19 A Master Of Himself (2/2)

'Yeeeeeeee!' Madam Caro wails from her place behind the counter. 'Dis girl don kill me oh!' She flies towards us, with a violent speed that belies the burden of her bosom and bottom, landing on Risi with a slap whose force drives the poor girl's body into the ground, taking the table with it in a mighty crash.

'Madam!' I cry.

'Ah, oga, di girl don get belle! She don carry belle under me! I don dey ask am since, she no answer. I tell am say I go catch am . . . I never catch you now? G.o.d don catch you today!'

Belle? The woman seems to be more incensed at the thought of the girl's pregnancy than at the horrifying fact that she has just puked into a customer's bowl of soup. What was so insanely infuriating about a barmaid's pregnancy anyway, I wonder, that would make vomit in a patron's bowl of soup become inconsequential.

It takes almost a whole village to prise the deranged proprietress off her girl who is now bleeding from the mouth and nose and writhing on the floor in agony and fear.

Finally subdued in a corner, panting, Madam Caro asks Risi

the inevitable question: 'So na who give you di belle, ashawo girl?'

The answer can't make it through the girl's gurgling and sniffing, and it is only after a few feints from Madam Caro and the clamour of pleas from the crowd – Ansa na! You wan' may she kill you! You nor get mout'? Na who be di papa? – that the answer comes in a barely discernible whisper:

'Broda Igna . . .'

'Ehn?'

A silence falls upon the crowd, followed quickly by a murmur that grows into various degrees of exclamatory wails, from astonishment to disgust to raw ire; the largest of the interjections coming from a woman who has stepped forward out of the throng to accost the battered barmaid.

'Ehn? What did you say? Who? Who gave you belle?'

Risi, recognizing the woman and the growing blaze in her

eyes, recoils in terror.

'I say who did you say got you pregnant?'

It is not until someone kicks her that she repeats, 'Igna. Broda

Ignatius . . .'

'Heyyyyyyyy . . .'

At the moment that terrifying keening rent the air, I cast my mind back to a few months ago – I can't recall how many exactly – and try to recollect the face of the drunk man that had been helped home by this girl. . . Is this his wife who had gone visiting on a mountain? Oh Lord Jesus . . . Poor woman.

Tears have quickly sprung to the surface of her eyes, while a baleful blaze burns beneath. Her delicately pretty face is marred by the heat of the malicious wrath it is presently wreathed with . . . She is like a flash of lightning when she pounces – one minute she is standing there looking as if she is about to drop dead, like one in a spiritual trance; the next minute she is upon the cowering barmaid, biting and tearing, spitting and scratching, with savage bloodcurdling screams to accompany the battery, as she flies rabidly out of control. She has taken everyone by surprise; this is not what anyone had expected, at least not to this extent; even the vicious Madam Caro is shocked into motionlessness. What would make an erstwhile good Christian woman snap so suddenly and go completely carnivorously berserk; what kind of dark demon could have possessed such a good, pure heart so abruptly.

It takes more pa.s.sers-by, stronger ones, to remove her from the almost dead pregnant girl . . . If the girl could have been beaten to such a state of sogginess, I wonder, the foetus must have turned to liquid.

I want to help the girl – clean her up, bandage her, give her a bed . . . But the way her panting a.s.sailant is glaring from the corner where she is being held down by big men with strong arms, I stay put. It is that dark demon still in possession of her heart that is glaring out through her eyes, it is not her; I can see it, I recognize it.

Confronted with evil in such corporeal Stygian form, one's milk of kindness dries up instantly and the intention to do a good deed takes leave of the person . . . Besides, I had never been a good Samaritan; I am just a man in pa.s.sing. I usually just stop here for the goat-meat pepper soup on my way from town to town as an itinerant labourer, in search of houses to be built, farms to be tilled, graves to be dug, and such . . . Just for the pepper soup. . . There will be none here today; only blood and tears . . . and maybe death.

I look down at the mangled body on the floor lying still in the slime of pepper soup, pregnancy vomit and blood . . . And somehow the greatest portion of my mourning is for the loss of my evening's pepper soup.

* * *

By the time I'm leaving, the crowd is still swelling, filling Madam Caro's bar to bursting and spilling into the street, all the way down; the news has spread far, and is already taking on the natural form of big juicy towns.h.i.+p gossip, being stretched and embellished as it travels from mouth to ear: Ah, that s.l.u.tty Risi, a mere illiterate barmaid, had infiltrated the tightly Christian home of Brother Ignatius and Sister Charity and had come away with a pregnancy (which Sister Charity hadn't been able to acquire for years), and Sister Charity had beaten her to death and had run mad in the process – naked-in-the-market-square mad o! Sister Charity, the town's model of a good Christian woman and wife, Sister Charity of the most angelic voice in the choir who led choruses at every church meeting and sang sweet solos to the heavens. A demon, a dark ugly demon, has possessed her soul, you have to see it . . .

* * *

At the motor park, on my way to the next town, I run into Ignatius' friends, Reader Richard and the jolly Cletus; they have just returned from a trip. Both of them are stinking drunk; Richard, in his usual sedate manner, managing to portray more composure than his less refined friend.

They recognize me first and, in the state of near-blind inebriation which makes him seem more expansive than usual, Richard cries, 'Ahhh! Our man!'

'Yes!' his friend agrees, a.s.serting this claim by clapping me on the clavicle in what should have been a friendly gesture but sends a shaft of pain down my arm. 'How have you been!' he shouts.

'Quiet,' I reply, 'Which cannot be said of Madam Caro's at the moment.'

'As how?' Cletus asks, his eyes lighting up with the Schadenfreudic prospects of gossip.

'The little fire you people started there has just burst into a

conflagration . . .'

'What nonsense.'

'Madam Caro's barmaid Risi is pregnant, and––'

'And we are the father . . . Or how does this consign us?'

'You set her upon a certain Ignatius friend of yours, didn't you.'

'Oh that funny episode back then . . . hahahahahahaha . . .'

'You people knew fully well that he was drunk and his judgment couldn't be trusted and––'

'We?' Cletus swallows his big laughter abruptly, and takes on a scowl. 'We. We put funnel for him mout' pour di beer for him throat? Or we put him ting for inside di girl?'

'See,' Richard takes over the conversation, with that calm academic tone suited for explaining theories, 'the problem with

Ignatius is that he cannot hold his drink . . .'

'E nor sabi drink!' Cletus translates. 'Only one bottle!'

'Well, that was enough to start the fire raging at the bar right now . . . And if you people knew this you shouldn't have bought him any alcohol at all . . .'

'Forget Ignatius!' Cletus barks.

But the more rational Richard goes on to explain, 'All we were doing was just celebrating a good promotion, and we decided to call up an old friend we hadn't seen since we left school, for a harmless reunion, a few drinks like old times, unaware that he had become this . . . this 'Brother' . . .'

'Even when e no Brother, Igna nor sabi drink! Abeg forget Ignatius . . . come and have a drink with us at the motor park's beer parlour . . .'

Unable to make the blame stick, I contemplate the offer. 'Do they have pepper soup there?'

'Hahahaha! My good man! Better than Madam Caro's own!'

'I'd been made to believe hers is the best in this town.'

'Nonsense! Man wey never chop anoda skele ponmo go tink say na him wife own sweet pa.s.s.'

I find this crudely ribald allusion very offensive, especially in the light of the present situation with Risi and Ignatius of which the drunk duo are too keen to dismiss, but I follow them anyway.

'Forget Igna abeg!' Cletus declares, with finality this time. He is already looking forward to drinking away whatever is left of his friend's new salary.

The friend, seeing the look of worry still on my face, says, 'Seriously, my man, forget Ignatius; a man who has allowed rules, laws, commandments, whatever you want to call them, purportedly laid down by a foreign G.o.d, a Western G.o.d, to restrict him and determine the limits of his liberty deserves whatever troubles come upon his head . . . So, forget Igna, his G.o.d will help him.' 'Amen,' says Cletus, in mock solemnity.

'Just forget him.'

I do – I cast him out my mind, along with his wife, Sister Charity, his G.o.d, the broken Risi, and my lost pepper soup, and dig into this fresh bowl before me. The lecturer and his friend were right – the pepper soup is great, and a man who has chosen spiritual bondage over Self deserved to suffer for his foolishness.

Me, I am a master of my Self; I deserve to enjoy.

We drink and laugh well into the night, Ignatius forgotten, as well as my trip and miscellaneous sorrows.

A man of himself forgets easily, and is free.

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