He still waited. It had been four hours since his coming into the Yare Club Restaurant. The mayor’s son had not arrived yet. This meant that he continued to inflict damage on the already dwindling resources of his pocket. For the first two hours, he had been in the bar with the bartender only. The man had henceforth proceeded to give a strangely weird interpretation of political events in the country. He even went on to suggest, and tragically so, that it was time Kenyans tried inviting Museveni to come and be president. This suggestion had paled to insignificance when he went on to say that he would only vote for president when one of his own stood in the election. At that point, Beni decided that he was going to be a passive participant in that conversation. But he refused to wonder.
He did not wonder. He had good reasons for not wanting to get surprised. He knew he was living in a country in which everyone behaved as though they could put claim to some remarkable knowledge in all matters ranging from politics to Marine Physiotherapy – if ever there was anything of this kind. That knowledge that everyone behaved like a professional in every imaginable field was already bad enough. Not wanting to make it worse, he chose not to argue with the bartender.
He had learnt things. He could not say that he was old; neither could he say he was very young. He had been born six years before Michael Jackson stopped being black. At his age therefore, he could not enter a plea of ignorance on most contemporary matters. Least of all, he could not allow himself to be clueless on matters political. That is why he had to know things. But knowing things did not to him mean that he walk around the streets pleading with people to see things his way.
He knew that political discussions were always willing to degenerate into sessions of heckling. They were consistently charged with passions, sometimes of epic proportions. Occasionally, he suspected that these passions would lead to people butchering each other faster than any computer can count. This did not mean that the butchering or something similar to it had not yet begun. These things were already happening, albeit on a limited scale.
He feared talking politics in the bar. This was one of the most fertile grounds for these irrational passions to transform into bodily injuries or worsening of inter-ethnic tensions. He had seen such things in bars. On one occasion, he had seen a bottle disappear into pieces on a man’s head only for it to be promptly replaced by spurts of blood.
His mind was beginning to move fast. He was beginning to feel a distant whirlwind take his head in circles. Perhaps it was the beer. But it could not be! He convinced himself with the memory that he had always gone beyond five beers and still retained the feeling that he yet remained with at least double digits on the IQ scale. He had to remain sober. It was not the beer after all, he realized. It was the music. The invisible stereo system in the bar was playing Franco’s Kipakisangameni. He wanted to believe it was this music beginning to spin his head.
“Wacha nikununulie kamoja,” said the bar tender.
Then he noticed the mistake he had made. Beni had offered the man a drink. He had known of people who just waited to be incited into buying liquor. Once they began revenging, they left you regretting why you had bothered to involve them on your account in the first place.
“My friend, the desire for alcohol is just like desire for money, power and women,” spoke the bartender
“How do you mean?” Beni asked wondering when he had become friends with the man.
“You told me you are a teacher? Which university did you go to bwana? You don’t know that?”
“I should like to know,” Beni replied, successfully hiding his growing irritation.
“I almost became a CPA holder,”
“What has that got to do with money, power and women? Well, I studied arts at the university and know nothing about CPA,” Beni said.
“The Law of Diminishing Marginal Utility. Only three things have refused to obey it: money, power and women. The more you get, the more you want. And believe me, alcohol is almost like that.”
With that, the man rose and tolerably dragged his mass towards the counter. Beni concluded that there was no wisdom in hating the man. He had proven that the bartender had not been given a head to merely separate his ears. There was something intellectually refreshing about dealing with such people. They gave you the almost comforting impression that a bar was not a place where people only went to drown their sorrows before eventually distributing such sorrows and frustrations to various urinal areas and toilets.
His head started spinning again. This made him dismiss the flowery thoughts about the goodness of the bar. Such thoughts were simply the wanderings of a drunken mind. No he was not drunk! He could swear he was not drunk. He had to remain sober and wait for the mayor’s son. Although it was turning out to be like Waiting for Godot who never showed up in Anton Chekhov’s play, he had to be patient.
He would not have noticed if it were not for the hair. It was not like the fake horse hair that populates the heads of Nairobi women. He stopped looking at her face and let his gaze drop gently, following the hair up to her waist where it thinned into a tail. For a brief moment, Beni found himself beneath the palm trees on the beach arriving onto her lips with his.
“Where is Lengai?”
That was the name of the mayor’s son. The bartender had realized that Beni was beginning to have ideas about the lady. Like a caring brother, the decided to give him a clue that the lady was in the company of the man he was waiting for. He was glad and disappointed at the same time. He was glad that Lengai had finally come before his head began spinning faster. He was disappointed because the bartender had related the lady to the mayor’s son. He adjusted himself on the seat and waited. It was already six in the evening.
No comments:
Post a Comment