|
“This is
heavy, Dad. Why are you telling me all these things now?”
Orji asks.
Ugo
takes out the envelope from his pocket and hands it to his
son. He watches the changing expressions on Orji’s face as
he reads the letter.
“Is this
guy for real? Nearly forty years since your challenge, he
wants you to wrestle with him now? At your age? With your
bad back? Can’t you just tell him to go to hell?” Orji asks.
Ugo
laughs again, this time with a tightness of lips and
heaviness of heart, rasping through grating teeth that he
wishes it were as easy as that. Without another word, he
takes the letter back from Orji, puts it back into his
pocket, and agonises to his feet.
“I have
to go to Mayer’s.” Ugo announces, “At this rate I won’t be
able to walk to the plane.” He chuckles.
“Why
didn’t you wrestle this Ogele guy back then, Dad?” Orji
asks.
Ugo
smiles at his son. “Come. Drive me to Mayer’s, I will tell
you in the car.” He says.
As Orji
edges the Mercedes unto the road en route to Mayer’s, Ugo
tells him how the circumstances of his life had changed
beyond his control just a few weeks after he challenged
Ogele. He had come home from school one day and was told by
his father Okazuo, that the whole family was to travel to
England for two weeks. It was for the Golden Jubilee
anniversary of the marriage between Mr Stuart Moss and his
wife Priscilla. Mr Moss used to be Okazuo’s boss in the
Eastern Nigeria Civil Service many years before, and though
he had been back to his own country for over twenty years,
he had kept in touch with his old friend. Ugo had been too
young to understand what happened exactly but he just found
himself and his younger brother being enrolled in a school
in Sheffield, and his parents went out everyday to work and
nothing further was said about going back to Nigeria. Each
time he asked if they were not going to return to Nigeria,
he was told that it was not yet time. Time for what he was
never told, and when he got tired of asking, he just went on
with his studies.
“I wrote
a letter to Ogele, you know” Ugo says. “I told him what
happened, and that whenever I return, I would be ready for
him. But he did not believe me. He wrote back to say I was
well aware of the family plans, and that that was the reason
I tricked him into the challenge. Don’t race him, please!”
“What?”
Orji asks.
“Sorry,
I thought you were racing that car” Ugo points at a blue
sports car speeding away from them right through a red
light.
“I don’t
race people on the road, Dad, you must know that.” Orji
says.
“If you
didn’t I would not have…” he stops himself. “I am sorry,
forget I said that.”
He goes
on with his story and tells his son that when he got older,
he learnt that during that anniversary party, Mr Moss had
introduced Okazuo to a British charity of some sort looking
to recruit former officers of the old colonial regime for an
off-the-record programme called ‘Healing The Social Wounds
of Colonialism’ which sought to sponsor projects that would
help Africans overcome lingering pains or complexes
inflicted by the invasion of their homelands, and any
untoward acts by the imperial colonising powers.
“That’s
deep. You never told me any of these things before, Dad.”
Orji says.
“That’s
because I never saw any real benefit of the charity to our
family except the relocation to Sheffield, if that is a
benefit. Neither did I see any benefits at all to anybody in
Africa for that matter.” Ugo said rather impatiently. “Well
son, you know the rest of the story. I finished my education
England, moved from Sheffield to London, and married a
beautiful Canadian lawyer I met at a dinner party and before
I realised what was happening, I am was fifty-two years old
with a 21-year-old son.”
Orji
edges the car into a bay outside Mayer’s and just before he
turns off the engine, he asks Ugo why Ogele did not
challenge him twelve years earlier when he went to Nigeria
for a month.
“Because
I was there to bury my father. Not even a mad man like Ogele
would bring up a wrestling contest under those
circumstances.” Ugo replies, and gets out of the car slowly.
*****
After
about fifty minutes, Ugo returns to the car. It is only when
he closes the door that Orji wakes up. Orji falls asleep at
the drop of a hat anyway.
“Dad, I
have been thinking about the letter from Ogele. I think I
can do it.” Orji says and watches his father’s face light up
in a smile.
The
letter from Ogele says that the score has to be settled one
way or another. Ogele is a dying man putting his house in
order. The elders of the village have ruled that if Ogele
and Ugo are no longer able to settle the score themselves,
then their children must do it, and it must be done in their
lifetimes.
“Are you
sure?” Ugo asks.
“The
recompense of the flippancy of fathers will be visited upon
their sons.” Orji replies with a warm smile.
“I am
afraid so.” Ugo replies proudly.
Orji
frowns. He is saddened by the fact that the only reason his
father has considered taking him home was to take part in a
local wrestling march to save a piece of land he neither
knew existed nor has any need for.
“I don’t
need that land Orji. But your uncle Uwanka spends a lot of
time there with your grandmother as he prepares to run for
the local council elections. When your grandmother passes
on, that land will belong to your uncle and I. God forbid
that I should make him destitute over this. You will honour
me. You will not back down now. You will wrestle Ogele’s son
and you will throw him.” Ugo says.
Orji
laughs. He says he knew his father had been play-acting all
the while. The demanding, commanding father he has always
known had been hiding inside the pitiable man he saw all
day.
“I
thought you were asking. Now you are ordering me to wrestle.
Nothing will get me into that Arena” Orji snaps.
“Then I
will do it. I always bear my cross. All I ask is that you
come with me, so that if I get paralysed, you will see to it
that I get immediate medical attention and arrange to bring
me back here.” Ugo says.
“If you
get paralysed! If you get paralysed? That is blackmail. Why
are you doing this to me Dad? Was I the one that went
challenging your mate in the wee hours of the morning?” Orji
protests.
“You
don’t have to come if you don’t want to” Ugo says, “but I
must ask you a favour. Don’t mention the purpose of my trip
to your mother.” He says.
Horrified by this Orji gasps in disbelief, “You will not
tell mum? You will get on the plane, go to Nigeria and
wrestle with your bad back and may come back in a wheelchair
and you will not mention it to your wife?” he asks.
“She is
a woman. She may say things that will cloud my judgment.
Besides, her cultural background, like the one you have
soaked up, might blind her to the reason. She may not reason
with me. Do I have your word?” Ugo asks.
Page
2 of 3 [Next
Page]
Top of page
|
