19 A Master Of Himself (1/2)

I walked into the middle of this conversation and, literally, sat on the fringe of it – in a quiet corner – hearing, only in the outskirts of my hearing, the words being said but not paying them any mind; giving all my attention to my piping hot pepper soup.

'. . . Aha, so you acknowledge the concept of G.o.d, but––'

'I have given no impression of acknowledgment of any such b.o.l.l.o.c.ks concept; instead, I subscribe to the more rational, openminded suggestion of a ”controlling” force, or as Einstein put it, a ”synthesis of the laws or regularities that determine the occurrence of phenomena,” a sort of divine centrifugal ent.i.ty that directs, not necessarily presiding over in a biblical totalitarian way, the affairs of men; the hypothesis of a supreme being which, not knowing all as has been pentecostally propounded, is subject to the fickleness and volatility of the human psychology, as any mortal man.'

'A hypothesis, you say – a statement of logical guess . . .'

'Yes, a ”guessed” existence, not yet established, not yet

proven . . .'

'The problem with you scholars is your propensity to academicize every bit of––'

'Academicize, no – but as scholars it is our obligation to search for the truth, to question––'

'The truth! Haha – there is only one Truth; Jesus said, I am the Way, the Truth and the Life, no one cometh to––'

'Somebody please pluggeth this spokesman-of-G.o.d's mouth with another bottle!' This was the third man who hadn't contributed anything to the conversation hitherto. He sounded playfully exasperated. 'He is spoiling our jolliment . . . Abi na by force to do born again?'

The 'spokesman', who had hardly gone halfway with his first bottle, replied, in equally playful defence, 'I am not asking you to be born again, Cletus, or born anyhow, which would be a Herculean, if not futile, feat, seeing as you do not believe in the existence of the Father through whose Son this rebirth would be guaranteed . . .'

The other man slipped back into position, 'Father, son, daughter . . . See? That is another problem I have with you people: you will say one thing with one side of your mouth – ”Oh, there are three people!” – and use the same mouth to say, ”Oh it is one person, these three people.” How many people is it, or are there; how many mouths do you people have!'

'It is not about the number of our mouths, sir; for the Word is not of our mouths; it is established, the Word that––'

'My friend, drink your beer and leave all this talk of word for Jesus.'

'Amen, my brother,' Cletus chimed in, with a tinkling childish chuckle. 'Make we drink.'

'Yes,' the other man agreed with him, with a friendly smile, 'Let us drink, in peace.'

They drank in silence, for a while. It was during this their brief silence that I began to pay attention to their looks: the spokesman one was dressed in that near-shabby state of a person whose house was nearby and had only come out to walk his friend halfway up the street in farewell; the threadbare Google t-s.h.i.+rt that stretched into amoebic shapelessness on him hung above elderly jeans whose blue had been washed down to white in front and a very pale sky-blue in other places, and his rubber Dunlop slippers only confirmed the proximity of residence, or otherwise his open-sore penury; the least loquacious of the trio whose name had been established as Cletus wore an old flat cap over permanently impish eyes which stared too pensively into his beer as if trying, by this scholarly contemplation, to separate the dark liquid into its individual chemical components; his clothes spoke of a man who, because he couldn't afford new clothes, spent a good portion of his time pressing the worn ones he had into some semblance of newness – the creases stood out against his shoulders, arms, torso and thighs in symmetrical razor-sharp lines. The last man was dressed like any other man – a s.h.i.+rt, trousers, and shoes . . . When he spoke I noticed that he did not raise his voice like those rural parvenus sprouting all over town, but lifted it in that graceful manner of cultivated gentility; a man of good breeding enhanced by vast learning. He spoke with the gentle, but firm, authority of a man accustomed to footing bills. 'We are going to Abeke's place from here,' he announced, with an almost imperceptible wink at the spokesman. 'You should come.' 'I won't.'

'If you follow us you will.'

Oblivious to this ejaculatory pun, the man repeated, 'I won't.'

'Oh you will, Igna, trust me.'

The man referred to as Igna – which I a.s.sumed was short for Ignatius – sighed, in resignation which one could see was not concession to the other, but emotional weariness. The argument had worn him out, especially since he considered it lost, himself the loser, the foundation of his faith having been confuted by his infidel friend's polemic tenacity.

'I will take this pensive silence to mean acquiescence . . .' 'It is not; it is nothing.'

'Then I take it you are praying?' the man mocked. 'Asking your G.o.d for guidance. For direction . . . Let it go, man, and come with us!'

'Hmm, Abeke, Abeke,' Cletus mused, lasciviously, into his beer.

'Yes, Igna, Abeke, that Abeke; you have heard about her, haven't you – we are giving you a chance to see her, to touch her, feel her . . . be with her, let her fill you, fill you with joy, laughter, happiness . . .'

Igna seemed to be panting, as his chest rose and fell, like one whose imagination, running crazily all over the place, had set his heart to racing wildly in his chest.

'See, Ignatius, if you have rid her of her wrapper in your mind, which I reckon you have, then you have set your foot on the path of the sin, or isn't that what your book says, the ”good book” – your rule book.'

'It is not a rule book . . .'

'Well, if Abeke has happened to appear in her naked glory inside your thoughts you have successfully embarked upon the journey of the sin; just follow us, to reach the destination, to conclude the process. Because, what is the use of torturing your thoughts with such images if you won't let your hands and . . . and leg be involved in the enjoyment . . .'

'Enjoyment! Enjoyment, you say . . . d.a.m.nation, I say. Eternal d.a.m.nation!'

'd.a.m.n you then!' screamed the erstwhile taciturn Cletus, banging on the table with his fist, causing bottles and gla.s.ses to hop to the force of his fury. 'd.a.m.n you, man. d.a.m.n you to h.e.l.l! Get out of here!'

'I will,' Ignatius declared solemnly, accepting defeat. 'I will. I have sat in the seat of scoffers enough; I will not walk with them, in their counsel, nor stand in their midst anymore . . . I will leave . . .'

He tried to stand up, tottered forward and fell back into his seat heavily.

'Ignatius are you sure you can stand on your own, without support, or even walk home without help . . . Risi! Risi! Come and help this man to his feet.'

The barmaid appeared; a shy smile, which belied the amount of s.h.i.+ny cleavage on display, played on her luscious, liberally lipglossed lips.

'Come on!' the man urged, when she hesitated. 'Come on.'

The girl grabbed Ignatius under the arm, with the skill of a person who has helped many a drunk to their feet, and, after a moment of feeble struggle from the drunken man, steered him towards the door, shuffling and smiling. . .

'Take care of him o, Risi!' Cletus called after them. 'Take gooooood care of him; his wife is away on a mountain visiting with G.o.d, or is it the man-of-G.o.d, I don't know . . . Sha take care of him wellwell.'

'Yessah . . .'

'Good girl,' Cletus concluded, proud of himself.

He turned his smile on me then; I had been watching the unfolding scene, my pepper soup bowl empty, but for the cold bones in it, and my only bottle of beer almost empty, losing its chill. Then he turned away. 'Sade! Sade!'

The other barmaid – an older, less desirable one whose incessant curtsying made her look like a dancing puppet – appeared.

'Knack that good man over there one more bottle.' Then to me, he added, 'We're was.h.i.+ng my friend Richard's promotion. To Reader. a.s.sistant Professor.'

His tongue seemed to be loosening considerably and growing lighter under the weight of the alcohol.

'Ah, congrats,' I said, to the now quiet Reader, feigning admiration, and ignoring his increasingly irritating mouthpiece.

'Thank you, my man,' the Richard replied, in a tone that was coldly civil almost to a point of condescension; his ”my man” sounding like a pat on a servile houseboy's head.

I almost asked Sade to take the beer back, but I was thirsty.

His friend, Cletus, had seen my hesitation. 'Or are you a man of G.o.d too, like our friend?' he asked.

I managed a shadow of a smile. 'I am a man of myself,' I told them.

'Hmm,' he nodded. 'Ah, good man. Good man! Another beer for the man!'

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Sade hadn't even opened the new one; but she scurried away to fetch another, as ordered.

'Do you live around here?' the quiet Reader fellow asked, warily.

'No. I'm just pa.s.sing . . .'

'Oh, pa.s.s well, my friend,' Cletus recovered the reins of the conversation as they rose to their feet, then added, in cloying jauntiness, 'And we, Richard and I, are pa.s.sing the night at Abeke's, in sin.' He enunciated that last word with such an uncanny triumph that unsettled me somewhat, and which made me glad to see their exit. 'Sin well,' I wished them.

The sudden staccato of Cletus' laughter scattered throughout the night air like shards of gla.s.s, shattering the nocturnal stillness. 'HAHAHAHAHAHA! I like this man!' he boomed. 'Come with us, you'll like Abeke! She'll like him, won't she?' The Reader did not answer.

'Go on and enjoy yourselves,' I said.

'Sin well!' Cletus roared. 'Hahahahahahahaha . . . Good man. Good, man.'

They were barely outside when I heard Richard growl in rebuke, 'You didn't have to invite him.'

His friend replied with the rush of guttural vomiting . . .

* * *

She vomits into my pepper soup just as she bends to place it on the table, her vomit the brown-green of gutter-slime splashes all over my trousers.