Adaobi Nwaubani - I Do Not Come to You by Chance

‘Mr Hooverson?’

‘Yes?’ he replied sternly, like a female post office clerk.

‘Aluta Continua!’

His smile opened up like an umbrella. He pulled the door all the way. In his neat, old-fashioned suit, Mr Hooverson could easily have passed for a Baptist minister. He was a tall, handsome man who looked as if he had recently started feeding too often and too well. I was not quite sure about his age. He looked slightly older than a secondary school principal, but much younger than a grandfather. I noticed that his fingernails were bitten halfway down to the cuticles.

‘I’m Shehu Musa Abacha. This is Dr Wazobia. He was my late brother’s trusted chemist.’

Mr Hooverson’s smile flickered. He looked unsure of this new character. His mouth opened to ask a question; I grabbed him into a tight embrace.

‘Thank you,’ I said with tears in my voice. ‘Thank you very, very much for all your help towards my sister and my family.’

It is amazing the things we never know about ourselves, the skills that situations and circumstances drag out of us. In all my six years of secondary school, nobody had ever considered me for a single part in the yearly Inter-House Drama Competition. They said I was too set in my personality, they said I could not act. Now, here I was giving a performance that was on a par with any of Denzel Washington’s.

‘It’s my pleasure,’ he replied and hugged me back.

We remained in each other’s arms for several seconds. The whole thing had a certain United Nations touch.

‘My sister Mariam asked me to apologise for not being able to meet you herself,’ I said, as we went into the room.

‘Oh, I perfectly understand. I understand about the horrible situation in your country. It’s really very sad.’

I moved on to stage two.

‘When my sister rang the security company yesterday just to make sure that everything was in order, they told her that the only thing remaining is an anti-terrorist certificate.’

‘What! They never told me anything about that!’

‘I think it’s something new they just started implementing,’ Dr Wazobia said.

We told Mr Hooverson that we had raised $5,000 of our own money for the anti-terrorist certificate, and would pay the remaining $10,000 when the consignment arrived.

‘Oh, great,’ he sighed.

‘But they said we can only have part of the delivery until I pay them the remaining.’

‘How much would that be… Part of the delivery?’

‘It’s one of two trunk boxes,’ I replied. ‘That comes to exactly half of the $58 million.’

I could see the mathematics going through his head. Half of $58 million dollars was still over $25 million.

‘That seems like a perfect idea to me,’ he said and nodded. ‘Once we have the first trunk, we can then pay from that for the second trunk… Everyone is happy!’

I dug into my pocket and brought out an envelope of cash. I counted out fifty $100 bills in full view of everybody and handed them to Dr Wazobia, who then left to pay the anti-terrorists. He was supposed to return with the certificate, which we would then take to the security company. Then we would receive our trunk of millions.

Mr Hooverson and I were now alone.

‘How’s your sister doing?’ he asked in a tone of utmost concern.

My reply painted as pathetic a picture as I could conjure. Grunts of different shapes and sizes escaped from Mr Hooverson’s lips. By the time I finished, he was clutching his chest with grief. Did I say Denzel Washington? Make that an Eddie Murphy or an Al Pacino.

‘How sad,’ he said. ‘How very, very sad, I would have loved to pop over to Nigeria quickly and see her, but I need to be back in the US as soon as possible. I left him at home.’

While speaking, he reached into his wallet, extracted a photograph, and passed it on to me. I stared at the muscular, jet-black creature.

‘Is this your dog?’ I asked.

Mr Hooverson glared at me as if I had just called his mother a hermaphrodite. The skin on his face changed from the colour of boiled chicken to the colour of a baboon’s buttocks.

‘Don’t call him a dog!’ he howled with uncharacteristic, un-good-Samaritan-ish vexation. ‘His name is Kunta Kinte!’

My heart went pit-a-pat. Rapidly, I calculated how many leaps and bounds would get me to the door.

‘Kunta Kinte’s been through a lot,’ he said in a much softer voice. ‘He gets very agitated when I’m not at home. My new wife is really mean to him. She never lets him sleep in our bed.’

I was still clutching my heart between my teeth. My mind was already halfway down the valley of the shadow of death. I recalled all those stories about Americans who suddenly whipped out guns from grocery bags and started shooting everyone in sight. And from what I had seen on television, every American had at least one firearm. What if Mr Hooverson had come along with his gun? Would he shoot me if he happened to find out right here that all this was a scam? Would he shoot himself afterwards or live to tell the story? Would the shooting event make it to CNN or BBC? Would it be on the NTA 9 o’clock news?

What would my mother say when she saw it? I started losing weight right there in my seat.

Mr Hooverson went on to narrate several stories about the dog, describing Kunta Kinte’s good qualities, remembering with tears in his eyes the day he lost him and later found him in the garden shed. I listened on with sweet patience, but in my mind I had started throwing huge boulders at him. At long last, I could take it no more. I had never been one to shine at small talk, but I decided to try.

‘Do you have any children?’ I asked, hoping that this would lead to a more tolerable topic.

‘Kunta Kinte is my only child,’ he replied tenderly. ‘One of the reasons why I’m looking forward to this money coming in is so I can leave him something to live comfortably on even if something was to happen to me. I’m thinking of a trust fund in his name.’

God being so kind, right then, Dr Wazobia rang my cellular phone.

He informed me that the person at the anti-terrorist office was insisting on the complete $15,000 before he could issue the certificate. I threw a tantrum over the phone.

‘What sort of rubbish is this? Mr Hooverson has come all the way from America to help us and now this! Can’t you explain to them that we’ll give it from the one in the trunk?’

I continued the heated talk while Mr Hooverson looked increasingly worried.

‘Let me see what I can do,’ he finally said.

He rang someone in the USA and asked them to wire money, quick. The person appeared reluctant. Mr Hooverson insisted that it was an emergency. After a brief argument, the savage in him burst through the Caucasian coating.

‘Just do it!’ Mr Hooverson howled, punching the arm of his chair until it groaned.

That was one thing I loved about these Yankee Doodles. They had a way of getting things done.

The next few hours were a rush of dramatics. I accompanied the mugu to a nearby cash machine and stood respectfully aside while he punched in his pin. When would this sort of technology reach my dearly beloved Nigeria? These cash machines were like gods standing right there in the streets, answering the cries of the needy at the press of a button.

Dr Wazobia met us up at the hotel lobby. He collected the cash, dashed out again, and returned shortly after with the anti-terrorist certificate. Now we could officially pick up our trunk of millions. We hailed a taxi to the security company. Mr Hooverson knew the address by heart.

The security company office was complete with signboard, reception, and inner office. There was even a Caucasian man and woman in charge of things. Cash Daddy had exhumed this setup from where-I-do-not-know, but it looked perfectly authentic.