Chapter 51: Chapter 51

CHAPTER 44

He was lying on his sick bed one hot afternoon. He was the only one at home, and it was market day at Towobowo market. Both his uncle and aunts were gone to the market. None of his aunts could stay back to tend to his illness. His condition had stabilised and the market day was not on a daily basis but once in five days. And due to surrounding situations, skipping a market day could mean a lot of trouble.

Teju had asked his uncle to open the doors and windows since there was hardly anything worth stealing in the house, and since it would be red hot in the afternoon. His uncle had taken his sheep to the market, and his aunts had taken also their textiles, garri and ungrounded amalalafu. The house was almost unfilled. It was still and silent. No movement was visible and no sound was audible when suddenly a shadow of a feminine figure appeared on the grungy wall of the room like a projected image.

Teju panicked. He was not expecting a hallucination in the ‘ripen’ afternoon. He closed his eyes, tightened them and then opened them up at a snail's pace. But the shadow was still there. He heard the footsteps of someone moving closer to his bed. He could see the shadow fattening on the wall until a face was standing over him, and the face to his surprise was Lara. She was in loose blue jean trousers which secreted her body shape, and a black print t-shirt. On her head was a heap of artificial hair. It could have been either a wig or an attachment of synthetic Brazilian hair; Teju did not have the eyes to tell the difference. Her face was powdered, her lips were painted and so were her eyelids.

“What are you doing here?” Teju managed to mumble.

“You won’t even offer me a seat at least?”

“I said what are you doing here?” Teju asked again with his teeth glued together. He was beginning to think she had come all the way to repeat what she did in the restroom on Tiwa's birthday, maybe in a more secure place.

“Well, I’m here to tell you something very important, but before I say it, I’d like to apologise for what happened on Tiwa’s birthday. I’d always liked you as a gentleman and I know a lot of girls would always have a ‘crush’ on you but I would never have done what I did on Tiwa’s birthday if it was real” Lara said.

“What do you mean?” Teju managed to ask, with a frown emerging on his face.

“Look, it was not my idea at all, it was Tiwa’s, and I would never have done it, but....but I needed the money”

“So you’re saying it was going to be a setup, and you’re going to get paid for it?” Teju found his voice.

“Look, I’m sorry. I’m deeply sorry for...” her voice trailed off, and Teju wondered if she was going to cry.

“You know the man in the pictures Tiwa sent to Simi weren’t you, don’t you?” Lara continued.

“I was drunk that night, but it couldn’t have been me, could it?”

“No, it was not you. It was your friend,Sam”

“How? We both drank ourselves out that day, how could it have been him?”

“Well, Sam was under Tiwa’s surveillance, and she had a lot of ways to arrange encounters like that with her money, and it was easy for her to frame you with the pictures that were snapped when Sam was at it,” Lara said.

“So you knew all this while? Did you plan all that together, you and Tiwa?”

“No, I did no such thing. It was Simi who showed me the pictures. I don’t know why she could not easily see that you were not the man in the picture.” Lara defended. Teju’s face coloured up in unhappiness, but what really bothered him was the mysteriousness of Tiwa’s being. He wondered why Tiwa chose to put his friend’s marriage on surveillance. One could easily accept Tiwa’s alibi, but then, who goes around spying people’s marriages just because one had been jilted on several occasions? People could be resentful on such occasions, but they eventually find good reasons to move on with their lives without being rancorous marriage spies.

“I wish I never had my hands soiled in such filthy business, I’m really sorry for causing so much pain and disrupting your happiness. I’m sorry, I hope you could just forgive me, and if not forget, please pretend it never happened” Lara said, her voice toned with remorsefulness which, if well acted, could be made up. Teju nodded and permitted a faint smile to creep up his face. He wondered how it was possible for him to pretend that that sort of eerie thing never happened. He preferred to treat such memory with the bygonesarebygones philosophy rather than pretending it never happened.

“It’s alright, what did you want to say?” Teju said.

“Simi had given herself up...” Lara paused.

“She had given herself up? What do you mean she had given herself up?” Teju asked, alarmed, knowing that Simi giving herself up could also be synonymous to committing suicide.

“She gave herself up to the police last week” Lara replied.

Teju allowed the words to sink into him. As the words sunk into him, they ate up his white blood cells and turned off his immune system. It gave the malaria an upper hand.

“Your house was fully under the close watch of the mobile police and the army. They were fully stationed at the frontage of your house, and they even stalked Simi whenever she was out. So she decided to write a confessional statement that she was the one who pushed you to have Tiwa killed, and she surrendered herself to the police so that you could be a free man. She confided in me, but I had come here without her consent. She said she wanted you to live a freeman. She said it was her only chance to make it up to you for all her wrong. She said she wanted to redeem herself, she said...” Lara’s voice trailed off as tears trickled off her face. Teju saw a Lara who was irked by her sinful deeds, and who was fighting for a sense of inner peace. She was relaying what Simi had told her, but really, she was saying what she had her own mind so as to find her peace.

She gave herself up because she wants me to live a freeman because it was her only chance to make it up to... oh that sounds like bullshit, Teju thought. He had told Simi not to give him away even though nothing was enigmatic about his crime, but it was hard to believe that she had not fulfilled her promise. She had courageously taken his responsibility which he had run away from, but that could not keep him from being angry with her.

“And how did you know where to find me?” Teju asked after a long silence. His face was also reddened and blurred with tears.

“She told me you had likely fled to your hometown, and I like your hometown very much” Lara replied.