A pen in one hand and a cigarette in the other, that"s how Ayu worked every night. Writing and smoking into the small, grey hours of dawn.Abigail, the whisper of a girl who typed up his nightly scrawls, would find him slumped across his desk in corpse-like slumber every morning; cigarette b.u.t.ts, ash and crumpled sheets of paper all over the floor. She would sweep them up and straighten the room up before waking him. When he woke she would have his whiskeyed tea waiting. He always threw it back in one large gulp, as scalding hot as it was, without looking up at her.
One day he did. "You have cut your hair," he drawled, disinterest weighing down his tongue.
"Yes, sir," she said. She had cut it six months ago; it had barely grown past a week-old stubble. He stared at her head, his eyes waiting for an explanation.
"My husband died," she said. She read the further questions in his eyes, and continued. "The shaved head is a mark of mourning in our culture."
"You were married?"
As if this sudden discovery of her marriage is an insult. "Yes, sir," she says, apologetic-like.
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"To who?"
"Marcus. Marcus Igbinovia."
He caught the break in her voice. "You are not going to cry, are you," he said, like a warning.
Her well of tears had dried. There was only that black bottomless hole of pain left; it echoed with the dullness of stale grief whenever his name was mentioned . . . She shook her head, "No."
"How did he die?" Ayu asked, sitting back in his chair like one about to relish the delicacy of beautiful narration.
She waited for him to settle properly into his seat – legs crossed at the ankles, palms under his head, face melted.
"Like an animal," she answered, gravely.
"Like an animal."
"Yes, sir, like an animal – cut up and cooked."
He sat forward with a jolt, uncrossing his ankles. "Cut . . . up . . . and cooked."
"Three hundred and fifty seven pieces. Took a whole day to cut. And almost the whole of the next day to cook. Human flesh cooks slowly . . . What I did with the cooked pieces? I gave his pigs a feast . . . His parents? Poor things. They said I should have stopped him from going for a swim at night. I told them I couldn"t have stopped him, since I was in pieces all over the floor from his beating, and he had stormed out . . . They had the Ughali River swept for his body . . . I wept up an ocean and drowned myself in the blackness of my mourning . . . They accepted their fate and buried an empty coffin . . . No, they know I can"t kill my husband; they had been expecting him to kill me. . ." (then suddenly, as if remembering the pigs) ". . . The sty, I want to sell the sty! b.l.o.o.d.y pigs won"t stop weeping at night! I can"t sleep!"
* * *
As Ayu listened to the clatter of typing in the outer room – Abigail"s fine murdering fingers beating the typewriter"s keys furiously – the pieces of the story fell about in his mind, littering his thoughts. He picked up his pen, lit a cigarette and began to put these gory pieces
together on a new page. A new novel! His opening . . .
* * *
He smoked and wrote. She typed and cleaned.
They made odd bits of warm conversation and heated love often.
She did not want anything more; no love, no promises, no colours.
Nothing.
This was enough. This blur.