Chapter 50: Chapter 50
CHAPTER 43
Teju fell sick. He had a fever that almost incapacitated him. At first, his uncle thought it was a stroke, but evidently, he was too young to have one. Even with the fever, the ravenous mosquitoes did not cease their piercing and sucking business. The mosquitoes whose sizes were like the fist of a baby buzzed, perched and pierced when they had the chance, and when they did not have the chance, they created one. Teju had never witnessed such a desperate display of greed and hostility from the hands of the tiny, bloodsucking, violinist vectors.
Apart from the anaesthetizing and horrendous statistics that once claimed that mosquitoes were the greatest and cheapest assassins in the world, according to a documentary on NatGeo Wild, Teju had never had the reasons to be so horrified by their beastly rampages. In fact, the breed of mosquitoes that inhabited that part of the country was nothing compared to those in the cities. They were more rugged and resilient. They were the type of mosquitoes on which one would exhaust a full cylindrical tin of insecticide just to get rid of them before sleeping off a long day, only for them to start an orchestra around one’s ears just two minutes after one got into bed. It could be frustrating.
It was pretty unfortunate as much as annoying that the government was too busy tackling their political menace- the impending elections- while thousands of the people, of whom they governed fell and perished in the hands of a noxious protozoan called Plasmodium. He had asked his uncle to take him to the only hospital in Igbo-ora. It was a government-run hospital of course, with a questionable standard, but his uncle had resorted. He had insisted that Teju would be treated at home.
“The economy is very sick, it is the economy that needs to be hospitalized, not you” his uncle had said. It was hard for him to believe, but the ‘good’ economy had greatly changed the lives of many people, especially the so-called masses. It had changed their reasoning and mentality. It had coloured the perception of the common man concerning the present condition of the nation, and this had influenced the way he saw the future. And while it was idiotic to undervalue the supremacy of the common man, it seemed it had become a common error with politicians.
The lingering shadows in the old man’s face when he spoke about the need to hospitalize the nation’s economy stung Teju. He was instantly unwilling to pursue the argument that might land him in better hands for treatment. When he was healthy, he could slap out the life of the mosquitoes who were drunk with his blood. But now that he was indisposed, to lift one of his hands was as difficult as the sun sneaking pass the rooster. It was like an open call for mosquitoes to feed on him without sanction. Come, all ye that thirst for blood and drink of my blood freely.
Teju pleaded for a mosquito net, but buying a mosquito net was like child’s play to his uncle. And for the first time in his life, he wished his uncle had basic education. There was no power supply, and when he asked why, his uncle had shrugged. He had said they had not seen the yellowness of the bulbs in his house for almost six months now. All they had was purely local oil lamps, candles on special days, and zero electricity bills.
The fever escalated as the piercing did. His uncle who had a hunch on how to treat fever in the traditional way had fetched some herbs from a herbalist in the market. One portion of the herbs was leafy, and the other was the bark of tree trunks. His uncle gave one of his aunts to have them cooked separately. The herbs were cooked in little round black earthenware pots, which made Teju think of the traditional Yoruba movies he had seen. They put some in the water for his bath. Whenever he had his bath, he could not help sneezing because the herbal stench would not hesitate to ignite an itching sensation in his nose.
Though the incapacitation was sifted, the normal symptoms of malaria did not give him a recess. His head was always laden heavily with a headache. Apart from his head being an adsorbate of headache, it was like he had incarcerated Tiwa’s soul in his head. And Tiwa, in order to break free had laid hold on a tack hammer, and she would not stop battering the walls of his head until his skull burst open. The ambivalent situation of sweating and shivering made it seem he was both caught up in hell and heaven at the same time.
The malaria sapped him. He was like an empty body of a housefly that had been sucked by a spider. His strength eluded him as it did with Samson after he had his first hair shave. The sweet smell of African viand which flew from the shed at the backyard was transformed into the despicable rotten smell of a gutter immediately they were within the four walls of his room. His appetite for the luscious African delicacies was as dead as dodo.
After much wiles and scolding from his noisy and nosy aunts, Teju could manage to swallow six to seven little mounds of amala lafu with egusi soup or eforiro. Thereafter, when it was time to take his dose of herbal medicine, his aunts would call him a baby and he would gulp a cup of ‘cocktailed’ herbs unenthusiastically to prove he was not. The taste of water was different. It was like drinking water after eating a walnut. It made him drink little water from the large earthenware pot even though it was usually cold. He longed to drink something with a sweet taste, like soft drinks or fruit juice. They might indeed appeal to his sense of taste. They could briefly sweeten his sour-tasting saliva. But all he constantly had was bitter herbs that further embittered his bitter mouth.
During these times of severe ailment, nighttimes became nightmares. He was under perpetual mental torture night after night. With the shadows of the night came the images of hallucination. He heard strange sounds. He saw strange things. He perceived strange smells.
Sometimes he saw Tiwa’s bloodcurdling image, looking at him with such gentleness and harmlessness that sent that guilt terror through his veins. He would feel his tendons breaking free from his muscles, and his ligaments tightening around his bones. Maybe Tiwa would have loved him as she had claimed. But like every other conditioned love, it had the tendencies of turning coldly into hate, especially when he was in a severe bond with another woman.
Sometimes he would see the terror-stricken face of Simi, sitting up in her bed in the hospital, reading his heart-breaking note. He would see her collapsing into the bed, with the nurses running helter-skelter. They would be shouting for the doctor’s help, and something would be beeping fast. He would see the doctor appearing with his aged stethoscope. He would see the doctor giving his wife a rather romantic CPR, and then, a deadening blackout.
And sometimes, he would see his mother and father glaring and standing over him with threat as if they would press a pillow against his face and suffocate him to death. His body temperature would heat up, his muscles working out and his breath pacing up. He would sweat and groan on the bed as though what he saw were real, and the images would disappear into the dark shadows of the night. He would heavea profound sigh. His breath would slow down, and then sleep would come.