That was how he left the main street and took the narrow footpath that led to his one roof apartment off Silver Street without looking back. He wasn't aware of the town's noise at twilight – bleating of goats in search of their young ones, children crying away as their mothers, laden with baskets of wares hurried home, motorcyclists' horns blaring as they whisk away stranded pedestrians, dusts and smoke made the evensky smoky. He walked on the fringes of the road, avoiding the pandemonium on Silver Street. His movement was snailish. Perhaps, the snakish nature of the road and the burden on his mind made him walk at that pace.
Nine months after serving his country, it seemed the world has abandoned him. He left home when his father began to treat him as if he were a stranger. He was told a certain evening by his father a tale. Although it wasn't told him directly but through the agency of the children gathered to listen to stories from the retired soldier.
Once upon a time, he began his tale. The eagle built her nest on the tallest iroko. There, her eggs were safe. When the eggs hatched and her young ones opened their eyes and behold the piercing rays of the sun, she would leave them and to the end of the earth go in search of food. But after some times, she picked up her young ones, tossed them into the air and left them there, falling and falling. The young ones would open their wings in fright and suddenly, they would stop falling like stones tossed into a mad stream. She would tenderly clawed them and take them back to their nest. When they are ready to fend for themselves, she maliciously kicked them out of her next into the wild and strange world. We send you to school from the cradle to the University. After your National Youth Service, do you expect us to still feed you? Do you expect us to spoon feed you with children's milk? Go out there and fend for yourself. Go out and make use of your knowledge! Children, go and sleep.
With the story over, Ojonugwa went into his room, brought out a travelling bag, and stuck it with his few clothing and shoes. Early the following morning, he took his bath, put on his clothes and picked his bag, hoisted it on his back and walked out of the door.
I am leaving, he said to his father as the man stepped out of him room with a hoe slung over his shoulder.
His father said: Safe journey. He took his cutlass and was off to his farm. He walked away without looking back.
His mother called him into her room as he told her he was leaving. The carpets on the floor were torn and there was a crack on the wall. The crack began from the base of the window and disappeared in the sack-ceiling. The iron bed creaked endlessly as she sat upon it. He sat on akpete with his bag on his knees. The room was dark; blades of light wriggled into the room through the unfitted frame of the window illuminating a part of her face. He was in darkness.
My son, she said. Where are you going?
He said: Mother, I don't know. Hope you've heard father's tale yesterday?
Yes my son, she said.
He had wondered for a long time why often, fathers and sons don't get along. He has read Songs and Lovers by D. H. Laurence and the psychoanalytic studies of Sigmund Freud but he felt within him that those texts have not adequately explored the primordial antagonism between fathers and sons. He had witnessed such antagonism between his father and his late elder brother, Abel. They were like cat and dog. He could not place the root of the schism. On the day of his death, he left home in great annoyance after father and son have exchanged bitter words. He was an okada rider. Some distance away from their abode in Otukpo, they heard a crashing sound. Abel was pulled out from under a Dangote. He was crushed beyond recognition.
And you are going?
Yes. Am not ready to die like Abel in the hands of this Cain!
She smiled bitterly. A cock crowed from behind the house, the sound of life in the compound began to filter into the room. A cockroach crowled into a blade of sunlight from under the bed, surveyed the world with its antennae, unsure of what may befall it, it scurried farther away into the dark.
Ojonugwa, she said, don't let your father's actions kill your vision. Whatever you can do for him, do. He is your father and so will he always be.
Mother, thank you, he said. I will be on my way.
She looked at him for a long time. He saw a lot in those eyes what words could not express: The tenderness of a mother towards an embattled child. If it were for me, she said suddenly. I wish all my children would stay with me forever. The death of Abel was a blow I wasn't prepared to receive. I shifted all in me to you and now you also are leaving. In all, this is it. Yes, this is life. When I was a child, I dreamt of this day. I dreamt of it. I saw myself in a big house and my children, like seeds round about me. Of course, see them, my children, ten of them but one gone. I was happy in my dream but am I a happy woman today?
The room was tensed. He stood up, handed her five thousand naira and left the room. At the door he said: I will call and inform you where I will eventually settle. But I know, I am going to Lokoja. He was gone.
In the bus to Lokoja, he felt like a droplet of rain in an ocean. It was there and then that he pondered upon human life and the mystery of existence. We all are passersby here. But what is most appalling is, we came from nowhere and are heading towards our final resting place in the dust. But that sense of being stranded, of being lost in a vacuum, of floating and even of stagnancy took a lot from the sojourner. In the organizational pattern of life, man comes from the darkness and seclusion of the womb and blindly runs through a strange field trying to discover himself and where he was. He sacrifices his youth in the pursuit of knowledge and wealth, happiness and love. But one day, he falls like a grain of wheat and get lost forever.
And walking down Silver Street, Ojonugwa felt that sense of lost. He was returning from Mount Pati Academy, a private school where he was teaching Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics. The ten thousand he was paid a mount, was it enough to offset his transport fare? He uses his legs so as to preserve that which would have gone into his transportation.
Anyigba, May 5, 2016.
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