Chapter 27: Chapter 27

CHAPTER 24

Monday, 28th November.

Teju had barely recovered from the shock he got from Simi’s behaviour when he arrived at his office the following morning.

‘Allaaaahu Akbar...’

That was the intelligible Islamic maxim from the muezzin. The muezzin’s shrill voice from the trilling funnel-shaped speaker pierced through the dusky morning’s cold silence and jolted him up from his slumber half an hour before his normal schedule. And as the muezzin continued in his call-to-prayer business, Teju busied with getting ready for the toils of the day. He prepared toast bread and tea for Simi and himself even though she had not asked him to.

The toasting machine purred and the kettle whistled steadily in a low-pitched drone, punctuating the voice that blasted from the mega-speaker of the mosque, and substantiated the realness of his strange morning. Simi was still asleep at the far end of the bed with the bedspread carefully wrapping her up as a skin would wrap up tobacco. By the time she wakes up, the toast bread and tea would have grown cold. But then, she could microwave them.

The exercise brought back the memories of his bachelorhood years to him. It was not a new scene. There was no big deal in preparing breakfast even when he had a wife. That was just what he did during his years of being single. Though he had a girlfriend, he was not one of those men that fancy having their girlfriends live with them.

He remembered the feeling he got on the first day he woke up and his breakfast was already set. It was an odd but contented feeling. It was the morning that followed their wedding night. After making love to Simi all night, he had woken up to the appetizing aroma of Simi’s classic food. She had prepared boiled potatoes, fried plantains and had designed it with scrambled eggs. It was served with hot ginger tea.

He wondered how she thought of combining these foods together to have one super delicious meal. It was like mixing chemical solutions in chemistry. Though he had never eaten such delicacy, it tasted different. It seemed that was the first time he would eat goodand tasty food since the last time he ate his Mom’s food a long time ago. All he had been eating during his bachelorhood days entirelyseemed to be gobbledygook.

He could remember he had made love to her that very morning, and in fact, throughout that day. In the bathroom, in the toilet, in the kitchen, in the sitting room, in the garage, in the bedroom and all other experimental places they could strip themselves. It was paradise. That was the first and last time he would make love till his crotch grew weak. That was the first and the last time he would play and play like a child.

But after almost a year now, the realities of his past were fading like paint on a wall. What exactly has happened that the reverse of what he had experienced for almost a year was now an element of turbulent disturbance to his inner spirit? Of course, they had appeared in church the ensuing Sunday morning of their wedding day to give their thanks to God for the life journey of a marriage which had just commenced.

They had worn matching and brightly coloured Lace materials. Teju was in his agbada and Simi in her iroatibubaand gele that spread like eagle wings. They were the centre of attention that day. They had to put up with a lot of congratulatory pleasantries and well-wishes. He felt very bad even though the memories he had were as sweet as sugar cane. Not because he thought it was a tragedy for a man to enter the kitchen despite having a wife, at least he had done that before, more than he could count.

What made him feel bad rather was the unparalleled breed of Simi he saw the previous day in church. He had driven her to church as she had requested and they had worn the same type of Adire clothes. She had glued to his side as 5 would glue to 6 in figure 56. She was smiling a fake broad smile in church, as though all was even better than before, as though the wedding anniversary in the offing was in its perfect condition as planned. It pained him. It hurt him. He could not understand why she was doing that. He could not see the reason why she would debase herself before him and God by immersing herself in such untainted hypocrisy.

Even though he was completely innocent, he preferred to be slandered spitefully as an adulterer. He was ready to face grave punishment as recommended by whichever law for committing adultery, but hiding his marital home at the very verge of a great collapse and at a place where amends could be made was absolutely contemptible and unacceptable.

He had seemed too dull and solicitous in church. Concerned church members who had noticed and inquired were told that he had a little headache by Simi, even though they never appeared before the pastor for prayers as it was routinely expected of them to do. The more people they met in church the more lies Simi manufactured to ward off suspicion. She even lied about her ring. Even the Devil -Teju admitted- could not have had such a sharp lying instinct as she did.

When they got back home, Teju remained dumbfounded. He could not protest against her. He could not reprimand her. Maybe he had even lost the courage of articulating and standing for what he felt was right and just. Maybe Simi had nothing to lose after all and maybe he was right in her web, squirming helplessly within its grips.

As he parked his car in the space tagged Reserved, he reflected on his situation. It seemed almost insuperable. It was like a bleak gargantuan insignia before him and he shuddered at the inward picture. And as he walked off from his car to his office, it appeared his limps were too stiff and were in need of lubrication. Or possibly, he had a mammoth albatross in his stomach that weighed him down.

The thoughts that echoed in his mind made everything seem oblivious. The interlocked bricks of the floor, the tall and glass-walled building, the assorted model of cars, the ornamental plants and saplings, and even the greetings from his suited work-mates were all like shadows and an echoing sound from a dream.

Simi had said cheating on her was unpardonable. She said Jesus Christ had atoned for every sin on the Calvary cross except for the sin of marital infidelity. Her determination was scary and alarming. She was up to something that could possibly not be terminated no matter how he tried. It did not matter what he did to prevent it, she would definitely stop at nothing to see it done duly.

As these thoughts kept on pouring like water-fall on his mind, he lost consciousness of what he did physically. He did not even notice that whenever these thoughts struck him really hard, he stopped abruptly in his tracks. He was absorbed in himself. The whole company gazed bizarrely at him from their desks, asking themselves what was wrong with him. All eyes were fixed tenaciously and pryingly on him when he was thrust back from his abyssal thoughts by Ebun. She had been repeating “Good morning sir, is everything alright sir?” for the past two minutes without evidence of being heard or an answer to her pressing question. He had mumbled back his greeting evasively and had darted to his office as though tears were about to rain, and he did not want them to see him cry.

“Good morning sir” Ebun barged into his thoughts again as he stood looking out of the large window of his office, dipped fully in his thoughts.

“How many times would you greet me this morning? And when did you lose the etiquette of knocking before intruding into your boss’ privacy?” Teju said turning on her with a face red.

“I did knock sir, but I didn’t know how many times I had to knock before I get an answer, maybe still my fingers get swollen” Ebun replied. If she was irate at him, she did not hide it. On a standard Nigerian scale, her statement was impertinent considering the fact that it was a boss-to-subordinate situation. Teju felt a little guilty. He had not heard her knock, and probably he was frustrating her job with his strange manners. Maybe he should not be acting that way. He should not tell the whole world he was in a messy problem by his facade and actions.

“What do you want?” Teju pursued, biting his lower lip.

“The manager wants to see you in his office right away sir”

“Well, we appreciate your effort so far for this company. You’ve not only kept our company running, but you’ve also kept it topping. Once again we appreciate your priceless efforts on behalf of the board of directorate. We would love you to accept this as a token to show our boundless gratitude” the manager said to Teju, presenting a new Apple laptop, MacBook Pro 15. Though Teju knew he was expected to be happy, he could not turn on his cheerful mood merely at the sight of his dream laptop when his home which used to be paradise was now hell. He stared back at the manager, an indifferent and awkward stare ridden of excitement.

“Is anything the problem?” the manager quizzed.

“Oh no, thanks, I really appreciate it” Teju mumbled as an obviously phoney smirk seized his face.

“Oh, come on Mr Teju” the manager pressed “if you’re not okay with it; just tell me, I’ll tell them to arrange another one for you”

“Oh no, I’m okay with that, thanks”

“But you look like hell. You look lost. You seem to have lost weight and you look like you’re going to crash anytime from now and leave us hanging. What’s the problem?”

“Nothing much, sir, just some domestic problems”

Teju was given a week off to sort out his domestic problems. He had not taken his usual annual leave though. He insisted on completing the working hours for that day. Settling back into his office, he could only perform some random tasks which do not require many technicalities. He test drove his new office personal computer, the MacBook, and to some extent, he was satisfied with its functions.

On his desktop computer, he logged in to his email account and read some of the new emails he had in his inbox. Most of these emails contained messages persuading him to start up a business in Istanbul or Malaysia with a token amount of money. These emails should be in Spam, he thought to himself as he hissed and sent them to Trash. He replied the emails he ought to reply, forwarded some others to the appropriate addresses, and ignored the ones that had not won his attention.

He rearranged the files in the ‘In’ and ‘Out’ trays properly and checked through the files in the ‘Pending’ tray. He made and received calls. Then he sat in his chair, sullen and sombre, thinking about life, his life, and its ups and downs. He had a credit alert that day from his bank. And though it was perceptible that his boss had added a substantial amount of money to his monthly salary as his compensatory bonus, the attainability of merriness was still a mirage.

After closing time at work, he could not head home. He was not ready to go home. He was not in the disposition to encounter any of his wife’s expensive jokes at home. He was not ready to partake in that negative silence competition going on at home. In fact, it was better facing suicide than facing that slow-killing and deep-pricking silence.

The silence was as frigid as an iceberg. It was as if the first person to break the silence between both of them was the loser. When that kind of silence was in a marriage- then it’s almost homicidal, Teju thought. One might as well say that Teju had quitted walking to his grave. He was rather flying to his grave. He was just twenty and seven years of age, and it was expedient for him to slow down the journey a little bit.

As he drove his grey-coloured, glass-tinted Toyota Sienna LE, he was undecided on where he wanted to go. He needed something to change this game, this dangerous game of matrimonial rubbish. He wanted to relieve his neck from the big millstone around it. It was no exaggeration that the millstone around his neck had kept his spirit subjugated nine hundred and ninety-nine feet below the ground level.

He decided to go to church. To have a chit-chat with God on his situation as Simi’s Mom had recommended, only that he had made up his mind to do it on his own. He had, at last, made up his mind to fight the real enemy through a means he hardly believed in. Who was the real enemy anyway, the devil? He was not sure prayers were the next weapons to carry in order to uncover the enemy of his marriage. But he had to do something. He had to incline somehow on supernatural intervention. He had to hope his faith in the Lord was merely being tested, like Job.