Memories of Mr Columbus

Lolade threatened to seize my car key if I didn’t get her car fixed. I thought she was bluffing until that morning, when I was running late for work and found out she had already taken my car for grocery shopping.

Lolade is my wife, and I love her very much so much that it would probably worry some African families, especially a Yoruba family. Rumours flew around the neighbourhood that she used juju on me, but no one dared to say it to my face.

Thinking about it now, if this is what it feels like to be under a spell, her Baba definitely deserves a raise because, as far as I’m concerned, I am the biggest beneficiary of his good work.

Still, at moments like this, I feel like going Randy Orton on her. She surely knows how to get on my nerves.

“Why? Why? Why on earth would she go out with my car when she  knows very well that I’ll be running late for work?” I exclaimed to myself.

Of course, I knew why. I was just looking for a way to vent my anger. Lolade doesn’t act without warning first. It had been two weeks since I kept promising to take her car to the mechanic.

“Why does she even need the car? She’s pregnant and should stay at home and allow me to do the running around, but no! She wants to be going here and there. This is one of the reasons I don’t want to fix her car,” I said to myself in distress.

I was so furious that I didn’t realize how much time I was wasting standing there. When it finally dawned on me that I was getting late, I took a cab to the office.

Fortunately for me, I made it on time for my meeting. It was a brief but lucrative one. We finally secured a multimillion-naira deal. I am an architect who works for one of the fast and rising architectural firms in the state. We had a rough year and had been working towards this deal for months. Finally, we signed it. We were to renovate three amusement parks in the state.

After the meeting, I went back to my office, practically dancing with excitement. I reached for my phone. I couldn’t wait to tell Lolade the good news.

Then it occurred to me that I was still mad at her.

“A little couples’ misunderstanding shouldn’t stop me from telling her great news like this,” I thought to myself.

Then I decided it would be nicer to tell her in person.

I sat down and stared at her picture on my desk. I picked it up and smiled at it.

LOLADE OLUWAFUNMILAYO ADEKUNLE SHITTU.

That was her full name. She wasn’t just my wife; she was my day one friend and my backbone during our university days. We fell in love when the song African Queen was released, I am very sure tuface idibia would have sued me if he heard the many remixes and versions I sang to Lolade just to impress. She also supported me financially and emotionally when times were hard. Our bond grew even stronger when I lost my mother.

Iya Shukura, Maami (my mother)

My mother’s biggest dream was to see her children succeed.

“God will bless you all, my children. You shall not suffer in this life. You all shall prosper in the name of God. And I will reap the fruit of my labour,” she would say.

And we would answer with a loud, “Amin.”

She said this prayer mostly at dinner time, when we gathered around the lantern or candlelight to eat whatever she had prepared for us.

Iya Shukura. Maa mi.

My deepest pain is that she never got to enjoy the fruit of her hard work.

She died when I was still struggling to finish my tertiary education. She spent her last kobo making sure we never lacked the basic things. Today, I am a millionaire, and she is no more.

I went home later that evening, pretending to be angry with Lolade. But the aroma of her cooking wiped away whatever sense of anger I had left in my mind. Not that I was actually angry with her, but now it would be difficult for me to even fake it.

She did this every time she made me angry. She knew very well how much I loved food, and that was her way of apologizing.

I entered the living room and dropped my bag. A few moments later, she came out of the kitchen smiling. Her beautiful brown skin was glowing, and her killer smile exposed that amazing set of teeth that always drove me crazy. She looked so beautiful and gorgeous.

But I still held on to my frown, trying to restrain myself from being cajoled by her charm.

I tried very hard, but I couldn’t hold it anymore. She hugged me, looked into my eyes, and said, “Ifemi, I’m so sorry.”

At that point, I was already on the verge of smiling.

Then she started poking every part of my body playfully, something we called . That was my weakness, and the reason I never allowed her to get too close to me whenever I was angry.

Finally, I was laughing like a fool.

We moved to the dining table for dinner, and I told her about the contract. She was over the moon with the news. She showered prayers of success on me, and once again, she reminded me of Iya Shukura.

This was exactly how she would have reacted if she were still alive.

I looked at Lolade with so much affection. She was the closest person to me. Apart from my sister and my brother, Kayode, she was the only family I had. That was why I had become so protective of her ever since I found out about the pregnancy.

I knew I was being unreasonable and overprotective, not wanting her to drive or do certain chores. The truth was, I knew how much Lolade hated idleness. Besides, she was only a few weeks pregnant.

I explained my concerns to her and made her promise that she would be careful and stop doing certain chores when the time came. In return, I agreed to fix her car.

Once again, we were back to our lovely life.

The next day was Saturday. The weather was a bit cloudy, and I decided to take Lolade’s car to the mechanic. I went out early because I was expecting Shukura and her husband that afternoon. It had been a while since we had seen each other. We had both been busy with work.

She owned a restaurant close to the airport and spent most of her time there. We were meeting for the first time in four months.

Kayode, on the other hand, was busy with school and only came back during the holidays.

I made it to the workshop and took shelter under a shade because the rain had already started drizzling. While Segun, my favourite mechanic, was explaining the fault in Lolade’s car to me, I heard a voice coming from the entrance.

The voice was so familiar that I couldn’t help but listen.

Someone was raining curses and insults on another person. The voice was fierce, loud, and self-assured. The closer the person came, the louder the voice became.

After a few seconds, the picture became clearer.

Of course, it was Mr. Columbus.

I would remember that voice even if I was hypnotised.

What a small world indeed.

Who could be the victim of Mr. Columbus’s anger? I felt sorry for whoever it was. That person was definitely in for a bad day.

Mr. Columbus’s voice brought back a lot of memories. It had barely changed. It had only matured with age. But the words were still the same.

“Bloody cow. Bloody fool.”

Those were still his favourite insults.

I was sixteen the last time I saw him. He was weeping to Iya Shukura, while she tried to console him.

That was the first time I had ever seen his weakness.

He was always strong and full of life. He barely kept quiet. He always had something to contribute to any topic of discussion. He was basically Mr. Know-It-All.

And he firmly stood against anyone who dared to correct him.

His bond with Iya Shukura was strong, mainly because he was one of her best customers. He patronized her food regularly, partly because it was affordable and partly because of the warmth she showed him.

Mr. Columbus was not exactly an easy person to like. In fact, liking him required some patience. But my mother always treated him with kindness, and because of that, he respected her deeply and took anything concerning her seriously.

He was an Intro-Tech teacher at Royal Academy, a private school not far from mine. He taught the junior section.

“Spoiled kids,” he would rant whenever he came to my mother’s shop and narrated a story about a student who had misbehaved.

He believed most of the children in his school were spoiled and lacked home training. And if it were left to him, he would give them a thorough lashing.

Unfortunately for Mr. Columbus, it was a rich man’s school. He would probably lose his job for yelling at a child, talk less of laying a finger on one.

One afternoon, he stormed into my mother’s shop, raining insults on the government and the rich. Everyone was confused, so my mother eventually asked him what had happened.

“Can you imagine? These riff-raffs brought cars to party in the school. Not just any cars, o! Iya Shukura, expensive ones. Something most of the teachers cannot even afford.”

Shukura and I looked at each other and quietly laughed at his last statement.

“And the principal is doing nothing about it. If it were up to me, I would suspend them for a month.”

He paused and shook his head.

“But what difference would it make? They will gladly accept the punishment and stay at home playing video games.”

He complained bitterly, as though the entire future of the nation depended on those children being properly punished.

Later that night, as we sat around the lantern eating dinner, Shukura and I talked and laughed about Mr. Columbus’s lamentation.

We concluded that he was simply jealous of the children and secretly wished he was the one driving around in expensive cars.

“Moreover, he teaches the junior students. He has no business with the senior students,” Shukura said, shaking her head.

I laughed.

Now, the rain had stopped, and Segun immediately got to work on Lolade’s car. I took a seat at the far corner of the shade and watched Mr. Columbus’s drama unfold.

Apparently, his car had been bashed by an unfortunate Okada rider.

The poor rider was on his knees, pleading with Mr. Columbus, but an apology was probably the last thing Mr. Columbus wanted to hear at that moment.

“Do you know how much I bought this car?” he kept shouting.

It was a 1990 Mercedes-Benz. The car looked surprisingly clean and classy, even with the fresh damage.

I smiled as I watched the whole scene. I knew Mr. Columbus too well.

Mr. Columbus, the self-righteous man.

The man who was always right. Always innocent. Always pure. Left to him, he was probably as holy as Christ himself. And the funny thing was, he played the part so well that anyone could believe him.

I almost did.

Until the day he secretly started asking Shukura out.

She rejected him at first. Then, after some thought, she decided to see it as an opportunity to exploit him.

Mr. Columbus spent an entire month’s salary on her, hoping he would get something in return.

He got nothing.

Naturally, he was furious.

That was the beginning of the cold war between him and Shukura.

The worst part for him was that he couldn’t complain to Iya Shukura. He knew very well how much she frowned upon that kind of behaviour. So he had no choice but to carry his embarrassment quietly.

I watched him at the garage and smiled. I couldn’t wait to tell Shukura who I had met at the workshop. I knew she would be thrilled, and I could already imagine the number of questions she would ask me.

Then something about his appearance caught my attention.

The shirt.

Of course, the shirt.

I had never seen Mr. Columbus in any other attire apart from his light-blue striped shirt and brown polo T-shirt. He was always wearing one or the other.

How he managed to keep them clean and sparkling all the time was still a mystery to me.

One would think he had an entire wardrobe filled with identical shirts.

Physical aggression was not really his thing. He was more of an oral warrior. And he certainly didn’t take verbal insults lightly. He once had a neighbour arrested for calling him “an ignorant fellow” during an argument.

The irony was that he constantly complained about the Nigerian system, calling it unreliable and unjust, yet he still preferred to obey the law rather than take matters into his own hands.

He belonged to that old-school school of thought that believed in discipline, hard work, patriotism and respect for authority, with just enough modern philosophy sprinkled on top to make him feel enlightened.

He also liked to pretend he wasn’t materialistic. He often condemned the finer things in life, usually with his favourite line:

“Everything is vanity.”

Yet, for a man who believed everything was vanity, he was extremely careful about spending money.

“If it’s not bringing in, I’m not taking out.”

That was his policy.

One could only imagine how he felt after spending an entire month’s salary on Shukura.

One evening, we were all gathered at my mother’s kiosk when one of Mr. Columbus’s old friends came to visit him.

We were astonished.

How did Mr. Columbus know someone like this?

The man arrived in one of the latest Mercedes-Benz cars at the time. He was dressed in a well-tailored suit and tie, and his cologne seemed determined to announce his arrival before he did. People like him rarely visited our little kiosk.

My mother quickly cleaned a seat for him and welcomed him warmly, as though he were a long-lost relative. That was one of the habits everyone loved her for. She could make a stranger feel like family within minutes.

The man was humble and friendly. He and Mr. Columbus were around the same age, but money had been very kind to him. He looked much younger and more attractive than Mr. Columbus, whose face seemed to have been squeezed by poverty and left there to dry.

His name was Williams.

He was fresh faced and calm, the complete opposite of Mr. Columbus. Even though he had a deep voice, he spoke gently and carried himself with an ease that made you want to listen.

My mother offered him Fanta and biscuits, probably judging from his appearance that those were the sort of things a man like him would take.

But he surprised us.

“Do you have amala?” he asked.

My mother smiled and brought it out.

He washed his hands and began eating casually.

“It’s still your favourite, I see,” Mr. Columbus teased him.

Shukura and I stared at each other, quietly amused by the irony of life.

Seeing him eat the same amala we ate every day, Iya Shukura immediately became fond of him. We didn’t have any rich relatives, and most of my mother’s customers were people whose daily earnings were less than a thousand naira.

So having someone clearly above our social status sit with us and eat from our plate felt special.

After the meal, Mr. Williams took Mr. Columbus, Shukura and me shopping.

It was our first time entering an expensive car.

We were used to rickshaws, old Toyotas and bruised Volkswagens. Not because we owned any of them, of course. We simply use them as taxis on our way to school or the market.

Iya Shukura insisted that we washed our feet and cleaned our shoes before getting into the car.

Left to her, she would probably have made us go home and take a full bath before allowing us anywhere near the car, not to make ourselves presentable, but to make sure we didn’t stain his car.

Mr. Williams laughed at our behaviour and urged us to get inside and make ourselves comfortable.

Mr. Columbus, meanwhile, had never looked prouder of himself.

You could see his grin from a mile away. His mouth stretched even wider whenever Mr. Williams addressed him as, “My friend, my friend.”

They were childhood friends who had grown up together and remained close until their tertiary education.

Fortunately for Williams, he secured a job with an oil company immediately after NYSC. Mr. Columbus, on the other hand, had to face the more familiar struggle of life.

Mr Columbus made sure everyone saw him getting into the front passenger seat.

It was as if he wanted the whole world to know that he was not the ordinary man they thought he was.

His enemies would hide in shame.

The world would finally know that he, too, was connected.

As for Shukura and me, it felt like a cruise through Paradise.

For the first time in our lives, we got a small taste of what it felt like to be rich.

Growing up, we always watched people in nice cars drive past us. Whether it was under the scorching sun as we walked home from school or on rainy days when we stood under whatever shade we could find, we were always the ones watching.

But that day, we were the ones sitting inside.

And others did the watching.

Mr. Williams took us to places we had only heard about, the mall, a park and, finally, the cinema.

To be honest, we only knew places like that existed in the movies, but on no occasion have we visited, let alone experienced what people actually did inside them.

Our lives revolved around school, the market and Iya Shukura’s kiosk.

The food and gifts he bought for us were amazing, but we were even more fascinated by everything we saw.

We were mesmerized, Shocked, Almost overwhelmed. 

It was an experience of a lifetime, and we cherished it so much that we talked about it for days. In fact, for the rest of that week, it was the main topic of our conversations.

That evening, we refused to eat around the lantern.

We announced that our stomachs had become too expensive to be corrupted with amala or fufu.

My mother did not find it as funny as we did.

When Mr. Williams dropped us off, it was obvious he was tired of hearing the words “thank you.”

My mother thanked him, then made sure we thanked him properly. She even thanked Mr. Columbus for bringing such a generous friend around.

For days afterward, she kept reminding him to extend her regards and gratitude to Mr. Williams whenever they spoke on the telephone.

Of course, our friends at school soon heard about the whole adventure.

For those few days, we became celebrities.

We took some of the gifts to school and were treated like royalty among our friends.

My classmates begged me to let them play with my Game Boy, while Shukura had a whole circle of friends around her, each one hoping to get a taste of her precious chocolate and Nike biscuits.

For a few glorious days, we were no longer the children from Iya Shukura’s kiosk.

We were the rich kids.

At least, that was how it felt.

I was both disturbed and surprised when I saw Mr. Columbus weeping to my mum. Not that I had any affection for him. In fact, I kind of hated him back then. He always acted like those wicked African uncles who seemed to have a problem with everything you did.

But seeing him in tears made me worry.

It was unlike him.

What could possibly have caused him so much pain?

When I found out, I wished I hadn’t.

It was the death of Mr. Williams.

He had died in an accident.

Our beloved Angel, the man who had showered us with so much kindness.

We wept terribly, almost as though we had lost our own brother. The only death that had ever pained me more was that of my father.

Months passed, but I couldn’t stop thinking about Mr. Williams. His gentle nature and that warm smile remained fresh in my memory.

But his death meant much more than the loss of a childhood friend to Mr. Columbus. Williams had become something of a benefactor to him. He helped him financially and had even promised to help him secure a job at his company.

That was one of the things they had talked about during his last visit. In fact, it was one of the main reasons Mr. Columbus had come to Lagos in the first place.

“Iya Shukura, I am finished. Williams... Williams, the only true friend I have. Where do I start from now?”

He wept bitterly.

It was also after the incident that we discovered Mr. Columbus was married and had a child. He told Iya Shukura his whole story.

He had come to Lagos in search of greener pastures, hoping that Mr. Williams would help him get a job.

“Now that Williams is dead, I have to go back to Onitsha.”

I felt sorry for him.

Something I never thought would happen.

There was something unsettling about seeing a strong man completely broken down by grief. Mr. Columbus, who always seemed to have an answer for everything, suddenly had none.

After Williams’s death, he left Lagos and returned to his hometown.

And then, he disappeared from our lives.

No letters. No phone calls. Nothing.

Whenever his name came up in conversation, Iya Shukura and I would talk about him briefly. But after her death, we barely remembered him at all.

What a small world indeed.

And now, standing right in front of me was the Almighty Mr. Columbus.

The memories came rushing back.

By then, Lolade’s car was fixed. I stood up, walked past Mr. Columbus and his victim, pretending I had no idea who he was.

I settled Segun for his services and was about to get into the car when I heard a familiar voice behind me.

“Femi, is that you?”

I froze.

For a second, my heart started beating faster.

“Oh shit,” I said to myself.