Dear little child came back from the playground with her toe bruised. Shall we just blow cold air from our mouth on it or put on a salve? Nothing matters really. Just see that she does not feel unattended. And the old sea roars on. This is a calm sea, generally. Too calm in fact, this Gulf of Guinea. The natives sacrifice to him on Tuesdays and once a year celebrate him. They might save their chickens, their eggs and their yams. And as for the feast once a year, he doesn’t pay much attention to it either. They are always celebrating one thing or another and they surely don’t need him for an excuse to celebrate one day more. He has seen things happen along these beaches. Different things. Contradictory things. Or just repetitions of old patterns. He never interferes in their affairs. Why should he? Except in places like Keta where he eats houses away because they leave him no choice. Otherwise he never allows them to see his passions. People are worms, and even the God who created them is immensely bored with their antics. Here is a fifty-year-old ‘big man’ who thinks he is somebody. And a twenty-three-year-old child who chooses a silly way to conquer unconquerable problems. Well, what did one expect of human beings? And so as those two settled on the back seat of the car to play with each other’s bodies, he, the Gulf of Guinea, shut his eyes with boredom. It is right. He could sleep, no? He spread himself and moved further ashore. But the car was parked at a very safe distance and the rising tides could not wet its tyres.

James has come home late. But then he has been coming back late for the past few weeks. Connie is crying and he knows it as soon as he enters the bedroom. He hates tears, for like so many men, he knows it is one of the most potent weapons in women’s bitchy and inexhaustible arsenal. She speaks first.

‘James.’

‘Oh, you are still awake?’ He always tries to deal with these nightly funeral parlour doings by pretending not to know what they are about.

‘I couldn’t sleep.’

‘What is wrong?’

‘Nothing.’

So he moves quickly and sits beside her.

‘Connie, what is the matter? You have been crying again.’

‘You are very late again.’

‘Is that why you are crying? Or is there something else?’

‘Yes.’

‘Yes to what?’

‘James, where were you?’

‘Connie, I have warned you about what I shall do if you don’t stop examining me, as though I were your prisoner, every time I am a little late.’

She sat up.

‘A little late! It is nearly two o’clock.’

‘Anyway, you won’t believe me if I told you the truth, so why do you want me to waste my breath?’