He felt reluctant displaying a sense of spiritedness even though he had made up his mind to do so lest he rue the only protection he had in an unfriendly world. The name of the game: caution.
He made it a habit to evaluate every morning the steps he had to take the rest of the day. This enabled him to ascertain the number of gambits open to him on life's chessboard; how he would toss his own pawns and kings while eluding stalemates. These ritualistic reflections each dawn were the fertile grounds on which his love for the ways of the rooster grew. Besides waking him from bed, it gave him time to reassess the previous day’s anxieties and successes. It also gave him the opportunity to peer into the faint blur of the future.
By virtue of many life trials Netu Deo had developed a shrewd approach to life owing to one belief – the actions of the moment determined the outcomes of tomorrow. Sadly, he thrived daily in a cycle plagued by intrigues. These webs, spun by his adversaries, aimed at disproving his guts. He knew he had to be wary at all times to survive their onslaught.
He stirred in his bed in the brightening hue of morning and his eyes began to take in the outlines of pieces of décor placed in the bedroom. A medium size Thermocool refrigerator took up a corner of the room while two armchairs and a table were placed at the centre. Next to the bed, a cassette tape recorder and a standing mirror were present. His gaze swept through the remaining décor - two palm trees in giant vases on each side of the walls, a shoe rack next to the wardrobe, photos of his earlier days around the room, half drawn pink and cream striped drapes on the window, and a red linoleum carpet on the floor.
All these he could conjecture with some clarity as the light of day filtered through and the minutes ticked on. After a while, the flare of the light sensations overwhelmed the room. Day had out-phased night.
Netu’s memory went back four days before this dawn as he glanced around. He recalled in utter relief the prying little game he had with Anne Ofino. He recalled too his prime motivation for doing what he had done with Anne Ofino in Lina Phillip Uwa's dream. He had acted in self-protection, suspicious of Anne’s ulterior motives. Yet he did not feel any guilt pangs after the act.
Lina Uwa’s proof of her love had been her warning of the danger he would expose himself to should he become reckless in dealing with Anne or any other woman with vengeance on their mind. He had pondered over Lina’s advice and used it to guide his stead.
On the part of Anne, she had vowed to hold on to the greatest joy of her life, Netu, the most beautiful discovery of her exuberant spirit. In this regard, Anne had done away with pride and fierce ambition and had in the strange ways of love signed a pact with him to treat him kindly as would a mother. She had done this in the hope he would let go of his suspicions and trust on their feelings for each other. Nevertheless, Netu knew she was also aware he could see through her antics as the glare of a midday sun.
He doubted no one’s loyalty or affection. Lina and Anne both had strings wound around his heart as essential parts of his life’s growth process. Only a fool failed to learn in the arms of providence, he thought.
After all, he had come to acknowledge life as an endless process of learning. Anne Ofino and Lina Phillip Uwa represented his sublime teachers. He needed to learn the lessons they had to teach him in order to achieve all he had set out to accomplish within the framework of his transit in Newland, Riagena.
He had long admitted he had a mission to fulfil in spite of his chequered life. Yet one thing worried him; knowing other people knew his mission better than he did. This made him vulnerable.
This much he knew, but he had already acknowledged Lina and Anne as predestined actresses from different camps traversing the fields of his mission. Their pretence he could easily discern. In spite of it, he would not forget to be cautious in his walk along ponds patronized by cruel headhunters.
Disembark Netu from your vindictive train. The worst adversary you think you have is the best teacher you will ever have if you bring your head from the clouds to learn, he urged himself as he got up from bed. He yawned mightily and grinned at his philosophical posturing, then began to indulge in gentle exercise of mind and body.
The sun, a faint yellowish disk he had noticed earlier in the eastern cleft of Newland, had sailed high now in the sky. It emitted purple ribbons of light at first and then waves of bluish cloud transformed it into a peculiar phase of luminous orange-gold. Now it flared like pure crystals with yellowish tint, the beams of which overwhelmed the city with brilliance.
Netu relished in the warm sensations of the sun in the mid-morning sky. Its streaking ribbons stole into the room even with the lace overlay and thick half-drawn drapes on the window and got his mind in sweet flight. The fresh gush of wind through the window from outside helped him to start the day on a beautiful note. The day was long born and buzzing noise from the other apartments of the one-story building reminded him of the speed of time.
Neither the busiest nor the most exotic of the cosmopolitan districts of Newland, the neighborhood of OldHill often stirred quite early. He presumed from the din of his friends’ chat that they were in the living room. He reckoned Vivian, their cousin, would have been out for work at that hour of day.
Cars honked along the street and children from a private school a little down the slope had begun to chatter on the assembly ground. Close to the window, a stray weaver bird perched high up on the yard’s hedge, cajoled and sang nonstop.
Netu halted his exercise to peer out of the window. The weaverbird, not too visible from the angle of view, with its singsong, made him return to his exercise which ended moments later.
Netu bathed in a rush. He had an appointment with an old colleague during his hay days in the Brotherhood of Father Manu. This colleague, Joan Price, had hosted him at home earlier in the week without reservation. They had met by chance at Boye Steve's office in Vintage Brewery. Joan had been hospitable enough to invite him over. Smarting from the reunion he had promised Joan to return at the weekend, Friday, so they could reminisce over the past. And Friday had come in a flash.
Since he had made a promise, it had to be fulfilled somehow even if he found it inconvenient. He looked forward to the visit with so much enthusiasm. They had broached on a number of issues including those days in the Brotherhood of Father Manu. They had recreated every piece of gossip or information there was, curried and given it flesh in the joy of reunion. He wished to repeat this thrilling encounter and this visit to Joan Price’s home provided once more the right opportunity to recount.
Netu walked into the bedroom from the bathroom with a yellow towel wrapped around his trim waist. His skin damp from the shower, hair in quaint curls due to remnant droplets of water, and his eyes dazzled with unknown inspiration. A thin moustache complemented his trimmed eyebrow.
Netu looked fresh, youthful, and confident. Though signs of emaciation showed around his eyes and chin, his eyeballs never ceased to glow with vigor, illuminating the corners of his astute mind.
He inclined his head forward and daubed his damp hair with the loose end of the towel denying the droplets of water foothold. Then he rubbed into his skin a moisturizer sensing a chill wind outside, and quickened the care of his hair with a natural herb cream, combing through neatly.
He spent split seconds deciding between a gray blazer of woolen fabric and light green slacks, but he went for the blazer instead. He would be seeing his friend Boye Steve in Vintage Brewery at Bago district, the major industrial layout of Newland later in the day. He needed to look smart knowing they would be visiting another friend of theirs, an upstart millionaire, in connection with their late pal Tom.
The blazer over a black turtleneck shirt, gold neck chain and black shoes, gave his tall build a gentlemanly appeal. He applied his favorite designer talcum powder The Breeze on his face. He loved the lingering fragrance of the perfumed powder more than his expensive cologne. He then strapped his Citizen wristwatch on his l
eft wrist, ready to sail out like magnificent moon over night clouds.
He exchanged brief pleasantries with Lata and John in the living room and excused himself from their patented flattery.
"You guys never stop giving a man false air, do you?” he joked and walked out as their burst of raucous cheer filled the room.
He noticed a very clement weather outside, unthreatened by pockets of dark clouds. The effervescent sun in its sail lit up the sky. The gradual build-up of its warmth had little impact on the rather chill wind, which eased by and caressed his spirit.
He walked up the crest of OldHill with the inspiration to scale all impediments on his way in same manner the chill wind held sway in spite of the sun’s incursion. If the wind could dare to show its relevance as an indispensable force of nature, he too would survive whatever the challenge ahead. Every step he took then came light and determined.
Few cars plied the streets for him to worry about. The pedestrians he came across in his walk he hardly noticed. His being flew on the wind of sudden inspiration like a blown balloon in flight. Joy bobbed in his heart, deadening the aches of time.
At OldHill’s park Netu boarded a bus to Pen Station. The trip lasted about ten minutes, and then he strolled down a few yards from Pen Station and got another bus to Bago District. Five minutes later, he alighted from the bus and hopped into another one in the heart of Bago District which headed westward.
Joan lived at the western end of Bago District, an area regarded as a vast slum but upgraded in the facelift accorded it by the creative ingenuity of real estate moguls. The area had witnessed an upsurge of posh residential layouts, corporate bodies and small-scale industries just as other medium income residential areas of Newland.
A few miles down the road on this westward strip led to Netu’s destination. He boarded the new bus as the last commuter. The brawny driver got behind the wheel and drove out of the park. At the first traffic light along the road, the driver slowed and then braked due to a stop sign. As the light showed green, he engaged gear and sped on.
Lost in thought, an incident before the traffic light evoked childhood memories in Netu. An old woman, probably a grandmother, had lumbered across the road a little distance ahead of their bus in a daredevil stunt with a slim young lad trailing beside her. She had exhibited some sort of motherly bravado that reminded him of his mother’s care when he was much younger and headier.
The wary woman had dashed across the road some steps faster than the boy, old enough to cross on his own. Somehow, she had looked back and saw the boy’s timid hesitation at the center while a fast moving car overtook the bus and approached him. Where her strength came from Netu could not say, but the old woman leapt back in a flash to the center of the road and whisked the boy off the path of the car. The woman’s stunt surprised those in the bus. Everyone thought it daring, but she had just one consideration in mind, the boy’s safety even if it meant sacrificing her own life. Netu reckoned with her spontaneous reaction as typical of his mother in a similar situation.
Netu wished he could reverse the hand of time twenty-five years back to his seventh year. Life then had been a unique fantasy; a soaring bubble which would never explode no matter what came upon it, unlike the starkest reality he had grown to know as an adult. His whims had been undeniable commands to his mother who assuaged his needs the best way she could. He did not have to worry then about the rigors of life. The problems of the world did not matter in his happy visions of society. He had ample love everywhere - to give and to receive. He never knew or heard the chants of rancor and abject poverty, and never the stranger he had become with the passage of time in a world he thought he had come to proper terms with.
Time, however, had led him step-by-step, year-by-year, thought-by-thought, from his childhood world of wanton peace to a world ridden with anxiety and so much strife. He did not quite understand why his bubble had burst so soon. He did not understand why time compelled him now to pay rather gravely for his childhood misinterpretation of life’s game.
He hated thinking about the present. He knew life’s tranquil pond only in his childhood revel. He would recall only that part of him because the pebble of destiny had since rippled the serene pond of his thoughts and spread its sad causes all around him. His one wish: to escape this reality.
His mother had recalled so often the circumstances of his birth. Netu believed without a shred of doubt he could give an exact account of the period, including his mother’s travails, as if he witnessed those times himself.
Memories she had recounted too often to him like a great raconteur before a rapt crowd. Before he even had the first chance at recognizing his own existence and those around him, he had learned over and over the whole story of his mother’s travails. Quite naturally he recognised in those stories the storm apparent in the life of an orphan.
Fate had dealt his mother an ugly hand at a tender age. Her peasant parents died in mysterious circustances almost in quick succession. The tender little girl child, Dienloko, who had not even the faintest glimpse of life, became an orphan and encountered the awful hills of survival and the inherent problems of a polygamous home. She had numerous brothers and sisters from the other wives of her father Nabibia though. There were a horde of extended family members too. Her mother’s sister Mokuni it was who shouldered the burden of her welfare and that of her only sibling, Derpow.
Dienloko’s father Nabibia hailed from Brize village about five miles from Baloko village, her mother Eremeni's place; a Waji peasant settlement in mid-west Riagena. Her parent’s death came as the turning point in her life. She lacked parental care and love as a result. In the harsh years to follow, she never would have the chance to know such desired affection.
Dienloko lived with her aunt Mokuni in Baloko village after leaving Brize village her maternal home. A rapid exposure to the thawing process of peasant life took the fun out of childhood pamper and turned her overnight into a woman. The ill-timed death of her parents challenged her infant will to survive - and survive she did.
So impressed by Dienloko’s prowess in handling chores at home and in the turbulent streams of life, Mokuni spared no lesson in preparing this ravishing beauty for womanhood. Not as smart, her sibling Derpow did not have the magnetism Dienloko had. Despite this, Derpow too had begun to catch up on life and her physique had flared with a peculiar attraction.
At barely fifteen years, Dienloko’s poise and tawny beauty, stuck on the lips of eligible bachelors of Baloko, neighboring towns and villages. Pressure mounted on Mokuni as a result to accede to one of Dienloko’s many suitors who thronged her home daily. Mokuni considered it wise to save Dienloko from the hands of lusty admirers. Dienloko then became a young bride during the dry season of her seventeenth year to a vibrant, handsome young man from Brize village.
The course of Dienloko’s life did not veer in the direction Mokuni had envisaged. Dienloko became fate’s sad victim. Her marriage broke up thirteen years later from a rosy beginning, not due to a love lost, but owing to an unsown seed in her womb. Her family upheld the notion of children as the pride of womanhood. Her sterile clinging to love meant nothing but a negligible emotion to them.
When they could not prevail upon Dienloko, they resorted to the use of force to spare her the anguish of a self-imposed barren life. They arranged for her to remarry to have children before she reached menopause. They believed luck would smile on her not with Nabibia but elsewhere.
Guided by her family’s careful selection of eligible bachelors, Dienloko got married to Deo Baanu, Netu's father – a young, tall, handsome, pragmatic and renowned peasant of Baloko. Her family’s prophesy came to pass. Luck did smile on her three years later. Amid speculations regarding her presumed barren womb, Dienloko gave birth to her first child, a beautiful and tender girl who passed away while the euphoria garnered momentum. Then the intervening three years before Netu’s birth - years of fervent prayers and wistfu
l thoughts.
At last, Dienloko fulfilled the purpose of her living with the birth of Netu. In Netu she had a father and mother she hardly knew rolled in one. The love she never felt ooze from her parents due to their early exit she showered unend on Netu and did almost anything within her powers to comfort him and ensure his safety. She had three other brilliant daughters in later years, but Netu remained the fulcrum of her life. Wherever he turned, her life also turned along with it.
Netu remembered too his early school days and the triumphant facade his mother exhibited whenever he bustled home from school hungry and tired. She would hold him by the hand or shoulder with affection and inquire about proceedings at school. She would ask if anything was the matter with the gruff way he looked at times - soiled uniform and unkempt hair. After he had given her all the right answers, she would urge him to change to his casual wears and then there would be plenty food to eat. And in those moments of scrutiny or cathartic maneuvres of hers, Netu would observe her affection and fawning in every gesture and it became quite clear to him that he meant so much to her.
Netu later found out Dienloko was not as soft as she had always portrayed to him. While she spared nothing to comfort him, she also spared nothing to discipline him. He recalled incurring her ire once - the harshest of all her reprimands ever.
In elementary school at the time, about nine years or thereabout, he had pilfered a fifty Rinai bill his younger sister Neretou found near their house. He had used the money to propitiate the rage of a much older member of his play group whose bicycle he had damaged while on lease to him. He knew where Neretou stashed the fifty Rinai bill on his mother’s order. So he helped himself with it to save his face amongst peers. His childish extravagance in school drew the attention of a senior pupil - a young mass servant in the Holy Cathedral, where his family worshiped.
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