Must Read: Paradox Of Abel - Season 1 - Episode 16

7 years ago

Must Read: Paradox Of Abel - Season 1 - Episode 16

They spent almost twenty-four hours before arriving in Lagos, because the rickety bus they boarded developed flat tyres, carburetor, transistor, accelerator, radiator and whatever –tor inherent in a vehicle’s anatomy problems.

If left for Daniel alone he’d have boarded a plane but Mr. Johnson would never hear of that, even when Daniel insisted on paying footing the ticket fee of both of them. It wasn’t that Mr. Johnson was scared of heights, or because the price for the two of them in a first-class travel could gag a sword swallower; he was just afraid of dying. He launched into a verbal education of Daniel about the unfortunate events inherent in Sosoliso and Bellview in the years past. He explained how so many things could go wrong in the air. Like, say, an engine might fall off, probably because a mechanic sabotaged it. All these claims and beliefs had resulted from the effect of all he suffered when he lost both his parents in an air crash that occurred far back in 1985. This year’s Christmas Day would seal the twenty-seventh year after the sad event. He was still a secondary school kid when the tragedy happened.

The sudden demise of Tunde’s parents led to his opting out of school for lack of tuition funds. If Tunde Johnson had been educated, he could possibly have become a scientist or an inventor of time-capsules; he really was that intelligent. It was his intelligence, not his social status, that got him inside the hot Ruth’s pants and impregnated her when she was barely seventeen. He was at first not sure if the pregnancy was really his, because Ruth had been quite a loose girl since the age of twelve.

So, naturally, Tunde had denied blowing the balloon. Ruth’s furious father had sent hoodlums against him, he was beaten so hard that he was hospitalized. But the father of the pregnant girl paid for his treatment and got him locked up thereafter. Tunde spent nine months behind bars; he was released by the police only two weeks before Ruth put to bed. The man had forgotten him there in the cell.

Some tests were conducted which confirmed that Tunde was the father of the child. The rich man had later apologized to Tunde for the hard way in which the situation was handled. He arranged a wedding ceremony for Tunde and his daughter, and both man and woman were joined in holy matrimony. But this did not alleviate the resentment Tunde fostered against his father-in-law. He hated Jamal with passion, and he was patiently waiting for the best time he would take his revenge on the man for what he had done to him. His hatred for the man grew so much that when Jamal offered to assist him financially, a pecuniary intervention which he desperately needed, Tunde had humbly, with a smile, declined the assistance. Tunde was not one of those few people who possessed the spirits of pardon. He kept every memory green, especially the bitter ones.

When Tunde was only ten years old, a neighbour had turned his ear for stepping in his garden. Tunde waited three years to get back at the bad-tempered man. Because the man was older and more powerful than he was at the time, Tunde could not twist the man’s ear in return. So, he waiting until the man got married and had a baby. When he was alone with the child, Tunde twisted the baby’s ear in as much painful a way as his father had done him three years prior, making sure that it was the left ear he twisted, for the baby’s father didn’t twist him in the right ear. The baby had shrieked with pain but Tunde had disappeared from the scene before people began to rush into the room from whence the shrill cry had erupted. Tunde had felt guilty for his action thereafter; the baby wasn’t the offender, it was the father who should be punished. He hadn’t really revenged; taking revenge on innocent people, he realized, wasn’t his style. He shrugged his guilt off, at least, the pastor had preached last Sunday from a verse in Jeremiah; about a man who gobbled a sugarcane or something without giving a thought about what would happen to the children’s teeth. Young Tunde never really cared to listen attentively to sermons.

Tunde, now an adult, was still looking for that man who had twisted his ear when he was ten.

If he saw the man, he would definitely twist the man’s ear and finally be at peace with himself. Even if the man was going to become the next President of Nigeria, and if there was the likelihood that he could be shot for his attempt, Tunde didn’t care. Besides, the man who twisted his ear when he was only ten was a stark illiterate; the probability of his becoming the next Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces was very slim.
“Do you really mean what you said, Mr. Johnson?” Daniel Famous asked as they finally got off the bus. He was taking his steps with caution because, while sitting huddled among the travellers in the bus, the blood that was circulating around his body had departed his feet. For each step he took, he felt stinging and tickling s£nsat!on course through the lower part of his body, right from the patella down to the metatarsal region. His gait almost resembled that of Simon Peter trying to walk on water like Jesus.

A Coca-Cola truck was parked at the other side of the road, and the driver was unloading crates and carrying them into a restaurant.
“What did I say?”
“What you said about my arm and flogging. You don’t mean that, do you?”
The man adjusted his lips, forming what he probably read some place was known as a smile. He said, “I don’t make idle threats, Daniel.”
The younger man’s eyes opened large, “You are joking, right?”
The smile grew broader, “Yes, I’m smiling, Daniel, but I’m not joking. Just pray we find my daughter.
“It seems to me like you want people to be afraid of you.”
“Fear implies respect.”
“So far,” Daniel lied, “You are not registering high on my terror metre.”
“I will warn you not to see my threat as a-a-what is the expression I want meaning a big stir about very little?”
“A tempest in a teacup?”
“Yes, thank you. Don’t see my threat as a tempest in a teacup.”

They reached the car park and boarded another bus, this one cosier. They did not resume their conversation. When Mr. Johnson told the bus-conductor where they’d be alighting, Daniel frowned.

Because it was Christmas eve already, the traffic was slower than usual. They spent over an hour before arriving at their bus-stop. The common tricycle transported them to their exact location.