes without flinching.
The man motioned him into the chair opposite him and then cleared his throat before he spoke, his voice surprisingly soft, mellowing the ice in his stony eyes. ‘My boy, I am not quite as young as I used to be and so, I can use the company, no matter how formal it might be. Well, what can I do for you?’
Obi crossed one leg over the other before he proffered a reply. ‘I need information about one of the girls who worked here several years ago and I was told that you were the only one that can help me. Well, let me put it this way: around twelve years ago, a girl worked here as a dancer and a singer. She was very popular here, and was outstandingly beautiful to look at, and she had a body that every man dreams of and every woman would die for. I would like to know everything about her, and I’m quite sure that her name would jolt your memory. Her name was Adamma.’
He was watching the older man intently as he spoke, concentrating on the man’s facial expression, and now, he noticed a shift in the man’s indifference. The silver eyes had hardened, and his face had taken on an animated expression, and Obi knew that the man still remembered who she was. Well, who wouldn’t?
The man hummed softly to himself, and then he asked, ‘Do you mean Adamma, the singer?’
Obi nodded. ‘That’s the one I’m talking about. But then there are not two women that bear that name and had worked here, is there? Even if there is, then I don’t care; the one you mentioned is the person I’m interested in.’
The man fixed Obi with a cold stare, his lips compressed in a grim line, his fingers tapping some tunes on the desk. It was as if he was fighting some inner battle within himself, trying to make up his mind pertaining to whether or not he should talk to Obi about one of the star performers in his club; it was as if he was trying to make some urgent decision. That was the thought that flashed through Obi’s mind at that moment. And then he asked himself a one-syllable question: why? Was the man trying to protect the famous singer?
A moment later, the man relaxed and spread his lips in a smile, and he didn’t look so formidable now that he was smiling. He raised one hand. ‘I will discuss her and tell you what you’d like to know about her. First, let me start by telling you how I met her. One day, she just knocked and walked in through that door, stepping into this very room. Now, let me tell you that she was an extraordinarily beautiful girl, and when she told me that she was interested in working here, I was flabbergasted. She was extremely beautiful, and so could do anything she wanted to do, but yet, she wanted to work here? Even though I liked her from that moment, I had to see what she was capable of, so I put on some music, sat back, and then I watched her perform her striptease. It was beyond imagination, and so I had to call in some of my men to watch her and see the pure magic she’d made with her stripping.’
‘And so you employed her?’
The older man lifted his shoulders in a shrug. ‘Well, from the very moment she performed her act and my men sat in here and assessed her performance with me, I knew I’d struck gold; I had seen a goddess in action, and I would have been a fool not to have hired her. She started work that night, and, after a week, she became our number-one girl. Her name was on every lip, and she brought in a lot of business for us and also earned a nice package for herself, and so I issued an order; no man was to touch her or make a go at her unless it was at her instance_ she was never to be touched. And she wasn’t, and men flooded in from all corners of the metropolis to come and watch her. She really had great potentials.’
Obi frowned. ‘Since you knew she had such great potentials, did you try to tap into it?’
‘I tried to, but then there was no way to really help her. And she was the kind of hard girl with a lot of intelligence and dignity to boot, and she wanted no help,’ the older man said dryly. ‘She had a great body, a magical face, and she had a lovely voice; she could sing like a queen, so she took up singing on Friday nights. Her success was phenomenal; everybody was crazy about her_ she was the best cock-teaser we had_ pardon my language, and she could sing and also back that singing voice with a dancing step that could make a man forget his name.’
Looking at the man opposite him whose eyes had turned dreamy with remembrance of bygone days, Obi said, ‘She must have been very popular.’
‘To the men, she was the best thing and greatest piece of ass they’d ever seen, but to the other girls? Well, they were insanely jealous of her. But then, she had a lot of dignity and guts, and so would shoulder no bullshit from anybody; she steered clear of the animals. It was only her friend Amanda, a worker here and then a soft hooker whom the men loved for her full figure that really did care about her. Perhaps it was because she did not have to compete with Adamma, but the point is that Amanda had cared.’
Obi’s eyes narrowed suspiciously at the mention of that name, and then his brows shot to his hairline. The name this man had mentioned had rang a bell in his mind, and his brain hammered at it, working and churning with lightning speed to arrive at the answers he sought. And then, right out of nowhere, the answer flashed through his mind. It was Amanda, his wife’s closest friend, the woman who had on more than two occasions threatened to slice off his balls if he ever hurt her friend. So, she’d had a history with his wife? She had been a whore? She had known Adamma for so long?
Brushing aside this new piece of information for later handling, he turned to the next item on his itinerary. ‘How did she survive by selling her body?’
The man’s lips relaxed into the semblance of a smile. ‘Not much. She only slept with the men whose purse she considered to be deep enough for her attentions, and she sent the less fortunate ones off with such grace and charm, they could never be angry at her. She was a terrific stripper, a wonderful singer, but I think she hated being a whore. Right now, as I look back over the years, and into her eyes, it’s suddenly dawned on me how she must have loathed it; there was such a look of great sadness in her eyes, that I often felt very sorry for her. And that is a luxury I can barely afford to indulge in. But then, my girl was ambitious, a predator who knew her prey, and so she waited, and I was often terrified, afraid I’d lose her to some rich bastard who would care enough for her to take her away from here; I did lose her.’
Caught on a burgeoning crest of fascination, Obi asked, ‘How?’
‘Well, she waited for her prey, and she found it. I was in the bar on that particular night, and she was up there on that stage where she spun her magic and the men fell for her, and she was singing. And then her eyes swept through the crowd that were enchanted by her, and they rested on a young man who was so swept away in ecstasy, I feared he was on another planet. There was something extremely cold and assessing about that glance she threw at him, and then after she was done for the night, she walked straight to his table and sat there with him, and they talked in hushed tones, their heads leaning close together. I do not know what happened next, but she stood up and left with him; she never returned.’
Obi frowned. ‘She just left?’
‘Well, I saw her leaving with the handsome bloke in his expensive car, and then she never came back here again. I went to see her and know why she was betraying me, and she told me that she was pregnant; she wanted to start a new life and take care of herself and her baby. I gave her a fat sum of money, wished her good luck, and then I left. A year later, I heard about the album that was making waves in the market, and then I saw that it was her; she’d finally made it in life.’
What Obi refrained from divulging to the man was that the handsome stranger Adamma had left the club with on that night; the man who took her and catapulted her to stardom after he’d helped her during the period of her pregnancy, was Dan. He also kept mute about who the father of her babies were.
The older man was looking at him strangely, and he felt as if he was being assessed like a side of beef. ‘That is all I can tell you about her,’ he said. ‘However, I’d like to know who you are and why you’re so interested in her. Obviously, you’re not a journalist or I would not have even let you sit here talking to me.’
Obi stood up and then lifted his shoulders in a shrug of feigned indifference. ‘I am her friend, so I was just curious about her. Thank you for your help.’ He extended his right hand and the older man clasped it in a firm handshake.
The man smiled, but now, there was hint