Chapter 45: Chapter 45

CHAPTER 39

The threat of standing in a dock before a condescending judge or the eventual sentence to imprisonment for a number of years with hard labour never occurred to Teju until he saw his wife hospitalized. He had not said a word to convince Simi of his innocence. He was forced to believe that the subsequent reconciliation characterized by the grievous loss of their unborn child was by a divine miracle.

Now that everything was set aright, he became reluctant of being imprisoned for the death of a senator's daughter who had stepped on a viper’s tail. He had earlier made up his mind to boast of killing her since it was done out of true love. Things done out of true love were just and fair, and things which were just and fair should be boasted of. But boasting of such things now seemed not only stupid but also fanatical.

He wondered what the reaction of Tiwa's father would be. He wondered if her father would pay off the Judge to have him hanged or if he was just going to accept the death of his daughter as a fixture of fate. Tiwa's father made him think of the iconic politician, Honourable Chief Dr Nanga MP - minus opportunity in A Man of the People. It is a novel by Chinua Achebe which he had been chanced upon to read when he was in secondary school. The more his thought dwelled on him in that light, the more scared he was that, just like the headstrong Odili, he would end up in the shackles of the senator’s wrath.

Simi had a miscarriage resulting from weighty shock, but she would be fine very soon. All she needed was a befitting treatment, a substantial rest and a heartening state of mind to aid a fast and tangible recuperation, the doctor had said. The doctor must have been in his late sixties and Teju suspected that he was due for his retirement. The doctor spoke to Teju like a father-in-law who supposed he was about to do something hasty which could complicate Simi's situation. The doctor had insisted almost forcefully that Teju stayed in the hospital with Simi. It might help her in recovering better and faster, he had argued.

Only if the doctor knew better, that it would all come to the same end if Teju stayed back in the hospital long enough for Providence to catch up with him and overtake him. When he had driven his wife to the hospital, and the nurses had hurriedly collected Simi in a stretcher, it had come to his remembrance that Tiwa’s mansion was under camera surveillance. He had first noticed the stationed cameras on Tiwa’s birthday party. The cameras were indiscernible to ordinary eyes. They could only be detected by trained eyes.

It was then it became clear that whether he confessed or not, his identity as the one who murdered Tiwa was no mystery at all. For all he could guess, the police must be seeing the video footage of the incident or they must have seen it and were on their way to his house with a warrant of his arrest. His hours of freedom and opportunity to escape were severely numbered. It became palpable that it was better to run away into a murky world and lay incognito for some time than wait naively for the police to snatch him away from his wife in the hospital.

He left a sealed note for Simi to read after she might have gained consciousness. He had requested for a ball pen, a plain paper and a private place to write the note. He wrote the content of the note with shaky hands which made his handwriting look as if a pair of ink-stained chicken legs had walked aimlessly on the paper. Though he felt like Abelard writing one of his letters to Heloise, he was afraid of what could transpire after she had read the note.

Would she slump and die, or would she develop high blood pressure, or would she feel genuinely bereaved and keep crying relentlessly like a bush baby? He shuddered as he penned every word that came from the depths of his heart. He wrote about how excited he was for their happy reunion. He told her that Tiwa was dead and that he had accidentally killed her, but he warned her not to let the secret crawl near another soul's ears. He asked her to swear not to give him up or give up on him, as though he would be there to be sure she swore.

He told her he was going away for a 'little time'. He opened and closed the phrase with inverted commas, to make her remember that Jesus had also told his disciples the same on mount olive, and was not back for over two thousand years. But he had given his word, and it was believed most strongly that he was surely coming back. He heartened her. He told her to remember the dictum of the three Indians in the epic Bollywood movie titled 3Idiots. 'Alliswell', the three idiots would say, placing their hands on their chests. They had seen the movie together and it had inspired them on a number of grounds.

He reminded her of what Thomas Hardy had said about a strong woman in a novel they had read together titled Far From A Maddening Crowd; that '...a strong woman who recklessly throws her strength away is worse than a weak woman who never had any strength to throw away’. He told her not to make the error of throwing her strength away. Tears trickled off his face as he put the syntax together. He hoped it would create the same effect on her. He hoped it would win some drops of tears from her eyes and some megabytes of trust from her heart. He gave the note to one of the genial nurses and instructed her to give it to Simi immediately her condition had stabilised. Then, he hit the road of his escape.

Teju could not sleep in the house. It was not safe for him to sleep where it was easy for him to be found or where it could be difficult for him to abscond. He could not go to Sam's house to sleep over. The last thing he wanted to see at that delicate moment was something that would put a bullet through his heart. So he decided to sleep at the car park where he would board the first bus to Igbo-ora the next day.

He did a lot of thinking before considering the option which was hard but compulsory for him to choose when staying out of prison was important. His health, no matter how unhinged it was, became a paperweight in such situation. He knew the famished vampire insects which had been longing for blood to fertilize their eggs would party with his blood. He had no blanket with him, and he could not risk going home to get one.

He withdrew some money from an ATM and slept in a car park. He was not foolish enough to sleep with his money sitting comfortably in his pocket. It would have been the easiest job for a random roadside ruffian to rob him. He kept the money under a broken brick after he was sure he was not being watched. He woke up the next morning with a lot of reddened bumps on his face. He retrieved his money and boarded the first bus to Igbo-ora.