Maestro GMK

I was walking out of the house fiddling with the idea that a stray bullet, from nowhere, might pierce my heart. As I stepped out, I placed my right hand on my left breast and began tapping my index and middle fingers in rapid successions. Looking around, I saw that there were scantily scattered people, mostly women. A man was seated on what seemed like a park bench, under a Neem tree some distance away, his hands spread out on the top of the back of the bench in a relaxing posture. The stood women in groups of twos and threes signaled a keke napep (a tricycle) that stopped and after a moment speedily drove past them. The women disorganizedly started walking to where I had no idea about. Anyone would perceive that something was amiss in the environment.

Earlier, when I had just awoken, I received a call.

“How are you doing?” asked the voice

“I am good, sir.” I recognized the voice. It was an older cousin of mine living in the next city.

“I heard the road has been blocked, that someone was killed. Have you heard anything?” he sounded worried.

“No, oh! I haven’t heard anything yet. Maybe that happened last night. As of this morning, I’ve not heard anything…but I’ll try to ask.”

“Okay. If you find out, let me know.”

At the time he hung up I was close to a friend’s house. But he wasn’t inside, he was seated with some neighbors on a corridor opposite his house. He knew the language of this people better and must have heard something concerning the recent happening. I asked him and he told me that a soldier shot a driver that wouldn’t stop when they ordered him to.

“They said he misbehaved. He was driving a car with lots of gallons of oil. When he didn’t stop, they shot him.”

I was in rush. I called my older cousin and told him all I was told. Because I was in a hurry, I did not inquire further. Though, I didn’t understand that story, so also did my mother not get it when I narrated the incident. She was quite perplexed.

“If he was driving past them they could only have shot at his tyres. How did they manage to shoot him?”

“That’s what I am thinking. Or it could be that after he stopped and didn’t comply with whatever they asked him to do, and was about to move, they bursted his tyres with a few bullets and threatened him and when he proved otherwise, they shot him in the chest.”

It was after the long analysis of this story that I later stepped out, toying with the thought that I might be shot, too.

The bona fide members of the community were having a peaceful protest all the while I was discussing with my mother. I later learnt it wasn’t an all round peaceful protest, that the protesters had destroyed some police checkpoints, and the police station in the public market in which apprehended pickpockets used to get some good beating.

I was outside the house to go check if any of the stalls had opened. But none had. As I was returning, a herd of protesters were violently flocking my way. I looked up and saw that there were two armour cars lazily following the protesters. The cars began firing. I wanted to run but my legs were stiff, I was struck with overwhelming fear. I couldn’t just move. I was seized in this fright while the cars fired and some protesters fell dead and others ran past me for refuge. I began trembling, and fell face down. I saw that my left breast pocket was soaked in red. I turned my tired body over, my eyes were unreadily bulging out, my whole body was hot; like a scalding liquid was oozing out of my ears, like the hair in my nostrils were singeing; I felt all this in a flash. I saw one of the armour cars pass by, then I became blind. It was all dark.

*Fiction

Sesuur is trying tonnes of different things during this lockdown. The lockdown that has kept everyone safe in their homes since February, 22nd. About 184 days have passed. Six months of staying at home to others, but six good months of tremendous improvement to Sesuur. Sesuur is thinking of the next new, big thing to do. What has he not tried? he thinks.

When the lockdown began, everyone thought they’d get back to their normal living as soon as possible; they thought the lockdown would last for three weeks, or four weeks. If very long enough, they hoped they’d get back to working, schooling, traveling, hustling and bustling, holding concerts and conventions in large, audience filled halls, in the first week of April. But as nothing happens the way people hopefully expect, this expectation was not seeming feasible. And it was in this first week of April, when no one was going to be out of their houses, that Sesuur revisited his secondary school notebooks. He saw that his handwriting had improved muchly since he started university and his writing vocabulary, too, ameliorated greatly. Comparing how he used to write – his grammar- to how he now writes, he felt proud of himself. If a person like him had not found himself in the right environment that enhances an individual’s improvement, he would have deteriorated drastically.

Sesuur didn’t start primary school early. At sixteen, one is supposed to be out of secondary school, preparing for university. Sesuur, at sixteen, was in Junior Secondary School III, so, he finished secondary school at nineteen. Children who don’t start primary school when their mates do often have lower academic performance, both in primary school and secondary school, even in the university. As a university teenager, you might sit in a lecture hall with someone twice your age, and still get better results at the end of the semester. Sesuur was definitely not the best even in his last year in secondary school, but he got a scholarship thereafter. This was because he was well behaved. In mission schools, it is your behavior that rewards you. Your good behavior gets you to good places, and vice versa; not some outstanding academic brilliance. As serendipity had it, St Paul’s Secondary School got into partnership with a new mission university during Sesuur’s last year at St Paul’s, and he was one of five selected from forty as the scholarship beneficiaries. It was in his first year in university that the lockdown began. Bearing in mind that the lockdown would not last, Sesuur did not go home, coupled with the fact that the university is far from home, a thousand-and-five-kilometer journey. He has been feeding well- the university provides that- so, all he worries about is the next new thing to learn.

When he saw he has gotten a new, good handwriting, and vocabulary, he used the month of April to read a lot of books. In a day, he read two books of two hundred and more pages, and had four hours of rest. In May, he did bunches of monologues, being both William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, and many other acts. When summer drew near, he got interested in learning the condiments of music, and he did learn. He studied the staff notations and solfa notations, that by the end of the summer he was already sight reading Wolfgang’s Hallelujah. Autumn is here, and there’s still no sign of the beginning of the end of this lockdown.

Sesuur does know that a changed person is what he has become. His brain has felt an immense amount of strain, he, too, feels it. The troubling topics in Physics, Chemistry, and Biology is what he is now set to conquer. When this is done, and the end of the lockdown still tarries, he will search for whatever that troubles him, and he will break its back.

*Fiction

The dance was not one of the trending dance moves; she aptly got into the traditional African dance, bending and jerking her back to and fro. It wasn’t her worry that her moves weren’t modern, she just danced to celebrate her children. As she danced towards the miniature stage on which two of her children were dancing with the other graduating students, their mates, I saw love.

I saw a dutiful, loving, never-giving-up mother whose dream for her children to gain a degree came through.

Though there were other parents there, her case particularly interested me because she single-handedly raised these children. And she, too, was the only parent who got up when the music began, danced to the stage, climbed the stage, danced through with her daughter (the son, my friend, claimed ‘man don’t dance’), and returned to sit after the music slowed and faded. The other women there still had their husbands with them, and I presume they could not have possibly known what joy rang in this widow’s heart seeing her son and daughter graduate from the university at the same time.

This same widow lost her second-to-the-last son last year. Quite terrible a thing to happen, after already losing her first son and husband years ago, that she wept for a month, and still mourns him.

I have no second-hand knowledge of how expensive it is to study in a Nigerian university, given the economic situation of the nation. And this woman took two children through it all. What other success is greater than this to her!*

Fiction

Driving down Gbaaondo’s street in Vandeikya, towards GMK football stadium, I saw Anna.

Way back, Anna had this huge admiration for me. I once asked her out but she opted out saying, ‘Charles, I don’t just like you; I actually adore you. But you see my life? It’s complicated and I don’t want such a sweetheart like you to come into my life and leave with regrets. Let’s just maintain a casual friendship. I still love you, but it work the way you want.’ It was a hard moment for me after I heard her say all this to my face. I looked into her eyes and saw utter truthfulness, I realized it had to stop there and I should not press the issue further. I backed off.

We were both students of the same university, she 300 level of Mathematics, me in 100 level of Physics, but I was older age wise. She caught my attention the day she performed Ed Sheeran’s ‘Perfect’ during one of the university’s Love Feasts, which was my first to attend. After the Feast was over, I saw that she was walking to the hostel alone. From where I came, a beautiful girl with quite a flawless voice, after a well done performance, would have a bunch of admirers and good music appreciators flocking around and about her. ‘Or was it because she was no new student and perhaps, everyone already knew she was quite a lovely singer that no one was with her while she walked back to the hostel?’ I thought. I later got to understand that most people had it that she was somewhat proud, but she wasn’t proud to me.

It was in this humble nature that she sincerely told me we couldn’t be in a romantic relationship.

Before this ending, before I backed off, her respect for me grew extravagantly when she discovered that I did and loved music more than herself. We’d sing together for hours under some Neem trees close to her hostel, mostly in the evenings, and I’d teach her some secrets to achieving a cherishable singing vocalism through ways she was supposed to exercise her vocal cords, and maintain the right singer’s diet, even though she was just a student.

Anna was a person one would call ‘lovable’ but only to those so close to her. We lost contact after graduation and I never saw her until today as I drove towards the stadium. She wasn’t looking bad anyway. I didn’t look at her, or around her for long, to see what she was doing in Gbaaondo’s street.

My windshields were tinted with black, so Anna didn’t see me. I drove past her and pulled over at the stadium.

*Fiction

Catherine had a flourishing zeal for music since her childhood but she didn’t get into the finest music school in town because she became an orphan at a very tender age.

Catherine lost her father at six, and her mother died the following year. Her father was a peasant, a farmhand who could provide just enough for his family to survive. The subsistence agriculture he practiced- if the farming season was foreseen to be favourable- he would extend to a larger scale to see that he got more harvest that could both serve as food for his family’s consumption, and for sales. Catherine was the only child they planned to have, and he could do anything for her. When he discovered that Catherine loved music and, at four, was enthusiastic about learning the piano- the only item of great value in his house, a heritage- he promised her that he’d fulfill his dreams through her.

The Bennett linage was the musical bloodline of the county, and passed down this piano from generation unto generation. This gene of musicianship didn’t skip any generation for over three centuries. The Bennetts were a well-to-do family, and every male child born into the family was sent to a big music school at the age of eight to maintain the bloodline as contracted by the first Count and the first Bennett .
The first Bennett got into agreement with the first Count after he was acclaimed the most skilful pianist, and was called to perform for the count whose heart melted after Bennett played, that he asked Bennett the one thing he desired.

This practice went on well for more than eighteen decades, until Catherine’s great-grandfather could not beget a son after ten years of marriage. After the eleventh year of their fruitlessness, goodness blessed them with a daughter. The Count at that time refused to compromise the terms of the contract, so the contract was relinquished. The Bennett family lost all privileges they relished within the confinements of the contract, even the mansion they dwelt in, therefore the Bennetts became scattered all over the county and beyond.

Catherine’s grandmother, whose husband left her for greener pastures after suffering years of farming in the county, told this story to her son, Catherine’s father: how she was blamed for the misfortune that followed her birth; how even with her love for music her poor parents could not afford the tuition of the music school; and why she named him Bennett.

It was because of this name that a new Count learnt of an abandoned mansion, was taken to it and found the piano, inquired and then commanded that it be returned to the Bennetts, and Bennett, Catherine’s father, became in possession of this antique of thirty decades.

He, too, wished to have been schooled musically, but his struggling mother could not help, too. The blood for love of music was not obstructed, so it kept flowing.

The music blood still flows and is flowing in Catherine’s fingers as she powerfully pounces the keys of the piano. A tear trickles down her cheek. She doesn’t, but knows that only goodness brought her thus far, playing the heritage in front of a million-and-ten audience.

*Fiction

We just met and I was in my usual aura, being friendlily funny. I, possibly, am not very good at making jokes but I always succeed in making ladies laugh so hard. She laughed her moodiness away, kept laughing while I said things that, to me, were basically witty. In situations like this, that have happened severally, I think my wittiness is a joke, but not so, methinks. I then said nice things to her that made her ‘awwwnnn’ and ‘hmmmm’. At this point, she was interestingly staring at me and I saw something in her eyes -interest, of course. The mood around us that was, a moment ago, laughy became sober. I don’t like that mood when we’re not talking business. I kept making her ‘awwwnnn’ until she said “You’re cute”.
Ladies do tell men they find attractive that they’re cute and the men will be like “Oh! Thanks”. But I don’t like cute. And I told her, “I’m not cute, eh? Don’t tell me that.” Then I stopped talking.

*Fiction

It was practically impossible for us not to steal a glance at each other, ’twas just impossible.

I broke it. I broke the relationship. I broke her heart.

“Let’s cut ties”, I said.
“What do you mean?” she replied.

Before we parted ways, she told me she had already seen it coming, that my attitude toward her had gradually, unbecomingly become ‘unfathomable’. Yes, unfathomable was the word she used. I said to myself that that was too big a word to use to describe how boring I sounded on the phone when she called, how I stopped making jokes while I walked her towards the school gate, how my chats on WhatsApp turned mind-numbing, how I became too sensitive that her fleeting banter would unassumingly start a quarrel. All these she called unfathomable. I had my mind already made up, and she too said nothing more. I told her that we should begin to see each other as total strangers, if not strange enemies. Her complacency had hitherto been a thing I, too, could not fathom; I could not puzzle out her anxiety at the moment, as in the past. We ended it.

After then, we crossed paths a million times. We could not hold ourselves from looking at each other even for the slightest glimpse. Sometimes, our eyes met but we did not want to see each other the way it used to be. We had let go but did not actually let go.

*Fiction