The unforgivable sin

Chimkamara committed the unforgivable sin.

We were sharing a drink in his elegantly furnished flat three Saturdays after he committed the abomination. His face was expressionless, his demeanour ostensibly unruffled. But I knew my friend of more than fifteen years well enough to know that it was just a mask.

‘‘It was pure emotional blackmail. Blackmail,’’ he said intensely. ‘‘I mean, a family meeting, not to discuss a burial or a family emergency…’’

‘‘Well, your matter is a family emergency!” I cut in. “The first son of the family in his early forties, and still single? Those old folks will be wondering if your powerhouse has gone kaput!’’

Chimkamara managed a wan smile in acknowledgement of the joke.

‘‘You should have seen them all, literally foaming at the mouth. I knew the world had gone zany when Dad openly suggested contacting some powerful Reverend Fathers for deliverance. Jacinta and Nneka were combative as usual. I wonder how crazy some people can be—leaving their husbands and kids all the way in Ibadan just to come and decide a grown man’s future. If not for courtesy, I would have slapped melon seeds out of Jacinta’s mouth.’’

Jacinta was the first child and his immediate senior. They never got on well.

I sighed.

‘‘Thank God you didn’t,’’ I said sipping from my glass of deliciously foaming Gulder before proceeding to ask the top question on my mind.

‘‘What of Zebulon, Ursula and Mama?’’

They were his favourites in the family and had a great deal of influence on him, despite his vaunted independence. As teenagers fresh out of secondary school, Chimkamara and Zebulon, his immediate younger sibling, had decided to shun university opting instead to enrol into the National Defence Academy. However, mama’s heartrending wails of the bitter memories of the Biafran war which had claimed her brothers’ lives were enough to make the boys change their minds. But not without some resistance, at least from Chimkamara who, in his usual recalcitrance, nearly instigated a family feud. Zeb, on the other hand, was not too hard to convince. Chimkamara went on to do a degree in Political Science at Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Akwa, even though he had been offered admission to read Law at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, his father’s alma mater. It all seemed like vendetta but no one was going to get in his way this time. ‘‘Either I get my way or you can forget about my going to school,’’ he had told his parents. Openly wondering if their first son was troubled by Agwu Ngene, the spirit of mental disequilibrium, they let him have his way. Their disappointment was somewhat assuaged when Chimkamara made a first-class and got a job as a lecturer in his department. And he didn’t stop there. He went on to complete a doctorate at the University of Calabar and an M. Phil in Strategic Warfare at the London School of Economics. Zeb, on his part, went on to marry his university sweetheart after Chimkamara ingrained it in him to ignore the custom of waiting for the first son to settle down. A successful movie producer, Zeb was now the father of a son. Only Ursula carried on their father’s legal tradition. She was the baby of the house and had just gotten engaged to her classmate at Law School.

“Ehn? What of them?” I asked again noticing Chimkamara’s hesitation.

‘‘Zeb and Usky tried to be enlightened but the elders and those ranting sisters of mine were adamant. Shit hit the fan when Dad threatened to marry a girl for me by Christmas. I went mad.’’ I could hear the pain in his voice.

‘‘Good Lord.’’

He sighed. ‘‘Eze, all that would have been water off my back but…’’ He paused, struggling with his feelings and recollections of what must have been a very unpleasant session at home. I tensed, expecting an incendiary explosion. I was not disappointed.

‘‘Mama didn’t shout. When we calmed down she looked at me with tears in her eyes and spoke so softly that I knew I was in trouble. If I didn’t start making marriage proposals by Christmas she would not only disown me but I should also be ready for anything that happened to her. You know her blood pressure is unstable.’’

He began to pace the sitting room, holding his beer glass like a weapon.

My heart went out to him. For the umpteenth time, I wondered why our society was so hung up on marriage. Yes, I was married with two children but it was a personal choice. Some people just did not find the picture of life surrounded by the joys of family appealing. To the best of my knowledge, there were no other reasons why Chimkamara could not get married. He was good looking — a handsome man with a sparkling smile and an apparently effortless way with the ladies who never ceased to subtly and openly let him know of their availability. He was also into women — that had never been in doubt.

I decided to play devil’s advocate on the subject. We had often argued over it but since I could not convince him, I let him be. But now matters had taken a dangerous turn. His mother was not kidding; she had passed on her genes of stubbornness to her first son.

‘‘Old boy, sit down and tell me the truth.’’

He sat and looked at me curiously.

‘‘What really have you got against marriage? Who broke your heart in London?’’ I was not kidding.

Chimkamara answered just as seriously.

‘‘Nobody hurt me. You can say I did the hurting, though not in a crude manner.’’ He smiled impishly. ‘‘It’s just that I don’t feel the need for a permanent female companion just because society expects it. It will cramp my spirit. I am a free spirit. You see how all my girlfriends and I fall apart if we get too intimate. Not sexually, though.’’ We laughed, but I knew he wasn’t joking

‘‘Casanova was right when he said marriage is the tomb of love. I dare not marry the one I love.’’ He spoke softly.

‘‘Is it Jean?’’ The half Igbo, half French bohemian Theatre Arts lecturer in his university with whom he had become an item in the last couple of years. Jean Jane Okagbue Pierre was as unorthodox, as disdainful of tradition and as brainy as her boyfriend. Quite a few, including myself, expected the wedding bells to toll.

‘‘Can you see Jean taking on that honourable title ‘Mrs’?’’

‘‘With your TLC, she might. Marriage doesn’t hinder radicalism.’’ TLC was short for tender loving care.

‘‘Remember that great man, Giacomo Casanova.’’ His tone was mischievous and its archness irritated me for some crazy reason. I did not disguise my feelings when I spoke.

‘‘Continue justifying yourself with the rubbish from an outdated Italian rogue who should have been castrated for rape. Look, guy, it won’t wash. That cannot make sense to Mama, so get something better or do the needful.’’

The look of unalloyed hurt that crossed his chocolate complexioned oval face filled me with instant contrition. It was a matter of principle for him. But perhaps the only way to get him to change was to wean him of those classical thinkers whose teachings he clung religiously to.

He sighed.

‘‘Guy, you don’t have to feel sorry. But I just can’t hurt a good woman by adhering to an institution I sincerely do not believe in. Jean is one hell of a woman but what we have will die on the altar of marriage simply because I, or maybe even we, don’t believe in it.’’

‘‘What of Mama?’’

He did not answer the question till I left.

Two weeks later, Chimkamara phoned me with news that Mama had been admitted to the hospital with an alarming manifestation of her blood pressure. He drove home the next morning to see her and came back three days later, broken and close to tears. When we met he poured out his heart.

‘‘The doctors told me that all their drugs and skills will do Mama minimal good unless she gets rid of the load on her chest.’’

And we knew what the load was.

‘‘Mama gently pleaded with me not to allow her die without seeing my intended, even if she could not see my child. I tried to get her to stop thinking of her demise. Usky and Jacinta were around to help me beg her but you know Mama.’’

I sighed. This was now an emergency, probably not in the class of the COVID 19 virus, but an emergency all the same.

‘‘What do I do, man? I assured her she would see my intended soon. Anything to get her favourable response to medical treatment.’’

A crazy thought jumped into my mind almost immediately.

‘‘Guy, talk to Jean.’’

Chimkamara sat up as if I had hit him.

‘‘You don craze?’’ he asked.

‘‘No. See, Jean cares about you. She’d have gone home with you if not for pressing duties on campus. Beg her to pose as your fiancée before Mama.’’

‘‘Oh, boy. This isn’t Nollywood. And what do I do when Jean calls off the charade?’’

‘‘Stop being so pessimistic. You will have a story ready before then. And who says Jean won’t marry you? Work hard and turn the drama into a real-life show.’’ The Muse was working overtime in my head that evening.

My friend was doubtful but I was rather persuasive. His mother’s condition didn’t do his resistance any good and he soon gave in.

Jean listened thoughtfully while he talked. A long silence followed as Chimkamara’s eyes silently begged her. Finally, she got up, pulled her troubled boyfriend up and kissed him fully on his lips.

‘‘Monsieur, you’re one hell of a guy and if I were sane, I would either kick you out or get mad at you for not proposing after making me throw every guy out of my bed for you. But since we are working on a script for the Idumota boys, let’s go give your mum a new wife.’’ She spoke lightly but her eyes oozed her deep feeling.

Chimkamara’s passionate kiss of gratitude quickened their blood and it only cooled down after forty minutes of solid action on the sofa in Jean’s sitting room.

Mama was discharged a week after Chimkamara visited her again, accompanied by Jean.

I worried over the script I had set in motion. Like Chimkamara and everyone else, I rejoiced over Mama’s recovery. But what would be the aftermath of this presentation of a ‘fake’ fiancée? Mama and the rest of Chimkamara’s family became enamoured of Jean and, from all indications, she liked them. It was clear to even the blind that there was something very strong between her and the political scientist. I kept wondering in the name of the gods why they could not throw Casanova’s philosophy into the jungle and do the needful. But it was not my duty to fast track things. I had done more than enough. Yet I feared the worst when the bubble eventually burst.

So when Chimkamara and Jean buzzed into my flat three months later, looking like ten billion naira and grinning like Cheshire cats, unable to get their hands off each other, I wondered what was up. At their insistence, I called in Maureen, my wife.

‘‘We are engaged, folks. Preparations for introductory marriage rites begin two weeks from now.’’ Chimkamara set a bottle of Rémy Martin on the table with a flourish. ‘‘To formally tell you that you will lead the knocking-on-the-door process. You have the relevant work experience.’’

I broke out in a jig with Chimkamara while Maureen grabbed Jean in a happy hug. When we calmed down I asked the most pressing question on my mind.

‘‘Are you guys sure of this?’’

The couple looked youthfully happy although Jean was in her thirties and Chimkamara was three years past forty. They looked at each other.

‘‘Yes, bro. Casanova does not speak for us anymore.’’

Jean kissed his ear.

‘‘It’s our story, Eze.’’

Who was I to stand in the way of happiness? I turned to my wife.

‘‘Baby, glasses, biko. Cupid must be honoured.’’

We roared uninhibitedly.

Chimkamara and Jean got married both traditionally and in the church within four months. By then, Jean was a month gone. Mama nearly danced herself lame.

Two years and a baby later, the couple summoned both families and announced their amicable parting. Mama nearly had a heart attack but they were firm. Jean kept the baby but Chimkamara maintained a definite presence in their child’s life. The couple even dated and got intimate. But the marriage was over and nothing anyone did could bring them back.

‘‘I don’t want Casanova’s prophecies wrecking our lives,’’ Chimkamara said to me over a plate of goat pepper soup in our favourite joint. ‘‘Nothing should wreck my love for Jean, not even marriage.’’