RATS ON RAMPAGE (1)

 

THE TIMES WERE TOUGH and this day was particularly rough for me. We had gone to our boss at the end of the day’s work for the week’s wages, as it was the weekend, but he was telling us something about how lack of fuel in the accountant’s jalopy had not let him get to the bank for the money needed to pay us. For a very long time, only the accountant’s car had been on the road. The others – the site engineer, the supervisor and the contractors – had parked theirs. Some masons and menial workers (including me) trekked long distances to work and most were now sleeping on the site to curtail the hassles and exorbitant fares of commuting daily. Everyone’s story was all too familiar – across the length and breadth of a major oil-producing nation, with the status of having its own refineries, there was a scarcity of petroleum products. Those in government thought it was cheaper and wiser to import fuel while the refineries were left to rot.

The petrol station owners and attendants, conniving with government officials, were re-routing the products through the black market and smiling to the banks while armed military men of the special task force (set up to oversee the smooth delivery of the available products) were actually delivering blows to rowdy drivers in the few mega-stations of the national supplier that were selling the petroleum products. Our boss told us how his driver was rubbished a few days back by the uniformed men. We all left the massive building site, owned by a civilian federal minister in the military government transforming to civilian rule in a few months, that foggy evening with one story or the other to tell.

The roughness of this day to me had a serrated edge. The one listening ear I had in this concrete jungle had, like an angry soldier, booted me out of her life two days back. With part of last week’s wage, I’d bought two second-hand novels from the bus stop vendor as I was coming home from work with the intent to read and while away time whenever she wasn’t around. My girl saw them last weekend and went away saying nothing. Only the day before yesterday she came back and told me in her usual cool way my relationship with her was over; that she could no longer put up with a brute of a guy she was going out of her way to please and think of every time. But that I thought of myself and books only. Not that she was asking for anything expensive, which she knew I couldn’t afford yet; but a gesture, no matter how small or cheap, would have assured her more of my love.

To show how serious she was about this, she tossed the cheap ring (which I gave her and she condescended to wear) across the boarded floor and it landed right at my feet and she walked out of the shack. I was indeed stunned. I found later I was gaping and drooling. I wished she had stayed so I could explain my side of the story better. Undoubtedly, I loved books but my girl remained the number one in my life. I wished she had waited so I could tell her this.

Steering myself honourably through the posh district where the site was located, I left for home. My route home passed through the side of an embassy. Almond trees lined near the fence, their fruits spilling outside on a grass patch and on the sidewalk. I would pick them and eat to savour their thick juicy flesh and to dull the keen edge of hunger; then, I would trek past a sprawling army barracks built on the bank of a canal emptying into the raging salty waters of the Atlantic Ocean.

Linking a bridge crossing the canal I’d walk to the Marina area where I’d board a bus at the bus stop that would convey me from the backdrop of a wharf – ships and cranes dotting it. At night, the myriad points of light waved alluringly in the glistening expanse of water. The bus would circle the commercial hub of the metropolis replete with high-rises, cross a bridge or bridges (depending on which route the driver thought had fewer traffic jams) and take me back to base.

Today, I picked the fruits of the almond trees and filled my shirt’s and trousers’ pockets and munched them as I trekked all the way home. And home was a shack in the heart of a poorly filled section of a bog constantly absorbing the slimy malodorous water of the city’s drainage. At Iya Buki’s place, being her long-time customer, I bought on credit a medium-size bread, hollowed it out and stuffed it with beans. Armed with this, I mounted the creaky wooden bridge over the bog to my room.

Unlocking the door, I entered and had an eerie cobweb of loneliness clinging to my face. Weeks back, Nene’s voice would play beautifully in my ears, her embrace would send warmth all over me and life then wasn’t so drab and hopeless; life then wasn’t so miserable.

I sat at the foot of my bed, tore the transparent waterproof cover of the bread and dug into it, careful not to spill the beans. I had hardly swallowed the first mouthful of food I was chewing when I saw my whiskered friend emerging from nowhere to sit on a roof beam, nosed around and then its fiery eyes dropped and dwelt intently upon my food.

I had always seen him and he had always been there and very often when Nene was around and we had a little extra food to spare, that whiskered friend of mine had always stolen some. For weeks now that theft had stopped – where was the food to spare? And my friend had no crumbs to pick – where was the food for me to eat and leave a crumb? And as if to say the rat could go to hell for all I cared, I bit so carefully into my bread, making sure not a bit of a thing dropped to the floor.

I looked up again to see my friend had gone away, I was certain, moaning about the hard times too. With the way I ate, I knew, I was taunting and tormenting him. He had no option but to salivate and painfully swallow gobs of saliva. Power is sweet! I chuckled. ‘Stupid thing,’ I thought, then voiced it: ‘why don’t you sit there in your high office to eat your father’s food?’

(READ 'RATS ON RAMPAGE {2}')