Must Read: Paradox Of Abel - Season 1 - Episode 10

7 years ago

Must Read: Paradox Of Abel - Season 1 - Episode 10

Those five words which had turned him into a helpless insomniac. The five words that had endeared his pitiful heart to flutter than usual.

The words had excited him, had emblazoned him with passion, had unleashed in him a hound of cupid scent.

Daniel tossed and turned; he wouldn’t have acted more impressively if he were inside a barrel rolling down a hill. He was still oblivious of his surrounding, of time…of himself. He was back in the vehicle; the annoying wails of the conductor had faded into nothingness, the stale odour of the dirty fat man had dissolved with the mist…and most of the discussions he’d had with the pretty lady were now coming in whispers. It was only five words which came out clear from that blessed mouth; strong and resounding; as sharp and as audible as a judge’s gavel. Those were the only words Daniel was hearing now.
“…I may even marry you.” These words were being repeated in his dome more times than any emotionally-struck dervish like Daniel Oliver Famous could count. These words had struck such a perfect cord on his cello that series of uncontrollable musics were now playing inside his skull.
“…I may even marry you.”
The girl could be joking, she might even have forgotten totally about Daniel let alone manifesting the nuptial possibility she uttered into Daniel’s hearing. But he didn’t care about all that. He just wanted to be with her again…wherever she might be. It was not impossible that even if he saw her she wouldn’t recognise him. Yet though, he believed positively that the woman had liked him when they spoke in the car. He was sure of that. Perhaps not half as much as he was fond of her now. He knew that she probably wouldn’t be having any sleepless night over him. Coming to rethink of it, she could actually be, he thought. She could, mayhaps, be counting more ceilings than Daniel had been doing since the last couple of days…but not over Daniel but on someone else. This thought elicited a sliver of shiver on his skin. That could be disastrous, it really could be. The possibility that the girl whose thought had saturated the whole of his mind having a longing for someone else was too heavy for Daniel to bear.

If that really was the case, Daniel decided that he would shave his hair, walk bare-footed all the way to Okija Shrine and demand to have his head washed with a parrot’s faeces mixed with the chief priest’s saliva. Because by that time, he would believe that a curse had been placed on his head by a kind of cult who wanted him to remain a celibate for the whole of his life. Rather, he would feel like nature was hurling all the trash of the world at him.

He quickly shook the thought out of his mind, fearing that the thoughts would manifest if he meditated too long in them. Although he knew himself a hopeless pessimist but he still managed to allow the pleasure of a blissful thought travel through his head, thinking of a better world for himself and the girl. This thought rendered his imagination to run faster than a speeding car. He began picturing her in flowing gown which extended from Lagos to Mogadishu, and he in a clean white suit purloined from Pastor Chris. They would be standing beside each other as a religious leader…it could be a pastor or an imam, or even our humble traditionalist…reading the Bible, Qur’an, Torah, Scroll or parchment, Daniel didn’t care…and in the end they’d permit him to kiss the bride. They would kiss, he and she, in such a way that hot blush would be elicited from the faces of every single guy and lady in the gathering, and mothers would be forced to place their hands across the faces of their little wards who would struggle to watch the newly-wedded couple sU-Cked tongues and swallow saliva. Afterwards, their lips would be swollen from overkissing.
He continued picturing a life with the lady. Popping her cherry on honeymoon, if she’s still got a cherry, and breeding like rabbits. Growing old together with no problem whatsoever in the world other than wondering where they had placed their false teeth the night before, and having grand and great-grandchildren with a population that would top the residents of the Lagos Police Barracks brought together.

The alarm clock shrieked!
Daniel started suddenly. He was startled to find out that it was five already. He groaned, the passage of another sleepless night. He decided that he could not continue like this, he had to find something to do about his current predicament. He knew that there was only one thing to do. But out of pride and the fear of disappointment and shame, he had refrained from doing it. Now, with the way things were going with him, Daniel would have to flex his gullet muscles and gulp in that pride.

He had nothing to lose, except his sanity.

An hour later, Daniel rose from the bed; he had been able to steal a half-hour’s sleep. He forced himself to do a couple of dozen situps, pressups and deep knee bends; after his exercises, he went directly to the bathroom to shave and wash himself, taking particular care to brush his mouth with the air of a butcher hacking meat from bone. He believed that everyone should be sweet-tempered, polite, considerate and brush their teeth twice daily.

There oughtn’t be stale breath and furry tongue added to the problems of the world. He trimmed his toenails and sprayed deodorant under his arms.

It was almost 7am when he was finally prepared to go out. He turned off the lights and exited his room, locking the door behind him. Knowing that he would be in Lagos in the next three days filled him with glee, he’d be celebrating Christmas with his family.
Unlike the usual traffic congestions that seemed to be the trademark of the city, the transportation from his location down to the stadium took less than thirty minutes, an unusual and suprising thing to have happened.

As soon as he reached his destination he sought out the man who mowed the grass. There were twelve men who did the work from Mondays to Saturdays; two men for each day. The previous couple of days, Daniel had monitored the men who had come to perform the labour in the last five days, and none among them was the man he wanted to know and talk to. And today, a Saturday, was the last day of work for them. He was expecting to see the final batch of labourers today, hoping that one of these last two men would be the man he required.

He particularly came to this stadium this Saturday with the expectation of meeting the father of that extraordinary girl whose thought had invaded his mind, assaulted his dreams and threatened his sanity. Because today wasn’t the official training day for the senior players, the stadium was empty and locked. He had come too early. He would have to wait outside the gate of the stadium for the labourers to come and unlock it, even the auxiliary players who took the weekends for their trainings didn’t always come this early.

As Daniel waited, sitting on a slab of stone, he thought about how ridiculous it was for him to wait here so early in the morning, where he should, perhaps, be on his way to Lagos. What if the girl was only lying? What if she had no father working here at all? She could easily have said it without really meaning it; just for discussion’s sake, or just to pull his legs. He would not find it funny at all if he realised that he had woken up early in the morning, travelled a long distance, and sat on a stone slab fit for a shrine, all for nothing. This could be a wild goose chase for a goose which existed not.
Coupled with his disappointment, he would also look much like clown when he approach the two men and ask:
“Hey! Which one among you is the father of the pretty girl I encountered in the bus last week?”
With such a question, Daniel knew that the men would probably book an appointment for him with a psychiatrist.
It was at this moment that the problem of what sane words he would say occurred to him, if he was lucky and found the father of the girl.
He waited forty-five minutes, deeply engaged in a conversation with himself, when he spotted the two men coming. The sun was beginning to come out high above, among cumulus clouds which resembled scoops of vanillla ice-cream, the cloud drifted lazily above. The high sky went on forever; the air was fluffy, with a softness that caressed the skin. The breeze was scarcely strong enough to raise kites and faint shadows were cast on the grounds beneath. The men appeared to be of the same age; they looked about forth-five or fifty years old. This left him particularly sad as he was hoping to catch one younger and the other older. He was sure that if the younger one appeared being in his thirties, then, perhaps, the older one would likely be the man he sought. This closeness in age between these approaching men had built a strong wall before his amateurish logical deduction. Some daughters resemble their fathers, he thought. He studied the faces of the two men carefully as they came, trying to determine with which one between them the lady had a close resemblance. None. Daniel sighed in frustration, the girl apparently resembled the mother. Sometimes though, offsprings do not take any facial resemblance with either parents. Thus, subjecting the husbands to question their spouses’ faithfulness.

He stood up from the slab as the men reached the gate, his pelvic bones were beginning to complain. And to his utter amazement, the men did not appear to take notice of his presence. A part of him suspected that these men wouldn’t have noticed even if Godzilla took a stroll past, leaving wreckage in her wake, provided she did not step on them. Have I turned into a ghost or something? He asked himself.

One man extracted a bunch of keys from his pocket and inserted it in the lock. This one had a close resemblance with Soyinka: a mountain of greying hair, enough moustache to sweep a parrot’s cage, and the kind of beard Prophet Mohammed would have cherished. On his face was a pair of contact lenses that could easily have been stolen from Awolowo’s reading table. He was tall and lanky with an inability to stop himself from blinking.

The other man, who was busy making a phone call as his partner struggled with the gate, was clean-shaven. He was heavily built; a broad-shouldered man who looked like he could nudge a locked door off its hinges with no trouble at all, and he could have subbed for the biblical Samson, pulling down pillars and crashing edifices and roofs upon the heads of the Philistines. The only features he lacked were skin colour and hairlocks. He carried himself with the air of a man who could break Daniel into a dozen different pieces without breaking a sweat. The footballer suspected that under the big clothes this giant of a man donned, he probably had a barrel chest and legs like mahogany trunks. Over all that, fur.

The man was more hairy than the average orangutan. His hair was almost reaching his palms. Thank goodness that he was at least clean-shaven, he wouldn’t have looked a bit human otherwise. Daniel would rather prefer the bespectacled man to be the father he sought.

They still hadn’t noticed Daniel.

He didn’t believe that the two men, Soyinka and Samson alike, were unaware of his presence. He felt that they intentionally ignored him. This could possibly result from the fact that they knew him but not approve of him, which was almost unbelievable too. Trainers and grass-mowers did not always meet; the labourers came very early before the trainers and finished their works before trainings resumed. Then they returned again in the evenings, after the trainers had departed, to tidy up the stadium again, with the exception of Saturdays where the labourers had the liberty of rsuming work later than usual. There wasn’t always major trainings on weekends. So, Daniel sufficed that these men wouldn’t have known him. Except, Oh! Except the girl had called her father and told him about Daniel. And the father had reecognised him from the description given by the daughter. The protective father who didn’t approve of his child having a boyfriend at twenty, recognised Daniel but wouldn’t welcome him with open arms. Instead, he chose to ignore him (Daniel), and told his partner to do likewise. But statistically, Daniel reflected, a woman should have her first baby at the age of nineteen. He intentionally refused to acknowledge the statistic that also proved that no woman should start copulating before the age of twenty-six. What father disallows his daughter from having a boyfriend at twenty?
Daniel was certain now about that. He believed that was what had really happened; the reason why he was being sent to the Coventry by these mean men. He even suspected worse. One of these men, the father perhaps, could be concealing a sharp object under his clothings.

They intimidated him; he was afraid to approach either of them, lest one conjured up a magical pistol and shoot him. Daniel was more afraid of being shot than any other harmful means. Inexperience does not the best teacher make. The white-bearded, blinking man continued to turn the key in the lock; a process that endured long enough to calculate the square root of 2.
Before he knew it, his mouth said, “Good morning, sirs.” Oh! Now I’m definitely going to be shot