“Fool”

It has been going on for months. Two months you think. That is how long you have been sleeping with the woman next door. Her husband lives in Tunisia. He rarely visits unless during festivities. So you keep her company. Do the duty of a husband. Who cares? She works with the Insurance. The first thing that attracted you to her was her thin body. Her waist looks as if it will break if you hold her with your two broad hands and squeeze tight. The woman is thin and short. With a smile that is always as wide as a gully. You always wonder why she is so thin. But she is so beautiful. Beautiful and thin. Each time she smiles, her dimples show. And make her look like a model, reclining on a cushion, about to have her snapshots taken. Exquisite. You have not gotten a job since graduation from the College. So you do nothing than stay at home. And every month, you receive an alert – your brother who is trading at Onitsha always sends money. He says that when his children are grown, you will train them. That is why he took the pains to see you through school. You are sure that when you start working you will take care of him and his family. The street is a busy one. There are a lot of beer parlours where young men like you gather every morning and evening to argue about Nigeria – why should government remove fuel subsidy? Why didn’t President Goodluck die instead of Yar’adua? What happened to the eight people killed by terrorists in Kano? The argument that is always constant is about the Governor of Enugu who has been abroad for medical treatment for close to four months. Some of your friends say that he has HIV. Others say that he is suffering from cancer. One of them argues that his enemies have cast a spell on him, so he has travelled to India where they have the power to neutralize all kinds of spells. In the evening, the same thing happens. You all gather to gossip and to argue. Sometimes the arguments get so fierce that someone will rush home to pick a dictionary and come back. You are all educated. It is on one of the days that someone has to rush to his house to bring something to expatiate his points in the arguments. You run to your house to collect a copy of your Qur’an. There is an argument on whether the Qur’an mentions that if someone kills himself or another in the name of Allah, he will inherit Paradise and Allah will bless him with 72 virgins. You argue that there is no mention of that. Even in the Suret Yasin where the reward for Paradise is mentioned in 55 downwards. 72 virgins are not mentioned. You run to the corridor of the building and about to head to your flat when you bump into the thin beautiful woman. Your head hit her nose and she screams in fright. The corridor is only illuminated by rays of light coming from your flat and hers. She begins to sob. Clutching her face. And then you notice that her nose is bleeding. She kneels on the ground, beating her left hand on the floor. You take her by the hands and support her to her flat. It is the first time you enter her flat. Her sitting room is the same size as yours but well furnished. She has a Plasma wall television. Her cushions are made of ox-blood leather materials. The floor is tiled and there is a rug at the centre, where a glass table rests. The television is on. A soap opera is showing. It is Super Story. The current popular soap opera on television. You keep on muttering the word ‘sorry’ several times. Your hand towel is on her nose. She shows you where the water flask is and you pour some hot water into a small bowl and use her handkerchief to dab at her nose. When you are done. You open her refrigerator and collect some cubes of ice, wrap them in the handkerchief and place it on her forehead as she relaxes on the cushion. ‘I am so sorry,’ you say. ‘Why were you in so much haste?’ You tell her about the argument and about your running to collect your Qur’an. She is surprised that you have a copy of the Islamic holy book. And wants to see it. You tell her that you will bring it the next day. You ask about her children and she say that they have retired for the night. She tells you their names. ‘Come and check the towel, please?’ You sit beside her on the cushion and collect the towel. The blood has stopped oozing from her nose. But she still feels some pains. You remove the wrapped ice from her face and she sits up. She tells you a story of her childhood, when she used to have nose bleeding in the middle of the night and keep everyone in the house awake till morning. ‘Do you still have it all the time?’ ‘Yes. If I am stressed, I still see it. My work is very stressful, so sometimes at night. I still have it. Sometimes when I am angry or frightened or anxious. The blood will come.’ You touch her neck and it is cold. And smooth. She asks you about your work. And you tell her that you are jobless. She laughs and says that the next day, she will ask around in her office for you since you studied Economics. She asks you why you hadn’t bothered to ask her all the while. You are silent and pray in your heart that it works out. ‘You live alone here. Why?’ ‘Because I chose to. I do not want disturbances—’ ‘When you are jobless?’ She laughs. ‘How do you pay the rent?’ You tell her about your elder brother. And she smiles. Her dimples appear and she looks so sexy. Read full story in Brittle Paper