Nenrot rose frantically from the chair he had sunk into and, in like manner, started roaming about the house in search of something. He walked to the kitchen, saw the neat collection of knives, arranged by size, on the table (a wedding souvenir), glittering as if they were attracting his attention. He thought against them, “Too messy”. He strode with his long legs into the store: nothing there but a pile of yams. He walked to the sitting room, cast quick glances at the television, the sofas, the books on the shelf, the stupid cat, perched lazily on a pillow, that was now looking inquiringly at him and annoyed at him for disturbing her peaceful slumber with his energetic intrusion. He found nothing suitable for his designs; that numinous force which instigated his explosive behaviour also seemed to procure a rationale for the unsuitability of all he laid eyes on. He — with some resignation — went into his room and collapsed, face down, onto the bed. The tears wouldn’t come. Sensing some asphyxiation, he rolled on his back, and the sight of the mosquito net suspended over him evoked a new thought. He got up and dashed into the dark store, and, stretching his lanky arm, groped for the bottle he expected to be there. He found it and returned to his room, clutching it like an elixir of eternal youth. It said ‘Dichlorvos’ on the label and in bracket, ‘2, 2 – dichlorovi –’, he grew frustrated and gave up the pronunciation, “Who cares? Caution, caution, where’s the caution? Aha! Effect on humans.” Squinting his eyes to barely noticeable slits, he started reading, growing disappointed with each item he read off the list: weakness, headache, dizziness, nausea… “What’s this?” he voiced in animated anger. “Am I looking to – Do I want to – What’s this? If you’ll make something, do it right!” directed at the invisible manufacturers of the product. The alarm went off, interrupting his heated soliloquy. Pondering what it was for, he remembered, “Susie.” He ran a comb (painfully) through his hair, wet his face, put on his shoes and left to pick up his little sister from school. If he’d heard the alarm ring those previous two times, he would have been in some more haste.
He reached Susie’s school and was perplexed to find it sparse. Susie was on a see-saw with one of those children who looked more like an underdeveloped, corpulent adult than a child. He wondered how Susie managed her descent and, of perhaps more concern, how she wasn’t catapulted off every time the boy came down. She was obviously free of all his concerns, throwing her hands above her head and shrieking, “Whee!” every time she rose. He’d normally wave for her attention, but the futility of a wave against her revelry coupled with the necessity of terminating the imminent hazard compelled him to approach her.
“Nen!” she squealed, “You’re late.”
Looking at his watch, he judged, wisely, against an argument. “Come on down. Let’s go.”
He looked at the boy and hoped the subtlety of his expression was enough to communicate his desire for him to stop doing the spring with his legs which generated the momentum to lift him against Susie’s tiny weight, followed by his crashing descent against her – apprehensively – tiny weight. The boy mercifully obliged and gently lowered Susie. They started walking.
“Do you want me to carry your bag?”
“No. You’re late. I’ve done all my homework already. Do you want some chocolate? Danny gave me his last piece.”
Danny must be the boy, he thought. If he’d been doing more of this sharing then…“No, thanks.”
“Here, have some,” she broke off a piece and shoved it into his hand, ignoring him.
“Some people came to talk to us about HIV and AIDS today. Why do people share needles?”
“Well, remember when those people came to immunise you?”
“For meningitis, yes.”
“Imagine if they did not use a new needle each time they immunised one of you.”
“But that would have been their fault, not ours. Can you …”
Nenrot had just experienced one of those moments when a word evokes some new idea. Susie’s voice was now ambient to him.
“Intravenously. That might increase its potency,” he thought. They entered a drug store where the gruff druggist peered at him questioningly after he asked for a syringe.
“How many mills?” the man almost barked.
“Um, how do you sell it?” The man widened his bloodshot, large, bulging eyes.
“What do you want it for?”
“I’ll buy the regular size.”
“Regular,” the druggist muttered inaudibly. “Take the 10.”
Nenrot took out his wallet to pay.
“I don’t have change oh! Better have the exact money.” He did, and, meekly handing the man the note, hurriedly departed with the clinging Susie.
“There’s a mai lemu there,” Susie said, breaking his thoughts.
Understanding that she thought he bought the needle and syringe for her as a toy, and thus needed oranges to complete the rendition, he obliged and, for a second, considered returning to the store for another syringe; he shuddered at the thought and decided against it.
“Gimbiya,” the orange seller greeted the giggling Susie while carving spirals off an orange. Nenrot paid for five oranges and left with six (Susie’s effortless influence).
When they arrived, they met their mother outside, under a tree with a few women, and neighbours. They looked solemn. They greeted them all, receiving subdued responses. They had gone past them before she called him, inspired by the remembrance of something. “Nen, go and see your friend. I know you haven’t gone yet. It’s not right. You should go.”
“Yes Ma.” The insignificance of his grief was now blatant to him. Their neighbour’s daughter, a young woman, was only recently widowed. Her husband, after a swift struggle against an illness which struck him with commensurate swiftness, passed away. The friend his mother referred to was the woman’s brother, an old childhood friend whom he had grown apart from and had even come to, perhaps, inexplicably loathe. Now, the rude interference of death had imposed upon him a necessary duty whose discharge, aside from the circumstance extracting it, he anticipated to be unpleasant. He had, first, to promise Susie access to her new ‘toy’ when he returned.
Nenrot arrived at the house and intuitively substituted his characteristic rapid movements for the more appropriate plod in a house of mourning. There were women seated on the ground, legs thrown in front of them, arms propped on their heads, faces exhausted, yet retaining a vestige of recent mourning; images of despondency. He had come here, dutifully, so he wouldn’t have to again, but if Sule, his old friend was experiencing even a modicum of the suffering he had just seen, then he’d have willingly made the appearance if it could allay some of the pain.
He knew where Sule’s room was and went through the open door. He saw three boys there: two were over a chess board, the third, stretched on the bed, reading a book. Sule was lying, face up, on the bed. For a moment, Nenrot had an epiphanic remembrance of the cause of their drift. These were Sule’s friends, eccentric and deviant. They were the bunch who didn’t act like secondary school kids and insisted on watching cartoons, wearing their uniforms and haircuts bland, taking school seriously, and not knowing how to chillax. Sule chose to be like one of these guys and they both reached a tacit agreement to terminate their friendship. He had sometimes wondered how a group of rare oddities like them, with their chess playing and novel reading and spelling and debating and mathematicsing ever crossed paths, and how they maintained deafness to the derision of their peers and seemed to only be concerned with the opinion within their group. He wondered.
Sule was very appreciative of his coming, “Thank you very much, Nen,” he said and was generally very kind to him; they all were. They taught him chess, cracked [really] funny jokes (for Sule’s sake he thought), and invited him to their book club which he was seriously considering.
On the way home, his reflection illumined the barrenness of his relationship with his friends. They shared no interests beyond the prevalent and expected. What value did they contribute to him? Sule had just suffered a loss and his friends were obviously affected by it. He had suffered a sort of loss: his girlfriend had just terminated their relationship and he was moved to attempt suicide. Will they understand his reasons? He might have survived that ordeal, but what value will that survival have if his companions (that’s what they were; not friends) were on a path wholly separate from his? What he wanted was a Danny who, despite his obvious need for it, could spare his last chocolate.
Arriving, he kept his promise and gave Susie her ‘toy’.
Read – Loyalty in the Mud – A Short Story by Ebenezer O Akeju, Nigeria
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