Thinking long and hard about the problems of the world, he agreed—finally—that his own stomach was foremost. He had been born to poor, shiftless parents. But, to him, that was not exceptional or worth sulking about. Neither was it worthy of a special mention that he had lost his father to excessive alcoholism. He blamed neither providence nor provenance. He simply choose, instead, to read a book.
Sometimes, however, there was not even books to read, seeing as he had only three books to himself—This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Revolt of Angels by Anatole France, and If on a Winters Night A Traveler by Italo Calvino—which he must have read a thousand times over at the least.
There was a college not too far from where he lived, and on days when he somehow found the strength, he would trek thirty minutes to get to the college library, where for hours he would sit, exploring the uncanny minds of late geniuses on rusty pages.
But after the college went on vacation, on a rainy day last year, he was hungry to dreary. His strength had deserted him too early, so he sat outside on a chair with torn coverings and exposed wood, which made a slight sound of protest as he sunk himself in it. He had only just opened his Anatole France when his attention was seized rather vehemently by his mother, who stood as erect as she could by the door.
“Segun!” Her mother called. “Segun, you lazy bastard. You sit on your lazy ass all day and do nothing. Is it not your mates who already are out there making a living?”
Segun, already sixteen years of age, knew of the virtues which an obedient boy must possess, and not talking back to one’s parent definitely was one of them. But hunger is such a funny proposition, that once encountered, one losses all convictions; all volitions, and all such virtues which earlier one might have prized oneself of possessing, as if seduced by the devil itself, because as the stomach knots in pain, serenity is ceded to anger. It was with this anger, then, that the meek Segun, for the first time in his life, yelled back at his mother.
“O my god, mom!” He exclaimed. “do you even care to know if I’ve had anything to eat since morning? What sort of mother would not care as her own son starves!?”
His mother’s mouth was ajar in disbelief. Now normally when a child disrespects his mother as such, the usual response was a vigorous flogging to be received by the recalcitrant child, but Segun’s mother, perhaps suspecting herself guilty, chose to exchange some words of wisdom with her son.
“I try my best you know,”
She replied, her voice shaken by indignation. “ever since your father was taken from me -- ”
“Taken from you?” Segun interrupted. “Taken from you? He wasn’t taken from you, the bastard gave himself away.”
“You will not talk about your father like that. Have I not taught you to show reverence to the dead? More so if you had chosen to find a job, instead of reading stupid books all day, maybe you would have been able to find yourself something to eat instead of depending on your frail mother.”
Segun said no more. He stood up from where he sat and went directly over to where his mother stood, with gentle tears strolling down her cheeks. With just his thumb, Segun wiped his mother’s tears off, and he gave her an ethereal kiss.
As Segun walked out of his mother’s house, he was overran by a bewildering paroxysm. The only phenomenon his wisp of a mind could grasp, you see, was carnations. He had no idea why. He had never even seen them before. Perhaps he had read it somewhere. T iny drop of tears rolled down his cheeks, and he dropped his bags and ran back to his mother,
“I wonder, mother,” He said, wiping off his tears. “do carnations grow in Nigeria?”
“Cantations?” His mother asked incredulously. “What in Sango’s name are cantations?”
“Goodbye mother,”
Segun said quietly, walking away without giving back a furtive glance.
“Where are you going?”
His mother protested. “Don’t leave me Segun – please. Don’t leave me like this.”
Most of the roads were not tarred, and as such they were a lot harder to trek upon. So much so that if you weren’t careful of the oncoming vehicles, the dusts got blown into your eyes as the barren roads protest to the harrowing speed of the vehicles, and the deafening sounds they make.
Segun did not care very much, however. He had trekked them so much that with instinct alone he could tell which vehicle would blow the dusts and which would not. More so, although he was on the road, his mind was farther away.
He was in another one of his phantasmal creations—nebulous worlds wherein hunger was not a tangible phenomenon, but a tale told by desperate parents to make stubborn children scared. And where the kids, with bored incredulity, would dismiss its veracity at once. “No, really,” The parents would insist, “kids really did starve in Africa, going days and days without food.”
“Yeah right”, the kids would reply, “why don’t you tell us about the dragons instead.”
“Yeah”, another would corroborate, “dragons are cool—and real.”
Segun gave himself a smile then. He would make a good writer, he thought. It had always been his dream to be a great writer of prose, but he knew, that dreams were not meant for people such as him. Not while the stomach is busy entangled in a painful knot.
Realizing he had been trekking all day, to nowhere in particular, he decided to weigh his choices, and at the end of the day he realized he had had nowhere to go the first place, and so he decided to return home.
As he crossed to the other side of the street, however, he realized that a book which he held loosely in his left hand had fallen in the middle of the road. He decided he could get to the book before the oncoming vehicle, and so with a burst of confidence fueled with purpose, he leapt back into the middle of the road, where he realized the erroneousness of his calculations. He could not make it out before the vehicle arrived.
Segun laid still on the dusty road, unable to move most of his body parts, making out only a little of what was being said by the shadows lingering above him and clustered around him.
“You should thank God he’s still alive.”
They were saying.
“We have to get him to a hospital.”
“Yes. But you hit him, so you take him.”
The room in which Segun was admitted was not a very spacious one. But of course the first time he had opened his eyes to it he had been unaware of this fact. A plate of fried rice and chicken which sat beside his bed had taken the sole custody of his attentions, and it was only after it had been fitfully consumed—which took close to no time at all—that he realized how small the room was.
“Wait,” He said aloud to himself. “this room is very small.”
“Yes,” Said a silhouette behind the door. “yes, it is.”
The figure manifested itself, appearing at first to Segun as that of a much older man, but as it moved closer to him he saw it was a boy who at most would be a few years older than him.
“I’m John,”
The figure revealed. “It was my car you ran in front of. Tell me, why did you wish so much to give my speeding car a hug?”
“I’m sorry.”
John smiled.
John had a very enthralling smile, which made Segun feel more comfortable with him than he would have been with another stranger. Within a short period of time they were engrossed in a scintillating conversation about books, and at the end of it Segun found he had gotten unusually fond of this stranger who had hit him with his car.
Subsequently John visited, and at the end of his stay in the hospital, they had gotten very close. On Segun’s last day John visited again, bearing gifts—food and drinks.
“I’m never getting hungry anymore,”
Segun shouted in ecstasy.
“You will,” John replied. “these won’t fill you. At the end of the day you will get hungry, but when you do, do not fight. Let your stomach tighten, and let that tightening make you strong.”
Now John was as eloquent as he was charming. He was tall too, and tidy—very tidy. After the hospital Segun and John got to the climax of their intimacy, to an extent that Segun saw John as more than just a friend, but a mentor. And on days when he was at the apex of his luck, John imparted on him some uncanny wisdom. And he would be swayed to utmost admiration, not by the message itself, but by the sheer splendor of articulation with which it was imparted.
But of all of John’s admirable characteristics, his wealth and lavishness was what Segun craved the most. He wondered inside him most times, without giving a voice to his wonderings, how one so young could have so much money, so much so that he felt maybe to dream was not so beyond him after all.
John and Segun got so close after the hospital that just days later Segun moved into John’s apartment. But there was a slight problem. It was not as fulfilling as Segun had thought. He had hoped to learn a lot from John, maybe even about his job. But John was either away all the time or too furtive about it.
One day while they were together at a restaurant John got a call from a friend who met up later with them. Apparently he was the work partner with whom John spent most of his time.
Segun thought him appalling, seeing as he was extremely drunk, and dressed like a tout. He was the exact opposite of John, and just when Segun considered how disturbing it is for John to work with such a man, another arrived, even more appalling than the previous one.
Most of their words were gibberish too, and seemed to have the same meaningless expletive in them. Only thing Segun could pick up was about a job given to them by a chief that had to be “done yesterday, if you knah mean.”
The next morning Segun woke up to John standing by his bed, dressed, packed and ready to go.
“I’ll be leaving tomorrow.”
“To where?”
“I’m sorry I can’t tell you.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
John only gave a smile, and Segun. He knew John had a secret. But he understood. They were only just at the start of their relationship. He trusted him and he understood that it was okay, for at the end of the day it was all irrelevant. He was a fine man all the way, that John, and he was glad to have known him. They hugged each other then, tightly as if forging in each other a part of the other person’s self.
“I’ll miss you, John.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll be back before you even know it. I promise.”
John turned away then as he began to take his leave, and he must have taken five steps when his attention again was seized by Segun’s beckoning voice.
“Give me a second,” Shouted Segun, jumping out of the bed. “I have something for you.”
In a moment he was back, holding his only copy of If on a Winters Night a Traveler, which with teary eye he proffered to his friend.
“For the road,”
He said.
And John accepted at last, after an initial polite declination, as he hugged his friend again.
“I’ll be back.”
The following days were the most wrenching of Segun’s rather young life. They were months filled to the insignificant second with violent discomfort. And hatred. Hatred for all things, yes, but most especially hatred for John, the one who had led him on the most.
Two months had passed and John wasn’t back. Segun had moved back to his parent’s after he found out the rent to John’s apartment had expired the month before.
One evening on his way back from the library, he was forced by nostalgia to walk by the road which led from John’s house to his, and on getting to John’s gate he saw two large policemen having a discussion with one of John’s neighbor. Suddenly he saw himself pointed to by the neighbor, and as he moved closer the policemen walked over to him.
“Do you know the gentleman who lived here?”
Asked the larger policeman.
“Yes sir,”
“He was killed last month. His body was found in a bush in the northern part of the country.”
Segun felt his throat stiffen. The devastation threatened to shake his heart, but he made sure the policemen did not see it.
“Do you know who killed him?”
Segun asked.
“We believe it was his partners. Apparently he grew a conscience and threatened to ‘oust them to the police.”
“Now look here kid, don’t act as if you don’t know what your friend does. Thant man told us you were very close.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Alright, listen here, our sources told us he had a large sum of money with him before he was killed, you wouldn’t know where he hid the money, would you?”
“Of course not.”
The policemen let him go after some more ridiculous interrogations. Getting home his mother was waiting already for him.
“Did you hear about your friend? I warned you – I warned you about that boy, did I not? Oh these boys, I knew he was trouble, these boys of nowadays.”
Segun said nothing.
“Someone sent you a package.”
Her mother revealed later in the day.
“It’s in the garage.”
“The garage?”
Segun went immediately then to the garage where he saw a brown box sitting lonely amidst empty kegs and ancient newspapers.
Naturally then he picked up the box, wondering what its content was. He was only curious about the content, you see, because he knew whom they were from, even though they were stamped anonymous, he knew.
He could feel his heart throb as he held the box to plunder. They box felt heavy and his hands shook, and all he could think about was carnations.