‘Madam. Injection?’
Remilekun turned to look at him and smiled. Desire knew her friend enough to assume that she suddenly found the peanut-shaped head of the doctor amusing, if she had not earlier.
She shook her head in the negative, ‘I want to see it.’
‘Okay, I will give you general.’
‘I don’t want injection!’
‘Sure?’
‘No injection,’ she repeated quietly, but with a tone of no-question. He looked at her for a moment, like he was waiting to see if she would change her mind. No word was spoken again between them. Desire caught the doctor signal to the nurse, who passed a syringe to him, and he punctured Remilekun’s thighs quickly. They had gone ahead to inject her despite her wish.
Desire watched as the procedure started. First, he cleansed her with something she suspected was an antibacterial scrub, then he slipped in the metal dilators, and inserted the other metal object with a flat metal loop into her. Each of these objects—cold steel, all of them—slipped into her, disappearing to find the foetus.
She watched the deftness and ease with which the doctor attended to his job. Remilekun couldn’t hold back the tears. Desire held her hand tighter.
‘Sorry, madam. It’s one of those things,’ the doctor turned to the nurse, who spoke, and whispered something to her.
Desire knew it was over as the doctor pulled off his gloves and said something she didn’t hear clearly about waiting for a while. The leaf-lipped nurse helped Remilekun up from the bed, with the bed spread falling to reveal a nylon-covered mattress. It was with slow steps, and her hand against the wall, that Remilekun moved to a ward to regain her strength, while Desire rubbed her back before going to meet the clerk in the reception to settle the bills.
Remilekun moved about the house like a sick dog. She stayed in bed. She was not willing to go to classes or answer phone calls for a week. She ate little and said less and Desire was becoming afraid when they heard a knock on the door.
‘Could you have kept that baby, even if he didn’t want it? You wanted that baby.’
‘He didn’t want it.’
‘But you did.’
‘Where is paternity without a father’s acceptance?’
Desire sighed, and that appeared to have been the cue for a whisky-scented Mr. America to flounce into the room, shocking them with an unintended reminder of a door left unlocked.
‘If you leave me, I would die,’ Mr. America said. Desire wrinkled her nose. She looked on as Remilekun fell into his arms, and she muttered something about taking a walk.
She did not have any destination in mind, but she arrived at Prof’s door.
27
Desire did not know what to expect as she knocked on his door. It was two weeks since her last visit to see Prof, the day she mentioned Ireti’s name and left without any explanation. She twiddled her forefinger while waiting for him to answer. Prof opened the door, paused and then broke into a small laugh as he moved towards his chair without speaking. She followed quietly behind him, slightly irritated that he would let her in without making her feel any guilt for her absence. She sat on her usual chair and waited for him to begin. She wanted to talk but her mouth was dry. Soon, a small silence drowned their intermittent sighs, deep breaths and pounding hearts. Neither of them gave an inkling of the thoughts in their minds. After about 15 minutes, when they had both settled into their seats in the room and still had not spoken, Prof asked, ‘Would you like some water?’
She ignored him.
He stood up and entered the door that led to the other rooms in the house, but he returned to the sitting room almost immediately. He sat down and returned to the silence which was there before he left.
She said, ‘It is really dark in here. Is it darker? I’ll switch on the lights.’
She stood up from the chair and placed her hand on the switch, unsure of whether she would flick it on or not. The thought of him springing from the chair as she did so, and perhaps strangling her, made her shudder. It was so strong an image that she gasped in reality. She shook her head and wiped her brow with her right hand.
‘Don’t you want to know what I look like today?’
‘Would your look change the price of bread in Lagos?’ he said with a small laugh.
A speck of light slanted onto her chair from his neighbours’ flat. Again, her desire was stirred; but his hawing and heavy breathing stood as a warning of an imagined doom. Desire stopped to weigh his unwillingness to see her. She rested her head against the wall. In synchrony with her thoughts, she moved her hand to the wall and her palm coasted against the coarse text-coat paint as she fingered the protruding button of a switch. Her hand lingered on it as she tried to find the courage to push it down.
‘You can do it,’ a voice in her head spat out in repetition. It was like the refrain of a song.
‘You’ve not said very much today,’ his voice shot at her. She removed her hand from the electric switch, so that it fell to her thigh. She adjusted her position in the chair and gave a deliberate and audible sigh. Then, she cleared her throat like she was about to talk but used the moment to gain courage to put the lights on.
Once she felt she was confident enough, she said to him, ‘Sir, please put the lights on. This room is too dark.’ She explained that she needed to tell him something and it was important that she saw his every expression as she said it. She waited only for a while before she added, ‘And I have not even seen you since I started visiting. I don’t know what you look like since you returned from prison. I want to see how you’ve changed. Please.’
Desire closed her eyes in anticipation of what a lit room would make of her. Perhaps, it was best to be a mental subject than to reveal herself to scrutiny under the lights, and this applied to him too.
When she opened her eyes, it was still dark, and she hadn’t asked any questions. There was even more silence in the room and it was as if they had both stopped breathing. The humming of generators in the distance sounded like a trombone in her head. She arranged her hands over her shoulders and asked, ‘Why is there never light in the room?’
He spoke slowly as if he was measuring his words, ‘The colour of the room makes me nervous.’
‘Change it. I’ll get a painter tomorrow and I will bring you a transistor radio.’ Although she didn’t know how she would get one, she said the first thing that came to her.
‘I don’t think that’s necessary. I don’t need anyone.’ ‘Why?’
Prof became silent, his deep breaths vibrating through the room.
‘I think there’s value in the dark and the light would swallow it.’
‘Ha! Sir, what does that one mean again?’
‘Prison makes you a philosopher who sees the difference between light and dark. It brings out the sage in you,’ he laughed as he said this. ‘Then when you’re out and alone, you become even more sagacious.’
She squeezed her face, wanting him to fill the space inside her. ‘What does darkness do for you?’
‘Like, does it help me wash the dishes or run errands?’ he chuckled, but it sounded rather eerie to her.
‘I mean, what does it do to you?’
‘Well, I’ve come to realise that it is best to be in the dark. You could compare it to a vacuum, a space. It is like being in a place where heads are left to roam and mature into their own form, a place without external forces beating your choices into shape. You know, darkness can be the place where one can understand existence better. Darkness… that state of assumption that brings continuity to our lives; we can hope in the dark. Don’t seek to fill it—you know, the emptiness, the rest of our lives is necessary.
‘Poets will disagree with you. I once had this friend, a poet. He was part of the movement then. He taught me these lines from a poem by a poet called Pablo Neruda. It is called, There’s No Forgetting: “Why should day follow day/Why must the blackness of night time collect in our mouths?” You should read the full poem.’
‘I don’t know poetry, sir. But, your theory, sir, I must disagree this once, doesn’t work. Darkness is not home. And it is not gathering in my mouth. It is not home for anything. It is gathering in my—’ she stopped and leaned against the chair, letting him interrupt her. His voice became a thunder in her ears, it drowned her as he spoke of how empty the world would be if there were no poets.
‘You should only look around you to know that we exist for poems. Life is poetry. The dark is where you find light—this is what poetry does for us.’
Desire pressed her fingers against the arm of the chair and said to him, with a lilt to her voice that sounded like she giggled as she spoke, ‘I thought you were an economist, an activist? Not a philosopher. Not a poet.’
‘We lose ourselves to many things when life chances upon us, Desire. You should know that.’
She swayed, holding her head.
‘And chancing on the fact that you have a son is not enough reason to want the lights on?’
‘What has light got to do with the assumption that I have a child?’ he said slowly and with a tone that Desire struggled to read.
Desire shook her head, closed her eyes and plotted how she would get the room lit up. This madness must stop, she thought to herself.
She got up from her chair and left.
***
‘Your father never puts on the light.’
Desire snuck a glance at Ireti’s face as they walked down the street. He was only half-listening. He smiled and waved to a man standing in front of the chemist where she had once bought condoms.
‘I know I sound crazy and it is still really crazy to me. But do you know all the time I couldn’t see you I was seeing your father at 9pm?’
Ireti stopped walking, he looked at her face, and smiled. Then he tucked his hand into hers and said, ‘Let’s get a drink there.’
They walked to a shop with a roof that extended outside. On the plank holding the roof in place was written: Comfort Eatin’ Place.
A boy who walked with a limp came up to him and asked them what they wanted. The smell of freshly made pepper soup floated about the place and Ireti ordered two plates without asking her if she wanted anything.
‘Don’t you want to know your father?’
Ireti looked up at her face and waited, like he was studying her features, before he said, ‘No. I already met you. My sister. You know you’re like my twin sister. I feel I can tell you anything.’ He laughed.
‘You are certainly not serious! You are friend-zoning me,’ Desire said and sank into the chair again. Her heart became torn as she realised that the idea of her meeting with Prof sounded bizarre. ‘It’s true Ireti. I know your dad.’
Desire looked Ireti over. He seemed different, his hair bushier and uncombed.
‘We need some space—for some weeks or months. I need time to think. I need space,’ he said shaking his head.
Desire stood stiffly for a while, unsure of how to respond to him, and then she walked away swiftly. It was after many steps that she looked back. He was no longer there.
28
Prof’s phone rang. He picked it up, ‘Maami, yes… okay… I still have enough… tomorrow… it’s fine… okay, okay, I’ll call you. I need to go now.’ As Desire’s absence grew longer, he found himself calling and accepting his mother’s calls more. He tried to call Kayo, too, after their last encounter, but his friend never picked up the phone. Loneliness was not something he had considered until of late. Solitude and loneliness inhabited the same space and he found how easily one could take the place of the other with a sudden shift in feeling. It had been a month since Desire last visited.
As the grandfather clock chimed 12 times, Prof realised that regardless of how much time had passed, it still felt like the first night without her company. His heart was singed as he thought of a future with her continued absence. He went to the door and stood there for almost three hours, with the hope that she would knock, with explanations of how she needed to stay home the previous night because she had been sick. Some faint sound reached his ears and Prof leaned against the door, straining to catch the footsteps he thought he heard. When he returned to the chair, he still waited for the sound of her knocking. He listened until he was certain he heard something. He leaned forward on the chair and then sank back, before getting up and walking slowly to the door. When the sound came again, but not the knocking he had hoped for, he interpreted it as a fear of being unable to knock. He had told her that he did not want her to come again, had he not? He leaned on the door and listened harder to what he assumed were descending footfalls. With sweaty palms and shaky knees he flung the door open to ask her to come in. Outside his doorstep was a tabby cat, with gleaming white eyes, scratching the wall. The animal moved its head to watch him for a while, let out a “meow” and disappeared down the stairs. Prof returned to his chair where he buried his head in his hands and sobbed.
A voice in his head urged, ‘Eni, find her.’
But before he could send messages to his limbs to move, another voice cajoled, ‘And why would you want to do that? You’re the one who likes it in the dark.’
‘How would you have expected the girl to accept your darkness?’ the first voice added. ‘To make matters worse, you asked her to go.’
‘But she didn’t complain. She never did.’
‘She never did?’
As the voices in his head conversed, Prof shook his head vigorously; a side of his head throbbed as he did this. He wrapped his arms around himself and closed his eyes. He wanted to cry but his eyelids ached.
‘Light!’ And with this prodding from the voice in his head, Prof stood up again and walked to the light switch with jittery hands. He leaned against the wall and built up the courage to push the button. His middle finger rested slack against the switch, and then it became rigid against the button. He waited till his whole hand rested against the light switch.
He pushed himself to put it on for an indefinite length of time before he slid to the floor shaking and jerking. He saw flashes of whips landing against his flesh.
‘Can you hear your colleague in the other cell?’ the soldier who accompanied the warder asked him. His laughter bounced about until it felt like it landed on him in the guise of a slap on his face. Blood rushed down from his nose, he wanted to plead for mercy.
‘Water, water…’ he said instead. The two men laughed. They dragged him up from the corner he had fixed himself into in the solitary cell, as if the wall would open up and he could go through it. The kicks came in; one, two, three… ten, he lost count. He held his pain between his teeth, except for the muffled grunts that escaped his lips when the kicks got him in the ribs. When they left the cell, he waited to count the five clicks of the torturers’ heels as they walked away. This told him that his two torturers were now many cells away from him. There was silence, except for the sound of water dripping from the decking.
‘No! No! No! Leave me, leave… Please, help.’
Prof pulled at his hair. He wanted his head off from his neck. He wanted to forget, so he concentrated on the pearls of water dribbling from the middle of his head to his face.
‘I can’t. I can’t do it,’ and when he felt he was becoming loud, he cried, but it sounded like chuckles, because he tried hard to suppress himself from a loud cry.
Then, from nowhere, in his head he heard, ‘Ha! Put on the lights.’ It was like his mother’s voice but it came with an authority he had never heard from her. He stopped his ears with his forefingers but the voices were coming from inside him and they became even louder and more confident. His breathing became laboured. He wept.
Desire, his mother and even Kayo, shouted, ‘Light! Light! Light!’ He heard some other voices shouting in his head too.
The voice of the son Desire told him he had screamed ‘Light!’ at him too, as if that would make up for all his indecisions, his failings, his pain.
He could not scream, so he slid down to his knees and cried in pauses, one sob at a tim
e, until no sound came out of him. Desanya came to him once again, ‘I can’t stay any longer. Light! Light! Light!’
He saw several mangled bodies laid upon themselves, soldiers flogging and kicking young boys and girls. He heard someone screaming for help, ‘I don’t want to die!’ and he saw the rumpled body of Kayo’s wife, his father’s begging eyes—the images flickered through his mind and he held his head in his arms. It was just like in the early years of prison, when all that he remembered were the bad things. He recalled things that related to him and things that did not. He saw screaming as he held the Concord Newspaper showing the scorched body of the journalist, Dele Giwa. “They got him, they got him.”
He was remembering all the bad things in his life, in the lives of those he knew, and he could not scream, but it felt as if every part of his body was shouting for help.
He stood up from his position on the ground with a sudden resolve, pressed his hand against the switch, but he still couldn’t gather enough courage to push it down. He shook his head, he was beginning to feel woozy.
He thought of those days in prison; when the lights came on, he knew that only meant hot iron marks on his back, lashings, and sometimes punches that left his bones praying for a partial immobility. He thought of his father, who did not think he was worth being called a son. He thought of women he could have loved if he had tried, and he broke down on his knees. He cried thinking again of every time they beat him in prison because he shed no tears. For not standing in front of his father and his lawyer to tear up the papers for the house and bawl at how anyone could think he could be bought. He cried for Desire, for his mother. He cried to feel safe.
In the first week in prison he felt there was enough of the idea of salvation in him to save Nigerians. He carried this air of invincibility about him and a boldness from never having stayed more than three days in prison. He remained straight-backed when the head of state came to visit. He looked the Number One in the face and for a second time, spat in the president’s face. The man simply asked for water to clean his face and said nothing more than, ‘He hasn’t learnt, has he?’
A Small Silence Page 19