Season of Crimson Blossoms (28 page)

Binta rested her head on his chest as he leaned his back on the headrest. She sighed. And Reza sighed too. Their lovemaking had been awkward; their kisses were perfunctory, lacking passion, as if they were strangers to each other's bodies.

He caressed her shoulder absently with his fingers and stared at the wall. Memories of his first time in the house, when he had pricked her with his dagger, assailed him. He searched for the scar on her neck in vain.

‘I am sorry.' The words tumbled out so fast they surprised him. He put his arm around her and squeezed her to his chest.

‘Sorry? For what?'

‘For the first time I came into this room. For what I did to you.'

Her silence stretched into the fields of reminiscence. She thought of her life before the day he had first scaled her fence, how different it had been since then; how, in equal measure, she had been happy and despondent; and how she had to bring an end to this affair that was, of late, causing her more distress than happiness. She sighed, ‘Things happen for a reason.'

Reza held her tighter and buried his face in her greying hair. Thoughts of his sick father came to him, how badly he smelt from his illness. He wondered if he himself would repulse his grandchildren if he ever grew to be that old.

She played with the curly strands of hair on his chest, picking at one after the other and stretching them to their full length. She basked in the comfort of his being there, of the masculine scent he exuded. But this sensation passed when the shadow of her recent encounters crept into her mind. And the cause of all
this opprobrium was the man on whose chest her head rested. She sighed again. ‘Were there people outside when you came in?'

‘Just some kids playing. There were some men talking, you understand—'

‘They saw you?'

‘No. I walked past twice. The third time, they were gone. I was careful. It was easier climbing the fence though.'

She sighed. ‘Yes. But now the wires are there. We have to be careful, Hassan.'

‘We have been careful—'

‘We need to be more careful. People have been saying things.'

Reza grunted. ‘Have you ever seen the sea?'

She raised her head and looked at his face, her eyes wide with bewilderment.

He was looking away into the distance, beyond her walls. When he spoke, it was in the distracted fashion of one given over to baffling reveries. ‘I have been thinking of the sea. All that water; sometimes patient, sometimes raging. All that water, you understand. Can you imagine what it could do?'

‘I saw the sea only once, Hassan. From the little window of a plane on my way to the hajj.'

‘Is it far, Mecca?'

‘Not so much now. Just a little under five hours.'

He sighed and for a while he was silent. ‘She called last night … that woman. She wants me to join her in Jeddah. Imagine. She said she would book my flight and make all the arrangements.' He chortled. ‘She even spoke to my father and wished him well.'

‘That was nice of her. And what did you say to her?'

His face darkened. For a long while he ground his teeth. ‘You know, I think she is getting lonely, you understand? I told her she would die alone and they would dump her corpse somewhere because no one would grieve over her.'

Binta sat up. ‘That was not a good thing to say, Hassan. She was trying to make amends. You shouldn't have said that. You should give her a chance.'

But she could see from his face that he was already shutting the door to that conversation, as if he had discovered a draft coming in through a half-opened window, rattling his heart, which
had been fossilized by the callousness of fate. She tried to say something that would keep that window open for a little longer but he pulled her to him.

‘I want to see the sea someday.' He stroked her head absently. And as far gone as his mind was in the blue-green of the sea, he imagined for a moment what it would be like to have Leila lying on his chest. He imagined his hand stroking her silky, scented hair and the colour of the sea reflected in her eyes. He remembered that first girl he had fallen in love with when he was a teenager, the one who had gone on to have that hideous baby. He remembered what being in love felt like, how his heart used to flutter when he saw her smile at him in the coy fashion of a lovestruck teenager. But beneath the waves of sadness, there was a tinge of anger and regret. Anger at Gattuso and Joe and Dogo who, because they feared they would be caught, had abandoned Leila outside a hospital at midnight. And regret that he did not, in his own way, say goodbye to her.

Binta gripped his hand, perhaps with some unintended force. He looked at her and saw the tint of fire in her eyes; the sort only jealousy could ignite.

‘There is another woman, isn't there, Hassan?'

‘What?'

She moved away from him. ‘There is another woman.'

‘What are you talking about?'

‘You are seeing another woman.'

‘Me? What woman?'

She eyed him with such intensity that it made his comportment thaw. ‘There is another woman.' This time she was certain. ‘The way you touched me just now, it wasn't me on your mind, it was her. The other woman.' She got out of the bed and started putting on her clothes. ‘I should have known. The way you've been making love to me recently, I should have known. In your mind it was her.
Iskancin banza
!'

He got out of the bed and calmly collected his clothes piled on the side of the bed, grinding his teeth as he did so. When he was done dressing, he turned to her. ‘I have a lot of things to deal with, you understand. I've got these runs, some crazy business I don't fully understand yet and it's giving me sleepless nights.
Now the job is bungled and I have some explaining to do and I don't know where to start, you understand? My father is lying in a hospital and I am here, with you. He was the only one who ever gave a damn about me, you understand? And I am here, with you, you understand? I need to be at San Siro now to ask the boys how they messed things up. I turn my back one fucking minute and they mess things up. I need to ask them, you understand? But no! I am here, with you. And look what you are doing.'

Her heart whirled with that tortuous sensation that drives lovers to passion-induced savagery. She wanted to hurl something at him, to make him bleed. But when she looked into his eyes and saw the vortex of emotions, she thought of her son Yaro, to whom she never gave the chance to tell her how confused he must have felt. She went round the bed and tried to hug him but Reza resisted. She persisted until he allowed her to press him to her heart. How could the world not understand what he was going through, how he needed her, how she needed to save him as she had failed to do with her own son? How could they judge her?

It was the first time their troubled hearts truly embraced, melting into each other. It was the first time his heart touched hers. It was, despite their shared ardour and litany of memories, the closest he ever came to feeling love for her. ‘God, I am sorry.'

And she was certain she heard the hint of tears in his voice.

He did not want her to see his heart, naked as it was then, or the tears in his eyes. ‘I have to go now. I have to go, you understand?'

He pushed her aside and hurried out of the room. She ran after him, calling his name, the one no one else remembered but her. When he crossed the living room and opened the door, she dashed after him. He was halfway to the gate when it was pushed open and Ummi rushed in. She did not acknowledge him and sped past him to her grandmother who was frozen by the door. But Fa'iza, who was at the gate, recognised him immediately and her heart stopped. Reza marched on until a man appeared behind Fa'iza. He rightly assumed him to be Binta's rich son. They regarded each other, Reza in bewilderment, Munkaila in sheer rage, the sort the younger man knew inspired men to murderous deeds.

Beyond Reza, Munkaila saw his mother, whose guilt was evident on her face and in her hastily flung-on dress that left her
shoulder bare and exposed the straps of a black bra. He latched the door behind him.

And that was precisely when Binta remembered that she had woken up that Sunday morning to the unmistakable smell of giant cockroaches.

Again Binta Zubairu found herself ensnared in a lingering daymare. Her mournful curtains, which bordered this dream, took on a deeper shade of grief and blurred the boundaries so that she had no idea when she was dreaming and when she was not. Surrounded by faces she only saw as a blur, of pensive friends and wailing kin, she sat on her bed chanting at intervals the mantra of her grief: ‘
Innalillahi wa inna ilaihi raji'un
.'

The offers of condolences passed into a haze and she was certain she would wake up to find Munkaila sitting on her couch, jingling his car keys around his chubby finger. And when she thought of that finger and his plump cheeks and the potbelly he was rather fond of caressing being eaten away by the hosts of the earth, tears streamed out of her eyes. Her Munkaila shrouded only in white muslin thrust into the belly of the earth. Her Munkaila who resented even the ants that ran wild on his Italian shoes.

In the days that followed, the defining moment looped in her head with cinematic precision. The expressions on Munkaila's face played out so vividly, the wild chaotic chase, the sight of Reza speeding away, his footfalls now echoing in the labyrinth of reminiscences, her chaotic screams for them to stop. And the last
word her son had uttered, the way in which he had addressed her: a half growl that had conveyed all the contempt he felt for her.

While Binta was lost in these dreams that lingered too long, it was left to her sister Asabe and her daughter Hadiza to accept condolences and see to the administration of the house of grief. They had arrived, with their husbands, as soon as the news had reached them. Hureira, too, had made an impromptu return, also accompanied by her husband, who had spent only a night and had since returned to Jos. But Hureira had been wailing so much she had promptly constituted herself a nuisance.

Sadiya, who had come to see Munkaila one last time before he was buried the day he died, stationed herself in a corner of Binta's room surrounded by her relatives and friends. In their midst, she sat, swaying between anger and bafflement.

It was her disgusted relatives, who had barely waited for the completion of the third day prayers, who ushered the widow and her children into a waiting car and drove her back to her parents' house, far from where her husband died trying to save his mother's honour.

The men sat under the canopies set up in the yard, bowing their heads, sighing and clicking at the backs of their throats. The women remained indoors, falling on each other and wailing occasionally. Sometimes they talked, in the tents and indoors, about the tragedy, so that in the end several versions emerged. Some of them suggested Reza strangled Munkaila with his bare hands. Others had it that Munkaila had chanced upon his mother and that insufferable rogue going at it butt naked.

But Binta knew, as did Fa'iza, who had sealed herself in a cocoon of silence, exactly what had happened. And in their silence, conjectures and speculations blossomed. So she sat in her grief contemplating the boundaries between lingering nightmares and tenuous reality. On the third night, she got up, picked her way through the sleeping figures in the living room and went out into the night. The yard was doused in moonlight and a pale breeze played with her hijab as she wandered in the yard. When she found herself at the spot, she had no idea how long she stood there until Hadiza and Asabe, alarmed by her absence, rushed out to look for her.

‘Yaya, come in now. It's ok.' Asabe put her arms around her sister. They had never been close because there had always been a chasm of reverence between them. Asabe was six years younger and at the time they should have forged closer ties, Binta had married and Asabe was left to play big sister to their siblings. But grief had always brought them together. The devastation of the interminable Jos riots that had forever altered the landscape of their lives drew them closer, when Binta lost her husband, and then Asabe's own spouse and son were taken from her.

‘It was here,' Binta gestured. Her face glistened with tears. ‘He was lying right here.'

‘Hajiya, it's ok. Let's go in now.' Hadiza gently pushed her mother's hands down, away from the spot where Munkaila had fallen. She put her arms around her mother's shoulder and tried to guide her away. Binta fell to her knees and the women knelt by her, imploring her to rise.

‘He didn't want to fight him. He didn't want to but Munkaila, he chased him. He chased him and they went round the house and he tried to unlock the gate but Munkaila, he chased him.'

‘Shush. Yaya, it's ok. It was destined to happen.'

‘I was screaming for them to stop, I was saying Munkaila stop, Munkaila stop. But he wouldn't listen. Fa'iza was screaming. So much screaming …' Her voice trailed off. She sniffled and covered her face with her hijab.

Hadiza tried to rouse her, but Asabe urged her to leave her alone.

‘They went round the house again. And then Munkaila didn't come out. And Hass … Reza ran out and unlocked the gate and we came round and he was lying right there, right there. And the wood was there, beside him. He had struck him on the back of the head. And he was panting like this … like this …' She inhaled deeply then froze.

She remembered the sound of Munkaila falling, a sound befitting a man of his bulk. She could not, however, bring herself to describe how he had looked at her as she and Fa'iza tried to help him up. How he had growled, ‘Mother' with such contempt that she still felt the sting. How his last conscious movement had been to push her hands away from him. She had never seen anyone die with so much anger. She knew her family was afflicted by the incurable
curse of incendiary rage and it was that rage, that legacy of her late husband Zubairu, that had killed Munkaila, more than the blow to the head. And she wept, there in the silvered night, right where her son had died.

Gattuso looked at Reza sitting by the little window, looking out at the herd of cows grazing in the field of wilted grass, being shepherded by a boy no more than fourteen. The stench of an unwashed body reached him. But it was the look on Reza's face that distressed him the most.

‘Reza, I have been here five minutes and you haven't said anything.'

Reza sighed. ‘Sorry, brother. I've been preoccupied. I never meant to kill him, you understand. I wanted to get away but he kept coming after me. I just struck him so I could get away. She must be very sad now, Hajiya. Have you seen her since it happened?'

Gattuso cracked his knuckles.

Reza sensed there was something wrong. He turned and regarded Gattuso, who bowed his head and shook it intermittently. When Gattuso looked up, he saw that his eyes were bleary, his face swarthy. But it was the sense of loss in his eyes that troubled Reza. He left the window and crossed the little hut to sit with his friend on the narrow bamboo bed.

‘Gattuso, what's wrong?'

Gattuso heaved and leaned back against the mud wall. ‘You are so lost in this woman, you don't even realise what you have put us through, we the boys who have stood by you all these years, Reza?'

Reza sighed and scratched the five-day stubble that had been irritating him. ‘I'm sorry, man. I'm sorry. How are the boys?'  

Gattuso punched his fist in his open palm. ‘They raided San Siro as soon as they got news that that man had died. You know the new OC, that mamafucker. Most of us heard that you had been involved in a murder and took off immediately. They raided San Siro and got Joe.'

Gattuso sniffled. It made Reza sit up.

‘What happened?'

‘He was so angry we didn't collect the ransom he went and got himself drunk. When they came he was too sozzled to run. They took him into custody and hours later they shot him, in the cell. They said he wanted to escape. The mamafuckers. They shot him in cold blood.'

‘They shot Joe?'

Gattuso wiped his eyes. He stood up and went to the window, where Reza had been moments before. In the distance, the sun was setting, casting a reddish glow on the plains spread out before him. The herd had moved on and only a flock of egrets ambled along in the pale grass. The silence in the little mud room irritated him and he wondered what it must have been like for Reza, who had spent days in the shack, the temporary hideout in the plains of Gwandara. He looked around and saw the familiar squiggle he had made on the walls with a nail. Patterns without meaning or ideas behind them. In the two nights Gattuso had spent hidden away in that room, it was the only thing he could do to get things out of his mind. It had been a little over a year before, when he had got into a fight and broken a young man's limb. When he learned that the boy's father was an army captain, he knew he had to go underground. Reza had shoved a key in his hand and told him how to find the shack. He had stayed there, etching inane patterns into the wall for two days that tested the limits of his sanity. On the third day, he saw Reza approaching from the distance, smiling, and he knew the matter had been settled with the captain. Gattuso never knew how, and never asked. But he remained grateful to Reza.

And when news reached San Siro that the man Reza had whacked in the head had died, and Reza had slunk away and had not been seen or heard from for days, Gattuso knew he would be at the little shack in the plains, tormenting himself with solitude.

He turned and saw Reza sitting on the bamboo bed that had gathered a season-long shower of dust, head bowed as he wept.

‘The sun is setting.' Gattuso cracked his knuckles.

Reza wiped away the tears from his eyes.

Gattuso reached into his pocket and fetched a packet of cigarettes. ‘Let's have a smoke, for Joe.'

They sat down on the dirty floor, their backs against the walls,
and puffed their grief into the bare
azara
rafters. In silence gilded with ribbons of smoke, they honoured the memory of Joe.

After two sticks, Gattuso stretched his legs. ‘That man was an important man. The police have been all over this one. They have been hunting down people. Too much heat, Reza. This is just the excuse that fucking policeman needed to ruin us.'

Reza shook his head absently. ‘I just want her to know that I never meant for it to happen this way, you understand. The bastard wouldn't get off my case. I just whacked him so I could get away. It wasn't even a serious blow but the fucker just keeled over and died. Fucking rich, spoilt bastard.'

‘So what do we do now?'

‘I don't know if we can fix this, Gattuso. But I will talk to the senator and see what he can do.'

Reza reached out for another stick and Gattuso lit it for him. He had endured five days of empty spaces but had found the gaps in his mind occupied by circuitous thoughts.

‘Reza.'

‘Mhm.'

‘Any news about your father?'

‘He has been discharged. Two days ago.'

‘You went to see him?'

‘No. You know they will be looking for me there. I called.'

A cricket started chirping. It was jarring at first but the familiar rhythm grew on Reza. It was therapeutic. And a strange bird in the night cawed, a lyrical and haunting sound that rent the night and disrupted the rhythm of the cricket. After a while the insect resumed its solo from the crevice.

‘Gattuso.'

‘Mhm.'

‘Have you heard anything about Hajiya?'

Gattuso hesitated. ‘No, man. I'm sorry. We have all been underground. Don't even know where some of the guys are.'

‘I just want to tell her I didn't mean for this to happen.'

Again, the bird in the night cawed. It repeated the haunting sound and then took off in a flurried flapping of wings.

The ends of their cigarettes glowed eerily in the dark of the night. In the darkness of their grieving hearts, there was only silence.

From his couch, Senator Buba Maikudi observed Dauda Baleri sitting across from him and concluded he did not like the policeman. But he smiled and shook his hand.