Chimamanda Adichie - Americanah

IT AMUSED OBINZE, that Nigel had decided to move to Nigeria, instead of simply visiting whenever Obinze needed to present his white General Manager. The money was good, Nigel could now live the kind of life in Essex that he would never have imagined before, but he wanted to live in Lagos, at least for a while. And so Obinze’s gleeful waiting commenced, for Nigel to weary of pepper soup and nightclubs and drinking at the shacks in Kuramo Beach. But Nigel was staying put, in his flat in Ikoyi, with a live-in house help and his dog. He no longer said, “Lagos has so much flavor,” and he complained more about the traffic and he had finally stopped moping about his last girlfriend, a girl from Benue with a pretty face and dissembling manner, who had left him for a wealthy Lebanese businessman.

“The bloke’s completely bald,” Nigel had told Obinze.

“The problem with you, my friend, is you love too easily and too much. Anybody could see the girl was a fake, looking for the next bigger thing,” Obinze told him.

“Don’t say ‘bigger thing’ like that, mate!” Nigel said.

Now he had met Ulrike, a lean, angular-faced woman with the body of a young man, who worked at an embassy and seemed determined to sulk her way through her Nigerian posting. At dinner, she wiped her cutlery with the napkin before she began eating.

“You don’t do that in your country, do you?” Obinze asked coldly. Nigel darted a startled glance at him.

“Actually I do,” Ulrike said, squarely meeting his gaze.

Kosi patted his thigh under the table, as though to calm him down, which irritated him. Nigel, too, was irritating him, suddenly talking about the town houses Obinze was planning to build, how exciting the new architect’s design was. A timid attempt to end Obinze’s conversation with Ulrike.

“Fantastic plan inside, made me think of some of those pictures of fancy lofts in New York,” Nigel said.

“Nigel, I’m not using that plan. An open kitchen plan will never work for Nigerians and we are targeting Nigerians because we are selling, not renting. Open kitchen plans are for expats and expats don’t buy property here.” He had already told Nigel many times that Nigerian cooking was not cosmetic, with all that pounding. It was sweaty and spicy and Nigerians preferred to present the final product, not the process.

“No more work talk!” Kosi said brightly. “Ulrike, have you tried any Nigerian food?”

Obinze got up abruptly and went into the bathroom. He called Ifemelu and felt himself getting enraged when she still did not pick up. He blamed her. He blamed her for making him a person who was not entirely in control of what he was feeling.

Nigel came into the bathroom. “What’s wrong, mate?” Nigel’s cheeks were bright red, as they always were when he drank. Obinze stood by the sink holding his phone, that drained lassitude spreading over him again. He wanted to tell Nigel, Nigel was perhaps the only friend he fully trusted, but Nigel fancied Kosi. “She’s all woman, mate,” Nigel had said to him once, and he saw in Nigel’s eyes the tender and crushed longing of a man for that which was forever unattainable. Nigel would listen to him, but Nigel would not understand.

“Sorry, I shouldn’t have been rude to Ulrike,” Obinze said. “I’m just tired. I think I’m coming down with malaria.”

That night, Kosi sidled close to him, in offering. It was not a statement of desire, her caressing his chest and reaching down to take his penis in her hand, but a votive offering. A few months ago, she had said she wanted to start seriously “trying for our son.” She did not say “trying for our second child,” she said “trying for our son,” and it was the kind of thing she learned in her church. There is power in the spoken word. Claim your miracle . He remembered how, months into trying to get pregnant the first time, she began to say with sulky righteousness, “All my friends who lived very rough lives are pregnant.”

After Buchi was born, he had agreed to a thanksgiving service at Kosi’s church, a crowded hall full of lavishly dressed people, people who were Kosi’s friends, Kosi’s kind. And he had thought of them as a sea of simple brutes, clapping, swaying simple brutes, all of them accepting and pliant before the pastor in his designer suit.

“What’s wrong, darling?” Kosi asked, when he remained limp in her hand. “Are you feeling well?”

“Just tired.”

Her hair was covered in a black hair net, her face coated in a cream that smelled of peppermint, which he had always liked. He turned away from her. He had been turning away since the day he first kissed Ifemelu. He should not compare, but he did. Ifemelu demanded of him. “No, don’t come yet, I’ll kill you if you come,” she would say, or “No, baby, don’t move,” then she would dig into his chest and move at her own rhythm, and when finally she arched her back and let out a sharp cry, he felt accomplished to have satisfied her. She expected to be satisfied, but Kosi did not. Kosi always met his touch with complaisance, and sometimes he would imagine her pastor telling her that a wife should have sex with her husband, even if she didn’t feel like it, otherwise the husband would find solace in a Jezebel.

“I hope you’re not getting sick,” she said.

“I’m okay.” Ordinarily he would hold her, slowly rub her back until she fell asleep. But he could not get himself to do so now. So many times in the past weeks he had started to tell her about Ifemelu but had stopped. What would he say? It would sound like something from a silly film. I am in love with another woman. There’s someone else. I’m leaving you . That these were words that anybody could say seriously, outside a film and outside the pages of a book, seemed odd. Kosi was wrapping her arms around him. He eased away and mumbled something about his stomach being upset and went into the toilet. She had put a new potpourri, a mix of dried leaves and seeds in a purple bowl, on the cover of the toilet tank. The too-strong lavender scent choked him. He emptied the bowl into the toilet and then instantly felt remorseful. She had meant well. She did not know that the too-strong scent of lavender would be unappealing to him, after all.

The first time he saw Ifemelu at Jazzhole, he had come home and told Kosi, “Ifemelu is in town. I had a drink with her,” and Kosi had said, “Oh, your girlfriend in university,” with an indifference so indifferent that he did not entirely trust it.

Why had he told her? Perhaps because he had sensed even then the force of what he felt, and he wanted to prepare her, to tell her in stages. But how could she not see that he had changed? How could she not see it on his face? In how much time he spent alone in his study, and in how often he went out, how late he stayed? He had hoped, selfishly, that it might alienate her, provoke her. But she always nodded, glib and accepting nods, when he told her he had been at the club. Or at Okwudiba’s. Once he said that he was still chasing the difficult deal with the new Arab owners of Megatel, and he had said “the deal” casually, as if she already knew about it, and she made vague, encouraging sounds. But he was not even involved at all with Megatel.

THE NEXT MORNING, he woke up unrested, his mind furred with a great sadness. Kosi was already up and bathed, sitting in front of her dressing table, which was full of creams and potions so carefully arranged that he sometimes imagined putting his hands under the table and overturning it, just to see how all those bottles would fare.