He enters the house, stealthily, like an intruder, as if it is not his, as if he is not the man of it. The apartment is dead silent. The TV is on in the living room, mute, Mexican mouths moving animatedly in it. She is waiting in front of it, laying on the couch, on her side, her eyes on the moving mouths, unmoving, unseeing; not following the movements of the lips, not watching the emotions on the faces – the eyes, cold, just staring through the screen, dead . . .He clears his throat. She does not stir. She could have been a cadaver. He can feel the deathly chill, the icy force field that surrounds her . . .
He clears his throat again. "Good evening." Nothing. Cold silence. "Goodnight."
He goes upstairs, through the dining room, where the table is set for two – man and wife – two that had become one. But fifteen years is a long time – only two cannot be enough for that long.
Fifteen years is too long for just two to remain as one, as joined. As time heals all wounds, so does it, conversely, widen festering sores. The crus.h.i.+ng pressure of Time had reduced both of them to mere fractions of their former selves; no longer one, no longer "halves" of each other. Each party had become his own person – the man, the woman – with a widening s.p.a.ce of silence and coldness between them, each just going through the motions of matrimony; two actors, without lines . . . Except the "Good morning... Goodbye" of the mornings, and the "Good evening . . . Goodnight" of the nights.
Tonight, he lingers in the dining room, before climbing the stairs, staring at the plates and bowls, trying to guess what kind of foods were hiding beneath those covers, cold, untouched, knowing they will not be touched, knowing he would never know what lay in those dishes, waiting, for a family of two . . .
He doesn"t know why the food won"t leave his mind, even though he is not hungry. His stomach growls violently as the thought turns itself over and over in his head, nibbling away at his heart – the thought of the food, and the beautiful table, meticulously set, cold, loveless; the thought of the shreds the marriage had become over the years . . . the thought of the curtain falling on it all. The final curtain.
* * *
She is staring at the curtain in the bathroom flapping violently, fluttering in the open window, the breeze thras.h.i.+ng it about – backand-forth, in-and-out, side to side . . .
A knock had woken her that morning. She had slept on the couch in the living room, as she usually did every night, so the knock, as light as it was, had been enough to wake her; a respectful, sombre tap – a timid, uncertain visitor. They never had any visitors – since they didn"t have any friends or relatives, and they never said h.e.l.lo to neighbours.
There were two policemen – muftied and uniformed, swollen-bellied and lean, grave and bright-eyed, middle-aged and fresh-faced. They didn"t enter; she didn"t ask them to. They asked if she was her husband"s wife . . .
When they asked her to follow them, to help them identify a body, she knew.
She asked them to wait – she had to change into proper clothes.
* * *
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They have been waiting for about twenty minutes, the two policemen, at the door. The muftied one, the senior, keeps looking at his watch – he does not have time for this. The uniformed one s.h.i.+fts from one foot to the other; the urine he had been holding in his bladder since morning was now at the tip of his manhood and threatened to burst inside his trousers . . .
"Oga make I go check this woman," he suggests, "She dey waste
our time . . ."
Oga hesitates; he looks at his watch again, and decides, "Okay,
make it sharp . . . and hurry her up! Let me call the station . . ."
He dials his girlfriend"s number, frowning at his watch – she would be waiting.
The young recruit leaps up the stairs, his bladder now fatally swollen. He does not look for her; he dashes straight for the toilet.
She is in there, sitting on the edge of the bathtub, staring at the flapping curtain, smiling ominously. She looks up, with a start, when the constable bursts in.
He stops.
". . . it was our wedding anniversary yesterday. I don"t think he remembered. Fifteen years. And you end it with a walk through a twelfth-floor bathroom window. Taking all those years with you, everything . . ."
In the middle of her lament she suddenly reaches out and s.n.a.t.c.hes the policeman"s side arm from its holster on his hip, and in the same fluid motion points it at her face.
Even the policeman had never used the regulation .38 Police Special pistol before; it had just been part of his uniform. He had never heard a shot fired so close; it is deafening!
BANG!
The force and abruptness of the sound pushes the urine from his bladder, and the liquid explodes all over his new black trousers.
He cannot hear himself screaming – he is deaf.
The flapping curtain has fallen; now it is just s.h.i.+vering gently, at half mast, as the breeze drops.