Must Read: Paradox Of Abel Season 1

Season 7 years ago

Must Read: Paradox Of Abel Season 1

PROLOGUE

… and he gathered all the bits of shell and stuck them together. That is why Tortoise’s shell is not smooth.
(C.A. Achebe, Things Fall Apart)
1975.
GN––Genevieve Nnaji wasn’t famous in 1975––she was still four years short of existence. Neither was Regina Askia; a mere schoolgirl. Wizkid haunted no young women’s dreams. Wande Coal, Dagrin, Darey, D’banj and P-Square––their existence was yet to be accomplished.
General Yakubu Gowon was the Head of States in 1975––he was acclaimed the youngest Nigerian leader. Nigeria witnessed her third military coup that same year.


The best-seller among African novels was Things Fall Apart (though it was actually first published in 1958).


The movies: Behind the Cloud, The Village Headmaster, Aiye.


The music: Ebenezer Obey, Dele Abiodun, Majek Fashek, I.K. Dairo, Fela Anikulapo Kuti.
It was a different time. A different world.
The Nigeria’s exchange rate of the naira to the US dollar in 1975 was sixty-two kobo.
Petrol pump price per litre was less than ten kobo.


Economic Community Of West African States was founded.
Seven federal universities were founded in Nigeria.
1975. It was the year when Cain Martins was still a young lad of eighteen.
He was drunk when his mother died.
The half-mad Cain Martins staggered into the hospital, having his gin bottle firmly stuck under his armpit. Occasionally, he would release the bottle from the bondage of his arm, uncap it and take a deep swig, he appeared not only to be drinking the gin but also bathing in it. Every of his being stank of alcohol, he even sweated alcohol. In his drunken stupor, he entered the waiting room and sat down amongst two pregnant ladies. Offended by Cain Martins appearance and smell, the pregnant women rose to occupy another seat farther from Cain. His eyes scared them; they were granite hard and restless like the eyes of a vulture. The drunken eighteen-year-old ugly boy grinned at the women and said:
“Can I help it if my face frightens people?” giving a mock grimace, “Come to think of it, it even frightens me sometimes. Especially when I suddenly find myself looking in a mirror.”
Cain smiled at his comment, and when he smiled, it was the most unbeautiful thing in the world. He said in his drunken accent that elongated vowels and blurred consonants, pointing at the women’s protruded bellies:
“Did each one of you swallow a watermelon overnight?” his voice sounded as if he had something in his mouth; an odd, strangled sound.


One of the women said, the heavier one, “I think you must be mad! No sane man could talk as you do. No man in his right mind would walk into a hospital in such a drunken state.”
Cain shrugged, “What if I am? What is wrong with being mad anyway? Why do people have such a horror of being thought mad? I don’t. I’m perfectly satisfied with the way my mind works. After all, madness is just a matter of view point.”
Sitting there for just fifteen minutes, Cain decided that he had been waiting too long.



More people had come in to sit in the waiting room––waiting their own chance to visit a father who had had his appendix removed, a mother who had discovered a small lump under one of her breasts a bare two days ago, a friend who had been struck in the chest with an invisible sledge hammer while jogging, a brother who had fallen off his bike and hit his head on the tiled road. The faces of the waiters were made up with composure; except, of course, Cain’s.


He got out and made his way to the Intensive Care Unit––where his mother was lying supine on the bed. The petite thirty-five-year old young woman who had once been graciously pretty; the voluptuous curves that had once ruled her body had now withered away. She was now shrunken, her beautiful eyes were now shallow, and her skeletal structures were now visibly pronounced. Her arms and legs were as thin as matchsticks, and this made her feeble limbs look more like a toad’s. AIDS had finally won over her body’s immunity. Pamela was shriveled and withered like an Egyptian mummy.



The room directly opposite the Intensive Care Unit was the delivery room, and two young women had just put to bed therein. And as Cain staggered into the ICU, two ladies emerged from the delivery room, each carrying a bundle of joy. Cain only just made the steps into the ICU. If he hadn’t clutched on to the back of the chair before he sat on it, he would probably have found himself sitting on the floor of the room.
“You aren’t dead yet, Pamela.” He said to his mother.
Although Pamela was Cain’s mother, she always felt a chill crawl up her spine at the sight of her own son, just like she was feeling now. “Cain, I’ve been waiting for you.” Her voice came as a low rasp.
“What do you want from me?” he slurred, and then belched.
“Have you been drinking again, Cain?”
He nodded eagerly, as if he was a little boy and his mother had just asked him if he wanted a new toy, “Yes, I have. Not drunk yet, just a wee bit boozy-woozy. It isn’t against the law to be drunk, is it? Even the Bible confirmed it.





Jee-zuz said,” he slurred, “ ‘For in wine shall thou find pleasure’ it’s in First Thessalonians or Second Babylonians, I can’t remember which.”
“How more drunken can you get than this, Cain? I’ll have to go to my grave with the memory that my son is a drunkard. This way you’re drinking yourself like a fish, you may kill yourself if you keep it up, Cain.”
“Pamela, I haven’t fallen off the wagon yet. I’m mobile, am I not? And my words aren’t coming out as lisps, are they? Give me a tongue twister and I will tell you without a slight break. Besides, we both have our different tastes, haven’t we, Pamela? I’m always on the look out for a new bottle of booze while you were always on the look out for something new in trousers. Who knows to how many men you’ve distributed your virus? Now, why did you call me into this shrine they call a hospital?”
Pamela hesitated, as if what she had to say was going to be physically painful. “I have a confession, Cain?”
“And you want me to call you a reverend father?”
“No, Cain, no––I have to confess to you before I die.”
“Wait, let me get my rosary and Bible. What do you want to confess? About where you kept your money?”
“No, no––not about that. It’s about––”
“Where did you keep it?”
“It’s not about––”
“Where did you keep your money, Pamela?” his voice was louder now.
“I want to tell you about––”
“Tell me about the money now or I’ll walk out of here and you shall never see me again. Oh! How you stink so, Pamela!”
Tears flooded his mother’s face as she spoke:
“The money is in the backyard at home––inside a pouch under the water pot. I kept it there because you would have stolen it if I had put it in the house.”
Cain leaned forward, an unusual smile on his face, “How much did you keep there?”
“Everything contained in the pouch is coins. Cain, won’t you listen to my confession before I die?”
“How much do you have in the pouch?”
She said with an effort, “Twenty naira.”
“What!” Cain exploded. He stood up instantly; he nearly lost his balance and quickly held onto the table by the bed to steady himself. Because he was drunk, he was too rocked by the news to stand upright. Sweat poured out from the pores of his face, as if he were a Coke bottle that had been left too long in the freezer.





Suddenly his fist clenched itself and came down on the table with a bang; his face crimsoned and two big veins stood out on his forehead. “Is the floor moving up and down or am I drunker than I imagine I am? Did you just say twenty naira, Pamela? You incompetent, useless pin-headed hoe! With all those illiterate, prissy-groined, dye-in-the-wool nincompoops and brutes you’ve been screwing, all you were able to come up with in the end is twenty naira?”
“Cain––my confession––”
“Shut up, Pamela!” he screamed, his face was suddenly vicious. “Just shut up! Lest I kill you before the AIDS do. You filthy woman! I used to think you made real money from your immoral business, so I didn’t care if you trekked up Mount Calvary, climbed the cross and screwed the Christ. Now, you’re here blabbing that all your life’s saving is twenty naira.” He was getting angrier as he spoke, “Listen to me, I know I’m the son of a b*tch––do you know what a b*tch is, Pamela?––and I’ve learned to live with that. But even in death, as you’re busy satisfying Satan and other damned souls in Hell on per minute billings, you are going to wish you had never given birth to me. That, Pamela, I am assuring you.”
He had lost control of the little sense which was still left in his mind, because he was screaming now; thundering curses and vile utterances upon his own mother. Pamela was shivering and weeping, every word from his came upon her like the stab from a knife. Cain, having depleted almost all the curses he was capable of coining, he turned to go, still cursing maniacally under his breath as he exited the ICU.
“Cain!” Pamela called after her son, “Cain––my confession! You must listen––” her shiver had resulted in violent seizures. She began to foam at the mouth. A doctor and two nurses rushed into the room. The doctor switched on the ophthalmoscope and directed the light in Pamela’s right eye.
As though the beam from the machine was a piercing needle and her life a balloon, Pamela let out an explosive breath; her last word came as a whisper:
“Cain!”
She brought her head up suddenly, looked directly into the light which shone on her eyes, slumped back upon her pillow, and died.





With the few techniques and instruments available in the ward, attempts at resuscitation of the diseased and deceased patient were made, but to no avail. Pamela had taken leave of life, and she wasn’t coming back.
As the drink-sodden baboon staggered down the corridor of the hospital he raised his gin bottle to his mouth and drank deeply, the liquid ran from the corner of his mouth down to his chin and the front of his chest, and onto the marble floor of the hospital. When he got out of the hospital the bottle was already empty. He brought it to his mouth again and sU-Cked at air. He was surprised at this; more surprised than at the disappointing news his mother had told him. He brought the bottle up and peered curiously at it so as to be sure it really was empty; the little ram on the bottle label looked back at Cain too. Cain caught the ram’s stare and asked it where the alcohol therein had gone; the ram didn’t offer any answer. Angry at the bottle, the ram on its label, and his mother, he attempted to fling the empty bottle away but it slipped from his grasp. He had no more money to buy another alcohol. Cain swayed home to retrieve the twenty naira inside the pouch which lain under the water pot.




He did not listen to his mother’s confession.
However, Pamela was not the only woman who gave her last sigh back in the hospital. Five rooms away from where Pamela was, a young woman also uttered her last word, and her word also came out in a whisper:
“Abel!”
Both women died at precisely 4:15pm.––June 12, 1975.