‘It get wet in de airport,’ B.B. explained. ‘You get de idea anyhoare.’
We shook hands.
‘Bruise?’ he asked, as if I did easily.
He stood up for some reason. He was holding his shorts up with one hand. He had such a tremendous stomach that they had no chance of being done up. He wore a string vest which stretched over his belly and creaked under the strain like a ship’s rigging. The vest was badly stained with coffee and a few other things, one of which was egg. He had short, recently cropped grey hair and snaggled grey eyebrows which fought each other over the bridge of his fleshy nose. His mouth was small and sweet and looked as if it might whistle. His neck was like a gecko’s. It hung from below his jowls and fanned out to his clavicles.
He crashed back into the armchair, swung his feet up on to the table and crossed them at the ankles. His big yellowing toenails arced out from the flesh by a couple of inches and he had hard pads of skin on his soles. They were high-mileage feet in need of some remoulds.
‘Sit, Bruise,’ he waved at a chair. ‘Ka-ka-ka-ka-ka-ka-Mary!’ he roared.
Mary was standing right behind his chair and said, ‘Yessah!’ which made him jump a bit. He turned as if he was in a seat belt and gave up.
‘I see,’ he said. ‘You want drink, Bruise?’
I asked for a beer. He tried to turn to Mary again and it brought on a wince of pain so he relaxed. ‘You bring beer for Mister Bruise and the ginger drink for me.’ Mary hadn’t even moved when B.B. said: ‘No, no, no, no, no. Yes.’ She went to the kitchen.
B.B. rapped the arm of his chair, alternating between his knuckles and the palm of his hand for a minute or two. Suddenly his eyes popped out of his face and he leaned forward as if he was going to say his last words, but instead let out a sneeze like a belly flop, showering me and the furniture. He pulled a yellow handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped his nose and took the sweat off his brow and then held it tumbling out of the back of his hand.
‘My God,’ he said. ‘I tink I have a cold.’
I was ‘tinking’ I was going to get a cold when Mary came in with the drinks. He sipped his daintily with his little finger cocked. He dabbed his mouth with the handkerchief and put the drink down. His face creased with agony. He lifted himself off one buttock and then settled back down again. His face calmed.
‘Yesterday I tink I eat someting funny. The ginger is good for the stomach,’ he said. ‘Lomé? Is hot?’
‘There’s going to be more trouble.’
‘Africa,’ breathed B.B. ‘Always problem. It getting hot in Ivory Coast now. De people, dey want to be free. Dan when dey free dey don’t know what to do. Dey make big trobble. Dey teef tings and kill. Dey ruin deir contry. Is very hot in Abidjan now. Very hot.’
I sipped my beer and felt very hot through the Dralon seat covers. B.B. went through a few more crises. I felt as if I’d been there a couple of hours. I didn’t feel awkward; he seemed to have things to occupy him.
‘Jack said you wanted to see me,’ I volunteered.
‘Yairs,’ he said and sipped his drink and looked out into the garden.
Mary flipped in and flopped out again. It reminded him of something.
‘Ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-Mary!’ he hollered, and she reappeared.
‘We eat someting?’
‘Corn beef, sah!’
He looked at me, wanting some encouragement, so I nodded. Mary went back into the kitchen.
‘Jack –’ he said and stopped. The singing in the church stopped too and was replaced by a preacher who roared at his sinners, torturing them with feedbacks from his microphone. B.B. lost his track. His eyes looked up into his forehead as if he might find it up there. Something clicked, it sounded like a synapse from where I was sitting.
‘Jack,’ he repeated, and I flinched because his eyes had popped again, but the sneeze didn’t come, ‘is a nice man. His father too. His father dead now. He was a nice man, a good man. We do lot of business together. He know how to wok. We wok very hard togedder, all over Ghana, the north, the west side, east…Kete, Krachi, Yendi, Bawku, Bolgatanga, Gambaga, Wa…We wok in all dese places.’
He sipped his drink and I wondered where all this was going to. He breathed through his nose and mouth at the same time, the air rushing down the channels. His feet seemed to conduct an orchestra of their own. He talked for twenty minutes with a few coughing breaks in which he turned puce and became so still that I thought an impromptu tracheotomy was looming and I took a biro out for the purpose. What he talked about is difficult to remember, but it took a long time and part of it was about how hard he had ‘wokked’ with Jack’s father, which brought him back to Jack again.
‘Jack,’ he said, ‘has never wokked. Everting has been given. Is a problem, a big problem. If money is easy, you always want more, but more easy evertime.’
He winced again and leaned over, raising his left buttock as if he were about to break wind ostentatiously in the direction of something he disagreed with. The pain made him lose his track but his random access memory came up with something else. ‘Cushion,’ he said, and I looked around. ‘Cushion!’ he said again, wagging his finger with irritation. ‘When you want to cross the road you always look, if you walk and no look you get run over. Cushion. Always look. Take your time. Don’t be in hurry. Cushion is a very importarn ting. Jack is not careful. He no understand the word cushion.’
B.B. sipped his drink. ‘Respeck,’ he said, holding up a different finger. ‘Respeck is very importarn ting. If you no have respeck you no listen, if you no listen you make mistake. If you make mistake in Africa you get lot of trobble. Jack he no listen. He know everyting. He no respeck. You know Africa, Bruise?’ he said suddenly, so that I wasn’t sure if it was a question.
‘Not as well as you,’ I said, throwing a handful of flattery.
‘Now listen.’ He looked at me intently. ‘You see, I am still small boy. In Africa you learn all de time. If you tink you know everting you stop learning, dan you get big trobble. It come up on you like a dog in de night.
You hear noting until you feel de teeth.’ He grabbed a buttock with a clawed hand so that I got the picture.
‘Smock?’ he asked, and I looked puzzled, so he lit an imaginary cigarette.
‘I gave up.’
‘Me too,’ he said, annoyed.
He saw someone over my shoulder in the garden.
‘Ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra garden boy!’ he yelled.
Outside, the gardener was looking around as if he’d heard The Call. He ran towards the gate.
‘Bloddy fool!’ said B.B., standing up, grabbing his shorts and walking with an old footballer’s gait to the window.
‘Ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-garden boy!’ he bellowed and banged on the window frame.
The gardener worked it out, ran to the door and knocked.
‘Come,’ said B.B., searching his pockets.
The gardener, glistening with sweat, stood with his machete down by his side, naked apart from some raggedy shorts and a willingness to please. B.B. had performed the Augean task of cleaning his pockets out of old handkerchiefs and found nothing.
‘You have some monny, Bruise?’ he asked.
I gave him some money with Jack’s words sticking in my craw. He told the gardener to get him some Embassy.
He was about to walk back to the armchair when Mary came in with the food. It was chilli hot corned beef stew with rice and pitta bread. B.B. sat down and ripped the pile of pitta bread in half like a phone book. He reached over and scraped exactly a half of