Untitled chapter
VISIT TO THE RED ZONE
There goes the story of a certain commercial motorcycle rider in Port Harcourt who was overly fund of ladies. Each time he carried a lady, he would start persuading her to go with him to his apartment at the outskirts of the city to spend some time with him, promising her heaven and earth with his sugar- coated tongue. Sometimes he succeeded, but whenever he failed till late in the evening, he went to the “Red Zone” of the city and picked for himself a good- looking prostitute, one that looked equal to the function for which she was being hired. Thus, what began as a flimsy pastime became over time a compulsive habit.
He had in fact been in that habit for many years, for which everybody who knew him called him Jolly Boy. But some people told him, rather jokingly, that he might be burning off his destiny in the constant steam of pleasure, and others warned that he would one day pick one of the many ghosts, witches, and marine spirits parading everywhere as beautiful ladies. But Jolly Boy did not believe in the existence of ghosts, witches or marine spirits. He actually believed in nothing but constant enjoyment. So, everybody knew that nothing short of an unforgettable experience could make him drop that habit. That experience took long in coming, but it surely came at last.
One Sunday afternoon, he met a girl in a restaurant where he had gone to eat. Something about the girl struck his mind. She was dark in complexion, with a small face and large, hazel eyes. Her face was not particularly beautiful because her mouth was long and pouted, and her nose was rather flat. But whatever she lacked as beauty on her face was given to her body, for she had beautiful round and high shoulders, ample breasts and voluptuous hips, and her legs were dainty and almost imperceptibly bow-shaped, with dimples at the two sides of the back of each of her knees. She was of average height and weight, straight like bamboo.
She was moving about listlessly, as if something bothered her. Her eyes seemed to be dilated in fear. Joly Boy called her and began to talk with her. She finally agreed to go home with him, but pleaded with him to take her to somewhere in town for her to drop an urgent message. Soon they rode off in his motorcycle.
Jolly Boy was turning on a roundabout when his subconscious mind perceived that the atmosphere was rather quiet- eerily quiet- even though there were many people and vehicles on the road. But because his sensitivity had been benumbed by being focused constantly on sensual pleasure, he could not make proper use of his cognitive senses. Otherwise he would have consciously noticed that something was definitely, strangely bizarre about the atmosphere of the area.
It seemed as if a dark cloak had been placed over the sunshine, which made it look like the grey face of a mourning widow. The girl was slapping Jolly Boy on the shoulder and frantically shouting:
“Stop! Stop! Stop me here!”
After he had stopped, he noticed that everybody stood still as trees, like people frozen in the spell of a hypnotic moment. They were all looking at the sky, with their palms shielding their eyes from the dull but penetrative sunshine.
Still sitting astride his motorcycle, Jolly Boy looked up and saw what they had been gazing at. It was a most amazing spectacle. Two birds were fighting in the sky.
The picture would not have seemed strange in any way if not for the extraordinary nature of those birds and the kind of swift movements they made in the air. Each was dust brown in colour, like a vulture, but as big as an ostrich, with a short solid neck. They had powerful wide wings that made noises like the sound of massive hammers on monstrous anvils. Everybody heard clearly those horrid noises of their fighting clashes.
Jolly Boy’s girl had run forward, shouting raucously, “Supreme mother of darkness, save my mentor, save my mentor! Save my… The consternation in her voice echoed in the brooding heart of the doleful sunshine. Jolly Boy could not believe his eyes. His heart pounded furiously.
Meanwhile those birds fought fiercely, savagely, endlessly. They clawed with their sharp talons, pecked with their powerful beaks, and slapped with their metallic wings. It was indeed a most ferocious encounter. They screeched piercingly as their blood fell like pebbles on the sun -baked earth.
Eventually one of the birds lost balance and could no more move with power and direction. It hung at a place for a brief helpless moment fluttering its wings. Then it began to fall. At this moment, the other bird turned round and flew slowly and tiredly away.
Jolly Boy’s girl was running distractedly to the direction the bird was falling. She was screaming ever so disconsolately, slapping her hips until she began to leap, leap, leap forward, screaming with hysteria.
The crowd was screaming, too. Everybody kept running and stopping, trying to avoid the spot where the bird would fall. Only the girl was running towards the direction of its fall. Now she lifted her hands to catch it. Oh, how could she catch such a gigantic bird with such metallic wings? Jolly Boy’s heart was pounding and pounding; his feet and hands were shaking.
As the bird hit the girl’s chest, they both crashed to the ground inside the circle of the round -about. The thundering noise of the crowd at that moment reached the limits of the sky. On reaching the ground, both girl and bird dissolved into a light brown curling strand of smoke that disappeared as everybody watched it float away.
There was a stampede as people ran into various directions. In his panic, Jolly Boy kicked his motorcycle three times before it revved into a frantic start, and he zoomed off with the speed of wind.
Many hours after he had got home and taken his bath, his heart was still pounding. After his shock, however, came reflection.
He thought about his life, remembering the experiences in his life which he is fond of saying led him into this habit. He was the only child of his parents and they had lived in Kaduna, Northern part of the country. His mother had died in the year he entered the university for his first degree, and his father had trained him in the university until he had obtained his Master’s degree in Economics. Then his father was killed one Sunday morning when Islamic fundamentalists burnt down the church building in which his father was worshipping with other congregants. Religious riots had been the bane of any Christian that lived in the Northern part of the country, and it had always had deep tribal undertones. In such cases, Christians, especially Igbos, were massively massacred. Jolly Boy returned to his home Enugu state in the South Eastern part of the country. He began to search for a job. He had ever wanted to be a lecturer. But he discovered that in those days there were no more job interviews. People got jobs by simply getting a letter or an official card from a political office holder. Jolly Boy was disappointed at this trend, especially in the case of the higher institutions where the future leaders of the nation were being trained. He had nobody to help him get a job for years until he settled down to being a motorcycle rider, like many other graduates. He remembered the first day he took one lady passenger to his apartment at the outskirts of the city and gradually he had formed the habit, which now stock to him like a leech. Today, he thought, the habit was about to consume him. He thought very deeply whether he wanted to continue with the habit or not, and then then made up his mind that he wanted to give it up. He resolved that nothing on earth would make him bring another lady to his apartment until he was ready for marriage.
