Obinna looked on as Adure stared straight into his eyes; hers were wide and hard. And her words too, like they had been for the past ten months, cut very deeply, very deeply into his heart. He looked on, unable to speak like a funeral ram. And a shroud of self pity was fast obscuring his eyes.
''I told you not to come to this place,” Adure fumed. “You knew quite well that your presence is not needed here......in fact….. When you are done staying here, just find your own way …I mean, do not dare come close to my car,'' she glared before sizing him up from head to toe, rapidly. And then, briskly, she walked away, back into the hall, leaving him standing at the gate where she had called him out.
It was her birthday and also his and ever since they met, they had always celebrated together. But with the turn of things, recently, he should’ve known better than to turn up at the lavish party which held at the glitzy Blue Island hotel, independence Layout.
He did not know what to do; whether to stay till the end of the ceremony or to start going home; confused and ashamed like he’d been for the past ten months yet, he waited, enough time for her to calm down, before he went back inside the hall; he could not take his eyes off her. The crowd of friends and families was already dancing in the mist of the glitz and affluence and perfumes and flying naira notes. Adure was in the middle of the dancing; her red sequined silk gown fluttering as she danced. She had become a lot more shinny, a lot more alluring.
Those who were not dancing kept their eyes on her dancing and at the back of the hall, sat Obinna with them, talking to whoever cared to listen on how he loved his wife so much; how he was so happy for her on her birthday; how he often looked forward to this special day ever since he met his wife, because the day gave the world the chance to see his Adure through the lenses of his own eyes. He lurked until the party was over and all the guests gone before he started walking out of the hotel premises. He was dressed in his favorite cooperate wear of the F&F ash colored shirt and the GUCCI black pants whose boot cut trim rested on his St. Michael’s brogues shoes. And save for his face, he almost looked like the gorgeous Obinna of old. As he walked, he replayed his wife’s dance in his head. It was as new as ever.
His beautiful Adure! To him she will always be beautiful regardless of people’s opinion: the orange shaped face, the short flat nose, and the near Caucasian lips were ever new, more beautiful in his eyes, with each new day. And her straight build never told the story of childbirth and her dancing would forever appeal to him. All her near weakly feminine attributes glowed in his eyes just like they did during the first months of their courtship when they were drunk with love, when they went all night clubbing at Erina hotels on weekends.
She'd always known how to dance-the one thing about her that appealed to other men other than him. She’d always known how to wind and twist her V-shaped waist; her lean body until all masculine eyes around came falling at her feet. And, those days, she'd get him up even before they got home and he could barely wait. Today, as he watched her dance her beautiful self into his eyes and heart, he momentarily wished the clock would go back to those good old days when he often woke up with a headache after nights of bliss with her. He still desired her, perhaps, more than ever but, that was now like hanging his cloak where his hands would not get to. Like a poor man desiring Owerri soup, Ofe Owerri.
His walk home was heavy and tiresome. He was hungry and wanted to get home quickly to see if he would find something to bite on to give him the strength for the big thinking that lay ahead. He was hungry because while still at the hotel he’d totally lost appetite because he was scared he would choke while eating and perhaps create a scene which Adure would not have liked and so, he did not receive the food given to him by the over decorated, over painted serving girls who handed out pre-packed meal of fried rice. And again he had wanted to avoid Adure’s hard eyes which had been growing hand in hand with her upward movement in her new job at Enugu state broadcasting cooperation, her hard eyes which she had cast on him two days ago at the book reading of his friend Taiwo, when he had stood up to ask a question and saliva poured out from his mouth. The same wide eyes which grew hardest five days ago when she threatened to walk away if he disobeyed her as regards to his mother.
But, beneath the bite of his hungry stomach, lay the even sharper bite of the reality of his situation. And also, there was the fear in his belly of Adure’s harsh words nowadays. ''Since you didn't provide any money for food, how do you expect to eat food eh?” she had asked two days ago when he had asked her for food after he had called his mother to ask of her health. And so, he slowed his pace and all of a sudden, he did not want to get home anymore. He looked up then to stare at the golden yellow street lights lining the street and they were lovely to behold. This was why he liked the governor; his aggressive modernization effort had made the city beautiful at night and at times like this, the streets were good for a lonely sad walk ridden with painful thinking and self pity; the one exercise that he loved to engage in times of difficulty. And so he slowed down even more, briefly forgetting the hunger gnawing on his stomach mucosa, as the thoughts invaded his mind. Would thing have turned out differently if he had married someone else? What did he do wrong? Perhaps he did not play his cards well as David De Angelo, his favorite author on relationship matters would say on his blog? Any failed relationship is the fault of the guy Angelo would announce at the beginning of all his blogs. His pace got slower and slower and he drifted unaware, into the middle of the road. His ear piece was in his ear and Enrique Iglesias’s “maybe” played loud.
He was standing in the middle of the road; lost in thought, when he was jolted by the blaring of a million horns behind him. The impatient angry commuters laid curses at him. He had always thought the city of Enugu to be a soft city filled with even softer people unlike cities like Aba and Onisha which were filled with hard impatient and ambitious people who would trample on anyone who blocked their way. But now for a brief moment, he thought he was in Aba all over again; Aba, the hot city which had initiated him into manhood when he spent two years there hustling to raise money for his mother’s treatment when she had breast cancer.
“Go tell whoever sent you say you no see me o” somebody yelled from a yellow cab which had just stopped suddenly behind him.
“Yeye man. Go hug transformer” another shouted from a green keke.
Still, Obinna could not move. The whole drammer had him dazed, fixed like a statue. Then, a ferocious looking keke driver jumped out of his keke and made for him, grabbed him by the collar, dragged him to the pedestrian lane and then flung him by the side before walking back to his keke. There was a noisy murmur of approval from the other commuters. The mad man had been removed from the road. And life could move on again.
This was the climax of the story of his life and as he staggered to his feet he let out an awkward giggle, with tears wetting his eyelids.
“Obinno Odoh. This is what you have come to; this is the result of love and marriage.” he muttered. Yes, it was easy for him to lay the blame on his love for Adure and his marriage to her because what killed him most, now, was not that his life had crumbled but, the sadness arising from his knowing that his love for Adure had betrayed him. It had given him a brief hope of happiness in his mostly sad life and then left him abruptly in no man’s land; he had built his life around it. What weighed him down were not the difficulties he was facing in all aspects of his life but, the fact that the love he shared with Adure, the very phenomenon he valued most and which had been the driving force of his life was on the verge of extinction. And at the moment, he did not want to, could not think of living with this loss.
Before now, he would have taken whatever life threw at him stoically as a man. Like when he had to sell roast corn to pay his way through school. Or when he watched his father’s people chase him and his mother away after his father had abandoned them; in all these difficulties, he always rose like a phoenix but, the loss of the love of his life was too much to bear.
"There is nothing left to lose after losing you,"
Enrique was singing and he nodded to the slow beat. The melancholy brewing in his heart was getting red hot and once again in his life, he found himself contemplating suicide. But how could he be so selfish?
Who would take care of his mother if he took his own life now?
Who would father Obiajulu?
And so, suddenly, as quickky as it came, that thought of the relief to be derived from taking his own life was instantly stripped away from his heart. He sat down on the pavement and began to cry.
