The marriage nightmare had plagued Musingi for nearly half a year. There
was no question that his wife loved him. But, it looked, her love to him
was not enough without a luxury ingredient from outside. Although he had
no proof that his wife had an affair with her boss, his feelings loudly
warned, “That man is eating your wife like termites behind the frame.”
Musingi and Laka were four year-married. Laka had given him such pride
after their wedding for giving him a gorgeous son. Laka was the most
beautiful woman he had ever met. Of late he had started learning with
great humiliation that when you marry a beautiful woman don’t be stupid to
conclude other men have stopped seeing her beauty. On the contrary, her
beauty remains a liability both to your pride and marriage.
What gave Musingi nightmares were the generosity of Laka’s boss, Bwana
Mooka in giving Laka lifts in the evenings from work. Laka was Bwana
Mooka’s secretary. Musingi’s anxiety had been frustrated by the awareness
that Bwana Mooka, who had attended Musingi’s wedding with his two wives,
was a polygamist. For that reason, Laka was in good hands.
Even when Musingi offered his wife money for taxi from work, Laka hit
back, “Why waste your money when Bwana Mooka can give me a lift at no
cost? It’s not something he does daily. Only when I’ve done overtime and
he wants to appreciate my dedication to the work.”
Musingi had his own car and came home early in most cases. But it wasn’t
appropriate that, every time when Laka had overtime characterized by board
meetings, Laka should ring her husband, “Come for me.” It was so
convenience for the boss to drop her because he lived beyond Musingi’s
estate.
Of late Musingi and Laka had been trading arguments regarding why Laka
should get a less stressful job elsewhere. “You’ve got not enough time for
our son,” Musingi argued. What made it harder was that there were times
Laka worked on Saturdays. Laka loved her job because it paid her well and
she felt great being the secretary of the most powerful person in the
company. She got privileges, like air tickets to and fro Mombasa if and
when there was business in Mombasa. Musingi had never seen the inside of
an aircraft.
Bwana Mooka had shown how much he trusted Laka by the fact that he often
sent her to the ITM to get him money. She knew his ITM pin-number. It was
by chance that during one of the raid times when Musingi searched into
Laka’s handbags for suspicious contacts that he had picked up in her
notebook Bwana Mooka’s ITM pin number which she had written in green
colour. That raised a red flag in Musingi and he wrote the number
somewhere with the intention of raising the subject one day. But that day
never came. Laka had imparted to her husband how much the boss trusted her
because she could withdraw huge sums of money for him from the ATM.
Musingi became more suspicious lately because Laka’s boss had come up with
a new trend that when he went overseas he returned home to lavish his
secretary with very expensive female presents. One day Musingi hit back,
“I can’t accept these things.”
“I buy them with my blood,” Laka argued sharply.
“Your blood or your sweat?” asked the furious Musingi.
“My blood and my sweat mean the same thing to me. Take your jealousy out
of what I’m paid for what I do.”
“Get another job,” Musingi demanded.
“Where?”
“If you can’t get it I will reorganize the family economics to have you
look after the countryside farm. I’m going to get a loan for sinking a
borehole and engage in irrigation farming.”
“You can’t force that on me,” she hit him hard.
“Why not?”
“In order to punish me?”
“It’s better to repair a crack in the marriage before it expands to force
you rebuilt the house.”
“Jealousy is what drives you to punish me. Do you believe Mooka who has
two wives is a threat to your marriage?”
“I’m protecting someone I love most.”
The marriage fell into a long stretch of tension during which Musingi
didn’t hide his depression, which he tried to kill by drinking. He became
quarrelsome and she did everything to show that she wasn’t going to take
his demands lying down. The manner in which she began to speak indirectly
said, “I don’t need the marriage to like a comfortable life.” Yet, from
time to time, she pleaded with him, “You are everything to me. If in the
end you can’t change, so I’ll let it be for us.”
Musingi became so suspicious of what might be happening between Laka and
his boss that when Laka became pregnant for their second child, he feared
there were chances of Mooka being the father of the pregnancy. If it
happened that would be the end of the marriage. Then the beautiful Laka
could be Mooka’s third wife to live in material luxury. Mooka was a god of
wealth.
(To be continued in the next episode)