A short story by Omoseye Bolaji
It was if he were engulfed in some sort of sudden whirlpool! One minute he was all alone at the plaza, and the next a woman was throwing her arms around him hugging and kissing him. After some time he
managed to see who it was: Nono!
"It's been a long long time indeed!" she said now kissing him briefly and taking his hand. "Ah, you haven't changed at all!"
He wished he could say the same for her. She had put on some weight and there were hard lines etched around her face. And then of course there was the terrible scar on her neck. That's where the guy stabbed her, he thought.
"Let me buy you lunch here," she said to him. "Let's go to Ronnie's" In her direct authoritative manner she led him to the eatery and to a corner where they sat down. She noticed that even after she ordered the initial drinks and ice cream he still looked rather awkward and remote.
It's my fault, she thought. It was about time they put the past behind them. She said: "Seems you are still in pain after all this time. After all, it happened some four years ago. Poor you! I knew it would hurt you a lot. Does it mean you will never forgive me?"
He stared at her. "Do I look like someone fighting? I don't blame you. It was my fault. I was stupid and believed very much in love. I was naive; I did not know then that love is wasted on most of our black women,"
She stared at him. "Don't say that. Don't be cynical please " she said. "It's not like you at all." He thought about his great love for her at the time; and how he had felt when he learnt that at the same time he
stupidly thought she was his girlfriend, she was spending nights with another man (Dan) and was pregnant for him. The awful pain and shock had lingered on for quite some time.
As they sipped their drinks Nono said: "That's why I could not tell you at the time, I knew you loved me so much; it was so sweet, so good but we women want security. You and your artist's mentality and good
behaviour was not enough. Dan had money, a fine car, apartment. I allowed him to seduce me. I stayed with him. It was only after some months I realised he had other women; he even abused me whilst I was
pregnant. It was either he had never loved me or at some point hated me. I had to leave him in the end,"
"So you were heart-broken eh?" he said trying not to sound sarcastic. "You had left our city here by then, but word soon reached us that you were already hooked with another man..."
She stared at him. "Yes, that was Shasha, the one who nearly killed me. Maybe it was a rebound thing, or the fact that he always had a lot of money to spend on me; at least in the beginning. Then I discovered that despite his short, very slender frame he was a very violent man...fights everytime...he called me a witch who wanted to control him completely...he never had any time for romance for me. It reached a peak the
day he slashed my throat with that awful knife.
"The pain was paralysing. I thought I was dead of course. It was only later that I heard that even when I was being rushed to the hospital he was celebrating 'killing' me with some of his friends, drinking like a fiend. Of course I made sure I sent him to jail later. Who knows what he would do to me when he's finally out of jail?"
He wished she would stop, but she went on: "I thought about you a lot whilst recovering; about your good nature and your real love. I sometimes even wondered whether what happened to me was because of
what I had done to you. I wondered whether you were perhaps even happy that I had suffered a lot too; that I was being punished?"
He grimaced. He hated violence and blood and gore...he could sympathise, empathise with what had happened to her; though any love he had for her was gone for ever of course.
Nono squeezed his hand. "It's like we are strangers now; as if you hate me now. Yet I have been alone for over a year now with two young children whose fathers despise me (one in jail). It's a pity we can
not go back to the past. You hate me now?"
He said nothing as she, in her authoritative manner, now went on to place food orders for both of them. She knew, or rather she thought from the experience of how she knew him well in the past that he would not mind. She wished that - if only for a few seconds - he would gaze at her again in his love-suffused manner of the past. Now he was more or less a stranger. I did this to him, alas, she thought.
Nono said now, smiling that smile of hers he knew only too well. "Maybe you were just too good for me. You were too kindly and decent. My artist! I treasure all those wonderful sms-es you used to send to me. I
still remember those tender embraces and kisses. Yet you were just too good...you never even tried to sleep with me even when we were all alone. What a decent man you are! I can even confess that I used to
sometimes imagine you sleeping with me tenderly..."
He winced. She's now really spitting on my grave, he thought. "Good guys" lose out everytime.
She saw some emotion in his eyes now, and squeezed his hand again. He wished she would not touch him at all. She said: "Maybe your reward will come sometime...I mean, decency and true love should have some
compensation. I really still respect and like you...”
He said: “A fat lot of good that does me when the woman I love so much ends up in the arms of other men every time,"
She began to sob softly. It was clear that he had become cynical. Maybe he did not believe in true love again. And who could blame him? I did this to him...
She managed to say, just as the waitress brought their food on plates: "Okay I am sorry. Let's eat now..."
