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Old Score
a short story
by
Nnorom
Azuonye
Ugo
slides the letter back into the envelope it came in. Like
the evil sword it is, there in its scabbard, it will not
harm anyone. He gnashes his teeth in anger, glances at his
wristwatch, and shakes his head from side to side. In just
under one hour he shall be in another session at his
osteopath’s. It is like confession. Every other week he goes
to Mayer’s, surrenders himself to painful, trespassing but
awkwardly pleasant stretches of his body and bones. With
each session he borrows a few days’ relief from agony.
“Serves me right for trying to be Schwarzenegger,” he
pretends to tease, but really reprimands himself. He
remembers the precise moment at a Seven Sisters gym he heard
a click in his back that has condemned him to nearly a
decade of hell. A moment of stupidity that has also taken
away the courage he needs to return to Nigeria to settle an
old score.
Ugo is
definitely in no shape for a wrestling match. At fifty-two,
and with a back waiting for a surgeon’s knife, something as
physical as traditional Igbo wrestling might just cripple
him for life. He tries to make a mental picture of his
challenger, but the image is fuzzy. It is like trying to
conjure the face of death. A man who has never met death
cannot tell if death’s face is comforting at all or simply
menacing. The only thing he can remember about Ogele’s face
is his ugliness and his evil laughter, a satanic sound that
has haunted his dreams for years. He is shocked that there
are people who just don’t know how to let go of
unpleasantness. Things have changed now. He must go back to
Nigeria to face the demon he has been running away from.
People that run away from battles tend to hope to fight
another day, but he is a damaged battlefront deserter, and
might after all be unable to fight. The stake is too high.
He cannot keep running. He has to go home and settle the
score with Ogele.
The
trip is going to be a big deal. He does not wish to face his
fate alone. This is something for men. No need to trouble
his wife with it. He is grateful to God that he has a
grown-up son who will understand. His son is a man of his
own blood who will never judge him. He breathes out with a
whisper of relief and calls Orji on his mobile phone and
asks him to come downstairs, for a quick chat on a pretty
delicate matter.
Orji
sits by his father’s side in the warm sitting room and waits
for the delicate matter to come out of his father’s mouth,
but Ugo seems unable to find a suitable introduction. He
fidgets like a shy little man, and his spirit seems to dance
away with his eyes from the keen gaze of his son. He tries
to make sense of it in his head. Orji would never judge him.
Why then is he afraid to talk to him.
“You
may after all get a chance to visit Nigeria.” Ugo finally
says. He searches Orji’s face for a flicker of excitement,
or any emotion at all, but finds none. The only thing the
young man’s face seems to care about is what the bad news
could be. His father is not a man ever failed by words, but
suddenly he seems not to know what words are meant for
anymore. It cannot be good, his face seems to say.
“There
is a small niggling matter of a wrestling contest I have
evaded for thirty-eight years.” Ugo tells Orji. He eases
himself into the story, going back to a wrestling match in
his village in which he had been thrown by Ogele, a member
of his age-grade and a classmate. Ugo is almost close to
tears as he recalls how Ogele humiliated him for many weeks
afterwards with references to that match. He spoke of how he
was taunted for so long that he became ill. In those days,
even as a young boy, he tended to tackle issues head-on to
stop them getting out of hand. “Therefore one early morning,
I decided that I was not going to allow Ogele humiliate me
to an early grave. I went to Ogele’s house, it must have
been just before half past six in the morning, and
challenged him to a rematch, many months ahead of the next
New Yam festival. Wrestling in our village is always a part
of the new yam festival called ikerike ji ona na mmanu.” He
suddenly falls silent, wipes his eyes as they begin to
dilate, and casts an embarrassed glance at his son. It is a
first for him. He that everybody calls Obi Nkume, a heart of
stone, sheds a tear in front of his son! He worries, rather
stupidly, that Orji might actually be thinking it is a good
thing to see a vulnerable, softer side of him, and begins to
take quick breaths between words to gain composure. “He
laughed in my face, the spotted squirrel. He laughed me out
of his house.” Ugo talks with gritty bitterness, about how
Ogele had said he would never belittle himself by getting
into the arena again with a weakling like him. “He called me
a weakling. That rat! O.K. so I was plump in those days. He
taunted me, and called me ‘fat man lazy bones’. I was angry.
I was so angry that I said to him, ‘I will wrestle you,
Ogele, and I will throw you. If I don’t, I will give you my
father’s land.’ Can you imagine that?” Ugo laughs at how
ridiculous the stake he raised that day had been. What was
he thinking? He swallows hard as he recalls the void of
silence into which Ogele had descended, before laughing out
suddenly, like a deranged man, extending his hand for a
pact, saying “I accept. If you throw me, you can keep your
father’s land and take my father’s land also.” They two
fourteen-year-old boys had shaken hands on it and nothing
more was said of the contest as they awaited the next New
Yam festival. Ogele also stopped tormenting Ugo. The price
of that peace was potentially expensive, but it had been
worth it.
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In this
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Celebration of Cultures Evaluation
Celebration of Cultures Pictures
Don't Suffer in Silence
Four Poems by Obemata
Isle of Sheppey Cycle Routes Project
Jargon Busters
Kent Volunteers Small Grant Award
"Old Score" story by Nnorom Azuonye
Sheppey Health Walks
Skillnet talks to Swale Life
Swale - A Celebration of Cultures '09
Swale Walks
Two Poems by Chuma Nwokolo jr
PDF Downloads
Queenborough Castle Mound
Milton Creek Invite
Swale Special Interest Group
The South East Costal Project
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