FICTION: Short Story

Tough Guys Write Poetry
By Maxim Uzor Uzoatu

On the first day of my honeymoon, I hardly thought of my wife and me. I spent the hours thinking of another man. Chike literally stood before me, his large and impish eyes boring into mine with characteristic abandon. Then I would recall for the umpteenth time the moment during the send-off party when he kissed Victoria and soulfully told her: “When I look into your eyes I see the Statue of Liberty.”

Until recently, you could not quite count Chike among my friends. We had been classmates at the University of Ife in the early 1980s, and I can count on my fingers the number of times we ever exchanged pleasantries. We met infrequently at parties and tutorials; he complained to a couple of my friends that I ‘carried a permanent chip on the shoulder,’ while I felt he was an insufferable wag. We naturally drifted apart after our university studies, and it was such a surprise when I got to the office one Friday morning late last year and a saw a note that simply said: ‘Bala, I’m around.’ – Chike Ofoedu.

The Chike I met later that day looked emaciated, his head somewhat larger than normal and his scrawny body hiding inside a red jumper some sizes to big.

‘I’ve been down, my brother,’ he had said, as though reading my mind. ‘But now that I’ve found you I shall be up again.’

Chike regaled me with stories of what he called his misadventures since graduation from the university. A frustrating job as a teacher in a rural secondary school ended on a ‘quit or be fired’ note. During the long period of unemployment that followed, he made do with creative writing, churning out a rash of manuscripts that only fetched rejection slips that usually said, ‘Fine writing, but what are you saying?’ Abandoning writing and the rural haunts, he travelled to the city of Onitsha to do a bit of trading with an uncle. The business went as catch-and-catch, spanning the selling of foodstuff, second-hand refrigerators, books and clothing, with a wee bit of money-lending on the side. The deal became sour when Chike was conned off a substantial amount of money by a dupe who introduced himself as a money-doubler. Chike thus left his uncle’s business in disgrace and soon joined up with an itinerant Zen Buddhist who took him to Ghana.

‘It was sad day,’ Chike narrated, ‘when I suddenly found myself back on the streets of Onitsha naked as Adam.’

It was while undergoing psychiatric treatment in an Onitsha hospital that Chike chanced on an article I wrote in the Daily Times. He could not convince himself that I was actually the writer of the article, doubting with the benefit of his appreciation of me that I could ever muster the gumption needed for the journalism trade. In the university most people called me Bala Mohammed – after the erudite scholar murdered by Muslim fanatics in Kano; only some close friends or classmates like Chike knew my real name, Stephen Nnopu, with which I now wrote articles for the Daily Times. At any rate, Chike made the point of buying subsequent editions of the newspaper until he saw my photograph against my name.

‘Boy, you looked heavy,’ Chike said. ‘Like Ernest Hemingway.’

The hands of the office clock then stood a few minutes before eight, and Chike appeared in no mood to stop talking.

‘Let’s go to the canteen and get some food,’ I said, expecting Chike to jump at the offer.

‘Don’t you have a house?’ he asked.

Taken aback, I made awkward noises, unable to mobilise coherent words of reply. ‘We can eat in your house, can’t we?’ Chike laughed a throaty laugh that reverberated through the office walls.


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In retrospect, I cannot now say that I regret taking Chike to my one-bedroom apartment in Surulere, a crowded suburb of Lagos. At first it was like taking a certified lunatic to the church. Chike was a nuisance in overdrive. What I initially thought would at most be a one-weekend affair turned out to be a yearlong wedlock of strange bedfellows. Chike never thought of leaving once ensconced in the ambit of my narrow and stifling dungeon.

My neighbours had become used to the rather aloof journalist who stayed home all morning and afternoon only to saunter to work in the evening. I hardly exchanged a word in greeting with any man, woman or child. Nobody in the neighbourhood had ever paid me a visit, social or otherwise. All that changed with the advent of Chike. From morning to night, he made it his duty hosting all the children on the block to raucous session of story-telling. The overflow of wretched and grimy brats always spilled into my bedroom, and I could not but remonstrate with Chike about this. He answered me with a laugh.

‘At the university you were so full of talk about doing work for the masses.’ Chike said, presiding over a melee of children. ‘These here are the masses. Do some good for them. Go buy us some buns, will you.’

With Chike, one could swallow as much disgust as could brim the Atlantic. He carried on as though he had not a care in the wide world. My apartment soon became known to all and sundry as ‘Chike’s place.’ His capacity for comradeship was quite astounding, and he gravitated with fluid malleability from gruff market women to slick young ladies, from street urchins to smart lawyers. Everybody it appeared accepted him on his own terms. He would borrow from me to lend to people not caring that I needed the money back. I once in exasperation asked him to pack out of the house.

‘Of course you don’t mean it,’ he had answered with his trademark laugh.

Chike would not be frustrated into packing out. In fact he revelled in my wickedness.

‘I am the mosquito in your scrotum,’ Chike would say. ‘Smack the mosquito and you ruin yourself.’

It took me more than a dozen weeks and as many hear attacks to realise that instead of asking Chike to pack out of the house I should direct my attention to getting him engaged in some kind of occupation. This way, I reasoned, he would no longer have idle time with which to frolic with ‘the masses’ and engage in those other pursuits that played havoc with the palpitations of my heart. I was thinking of when best to broach the issue with him when he suddenly pulled me aside, abruptly breaking his early morning Zen meditation ritual.

‘I suppose you must be wondering why I’m not looking for work,’ he said, staring up at me from his Buddha-like sitting repose.

I sighed, startled. I stammered for some moments before I managed to bring some coherence to bear on my words. ‘If you need work we’ll try to find one for you.’

‘Working in Nigeria is nonsensical suffering!’ he shot back with a grimace.

I could not offer a reply. There was the insult to deal with, smouldering anger at the hypocrisy of Chike living off the meagre benefits of work he considered unworthy of his while. Let the truth be told, Chike took me for a fool who must do the dirty work for the sustenance of rare genius like him. I was so annoyed I was way past explosion. I was stiff and shaking and no words could form in my mouth.

Chike smiled. ‘You are a great soul, Bala.’

He paused, a new seriousness showing on his lugubrious face. I did not know what to make of his words, except that they helped in an imperceptible way to assuage the hotness of my anger and the deadly imperatives of my implosion. Time stood at a point, and I could only stare and wonder at the sitting and inscrutable Buddha.

‘I was lost and gone in darkness until your light beckoned,’ Chike continued, bulbous tears clouding his eyes. ‘You have given me the choice of life and I can never forget that. I shall forever be grateful to you, Bala.’

I saw a shiny tear fall down his cheeks; it dropped on the carpet with a plop. I was soon finding it difficult to see through a haze of my own tears; the image of Chike that formed in my eyes was a hoary pantheon dominated by a goddess with a bosom of gold.

‘I hope I can pay back just a little of what you have done for me.’ It was Chike’s voice all right, but it appeared to come from recess only the sublime can reach. ‘Ours cannot be an unhappy story.’

I awoke with a start, finding myself cuddled on the floor with Chike. The sun filtered in from the window eaves, forming grotesque patterns on the khaki-brown wall. A sharp ray stabbed me in the eyes and I stood up. Was it a dream? I furtively looked at Chike and images of things flooded my mind. I took my eyes away from him, involuntarily fiddling at the creases of my orange pyjamas.

‘I think I have had my fill for now,’ Chike said, sitting up. ‘I feel I should make it to the United States.’

It is infuriating, Chike’s insane capacity for talking profound philosophy one minute and uttering wooden-headed nonsense the next minute. What would one make of a jobless pauper talking of travelling to the United States currently when they do not grant visas to the U.S. to even wealthy Nigerians? I felt that what Chike’s utterance deserved was utmost mum. I kept mum. He repeated the utterance.

‘Don’t you know that procuring an American visa in Nigeria is tougher than crossing the old Berlin Wall?’ I said, glaring at Chike with the searing scorn of my bulging eyes.

‘But you can help me with that Bala.’ He said it as though it were the most matter-of-fact of truths.

‘Journalists like you do not find it difficult securing the mighty American visa.’

I laughed. ‘Like George Orwell’s animals, some Nigerian journalists are more equal than others.’

‘So?’

‘Even if you do get a visa how would you pay your passage into America?’

‘You wait.’

I expected Chike to keep pestering me with his dream of America in the following weeks. Nothing like that happened. He never again mentioned the United States to me; he just kept on being his ebullient self, entertaining the children and writing new chapters into a book of bad behaviour. He brought a hirsute magician into the house. After a week of complaining, I hired a bald-headed fetish priest who chased the magician away. The crazy confrontation brought the neighbourhood on its knees.

‘Good theatre,’ was all Chike saw of it.

On the morning after the celebrated confrontation, Chike literally dragged me out of sleep. He had a compelling object he could not wait to show me. Pointing through the window at the statuesque lady opening the door of a posh Mercedes Benz car he hollered: ‘Do you know that girl?’

‘She lives there,’ I said with a weary shrug of the shoulders.

‘What’s her name?’

‘I don’t know.’

Chike sighed, looking on in a naked adoration as the girl cruised away in the car. He shook his head, moaning wistfully.

‘You chased the girl and she turned you down or something?’ Chike said.

‘Who told you that?’ I cried, grimacing. ‘I’ve never spoken to the girl. Ever. I only see her from time to time. I guess she equally sees me. And that’s just about it. We mind our own businesses.’

‘My friend, stop being worked up,’ Chike said, ‘smiling. ‘Boy, if the girl should come to confess love for you, tell me, won’t you collapse with joy?’

‘I need my sleep to catch,’ I hissed, walking back to bed.

‘Chike, why die in silence?’

I got back from work at about ten in the night that day. A note was waiting for me on the table.

Bala,
I am at that girl’s house.
-Chike

I decided against going to look for him there. Just as well, for he came home with the girl within a handful of minutes of my return.

‘Bala, meet Queen Victoria!’ Chike was in his elements, shouting as though introducing the girl to the gods in the sky.

I could not look into her eyes. She was that intimidating. Heavy. She stood tall and cool and clean, an angel of the ages. I was all nerves and jitters and clumsiness. Would to Paradise the earth opened up and swallowed me!

Chike and Victoria put me in ungainly contortions of speechlessness. Getting into their groove was way beyond me. Mercifully Victoria eventually left.

However, she would always be there every day, doing Chike’s every wish, making spirited play and wondering at my lack of joie de vivre.

Chike had turned a girl I had at a distance thought more aloof than a parish priest to a frolicsome tomboy. Before, she could have been a statue for all I cared. Now I was the statue in the pack.

‘We make statues of one another when we fail to communicate.’

I cannot now make out whether she said the words or Chike did. No matter. The point really is I needed to come out of the shell into which I had been inexorably cast. Nevertheless, I cannot in good conscience blame myself. My upbringing was in lowly poverty, and tangling up with the rich and famous was always awesome. It comes naturally to the Chikes of this life. God bless them.

Chike now spent as much time in Victoria’s burnt-brick duplex as he did in my place. Victoria was always around, vainly striving to draw me out of my shell and into the family that their company presaged. On occasion I would wake up and go to work without seeing Chike; and I would come back and fall asleep without setting eyes on him. I was preparing for work on Friday afternoon when Chike burst in on me, smack in this dark and trendy double-breasted suit.

‘The American dream is real,’ Chike said, presenting me with his passport.

The sun slowly descended from the sky, exploding on my face.

‘How come…’ I said when I found my voice.

Chike smiled. ‘Victoria fixed it.’

Victoria put up a splendid send-off party for Chike on the Sunday. It was my first time inside her house. Marble columns, brass balustrade, chandeliers, Persian rugs and curtains, opulence. The music was hip and the dancing more so, and Victoria succeeded in making me uncomfortable by jigging unrestrained blues with me. The real highlight of the night happened when there was no music. Chike had all the attention and he called Victoria ‘the Statue of Liberty.’

Chike travelled out of Nigeria on Wednesday night. Victoria and I were the only ones at the airport to see him off. Tears stood in my eyes and Victoria could not be consoled. Chike was different: his face was sunshine.

‘Bala, take care of Victoria.’ Heart-rending parting words delivered as only Chike could. Driving me back from the airport in her Mercedes Benz, Victoria pulsated with distressing sobs. Smack in the middle of Isolo Expressway, she collapsed against my lap, unable to drive further. The car managed to slowly stop on the curb of the service. It became my duty to drive her home, but I had to own up to the crushing shame that I had never learnt how to drive.

She would later recover and drive us home. She passed the night in my place – and several nights thereafter. She was too afraid to return to the emptiness out of which Chike has so sweepingly drawn her. She was the most vulnerable I had seen a human being. She laid open the book of her heart before my eyes: her unhappy childhood after her Nigerian father left her English mother in London; the tragic death of her mother when she was barely ten; the unpleasantness of a foster home; her training as a lawyer; her return to Nigeria and to a wealthy runaway father…

I didn’t not need to propose to her. It stood as a given. Some lives are much too dramatic in the living to bear a rehearsal. Our marriage was a forgone conclusion. Even so, Chike beat us to the hallowed institution. His first letter from the United States, a month after his departure, talked of his recent marriage to an African-American.

‘I entered into this marriage simply to secure the American Green Card,’ Chike wrote in his spare cursive. ‘I can only pretend to love the woman and she somehow knows it. I’ve been reduced to a grinning statue. I write her love poems to patch up the rough and tough bits.’

The onus was on me to prove that my reason for marrying Victoria was something loftier than Chike’s predation.

“My dear, no love poems please,’ Victoria said, shuddering.

I smiled. ‘I’m not tough enough.’