What Napoleon Could Not Do


 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 RIVERHEAD BOOKS
 An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
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 Copyright © 2023 by Derek Nnuro
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 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
 Names: Nnuro, DK, author.
 Title: What Napoleon could not do / DK Nnuro.
 Identifiers: LCCN 2022042346 (print) | LCCN 2022042347 (ebook) | ISBN 9780593420348 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780593420362 (ebook)
 Subjects: LCGFT: Novels.
 Classification: LCC PS3614.N87 W47 2023 (print) | LCC PS3614.N87 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6—dc23/eng/20220915
 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022042346
 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022042347
 Cover design: Lauren Peters-Collaer
 Cover art: © 2022 Amoako Boafo / Licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
 Book design by Lucia Bernard, adapted for ebook by Cora Wigen
 This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
 pid_prh_6.0_142435014_c0_r0
 
 
 
 For my mother,Cecilia O. Gyamoh, who saw me through,and for my maternal grandparents,E.A. Ofori and Agnes Gyamo,who never wavered in their belief in me.
 
 
 Contents
 BOOK 1
 Worth
 Jacob
 One
 Two
 Three
 Belinda
 One
 Two
 Three
 Four
 Light
 One
 Two
 Three
 BOOK 2
 Wilder
 One
 Two
 Three
 Four
 Five
 Telepathy
 One
 Two
 BOOK 3
 One
 Two
 Three
 Four
 Acknowledgments
 
 _142435014_
 
 Book 1
 
 
 Worth
 
 
 
 
 
 
 From where he was standing on the veranda, Mr. Nti watched as Patricia’s people exited the pickup truck that held up two sedans behind it. On Saturday mornings stillness descended on Otumfuo, Deduako’s busy main road, a stillness Mr. Nti surmised also infected the drivers. How else could he explain the Job-like patience of the people at the wheels of the stopped cars? Hardly a honk from either when they were both forced to idle, all while Patricia’s people took a lifetime to cross Otumfuo for the clearing.
 Otherwise bare, the clearing rose in several small sand mounds, making it feel like unsteady foam underfoot. Still this inconvenience did not disqualify the clearing as a favored football pitch. The usual footballers who assembled every Saturday at dawn had now dispersed; the dust they excited had dissipated. Mr. Nti had caught the conclusion of this morning’s match, after which each side had brought down their collapsible goalposts. Today it had been skins versus shirts, with the skins coming out sand coated, some appearing as if a curious child had misconstrued sand for body paint; some as if a man had crept out of soot rubble. It was a shame that the dust they’d flared had cleared, Mr. Nti thought. A cloud of it would have precisely underscored the coming of Patricia’s indecent lot.
 Triggering the cloud would have been easy enough, except that Patricia’s people were not heading for the house as he’d expected. Their pace matched the slowness with which they’d crossed the road, and in its current iteration it could even be mistaken for tenderness. He, of course, would not be mistaken; Patricia’s people were the sort he knew to never accept at face value. When he couldn’t see them under the shroud of bushes that was part of their trek to the house, he was able to focus on hardening his resolve. He took in the rainbow-like rooftops that his high-sitting house looked onto; he heard the hollow chirps of morning birds. In this respite of peacefulness, he lost track of Patricia’s people, so that he almost missed it when Patricia’s mother came to an instigating stop about thirty yards away from the house’s front gate.
 She held herself in place: one leg on the timber bridge that led to the house, the other on the ground behind her. It could have been a warm-up stretch in an aerobics class. But Patricia’s mother, carelessly stout and in her sixties, had no use for aerobics. Maybe she stood wide legged to let whatever breeze was rising from the stream run up her thighs. Maybe she was savoring a secondary tickle: the dry weeds at the bridge’s entry against her legs. Just as Mr. Nti was contemplating this, they locked eyes, the thirty yards between them contracting to a hair.
 She smirked at him. She wobbled her raised leg. A taunt. That was it. She’d stopped only for that childish purpose.
 It was just like her. Two days before, during a phone conversation to finalize today’s plans, she’d predicted a quick divorce proceeding. “After all, it’s not as if Jacob has anything of worth for us to fight over,” she’d said.
 Now, with her assessing leg, she was repeating herself. Such worthlessness in Mr. Nti’s household. So much worthlessness that even the sturdiness of the bridge was now in doubt.
 It was a mercy, Mr. Nti thought, that Patricia’s mother would be out of their lives after today. All would be said and done. Why he hadn’t followed his first instinct five years ago to thwart the marriage, only God knew. He’d done some investigating on Patricia’s mother then. Someone had called her “a woman in charge.” Another had said, “What father?” when he’d asked for the whereabouts of Patricia’s father. That same person had mentioned that Patricia had a half sister whose father was also out of the picture. Worried about what might become of his son Jacob, Mr. Nti had sat him down to ask, “Are you prepared to marry into a home where men don’t matter?”
 Jacob had