II

It is the next day after he heard about his promotion as North Bureau chief of the newspaper he works for. He is driving his old Chevrolet and it is not a problem of petrol anymore. It is already evening and he wants to reach her house in time so that he would not think of sleeping there. He remembers the last embarrassment not with a smile.

            He has finally parked his old Chevrolet and he is knocking at her door. She opens and he looks at her as she looks at him. He sees that she has become younger and that her age seems like an unending flowing stream and that she is without wrinkles of any kind. She lets him in after their looking is over and silence ensues between them.

            “How are you?” it is her that asks and he begins to understand that there is something that can bother her, that she is really human.

            “I am fine.”

            “You are disturbed.”

            “Why do you say so?”

            “I am not usually the starter of the conversation.”

She laughs at what she thinks is a yarn. He does not laugh because he knows it is a fact. With his no-laughter, she comes to where he is sitting on a chair in her room and sits beside him, rubbing his head with gentility.

            “What is wrong?”

He takes his time calculating the words that would be best to use.

            “I have been reassigned to the North. I am now North Bureau Chief.”

She takes her time in swallowing his missal. It is a missal because she gets up and packs her whole garment of hair backwards. She moves up from beside him and goes to her bed and sits. She stares away from him.

            “You see why I said love is not white? You can never predict it. What do you want to do?”

            “That is what I do not know.”

They continue in their silent dialogue, if there was any dialogue.

            “I cannot marry you if you chose to go to the north. I cannot live in the north. There is too much danger.”

            He understands at this point—it is a choice. The choice between the two themes.

            “I want to go to the north. And I want to marry you.”

            “You cannot have both. They hate you and that is why they want you there. They know you would write something that shows you are angry with religious extremism. I cannot place my life on a risk.”

            “I want to go to the north.”

            “Then forget about me.”

He stands and makes his way for his car. He does not look at her and he knows she is not looking at him. He does not know why he made the choice and he does not want to remember the letter Adisa gave him.

            “Do you want to sleep here? I can make a bed for you on the floor.”

He turns to her and nods in the negative. He cannot sleep in her room with the knowledge that she chose pleasure above his love and the pain it might bring.

***

In the north, he has a big office with big furniture and a working telephone. He has already stayed for two months and he has started to forget about her. But he has not seen his son for many months and he is beginning to think that fatherhood would punish him.

He is knocking on the door that belongs to his ex-wife. When she opens, she gasps and he is already noticing something different. He enters, and it is not the usual chairs that he sees. There are more beautiful ones and he also sees a wedding picture. Not the one that was photographed when she entered the marriage she did not stay in. It was a newer one.

            “Sonto,” she said, with a tint of resignation in her voice. There was not the usual liveliness.

            “Ada, you are married.”

His reply was intoned, whispered. He does not have any spectacular feeling, not anger, not hate, not exhilaration. She does not reply.

            “You said you never wanted marriage. And you have married. Did I not love you enough? Did I ever show you I was not trustworthy?”

            “I never said I did not want marriage. We are no longer married. I have a right to get married if I want.”

            “Where is my son?”

She says he is with a relative of hers in another part of the town and he walks away because he has no more strength to argue.

A hotel is where he takes residence that night. Then he calls Adisa to tell him he is in town. He sleeps early because he would take his son and return to the north the next day, where he would be far away from the Herculean invention called marriage.

***

Her casual entry as he holds his hotel door reminds of when she said yes to his proposal.

            “Sisi! How did you find me here?”

            “I asked Adisa. I have been trying to get to you. Adisa said your phone was disconnected. I want to apologize.”

            “For what?”

That is where she is dumb.

            “Why do you want to apologize?”

            “I don’t know. I feel I have wronged you, that I have done something bad. I cannot say what it is. I think it is because I showed reluctance. I don’t know.”

            “Would you come with me?”

            “Is there any other option?”

            “No.”

            “I don’t know.”

            “Tell me what you know.”

She sits down on his hotel bed. There is a petrified insolence about her sitting.

            “I know how unsafe the North is. They are doing Jihad. They are killing Christians. You are a Christian. I saw what you wrote against them. I heard they burnt your Bureau office because of it. They can kill you. They can do anything for their god.”

            He is shushed until her words end.

            “I would still go back there. I cannot leave when it is hottest there. It would be cowardice.”

            “You chose heroism to love, eh?”

He begins to pack his baggage. He wants her words to leave him. She has started sniffing, as if in an appeal.

            And he walks out of the hotel room, away to his son. She has stopped sniffing. She is out of the hotel room when he closes the door and withdraws its key. And she does not have any utterance. When they leave the hotel-room door, there is pace between her and him. He thinks she is walking away from heroism and that he is walking away from love.

***

Where he has now been reassigned to is Kaduna, another part of Northern Nigeria.

            He is walking with his son on the dusty road, parched and devoid of greenness.

            “Where are we going?” his son inquires.

            “The post office.”

            “What are we going to do in a post office?”

            “I want to send a letter.”

The letter he has addressed is to Adisa. But there is another letter in the envelope that contains Adisa’s letter. It is for her, the one that defied heroism. It is unfussy and it reads,

                                                Sisi,                 

                                    Would you ever forgive me?

                                                Sonto.