THE VIEW FROM THE WINDOW (1)

 WARNING: ADULT CONTENT!

A hard kick on a door. A female voice screeched: 'Help me o! Help me o! ...' The din awoke the entire neighbourhood. Eyes stared in the dark and ears were strained to pick the bits of what was amiss.

Mr Udiong, in his boxers, removed his hands from his wife's belly as she had suddenly frozen her response to his romantic moves. He stepped down from the bed and tiptoed to the window near the source of the commotion. He pushed the curtain slightly and peered outside.

The sky was clear with the stars twinkling in it and the moon peeped from the horizon. Two points of electric light familiarly shimmered at Mr Udiong from the other bank of the brook which adjoined the neighbourhood. The solar-powered security lamps were the only constant ones around and they were one of a poultry farm and the other of the convention ground of a Christian sect.

'Open the door or we would break it,' a voice boomed after a second bang on the door. 'We are police!'

'Abeg, I go open,' the female voice pleaded in 'Una', broken English.

Mrs Udiong had joined her husband at the window, nestling on his back and looking over his shoulder. They were staring hard at the outside.

There were doors opening and feet thudding in the attempt to flee. The Udiongs could actually see dark figures slipping into their farm and melting into the silhouettes created by the crops.

Mrs Udiong muttered to herself: 'Oh, my young corn!' Her corn seedlings were barely two weeks old which she had planted after the second rain of the year. This was the last weekend of March.

'Stop there. If you move, I would shoot!' another heavy voice hollered, boots pounding after a naked male frame racing in a zigzag. The figure fleeing, with his organ jiggling like the clapper of a bell, was bathed with the blinding beam of a torch. He jinked into the section of the farm with the tall cassava stems and the policeman realizing he had lost the fellow said: 'Run. Soon, we would catch you. Run.'

Mrs Udiong giggled and her husband lightly punched her thigh, muttering: 'Stop!'

The bangs, the doors creaking as they opened, the thudding feet and the pleadings of those arrested went on for well over half an hour. When the ruckus died down and it became clear the police had left the vicinity with their suspects, Mr Udiong turned as the sound of the jeep engine faded in the distance and embraced his wife. His fingers strummed her bodily cords and in the bed, they flopped down to make music suitable for two adults. When the waltz was over, Mr Udiong looked up the time on his phone and it was a few minutes past three.

Police raid in the area was a common occurrence. When the police left with the suspects, it was natural for inhabitants to resume their rest. The Udiongs settled themselves into comfortable positions and slept off.

The morning of the new day arrived with birds singing in a wide range of tones, some low and some high. The sun shone brightly showing deep prints of boots in the sand, the scrapes on the stems of plants and the bruises on leaves. Mrs Udiong felt great pain for the raw human waste she had cleared away to sow her seeds and her quarrels with her neighbours always for turning her well-tended farm to their rubbish dump. Last night, they had turned it to their racecourse. But she was wondering what was the main reason for the midnight arrests.

To get a hint of what had happened, she and her husband didn't stray far from the rear window of their bedroom. By peeking behind the curtains, they had always observed their neighbours and she had confronted some boldly after watching their acts for long.

The terrain behind made the Udiongs' home look like a pulpit in the church where the Udiongs sat as the elders and pastor constantly looking over the heads of their neighbours sitting as the congregation in their shanties. They were part of the burgeoning middle class building into and pushing out the penurious farmhands from the choicest parts of the village as initially pieces of land were on leases but now, the landlords were selling them outright. The homeowners who failed to secure new leases (as the rents were going up annually) and were too poor to permanently buy the land had no option but to liaise with the landlords and offer their properties to any willing buyers. This was how the rich new homeowners were moving into the area.  Their big houses sat on top of the hill like a well-tailored suit but at the tail end was a damning blotch, a pack of dilapidated shacks. It had proved hard against the best bleach to be removed. So daily, it became the long reel the Udiongs were watching. The only price they paid was that the plot behind their house which they couldn't develop but planted a few crops on, from plantain to corn, did suffer some harm. A footpath separated the farm and the rows of shacks.

The sound outside wafted freely into the house but to see the figures making it, the Udiongs peeped through slits between the curtains. 

Mrs Udiong had heard the mellifluous voice of Amba and had drawn close to the window, peeping. He wore his trademark jeans and a polo shirt. He was tall, robust and dark, clean-shaven and had a slim slit in the front upper row of his teeth. His shack was the first and closest to the Udiongs' house. Amba had a young wife and two boys, the eldest being in Primary Four. But Mrs Udiong didn't think the man was yet thirty years of age.