Like a vigilant meerkat, Kanyale’s anxious face peeped out of his front door for the umpteenth time. The red ball of the sun had just emerged from the east, and he knew that anytime from now Abiti Tchale, a red plastic empty bucket freely balancing on her head, would pass by. The path to the village well cut in front of Kanyale’s hut, and every morning at that hour, he always came out to throw a greeting at her, a ritual to which she reciprocated with absolute indifference, always looking the other way. Today, Kanyale knew the story would be different.
“Che Kanyaleee!” almost singing, Abiti Tchale said, surprised. “You scared me half to death!” She had to use quick reflex action to save the bucket from falling off her head. And now laughing, she added, “You were about to bump into me.”
“Bumping into you! How I would love that, Abiti Tchale!” replied Kanyale jovially, the trap set to perfection.
“And you’re wearing like a pastor at this hour, what on earth is happening, Che Kanyale?”
Kanyale, a small exercise book in his hand, accomplishedly looked about himself as though surprised Abiti Tchale was surprised. “You’ve never seen me in these clothes?” In the new clothes, Kanyale looked like a brindled animal.
“No, never; they must be new. And the hairstyle,” she said, giving him a grin.
Kanyale had had his head trimmed like a hedge.
“You’re going to the city?”
Kanyale seized upon the opportunity lunging himself into a lengthy explanation. “To cash my cheque for the paprika,” he said. “Indians came on Friday and bought the whole field.” As proof, Kanyale opened the exercise book in his hand to show her the cheque. “See this?”
Her eyes rolled at the sum. “Pay L.E.A. Kanyale the sum of three million Kwacha only!” she gasped, repeating the information on the cheque.
Kanyale waited for a comment.
“But they’re saying ‘only’ as though K3 million is a small sum!” She giggled.
That subject was unimportant. Paprika had turned him a millionaire overnight; what’s the use arguing over a small word? “I’m having it cashed at a bank in the city,” he told her. “Anything I should buy you there?” he offered himself. He could now speak like an emperor; he had money.
Abiti Tchale knew Kanyale as a liar, the type that can sell a drowning man water. But this Kanyale wearing new clothes was new, credible. There was no doubting him this time; her own eyes had seen the cheque, the amount, and the date.
Since ten years ago when his wife’s relations took her and their two children back, Kanyale, over fifty now, had waited for this time.
He had had a good wife before, but one day her relations came over and took her and the children back to their village. They had realised that only a fool would trust anything that came out of Kanyale’s forked tongue. Perhaps that’s the reason he had married late in life, at forty.
Kanyale had told them he personally knew the MP of the area, that he owned a large piece of land and a canoe, all of which lies. He never followed them to plead with them for her. Not that he did not want to, but that he simply didn’t have any more lies to flash, his reservoir of lies having run dry. Later, his eyes developed a kind of religious fixation with young Abiti Tchale. She lived only four houses away.
Over the years, Kanyale had played every trick in his exercise book to win over her love, but it was Mafaiti that Abiti Tchale loved. Mafaiti, twenty-five or thereabout, Abiti Tchale’s age, lived in the city and barely visited her in the village, but Abiti Tchale always stayed true to him.
“I don’t know if they sell cellphones with WhatsApp there in the city.” It was less of a reply, more of a suggestion.
His eyes widened. “With what? Whats what?”
“WhatsApp,” she repeated for him like a mother does to teach her small child a new concept. She knew she was speaking Dutch. Kanyale never went to school.
“Well, I can always ask there,” he said before switching to a subject he understood. “You want to watch videos, Nigeria?”
Abiti Tchale blushed. “Of course, but there’s also TikTok.”
Kanyale pulled a face at the new vocabulary. He didn’t want to comment on a word that sounded like a wall clock; he didn’t want to expose himself. “I see,” that’s all he said.
That evening Abiti Tchale on her own volition knocked from the back door. She had come to receive her cellphone with WhatsApp.
When Kanyale opened, Abiti Tchale squinted; Kanyale had bought himself a solar lamp the size of a stadium floodlight.
“I’ve told you over and over again to trust things closer home, because time’s a fool. Do you believe me now?” Kanyale, now in a flattop hairstyle, had money to back every word from his rotten mouth. Here Kanyale was a boy. The grey of his hair was now gone, whatever he had done to it.
“We’ll see, Che Kanyale,” she said, afraid to overcommit.
Kanyale then collected in a corner a blue box in which was Abiti Tchale’s cellphone.
Abiti Tchale straight surrendered her seat, going kneeling. “It’s already charged?” she asked, looking up.
“I did it for you, yes,” he started, his right foot tapping on his bare floor. “I waited an hour for them to charge it for you. It’s charged. It will take a week of use before you will have to have it charged again.” There was a tone of truth in the words.
“I can’t know what I can do to make you happy, Che Kanyale,” she told him.
“Ever heard this song Chikondi chothira shuga aha?” he remarked, dulcetly, his head moving in imitation of the drum for a song that advocates love that tastes like sugar.
How many times she had rebuffed him previously Kanyale couldn’t remember, but Abiti Tchale’s love was gold; he had to dig deeper to find a grain, that minute priceless grain.
“And I didn’t tell you I bought you a bottle of perfume too. I want you to smell like Nigerian film stars.” Now Kanyale grabbed the edge of his chair, just between his thighs, drawing it closer to hers. “Open it and try it on,” he advised.
When she opened it, the phial gave out an ominous smell, a mixture of alcohol and paprika. “Will use it after my bath tonight,” she found some excuse, before placing it back in its equally ominous carton.
For a minute or so, Kanyale, ear-to-ear in smile, tasted a feeling of accomplishment as he waited on her as she tested it, her fingers delicately tapping the screen.
“You like writing on your phone, huh? You’re very, very good.”
She blushed. “I must leave now,” she said, “I’ve come on a very bad day; maybe after tomorrow.”
The following morning, Abiti Tchale visited Kanyale again. The new phone was blinking like a drunkard.
“But mine is still intact. I bought them at the same time,” he said, showing it her. It was a huge scary thing, the size of an analogue ammeter.
Abiti Tchale’s eyes sized it up with great scorn; she particularly didn’t like its bazooka-like tone.
The man doing the ‘technician’ in the village first tried a different battery. It responded straight away.
The man then went silent, prompting Kanyale to ask: “What’s the problem? Is the WhatsApp still there?”
“The problem is battery; I don’t want to steal from you, a fellow poor man; I’m not a politician. If you want it, you can give me K5,000.”
While Kanyale was fumbling in his trousers pocket for the cash, the man used the space to ask a seriously disturbing question: “This phone belongs to Abiti Tchale, uh?”
Kanyale stopped mid-leap, and while raising his head, asked, “Yes, why are you asking?”
Like Kanyale, this man had, on a number of times, visited Abiti Tchale’s compound to seek her hand in marriage, but each time he did that, her relations politely reminded him Abiti Tchale had a man waiting for her in the city. Pure false bragging rights, over the years he had developed such jealousy that he found it offensive someone should succeed where he had failed.
“I don’t know why people put their faith in Abiti Tchale,” the repairman attacked, this time directly. “Mafaiti must have given her zungulirakhonde, that I do not doubt. This aphrodisiac enslaves a man, always turning his heart to follow a girl like Abiti Tchale, someone who doesn’t seek anything in a man but his hard-earned cash.”
Kanyale took in a deep breath. It was like this man had once seen Abiti Tchale wearing only her skin.
“See all this?” the man said, scrolling down conversation upon conversation. “These are conversations, Abiti Tchale talking to Mafaiti.” The taunt in his tone, he was one dressed to kill, someone on a mission, someone intent to destroy whatever he found in his search.
Kanyale craned his neck like a stork in full flight when he noticed something. “Go back there, where there’s a red tomato.” He was motioning with his hand.
“Here?”
“Yes, that one. What’s that?” His jerking finger was pointing at the tomato.
The man reserved his words, but went for a kill, zooming in the DP so Kanyale should see for himself and reach his own conclusion.
“And this picture here shows Mafaiti, Abiti Tchale’s old boyfriend,” Kanyale, restless, was pointing at the DP. “Is she talking to him, sending him the tomato?”
“It’s not tomato, he’s sending him, sir; tomato doesn’t look like that.”
“But what’s it? It is; can’t you see, boy?”
“It’s a love emoji.”
Kanyale’s heart leapt at the word. “Love?” he asked without pausing for a thought. “Love, you say? Love to who, to Mafaiti?”
“Che Kanyale, I’ve worked on your phone. It’s fine, give me K5,000 for the battery.” He didn’t want to implicate himself. What was important for him was that Kanyale now knew he was not alone in the bedroom of Abiti Tchale’s heart.
“You seem to know something you aren’t willing to divulge,” said Kanyale pleadingly. “Honestly, I’ve lost all my faith in her. And I'm not sure she saved my number at all in this phone?”
“Give me the number,” ordered the repairman.
When he ran it, Paprika Fool highlighted in the contact list.
“And who’s Paprika Fool?” the repairman asked.
“I grew paprika but I’m no fool, not at all. Is that the name she saved in her phone?” Kanyale said, biting his teeth.
Maximum damage done, the repairman, happy as a lark, felt he could now release Kanyale. “You think too much, Che Kanyale. This is WhatsApp. There’s nothing wrong people sending each other love emojis or saving names using pet names. It must be out of her professed love to you that she used this moniker.”
“But she’s sending it to an old boyfriend?” he corrected him. “And what love calling me fool, Paprika Fool?”
From the repairman, Kanyale seething, discovered himself knocking at Ticha Sadiki’s door. He wanted him to teach him something about the emoji.
“If you don’t want to use words, you can just send someone emoji,” he started, flipping his phone to demonstrate. “See here? All these are emojis. This one with his hands on his head is in pain, crying, perhaps he hasn’t paid his landlord yet, and is worried.”
Kanyale gave out a forced chuckle, turning his slight body into a rod. “And this one?”
“The two hands here means one is grateful. Perhaps he’s won a bet.”
“And this one?” This time he came to the emoji Abiti Tchale had sent Mafaiti.
“This is serious now. If you send this to Abiti Tchale you’re telling her there’s no one else apart from her, that all your love is upon her, that you’ll die for her, and she for you.” With the words, Ticha Sadiki broke into a crazy laughter himself. But to his surprise, Kanyale never reciprocated; instead, his face stared like a man hanging.
“This girl is cheating on me; I think she’s still ‘walking’ with Mafaiti,” Kanyale concluded in a voice breaking.
“You’re making things up, Kanyale. Anyone can send this to anyone,” said Ticha Sadiki. He wished there could be some truth in what Kanyale was saying. As a school teacher, he had minced no words when he heard that Abiti Tchale had taken the paprika bait his old friend Kanyale had dangled before her.
“Maybe it’s not something serious,” Ticha Sadiki teased.
“Joking on my cellphone, one bought with my own money, and calling the buyer a fool?” He threw his long arms in the air, baffled. He felt the feet burning as though he was standing on live coals, bare-foot.
“I hope you’re not going to be stupid,” Ticha Sadiki warned. “Prison these days is no joke. You’ll meet older men there.”
But Kanyale was mature; he knew how to respond to treachery. He was not going to beat anybody or break anyone or smash anything. He would head straight, a high-speed train, to the trading centre; perhaps someone would show interest in it. He wanted to get his money back and live at peace with his heart again.
“I’ve lived over seven years in my house all alone, did I die?” eyes glazing, poor Kanyale asked, setting out a class case against treachery.
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