Dial - Season 2 - Episode 53

4 years ago

Dial - Season 2 - Episode 53

***
My eyes opened slowly.
I was lying on my bed, frail and weak and dying.

My body had shrivelled up, and I was very wrinkled. I could barely see, and my breath came in wheezes. My chest had become bony and scrawny, and my joints were swollen and painful.

Indeed, in the space of a few days, I had grown to be a very old man.

Abena Adobea was sitting beside me in bed, holding one of my scrawny and veined hands, and weeping silently.

Her eyes met mine, and she might have seen the truth in there, because she gasped and suddenly got off the bed, and fell to her knees by my side, the most excruciating pain crossing her face.

“Yao, please, don’t do it!” she wailed in a tight whisper as she put her arms around me and her face on my chest. “Don’t hurt me! Please, don’t kill my heart!”
With much difficulty I raised my left hand and placed it gently on her head.
“I’m sorry, Maa Abena,” I whispered painfully. “I must go to Wowo.”
“To marry her!” she wailed. “To leave me! You’re going to kill me, Yao! You’re going to break this heart of mine, Yao!”
“No, no, my love,” I whispered tremulously. “Don’t you understand? I have to go and make my peace with Akos! This is how it all began, how it started, please. I have to see where she was buried, and if possible try and make sure she is buried where her father wanted her buried, and put a flower on her grave, and bid her farewell. It is something I should’ve done a long time ago.”

“Yao, she is dead!” Abena Adobea wailed. “She’s no longer in the land of the living! She can’t hear you, or feel you!”
“I know that, my love,” I said painfully. “But her father sees her buried in the land of the shameful, and that hurts him very much! I did that girl wrong, more than any man could ever hurt a girl. The only way I can atone for that is to honour her resting place. If she can’t be moved to the burial place of her ancestors, I’ll make sure she has the d--n most beautiful grave in that forsaken place called Wowo. I have to do this, please, my love!”

“You’re just making excuses!” Abena Adobea shouted with agony now. “At least tell me the truth! Tell me you prefer life, and so you want to leave me and marry Dede! Let me know it’s over, Yao! Don’t hide your intentions behind lies! Don’t hurt me with vague principles!”
“Oh, Abena Adobea, my darling, my love, please understand me!” I said as tears glimmered on my eyelashes. “This has nothing to do with Dede! This is something I suddenly feel in my heart!”

“If that is true then let me come with you, my love,” she said as she sat back on her haunches and looked at me with her pained eyes. “Let me take this final journey with you!”

I shook my head.

“Maa Abena, you heard Nana b0s0mba,” I said weakly. “He said I should come alone. He insisted!”

“No, Yao, he said you should go there alone if you decide to marry Dede!” she shouted now, her young heart broken. “But if indeed you’re not going to marry Dede, but to honour Akos, then there should be no problem if I came along!”

She was right, and as she stared at me, my eyes could not lie to her any more. Of course it was true, I felt an overwhelming sense of guilt over Akos. I was genuinely hoping to do the right thing, and honour her in death. To do all I could to bring her a modicum of respect in Wowo, even though she was dead.
I had left it too long!

It was something I should have done, even before beginning this sabbatical that had taken me out of the city and brought me to a village where I had found true love.
Yes, Dede was the reason.
One of two reasons, yes.

I could not hide it, and I could not keep it out of my eyes.