Concluded
The very next day, he kept his schedule open in case the Professor called on him. As that day came and passed, his curiosity grew to match his worrisomeness.
How had this happened? Wasn’t his solution fool proof? And why was Prof’s fate thus even after The Man had intervened? Wasn’t he powerful enough? Wasn’t he, in fact the most powerful practitioner in the region?
The day that followed, it rained heavily and out of the blue from dawn to dusk. And just as The Man had expected, a dishevelled Professor Henry Maritim, now donning an oversized brown leather jacket sauntered back into the office after dark and sat on that cold leather couch. His bloodshot eyes were more settled this time but his gaze was vacant. It remained fixed on the little wooden box on the coffee table or through it somehow.
The Man stood barefoot in a fitting charcoal grey suit at the huge glass window with eyes directly locked on the Professor. Prof all the while bequeathed silence its reign letting an unseen wall rise between them. The Man’s hands met palm to wrist behind him before quickly dipping back into the pockets of his trousers as he tried his best to remain stoic. After another prolonged spell, Prof produced a cold intact lamp and set it upon the coffee table. He then slunk back and turned his eyes to the Man as if in a hopless trance, with his mouth gaping wide open.
The Man stared at Prof having not decided where or how to begin. Or even what to make of this visit.
“You are back” through great effort, The Man’s voice remained level as usual.
“I am.” Prof ‘s voice was a low and unmotivated growl.
The Man watched him before beginning.
“First and foremost, my condolences on your terrible lo…”
The voice interrupted
Those are just whispers lost in the rain. Whispers in the rain, son of the moon.
Prof nodded with his mouth yet wide open. The tears that were balancing in his eyes finally fell with his gaze as they left the dapper witchdoctor and moved back to the box on the table. He quickly ran his left hand over his cheekbones to dry them.
“Now, as you can imagine, I fail to understand how any of this might have happened given the discussion we had a few weeks ago.” His voice grew more gruff as he went on pacing forward to one side of the coffee table and squarely faced Prof who sat down. ” Professor Maritim! Would you mind telling me what it is that occurred?”
“I’d rather not” he started without missing a beat and turned to The Man “All I can say is that I am truly grateful for the gift…the last few days have been…terri…”
“Nonsense!” The Man paced around the table and headed to the seat in a wild huff “This is not some press conference where you can use ‘no comment’ as a valid response to anything you don’t deem palatable.”
Prof turned his head suddenly to find a searing gaze trained on him. His heart was now beating hard enough to tear out of his chest.
“It’s as though you forget where you are or what I am.” The Man pushed losing his signature calmness “Have you been deceived?”
“What?”
“I asked” The Man clarified “Did I at any point of our interaction deceive you?”
“No. No, you didn’t…”
“And is it true that your wife was in fact pronounced dead at some point in time between you coming here and leaving? And of a fatal gun shot wound that couldn’t be treated by any modern medicine?”
“Yes but…”
“Is it also true that she experienced a …what should we call it? A miraculous recovery as a result of the lamp I put in your hand which you now so ungratefully place back on my table?”
“Yes. Yes, I understand…”
“But do you really, though?” He paced back to the glass window.
“….y…yes…”
“Do you understand what my reputation is built upon, Professor?”
“I know it intimately, my brother. It is one I have benefited from…and it is one nobody can dispute. But this here is not about your reputation, but mine instead.”
“You might think you are correct but you are not. And I am no-one’s brother.” The Man crossed his arms over his chest and took a deep breath before he went on “When all the witchdoctors failed you, even that one in Tanga…” he stopped once more and pondered a bit “only I could deliver what you needed.”
“I am grateful for this. But…” he finally sat up and stared directly at the huge glass window, past the Man, now sullenly peering into its quiet darkness that even dull specks of artificial light past the rain couldn’t redeem “it is not just grief that gnaws at me but shame.”
“Prof!” He paced quietly along the length of the window and turned to him shedding his petulance “there is neither a secret I have not heard within theses walls. I keep them all till my dying day. Such is my burden. Such is my duty.”
It was all like warm profanities muttered under the breaths of life long friends. And though it might have seemed like rage that stirred The Man, it was nothing other genuine concern. He turned and faced out the window crossing his arms and taking a deep breath.
“Understand this : If you return one of the most precious gifts I have ever given anyone, and risk marring my reputation, then I shall at least have a truthful explanation.” The Man was now calm.
Prof slunk back into the couch with an exhausted sigh. He brought his left thumb and middle finger to rub his heavy eyelids and held them for a spell facing upwards before dropping them. He then turned to the Man, his bloodshot gaze capitulating with yet another laboured sigh following.
“It has been rough, this last couple of days” he finally pulled off his jacket to reveal the stump where his right hand had been “when we met, I refused to believe that every valuable lesson I have ever learnt was borne of suffering. I told you that death had no meaning”
“Yes, you did. And you paid the price to rewrite your fate. What of it?”
Prof got up and walked over to the window to stand beside The Man. He stared down at the parking lot from before.
“They used to sell whores down there” he began turning to The Man and smiling as he continued ” I know because I used to go there. Wildest nights of my life, maze.”
He turned back to face the lot below illuminated by streetlights as his smile slowly faded away.
“You were right about concealed intentions. I used to go there when I got lonely. And I was lonely a lot back then. I stopped all that when I met Lena.” He went on. “Obviously.”
“Mmhh” The Man was curious.
“Do you recall my maid that lost her memory?” He watched The Man reply with a nod from the corner of his eye and proceeded “well she fell into a comma not long after I left here. I managed her bills all the while. It seemed only right since she’d taken a bullet for my family. Well, I found it odd that my wife, only days after ‘rising’ herself kept implying that it’s best that I let her rest…pull the plug and all that.
I saw some logic in what she was saying but just couldn’t bring myself to do it. Something just felt…off. Anyway, 6 days ago, she miraculously woke up. Good as new…and eager to speak to me.”
“Not your wife?”
“No!” Prof pointed at himself with his stump ” Only me! And in secret.”
“Mmh”
“When we met…” Prof collected himself “she told me that there was no robber that night of the shooting.”
“So what was there?”
“My wife brought a gun with her and confronted the bodyguard while the maid was shopping.”
“She killed him?”
“Yes. The maid stumbled upon them arguing. Arguing like lovers. Lena…wanted to stop her affair with him. Wanted him to leave my service immediately. It seems she had tried telling him before that night. He wasn’t having any of that from what the maid gathered. I gather the gun was to make herself more clear.
She was always used to getting her way, that woman. Heh.”
Prof let out a painful chuckle before going on.
“Anyway, she shot him point blank. He returned fire hitting her and the maid before succumbing to his own wounds. Then my wife staged the scene to make it appear like an attack.”
“I see.” The Mans eyebrows rose for the first time in years.
“Well, that isn’t all. It turns out, and I sent a private investigator to verify this claim… it turns out that they knew each other way before we met. Apparently, he had planted Lena into my life. Investigator says it seems I was just a mark to her…to them actually. From the very start.
She wasn’t even meant to get pregnant… I needed to verify all this before I confronted her.”
“Ok. But none of this explains how your home burned down or how your wife and son are dead right now” the Man’s face was fixed in an anticipatory snarl. Prof’s face on the other hand was completely relaxed and still facing the lot.
“Isn’t it obvious?” He turned to The Man in a matter of fact manner and flashing him an insidious grin.
“You burnt the house with your son in it?”
“Of course not. I whisked him away to a separate location pending the results of the paternity test”
“Now, I’m confused. Why? What test?”
“Oh! I should have mentioned; the maid overheard my bodyguard declare that he wont allow his son to be raised by another man, anymore.”
Prof spoke clearly and with a poisonous smile lingering on his lips made even The Man eerie.
“He was going to tell me about the whole thing so she shot him.” Prof’s chin dropped to his chest.
“Pardon my asking” The Man’s eyes shot to Prof’s feet. “Unrequited love; Does it truly hurt so bad that you would kill even the blameless because of it?”
“Look, my heart has been broken by women before. It’s a painful thing, we accept it. It pained me to lose her that first time, and even more to learn that she was unfaithful to me. But…but when those results came back a 1 percent match…” he almost choked “Now! That! Is the sharpest…pain I have ever felt. To find out that the child you have loved and nurtured and provided for isn’t even really your kin. That, is true agony. Not unrequited love these children cry about.
This morning at 1 am, a whole day since she died elapsed, I watched that boy sink into a sleep he shall never awaken from. And all I felt was…disappointment. Disappointment that nothing pure endures in this world. Once you stop taking from the world, it starts taking from you.
I was wrong… Pain is the only true…faithful teacher. And death? Death has meaning. I was wrong to think otherwise. In fact, I was wrong to want to be anything other than the solitary animal I was before I met her. I see now that only women and children are capable of happiness. The best a man can hope for is victory. And I have had so much of that in my life.”
A plastic smile lingered on his lips before he looked up over the dark expanse canvassing the city. Then a monstrous sigh of relief left his mouth and it was as though a boulder was pried off his chest.
“I see” the Man whispered in shame staring out at the window.
“When we met, I wouldn’t ask you to bring about my victory in the elections because I knew how to take it myself. Perhaps it made me seem like a good man…a man that could have done a lot of good in the world.” He placed his left hand over his right stump and rubbed absentmindedly “but there was no such man, was there?”
“Just a facade with a beast hiding in the background. Scared to celebrate victory alone.” The Man said almost in a trance.
“…But…now, I’m not alone. Now I have you. In that way and that way only, despite what you tell yourself, you become my brother. And I thank you for that.”
For an extended spell, they both stared out at the city shrouded in a moonless night. At that point, it was as though they had said almost enough to each other for a lifetime. And madness wasn’t staring at them approach anymore. They were at the bottom of that spiral staring up at the world as though with new eyes and faulty hearts.
Prof then set aside his consternation and sorrow and walked out the door.
the greensun blog 