CHAPTER TEN

Five months have of Vivian divorced Charles. He became nostalgic; having isolated himself from home and any usual communication except few letters she wrote to Vivian. Both of them were set apart by experiences they could not share or do anything about it because he was not excused by the library organization for holidays. That was one important thing that hindered him from coming home.

One Good Friday noon, Charles entered a local flight at Rano airport and landed in Yale, his nation. Everyone around complained their way through the airport. Lines grew too long at all the stores, dinning out in a restaurant required both waiting and planning and traffic was heavy all day long. It wouldn’t improve until after Easter. Charles did not mind it too much, except for the crowding and the rudeness that seemed to come with it. He entered his car which parked for so long a time at the airport and made for his home in the south-east of Yale. He stopped at the supermarket, where he bought bread, cheese and some bottles of wine. Then he drove across the state and up the barrier island along gulf of birth of Biafra. He drove into the lot and parked.

When he entered his house that noon, he expected to see Vivian run out of the house joyfully and swoop on him with beardless kisses to welcome him, but she become a kind of vision out of reach. He looked around the rooms. All his belongings were nowhere to be found. He was horrified. Panic lanced him. He thought that criminals had come in unnoticed and made away with the properties. He bought those properties

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in expectation of the family they planned to start, a family that never happened. He felt a surge of fury so strong that for an instant he couldn’t even see, then, in a rush, it gave way to icy panic. “Where has she gone? Where has she gone with the properties?” He questioned excitedly. There was no way he could possibly know where she was. He couldn’t stand it anymore. He looked so lost and alone, as if he were reaching the end of his life. He immediately alarmed the compound with shouts, and his parents rushed out to know who made the strange noise. When they came to Charles’ flat, they found that it was him.

“Welcome my son, you have been out from the state quite for a long time?” Rogers began with thrills of joy.

“Thank you sir!” Charles answered in exclamation. “How about your work? I hope that it projected out in

moderate uniformity? We have been anxious to see you face-to-face; because it had been a long time we haven’t seen or heard from you.” Rogers inquired.

“Dad, things worked out normally as projected. I have few months ahead to finish the youth service and join the gross statistics of unemployed graduates roaming the streets,” Charles asserted.

“Since the Federal Government and its administrative council could not build up the country towards agriculture and industrialization and range the government offices with vacancies to accommodate the graduates from various universities, the statistics of unemployed graduates would insist on high rate on national employment data. But, you should not worry about employment programme any way; I have remitted five hundred million dollars for you in the western bank as a heritage,” Rogers declared.

“Dad, where is Vivian? I expected to find her in the bedroom when I got back, but I looked around for her and she was not in sight. In fact I looked for her upstairs but she wasn’t there. Did anyone come to the house,” he asked. “Did anyone take anything away from my bedroom? What happened to the properties in my flat? Did criminals break into the house unaware? Nothing is left in the rooms except the curtains hanging of the doors and windows.” Charles questioned with marked seriousness and in a sharp disconnected manner.

Rogers’ mind was scrambled around wildly seeking some kind of response. He did not know whether to dismiss the question or to suggest that they get together and discuss it further since he had just returned. He retained a very clear memory of Vivian. He had vaguely remembered that she might have left the house with the properties for good. He had been absolutely certain she had left alone with some briefcases.

“I do not know. I could not give account for the goods taken away from your flat. She was here with us few weeks ago. I do not know her whereabouts, and you could inquire from your mother where she was. Though suspicion was aided by the fact that one of her sisters said she went back to school early in the morning, which meant she should have gone to continue her studies,” Rogers declared and directed.

“Mum,” Charles called, as he turned, looking at his mother. “Did you see Vivian?” He questioned further with disrespectful seriousness.

“She was with us some weeks ago, though she was embittered and troubled about your long time absence from her. She complained to us about your absurd behaviour to her since you married her, and how you denied her your residential address of the State you were posted for National Youth Service. She also complained bitterly about your rascal behaviours. I am not really impressed with her complaints about you. She said that since she married you that you went about slumming with sexual thrills. We never believed that you would act anyhow. Last morning, I saw her packing her belongings, and I thought that she was preparing to go back to school – which was on strike few months ago,” Regina averred.

This moment, Charles was confused. He looked through the doorway as an enraged person could do out of strenuous speculation or like one thinking about something quiet mysterious. He was taken aback. Every cell of his being resisted that suggestion that she was responsible for the missing properties. The only thing that encouraged him was the realization that she was supposed to be at university since the strike had been called off. He found himself wondering why Vivian had gone without definite information on her whereabouts. “This act is not right. This is not her manners,” he murmured in agony.

“Why did you leave Vivian alone for so long a time, without even a visitation to know her wellbeing?” Rogers intruded. “A new wife needs proper attention, and you must be ready to fulfill the very top of her wishes. She must be soothed like a wound and pampered like a crying child – whose parents went on a distant journey. Ever she returned from school, I enquired about her condition and observed the state of her behaviour. I spoke to her one morning and her strange answers made a blush into my mind that still set her wider off the truth where she was packing her belongings to go. I intended to know what she was thinking, but you can’t see a person’s thought and you can’t look into a person’s mind. What I think happened all that morning with Vivian, while I talk to her before breakfast, and all through breakfast, was that her thoughts were stuck at a barrier she couldn’t get over. Of course, we are always nice to her. We had always provided for her needs…” Rogers informed further.

Charles was still looking through the door like a man looking for a missing thing. He was unable to know exactly where to find Vivian .He looked drowned from the present universe. Anger filled the pit of his heart like snakes in a pit. To his surprise, his parents did not mention about criminals breaking into the flat and made away with all the valuable properties. He said that everything Vivian had done was very carefully planned, and the planning might have taken place over months.

“Didn’t you stop her from packing all the properties in the flat?” Charles quarried angrily. His thoughts scattered like autumn leaves in the wind.

“When I wanted to know if she was going to visit her parents, she answered me with awkwardness and confusion as there was really a mixture of truth in her answers. When I tried to know her mind on the condition of departure and course of her destination, she manageably joined discourse with me, and reported your unfair treatment on her since you married her. I observed that anger was in her heart so I was calm in my answers in other to pacify her wrath. That notwithstanding, in the midst of my pampering and solicitations, she walked ponderously and passed me into her limousine car, and drove off with speed.” Rogers further explained.

Charles was totally confused about his parents’ response on Vivian’s whereabouts. He understood that she might have actually divorced him. He regretted his decision to allow himself to spend so many months in Rano without getting in touch with her. He thought of all the days he had spent away from her, working in the library. He was simply not going to live alone here till he found her; he told himself. Sitting up, he pushed his hair back and looked around. The apartment had a very different character that morning. It looked so unkempt. The house hadn’t accumulated that feeling in all the years he lived in it because the properties in the apartment had been carried away. He shook his head and was afraid to talk; afraid he had said the wrong thing, because he didn’t see Vivian pack out the properties in apartment but he was reposing on what his parents informed him. He knew that his parents would not misguide him with wrong information. His parents never told lies. Their information about her whereabouts was the truth. He stood there, watching the sky lighten and felt as if his own confusion had lightened, as if a great veil had been stripped away. He looked like a man in the grip of some kind of spell.

“Oh! My house furniture and furnishing have been packed out, properties and bank note taken away. My house is empty….” He groaned. Heaving a sigh, he forced himself to stop thinking about how difficult it was to search for her, instead, he looked around the living room again, trying to imagine what had happened there. “Did criminals break into the house?” He asked phlegmatically. “What had become of her? Where can I find her? Has she been kidnapped? Has she committed suicide on the account of my long time absence from home or is it because of my ills which she accounted before my parents? I hadn’t thought she could feel things like that. Of course I didn’t know what put her in her apparent behaviour; but, whatever it was; I thought all that sort of manner would have been taken out of her in the University. Illiteracy and ignorance are killed by learning. What had she hoped to accomplish?” Charles questioned himself in the midst of floating tears that emanated from his angry sob.

“Why are you crying like a woman?” Began Regina. “Brave and wise men do not cry in troubled time. It is true that thousands of people vanish mysteriously on earth these days, but we can’t take Vivian’s roving to be a matter that she had vanished or committed suicide. It is not easy to commit suicide. It is not a rare thing today. If she has committed suicide, did she die with your house properties and bank note which you trusted at her disposal before you went on youth service? In fact, after my vainly attempt to stop her to wait for your return, she disregarded my words, and shook me off of her path and entered her car and drove off. All the solicitations that I employed to calm down her perplexities while with us could not lure her back from running away from us. She had already accused you of many things; and posted your character so ill that she had decided to leave us without alerting us her whereabouts.” She explained further.

For long moments, there was nothing but stunned silence in the room. Finally his father cleared his throat, as if he wasn’t quite sure what to say. Charles looked like a man trapped in a nightmare, or a man who had lost a valuable treasure, and he wanted so badly to find the whereabouts of Vivian. But how could he? He felt as if his soul had been stained by the things he had just heard from his parents about her. Still feeling stunned, he didn’t know quite what to say or how to react. Then in a burst of discomfort that reminded him miserably of her elopement, he went through the entire bedroom checking locks on windows and doors, and pulling all the curtains so that he would not be visible from outside. It was inescapable that he felt as if he was under siege. Just the way Vivian had felt when he was in Diaspora.

“Yes Charles, your angry sob does not make you a man; heroes or strong men do not cry in strenuous catastrophe; you invited the black ant that bit you. Greater compatibility usually exists between two persons having similar background. I told you about the dubious characters and inconsistencies of the marriage with graduates and undergraduates before you married Vivian. If you would recollect what I initially said about your marriage with a beautiful girl like that, that at a certain period of life of togetherness, she would dislike you, and would disengage the first love she had for you, and marry a man, more handsome, more tall, more educated, more financially greater than you. Basically, look at all things graduates and undergraduates are capable of doing to their husbands on daily basis. I do not have to give you the laundry list. I do not trust these wise, learned women. They are capable of divorcing their hubbies anytime they wish. They can even poison them. They change men like clothe. Why would it be impossible that Vivian, finding out that her husband has been posted to youth service, decided to do most hurtful thing she can think of?” Charles’ father pointed out.

It took a few moments for the full meaning of his words to penetrate into Charles’ mind and in the silence that followed he became aware of Charles and how he was slowly drawling himself in his chair, and miserable was at his eyes opening wide and tears bedewed his face. He looked exotic and wild. What he had just heard was one complication he had not imagined that would come up among them. It had never occurred to him that she might actually be guilty of carrying away his valuable properties. He absolutely could not believe his eyes. Vivian’s decision to divorce him is an act of pure idiocy. It is the worst mistake any reasonable woman can make under heaven. And it is the stupidity blunder of the century. She had done what her religious organization prohibits – divorce.

“Divorce!” Charles exclaimed out of endless resentment; “as our love never changed, so, divorce had no part in my enjoinment with her whose thought left me sleepless days. I returned to see her face- to - face in peace and share with her the battle of love that enjoined us together, and discuss the affairs of our future pressing prospects. Whatever vexation she had for my absence and regardless attitudes could be right. And whatever resolution she had chosen “divorce”, must be blamed on her part, for a woman have no right to divorce her husband in any circumstance. Has she gone to her home town to explain to her parent about her lonesome situation that my absence created in her?” Charles said, and slowly shook his head. He was still having trouble taking this all in. Her elopement sounded like an unwise move to him. There was no wrong word or evil inclination in her earlier letters to him, or anything threatening while he was in the state of National Youth Service. Sometimes the pain of her departure was so bad that he honestly thought he could cut off his own head.

“Don’t be surprised to hear the faintest news that Vivian whom you still putting on your warm love and trust have divorced you, and got married to a man that pleased her. Love is a tendency toward simplicity, which cannot be violated with any impunity. You must realize that nothing in this life has ever been as painful as being able to trust a harlot. She will give you sad thoughts, and pangs of regrets. She made harsh accusation against you. There could be all kinds of stories in that squabble between you and her, which two of you would better define and settle.” Rogers added strictly.

“No Dad”, began Charles. “I am immensely proud of my marriage with her. I know that I have achieved a great triumph in marrying a virgin, an undergraduate whose innocence was not corrupt. A companion so endlessly delighted that nothing would separate us from our marriage, which was as loyal as every true marriage would be and which could not be separated by the influence of a mere man.”

“Charles,” “Regina began. “Do not be surprise to hear the odd news that Vivian does not love you any longer. Your trust and love for her is in the wind. Judging from her statements on your ills; she packed up in her resented heart, and her complaints about your absence from home and the way she packed your belongings and flinched, signifies that she has eloped. Sometimes the influence of a mere man can put a spoke in marital bloc. I told you often that some women have in their minds an image of their ideal, and they try to fit every passing infatuation of theirs into this image. Of course, no one can measure up to an impossible dream, but the infatuated one hangs on tenaciously and tries to force the other person to fulfill it. When this fails, he or she is disillusioned and searches elsewhere to find the imaginary ideal. But such persons never find their ideal. They seek a dream person that does not exist beyond their own fantasies. Persons who think like that are not good marriage material. On the other hand, Vivian had said many evil things about you. She said that she was ready to break off your relationship with her, hinting that she objected to the direction you have taken. We appealed for apology, and then she dismissed the idea.”

This discussion about Vivian’s elopement between Charles and his parent was so long, and consumed the hours of the day that Charles after fruitless enquiries about her whereabouts, turned into his empty bedroom and laid down on a bed without mattress. Few minutes later, he rose and lighted a lamp in the room, and with its flames, he saw a white envelop on a table opposite the bed. The envelop on one side was written his name; he quickly took the letter and tore it open from one end and brought out a white sheet of paper typewritten on it as follows:

“Dearly beloved Charles, I have waited for you for a long time, and I am now tired. I gave you my love, my all love in true wedlock. I offered you my assistance in anything that concerns the task of a true wife in a good coordinated wedlock. I refused any man’s company after I gave you the vows of love. But, now, I am so weakened by your acts of indifference toward our everlasting vows. I am paralyzed and dejected by your sinful apprehension, which your ills and amoral characters disdained our status. I am so terror-struck that I have not comprehended or hardly could give answers to what your proper plans were about me.

I have in these many months of your absence from me dreaded of your intentional indifferences in our marriage. You discarded me like a dirty rag and left my dear heart roving in loneliness. This is a calculated intention you would not deny the relevance of my remarks and you would distinguish that neither virtue nor principles of love had the least part in your acts. But the particular rationale and aversion I have conceived against your brutal love would be divorce, which I have out rightly carried out. You tormented me with the falsest notions and apprehensions of your flattered love. You arrested me into circumstances which were extremely critical: the attacks of your ill-love, which was more terrible to me than death itself. Your love which had set an enforced obedience on my personality.

Lastly, you would ask me, perhaps, whether all this time I have lived with you, if I have enjoyed your love and I would assure you, little or none, till just during your courtship with me, I experienced your love. Your grateful submission to all my needs and desires were recognized and accomplished. I remembered how you took me to picnic, discotheque and parties held in Hollywood. You civilized my timidity by exposing me to civilize society. Then, I relished the intimates of our reunion into marital bloc and chewed the curd of enjoyment in the arms of your love that didn’t wax cold. While our love for one another grew too great, people of the society imitated us (but imitation brings trouble) and tuned to one another that we were alike in manners, acts and deeds. Then, I felt prodigious which your love dominated me with. Love: that may be termed the salt of life, and indeed without it, the joy, great as it is, is still a vulgar one, whether in a hubby or in a bride, for it is love, undoubtedly, love alone that refines, ennobles and exalts matrimony. You have been rationally pleasured as being much too wise to be ashamed of the pleasures of humanity and you loved other women indeed, but loved me with less dignity after your courtship and union into marriage. For this your regrettable acts, I am writing to inform you that I have divorced you!

To all these words which Vivian had written in the service of her letter, however, Charles read it in tears that flowed plentifully on his check. The content of the letter put him into crisis. He was subjected to melancholic depression, which grew fiercer as he thought fervently on the word “divorce,” which formed the closing sentence to him in the letter. He read the letter again, and his heart thudded again, differently this time. He didn’t like the way it sounded. He didn’t like the implication of divorce word that she pressed into the service of the letter. “But maybe she was just bluffing?” He said and that was the impression he got.

He looked at the note for a long time, feeling that the threads of fate of their love and marriage were not running together any longer. It was an anxious feeling that he could not quite get a grip on. He was disturbed over the epistle that explained the whereabouts of Vivian. He dropped the letter on the table, letting the feeling and half formed impressions roil around in the back of his mind while he gave himself permission to think about her elopement and divorce strategy further.

“After all, she may not have meant to do anything but send me obnoxious note to find my mind,” Charles thought. She may be teasing him or pretending to signify her wrath on him for distancing her. He was surprise about her taking the next, inevitable divorce step. What really bothered him, though, was how much he found himself caring for her educational career; how much he had loved her with all his heart; how much it hurt that she had suddenly put this distance between them. He felt hurt by the way she had violated their vows and drifted away from their wedlock and away from their vows. There hadn’t been any energy left for another woman. Still stunned, he did not know quite what to say or how to react against her divorce information. The word divorce hit him with a cold chill. It was as if darkness crept into his mind, eating away the edges of normalcy and leaving him somehow empty; empty and uneasy. He certainty didn’t want to offend her. On the other hand, he didn’t want to take their relationship the way she had determined, resenting the way she had written to him and determined to prove to him that the risk she had taken was more than justified by what she had been able to learn.

On the other hand, on two letters she wrote to him while in Rano state, she wrote to him a note about his carelessness and frivolities showing that she would break off their relationship. He would not apologize to a ghost wife right now because distance had kept him bared from communication. “No, she had been planning divorce a long time until she eloped,” Charles said in an angry tone. He was not going to apologize for her inevitable step. What really bothered him though was how much he found himself caring for her guises.

Tipping back in his chair, he closed his eyes and thought about that. “How could she leave nothing at all, not even a hair in the house?” He questioned himself angrily. He was born away down the stream without making back to the shore. He extended his thought on her accusations against him. He knew really that she was hundred percent right on the account she had produced for elopement but didn’t admit it. He added in a harangue: “That Vivian in any essence has no legal right to divorce him, and that divorce proceeding is the act of a hussy.”

This is night Charles was staid and grew in constant speculation on this divorce case till he was seized by drowsy fit and fell fast asleep on a wooden bed. In his sleep, he dreamt about Vivian being married to a man richer than himself – with whom she had gone shopping. In his dream, he saw that she was pregnant and would soon bear a child to her second husband. In that fantasy also, she waved him goodbye and could not show love interest on him any longer. While she was waving him, he ran towards to grip her for an embrace, as he use to do during the period she had lived with him but she at an instant ignored him and disappeared.

Before she disappeared, she warned him severely to find another wife who would like his disregard or accommodate his evil behaviour and negligence to marriage status; those who would recognize him and consider him trustworthy. She told him to mind his own business and should not disturb her any longer. When he wanted to know if she would continue her course in English language in the university, she declined and quickly told him that since she had remarried to another man and now pregnant, she had terminated her course and would resume her studies when she delivered her child safely. Charles in the dream begged her to return home no matter how their love had met ruinous consequences but she refused his demand while he started weeping bitterly and awoke from his dream.

When he woke that morning, it was with a jolt. He sat on the edge of the bed in his pajamas, shivering, heart hammering in his chest, anger thundering in his heart, head pounding. The light was bright, too bright, after the dream. This time, the realization suddenly struck him that he might have to wait here till Vivian came home. He looked around the bedroom and raised complete hope to see her take up appearance in the room. He found that his dream was confused with his anticipation. He realized that dreams could not bleed. The rage, which paralyzed his being before he went to sleep, increased to a new degree that could not be measure in any scale. The realization struck him again that he might have to wait there till Vivian came home. He seemed still for a whole minute. He stared at a distance through the window. Like a man that has seen a ghost, one is tempted to say. But it was not really at all. Like a man that has seen something that no one has ever looked at before; something that he thought could not be.

He was so horrified by what she was complaining in the dream that he could not acknowledge that she was the person saying them. He was completely dissociated and had convinced himself that the snatches of memories he could not suppress about her divorce strategy were some kind of psychic dreams – which began giving him stream of consciousness. And he heard her say, “She was sorry she missed him, and that it is no longer important that she could continue wasting her time and life for the purpose of his baseless matrimony because nobody would like to waste a precious time on shifting affair or trusting on a man who does not care or take love very significant.” When he waited for her and didn’t see her, he began to soliloquize in wrath “Oh, I loved Vivian more than any woman in the world; I denied any woman’s courtship when I found love in her eyes. I could not sleep day and night nor was I able to finish a meal because of the thought of love for her. I rested not until I married her. I rejected the instructions and warnings of my parents and the risks to undertake a marriage with an undergraduate. I did not abide with the deceitful suspicions and envy of our enemies and the discouraging words from relatives during the period of courtship.”

He wondered what was wrong with her, that he was being so charitable to her for the entire days he lived with her. Her temper had grown entirely too hot and thought of divorce never seemed so far away from her. It was all a test, he believed, and he spent many hours praying for the strength to triumph. He was feeling as dislocated as the day she caught him with a girl in their bed. The difference was that he felt ashamed. Sometimes the pain of her departure was so bad that he honestly thought he could cut off his own head.

“Though, as to temper, Vivian is quickly riled by trivial contentment, sometimes even the sweetness of it to me made her seem to be born for domestic jubilation and felicity,” Charles began. “She is tender, naturally polite and always under sobriety – (though that was peculiar to every character of a courted girl and newly married girl), and gentle manner. It could not be her fault if ever jars from foes ruffled calm, she was always calm. She was so qualified in every way to be maintained, with attracting qualities and without being ostentatious that constitutes the desires of beautiful modern women. And being so much beautiful in physique, she never made a noise nor bragged about her incomparable beauty among the women folk. She had all those humble characters that composed the softer social advantage. She was made for admiration, if not admired by everybody in the village, universally esteemed and reverently honoured.

During the early period she had shared his love, there was no way to fight love. She had kept silent even when she felt he was wrong, because he would not hear her arguments. No matter how hard he tried to shelter her, no matter how much he had loved her and cared for her in her financial-know-how, there had come a time when she began to see him as a threat to their marital vow. He had begun to believe the divorce she gave him was an example. He had even come to believe she was his enemy too. She had torn his heart into pieces, twisting him in ways he could hardly comprehend even now.

She had wounded him. Of course he had been wounded even more because of this her divorce resolution and elopement strategy. Perhaps, worst of all was that no matter how badly he was hurt, no matter how terrible his life would become, or how many frictions that would arise and settle while he watched die; he never felt she had the right to divorce him. Instead of acknowledging the price he paid, she felt terrible for feeling that he paid any price at all. He hid her hurts and felt embarrassed by them. She denied that he suffered; even when her days of graduation suffered financial constraint…

Marriage to Charles had eventually become celibate. Since she passed the decision to divorce him, she had been living like a nun in a nunnery. She had in fact, believed that all her needs and desires for Charles had vanished somehow…

Charles was so much hurt and embittered about Vivian’s divorce to him. The irritation of it grew so violently that he felt awed and confounded about seeing himself surrounded by the warnings of his parents before he married her. With the grief of her whereabouts, he made up his mind to commit suicide. It is very hard to him to throw off thoughts of suicide. Feeling faintly unhappy, and after being tired of loneliness, he went out and bought a white rope from a nearby store. When he came home with the white rope, his parents asked him what he wanted to use the rope for. Charles was mute and could not respond to his parents’ questions.

The next morning, the sun had risen from the eastern cloud, created a fine coloured day. Waking very early, after the night’s imperfect rest and discomposure, he sat down on the edge of the bed; put his elbows on his knees to support his chin. He rocked back and forth steadily and endlessly with his head bowed and his eyes staring blankly. His face was a mask of anguish. Now and then he marked the checking-off of some point or other by a finger and bringing it back again onto his checks, or even onto the spot behind his jawbone – where there was a little movement like the movement of gills of a fish. He stood up and took his hat, topcoat and curiously put them on. He opened the front door and stepped out, to go and find his wife. He turned to pull the door closed and warm air from the room rushed through the narrow opening between the hinges. As he sails out into the glowing morning sun, a sudden voice spoke to him to stop looking for Vivian’s whereabouts, her elopement strategy and her letter of divorce.

He later changed his decision on searching the whereabouts of his wife and decided he would climb a tree unobserved and with the mind to kill himself by hanging. With the rope to murder himself, you could not say what he could stop at. Suicide tales seemed too bad sometimes for those who read them and never practice it. Though suicide is not a nice thing, and when a suicider is desperate and trying to hide his tracks he would not even be as nice as he was previously. That is what he was going to do. He is going to forget about all the troubles he was worrying about Vivian, and would focus on his suicide plan. “When the head is off, the body is useless,” he said. “And any other earthly troubled had ended.” He added. The more he thought about his state, the more the idea of killing himself appealed to him as the way to deal with the present problem. In his illusion, he groaned and said to unseen Vivian. “I fell in love with you in the University. Then I fell in love with you when you were timid. Then I fell in love with you all over again when you vowed to love me till the end.”

It suddenly struck him that he was losing patience with all these shit and all he really wanted to do was go find Vivian wherever she was and abduct her to Rano state for a week or a month or maybe the rest of his life. He desired to spend his days on the sand or in the water and just forget that the rest of the world exists. He went all nook and cranny of the town looking for her. No one else had the information on her whereabouts…

The next day, he set out a walk to a nearby forest and climbed up an oil- bean- tree with big branches, and hanged himself with the white rope on one of the projected branches. The white rope wrapped around his neck drew so tight. Almost immediately, stars appeared before his eyes. Reaching up, he clawed at the rope, dangling, as he struggled to draw a whistle of breadth into his constricted throat. As he continued dangling in the mid-air, stars continued to whirl before his protruded eyes, and the edges of his vision went going black. It was hard to commit suicide; he remembered reading somewhere in a suicide story. Hard to die suicidal or hang oneself but he had hanged himself. When his dangling legs stopped, he groaned and panted. A long, dark tunnel reached out for him and swallowed him up, until the last pinprick of light disappeared. And he gave up the ghost.

Few days later, people who saw him hanging dead, ran with tears and informed his parents and family relations about his death. They gathered around the oil-bean-tree, and felt a burst of white rage when they saw Charles tethered to projected branch of oil-bean-tree with the white rope around his neck. The rope was tight enough that his parents could see it bite deep into his neck. His eyes met theirs, but there was no vision in them any longer. His face was as white as snow. Decomposition was too far advanced. They skirted themselves on the dust and bereaved for the passing away of Charles, who graduated in first degree in English Language in Yankee University with upper credit, and could not stay alive to pay back his parents, the sufferings and the burden they had bore to train him.

After they moaned, they brought down his corpse, dug a deep grave near the oil-bean-tree and buried him. On his grave, Rogers his father wrote with a radical poetic metre:

Man’s bride has much,

Much great power

Over things that affect

His fate and way.

She gives him the crown

Of shame or honour.

She composes him live

Or pass away to hell or heaven.

She has the key to his rise and fall.

She can clothe him with peace and all.

She can bury him in sorrow, trouble fell.

THE END

THE END