A Small Silence

by Jumoke Verissimo

  ‘Yes. Today is the day,’ she said gladly.

  Desire screamed louder, so that even the landlord came rushing down and he was told about the event. He joined in the fray, asking his youngest daughter to go and prepare a room for Sarjee and Desire. It was a joke that was apparently open to everyone, but she did not find it funny at the time. She was to be married off as a seven-year-old girl. She tried to shrug Sarjee’s hand off her shoulder. She fixed her eyes on Sarjee’s mouth, which reeked of gbana mixed with bad breath. Despite the sharp smell of weed, he drew her close and kissed her lightly on the cheek. Her father clapped. Some tenants from the tenement house were laughing, and one of them promised to give her a portmanteau to carry her things in. Another said his village would be good for “honeymoon”. She looked at the faces of all the adults around her with confusion, and those of the children, filled with emotions between pity and amusement. Her face was covered in snot and tears, and her mother stood at a distance, smiling. It was while the celebration was being “planned” that she started to remove the rubber bands from her hand, stretching the ones that were too tight until they snapped.

  ‘Ha! You have cut our wedding band,’ Sarjee expressed, like he was truly shocked. Her child’s mind had believed it. She hurriedly removed the rubber bands, seeing what she thought was alarm on his face.

  Desire, realising that something appeared to have gone wrong, dropped the snapped rubber bands on the floor and stepped on them. She looked defiantly at her supposed husband, who now had his hands over his head. He even let out a pretend cry.

  ‘See what my wife has done now. Ha! See, me I don’t have wife again-o!’

  As every other person, except Desire, was in on the game, they pretended to be sad. Some even approached her and asked why she did something like that. It was only Babangida who asked that Sarjee, stop his “cry”.

  ‘Don’t worry, Sarjee, she always wears a rubber band. Anytime you see that she is wearing one on her wrist, carry her home as a wife.’

  Desire ran into the toilet and, mindless of the layers of faeces that settled in the broken WC like overcooked porridge, remained there until Sarjee left the house. Her mother was the one who found her there, asleep and standing in a puddle of stagnant water.

  22

  Prof was thinking of going to bed when he heard a knock at the door. He unlocked the latch and returned to his chair, leaving Desire to slither into the house with the smoothness of a snake. She moved towards the chair muttering, ‘I am s-s-sorry, sir,’ before she added, ‘good evening, sir.’

  The silence in the room was bold. Desire waited for him to talk, or at least respond to her greeting.

  Prof stayed quiet. Only the fleeting sound of voices and traffic which came as a scream, a cry or a glass-shattering honk from outside, broke the quiet between them. He decided he was not going to say a word until she explained her absence. The silence, however, began to irritate him. He sighed, exhaled out loud and coughed. She did not say a word.

  ‘One, two, three, four, five, six, seven…’

  Desire clenched her teeth as her fury grew, listening to him recite the numbers. She was getting angry at herself for coming to see him, only to be entertained by his silence, and now counting. She felt like a piece of furniture. She wanted to say, ‘Are you counting down to my exit?’ Instead she asked, ‘Do you want to live in this darkness forever?’ He stopped counting, but had no answer for her. ‘Do you want to turn on the lights?’

  Rather than answer her question, he stood up from the chair and said to her, ‘You should start heading home. It’s late.’ The clock chimed 12, as if to confirm his words, and she stood up and walked to the door. He thought of Desanya, his constant companion who always appeared when he called on her. He had abandoned her since Desire began to visit, now he felt she was a better companion who didn’t bring him anxiety.

  ‘You came in late today, anyway,’ he said. Then, he did what could have made her jump out of the window if she was close to it. He moved towards her for the second time since she had started to visit him, found her hands in the darkness and tucked them into his, tightened his grip and in a low voice said, ‘You should stop asking about the lights.’ Desire could hardly hear him over her pounding heart, like the sound of a horse’s hoof stamping the ground.

  Her head swirled and she stiffened to steady her feet. She wanted to think of something other than him at that moment, but with her head spinning so much, she knew it would be too difficult for any thought to stay in her head. She knew she needed to do something to put a stop to the way she was feeling and the way he was trying to make her feel, so she announced, ‘I met your son, Prof. His name is Ireti and he wants to meet you.’

  She found his eyes and looked straight into them. She felt his hands go slightly limp against hers. She rushed out of the door. It was the first time she left without hearing him say, ‘See you tomorrow.’

  Prof sat in the dark after Desire left and started to replay her visit in his head. A son? The idea that he was a father to someone calmed him for a few seconds and then his heart raced until he stood up and started to jump. Prof wished she was still with him in the room, so they could talk about everything, but not his son. He wanted to tell her about how he screamed in the prison when the warders came to pick him for the usual routine. He would have loved to tell her how he decided light was not for him. The more he thought of it, the more he could feel his head lengthening. He held his head in his hands and shook it, screaming, ‘Maami!’ He calmed down, breathing heavily and fell in a swoop on the ground in loud tears.

  Prof hoped that one day he would tell Desire of his time in prison. He bore the early days. Those days when he thought the worst thing was complaining and planning with other prisoners over the prison food; soups that lacked condiments: just water, a sprinkle of dry pepper and salt. He was strong for the first year. He yelled at the warder and proclaimed how the country would become a better place because the people would fight back soon. They came for him. The warders took him into rooms where he was beaten until his bruised body and broken bones made him walk with a bend.

  In the second year, the routine of his punishment changed. The warders came to him in the mornings, in the full glare of a hot northern Nigerian sun where he stood outside the prison walls with fellow prisoners and waited for the warders’ directives. The warders made them stand completely naked in the sun, like wet clothes being hung out to dry. The sun licked every part of his skin and scorched it with its rays until he felt his skin crackle in the heat. This was when he fell to the ground, shrieking, ‘Maami’ until the warders picked him up and threw him into a solitary cell. He picked a corner of the cell and shivered on the ground trying to make his body his once again.

  In the evenings, a new set of warders came to interrogate him, ‘Tell us, who are you working with? Is it the US government? Who is funding your activism?’

  He stayed quiet. They shone flood lamps in his eyes until he fell down calling out what was now a regular cry to them, ‘Maami!’ As he always failed to talk or give them the information they wanted, they would cover his head with a hood for many days. He always lost count of time and how it flew. Sometimes, they took him into a room where his hands and legs were shackled. They then forced him to endure strobe lights while screeching Fuji music blasted from the loudspeaker. His body hardened.

  The warders then laughed at him and said, ‘Professor! March now-now. Change the world. Change the country.’ They lifted him from the ground, put a veil over his head and took him to his matchbox prison cell. Once they veiled him, he knew the strobe lights were over. He began to find pleasure in how the warders veiled him.

  This was the routine until the head of state who threw him in jail died and another military government came to power. The strobe light routine ended. There was no longer any need for the warders to put the hood over his head. Yet, in the five years of having his face concealed, he had enjoyed the way it sealed the darkness and enclosed him in his own thought
s. His body grew rigid when they brought lights to his cell. It made him shut his eyes until they ached. He devised a way of dealing with the lights by wearing his cloth over his head like a veil.

  23

  The past is always a place to look for directions for tomorrow. This was Prof’s thought when he requested to see Kayo. He picked up the phone his mother had left for him and called the only number on it.

  ‘I want to see Kayo,’ his voice was steady, and he did not say more as he held onto the GSM. His mother’s silence made him fidget. He listened to her deep breaths on the other side and then she cut off the call. He tried to call her again, but the line wouldn’t go through. He tried throughout the day. He did not go for his usual nightly stroll.

  The next day Kayo sat in front of him. There seemed to be so much to say but it was evident they both felt there was no adequate way to start. Prof wanted to start by apologising but he did not know where to begin or what to apologise for. So instead he said, ‘How’s your family?’

  Kayo did not answer him and he repeated the question. ‘My wife died in an accident on the day you went to prison, with our only child.’ His voice dropped so that Prof needed to strain to hear.

  ‘I didn’t know that.’

  ‘Yes. That’s not the type of news you offer a man in prison or on the day of his return.’ He knew that Kayo was trying to bring up the way he was treated by Prof when he returned from prison.

  ‘I am sorry.’

  He bowed his head and thought of Kayo living without his wife. She was one of those women who never seemed bothered by anything, and Kayo always seemed like a school boy around her. She was his student, and one of the brightest minds he had ever met. She came to his office on one of those days that Kayo visited him on campus, and he did not introduce them. So, it was almost a shock, later, when Kayo said he was ready to marry, and she turned out to be the bride-to-be. Even all that time, Kayo was the one who was excited by the idea of marriage, she just wanted to live in the house with him.

  ‘So Kanmi is dead,’ Prof murmured to himself.

  ‘Yes. She died in an accident. But it’s a long time ago now.’ Kayo said. He leaned forward and asked, in a voice filled with anxiety, ‘I have a new woman now. How are you?’

  ‘Good.’ Prof said, surprised that his voice was stuck in his throat as he tried to make it louder. He could not look Kayo in the eye any more.

  Then he turned to Kayo, ‘Kanmi is really dead?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He nodded and said, ‘A lot happened in my absence. Anyway. I’m glad you are…I mean, that we can talk again, after a long time.’

  ‘You’re talking strange, man. You are my man.’

  Prof ignored him and stood up from the chair. ‘Do you want some water?’ he asked as he reached the door.

  ‘I’m fine. I want light,’ he paused before he added, ‘I want to see your face when I talk to you.’

  ‘Power is off in this house,’ Prof said and moved into the kitchen to get water.

  He returned silently and the quiet between them grew slow and stately, until it rested on them so much it expanded into a vacuous state of mind. Not knowing where to start his conversation, he said, ‘Do you think I have a son?’

  Kayo, at first, held a long pause, which was spat into a spurting, loud laugh.

  ‘How would I know that?’ There was a slight irritation in Kayo’s voice.

  ‘I need to know if one of those girls from the past had a son for me.’

  ‘What’s with this sudden search for a child? You who choose to stay in the dark?’ he said with a sneer.

  Prof ignored the lowered voice that followed the second statement, or the snigger which he could hear behind it.

  ‘Do you know where Blessing is?’

  ‘Blessing?’

  ‘My secretary, the one you said I should marry. She was also a student then, but she worked for me.’

  ‘Oh, that nice lady? No.’ There was a silence which left room for more words, and Kayo filled this with, ‘Why are you asking me this now?’

  ‘Why? Something happened, but I don’t think that is what I want to dwell on now.’

  ‘Okay. If you say so.’

  Kayo knew him, as much of him as the girls he slept with before he began his abstinence. They talked about the most likely person to have given him a child, Blessing, his secretary.

  ‘I don’t know but they said she has a partner, but was yet to have a baby.’

  ‘She is the only one that will keep my baby, or what do you think?’

  ‘She left angry,’ he said. ‘Consider you activist people slept with each other a lot.’

  ‘I never—’

  He then remembered one night in his final year in the university.

  He was at a congress meeting with leading activists from different parts of the country. All of the comrades who mattered in Nigeria were at the Obafemi Awolowo University to strategise on how best to weaken the obsessive, oppressive nature of the then military government to cut the academia down to size. He was the representative of student leaders across the country.

  ‘Every semester, not less than four or five student leaders go missing or die from accidental discharge. These students are the future of this country. Many of them are learning to become the enemy’s spy. They will rather sleep with the enemy than lose their lives. We need to fight against the corruption of the future of this country…’ Prof was the youngest at the meeting, but they listened to him. He gained respect for his introspection on issues. Many of them always forgot that he was not even out of the university yet at the time. They always treated him like he was already a professor. He was leaving the staff club of OAU, where the meeting was held, when he noticed her. She stood with legs astride, biting her fingers and this disgusted him in an instant.

  ‘Beautiful woman like you eating your nails as if it is sugarcane.’

  ‘And how is the biting of my nails of more concern than the sorry state of our country?’ Her tone made him feel as small as he had felt that night—standing right in front of a man like Prof Soyinka, whose feet he worshipped at as a student union leader. He stood there for a while. Finding no immediate words to respond to her, he found himself laughing.

  ‘Comrade, oh, have you met—’ He didn’t pick up her name and throughout the night, he called her “Fire”, which she giggled at, because he did not want her to realise that he could not remember her name or had not listened when they were being introduced.

  After her sharp response, she offered to help him with his books to his guest house room, and after a back and forth of ‘Not necessary’ and ‘Prof, it’s not a bother,’ he let her follow him.

  She sat on the edge of his bed before she was offered a seat and then she started a conversation. At first, he wanted to tell her he was tired and needed to get as much sleep as possible, but she wove one interesting topic into another, and it amazed him that a mind that intelligent and beautiful, could also say some of the craziest things with a straight face.

  ‘You think stopping coups and military rule in Africa will change our lives,’ she said.

  ‘It is one step towards it. I know that these leaders, change from military to civilian and remain in power…’

  ‘You have answered yourself. See, Prof. It is the West calling us to join their train and that we “need” to fall into the democracy league.’

  ‘You don’t think democracy works.’

  ‘I don’t believe in democracy, Prof. We never had democracy.’

  ‘The Igbos were a democratic…’

  ‘Prof! You shouldn’t be saying this. We have categorised the Igbo form of rulership into democracy based on the structure expected of us. While I do not have a name for it, it was certainly not democracy. Not like America’s.’

  ‘I’m trying to understand you. You want this military rule to continue or what?’

  ‘Prof, I don’t care. See, coups and military rules may no longer be in fashion, but the dehumanisation of hum
an beings is dateless. It never goes archaic.’

  She moved on to dissecting global politics and just as he was thinking that they would spend the whole night talking, she jumped up on the bed and threw a pillow at him. It thawed the tension of the past hour they had spent in intense argument. She laughed like a child being tickled. She dissolved into a familiarity that amazed him into believing such a moment of intensity, following introductions that were made barely four hours before, could exist. The more she talked, the more he realised that “Fire” was what was meant when people talked about how a beautiful mind washed out all forms of physical beauty. Were it not for the university rounds they were to go on the following day, he would have asked her to stay in the guest house with him, so they could talk and laugh and talk and top it off again with sex. Prof lost interest in what she looked like and even after that experience, which he described to Kayo—the only one he told of how he would not have minded bringing her to Lagos sometime for some more intimacy—he could not describe her.

  He gave her Kayo’s landline number and the best time she could reach him. Kayo was already working while he was in school. Most times, Prof went to his office to wait for calls on the rotary dial telephone whose ring was always so sudden, he jumped. The first few days after their meeting, his body felt giddy whenever he remembered the moments he spent with Fire. He wondered if she would call or seek him out. He wondered if she would dislike him if she discovered he was not a young professor but just a student union leader, who was well liked by the older activists.

  It was in December, during a meeting to call off the strike action of teachers across the country, that one of the more senior comrades who was at Ife told him of how she had just disappeared from the campus and no one could trace her.

  ‘Disappeared? What do you mean disappeared?’