Black Pages Of The Past - Episode 3

 

I BOARDED A bus bound for Onitsha, because I couldn’t get the one headed directly for Enugu. As a matter of fact, back then very few buses journeyed straight from Lagos to Enugu.

I sat beside a dark and corpulent male passenger, who turned out to be a first-class glutton – as he made it a point of duty to gobble up all kinds of edible items along the way. The man’s cavernous mouth worked voraciously – biting, tearing and chewing away – virtually throughout the entire journey . He, severally, offered me some of his goodies, but I politely turned him down each time.

We arrived at Onitsha late in the evening – owing to a sudden and heavy downpour, a few miles to Asaba. The almost blinding rain had induced a severe gridlock.

After debussing at the bus-park I, like some of the other passengers, boarded a mini-bus going to Enugu. We got there, 8PM on the dot. I climbed down and took a commercial motor cycle, popularly known as Okada, to my uncle’s residence. I got there at exactly 8:45PM.

My uncle and his family were wide awake. They’d been worried when I failed to turn up on time. My father and my siblings were equally worried because each time the former called my uncle, over the telephone, to find out if I had arrived, he got a negative response.

Of course, in those days mobile phones were not available on a wide scale, as they are now; so there was no way I could have communicated with my family to let them know where I was at every point in time.

Anyway, everyone was quite relieved when I arrived safely at my destination. I felt somewhat tired as I walked into my uncle’s house, which was a massive, two-wing, fully detached duplex

All episodes of this story can be found here >> https://www.ebonystory.com/story/black-pages-of-the-past

. Each wing carried four bedrooms, and a mini living room. The large and central living rooms were situated on the ground floors. My uncle and his family stayed in one wing of the duplex, while the other wing was, more often than not, used by guests. Both wings were linked by a short passageway, downstairs.

After quickly explaining why I had arrived late, to everyone, I was shown a nice-looking bedroom in the guest wing. I unpacked my luggage, took a long cool shower, got dressed and came downstairs for dinner, which consisted of hot fufu and egusi soup, which contained two enormous chicken laps. I ate dinner alone, because the rest had eaten theirs, before I arrived.

After the rather tasty meal, and several glasses of cold water, I went to the living room where my uncle and his family were seated, watching an interesting movie on T.V.

I joined them.

Now, my uncle had four kids; two boys and two girls. The first child and daughter was my age mate. Her name was Chineye. She was two years older than the second child: a boy; four years older than the third child: another boy; and seven years older than the last child: a girl.

Before then, the last time I saw my cousins was four years ago; and now they were all remarkably grown up.

Chineye, who was twenty at this time, was particularly stunning. She had blossomed into a beautiful young lady – with, as they say, the right curves set sexily in the right places.

While we were all watching T.V, I suddenly noticed, out of the corner of my eye, that Chineye, who was seated to my left, was staring at me. I turned in her direction.

She maintained eye contact. A rather...seductive smile lay curved, downwards, on her pretty face.

I couldn’t quite comprehend what lay behind the pleasantly devious expression. But I smiled back and returned my attention to the television set. Several minutes later the interesting movie came to an end.

My uncle then turned to me and we began to discuss issues relating to education. I learnt that Chineye had scaled the cut-off mark for her course in ESUTECH. She was already a Jambite – a local term for a freshman.

My uncle assured me he would do his best to ensure I was also admitted into ESUTECH. He kept up with the academic-related discussion, but, at that point, my mind was only processing half of our discussion, as I was already feeling sleepy. It registered in my tired eyes...my eyelids battling with the weighty bags of slumber. My uncle’s wife noticed this and pointed it out to her husband – prompting him to allow me retire for the night.

I thanked him for his concern and promise, and then I got up and excused myself. As I was about to walk out of the living room, I, once more, observed that Chineye, again, had her eyes on me – though the seductive smile was gone this time. But there was this piercing look in her eyes – like she wanted something from me. And whatever it was, she was going to get it – no matter what it took.

I wasn’t exactly fazed by her facial expressions.

Read " Love's Fool " by the same author ( Ikenna Igwe )

. I summed it up to the fact that she was just toying around with me. She and I were close. We’d been that way right from childhood. We chatted and played together. We were really good friends. But when she was eleven she had relocated with her family from Lagos to Enugu. We didn’t see each other again until five years later when she and her siblings (except the last child) came and spent the Christmas holidays with me and my family in Lagos.

She and I were very happy to be together again, to play together again. A night before my cousins returned to Enugu Chineye had given me a small envelope, containing a folded piece of paper. She made me promise not to read the content of the letter until after she and her siblings had left the next day.

So, a few minutes after they departed the following morning, I opened the envelope, brought out the letter and read its content, which was just a sentence, written in red ink: Darling, I love you with all my heart.

I smiled; but I didn’t take the letter serious. So, I tore it up in bits, and threw the pieces into the dustbin. That was four years ago.

I remembered the letter episode as I crept into bed that night, oblivious of – and consequently ill-prepared for – the bomb that about to explode in the near future.