Father Okere believed it was Zadie Smith who made Adaugo, his wife, leave him. But such were thoughts not easily shared with people, unless you were showing signs of madness or you were insane already—especially going by the circumstances under which Adaugo left her home, taking almost nothing with her. Not that Father or Adaugo had ever met this Zadie Smith or would ever get to meet her. The couple lived in Abakaliki; Zadie Smith lived in the UK or the US. But the day Adaugo left Father, she was reading Zadie Smith’s ‘The Autograph Man.’
Father hadn’t paid attention to this book or knew of this author before then, but after what happened, he had to believe it was the book that forced water into the stem of a cocoyam, and caused the hand of the monkey to turn into that of a human as soon as it was found in the plate of soup. In fact, the events of that day were stuck in his mind.
It was a Sunday, but Father did not go to church; although he was named by his mother after Reverend Father Thomas McGettrick—a missionary priest of St Patrick Society of Ireland, who was once the Bishop of Ogoja Diocese. McGettrick was installed in 1973 to head the newly created Abakaliki Diocese, which was carved out from Ogoja, and he was buried close to the altar at St Teresa’s Cathedral, the magnificent church he built at the centre of the city.
On Sundays, Father Okere woke by nine o’clock in the morning or thereabouts. Then, he would wash his shirts. Anyone could launder his other clothes but not his three shirts—those he preferred to wash himself. When he was done, he would step out, walk leisurely down the road to a small kiosk where he bought sachets of dry gin, and finish them on his way back. If his wife was home and had made food, he would eat and go back to sleep to wake around noon to go look for the Sunday Sun—it was the only day that he bought a newspaper. Afterwards, he would return home, recline on a sofa in his sitting room, and read till lunch was served or play with his little girl, Anyaugo, or doze off in a dreamless slumber.
That Sunday, his wife, Adaugo was in the sitting room, reclining on the sofa—the one he loved to sit on and read his newspapers. She was reading ‘The Autograph Man’ by Zadie Smith. Adaugo was still in her night gown and because of the way she was sitting, her dress had risen several inches up, exposing her pubic area. In fact, her legs were wide apart, and her pubic area was visible for anyone coming out of the room. The dark hair surrounding his wife’s vulva caught his eyes. They looked full and shiny, as if oiled with shea butter. Father’s manhood nodded in his trousers as he stood transfixed. Unsteadily, he approached his wife. He ran his right palm over her left thigh and the hairs on his arms and legs and at the back of his neck stood erect. A thousand sensations ran through his bones. Adaugo put the book face-down on the arm of the sofa and, as though seduced, opened her legs wider. Father was surprised.
They lived in a one-bedroom-and-parlour apartment in the Hilltop area of Abakaliki, close to the Water Reservoir at the foot of the hill. The parlour, as with the room, was painted blue, and was so large that Father always wondered why it did not occur to their landlord to carve another room out from it. But it held just two leather sofas. A television that no longer worked stood on a small glass table. And beside the glass table was a tall bookshelf where Adaugo kept all her novels and teaching materials. The curtains on the only window in the sitting room was almost threadbare and worn out. The ceiling fan rotated in groans.
When Adaugo held Father that morning, he felt as if a building just collapsed on him. Her hands, which she wrapped around his upper body, were so soft he wondered if they had always been this soft. It had been months since he was held like this by a woman because Adaugo, before then, had refused him every form of intimacy; claiming to want nothing intimate to do with a cursed man who ruined everything he laid hands on. But that Sunday, she caressed his back down to his buttocks, while kissing his neck. This side, that side. Father was in heaven, breathing so hard. He feared he might have a heart attack but when his wife, also starved of sex, reached down to Father’s groin, she found him limp. It surprised her. With her soft hands, she stroked him for more than ten minutes. Nothing happened. By now, Father was reclining on the sofa while she was beside him.
