'The Broad Street Inferno' by Edwin Madu

It was one of the few houses that dotted Broad Street as a huge part of the street was populated by banks, businesses, and brokerages. The fence around the house was white too and some shrubbery grew at the base outside it. It looked like the perfect house, like the kinds drawn in primary school art projects, with the windows symmetrically placed displaying curtains that hid all that lay within.

It stands today just opposite Freedom Park and is beside the Maternity Clinic. It is charred now with black lines like dendrites stretching out and spreading across the once white walls like shadowy fingers reaching out to the skies. Spirogyra, the colour of green grass, now clothes the outside of the fence, making an onlooker unsure if the wall was white with green stains or green with white stains. The shrubbery that used to grow there mildly has been replaced by vicious weeds with their flowers and leaves like phalanges spread out in all directions.

Its crimson roof has caved in, the windows have no panes; they are just square holes on the side of the building. The people who pass by it daily, whisper stories of what they believe to be the cause of the sad state of the house. Each story carries with it some truth and an equal serving of lies.

***

The year was 1999, the Nigerian people were ecstatic; the military government had finally relinquished its hold on the Nigerian leadership and allowed an election by, for and of civilians.

Obasanjo, who after being released from detention he suffered under Abacha’s regime had said he would never run for president, had just been sworn in as the president. It was a time when the people partied for no other reason but pure happiness. The kind that came with relief, relief that comes when oppression disappears.

Nkechi, Mrs. Adebayo as she had come to be known, sat still in her Peugeot 504 driving slowly behind another car that looked a lot like hers in the unending queue that was Lagos traffic. She fumed with both her hands on the steering wheel and each of her index fingers tapping without rhythm on the rim of the wheel, her wrinkled forehead said more about what she had on her mind than words could have. Her trip to Nnobi in the East had proven to be another attempt in futility. It was not the first time she had tried to talk to her parents about letting go of their prejudice.

They had paid no attention to her and subsequently shortened her planned one-week trip to a two-day one. They had never wanted her to marry a Yoruba boy. Plans had been made for Udoka and it was with utter disappointment that they had regarded her intention to marry Lekan Adebayo. It had been three years since she thought time would have helped. It hadn’t.

***

“Let me understand this,” Nkechi’s father Alika had begun. “You want to marry a Yoruba man and to add salt to injury, he is not even Catholic.”

Nkechi remembered that conversation like it was yesterday. She had just told her parents that she planned to marry Lekan Adebayo, a young man she had met while on campus at the University of Lagos.

She watched as her father’s subtle frown turned into a scowl and her mother’s disapproving look became one of sheer pity, looking at her the same way you would a mentally challenged child who spoke without knowing any better. Nkechi’s mother, a heavyset woman with skin so fair that her veins were visible, stood up and tied her wrapper securely across her torso, making a firm knot above her breasts, before letting out a loud hiss and jutting her lower lip out at her daughter.

All these said “You are just a very stupid girl who should listen to reason” and Nkechi heard. She always heard. But this time, she ignored, looking over from her mother to her father. Nkechi’s father had already begun his speech, which followed no particular format,  to which she paid feigned attention.

But this attention was not always feigned. It was the first time she decided not to listen to anything he had to say. Nkechi loved listening to her father talk. He had the voice of an orator and it was in sharp contrast to his thin, sickly body. His singlet hung loosely from his bony shoulders and the huge cloth around his waist looked like a hula-hoop when he stood up. He sat on the couch with his arms crossed across his chest.

He was furious and she could see it. He had always been prejudiced towards non-catholics having been raised by a Catechist who had been one of the locals who had welcomed the missionaries into Nnobi and after he fought in the Biafra war, his disdain for other non-Igbo tribes started to grow and now his prejudiced was one that was unrivaled. His disappointing stare was piercing as he spoke.

“Nkechi do you have any idea what you are doing?” he asked matter-of-factly.

“Yes Dad, of course. I am not a child.” She snapped back looking straight at him hoping that eye contact would somehow convince him that her confidence was not one that would falter.

“Better re-arrange your tone young lady, because you went to the United Kingdom now you cannot remember who you are talking to is that it?” he said. He rolled his eyes at her. The belligerent nature of her tone of voice had not gone unnoticed. He let his eyes fall on her and the dip in his brows and unshaking eyes told her all she needed to know about the extent of his anger.

“Sorry Papa” she replied looking away, he had shattered whatever pretend confidence she had tried to muster.

“Sorry for yourself.” The eye-rolling followed. It was a favorite of his.

“Papa, please I need you to understand that Lekan is a good man and he loves me.” She pleaded.

“Udoka, Chifo’s son is a good man too. A good, Igbo, Catholic man who, I’m very sure, is capable of loving you as well.” He retorted without missing a beat. He had rehearsed this conversation, he had his comebacks ready and he knew all of hers.

“Papa, Udoka is a dubious man who, last I heard, is a violent person. Ehn Papa is that what you want for me? Somebody that will beat me?” She responded. She was now on the edge of her seat and she only just realized that she had been shouting.

“It is a lie. If you do what you should as a wife, why will he beat you? Ehn?”

“Papa, I am an adult. I can make decisions for myself and I choose Lekan.”

“Ngwanu, go and marry, just don’t come crying to me when those Yoruba people start showing you pepper. I am not coming for any wedding that is not in the Catholic Church. My hands are not there.”

As he made the last statement, he held both his hands together and moved them around each other, one over the other, like he was washing them. Those were his last words to her on the issue and so while she sat and stared at him, he stood up, bringing himself up with the help of his cane that had been beside him, resting on the hand of the chair.

He made a face as pain coursed from his waist through his spine. The pain seemed to get worse every day. It was from an old bullet wound he had gotten at the war front. It was from the battle at Nsukka, from which he was lucky to have escaped. He had shed tears after fleeing the battlefield that day, not because of the bullet lodged in his hip, or the pain that came with each stride he took as he ran.

He had wept because of the bodies he had passed as he maneuvered through houses that had been blown to bits and schools that were all but debris. The sight of children burnt beyond recognition and men and women with bits and pieces of their flesh scattered everywhere tore a hole in his heart and now years after the war, the only thing that was able to fill that hole was hate.

“Papa, so you won’t come for my wedding” she wasn’t sure he had heard her and if he had, he had said all he wanted to. He walked out slowly, limping gracefully. And just like that, no other words were spoken on the matter.

The traditional marriage held about a month later with her father refusing to put a kobo into entertaining guests he did not invite and true to his stubborn nature, he invited no one. People gathered nonetheless, Lekan’s people, with their colourful adire iro and buba came in their multitudes and so did the people of Nnobi, her hometown.

Most of the people of Nnobi who came were not sure who the groom was and had not heard about the wedding until that morning but as long as there was food to fill their bellies and maybe take home, they wished them a happy marriage. The scowl on Alika’s face never left even as his daughter danced stylishly to the melodies of the Oriental Brothers and the villagers cheered and jeered, he sat there, a bitter old man.

The white wedding came a month after the traditional wedding and Nkechi remembered looking out into the crowd hoping to see her father, she knew her mother would not come if he did not, he wouldn’t let her.

She had taken his threat of not coming for the wedding lightly, had she known she would have mentally prepared herself for the sadness that replaced the joy of the wedding. She remembered crying all through her wedding night, and she imagined what a terrible inconvenience it must have been for Lekan. He had been patient that night, offering to bring her drinks and anything she could possibly want. She thanked God for him.

***

The traffic had finally cleared up and Nkechi was soon driving into the bungalow on number 10, Broad Street. The gateman, Saka, closed the gate behind her and mumbled a quick “Welcome madam” with food still in his mouth before returning to his tiny apartment located just beside the gate.

She stepped out of the car and walked towards the house and past the garden that gave the large compound an almost picturesque look. Dandelions and roses sprinkled all about and an orange tree stood towering over the house with its fruit ripe and as orange as they could possibly be in this country.

She had not expected him to be home by this time of the day and so she reached into her purse and pulled out her keys, all of them attached to the souvenir key holder in the shape of a cross that had the inscription ‘JERUSALEM’ from one arm of the cross to the other. The other side of the key holder read “MADE IN CHINA”. She was tired after driving all the way from Anambra and she needed a nap.

She came in and a gaseous mixture of beer and air freshener greeted her nostrils. There must have been a match the night before. Lekan probably had the boys over to watch it on cable. She only prayed they did not leave any mess in the kitchen. She hated filth. She went straight to the kitchen and downed a cold glass of water after inspecting and finding no filth in her kitchen. She rinsed the cup and returned it to the rack before turning to round to inspect for any filth she might have missed the first time over.

She was soon out of the kitchen and moving through the living room towards the bedroom area before she remembered she hadn’t gotten her bags from the trunk of the car, she began walking towards the door and turned back almost immediately, she would have to do it later – sleep was calling.

She opened her bedroom door and stopped where she stood. She held the door handle so tight that her fair knuckles were now almost white. Lionel Ritchie’s Hello filled the air. They had not seen her yet. They were oblivious to her standing there, and she, she watched in horror for what felt like hours.

The sight of both their bodies entwined in that way made her uneasy. She was worried that her mind was playing games with her. She turned around slowly, being sure not to make a sound and walked into the room where she kept gifts from the wedding, old clothes; all and sundry. She reached for the strange wooden box she had received on her wedding day from her uncle, the general. She had opened it and gasped when she read the note that came with it.

“I cannot protect you as much anymore, that’s his job now. But in the event that he can’t, here’s a little help.”

She had closed the box immediately after reading it for several reasons, chief of which was that a Smith & Wesson handgun was not the kind of gift you expected to see on the bride’s lap at a wedding ceremony.

She had kept it aside and not opened it until now. She reached for the box and dusted it off, holding back tears as she loaded it with the bullets that had come with it. She had fired a few times before, Uncle General Uche as she fondly called him had taught her when she was younger much to her father’s discomfort; he swore off guns and all forms of violence after the war, saying that words were his weapon of choice.

She walked towards the room and from the hallway between the store room and her bedroom she could see that the door was still ajar. She stood at the doorway, just below the lintel and took aim. Her hands usually shook when she used to practice; they were not shaking now.

Just before she pulled the trigger, he looked up at her and let out a shriek, unlike she’d ever heard from a man. Bang! Bang! She shot him twice.

The first one went straight through his head, his brains and blood on the white bed sheet looked like contemporary art. The second shot she took after she had taken a few steps forward, this time through the chest. The second one was not needed, he was already very dead. Lekan looked at her in horror, his face covered in the blood of the man she had just shot. He knew he didn’t have much time and that his being alive was dependent on his next few words.

“Honey, I -” he started.

“Shut up,” she said, calmly.

“Let me just-”

“I said shut up,” she said, this time screaming.

He fell silent. He knew better than to say anything after that. He glanced at Victor’s body as it lay splayed across his. The bed sheet was now almost completely red. He pushed Victor’s body off him and made for his wrapper.

“Don’t. Don’t grab anything, stay where you are and tell me what the hell this is.” She said. He stopped moving and faced her.

“Nkechi I am so sorry. I really am.” He said, his eyes searching hers for some kind of mercy. He found none.

She looked the same outwardly, she was still as beautiful as he remembered her being the day they had met. She; with her fair skin, high cheekbones, huge mane of hair, toothy smile and full lips. She was to be his trophy wife, to get his parents off his back about getting married. He remembered towering over her by almost a foot and asking for her number after they had stepped out of the exam hall for their final papers.

He was surprised he had never spoken to her before then but he was glad he did. She was charming and witty, making snarky remarks about everything. Sometimes he hated himself for what he was doing to her; hurting her this way. She now stood with a gun in her hand, a gun he had never seen before and she held it with every intention to kill. Her eyes told him that much.

“Lekan, so this is what you do?”

“I swear, this is the first time.” He lied. He had met Victor a few years before he met her, at a bar in Lagos. The bar was called a ‘gay bar’ by various people but in hushed tones, no one was ever sure. He remembered being introduced to Victor by a certain ‘man of God’ who frequented the establishment.

They had hit it off pretty well and had been seeing each other since then. He never really liked girls. He admired them, talked with them, saw them as beautiful but just never as sexual beings. His mother took it upon herself to nag him about getting a wife.

He finally did get a wife following Victor’s counsel just to get his mother to leave him and so they could continue with their affair covertly. Victor was slender with a high-pitched voice and effeminate gait that some would say foretold his sexual preference. He loved him nonetheless. Yes, he loved him.

“Stop lying or I will punch holes in you like a fucking perforator”

“Please put the gun down, Nkem” he pleaded. The gun had been pointed at him throughout and her finger had stayed on the trigger.

“Stop telling me what to do!” throwing her arm about as she screamed with her eyes closed. Bang!

*

She knew she hadn’t shot it this time, at least she hadn’t planned to. Lekan was propped up on the bed, his eyes were open and teary, and his chest bleeding. She had shot him. She placed the gun at the foot of the bed and rushed to his side.

“I’m…really…sorry” he said, out of breath.

“Me too.” She whispered back. But she knew she wasn’t. Some part of her wanted him dead for this, another part of her still loved him, but all of her knew that there was no way she would ever stay with him after this. Her eyes were misty now and she put her hand on his chest and kept it there till it stopped moving.

‘Hello is it me you’re looking for’, Lionel Ritchie was on replay. Lekan’s eyes stayed open, looking into the distance at nothing in particular.

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Edwin Ikenna Madu is a Nigerian writer born and based in Lagos. He writes short fiction, non-fiction, poetry, reviews, features, and articles. His short stories and poetry have been featured in the following: Naijastories, African Writer, Arts And Africa, Brittle Paper, The Kalahari Review, Jalada Languages Anthology, AFREADA, The Jeli and Per Contra. Read other awesome stories from his blog and follow him on Twitter @DwinTheStoic

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