Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Read Free Book Online

talk about something interesting at last, but he soon realized that, for Yemi, a book did not qualify as literature unless it had polysyllabic words and incomprehensible passages.
    “The problem is that the novel is too simple, the man does not even use any big words,” Yemi said.
    It saddened Obinze that Yemi was so poorly educated and did not know that he was poorly educated. It made him want to be a teacher. He imagined himself standing in front of a class full of Yemis, teaching. It would suit him, the teaching life, as it had suited his mother. He often imagined other things he could have done, or that he could still do: teach in a university, edit a newspaper, coach professional table tennis.
    “I don’t know what your line of business is, sir, but I am always looking for a better job. I’m completing my master’s now,” Yemi said,in the manner of the true Lagosian who was always hustling, eyes eternally alert to the brighter and the better; Obinze gave him his card before going back to find Kosi.
    “I was wondering where you were,” she said.
    “Sorry, I ran into somebody,” Obinze said. He reached into his pocket to touch his BlackBerry. Kosi was asking if he wanted more food. He didn’t. He wanted to go home. A rash eagerness had overcome him, to go into his study and reply to Ifemelu’s e-mail, something he had unconsciously been composing in his mind. If she was considering coming back to Nigeria, then it meant she was no longer with the black American. But she might be bringing him with her; she was after all the kind of woman who would make a man easily uproot his life, the kind who, because she did not expect or ask for certainty, made a certain kind of sureness become possible. When she held his hand during their campus days, she would squeeze until both palms became slick with sweat, and she would say, teasing, “Just in case this is the last time we hold hands, let’s really hold hands. Because a motorcycle or a car can kill us now, or I might see the real man of my dreams down the street and leave you or you might see the real woman of your dreams and leave me.” Perhaps the black American would come back to Nigeria, too, clinging on to her. Still, he sensed, from the e-mail, that she was single. He brought out his BlackBerry to calculate the American time when it had been sent. Early afternoon. Her sentences had a hasty quality; he wondered what she had been doing then. And he wondered what else Ranyinudo had told her about him.
    On the Saturday in December when he ran into Ranyinudo at the Palms mall, he was carrying Buchi in one arm, waiting at the entrance for Gabriel to bring the car around, and holding a bag with Buchi’s biscuits in the other hand. “The Zed!” Ranyinudo called out. In secondary school she had been the bubbly tomboy, very tall and skinny and straightforward, not armed with the mysteriousness of girls. The boys had all liked her but never chased her, and they fondly called her Leave Me in Peace, because of how often she would say, whenever asked about her unusual name, “Yes, it is an Igbo name and it means ‘leave us in peace,’ so you leave me in peace!” He was surprised at how chic she looked now, and how different, with her short spiky hair and tight jeans, her body full and curvy.
    “The Zed—The Zed! Longest time! You don’t ask about us again. Is this your daughter? Oh, bless! The other day I was with one my friends, Dele. You know Dele from Hale Bank? He said you own that building near the Ace office in Banana Island? Congratulations. You’ve really done well o. And Dele said you are so humble.”
    He had been uncomfortable, with her overdone fussing, the deference that seeped subtly from her pores. He was, in her eyes, no longer The Zed from secondary school, and the stories of his wealth made her assume he had changed more than he possibly could have. People often told him how humble he was, but they did not mean real humility, it was merely that he