Chapter 3 (part 2): Not a Tuesday
Perhaps
I meditated too deeply, as the cacophonous chorus became unbearable: hundreds
of horns blaring away at varying pitches of anger and frustration; all
persisting for lengthy durations and blasting out with irregular frequency; each
and every single one so clear in its delivery that I could almost picture the
intensity of each individual driver’s scowl from my bed.
The
throbs became more intense and began occurring with increasing regularity, so I
tried taking my mind away from the bus stop to focus on anything else, but in
no time at all, I began feeling ill-at-ease in my dark blue room: with the
tinted glass louvered windows; and the flimsy curtains; and the dusty ceiling
fan which was always switched on; and the loud air conditioning unit which was
always left off; and the dilapidated pine fitted wardrobe opposite the wall
which housed the window and the air-conditioner; and the video player which had
not worked for months, and if it had miraculously repaired itself, I wouldn’t
know because the large archaic television set it was connected to did not work
either.
I
knew she was not laying beside me, but I turned aside anyway, and began staring
at her peaceful face as she slept on the empty side of the bed.
I did not confront her when I walked
in on them. I simply made my way undetected towards to the most sober crevice I
could find, which just happened to beneath the bed where the sepuku was
taking place, and began thinking about other things: like the square root of
one-hundred and forty-four, and how glass is made. It is not that I was not
surprised or hurt by what I had seen. It is not that I did not want to flee the
scene immediately, nor is it that I temporarily ran mad and became
shell-shocked - like the soldier who decides to cower in the most frequently
bombarded crater in the middle of a war zone - but I knew, even in the heat of
the protracted moment, better than to spoil a good thing. What would
confronting them have done? I could have asked: “Why?”, “When did it start?”,
“How long have you been hurting yourself for?”, “Why him?”, “You bastard! Why
her?” But I knew then - as I still do now - that nothing constructive
would have come of any answers I would have been given. She would have left in
shame, and I could neither afford to upset nor lose her.
People make too much of a fuss about
these things anyway. So what if the love of my life happened to be having a
covert affair with the man who had been personally supervising my spiritual
development for the last decade? So what? I loved her - that counts for
something. Shouldn’t that count for everything?
And so I carried on watching her not
nestling tightly beside me: Not sleeping; not curled up into a hoop like a
recoiling summer flower; not laying with her hair packed tightly into a night
scarf; not wearing only a t-shirt of mine - and nothing more; not breathing in
through her mouth and out through her nose - as she always did when she slept;
not twitching her nostril every tenth breath; not there.
And as I lay there thinking about my
wife - who had disappeared (with clothes, with jewellery, with passport, but without
notice) two days after I discovered her in a her state of merriment - my
attention was drawn to the old rustic oak reading table, which was beside her
side of the bed, because there was something different about it - something
amiss. I began to wonder what stood out. A few novels and folders slumped
against one another on the upper shelf of the table, some unopened financial
journals sprawled onto the work surface, several jumbles of paperwork
splattered together in mid shuffle, and the pencil holder full to overflowing.
The table was in its customary state of disarray, but it still did not look
right, just as one knows when very familiar disarrangements are out of order
even by the slightest of margins. I began to wonder why it looked wrongly
disarranged - maybe someone had trespassed into my room, done some rummaging,
and replaced an item a bit too clumsily, or even a bit too neatly. And then I
saw that what stood out from the perfect mess of my study corner was a sealed
pink rectangular envelope resting on the lampshade at the edge of the table.
Upon seeing it, my heart immediately began racing, because envelopes of those
proportions never bring good word. It did not have the square proportions of a
greeting card envelope, but was rectangular, and probably pregnant with the
woeful tidings of most rectangular envelopes, like an invoice, a bank statement
or a bill.
My
thoughts suddenly went back to the hospital. There had been a note there as
well, but not in an envelope, and certainly not a pink one. One doesn’t forget
pink envelopes. I suddenly began to think over a lot of things that were not
important enough to bother me only moments earlier, like: “how did I get to
the hospital in the first place? How long was I there for? How did I get out?
Who paid the hospital bill? A name! A name at the back of my mind which I can’t
remember. Donald! That’s it. Donald! Donald?”
My thoughts were interrupted by a
loud knock on my front door. This startled me, as people tend not to knock on
my front door. It’s not that I don’t accept guest or have visitors, but my
guests tend not to have any reason to knock on my front door. When a guest
calls, he or she sees the gateman by the gatehouse at the entrance to the
compound, who in turn takes five paces into the compound - in the general
direction of the main bungalow, the entrance to which is ten paces away, but
one can’t be too sure where he’s really heading to, as he never takes anymore
than five paces, or I think he thinks he might die - and begins what is meant
to be a loud call, but ends up making a sound similar to the death howls of a
fatally injured cat, to call my attention: “Oga! Oga! Pesin wan see you oh!
Oga!” he always whines out despondently over and over again.
I don’t like my gateman much.
He has undoubtedly one of the laziest temperaments to have graced my
bewilderment. He doesn’t walk far enough into the small compound and doesn’t
shout loud enough, and those are the least of my problems with him. Most times,
I can only tell I have guests when by chance, I look out of a window and see
him barely standing upright - cock headed, slump shouldered, and knees in
mid-buckle - whilst mumbling something to himself close to tears. And when he
is not pathetically mumbling the arrival of my guests to himself, you can find
him blissfully asleep in the gatehouse.
No word of a lie, in the ten years
he has been my gateman, I have never once found him awake in that gatehouse. I
would despise him if all he did was eat and sleep, but I don’t, I simply fear
for his well-being as I don’t see him doing much eating either - he just sleeps.
It’s as though all the tasks of consciousness - blinking, listening, inhaling,
eating, and the like - use up too much energy, and eat into his precious
sleeping time, so he tries his best not to bother with them. It wouldn’t
surprise me if he would rather be intravenously fed for the rest of his days
than ever again have to endure the strain of lifting a loaded spoon eighteen or
nineteen times a day.
Once, I decided to have some fun at
his expense, and as he slept, I placed Twenty-Four-Thousand D’onoir beneath a
stone six paces away from the gatehouse. This is exactly twice the amount he
gets paid as a salary each month, so I didn’t think it’d be a sum he’d turn his
nose up at. I had no idea how long he had been asleep for before I placed the
notes beneath that stone, but it took another five hours of observation before
I got any activity out of him, and even then, that had to be engineered, as I
grew tired of waiting in my hiding spot (in the main house, beneath the closest
window directly opposite the gatehouse) and threw a small marble at his head to
rouse him from his seemingly eternal slumber. He stirred slightly, started a
yawn but quickly decided against it, and then blinked very slowly - once. For a
while, his eyes remained glazed and focused on nothing in particular, and I
thought he had possibly resumed his sleep without bothering to shut his eyes.
But then, after a few moments, he began squinting in the general direction of
the money. Not too long after, I saw a leg twitch and an arm spasm ever so
slightly, and having marvelled over him for a number of years, I was familiar with
these signs, and knew them to be his pre-arising stretches. But then, it seemed
as though the twitching muscles were ordered to stop exerting themselves, and
he decided against doing any rising. For a long while he did not move, but laid
perfectly still on the mat in the small eight foot by six foot gatehouse -
which was cluttered with all manner of long-festering filth - curled up into a
foetal position, with his head nestled on his clasped hands and his thighs
brought up very close to his chest. And then slowly, laboriously and seemingly
painfully, he nodded his head up and then down - glancing about the room - as
though searching for something. But then, he nodded only once, so I couldn’t be
sure what exactly he was doing, before he resumed staring blankly at the money.
An
eternity seemed to pass before his next action. He grimaced for half a second.
I almost missed it. In fact, I thought I had imagined it, but then, he made the
same facial expression again a few moments later. One moment, he was gazing
blankly at the money, and the next - for no longer than half a second - he
contorted his face as though he was about to sneeze, and then straightened it
out just as quickly. He carried on doing this sporadically for over an hour
when unexpectedly, he gently unfolded one of his arms from beneath him,
stretched it out towards the note, and left it hanging limply in mid air. This
is when I realized that what he had been glancing around for earlier must have
been some sort of dragging device - a pole, or rake, or something of the sort -
to pull the money towards him because it was too far away. And since he could
find none, the only other option available to him - he decided, after over an
hour and a half of pondering over things - was to stretch out an arm and will
the money closer. It was six paces, but he could not do it. Six paces: I
wondered why he did not take his customary five steps and then take just one
more. Or why he did not take his customary five steps and collapse forward onto
the money. What is the worst that could have happened? What evil could have
befallen him if he had just taken that extra step to acquire double his monthly
wages which was laying there free for him just beyond the fifth step - the
effort threshold which he could not surpass? It was painful to watch as he lay
on the mat in the squalid gatehouse agonizing over the unattainable; hanging
his limp arm out, and occasionally, actually beckoning the money towards him -
to please come closer as he had tried his absolute best and nothing more
could be done. Suddenly, without warning, his limp arm collapsed onto the
ground, he held on to one of his facial contortions, inhaled deeply, and then
let out a beastly cry. The noise he made startled me into rising quickly and
starting towards him, because it sounded out as thought he had been wounded and
needed some attention, but then I refrained when I looked closer and saw what
the cry was about. His arm - still limp on the ground beside him - was
beckoning more passionately. It was nothing more than a cry of surrender. He
began sobbing inconsolably as the wind blew and the notes flapped left, and
flapped right, but did not come unstuck from beneath the stone I placed upon
them. He cried as though he had just discovered tears for the first time and he
thought them a beautiful thing. And shamelessly, like a starved pauper gorging
on a free feast, he fully indulged on his distress. He simply lay there, with
his arm slumped on the ground, beckoning for the money to come over, crying as
though nothing else could be done.
This loud bellowing of cries so
loud, so loaded, so rich - so doleful - persisted for over half an hour, and
then quite abruptly, he simply fell quiet, closed his eyes, and went back to
sleep in exactly the same slumped-beckoning-arm position. Besides the fact that
the money went untouched, what I found most intriguing about the whole incident
is that although I am no expert on reflex reactions, I thought it was strange
that in all the time he struggled with the greatest decision of his life -
whether or not to take an extra step to earn double his wages - he only blinked
once, and that’s why I still employ him. It would be silly not to employ
someone like him - someone who does absolutely nothing, but paradoxically,
someone who gives it his all. Left to his natural devices, he would be a dead
man, as his sprit must constantly cry out for him to remain horizontal and give
up on breathing as well, as surely, it would deem breathing much too rigorous a
task. You can only imagine his horror at the thought of having to inhale and
exhale for the rest of his days. Over the two hours I watched him, all manner
of dust and grime would undoubtedly have settled on his eyes, but his reflexes
still refused to sanction more than one blink. It became clear to me that his
very nature was not one which encouraged his existence. And yet, every time I
had a guest, he managed to conquer the urge to remain rotting on the floor -
which, for someone who blinks once in two hours, is the kind of rigor his
essence would passionately discourage him from undertaking - and take not one,
not two, not three, not four, but five paces into the compound, and then summon
as high a pitch as he could possibly hail. But still, what use is a dedicated
gateman with the minutest whisper of life within him.
I really hate how he announces my
guest’s arrivals via feline whimpers as well. Somehow, it just seems so
uncouth. I’ve been trying to install a bell for years, but in some parts of the
world, it takes years to install a bell. One minute the electrician is two
minutes away, and two minutes later, he can only make it next week Wednesday.
I’ve tried other electricians, but they are worse - they promise three minutes
and then next week Sunday.
In the early days, I was perturbed
by all the whimpering from my compound and all the shouting from the
neighbouring compounds by other gatemen, but I quickly came to realize that
this is what gatemen do - they shout. They shout things like: “Oga! Oga! Your
guests are here”, and “Oga! Oga! I need money because the diesel for the
generator has run out” and “Oga! Oga! I’ve closed for the day, I’m off home
now.” But they never shout the really important things, like: “Oga! Oga! There
are several armed men approaching your compound. I suggest you flee. I started
following my advice to you a few moments ago.” All my neighbours still refer to
their gatemen as “security guards”, but I’m an Englishman, it is my language,
and I shall not muddle it up. In my experience of the people employed to man
gates in this country, they neither secure nor guard anything except their
routes of escape, and their personal safety respectively.
You might get the wrong idea about
me when I say I employ a gateman, and I have a maid. I am not one of these rich
expats living in Africa you hear
about, who can afford a decadent existence on foreign currency wages. I work
for The D'or noirian Federal Government. Rich white men in Africa don’t work
for The D'or noirian Federal Government. Rich White men in Africa might sub-contract for whatever Federal
Government, but they are definitely not salaried employees. Anyone with half a
brain is not on The Federal Government’s payroll, because The Federal
Government’s payroll register is like one of many mythical documents which people
hear about but have never actually seen, like: The Federal Government’s
constitution; The Federal Government’s annual budget; The Federal Government’s
fiscal policy blueprint and The Arc of the Covenants.
Truth
be told, I’m not sure what exactly it is I do for The Federal Government, as in
ten years, nobody has ever come round to tell me what my duties ought to be,
but I work for The Federal Government. One day, I went into a government
building and said: “I need a job,” and the receptionist, eating peppered barbeque
beef with her hands said: “go and sit at that desk,” without looking up from
her paper wrapped meal, and since then, every weekday between the hours of
9:00am and 5:00pm, I’ve been sitting at “that desk”, doing absolutely nothing,
and curiously, not getting paid for this. I haven’t failed to spot the irony of
complaining about not being paid when I really do nothing which warrants a
salary, but the fact remains that those who ought to be paying me have no idea
I do nothing. I don’t see why I should be penalised for other’s ignorance. I
know people who claim to have worked for The Federal Government for over three
decades who neither know what they are meant to be doing nor how much they
ought to be taking home in wages. In fact, I think it’s safe to say that the
bloke who sits beside me has no idea what he ought to be doing at work either. Neither
does the bloke who sits behind him, or the lady who sits beside him. It is as though a while ago, this
organisation called The Federal
Government leased several thousand windowless buildings around the country,
signed a couple of hundred thousand employment contracts, filled these leased
buildings with the co-signers, and promptly forgot about them. Working for the
Federal Government? I tell you, there’s absolutely nothing in it. I can afford
a gateman and a maid - like most of my other government worker colleagues can -
because firstly, their labour is cheap; but more importantly, most of us
Federal Government employees all have second jobs which actually pay. When I’m
not sitting behind a desk in a Federal Government Building doing absolutely
nothing, I’m a partner at the shrine, working as a Traditional Priest, a Babaaláwo
– commonly slandered in western press as a witch doctor, which if you happen to
be white, is a welcome novelty and hence is quite a lucrative profession to
pursue in West Africa. Besides, in most cases, you find that even gatemen can
afford to employ gatemen, and maids have several maids. Some pay for such
services, some breed the personnel - such is life.
There was another knock on my door -
this time louder, but I ignored it. Instead, I got up quickly, tore open the
envelope and read the hand-written note within.
Donald,
You
should have left immediately as there were more bills to pay.
At
this crucial point, racking up bills is not what we ought to be doing.
Don’t
bother going to the shrine – it’s been closed down.
Follow
the disabled homosexual.
Regards,
Donald
I
did not have much time to think too hard about the confusing letter before
there was a third knock. This knock sounded like the knock of someone who would
soon stop knocking, and begin swearing at the top of his voice whilst
breaking-in. Someone who wasn’t going away. And then the thought “Maybe it
is someone who belongs inside” came to me, and I immediately began praying
it was Loretta. I got up a bit too quickly - nearly succumbing to a severe
dizzy spell; threw off the sweaty t-shirt, and grabbed another as speedily as I
could. There was no way I was going to welcome her home with the sweaty smelly
t-shirt I had woken up wearing. I was still trying to put on the clean t-shirt
when I tripped - almost falling over as I scuttled through the living room making
my way to the front door. The journey seemed twice as long as it had ever
previously done, and I began thinking the worst: “Why didn’t she take her
keys?”, “Maybe something has happened”, “Perhaps she is being pursued and I
have been ignoring her. I left her at the door to be attacked”. “You fool!”
I thought to myself, “You left her to be hurt, you fool!” I couldn’t get
to the door quickly enough, and as I unlatched the bolt, engaged the handle,
and swung the door wide open in one swift movement, I narrowly missed a blow
from a tall thin man, who, I think, was in the process of delivering yet
another very heavy knock on my door.
It was the disabled homosexual
referred to in the note who just narrowly missed landing the knockout blow. His
disabilities were obvious: he was missing a left arm, a left ear, a left eye,
and part of his right nostril. However, his sexual orientation was even more
apparent, as I took one glance at him and by process of elimination, I knew him
to be anything but a fancier of women. Moreover, soon after he finished eyeing
me up, he turned around, began walking away - towards the main gate of my
compound - and beckoned me to follow him, just as the note suggested a calling disabled
homosexual might do.
Now,
don’t get me wrong, I am an open minded fellow. When I know I might be
expecting a disabled homosexual to come calling, and a disabled man - wearing
figure hugging jeans and a pink football jersey tied halfway up his torso to
reveal a finely toned stomach; with half the hair on his head gelled down, and
the other half tightly platted; waving about a limp wrist at the bother of
having been left standing outside for so long; wearing mascara, purple lipstick
and eyeliner - shows up at my door, I do not automatically think: “This is
the homosexual I‘ve been told to look out for.” But when such a man turned
around to display the word HOMOSEXUAL printed in large black cursive letters
above the number 66 on the back of his pink football jersey, I knew it was time
to focus on the facts. Besides, the note said to expect a homosexual, and
friendly neighbourhood homosexuals don’t go wandering around this part of town
knocking on strange doors. Possibly
because in Côte d'or noir, along with paleness and statements like “My rabbit
flies”, being a homosexual is another thing that is likely to get you slain
without much pomp or regret.
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