When you are as old as Mmmma is, and you can feel the life smouldering underneath your skin, there is nothing left to do but wait for Death to visit. She usually waits in the backyard every day, where she can feel the sun"s warmth on her face and heart, listen to the birds and leaves exchange gossip in whispers, where she can smell the rain from a distance, before it arrives, and inhale the heavenly perfume that rises from the soil after the sky has emptied its fury upon the earth.This backyard is nothing but red earth; no flowers, no vegetables, no life, no colours, just the brownish-red, and the orange tree beneath which Mmmma"s rocking chair sits. This is where she sits all day, not rocking, not breathing, just sitting still – a casual observer wouldn"t know what side of the darkness she was on behind those closed eyes; whether she was still floating along on the gentle current of sleep, or had slipped into the eternal abyss of death. Her face would just be the same, set solid, a death mask – unmoving, unsmiling, unknowable . . .
She had known a different shade of darkness all her life – blindness – so she considered all darkness the same – empty – whether of sleep or of death; they had no effect on her. So if you happened to pa.s.s by, you wouldn"t know if she was asleep or dead, the way she looked.
But there were no pa.s.sers-by here. There was only one man. He was not a pa.s.ser-by.
He was Helmet.
One look at the metallic s.h.i.+ne and shape of his bald head and you would agree.
He was the only one. He would come early in the morning, just as the blanket of night was being rolled away from the face of the heavens and people were still silhouettes against the grey dawn, faceless, shadowless. He would go upstairs to Mmmma"s room, with feathery footfalls, so as not to wake her, but she would be up already, sitting up in her bed, back against the headboard, her head bent forward as if in prayer, waiting – not for Death – for him.
"Why don"t you just lie in today," he would suggest.
"The worst position for Death to meet you is on your back," she would reply, in that thin voice that was so strong, so firm, that you couldn"t argue against it. "Let Death meet me sitting, waiting, outside . . ."
He knew about Death, intimately; he saw it every day – in people"s eyes, in the dark corners of rooms he entered; he worked with it, slept with it . . . He knew Death like that, like a lover.
* * *
She knew.
The first time he had come to her house he was dying, bleeding profusely, from gunshot wounds on his back. He had only managed to crawl into her backyard, and lay there dying, slowly, the red earth absorbing his leaking blood in sips.
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She had been sitting there, in her chair, between sleep and death, when she heard his dying – the low moans of anguish seeping from his lips . . .
"How bad is it?" she had asked, calmly, almost casually.
"V . . . v . . . verrrr . . . y . . ."
He couldn"t move. She rose.
"Wait", she said.
She had lived in this house all her life; was born in its cavernous darkness, and knew every corner, every crevice . . .
In the dim days that followed, while he recuperated, in the deathly silence of her sequestered house, in her father"s bed, while the shooters hunted for him outside, they forged an uncanny bond – she, blind and bent with age; he, bandaged and bed-ridden; she taught him about ancient medicine and herbs, and he confided in her his dark relations.h.i.+p with Death, and the black patches of his life. They would talk for hours, into the night, through the day; he would read to her – Freud, Pope – unknown men; she would cook for him – lafun, ojojo, agidi – local delicacies. He would stare at her while she worked – she was not blind. He was. Blinded by blood, by Hate, dark hate; living in the blackness of depths of sins, a man of the night. A feared man.
She had never had a man in her life; no husband, no son, no brother – only her father, who had been a feared witch doctor. She hadn"t known any real men, or what their lives were like. So when this one said he had to go back into his world of wars, she just said, "Go."
* * *
But he came back every morning, climbed upstairs, softly, like a ghost, tried to talk her into lying in, held her hand, gently, carefully, as if it would crumble, read her a pa.s.sage, put a little less brandy than she usually did in her tea . . . Then he would tell her about his last "hit" as he led her by the hand outside to her waiting chair, where she would wait all day, for Death, for him . . .
He would come back in the evening to return her upstairs, eat dinner and drink whisky with her, in her bed, a candle on a rusty tin of milk the only light in the house. Then he would tell her about his next hit – the target, the offence, the strategy, and he would silkily segue into the latest poem he had written. She loved his poetry. She would shut her eyelids and savour the full, sonorous sound of his voice, a voice that belonged in a symphony orchestra.
He would leave her then, in her darkness, wondering whether she was asleep or dead, blow out the light, and enter his darkness, to work.
* * *
The night he didn"t come back to take her upstairs, Death came. She had gone upstairs by herself and it met her in bed, on her back.
But it was not her bed. That night, she had a strange urge to sleep in her father"s bed – the same one Helmet had used during his recovery.
She heard the ominous tread on the steps, not light like his; so she knew it wasn"t him. She knew what it was. They were as silent as dead men, but she could sense the evil of their presence. The corporeal stench of menace that lay heavy about them, like a pall; she could feel its dark texture.
When they finally spoke, outside the door, their whispers were icy sharp and stank clearly of death:
"Na him room be dis?"
"Yes."
"Oya . . ."
She waited.
She had been waiting in the darkness of blindness, most of her life, for Death; now that it was here she didn"t know what to expect.
They entered, blind – the room was black. They stopped beside the bed, both of them, and waited. For nothing. For two minutes . . .
Then she felt the steel-coldness on her neck. She closed her eyes. Black. All darknesses are the same – sleep, death, blindness . . .
hate.
But before this final darkness, there was a sudden flash: white, blinding – and for that brief moment, she saw.
She saw it all: in hate, you can find a spot of love; in darkness, light; in Helmet she had found a good man, something more than a father, husband, son, brother, something pure . . . Even though he was a man of Death, and his death was upon her now, she had found peace with him, and she forgave him; held on to what he had given her, in that brief time of their a.s.sociation – eternal joy.
Only one muted sneeze – a silenced shot – and it was over.
Black. Silent.
" . . . him mama nko? Make we nack am down sef?"
"No need; she don almos" finish . . ."
They went down the stairs, slowly this time, and quieter, like pall-bearers, and rejoined the night. They were satisfied – they had ended Helmet, the most feared hit man in the university, and his dark reign of terror. Now they could sleep.
They were blind.