Tafawa, Dele and “Pumped Friction”, an extract from The Line in the Sand (inspired by a misspent youth)
‘Is Tafawa here?’ Dele said, flicking her earrings. In a pair of three-quarter length trousers, a pink top and a black denim jacket with large copper buttons, she thought she looked a right clubber.
‘What are you to him?’ said the bouncer. He looked like a constipated Sumo wrestler.
Dele tossed her hair back. ‘His wife, what do you think,’ she said. She showed him her ticket and brushed past into Tasadi nightclub without waiting for a reply.
Inside the club, polyrhythmic guitars chirruped over a thudding bass line and under the flashing strobe lights, the dancers seemed to jerk and snap like manic marionettes. Dele pushed through to the bar to buy a drink. She sat down behind a pillar in one of the darker alcoves. A man leaned over. Supple and lithe of frame with an unlined face he looked late twenties. He had a bright scarf around his neck, a green and black probably satin top tucked into a pair of jeans.
‘How much…?’ he said. Dele did not catch the rest. The man leered at her, jangled notes and coins near Dele’s ear. He had a sharp smell of beer, sweat and nicotine.
‘I’m not sure,’ said Dele, raising her voice to be heard.
‘Listen to this one. You think I no pay you, what you doing here in Tasadi? Is that how you ended up in this country? Your mama missed road?’ he said with an angry look on his face.
‘No need for that,’ said Dele. This is my friend’s club. I know the band “Jiju Brigade”, well.’ She looked him up and down with affected disdain. ‘You are not my type. I want Tafawa.’
The man poked his pumped up pectorals through the open shirt. ‘You know who I am? I’m Sikiru, band member. Guitar. I know where to find him,’ said the man.
‘I thought I recognised you,’ said Dele, playing along. ‘Was it at festival? I do some artwork.’
‘Pah, band for students. Jiju Brigade…we are international. Next month, Togo. Benin…’
‘Tafawa tells me you have a good time here. But I no see road myself…get my saying,’ said Dele in her best downtown drawl. She eyed Sikiru over the brim of her glass of beer and winked. This is what they call going with the flow. ‘Is he here?’
The next number started with a sampled James Brown riff. Marshall rolled on to the stage with a girl on his arm and a microphone cable wound, like a snake, round the other arm.
‘That’s Efun. The latest Marshall…recruit,’ said Sikiru, taking a seat and wheeling round to face the stage. The girl had the cherubic looks of teacher’s pet on the first day of term and did not look much older than fourteen.
‘Come. I’ll take you to Tafawa.’
Dele followed him, glaring and swaggering like a Lag, local area girl. They came to a set of pale double doors.
‘Hey,’ shouted a bouncer. In a baggy pair of lopsided blue dungarees, held on by the left strap thrown over the right shoulder, his boxing career had come to an abrupt halt when he snapped a head of his right biceps during a famous bout. ‘Dararasinha, how you dey,’ said Dele, prancing on the spot.
Dararasinha looked straight through her.
‘Hey Daras, do I not see you right?’ said Sikiru.
The man’s blood-shot eyes filled with menace and the corner of his mouth twitched. Dele got ready to duck.
‘It’s only because it’s you my Siki. Is she game?’ he said, after a moment. He gave a half salute and dropped his arm. What is game?
‘Who no know will know my man,’ said Siki and saluted by shaking his fist above his head. Sikiru guided Dele to the far end of the floor, pushed through what looked like another fire door. Dele found herself in pitch darkness. This is not good. She heard a girl groan, heard lips smack and suck and saw a dozen glowing red spliffs flit about in the dark. Buttocks gyrated, wagged, floated, stiffened and fell. Sikiru reached out for Dele’s left wrist, gripping it harder than she thought he should and placed it over the hard lump pushing at the front of his trousers. Dele flinched. Shrill warnings went off in her head. But Sikiru pulled her harder. ‘This one followed me here,’ he said.
‘Bring,’ said a man in a deep baritone voice. He sat up, putting on pause a girl’s oral gyrations on his obelisk. ‘Siki my man, you do well, fresh meat, hot flesh,’ he said.
‘Marshall ah, ah, how many you want do?’ said Sikiru.
The image of that room and the aroma of Sandman’s cigarettes in the camp flashed into Dele’s head. Must get out. She rubbed Sikiru’s swelling crotch and, sensing his guard drop, swung her right elbow as hard as she could into his right ribcage. She heard a crack. Sikiru cried out. ‘Ah, what do this woman?’ he said. With head swimming and ears ringing, Dele ran, trampled over a leg and a saxophone, tripped back out of the yard and through a door. She ended up in another dark but busy corridor. ‘Kakakolu, shansha, baluba,’ she said, adding other what she thought were credible night-club phrases as she shoved and bounded through until, stumbling down some steps, she found herself back on the oval dance floor. A short man gyrating to the music bumped into her, grinned and staggered off, bouncing into another girl, whose man shoved him away. He collided with a table. Bottles crashed on to the floor. A drinker at the depleted table leapt to his feet and dropped the clumsy dancer with a right hook. The erstwhile dancer got up, his rheumy eyes fixed on Dele.
‘You caused this,’ he said, winding up his fist. At that moment a strong hand grabbed Dele by the left wrist and spun her round. ‘Ah, ah, what you do here at Tasadi spot?’ It was Tafawa.
Tafawa had a large gold ring in his left ear and had a widestriped red and beige shirt open from the waist. The tips of polkadotted black and red brogues peeked from under a pair of white bellbottomed trousers: on his chain the initials, TB.
‘This is my dad’s place,’ said Tafawa, scratching his goatee.
‘I come to chill, look what happens. Now I run into a renegade like you,’ said Dele, shouting to make herself heard above a scratchy vinyl rendition of “Brown Sugar.” The live band had gone on a short break. ‘I thought this was a busy time for you medics,’ said Tafawa.‘All work and no play…,’ said Dele.
‘What?’ said Tafawa. ‘Oh, no worry. I know medics who did not know nothing, everyday so-so club and girls, kai, many are top doctors abroad.’ He dragged Dele off the dance floor to the bar. A young woman in a raffia red and yellow bikini skipped up to Tafawa to shout into his ear. Tafawa fondled her breasts. Lucky her, at least a 34D.
‘Do me a favour. I need somewhere to stay for a day or two, my room-mate’s fiancé is visiting and I want to give them space,’ she said with a knowing smile and tap on Tafawa’s forearm. Tafawa detached himself from the girl. The girl scowled, fished a couple of bank notes out of Tafawa’s top pocket and flounced off. The band reassembled on stage in animal skin tops over red pairs of trousers embroidered with a black map of South Roko.
‘Let’s go to my base, too much noise and I don’t want that girl… are you coming?’ He scratched his chin.
They walked through a backstage door and up a narrow spiral staircase into a large room shaped like a coffin. A single ceiling bulb washed the room in dilute light. Tafawa peeled off his clothes and planted himself on a red chaise longue. With his hairy belly hanging over the broad waist of his Chelsea football club boxer shorts, Dele thought he looked ridiculous.
‘Sit. That is my sister and her kids,’ he said, following Dele’s gaze. A handsome woman and three boys beamed down from the framed photograph on the wall. Dele sat down in a one-armed chair, grateful for the rest.
Tafawa snapped out of his chair. ‘Jesus. It’s nearly two and no fucking arrangement,’ he said. He pulled on his goatee.
A cork popped in Dele’s stomach. What does he mean, fucking arrangement?
‘Fried chicken? Microwave chicken, boiled chicken, baked?’ said Tafawa, counting off the choices on his fingers.
‘An egg or two will do, with a soft drink,’ said Dele with relief.
‘Egg and what? Ah doctor, you don’t know how to enjoy.’ Tafawa fished a mobile phone out of his pocket and ordered a double serving of fried chicken. ‘Sleep through there, it is free today.’ He pointed down a dark corridor. ‘For me for me I like to enjoy first. I sleep well, well, after fuck. Fuck works better than any pills…and you can’t overdose. Do they teach you that in medical school?’ His tone changed and he fixed Dele with red eyes. ‘Are you like saying that this fiancé man is want the both of you, that is why you hide here?’ he said.
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said Dele.
‘Man must ask,’ said Tafawa.
Dele called Ambasi’s ward at three o’clock. ‘No change,’ said Sister. The news dropped a barb into her heart.
***
The sun shining red through her eyelids woke her up at nine the next morning. She called Mrs Lagbaja, who sounded frantic.
‘All day this giant’s been watching the house. Won’t even let them deliver the newspapers or the parrot feed. I’m at my wit’s end. I gave some freelance men money to get rid of him but they took my dosh and disappeared.’
‘Can’t talk. I’m in the house of the medallion man. I’ve got to go. Someone’s coming,’ said Dele.
Tafawa’s house-girl brought in the breakfast. ‘It good?’ said Tafawa, waddling in with his shiny belly button peeping over the top of a red loin cloth. He opened the dish and forked two large pieces of yam on to a plate, folded an omelette between them to make a sandwich and disappeared across the landing to his room. ‘For stamina. By the way I disciplined Sikiru,’ he said, over his shoulder. Dele waited an hour before she crept over the landing to eavesdrop at Tafawa’s door. Perhaps the “sleeping tablets” have worked she thought and tiptoed back to her room.
She switched the TV on. Babubacka’s usual lies oozed from his greasy mouth. Another initiative to provide clean water. Billions of Yuan in bilateral kickbacks. Dele turned up the volume, bolted the door top and bottom, rummaged through drawers and cupboards, under the mattress and cushions, but found nothing to explain what Tafawa was doing at Mrs Lagbaja’s. She wondered whether she could not just come out and ask Tafawa about the pendant, but decided that that would be suicide if the impresario worked for Sandman.
Dele went on to the sunny balcony to clear her head. She watched the people go by until her arms started to tingle from resting on the hot balcony rails. Back inside, as her eyes got used to the light, the one spot she had not searched stared back at her. With her heart thumping with bated hope, she went over to check the door again before she got on to her knees to fish around the TV cabinet. Tangled amongst the plugs and wires and cobwebs underneath the cabinet, she found a DVD labelled “Pumped Friction II” in a white jacket.
She slotted the disc into the player. The crude credits rolled on to a jerky movie of a muscle-bound man in bed with a prepubescent girl, who fondled the buds on her chest while she bounced up and down, an otherworldly expression on her face. The man’s pay check seemed to be based on the word count of expletives. Dele was about to switch the player off when the scene segued into another. Shafts of fucked lightening. The cage in the corner of the room, the pale wardrobe with the broken handle, the picture of the parrot on the wall, the black and white tiles, it had to be Mrs Lagbaja’s house. And there was Confucius hopping about repeating what he heard from the bed below. So that explains Comfy’s vocabulary.
Questions rolled up in her head. What was Tafawa’s job?
Cameraman, producer, director, editor, actor? Did Mrs Lagbaja disturb them? Is that why the wardrobe toppled over her? How did they know she was not in in the first place? Would she rent out her room for cheap spanks? She tidied the room in a frenzy and got up to brush the dust off her clothes. She had just slapped a cobweb off her trouser leg when she heard loud banging on the balcony window.
‘Why you lock door? Eh, what the dogoni are you doing?’ said Tafawa. He swung his trailing leg on to the balcony and hopped into the room.
Dele shoved the DVD into a bag and leapt for the exit. She kicked the bottom bolt open but the top bolt would not budge. Tafawa’s hands closed round her neck. She felt the heat and aroma of his morning breath on the back of her head. Summoning all her strength she pushed backwards against the door. Tafawa wheezed and they both fell on to the floor.
Dele leapt for the door again, grabbed the bolt and tugged, but she might as well have been towing an oil tanker with a paper clip.
Tafawa grabbed her by the neck and threw her to the floor. ‘I will kill you this girl,’ he said.
‘Why the old lady’s house. Are you working for Sandman?’ she said, as Tafawa yanked her up on to her feet and the room spun round her ears.
‘You want die, doctor?’ he said, but Dele saw a flicker of fear in his eyes.
‘I have no quarrel with you. It’s the mama I’m trying to help. How did you know that her place was free?’ she said, panting for breath.
Tafawa paused as if he had not thought of that himself and in that split second Dele shoulder-charged him. He tripped over a stool, caught his head on the end of an armchair. He groaned, and tried to get up but fell flat on his belly, heaving for breath. A wheal ballooned over his right eye. Dele skipped away from his desperate grab at her foot and yanked again at the stubborn bolt. It came away from the jamb and hung off a crocked nail. With another desperate pull from Dele the door flew open and a dinner lady, probably eavesdropping, tripped and staggered along to land on Tafawa’s knee.
‘Stupid idiot, you’ve broken my leg,’ said Tafawa, shoving the woman away.
Dele charged out, collided with a late riser on a landing, leapt down the flight of stairs, brushed herself down with a pretence of nonchalance, put on a drunken gait, and, once out of sight of a bemused couple in the hall, picked her knees up and ran.
***
A brisk and stiff-legged ten-minute walk later, she ducked into an alley and crept along the narrow backstreets until she found a space in the oblong shadow of a church. To loud drumming in her head she sat down on a step. Her thoughts went back to Pumped Friction II. If Dada was making money from dirty movies Sandman must know. Then she remembered that in her haste to escape she had left the tape behind in Tafawa’s room. Daft and useless, you. She was still cursing herself when her phone rang.
‘Two men came…here this afternoon,’ Franko said with a breathless stammer.
‘What did they want?’ she said.
‘Please tell me the truth Dele. Your friend is in hospital you don’t know…what’s wrong with her. I heard that her young helper dies. Then these…ugly looking…urgh, men came this afternoon. Are you into heavy stuff? I know you were short of money…’
‘Of course not. Trust me. Franko, do me a favour. I can’t come back to college at the moment but I need your help.’
‘Keep me out of your trouble,’ said Franko. He went quiet. Dele sensed that Franko was talking to his precious girlfriend. ‘Ok. This and I’m done. I am moving out of college…until it is safe,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell you where I am. And it’s not the Majestic,’ said Dele. Dele closed the call and wandered around till it was dark. She bought barbecued beef from a roadside hawker and washed it down with a bottle of water. After that she had only loose change left. She went to sit on the steps outside a petrol station but an oil tanker arrived and proceeded to smoke her out. At eleven, hungry and shivering in the cold night, Dele shouldered into the departure hall of Dili Chuchu bus company.
About twice the size of a schoolroom, the ground floor reception hall heaved with passengers. After half an hour of pushing and shoving, past the grumbles of vented frustration at some delay or perceived insult, past the boy and girl cursing each other and a woman clouting her son about the ears for being tardy or perhaps for being there or born at all, Dele hurdled a cage of hens to reach a cracked noticeboard. In chalk, the time-table said the bus would leave in about five hours, at five o’clock. I can stay here all night then. Affecting an aggressive mien, she found a space on the edge of a benign-looking couple’s mat, next to a girl crying for her dress that had split but not at the seams. The couple’s toddler strained at her leash. ‘Let her come,’ said Dele. The mother eyed Dele’s torn blouse, but must have seen something reassuring as well. ‘Take,’ she said, letting the little girl roll into Dele’s lap. The little girl smiled up at Dele with wide, ash-grey, eyes. Dele tapped the toddler’s tiny shoulders with her fingers and rocked in time to a silly ditty she made up. The ditty put her in mind of Hanili and goose bumps tickled her neck.
‘She’s not good with strangers usually,’ said the mother. Dele handed the sleeping girl back and called the hospital.
‘Miss Hanili has been more up than down. She is asleep,’ said Sister. Cheered up a fraction, Dele rested her chin on her chest and fell asleep.
An engine’s growl yanked her out of sleep. She saw the passengers push and shove and bump, cursing their way out through the door as if in flight from a plague. The hall emptied in under five minutes. Dele crouched under a water spigot in the corner and had a wash. Her hair was still wet when Franko arrived in a shiny metallic grey sports car.
‘I have liquidity problems but at this short notice, take this, about fifty-five plus some Bobos,’ he said handing her the notes through the car window.
It’ll have to do.
‘And Lari said to give you this,’ Franko said, handing Dele a white cotton blouse.
‘You are a big sweetie,’ said Dele. She leaned in through the car window to give him a hug. Franko drove off and Dele called Ambasi’s ward. ‘Not so good,’ said Sister.
‘Give him my love,’ Dele said with a knot in her throat. After a spicy hot breakfast of rice and beans and fried peppers served in broad banana leaves, Dele turned her mind to the next stage. She needed Sandman’s recent autograph.
Comments (0)