I heard the hooting of a barn owl on my thatched roof this morning. People said seeing an owl in the morning was a bad omen. The sky was tar black, blotting out the old blue ambiance. At a distance, the howling wind rustled trees, waving the simmering rivers like a possessed witch. The rain didn’t exude from their chains as fast as a hardened criminal. It snapped and crackled through tiny apertures in Heaven’s gate, loosening itself in miasmic carnage upon the wretched earth.
“MAMA DIED YESTERDAY, COME HOME.” I received the telegram from a postal worker after the dark skies had finished spurning their red petals of blood.
“Another blackout.”
My eyes widened, my heart thundered as I stared at the brown paper with a crumpled face. Three days ago, I lost my sales agent job, and things were hard in the country. No job was forthcoming.
I couldn’t sleep that night. My heart was heavy, and a barrage of missiles was firing in my brain. I tried to get my mind off it, but the sun kept flogging my brain with its furnaces.
I kept my silent arrows to my chest, even though I knew they were firing in all directions. Mother said brave men conquer winter to reach summer’s summit.
At the lonely silence of the night, the hooting of vultures, the gurgling croaks of ravens, and the rambling caws of crows on hemlock trees shocked and possessed my existence.
The next morning, I rushed to Agofure Park on Lagos Island to catch the first bus. I went to the ticket office, attended to by an ebony, svelte lady. On a golden moon, I would have laid my cards on the table, but the lilies sprouting from my bleeding heart blinded me.
“Why is all this happening to me? I have lost my job and mother. Who do I cry for? No friends, no family. My father’s brother does not care if I exist. They confiscated my late father’s land when mother refused a levirate marriage. As for my friends, they vanished when the money stopped coming. In those days when the sun was still shining, they flocked to my house like ants attracted to a wax of honey. The world favors oily hands over bloody ones.”
I poked a cigarette in my lips. The blue lighter refused to strike. I tried thrice in another failed attempt.
“Why is everything crumbling? Even my lighter is feeling the dark storms.”
I put the cigarette back in its pack.
A doctor told me to stop smoking, as it causes lung cancer. I was an addict. Anxiety, sadness, and restlessness shook me, the day without a stick.
I waited for another hour because the mechanic was battling with the engine.
The driver, an unkempt smoker, blew the nicotinic haze with reckless abandonment, toppling it with dry gin. A stale smell of cigarette irritated me. I had never felt so disgusted.
“Maybe the death of my mother was evoking the black smoke?” I thought.
More nauseating was the man’s paunch belly, stained yellow teeth, and fusty breath. They rekindled sleeping ashes and laden Harmattan dust.
I buried my head in my palms, alone with my silent monsters. Some enthuse there is no love of life without the despair of it, and one cannot be happy when searching for the true meaning of life. I guess mine was in its ground state, hopeless.
The bumpy road, solitude of other passengers, humid clouds, and the acrid smell of gasoline made me doze off.
I arrived at Evbiamen at noon. The dark clouds had turned to a cracking fire, in ominous undertones, as beads of sweat trickled down my face. It was a harrowing journey, but the drunk driver showed his wizardry on the wheel. He boasted about how he had been on the road for two decades.
Mama’s hut was a stone’s throw from where the driver stopped me. It was a small, thatched house with a few bric-à-brac. At a distance, I saw someone wrapped in a white cloth, surrounded by women. Warm liquids ran down my spine.
“Hope it wasn’t her?” My legs wobbled.
Deep into the darkness of my pierced soul, I remembered how we crammed ourselves in its four walls, and how she told me moonlight stories. Mother was not only an excellent storyteller but a generous woman. She was also full of wisdom. Her white morsel festered through the entrails of the wildest beasts. Women like her carry villages on their backs.
I greeted and asked the women if that was my mother. Her younger sister unwrapped her face. The wailings from the women hit me from all directions.
“She died yesterday of fever. She had been ill for three weeks, waiting for you,” she said, her eyes freckled from the tears. Her face had turned too dark and rigid. She had been a rose flower all her days, the good seed that grew and bloomed.
I didn’t know whether to rattle or hang myself on a tree.
“My gold has shattered.” How I thought the white skies would rain fog to erode me into an abyss.”
I felt a tinge in my stomach. Mama told me to farm in the village, rather than looking for a white-collar job in the city. Imasuen, my childhood friend, had married and built two stories for his parents. He became rich through farming.
I went inside and sat on a bamboo chair, deep in reverie. “If only the ears had listened to the yelping falcon!” I thought.
“Here is water. Take heart. We are all mortals and will die someday. Your mother was an amiable woman. Crowds came here yesterday. More condolences came this morning. The villagers will play their part in her burial. Everything good will come,” a woman comforted, waggling her head in pity, before fading from the dim light.
“Thanks, ma.” I gulped the water, every drop bringing back hurtful memories. Those spirit-raising words were what I needed to keep my soul afloat amid my tribulations.
“What’s a soul without happiness? It’s nothing else but a pain bringing forth that which separates itself from its body.”
I couldn’t stare at her corpse again for fear of rattling. I leaned my back against the wall, trying to figure out how to get out of my predicament. For the second time, I slept off from the silent whispers of the cold room, flapping its wings everywhere and sending the glorious restless world into nonchalant exile.
I stayed a week in the village to mourn her. Sympathizers from far and near attended the occasion. Everyone said good things about my mother. Without their love and massive turnout, I would have licked my paws.
My travails didn’t end there. I was getting older, with no wife or children. Mama begged me several times to give her a grandchild before her death. The odious city life consumed me completely. The fishes that swam in my river were countless.
“Mother wouldn’t have died if I had stayed with her. It was my fault.”
I flooded my pillows. I reclined myself from my neighbors and stayed throughout the day, thinking of suicide. “Lost hopes. What else am I living for?”
I often practiced tilting a rope on my fan and forming a circle with it to fit into my neck. I felt thirsty for humane love, that kind of companion that dissects the dark silent room of one’s mind, bringing it to illumination. However, my introversion wouldn’t unchain me.
The suicidal thoughts continued for weeks. I had become a living corpse. The death of my mother had affected me in a way that I couldn’t breathe well. Before her death, we had a mother-and-child relationship, and she was never shy to scold me for my wrongs. The same with my papa, too. Papa was a disciplinarian and devout Catholic. He once said if he hadn’t married Mama, he would have been a celibate priest.
On one hand, I thought if I hung myself, no one would pour their hearts and tears out for me, nor say good things about my death. People would judge me as a villain, and I would be even more alone in death than in life.
I summoned the courage to unfasten the black birds from my cage. The doves had always known the sparrow’s chirrups, but when the sparrow makes hissing screeches, the dove lets it be. I poured out my silent room to them. They growled at me for not sharing it with them in a timely manner. One of them eventually helped me secure another sales job in his former company.
Two years later, I got married and christened my beautiful twins after my parents. I appreciated everyone who stood by me during the storm. Those years, I took flowers to their graves, remembering how their death took one part of me. I appreciated everyone as well who kept me afloat from the creepy shadows of the silent room.
—
Ikhenoba, Joseph, is a passionate biochemist and writer. His essays, poems, and stories have appeared in local and international magazines, including Writer Space Africa, Humanities Commons, Poetry South, and Kinsman Quarterly. He has authored over thirty short stories and has received nominations for several international awards. His poem “Sanctuary” was long listed for Iridescence Awards and his story, “Wretchedness of the Earth,” was shortlisted for Natives Awards in the USA. When not writing and making scientific researches, he is out there watching football and sipping beverages with his loved ones.
—
Read – When Obsession Turns to Murder – A Short Story by Micah Angel – South Africa
