"My darling,beat your wife"

By Irvine Syazyombo
The waiter served Bupe with chicken, chips and an expensive soft drink. By then Maggie had been enjoying her sausage and sipping a drink for about three minutes.

Bupe was sitting opposite his mistress across the table in a high cost restaurant chatting romantically before he drove her to the one room shack he had secretly been renting her for a year in a third world city.

At midnight Bupe pleaded with Maggie to leave because he could not spend the night in that city and go punctually to another town for work.

“Work is not the reason you cannot spend the whole night with me. Bupe you know you do not love me at all. You only love that monkey you call your wife,” Maggie charged.

“That is not true. I cannot love that gorilla more than I love you. Never. Darling you should know you are the only one I love,” he said before kissing her on the forehead.

He jumped out of bed in which lay Maggie who had barely covered herself with a bed sheet from feet to the belly. She looked on as he dressed up.

But she had something to demand before he stepped out of the room.

“You said it yourself that you love me more than anyone else. Honey, if you really love me, beat your wife for me,” she said with emphasis on the word ‘beat’.

Bupe just nodded in response before he strutted out to his car.

As the primary school teacher drove home he wondered how he was going to survive up to the end of the month because the bank from which he had staggeringly borrowed to buy the Spacio saloon car had substantially deducted his salary.
From the $50 equivalent of the local currency he had only remained with $25 after ostentatiously buying expensive food and paying rent for Maggie. He wondered how he was going to pay his $40 equivalent house rent .
There was no time to mind wander about food, water and electricity bills because the car soon arrived while honking in front of his house.

That day he thought it pointless to tell his twenty five year old beautiful wife, his former pupil he had impregnated out of school, Angela, lies about where he had spent most of the night.
The thirty two year- old man was determined to fulfill the wife battering promise. Nothing would stop him from doing anything that would make Maggie happy.

By the time he had closed locked the car, Angela his wife had already opened the front door and was waiting for him to go in.
He stormed past her into the sitting room to see what food she had prepared for him on the coffee table.
Having discovered that she had cooked nshima (hard porridge) with pumpkin leaves, Bupe turned furiously to his a face his wife.
“Where have you been…”
A violent slap in the face, kick on the side and punch on the nose punctuated her question before Angela crashed on the floor.
He repeatedly kicked her on the sides and violently stamped on her head while she screamed until she lost her voice.
Bupe’s seven year old son, Boyd, three year and two year old daughters Liness and Getrude respectively burst into the sitting room to prostrate and scream at the shock of seeing their mother being battered by their father.
Only when he accidentally hit his son with a back hand stroke in the confusion did he divert his attention thereby relieving Angela.
In the morning he left his wife groaning between life and death in bed and went for work.
After school he borrowed some money from a friend and bought fuel to drive so that he could narrate the good beating news while spending quality time with Maggie again.
At mid night Bupe and his mistress were startled by an unfriendly knock at the door and a roaring voice which Maggie unquestionably recognized.
“That is my fiancé. No doubt. He is the one who found this single room for me. I do not know what to do now”, she said while shivering.
“Why have you not told me …..”
“He is indeed a man. You are right .He was a black belt fifth dan karate panther by the time he completed high school, won all weight lifting contests at a business college before becoming a commando. For now we should worry about who is going to be clobbered most,” she interrupted fearfully.
Bupe hurriedly put on his shorts, grubbed his trousers, shirt and jacket and rushed to hide against the wall behind the weakly fastened door that flung open seconds later.
Once the soldier stormed inside, Bupe leapt out and zoomed past his car into the night. The soldier closely pursued.
Suddenly Bupe fell into drainage and broke his leg before the towering soldier punched, kicked, kneed and stamped him like a stray dog.
By the time he gained consciousness, Bupe had been hospitalized for six hours. He spent a month with his mother’s attention at his bed side.
When he recovered and returned home, Bupe apologized to his wife and vowed never to be promiscuous or beat her again.