Chapter 57: Chapter 57

CHAPTER 50

When he heard the clicking of the locks and the rattling of keys at the door, he looked up. He stared fixedly at the door with his heart pounding. Lo and behold, as the door opened, Teju saw Simi standing at the doorway. She was staring longingly at him. She was in a light cream-coloured gown tautened around her waist. Teju froze on the bed and Simi stood transfixed at the door. Teju got the whole concept. He knew that he was going to give his wife a good love-making act that morning.

Teju noticed the ring on her middle finger. He was more than happy to see that it had wriggled its way back to where it belonged. It was a dream come true, only that he did not understand why it had to be fulfilled while he was in jail. But that did not matter. It did not matter if his dreams were fulfilled while he was in chains or not. What mattered was that it was fulfilled nevertheless, and he was around to see it with his mortal eyes. They stared at each other for about half a minute before Simi ran into his arms. He felt the warmth in her tight grip which loosened and melted the icy layers of cold and loneliness from his body. She whispered to his ear.

“I missed you so much, baby”

“I missed you too,” Teju said painfully. If they missed each other, they were not only obliged to say it, they were obliged to show it also. He cupped her face in his gentle hands and dipped his head to capture her lips. Her mouth tasted like honey. It was as if he had dipped his lips in a pool of pure honey. He wished he had an MP3 player. He would have played any of Elvis Presley or Bob Dylan slow tempo songs. Or preferably, he would have surrendered to the meek and rather symmetric musicality of Don Williams’ country music. He would have turned the volume to the highest point so that the whole prison could share in his ecstasy.

He loved to listen to the rhythm of good slow-paced music. Most times, a good rhythm eventually dictated a good romance. The music would have built an impassable wall around them so that nothing mattered at all at that moment. Everything, in the spiritual and physical realms, would have ceased to exist, or their existence would have ceased to matter. The damp prison walls, the odoriferous smells, the godless inmates, the decayed entities known as prison wardens- whose uniforms was an assertion of their incarceration, though of a milder and superior kind- would have been relegated to a temporal nonexistence.

The kiss changed from nostalgia. It became hot and sensual. His hands left her face to crush her against him as they collapsed on the bed. They started to undress each other, swinging from fast and hard tempo to the soft and slow. They uncover each other rhythmically as though they were listening to a medley of Michael Jackson’s songs, transiting from his angry rocks to his romantic blues. He could feel his crotch gradually hardening in a pulsing erection. He could feel the tremors flowing through her body. His weak hands came up to brush against her puffy and fluffy breasts. He shuddered with pleasure. He decided to do a critically survey on her succulent body-terrain with his wet tongue.

He traversed the Olumo and Zuma standing side by side with a crown each on the apex of them. He rubbed the soft crowns with his thumbs until they started to harden into little flints and she let out a low encouraging moan. He travelled through the hills and moors. He sought out the creeks and the enclaves. He made his way to the deserts and the forests. Her sensual feminine appeal made him strong with yearning. He felt his erection rise up and harden as marble. He let his hands roam over her, teasing, caressing, exploring for a long time until she sprawled wantonly. He let the sheer pleasure build up in rhythmic patterns. His lips, his tongue and his mouth played with her until she tossed and ached wildly in a fever of desperate need. It was obvious it had been a while they had made love. They missed each other and they longed for each other violently. They have starved themselves for a stretched while during their childish loggerheads. And now, the only thing they wanted was to be filled with each other even to the brim.

He spread her thighs apart and impaled her with one deep plunge. She responded to his thrust instantly and wrapped her legs on his back. She fulfilled all his erotic fantasies of being deep inside the wetness of her. He had never dreamt she would be as tight and hot as she was. It was as if that was her first time, as though he was taking her maidenhead. They wore each other out with passion. And then with limbs still entwined, they fell asleep, totally sated for the moment. Hardly had two lovers been so well matched or so deeply in love behind the high prison walls.

Teju saw it more clearly in his cell. He saw that love, both as an objective and subjective fact, was a beautiful thing. But the truth is that love is an irony. Though it is inexplicably gorgeous, it is also inexorably intoxicating. Anything that intoxicates is also capable of being destructive. Love can heal, but it can also kill. Love can mend one’s soul, but it can also break it. Maybe love can never attain perfection in the hearts of imperfect men and women, and maybe it can. But one thing is sure; love is a risky business to invest in. You invest your trust and heart in it, but sometimes, or most times, you hardly invest in it without fearing that your most cherished inner possessions would one day be crushed to zilch.

When people fall in love, they do not feel that fear. Love is blind, but lovers are blinder. They do not feel the fear, not until the love itself is put to test or sadly put to rest. Just like an investor who fears that the millions he had invested in a business idea would come to nothing, lovers do fear that their trusts and hearts would be failed. They do not know how. They cannot say when. And the fear escalates because it might catch them with their pants down. It could be by death, or by betrayal, or by imprisonment. It could take two weeks, or two years or two decades. But in Teju’s case, it was by the chronological combination of the three, and it took just five years.

Whenever he looked out of the infinitesimal window carved out of his cave-like and crypt-like cell, he breathed in the sparse fresh air. He let the vermin-haunted air of the cell escape his lungs before his turn at the window was over. And when he stared at the azure above, tinted with harmattan's whitish particles, he was assured and reassured that he was happy and satisfied. That he had overcome the world and fought a good fight. He felt thankful and fulfilled that he had loved someone unconditionally and unconventionally. That he had loved his wife the way no one on earth could ever have done, not even Romeo, even if Simi was Juliet.