by Frank Achebe
‘Who? Who?’
Zach had no idea.
‘Don’t you think it could be God answering our prayers? You know, last night when I came home, I read the story of Lazarus again. And I prayed to God for my brother like Mary and Martha did for Lazarus. I fell into despair afterwards. I don’t know. Maybe God never answers the prayers of people like us.’
‘We must wait. Do you think there is anyone who will have anything to gain from the boy’s demise?’
‘I don’t know. We all would rather be happy. Mr Zachariah, do you believe in the story of Lazarus?’
‘I do.’
She stood and looked at him. Zach saw that she was hopeful that God had answered her prayers. ‘If God could make my father change his mind about Silas…, I believe.’
# # #
Zach returned to the shack hopeful that he was not mistaken with his idea. No, it could not have been any other thing. Someone had taken that boy away. He could not allow Kuniā to have false hopes. It would be more devastating if she were betrayed by those hopes than by reality.
He was certain that it was Hééb. That was his idea of it. He did not have another. He would have to follow it.
# # #
Madam Békhtèn had woken that morning cheerful. However, she had fallen into a gloomy state after counting the folds on her stomach. They had not reduced either in size or in number. She had gone to the small room where she had a treadmill and had sweated out her frustration. In time, she forgot all about them and set about her business.
Borûn had come to see her mother. They were both seated in the veranda. She observed her from the corner of her eyes without lifting them from the morning paper in her hand. She was a painful sight to Madam Békhtèn. She was never comfortable around her though she tried not to show it.
‘How are you doing, mother?’
‘Borûn, you’ve asked me this one question four times.’
‘He’s cute.’ Borûn said with a giggle.
Madam Békhtèn snorted. She was wearing a miniskirt. Her unmade hair were tied into a knot. ‘What about your sister?’
‘She insisted that I must pay for my hair. Mother, I need money. Not only for that but….’
‘For what again?’
‘Why are you always getting frustration and angry with me?’ she asked sensing the disapproval in her mother’s voice.
Madam Békhtèn did not want to take that route so she mellowed down. ‘Borûn, I gave you the equivalent of my worker’s monthly wage before I left. If it’s not enough, then it’s not my fault.’
‘But I…. Why do you always like making me the bad egg? If it were Ūö, you’d give her anything she asks without asking questions and without complaining.’
Madam Békhtèn was now back at it. ‘Look at your mouth. How dare you compare yourself to your sister? You ought to be ashamed of yourself.’ With that being said, she stood and stormed out. The girl apparently sensing her mistake fell cold.
The door opened and Ūö stepped in. ‘Borûn, how are you?’
Without answering, she stood too and left.
# # #
Ūö was a proud girl and it was her pride that had saved her. It was also her pride that eventually came to betray her.
She was determined to make her own way in life. She had a lofty vision of herself that was largely beyond the life to which she was raised. And a determination to fulfil this vision kept her to herself. Her vision of herself was untouched and untested and as such, she did not understand that it was the condition under which it was packed that made the crayfish to bend. She understood that but not as much as she should.
She measured the other women in her life according to that vision of herself. They had not attained to it. It was a naïve thing but its naivety meant that she begrudged them. It was in a corner in her heart, a very obscure corner that she pronounced her judgment—they had no excuses. There was no pride in allowing oneself to become a victim to one’s circumstances. Peace had fallen into the same predicament as their mother. Borûn’s case was different. She had no excuse. She was a victim of her own lack of self-control. She was not the only girl in the world who had something between her legs. She was going to pay for it.
They had no excuses. If they did, she did not see any.
But she had grown to forgive her mother. She could not tell exactly why but she had forgiven her after all. She could not totally forgive her sisters. She could not see that their mother had contributed in making them into what they’d become. She saw it but she could not accept that as a true excuse—for after all, she too lived under the same influences.
She forgave her mother. In the depths of her soul, she did not forgive her sisters. Though she did not show it and though she tried not to show it, she wanted to get away from them.
She had written the admission exams for the university and was hopeful of beginning her undergraduate studies in the new session, as soon as the holidays were over. Every day she would wait for the postman with his motorbike with her admission letter. She was positive that it would happen and she looked forward to the way the townspeople would speak of it. Her mother would be proud of her, as would her sisters definitely. It would be the beginning of the journey to the fulfilment of that pristine, theoretical self-vision.
On learning that Daniel had graduated from a university, her eagerness to spend time with him received a ‘reason’. They would discuss about the university life. She would ask him questions. He seemed to be a decent young man.
Into this assessment, as naïve as it were, disappeared all her apprehensiveness over the fact that he had followed his mother. For what she could not forgive others, she had forgiven him.
Chapter Twenty-One: The Nurse
That evening, Zach and the hunter left the shack. Zach had asked him questions as regarded what he’d been up to. The hunter had declined telling saying that he was making it a surprise for everybody. ‘Let’s hope it’s a nice surprise’ was Zach’s words to it.
Zach had left Kuniā after haven tried calling home again on her cell phone. It was worse than the first time. It did not even ring this time. The line beeped dead on him. The Operator’s voice told him that he would not be able to complete his call. No further reason was given for that. Now, he had another thing on his mind: his family.
He decided to put them out of his mind or rather at its back. They could surely take care of themselves and in case where they couldn’t, God would.
It was seven o’clock when they left the batcher house. He had the hunter leading him to one person that had been on his mind since he’d returned from seeing Kuniā: the smiley nurse. The hunter did not seem to know much about her except that ‘She is not married.’ They were in the same age grade.
‘Why not?’
‘No one knows. But she is a good woman. Unlike many of our nurses. The people, they love her to death.’
‘How long has she been in town?’
‘Well, she left to study and came back. Left again till the government people posted her to our town.’
‘Do you like her?’
‘I’m married.’ Zach answered figuring out what the man meant by the question.
‘Oh, I did not see that.’
Then Zach realized that he had taken off his wedding ring and had placed it in the breast pocket of his coat. It had happened on instinct. He had no reason for that.
‘How is she?’
# # #
Zach proudly told him of Ruth. The hunter wanted to hear more but their journey cut short his curiosity.
There had been concerns whether the nurse would be home before them. Zach was ready to wait into the night. When they knocked on the door of what was a block of single-rooms joined by a narrow corridor, it was opened to them by a girl who looked very much like the nurse, except that she was far younger. From her positioning in the doorway, Zach saw that she was crippled on both legs.
‘We are looking for Nurse Blessing,’ the hunter announced.
&nbs
p; The girl shook her head. The other two exchanged glances.
‘She is not back from the hospital?’
The girl nodded her head.
‘Can we wait for her?’
She nodded again, then closed the door and went back inside.
‘That means we are to wait outside,’ the hunter announced.
They found a bench on the veranda and sat out two straight hours in their wait for the nurse.
While the hunter curled onto the bench and slept of, Zach observed the people, mostly returning from a day’s job. He saw the same thing as he had on that bus that ha’d brought him to the town. They were begging to be relieved from the burden of their lives. Families of four, five and six crowed the rooms. It was those kind of houses were people stood in line to take their baths or use the public toilets. In all, they did seem to be contented with they had of their lives. Even if they had any complaints, they had no one to complain to.
The nurse walked in oblivious of them in a way that suggested that she had very little business with her neighbours and kept out of their noses.
Zach waited for a few minutes before he left the hunter still asleep on the desk and returned to the door, which was now opened by the nurse herself.
When she saw him, she tried to appear angry but she was not so good at it.
‘What are you doing here?’ she asked apprehensively. ‘Still poking into other people’s businesses?’
‘No, I came…’
‘No, go away. It’s late.’ She said and let her voice drop into a whisper. ‘You don’t want my neighbours to run into you. You are going to put me in trouble.’
‘They already have. We have been here for almost two hours. Please, I need to speak with you about the boy.’
‘He’s not my business and certainly not yours too! What is wrong with you?’
‘Somebody took him away from the ward.’ Zach said trying not to sound accusative.
Silence fell. There was some movement in the distance. It caught her attention. More from trying not to raise her neighbours to suspicion, she held the door and let him enter.
‘Who gave you that idea?’ she asked as she locked the door behind her.
The room was a tiny room with a bed in the corner that had the crippled girl asleep on it. There were no sofas in the room and the carpet felt very thin under his feet. There was no power for the night and the room was stuffy. Another door opened into a smaller room. She disappeared into that other room and returned with a small stool, which was handed to Zach.
‘You’ve put a lot of people in this town in danger. I am not ready to let you put my name on that list.’
‘It’s not about you.’
‘Are you a cop?’ She was standing by the smaller door with her hands folded across her chest. She was still dressed in her overalls. She had managed to drop off her nurse’s cap, which was in her hand by the time she walked in.
‘I’m not.’ Zach answered and then proceeded to give her a brief summary of what had brought him to Nānti. Mention was made of the nightmares. ‘I’m a piece in the puzzle very much like every other person. I cannot walk away from it, not when something could be done and not when I have come this far.’
Their eyes met in the kerosene-lamp lit room. The nurse then went to the bed and sat on the edge. A minute or two of silence passed by. She cleared her throat in resignation and began: ‘Hééb came and demanded to have the boy on account of the mayor. I refused and told him I had no business with him. I had instructions from the mayor and moreso, I did not feel any good about it. The mayor had handed the boy over to me directly. He pressed me though. The mayor was losing his mind to the grief and could no longer make decisions—.That was the way he styled it. The way he spoke suggested that the mayor was mental already. I did not think having the boy helped much but I could not come to let Hééb take him. And besides, we do not like him. I myself, I personally do not like me. I have heard stories about him. I know how many times he had stopped me from meeting with the mayor when I was having issues with the health centre and was seeking some funding for equipment we needed.
‘I really don’t know what happened.’
‘Did he make threats?’
‘He did not have to. I went back to my patients and by the time I was back, the boy was gone.’
Zach felt relieved. He could not have been any more surprised at his original hypothesis about Hééb being the culprit.
‘Is that your sister?’ He asked in reference to the girl who was lying on the bed, apparently asleep.
The girl woke to that. She hadn’t been sleeping after all. She greeted the nurse with a ‘Sister B’ and addressed her as such as she told her where to find her meal and how her day went. The girl spoke after all. They talked and she returned to her sleeping position.
Zach grabbed at the chance to switch the conversation to something more personal. He had something to say to her.
‘Yes, she is. She’s very shy of people.’ Zach had noticed that.
‘She has reasons to.’
‘Yeah, she does.’
‘I have a friend, and I suppose they are of the same age. He lost his use of his two legs when he was a child. He walks today.’
‘How did it happen? Surgery?’
‘No. They grew back in a space of few days. He had faith.’
She shook her head almost as if to say she did not believe him. ‘Her case is polio. It’s hopeless now. But she loves life and she never ever stops being grateful. Life has been friendly to her on another note: she has a great brain. She wants to be a doctor. Spends the days indoors reading anything she can lay her hands on. But I’m scared of how much of her desire to live will turn to hatred for life when that hope betrays her.’
‘Don’t be a pessimist.’
She chuckled. Now she was massaging her sister’s leg with one hand. ‘You see, I have not told her but she knows already that the world out there has no place in it for her—for people like her. But she believes she can conquer her fate by books. She finds something in them with which she can take into that world. She is not haughty but you can see a good measure of pride in her eyes. She has something to prove. Sometimes, it all seems all too simple and all too easy. But it’s enough for her to try. She should find pride in that. One should not become a pessimist too early. The end may eventually come to justify the means.’
‘But you’ve protected her so far from those realities.’
‘Yeah. I have tried my best. I love my sister to death. She could have been my daughter. She was the reason I became a nurse. You wouldn’t believe that. The more she suffered was the more I wanted to help her and the more I hated myself for not being able to do so.’
‘There was no such persons for the boy, Pûjó. He carried his cross alone.’
‘You have changed things for him, haven’t you?’
Silence.
‘But do you ever feel that one day, it will all fade into some betrayals—and your goodness will mean nothing after all? More than mean nothing, they would be the things that would give weight to her betrayal when it comes. I don’t know, but one should not hope too much.’
There was silence. Zach held his heart to himself. He was sure she was now speaking of herself.
He did not now think it was a good time to talk about what he’d wanted to talk about with her about her marital status and of course the church.
‘I didn’t come for the boy alone.’
‘Yeah, I know you didn’t. I have always known that your instinct to help people would lead you to me. You’ve heard my story, I suppose?’
Zach was silent for a while. ‘I can’t quite say I’ve heard it all.’
‘How much help can you give me now?’
Silence.
‘Do you believe in fate?’
‘Do you believe in the raising of Lazarus?’
She chuckled.
‘You must understand Mr Zachariah…’
‘Call me Zach,’ Zach tried to remove any p
otential barriers.
‘Zach, when I was twenty-three, that was about ten years ago, I met a man, you know those kind of men who can dare to love. You know not all men can?’
Zach nodded dryly.
‘You must understand that I am not one of those who women who believe that all men are evil because of some subversive realities of their past. My father was abusive of my mother but on good days, he was the most dedicated and loving man ever. I suppose that I was not raised to play the victim. My mother received all of that with gratitude, the abuse and the love. Many women of her age grade had lost their husbands in the war. Some had ran away with strange women. Things were hard and many women were prostituting to raise their kids. She was consoled by my father’s presence and was grateful for it. For all his weaknesses, she suffered but always forgave him and for his love, she was full of gratitude. As much as she could, she protected us from our father’s weaknesses though we knew. She was a lesson that I suppose my sister has learnt well—a lesson in gratitude to life for its friendliness and a lesson in forgiveness to life for its subversiveness. There has to be something to be grateful for. Not many people in my shoes can say they’ve found such things.
‘I was raised to be grateful in life. I was raised to suffer well. I have not played the victim, Zach. I am grateful for haven met such a man and I’ve forgiven life for taking it all away.’
Her voice had begun to fail.
‘He was a dreamy young man. He wanted to see the world, as much of it he could. Not that he could afford to, he styled it his destiny. He was one of those goose that belonged to the wild. He had a strong sense of destiny. And the beauty it all held for a young girl who had an abundance of dreams about love was that he had in his dreams a place for me. A lofty place, a place for which I had every reason to be grateful.’
A silence fell. It lasted for two whole minutes. Zach held on to the silence. He was assured in the fact that the woman really counted him worthy of her story.