Arrows of Rain by Okey Ndibe

Author:Okey Ndibe
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Literary Fiction
Publisher: Soho Press
Published: 2014-11-18T23:42:12+00:00

Chapter Thirteen

Several evenings a week, I would leave work and head straight for Good Life. Amidst the din of music, the spectacle of possessed dancers, the spirals of cigarette smoke, the clatter of beer bottles, the sight of men and women raising wine- or spirit-filled glasses to their sad faces, Iyese and I snuggled inside the shell of our private desires and despairs. We drank and joked and rubbed thighs as well as sides and exchanged pecks, arousing each other’s ancient hungers in a variety of subtle as well as brazen ways.

Some nights Iyese became tipsy and melancholy, and let slip some morsel of truth about her past. Occasionally she began to sob quietly. From time to time her demons seized her more violently and I took her outside into the cool air and held her in a strong embrace while she wet my shirt with the storm of her pain.

Whenever I got drunk and grew bold I slipped my hand under the table and sought out Iyese’s thighs. She would let my hand wander for a while, then she would remove it from the warm place it had found, put it on the table and softly slap it, purring “Bad boy, bad boy.” Depending on how drunk she felt I was, she would either invite me to sleep at her flat—“But you must promise not to try any hanky panky”—or plead with me to take a taxi home.

The editor of the Daily Monitor at the time was a fellow named Austine Pepe. He had begun his career at the Star, Madia’s oldest newspaper, in the years preceding independence when most of the paper’s senior editorial staff were British and he was a lone bright native. He had been much beholden to his Anglo­ Saxon mentors at the paper. They in turn had looked upon his industriousness as proof of the smaller blessings of the colonial enterprise.

As independence approached, and it became necessary to train the native talent who would take over and run many institutions, Austine Pepe was sent to Fleet Street to learn the secrets of British newspapering. He spent nine months of studious apprenticeship in England. On his return he was appointed deputy to a Bob Owen, the Star’s last British editor. It fell to Owen to let Pepe into the finer tricks of the trade.

The English labor was not wasted. Pepe the editor held himself and all who worked for him uncompromisingly to British standards. At editorial meetings (often without much provocation) he would brandish a copy of Owen’s parting testimonial, which stated that Pepe was “as good an editor as any to be found in Britain.” After reading it aloud he would hold up the piece of paper and pronounce the moral: “Bloody hell! We all know how difficult it is to impress the English. This letter attests to my qualification to edit the British Times or Guardian or Telegraph. So, when I talk, I know what I’m talking about, for God’s sake!” Pepe’s sharpest

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