I have arrived at the hospital. But I have been refused to go in because it is well past their visiting hours so I am now walking towards the bus stop where I will pick a bus headed towards Engel’s street. I have gotten to the bus stop and while I stand watching the cars speed past, I am reflecting on the whole mess of love, which is unfolding around me.
I am angry with Tanya. I am angry with her for trying to kill herself over me; how does she think that dying will solve her problems? Or does she think that by trying to kill herself that I will now love her? Does she not know that instead of sympathy I will begin to feel resentment towards her? I cannot be blackmailed into loving her, how can she be so foolish as to think otherwise?
Yet in my anger I still feel a bit of sympathy and a bit of fear and I wonder how comes love can become so self-destructive? And as I reflect on what she has done and I try to understand her motives, I am beginning to see that I am not that different from her; I begin to see that it is the same thing that I feel for Adelaide, which is now making Tanya to think that I am indispensable to her and I begin to understand that I really do not have that right to feel anger towards her.
I do not also have that right to judge her because in judging her I am really judging myself; when she says that she cannot live without me, she is echoing the same way that I feel about Adelaide. And I am beginning to see that her attempt to kill herself is just the same thing as my own self-destructive journey into drinking and whoring.
We are essentially the same. Tanya and I are just the same; she is the bolder one, who is willing to be rid of her anguish at once-to violently be separated from the thing that distresses her, while I-the coward-choose the protracted route of self-indulgence, clinging on to the thing, which I detest. The thing which I detest…?
Can this be the same love that poets write about and romantic movies are made of? Can this be the same or have we both, without our knowing it, fallen victims to something else-a lot more disturbing? Something I detest?
I am now confused; It is beginning to dawn on me that the reason why all along I have not been able to “take things easy and enjoy myself” is because this is really about me.
I need to talk with Tanya and let her know what I am beginning to understand about us…about myself; I need to help her to begin to understand that maybe it is not me that she loves…I am beginning to understand that all this has to do with the way she sees herself and that for her to be able to get home…to Africa…I may not be the one whom she needs.
I will go to her tomorrow and I will talk with her before she tries to hurt herself again.
Tuesday 27 November 2007
The last days of Spring/8
A few hours later, I am sitting in my room and watching Ade. He is staring at a letter, which he just received from home and has just finished reading. He is not saying anything.
“Is everything okay?”
He raises his eyes and looks at me blankly for a few seconds. “She’s gone…”
And I know that he’s talking about his mother…she has lost the fight to live.
“Are you alright?”
He ignores my question and continues to stare at the letter and I recognize that he probably didn’t hear me. I have never been in this kind of situation before; I don’t know whether I should keep quiet and let him deal with his grief alone or whether is should console him-but he is not crying and that makes it even difficult. So I keep quiet.
“Why…God?” I hear the pain in his voice; it sounds like something breaking.
“Maybe she is in heaven right now…” I offer trying to console him. But he doesn’t seem to have heard me.
“Why…?” I hear him groan and I realize that it is best that I leave him alone to resolve his own questions and to grieve alone. Sometimes it is better that way.
I am leaving the room and have patted him on the back briefly to show my commiseration and I leave without saying anything; I don’t really know what to say.
I have gone to Ugo’s room and I meet him packing his bags.
“Ol’boy Ade just got a letter from home saying that his mum just died”
“Na wa! Wetin kill am?”
“She suffered a stroke several months ago and I don’t think she recovered”
“Poor guy…at least him go fit travel during the holidays and not miss any school work…anyway when you go travel?”
“On Sunday”
“We dey leave for Moscow tomorrow morning …we wan pass through Kharkov first”
“Are you going with Eddy?”
“Yes…”
They wanted to pass through Kharkov so that Ugo could help Eddy with some of his stuff as he didn’t want to come back to Rostov after the summer holidays. They planned on going to Nigeria to sell football boots and some antibiotics; apparently they had made quite a lot of fortune in the last few months and they now had a ready market for their goods.
“We’ll leave you and your babes in Rostov…”
“Have you seen Sveta today?”
“She’ll be coming later this evening…I fit leave Sveat for you as well”
“No thanks…Tanya’s problem is already too much for me…she been meet me and Adelaide as we dey waka down the street today and then hin come bolt like person wey dey craze…”
“Bolt go where?”
“I don’t know…”
“So wetin dat one mean?”
“I really don’t know, but I just hope say hin’ no go harm himself…”
“Why…?”
“She just dey behave like person wey get real issues and I just don’t know what to do?”
“And wetin Adelaide come talk?”
“I never talk with am since then”
“You and this your love nonsense! Why don’t you just take things easy and enjoy yourself?”
“I don’t know…”
I really don’t know. That’s the question I have been asking myself and I am wondering whether I should not try to disentangle myself from Adelaide before I get too involved to a point where I cannot turn back. I am just so confused; one moment I know that It feels as if I cannot live without her, while the next I feel so distressed by the thought of her.
Is this what love is about? Why can’t I take things easy and “enjoy myself” as Ugo asks?
“Anyway, you don here the latest with Barry?”
Ah, the man Barry; I heard that he had attacked Omar along the corridor and had continued to punch him until Omar who was carrying a sharp penknife used it on him in self-defense and stabbed him in the abdomen…
Barry had been acting even weirder in the last few days; he had almost attacked Volodya the other day calling him a KGB spy and saying that no matter what they did that they will not be able to plant anything on him. I think most people had realized that something is going on with him, but nobody has been bold enough to do anything about it. He had been literally stalking Omar in the last few days and had been saying that as long as people like Omar-who according to him are an embarrassment to the children of Kememu-walk about freely, then the black man will never know any respect. He says its people like Omar who the white man uses to divide the black man…
I think it’s because of Barry that Omar started to carry about the knife with him. And its lead to this…
“So what happened to Barry?”
“They say they think he is mad and that they’re sending him back to Zaire after they treat his wounds…”
“Poor Barry…I think he just started to muddle up a lot of things from his too much reading…”
“No. I think the guy has always been sick and should have been treated a long time ago”
“But a lot of the things he says make sense…”
“Like what?”
“There are a lot of books he’s asked us to read and I’ll look for them when I go to England”
“You think say you go get time look for book in England? E be like say you think say na holiday you dey go!”
In a way he is right. The purpose of my traveling was to go and look for some holiday jobs to raise the funds to start buying and selling things. So it wasn’t really a holiday in the real sense of the word since I would need to pay him back once I came back.
We were still talking when there was a knock on the door.
“It must be Sveta…if na she then you know say you go vamoose…”
“I know.”
The door opened and it was Sveta; she wasn’t looking happy when she saw me!
“Kasi, what have you don to my friend?” she shouted at me as she walked in.
“What did I do?"
“My friend almost killed herself and she’s at the CGB…”
CGB is the acronym in Russian for the Central state hospital but everybody just knows it as CGB.
“Is she okay…what did she do?”
“She took an overdose of some tablets but her grandmother found her throwing up and called the ambulance…”
“Is she okay?”
“They say she is going to be okay, but she wants to see you…”
“Is everything okay?”
He raises his eyes and looks at me blankly for a few seconds. “She’s gone…”
And I know that he’s talking about his mother…she has lost the fight to live.
“Are you alright?”
He ignores my question and continues to stare at the letter and I recognize that he probably didn’t hear me. I have never been in this kind of situation before; I don’t know whether I should keep quiet and let him deal with his grief alone or whether is should console him-but he is not crying and that makes it even difficult. So I keep quiet.
“Why…God?” I hear the pain in his voice; it sounds like something breaking.
“Maybe she is in heaven right now…” I offer trying to console him. But he doesn’t seem to have heard me.
“Why…?” I hear him groan and I realize that it is best that I leave him alone to resolve his own questions and to grieve alone. Sometimes it is better that way.
I am leaving the room and have patted him on the back briefly to show my commiseration and I leave without saying anything; I don’t really know what to say.
I have gone to Ugo’s room and I meet him packing his bags.
“Ol’boy Ade just got a letter from home saying that his mum just died”
“Na wa! Wetin kill am?”
“She suffered a stroke several months ago and I don’t think she recovered”
“Poor guy…at least him go fit travel during the holidays and not miss any school work…anyway when you go travel?”
“On Sunday”
“We dey leave for Moscow tomorrow morning …we wan pass through Kharkov first”
“Are you going with Eddy?”
“Yes…”
They wanted to pass through Kharkov so that Ugo could help Eddy with some of his stuff as he didn’t want to come back to Rostov after the summer holidays. They planned on going to Nigeria to sell football boots and some antibiotics; apparently they had made quite a lot of fortune in the last few months and they now had a ready market for their goods.
“We’ll leave you and your babes in Rostov…”
“Have you seen Sveta today?”
“She’ll be coming later this evening…I fit leave Sveat for you as well”
“No thanks…Tanya’s problem is already too much for me…she been meet me and Adelaide as we dey waka down the street today and then hin come bolt like person wey dey craze…”
“Bolt go where?”
“I don’t know…”
“So wetin dat one mean?”
“I really don’t know, but I just hope say hin’ no go harm himself…”
“Why…?”
“She just dey behave like person wey get real issues and I just don’t know what to do?”
“And wetin Adelaide come talk?”
“I never talk with am since then”
“You and this your love nonsense! Why don’t you just take things easy and enjoy yourself?”
“I don’t know…”
I really don’t know. That’s the question I have been asking myself and I am wondering whether I should not try to disentangle myself from Adelaide before I get too involved to a point where I cannot turn back. I am just so confused; one moment I know that It feels as if I cannot live without her, while the next I feel so distressed by the thought of her.
Is this what love is about? Why can’t I take things easy and “enjoy myself” as Ugo asks?
“Anyway, you don here the latest with Barry?”
Ah, the man Barry; I heard that he had attacked Omar along the corridor and had continued to punch him until Omar who was carrying a sharp penknife used it on him in self-defense and stabbed him in the abdomen…
Barry had been acting even weirder in the last few days; he had almost attacked Volodya the other day calling him a KGB spy and saying that no matter what they did that they will not be able to plant anything on him. I think most people had realized that something is going on with him, but nobody has been bold enough to do anything about it. He had been literally stalking Omar in the last few days and had been saying that as long as people like Omar-who according to him are an embarrassment to the children of Kememu-walk about freely, then the black man will never know any respect. He says its people like Omar who the white man uses to divide the black man…
I think it’s because of Barry that Omar started to carry about the knife with him. And its lead to this…
“So what happened to Barry?”
“They say they think he is mad and that they’re sending him back to Zaire after they treat his wounds…”
“Poor Barry…I think he just started to muddle up a lot of things from his too much reading…”
“No. I think the guy has always been sick and should have been treated a long time ago”
“But a lot of the things he says make sense…”
“Like what?”
“There are a lot of books he’s asked us to read and I’ll look for them when I go to England”
“You think say you go get time look for book in England? E be like say you think say na holiday you dey go!”
In a way he is right. The purpose of my traveling was to go and look for some holiday jobs to raise the funds to start buying and selling things. So it wasn’t really a holiday in the real sense of the word since I would need to pay him back once I came back.
We were still talking when there was a knock on the door.
“It must be Sveta…if na she then you know say you go vamoose…”
“I know.”
The door opened and it was Sveta; she wasn’t looking happy when she saw me!
“Kasi, what have you don to my friend?” she shouted at me as she walked in.
“What did I do?"
“My friend almost killed herself and she’s at the CGB…”
CGB is the acronym in Russian for the Central state hospital but everybody just knows it as CGB.
“Is she okay…what did she do?”
“She took an overdose of some tablets but her grandmother found her throwing up and called the ambulance…”
“Is she okay?”
“They say she is going to be okay, but she wants to see you…”
The last days of Spring/7
She is staring at us as we are coming up Puskins street towards the hostel. And after what seems like a brief moment of indecision, she looks away and has just scurried off through the crowd and into the hostel.
“Isn’t that your mulatka?”
The paramedics are carrying a stretcher out as I come up to the entrance of the hostel and I have to wait for them to pass before I can continue my chase. Where is she running to…what is she going to do?
I recognize the stocky frame of Barry on the stretcher, with a bandage tied round his trunk and muttering something about Kememu. What’s happened now and what is this Kememu nonsense he’s been saying of late? Behind the stretcher, a limping Omar is being escorted out by two police officers and it’s clear that both of them have had another fight and that Barry seems to have come out worse. I pass through the crowd and run into the hostel and head towards the stairs to the second floor.
I am not sure where exactly she has run to but I have decided to check Ugo’s and Eddy’s room seeing that her friends still came by there sometimes.
I have come up to room and knocking but no one is opening the door; I don’t know where else to start looking and I am thinking that I should go back to the ground floor and wait there since she has to come out of the hostel through that one exit. I am running down the stairs towards the ground floor and Adelaide is walking up…
“I just saw your…er…the mulatka” she says.
“Where did you see her?”
“She just ran out of the hostel…as if she was being chased by somebody…”
“In which direction…?”
“I don’t know I was already in the lobby…”
I ran out onto the street and look in both directions up Pushkin’s street but she is not there. And I don’t know in what direction to go…
She is gone and maybe this is the best thing to happen; may be it is best for us to end this way…I cannot give her what she wants and that is that. Yet…yet I am realizing that I do feel something for her and though I will be able to live without her I will want to see her again and to end properly with her.
Now I am free to go after Adelaide; I am even more convinced that it is our destiny to be together-why else would we both be left behind in Rostov, while all our friends are posted out? Why else would it be today of all days that Tanya chooses to meet us together, if not that fate has decided to intervene? We are powerless in the hands of destiny; we cannot change what is meant to be. Adelaide and I were meant to be-we have now only to confront our destiny.
“Isn’t that your mulatka?”
The paramedics are carrying a stretcher out as I come up to the entrance of the hostel and I have to wait for them to pass before I can continue my chase. Where is she running to…what is she going to do?
I recognize the stocky frame of Barry on the stretcher, with a bandage tied round his trunk and muttering something about Kememu. What’s happened now and what is this Kememu nonsense he’s been saying of late? Behind the stretcher, a limping Omar is being escorted out by two police officers and it’s clear that both of them have had another fight and that Barry seems to have come out worse. I pass through the crowd and run into the hostel and head towards the stairs to the second floor.
I am not sure where exactly she has run to but I have decided to check Ugo’s and Eddy’s room seeing that her friends still came by there sometimes.
I have come up to room and knocking but no one is opening the door; I don’t know where else to start looking and I am thinking that I should go back to the ground floor and wait there since she has to come out of the hostel through that one exit. I am running down the stairs towards the ground floor and Adelaide is walking up…
“I just saw your…er…the mulatka” she says.
“Where did you see her?”
“She just ran out of the hostel…as if she was being chased by somebody…”
“In which direction…?”
“I don’t know I was already in the lobby…”
I ran out onto the street and look in both directions up Pushkin’s street but she is not there. And I don’t know in what direction to go…
She is gone and maybe this is the best thing to happen; may be it is best for us to end this way…I cannot give her what she wants and that is that. Yet…yet I am realizing that I do feel something for her and though I will be able to live without her I will want to see her again and to end properly with her.
Now I am free to go after Adelaide; I am even more convinced that it is our destiny to be together-why else would we both be left behind in Rostov, while all our friends are posted out? Why else would it be today of all days that Tanya chooses to meet us together, if not that fate has decided to intervene? We are powerless in the hands of destiny; we cannot change what is meant to be. Adelaide and I were meant to be-we have now only to confront our destiny.
Monday 26 November 2007
The last days of Spring/6
As we left the faculty building and walked on to Varashilovsky Street I found my self thinking briefly of Tanya; it is sympathy that I feel for her, I am sure of that…
It is already late afternoon as Adelaide and I stroll side by side into Pushkinskaya Boulevard. It’s very breezy here because of the trees and the cool summer breeze is now blowing on my face and caressing it gently; it’s so refreshing-the breeze-so invigorating.
Around us the birds are singing loudly to each other and you can see a few people walking their dogs. Some are just strolling hand along the tree-lined boulevard holding hands, while others-the more elderly ones-are seated on the several benches that can be found at regular intervals and watching the late afternoon pass slowly by.
I am feeling a bit uncomfortable because since we left the faculty building several minutes ago we have hardly said anything to each other; we are strolling on like two perfect strangers who are both lost in their own thoughts and who do not want to say what they are thinking; the spontaneity-the one that I always feel whenever I have been with Tanya in these last few months-is missing.
It feels different with Adelaide as if the reality and the fantasy are of two entirely different people. And I am finding it very difficult to be myself in this reality as I struggle to find the words, which would break the ice. Suddenly, a sense of not being man enough to bring out the woman in her hangs over me like a suffocating cloud. And I am wondering whether it is the lingering shadow of that shame, which had thwarted our budding relationship on that very cold night so many months ago that now covers me with such impotence…
What if underneath that lovely smile of hers she still resents me…?
“What are you thinking about?” she asked suddenly interrupting my thoughts.
“You…”
“What about me…?”
“I was wondering if…er…I was wondering if you still resent me….“
“Resent you for what?” She sounded a bit surprised and looked at me with slightly raised eyebrows.
“Because of…er…you know…the party”
“What happened?”
“Have you forgotten that day when we danced and I er…”
“I know but what actually happened?”
“It wasn’t supposed to…I…er…I was feeling…em…“
“You used me….that’s how I felt and that’s why I walked away”
“But I er…that was not my intention…I think it was the...er…you know...I have desired you from the very first day and…honestly I didn’t want it to happen that way”
“How was it supposed to happen?”
“I mean…only a fool would purposely ruin things with somebody….er…what I’m trying to say is that from the first time I set eyes on you at that Beryozka in Moscow, I…”
“Which beryozka in Moscow?”
“The one at that student’s hotel…that was where I first saw you sitting with Pedro and some friends. I had just come in with Ugo and I saw you there…on that first night”
“I don’t remember…”
“I do…I have never stopped thinking of you since…I er…I think it was the excitement of finally being close to you that evening…please forgive me ”
We were approaching the bust of Pushkin and two teenagers stood next to it. It looked like the young man was reciting a poem to his partner and as I saw them the image of Tanya flashed briefly across my mind. I remembered the day when I had stood at the same spot with her wishing that it was Adelaide that had been there with me….
“After I thought about it, I guessed it was not intentional. So It’s okay…”
“There’s the bust of Pushkin…when I came across his poem I knew that it was just right that I send it to you…those words about the wondrous moment when he beheld a glimpse of perfect womanhood…those words feel just right when I think of you…“.
As we walked past Pushkin’s bust she glanced at it momentarily and a slight frown creased her forehead. “I am not really into poems, but I like the one that you gave to me on that day…I told you so at the party”
“Yes…I still feel the same way…“She didn’t say anything.
We have come to the end of boulevard and have just come out onto Pushkin’s street; I notice that a police car is parked outside of our hostel, while just in front of it is parked an ambulance.
It looks like they’re trying to carry somebody out on a stretcher and the crowd of students standing at the door are making way for the stretcher.
“I wonder what’s happened now!” she said.
I hope it’s not Barry again…I am thinking as we walk up to the entrance of the hostel. And at that moment i notice that one of the people standing in the crowd and who has just turned towards us is Tanya…
It is already late afternoon as Adelaide and I stroll side by side into Pushkinskaya Boulevard. It’s very breezy here because of the trees and the cool summer breeze is now blowing on my face and caressing it gently; it’s so refreshing-the breeze-so invigorating.
Around us the birds are singing loudly to each other and you can see a few people walking their dogs. Some are just strolling hand along the tree-lined boulevard holding hands, while others-the more elderly ones-are seated on the several benches that can be found at regular intervals and watching the late afternoon pass slowly by.
I am feeling a bit uncomfortable because since we left the faculty building several minutes ago we have hardly said anything to each other; we are strolling on like two perfect strangers who are both lost in their own thoughts and who do not want to say what they are thinking; the spontaneity-the one that I always feel whenever I have been with Tanya in these last few months-is missing.
It feels different with Adelaide as if the reality and the fantasy are of two entirely different people. And I am finding it very difficult to be myself in this reality as I struggle to find the words, which would break the ice. Suddenly, a sense of not being man enough to bring out the woman in her hangs over me like a suffocating cloud. And I am wondering whether it is the lingering shadow of that shame, which had thwarted our budding relationship on that very cold night so many months ago that now covers me with such impotence…
What if underneath that lovely smile of hers she still resents me…?
“What are you thinking about?” she asked suddenly interrupting my thoughts.
“You…”
“What about me…?”
“I was wondering if…er…I was wondering if you still resent me….“
“Resent you for what?” She sounded a bit surprised and looked at me with slightly raised eyebrows.
“Because of…er…you know…the party”
“What happened?”
“Have you forgotten that day when we danced and I er…”
“I know but what actually happened?”
“It wasn’t supposed to…I…er…I was feeling…em…“
“You used me….that’s how I felt and that’s why I walked away”
“But I er…that was not my intention…I think it was the...er…you know...I have desired you from the very first day and…honestly I didn’t want it to happen that way”
“How was it supposed to happen?”
“I mean…only a fool would purposely ruin things with somebody….er…what I’m trying to say is that from the first time I set eyes on you at that Beryozka in Moscow, I…”
“Which beryozka in Moscow?”
“The one at that student’s hotel…that was where I first saw you sitting with Pedro and some friends. I had just come in with Ugo and I saw you there…on that first night”
“I don’t remember…”
“I do…I have never stopped thinking of you since…I er…I think it was the excitement of finally being close to you that evening…please forgive me ”
We were approaching the bust of Pushkin and two teenagers stood next to it. It looked like the young man was reciting a poem to his partner and as I saw them the image of Tanya flashed briefly across my mind. I remembered the day when I had stood at the same spot with her wishing that it was Adelaide that had been there with me….
“After I thought about it, I guessed it was not intentional. So It’s okay…”
“There’s the bust of Pushkin…when I came across his poem I knew that it was just right that I send it to you…those words about the wondrous moment when he beheld a glimpse of perfect womanhood…those words feel just right when I think of you…“.
As we walked past Pushkin’s bust she glanced at it momentarily and a slight frown creased her forehead. “I am not really into poems, but I like the one that you gave to me on that day…I told you so at the party”
“Yes…I still feel the same way…“She didn’t say anything.
We have come to the end of boulevard and have just come out onto Pushkin’s street; I notice that a police car is parked outside of our hostel, while just in front of it is parked an ambulance.
It looks like they’re trying to carry somebody out on a stretcher and the crowd of students standing at the door are making way for the stretcher.
“I wonder what’s happened now!” she said.
I hope it’s not Barry again…I am thinking as we walk up to the entrance of the hostel. And at that moment i notice that one of the people standing in the crowd and who has just turned towards us is Tanya…
The last days of Spring/5
I have been very busy over the last few days with my end of course exams and though I have thought of Tanya and the incident that happened last Sunday I am not that worried she has not visited as she normally does every other day. She is aware of my busy schedule this week and originally we had planned that we wouldn’t meet until Friday evening or Saturday morning.
It is Thursday morning and I need to go to the faculty to clarify which town I have been posted to after that I’ll just come home and rest.
Ugo had promised to raise me the ticket money for me to go and work in England for the long summer holidays. My application to the Gorodsky Soviet for the exit visa has been approved; the exit visa is an essential travel document for all residents of the USSR, which you need to show to the boarder controls whenever you are travelling out of the country-even if you are travelling to your own country. If you are travelling to a third country, you need the exit visa to show to the foreign missions before they start to consider your application for an entry visa into their country.
I am going to pick up my exit visa tomorrow by which time I will also know which town I have been posted for life rest of my education in this country. I have chosen Leningrad as my first choice and I may be posted there since we have been told that they will give priority according to our performance in the just concluded exams; I excelled in all the subjects, so I should get my first choice.
I think it will be good for me to start all over again; I think I need to be separated from Tanya and even from Adelaide; perhaps If I am sent far away to Leningrad I will be able to forget her. It will be a cruel joke of fate if we both end up in the same city again.
I don’t know how Tanya will take it, but I think what has happened on Saturday will make it easier for her to accept my going way; she too needs a break from me to allow her resolve her issues. Because I am sure that she will be able to get over me-she has to.
I have planned to travel to Moscow on Sunday evening so that I can sort out the transit visas within the week and hopefully leave for the United Kingdom by the end of next week. Tanya should be coming tomorrow or on Saturday…she has to start getting over me.
I have entered the faculty building and just joined a queue of other students who have been standing in the hallway just outside the deans’ office on the ground floor.
We want to petition the dean to reconsider our postings as we have just found out about the towns, which we have been posted to.I have just found out that I have been retained in Rostov even though I hadn’t included Rostov in my list and I was able to excel in all of the subjects! I am now feeling as if I have been shafted by the dean…
The door of the deans’ office has just opened and the student who is coming out is Adelaide. She has turned and started to come towards me and I can see that she is not in the least happy.
“Priviet…”I greet her, hoping that fate would once again keep us together"...where have you been posted to…?”
“They have kept me in Rostov and I didn’t even include it in my list of towns!”
“Me too…and…”
“I don’t understand them...after all they told us! Now the dean is saying that the spaces in Leningrad, Moscow and Kharkov are all filled up…“
“Filled up by whom?”“I don’t know…it looks like the only towns left are Krasnodar and Varonedj and she‘s asked me to go and think about it…but that we should remember that the medical school here is one of the best…"
“I heard that as well but Rostov itself is hopeless…and your friend?”
“Which one?”
“You know…er…is it Pedro?”
“He’s been posted to Varonedj…”
“So that makes it easy for you then…I mean…you don’t have a problem then since there‘s still space in there…”She glared at me.” I told her that I don’t want to go to either Krasnodar or Varonedj…I wanted Leningrad”
“Who’s next?!” the person standing behind me is asking and I notice that it’s my turn to go in as the line’s now moving very quickly.
“I won’t be long…can you wait for me so that we can walk home together?…the weather is really nice”
“I’m going to the canteen…you can check me there”I didn’t spend up to five minutes in the deans office since I was no longer in the protesting mood. I had just gone in, expressed my dissatisfaction to her unsatisfactorily and then I left her office in a haste to see if she was still at the canteen on the ground floor…She was.
I met her sitting there and eating some snacks; she and was having some Pirozhki-the traditional Russian small stuffed buns-and had a half full glass of the creamy Smetana on her table as I walked in and joined her.
“Do you care for some?”
“No thanks”
“How did it go with the dean?”
“Nothing’s changed…I am stuck in Rostov…with you”
Her expression didn’t change when I said that. In stead she raised her glass of smetana to her lips and drank from it and it looked as if she was staring through me…
“It’s not that bad…is it?” I asked.“I don’t like Rostov. There are not a lot people from my country here and there’s nothing much to do…”
“But you still accepted it ahead of Varonedj even though…”
“Oh…don’t bring up Pedro again!”
“Why…are you guys not…?”
“Can we not talk about him…how‘s your little girl?!”
“I don’t have any little girl…”
“Yes you do! The pretty mulatka that I see you with all the time…”
“You mean Tanya?…I…er…”
“She is your girlfriend isn’t she?”
“Her dad was from Nigeria but she’s never met him and I…er…”
“You are helping her find her dad…that‘s classic. You men never seize to amaze me!…can we go now?”
It is Thursday morning and I need to go to the faculty to clarify which town I have been posted to after that I’ll just come home and rest.
Ugo had promised to raise me the ticket money for me to go and work in England for the long summer holidays. My application to the Gorodsky Soviet for the exit visa has been approved; the exit visa is an essential travel document for all residents of the USSR, which you need to show to the boarder controls whenever you are travelling out of the country-even if you are travelling to your own country. If you are travelling to a third country, you need the exit visa to show to the foreign missions before they start to consider your application for an entry visa into their country.
I am going to pick up my exit visa tomorrow by which time I will also know which town I have been posted for life rest of my education in this country. I have chosen Leningrad as my first choice and I may be posted there since we have been told that they will give priority according to our performance in the just concluded exams; I excelled in all the subjects, so I should get my first choice.
I think it will be good for me to start all over again; I think I need to be separated from Tanya and even from Adelaide; perhaps If I am sent far away to Leningrad I will be able to forget her. It will be a cruel joke of fate if we both end up in the same city again.
I don’t know how Tanya will take it, but I think what has happened on Saturday will make it easier for her to accept my going way; she too needs a break from me to allow her resolve her issues. Because I am sure that she will be able to get over me-she has to.
I have planned to travel to Moscow on Sunday evening so that I can sort out the transit visas within the week and hopefully leave for the United Kingdom by the end of next week. Tanya should be coming tomorrow or on Saturday…she has to start getting over me.
I have entered the faculty building and just joined a queue of other students who have been standing in the hallway just outside the deans’ office on the ground floor.
We want to petition the dean to reconsider our postings as we have just found out about the towns, which we have been posted to.I have just found out that I have been retained in Rostov even though I hadn’t included Rostov in my list and I was able to excel in all of the subjects! I am now feeling as if I have been shafted by the dean…
The door of the deans’ office has just opened and the student who is coming out is Adelaide. She has turned and started to come towards me and I can see that she is not in the least happy.
“Priviet…”I greet her, hoping that fate would once again keep us together"...where have you been posted to…?”
“They have kept me in Rostov and I didn’t even include it in my list of towns!”
“Me too…and…”
“I don’t understand them...after all they told us! Now the dean is saying that the spaces in Leningrad, Moscow and Kharkov are all filled up…“
“Filled up by whom?”“I don’t know…it looks like the only towns left are Krasnodar and Varonedj and she‘s asked me to go and think about it…but that we should remember that the medical school here is one of the best…"
“I heard that as well but Rostov itself is hopeless…and your friend?”
“Which one?”
“You know…er…is it Pedro?”
“He’s been posted to Varonedj…”
“So that makes it easy for you then…I mean…you don’t have a problem then since there‘s still space in there…”She glared at me.” I told her that I don’t want to go to either Krasnodar or Varonedj…I wanted Leningrad”
“Who’s next?!” the person standing behind me is asking and I notice that it’s my turn to go in as the line’s now moving very quickly.
“I won’t be long…can you wait for me so that we can walk home together?…the weather is really nice”
“I’m going to the canteen…you can check me there”I didn’t spend up to five minutes in the deans office since I was no longer in the protesting mood. I had just gone in, expressed my dissatisfaction to her unsatisfactorily and then I left her office in a haste to see if she was still at the canteen on the ground floor…She was.
I met her sitting there and eating some snacks; she and was having some Pirozhki-the traditional Russian small stuffed buns-and had a half full glass of the creamy Smetana on her table as I walked in and joined her.
“Do you care for some?”
“No thanks”
“How did it go with the dean?”
“Nothing’s changed…I am stuck in Rostov…with you”
Her expression didn’t change when I said that. In stead she raised her glass of smetana to her lips and drank from it and it looked as if she was staring through me…
“It’s not that bad…is it?” I asked.“I don’t like Rostov. There are not a lot people from my country here and there’s nothing much to do…”
“But you still accepted it ahead of Varonedj even though…”
“Oh…don’t bring up Pedro again!”
“Why…are you guys not…?”
“Can we not talk about him…how‘s your little girl?!”
“I don’t have any little girl…”
“Yes you do! The pretty mulatka that I see you with all the time…”
“You mean Tanya?…I…er…”
“She is your girlfriend isn’t she?”
“Her dad was from Nigeria but she’s never met him and I…er…”
“You are helping her find her dad…that‘s classic. You men never seize to amaze me!…can we go now?”
Sunday 25 November 2007
The last days of Spring/4
Tanya has never known a man in her life and she says that she is giving me her virginity because I am the man of her dreams. So I have decided to treat her right-I will treat her like the woman she deserves to be.
I have prepared a lovely dish from a recipe one of my friends who comes Lesotho has given me. He says it’s a South African recipe and he gave me the herbs, which he bought in South Africa during the winter holidays; he says that the herbs “bring out the flavour in food”…and that they are especially good for “meat-based sauces.”
He is right the food has come out very nice and I have had to open the windows so that aroma, which was so thick in the room, could dissipate a bit and I have sprayed the room several times with an air freshener, which I recently bought from the grocery store and which supposed to spread the smell of spring.
I have placed the bouquet of roses on the table and the card on which I have written the little poem is leaning on to the side of bottle of sweat champagne. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get a bucket of ice anywhere, but the whole atmosphere has come out as romantic as is possible.
Tanya should be here any minute from now. I have slotted in a cassette, which I borrowed from one of my friends and which has a collection of popular love songs; I want to set it at one of the tracks that I think is most appropriate for today. I am fast forwarding the tape and then I find what I am looking for-I will start to play it once she comes in.
I check my self in the mirror and I am satisfied with what I see; Ugo gave me a sharp haircut earlier on today and I am actually beginning to look handsome-that gaunt look that I had at the time when I left Nigeria is now gone; my cheeks look a lot fuller.
There’s the knock on the door.
I open the door and she is standing there…smiling and Al is not with her. Tanya is really a beautiful woman and I must learn to love her…I am thinking as i look at her.
“Your beauty takes my breath away…” I am saying and I kiss her lightly on the lips. She smiles and then lowers her eyes.
She is so shy…
“Thank you…” she says as I offer her my hand and lead her into the room.
“Mmm…I like the smell of the food you cooked…”
“I had thought that the smell would have all disappeared by the time you come… I have had to open the windows and spray an air freshener about three times already…”
“But I like it…what is it that you cooked?”
“It’s chicken…I prepared it with some South African herbs and I have cooked some fried rice…there’s ice cream for desert as well…”
“Mmm…I love ice cream…what flavour?”
“Vanilla…that’s the only thing I could find”
“It’s okay”
“I am sure that the food will taste even better than it smells” I say as I show her to the chair and then go to the tape recorder to press the play button. The track I want has started to play; tonight I celebrate my love for you, it seems the natural thing to do…
“Are you ready to eat?”
“Yes…what this card on the table?”
“Its for you…you can have a look”She picks up the card and opens it to read while I try to dish out the food. As I am busy dishing it out I hear a sniffling sound behind me so I turn around to see her trying to hold back tears…she is not succeeding because I can see two teardrops trailing down her cheeks.
“Are they really for me?”
“Yes”
“Thank you…it‘s so beautiful”We have eaten the food and eaten the ice cream. We are now sipping the sweat champagne and listening to the love songs that are playing in the background.
“Let’s dance…” she says and we get up to dance. It is just the two of us here…alone.
And the evening is going so well; I am really enjoying Tanya’s presence and I am so very conscious of where this evening is heading to. I am not going to fight with my desires any more-she wants me and I want her; it is as simple as that.
She is now raising her face for a kiss and we start to kiss passionately. She is pressing her body on mine and I notice that her breathing is become more and more laboured.
The time has come…
And I begin to her slowly; I don‘t want to break the rhythm of the music playing, which is becoming a soundtrack to our unfolding love affair. She has decided to come to my aid and is in a hurry to free herself of her clothes.
She has such a beautiful body…
I have also started to undress myself as she stands naked in front of me, tugging at my shirt…wanting me. But something is not quite right-something is holding me back and I find myself now struggling with an embarrassing limpness, as a certain nagging feeling surfaces and begins to now hang over me, dampening my passion and it suddenly feels as if I am being watched…as if something is speaking to me-telling me-that it is not right; what I am doing is not right.
I cannot break this young girl’s heart…
I know that I am not free to do this to her; I know that I will still run to Adelaide if she were to as much as smile at me…
“What is wrong?” Tanya is asking.
“I am not yet ready, Tanya…I don’t want to hurt you”
“But…”
“It doesn’t feel right…not yet”
“But you said that you love me…don’t you love me?”
The words that I want to say have stuck in my throat; I can not continue to lead this innocent girl on; I might be a lost soul, but I am not yet beyond redemption.
“Kasi….”
She is crying…
And I don’t know what to say to her. What can I say that will make her understand that it is not right.
“Do you love me…Kasi?”
“I…”“You don’t have to say anything…” she says and starts to put on her clothes slowly, reluctantly…like one who is being drained of life.
“It’s not as you think Tanya, I …”
“You can’t even tell me that you love me anymore”
“Tanya I don’t want to hurt you…you have already been hurt so much in your life”
“But…you are hurting me Kasi…you…”
“Please, Tanya…I don’t want to hurt you…I..”
“But you once said that you love me…”
“Just give me the chance to resolve my feelings for you, Tanya…what you want to give me is a very significant part of your life and I…”
“But I have told you that I love you with all my heart….I want to love you with my body as well…”
She has finished putting on her clothes now and has moved towards the door. The tears are still falling from her eyes.
“Kasi, do you love me…please tell me that you love me?”
The look in her eyes was too heartbreaking for me. It was a look of someone who feels rejected; she looked at me and it was as if she was pleading for something but I do not have what she wants.
I cannot give her what she wants...
She had then looked a way with a rivulet of tears now streaming down her face as she opened the door and walked away.
I could not run after her because I was still naked…
I have prepared a lovely dish from a recipe one of my friends who comes Lesotho has given me. He says it’s a South African recipe and he gave me the herbs, which he bought in South Africa during the winter holidays; he says that the herbs “bring out the flavour in food”…and that they are especially good for “meat-based sauces.”
He is right the food has come out very nice and I have had to open the windows so that aroma, which was so thick in the room, could dissipate a bit and I have sprayed the room several times with an air freshener, which I recently bought from the grocery store and which supposed to spread the smell of spring.
I have placed the bouquet of roses on the table and the card on which I have written the little poem is leaning on to the side of bottle of sweat champagne. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get a bucket of ice anywhere, but the whole atmosphere has come out as romantic as is possible.
Tanya should be here any minute from now. I have slotted in a cassette, which I borrowed from one of my friends and which has a collection of popular love songs; I want to set it at one of the tracks that I think is most appropriate for today. I am fast forwarding the tape and then I find what I am looking for-I will start to play it once she comes in.
I check my self in the mirror and I am satisfied with what I see; Ugo gave me a sharp haircut earlier on today and I am actually beginning to look handsome-that gaunt look that I had at the time when I left Nigeria is now gone; my cheeks look a lot fuller.
There’s the knock on the door.
I open the door and she is standing there…smiling and Al is not with her. Tanya is really a beautiful woman and I must learn to love her…I am thinking as i look at her.
“Your beauty takes my breath away…” I am saying and I kiss her lightly on the lips. She smiles and then lowers her eyes.
She is so shy…
“Thank you…” she says as I offer her my hand and lead her into the room.
“Mmm…I like the smell of the food you cooked…”
“I had thought that the smell would have all disappeared by the time you come… I have had to open the windows and spray an air freshener about three times already…”
“But I like it…what is it that you cooked?”
“It’s chicken…I prepared it with some South African herbs and I have cooked some fried rice…there’s ice cream for desert as well…”
“Mmm…I love ice cream…what flavour?”
“Vanilla…that’s the only thing I could find”
“It’s okay”
“I am sure that the food will taste even better than it smells” I say as I show her to the chair and then go to the tape recorder to press the play button. The track I want has started to play; tonight I celebrate my love for you, it seems the natural thing to do…
“Are you ready to eat?”
“Yes…what this card on the table?”
“Its for you…you can have a look”She picks up the card and opens it to read while I try to dish out the food. As I am busy dishing it out I hear a sniffling sound behind me so I turn around to see her trying to hold back tears…she is not succeeding because I can see two teardrops trailing down her cheeks.
“Are they really for me?”
“Yes”
“Thank you…it‘s so beautiful”We have eaten the food and eaten the ice cream. We are now sipping the sweat champagne and listening to the love songs that are playing in the background.
“Let’s dance…” she says and we get up to dance. It is just the two of us here…alone.
And the evening is going so well; I am really enjoying Tanya’s presence and I am so very conscious of where this evening is heading to. I am not going to fight with my desires any more-she wants me and I want her; it is as simple as that.
She is now raising her face for a kiss and we start to kiss passionately. She is pressing her body on mine and I notice that her breathing is become more and more laboured.
The time has come…
And I begin to her slowly; I don‘t want to break the rhythm of the music playing, which is becoming a soundtrack to our unfolding love affair. She has decided to come to my aid and is in a hurry to free herself of her clothes.
She has such a beautiful body…
I have also started to undress myself as she stands naked in front of me, tugging at my shirt…wanting me. But something is not quite right-something is holding me back and I find myself now struggling with an embarrassing limpness, as a certain nagging feeling surfaces and begins to now hang over me, dampening my passion and it suddenly feels as if I am being watched…as if something is speaking to me-telling me-that it is not right; what I am doing is not right.
I cannot break this young girl’s heart…
I know that I am not free to do this to her; I know that I will still run to Adelaide if she were to as much as smile at me…
“What is wrong?” Tanya is asking.
“I am not yet ready, Tanya…I don’t want to hurt you”
“But…”
“It doesn’t feel right…not yet”
“But you said that you love me…don’t you love me?”
The words that I want to say have stuck in my throat; I can not continue to lead this innocent girl on; I might be a lost soul, but I am not yet beyond redemption.
“Kasi….”
She is crying…
And I don’t know what to say to her. What can I say that will make her understand that it is not right.
“Do you love me…Kasi?”
“I…”“You don’t have to say anything…” she says and starts to put on her clothes slowly, reluctantly…like one who is being drained of life.
“It’s not as you think Tanya, I …”
“You can’t even tell me that you love me anymore”
“Tanya I don’t want to hurt you…you have already been hurt so much in your life”
“But…you are hurting me Kasi…you…”
“Please, Tanya…I don’t want to hurt you…I..”
“But you once said that you love me…”
“Just give me the chance to resolve my feelings for you, Tanya…what you want to give me is a very significant part of your life and I…”
“But I have told you that I love you with all my heart….I want to love you with my body as well…”
She has finished putting on her clothes now and has moved towards the door. The tears are still falling from her eyes.
“Kasi, do you love me…please tell me that you love me?”
The look in her eyes was too heartbreaking for me. It was a look of someone who feels rejected; she looked at me and it was as if she was pleading for something but I do not have what she wants.
I cannot give her what she wants...
She had then looked a way with a rivulet of tears now streaming down her face as she opened the door and walked away.
I could not run after her because I was still naked…
The last days of Spring/3
I want to love Tanya; I want to be able to feel free with her and not be held back by this nagging feeling of my leading her along a path, which leads to nowhere...
And after we kissed by that fountain at the bottom avenue of Gorky Park I have started to see her not just a lovely girl with a sad narrative trailing her but as a beautiful woman. She has aroused in me a sexual fantasy that throbs in me when I start thinking of her-a sexual fantasy that is shed of the guilt that had clouded my thoughts of Adelaide after we crossed that barrier of innocence so many months ago.
I begin to feel that it is Tanya who is bringing out the man in me. It is she with whom I have learnt to be myself and the spontaneity that accompanies our engagements fills me with an increasing level of confidence and yet…yet in wanting her I am realising that I am not quite free to have her; It is as if I am bonded to Adelaide by some invisible-yet enduring chain-that forbids me to love someone else…
I will be meeting with Tanya today and we will be alone since Ade has gone somewhere in the Northern part of Rostov and he will not be back until later this evening. He has been meeting with a group of Russian Orthodox Christians who meet regularly to share the gospel and to pray in one of their members homes since there are no churches in Rostov-Religion has been banned by the state-so those who meet, usually meet secretly.
This is going to be the first time when I will have my room to my self since that kiss that happened last week, which seems to have changed the texture of the relationship between Tanya and myself; it feels as if we are no longer innocent and I can no longer stop my self from giving in to her sensual desire…
She will be here soon and I have bought her a bouquet of roses and I have translated some lovely words-I don’t know where I first saw them-into Russian;
Under the burning sun of Africa’s harmattan,
I have learnt about heat;
In the white nights of Russians winter,
I learn about cold;
But in the warm embrace of your passionate kiss,
I am learning about love…
I feel that I should begin to treat her like a woman-I should begin to act like someone in love and perhaps…perhaps, love will follow my actions and will blossom in my heart, breaking the chains that bind me…I want to love her and today-after we have sipped the champagne that I have bought and eaten the chocolates, which they say acts as an aphrodisiac-I will make love to her and perhaps then the chain will be broken…
And after we kissed by that fountain at the bottom avenue of Gorky Park I have started to see her not just a lovely girl with a sad narrative trailing her but as a beautiful woman. She has aroused in me a sexual fantasy that throbs in me when I start thinking of her-a sexual fantasy that is shed of the guilt that had clouded my thoughts of Adelaide after we crossed that barrier of innocence so many months ago.
I begin to feel that it is Tanya who is bringing out the man in me. It is she with whom I have learnt to be myself and the spontaneity that accompanies our engagements fills me with an increasing level of confidence and yet…yet in wanting her I am realising that I am not quite free to have her; It is as if I am bonded to Adelaide by some invisible-yet enduring chain-that forbids me to love someone else…
I will be meeting with Tanya today and we will be alone since Ade has gone somewhere in the Northern part of Rostov and he will not be back until later this evening. He has been meeting with a group of Russian Orthodox Christians who meet regularly to share the gospel and to pray in one of their members homes since there are no churches in Rostov-Religion has been banned by the state-so those who meet, usually meet secretly.
This is going to be the first time when I will have my room to my self since that kiss that happened last week, which seems to have changed the texture of the relationship between Tanya and myself; it feels as if we are no longer innocent and I can no longer stop my self from giving in to her sensual desire…
She will be here soon and I have bought her a bouquet of roses and I have translated some lovely words-I don’t know where I first saw them-into Russian;
Under the burning sun of Africa’s harmattan,
I have learnt about heat;
In the white nights of Russians winter,
I learn about cold;
But in the warm embrace of your passionate kiss,
I am learning about love…
I feel that I should begin to treat her like a woman-I should begin to act like someone in love and perhaps…perhaps, love will follow my actions and will blossom in my heart, breaking the chains that bind me…I want to love her and today-after we have sipped the champagne that I have bought and eaten the chocolates, which they say acts as an aphrodisiac-I will make love to her and perhaps then the chain will be broken…
Tuesday 20 November 2007
The last days of Spring/2
Spring was fully upon us and Tanya was becoming almost inseparable from me. She would turn up at the hostel unannounced saying that she can't bear for more than two days to go by without her seeing me.
And on weekends we would spend the whole day together as she is always finding something new for us to do or someplace where we could share an adventure.
The other day we spent the whole afternoon strolling along Pushkinskaya Boulevard and then we had sat at the bench next to the bust of Pushkin, where she recited some of his love poems to me. The poems sounded so beautiful in Russian as she recited them.
“Do you know that Pushkin’s grandfather was African?” she had asked me one day.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes!” And she told me of how his maternal grandfather, Ibrahim, who was later renamed Hannibal, is thought to have come from somewhere near Chad. He is said to have been abducted to the courts of the Sultan in Constantinople and from there he came to Russia…
“Interesting. But is it true?”
“Yes…”
“Who knows he may have come from present day Nigeria then.”
“Maybe.”
After Tanya told me of Pushkin’s African background I fell in love with his works all over again.
"Can you recite the one he wrote to Ms Kern?"
"Yes." She said and she recited the poem I had once given to Adelaide. It seemed like an eternity ago when I had stood shyly in front of her door-not knowing a word of Russian-and handing over to her the envelop, which had the love poem inside.
But as Tanya recited the poem, I was remembering that feeling and the reason why I know that my life is incomplete without Adelaide. And for the rest of that afternoon I thought of Adelaide and I knew, without doubt, that it was her whom I wished was sitting with me that late spring afternoon, sharing those lovely moments as the birds sang in the nearby trees…
Tanya has been wanting me to make love to her because she wants to show me how much she really loves me. But I am telling her that love can also flourish without sex and that I am not in a hurry to sleep with her; I have told her that i know she loves me and that she doesn't have to try to prove it. But she is now saying that if i truly loved her that I will not refuse to make love to her.
I am very reluctant to cross that boundary with her because it just doesn't feel right-not yet. I don't want to spoil what is happening between us because I have started to enjoy her company and I look forward to the new things that she teaches me and the new places that we go together.
I have discovered Rostov with Tanya; I have discovered the many green gardens where she has taught me how to feed squirrels from my hands. I have discovered the beautiful Gorky Park, which though I had seen so many times because it is located in the centre of the city just off Engels Street, I had not really paid much attention to.
We have taken long walks through the park holding hands and laughing to silly jokes as the music of Ala Pugachova played in the background.We have discovered the ice-cream parlours and the restaurants and have watched other lovers sitting and staring into each others eyes, whispering foolishness into each others ears. And we have laughed together and wondered what it is about love, which gives it that power to make children out of adults.
And together we discovered the fountains and the wooden sculptures of the out-of-door museums, where we took so many pictures together and where we shared our first kiss.
I think that it was on that day that my resistance to her started to erode; we had stood near the fountain, which is located at the bottom avenue of the park; the water from the fountain had sprinkled on us like a very light shower and seemed to lend the air a very heavy scent of romance.
Around us, a few other young people sat on the nearby benches, while others just walked by. And at that moment she suddenly called for my attention.
“What is it?” I asked a bit concerned.
“It’s so beautiful...”
“What is so beautiful?”
She didn’t answer but looked at me with a mischievous sparkle in her lovely brown eyes; I noticed how her lips looked so full and inviting and I felt the intoxication of the moment, which seemed to beg for something to happen…
“You want to kiss me don’t you?” she said.
I did not say anything. Instead I had drawn her closer and kissed her passionately.
And I remember that after the kiss she had started to cry.
“Was my kiss that bad?” I asked worried.
“No it was very good. It is just that this is the first time I have ever been kissed by a man…”
She had told me that the caress of my lip on hers made her to want me even more. And after that first kiss I knew that I too wanted her and that it was going to happen. But I was not sure that it was the right thing to do; it did not feel right to become iredeemably entangled with this lovely innocent girl who carried with her so much hurting-yet who was becoming more and more obsessed with me as the days of spring crawled by.
It did not feel right for both of our sakes because my heart still belongs to Adelaide.
And on weekends we would spend the whole day together as she is always finding something new for us to do or someplace where we could share an adventure.
The other day we spent the whole afternoon strolling along Pushkinskaya Boulevard and then we had sat at the bench next to the bust of Pushkin, where she recited some of his love poems to me. The poems sounded so beautiful in Russian as she recited them.
“Do you know that Pushkin’s grandfather was African?” she had asked me one day.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes!” And she told me of how his maternal grandfather, Ibrahim, who was later renamed Hannibal, is thought to have come from somewhere near Chad. He is said to have been abducted to the courts of the Sultan in Constantinople and from there he came to Russia…
“Interesting. But is it true?”
“Yes…”
“Who knows he may have come from present day Nigeria then.”
“Maybe.”
After Tanya told me of Pushkin’s African background I fell in love with his works all over again.
"Can you recite the one he wrote to Ms Kern?"
"Yes." She said and she recited the poem I had once given to Adelaide. It seemed like an eternity ago when I had stood shyly in front of her door-not knowing a word of Russian-and handing over to her the envelop, which had the love poem inside.
But as Tanya recited the poem, I was remembering that feeling and the reason why I know that my life is incomplete without Adelaide. And for the rest of that afternoon I thought of Adelaide and I knew, without doubt, that it was her whom I wished was sitting with me that late spring afternoon, sharing those lovely moments as the birds sang in the nearby trees…
Tanya has been wanting me to make love to her because she wants to show me how much she really loves me. But I am telling her that love can also flourish without sex and that I am not in a hurry to sleep with her; I have told her that i know she loves me and that she doesn't have to try to prove it. But she is now saying that if i truly loved her that I will not refuse to make love to her.
I am very reluctant to cross that boundary with her because it just doesn't feel right-not yet. I don't want to spoil what is happening between us because I have started to enjoy her company and I look forward to the new things that she teaches me and the new places that we go together.
I have discovered Rostov with Tanya; I have discovered the many green gardens where she has taught me how to feed squirrels from my hands. I have discovered the beautiful Gorky Park, which though I had seen so many times because it is located in the centre of the city just off Engels Street, I had not really paid much attention to.
We have taken long walks through the park holding hands and laughing to silly jokes as the music of Ala Pugachova played in the background.We have discovered the ice-cream parlours and the restaurants and have watched other lovers sitting and staring into each others eyes, whispering foolishness into each others ears. And we have laughed together and wondered what it is about love, which gives it that power to make children out of adults.
And together we discovered the fountains and the wooden sculptures of the out-of-door museums, where we took so many pictures together and where we shared our first kiss.
I think that it was on that day that my resistance to her started to erode; we had stood near the fountain, which is located at the bottom avenue of the park; the water from the fountain had sprinkled on us like a very light shower and seemed to lend the air a very heavy scent of romance.
Around us, a few other young people sat on the nearby benches, while others just walked by. And at that moment she suddenly called for my attention.
“What is it?” I asked a bit concerned.
“It’s so beautiful...”
“What is so beautiful?”
She didn’t answer but looked at me with a mischievous sparkle in her lovely brown eyes; I noticed how her lips looked so full and inviting and I felt the intoxication of the moment, which seemed to beg for something to happen…
“You want to kiss me don’t you?” she said.
I did not say anything. Instead I had drawn her closer and kissed her passionately.
And I remember that after the kiss she had started to cry.
“Was my kiss that bad?” I asked worried.
“No it was very good. It is just that this is the first time I have ever been kissed by a man…”
She had told me that the caress of my lip on hers made her to want me even more. And after that first kiss I knew that I too wanted her and that it was going to happen. But I was not sure that it was the right thing to do; it did not feel right to become iredeemably entangled with this lovely innocent girl who carried with her so much hurting-yet who was becoming more and more obsessed with me as the days of spring crawled by.
It did not feel right for both of our sakes because my heart still belongs to Adelaide.
Book 4. Chapter 8; The last days of Spring/1
I have told Tanya that I love her and I am now thinking it was a big mistake for me to have said those words.
It was the day after the Ghanaian Independence party and she had come by as she said she would. She was dressed in a pink sweater and stone-washed jeans and she was accompanied by her little puppy; a brown and white Spaniel, which her grandmother had given to her as a birthday present last year after she turned 17. Tanya calls the dog "Al" because she likes that name and it follows her about everywhere she goes.
I am not really a pet person and I did not feel in the least comfortable about having the dog in the same room with me.
In my village back home, dogs rarely come into the house; they sleep outside where they're supposed to and are mostly used for hunting. In some cases, they also do the dirty stuff, like lick the excrement from the buttocks of the toddlers in the yard after they've done their toileting.
And they can also bite you with very little provaction, especially when they smell that you're afraid of them. So i don't like dogs coming close to me and wonder how some people can actually kiss them.
Al had started to bark at that moment.
“Can't you keep your dog outside or something. What if it wants to wee or do something even more evil…? I asked looking for a way to engage her reason.
“It’s already gone to toilet before we came up. So don’t worry; I’ll know anyway…”
The little thing seemed to sense that I didn’t quite fancy it and had started to growl at me and at one point it looked like it wanted to lunge at me as well.
“Al doesn't seem to like you very much!"Tanya said.
"The feeling's mutual"
"He won't bite you. Sit Al!” Tanya said and it obeyed, finding a spot next to her feet to settle down, but it continued to look at me with its big black eyes and didn't look in the least friendly as if he was sensing that he would soon have to share Tanya with me.
“I brought you some food that babushka says that I can give to you”. She brought out some jars.
“What are they?” I was a bit curious seeing that I was beginning to develop the taste buds for a lot of Russian Cuisine and was actually quite interested in trying out some more.
I remember, for instance, that the first time when I tasted the thick sour cream, which Russians call smetana, I had almost thrown up, but now smetana has become one of my favourite delicacies, which i buy everytime i go to the canteen; okay, I still add some sugar to it most of the time but even on those days when the sugar has run out in the canteen I am still able to drink it without the least hesitation. It usually feels so refreshing and filling...
One thing, which I have not been able to get used to, though, is the red caviar, the krasnaya ykra. And I can’t understand why a lot of people are making a fuss about it; I understand that the black one even fetches a lot of money in the West and that some students have been smuggling them out during the holidays…
“They’re pickled cucumbers and salad" I heard Tanya saying "...my babushka’s is very good at making this kind of stuff…”
“Thanks. I really appreciate this...”
“But I’ve told you that I love you and I will do anything for you!”
And as she said those words again, I guessed it was only right for me to tell her the same. And I did;
“Ya todje loublou tebia”I said.
“Eta Pravda?”…she asked, wanting to know if what i had just said is true.
I hesitated a bit, wondering what i had just gotten myself into. “Er…of course.”
And then she started to cry, leaving me feeling really embarrassed. “Why are you crying?”
“Because nobody has ever told me that they love me…”
“But your babushka must love you quite a lot. You told me how she cares for you…”
“Da but…” She then went on to tell me that she senses that her babushka does the things for her more out of sympathy than of love. And that she has never said in words that she loves her.
“It’s not the same when the person doesn’t say they love you…"
“Yes, but action does speak a lot louder than words-words sometimes do not mean anything and are just empty…”I said trying not to let the guilt, which i started to feel to become so evident. And I started to regret ever having said those words.
“Please don’t ever leave me…” she had said. And had looked pleadingly at me as if she sensed what was going on in my mind.
It was the day after the Ghanaian Independence party and she had come by as she said she would. She was dressed in a pink sweater and stone-washed jeans and she was accompanied by her little puppy; a brown and white Spaniel, which her grandmother had given to her as a birthday present last year after she turned 17. Tanya calls the dog "Al" because she likes that name and it follows her about everywhere she goes.
I am not really a pet person and I did not feel in the least comfortable about having the dog in the same room with me.
In my village back home, dogs rarely come into the house; they sleep outside where they're supposed to and are mostly used for hunting. In some cases, they also do the dirty stuff, like lick the excrement from the buttocks of the toddlers in the yard after they've done their toileting.
And they can also bite you with very little provaction, especially when they smell that you're afraid of them. So i don't like dogs coming close to me and wonder how some people can actually kiss them.
Al had started to bark at that moment.
“Can't you keep your dog outside or something. What if it wants to wee or do something even more evil…? I asked looking for a way to engage her reason.
“It’s already gone to toilet before we came up. So don’t worry; I’ll know anyway…”
The little thing seemed to sense that I didn’t quite fancy it and had started to growl at me and at one point it looked like it wanted to lunge at me as well.
“Al doesn't seem to like you very much!"Tanya said.
"The feeling's mutual"
"He won't bite you. Sit Al!” Tanya said and it obeyed, finding a spot next to her feet to settle down, but it continued to look at me with its big black eyes and didn't look in the least friendly as if he was sensing that he would soon have to share Tanya with me.
“I brought you some food that babushka says that I can give to you”. She brought out some jars.
“What are they?” I was a bit curious seeing that I was beginning to develop the taste buds for a lot of Russian Cuisine and was actually quite interested in trying out some more.
I remember, for instance, that the first time when I tasted the thick sour cream, which Russians call smetana, I had almost thrown up, but now smetana has become one of my favourite delicacies, which i buy everytime i go to the canteen; okay, I still add some sugar to it most of the time but even on those days when the sugar has run out in the canteen I am still able to drink it without the least hesitation. It usually feels so refreshing and filling...
One thing, which I have not been able to get used to, though, is the red caviar, the krasnaya ykra. And I can’t understand why a lot of people are making a fuss about it; I understand that the black one even fetches a lot of money in the West and that some students have been smuggling them out during the holidays…
“They’re pickled cucumbers and salad" I heard Tanya saying "...my babushka’s is very good at making this kind of stuff…”
“Thanks. I really appreciate this...”
“But I’ve told you that I love you and I will do anything for you!”
And as she said those words again, I guessed it was only right for me to tell her the same. And I did;
“Ya todje loublou tebia”I said.
“Eta Pravda?”…she asked, wanting to know if what i had just said is true.
I hesitated a bit, wondering what i had just gotten myself into. “Er…of course.”
And then she started to cry, leaving me feeling really embarrassed. “Why are you crying?”
“Because nobody has ever told me that they love me…”
“But your babushka must love you quite a lot. You told me how she cares for you…”
“Da but…” She then went on to tell me that she senses that her babushka does the things for her more out of sympathy than of love. And that she has never said in words that she loves her.
“It’s not the same when the person doesn’t say they love you…"
“Yes, but action does speak a lot louder than words-words sometimes do not mean anything and are just empty…”I said trying not to let the guilt, which i started to feel to become so evident. And I started to regret ever having said those words.
“Please don’t ever leave me…” she had said. And had looked pleadingly at me as if she sensed what was going on in my mind.
Sunday 18 November 2007
Spring/6
It is now almost midnight and I am lying on my bed awake and still thinking about the events of the day. Ade is talking in his sleep in Yoruba so I can’t understand what he is saying.
I am feeling a sense of foreboding and I think it has to do with the fact that I am realising that Tanya is a very troubled young lady who I may not be able to provide the emotional anchor, which i sense she needs to soothe her hurting soul. I am seeing her to be someone who will need a lot of reassurance and attention but I am not quite sure that I can deal with that right now.
She put me on the spot as we walked along Engels street and all the way up to Budyenovsky Avenue after we left the Intourist hotel. She wanted to hear from me that I love her and is not satisfied with my explanation that we have just met and that it takes time for love to develop. She tells me that some people fall in love on their very first date and says that this is something which has just happened to her.
But how can I tell her that I love her when I don’t? How can I give her a promise of something that I will not be able to fulfil? Or is it right for me to tell her that I love her, just so that she can feel better?
Ade has just farted in his sleep. This has distracted me from my chain of thoughts and I am now wondering how most of the people around me seem to be living lives, the narratives of which are turning out to be so tragic. I can sense the image of Philip lurking at the back of my mind but I don’t want to think of him. I don't want to think about death; i prefer instead to think of pleasant things but even she-Adelaide, the only pleasant thing in my life right now-belongs to someone else.
Perhaps I should give Tanya a chance and tell her that I love her. Perhaps in telling her the words she wants to hear I too will begin to believe it and maybe actually start to feel love for her.
Yes, I will tell her that I love her when she comes tomorrow. And perhaps by so doing I will be making her life a little better since I am sure that there can be no harm in telling somebody that you love them…if those are the words that they wish to hear.
I wake up in the middle of the night and I realise that I have been having a nightmare; I can remember that I was falling down a dark bottomless pit and was feeling so scared and I am very conscious of having been alone. I then found myself looking frantically for something in a place that looked like a very run down old barn with some copper jacketed bullets lying about on the ground, yet I am not quite sure what it is that I was looking for.
Then the search took me to a graveyard. It seems like I have come to pay homage to the body of someone but I found that the grave is missing and I suddenly sensed a deep inconsolable sorrow, because this person whom I was looking for is very dear to me. I don‘t know who it is that I was looking for in my dream but I have woken up crying and I am feeling as if I have lost something forever…
I am feeling a sense of foreboding and I think it has to do with the fact that I am realising that Tanya is a very troubled young lady who I may not be able to provide the emotional anchor, which i sense she needs to soothe her hurting soul. I am seeing her to be someone who will need a lot of reassurance and attention but I am not quite sure that I can deal with that right now.
She put me on the spot as we walked along Engels street and all the way up to Budyenovsky Avenue after we left the Intourist hotel. She wanted to hear from me that I love her and is not satisfied with my explanation that we have just met and that it takes time for love to develop. She tells me that some people fall in love on their very first date and says that this is something which has just happened to her.
But how can I tell her that I love her when I don’t? How can I give her a promise of something that I will not be able to fulfil? Or is it right for me to tell her that I love her, just so that she can feel better?
Ade has just farted in his sleep. This has distracted me from my chain of thoughts and I am now wondering how most of the people around me seem to be living lives, the narratives of which are turning out to be so tragic. I can sense the image of Philip lurking at the back of my mind but I don’t want to think of him. I don't want to think about death; i prefer instead to think of pleasant things but even she-Adelaide, the only pleasant thing in my life right now-belongs to someone else.
Perhaps I should give Tanya a chance and tell her that I love her. Perhaps in telling her the words she wants to hear I too will begin to believe it and maybe actually start to feel love for her.
Yes, I will tell her that I love her when she comes tomorrow. And perhaps by so doing I will be making her life a little better since I am sure that there can be no harm in telling somebody that you love them…if those are the words that they wish to hear.
I wake up in the middle of the night and I realise that I have been having a nightmare; I can remember that I was falling down a dark bottomless pit and was feeling so scared and I am very conscious of having been alone. I then found myself looking frantically for something in a place that looked like a very run down old barn with some copper jacketed bullets lying about on the ground, yet I am not quite sure what it is that I was looking for.
Then the search took me to a graveyard. It seems like I have come to pay homage to the body of someone but I found that the grave is missing and I suddenly sensed a deep inconsolable sorrow, because this person whom I was looking for is very dear to me. I don‘t know who it is that I was looking for in my dream but I have woken up crying and I am feeling as if I have lost something forever…
Spring/5
We have been at the party for about 3hours now and I am finding it quite easy to communicate with Tanya; she is so open and easy to talk with, as if eager to be appreciated... eager to be accepted. In these 3 hours I have come to know absolutely everything about her, which there is to know. And the more I know of her, the more I am sensing how so fragile she is and how she is so vulnerable to being hurt in love. I am asking myself if getting involved with her is a good idea after all seeing that I have my own emotional issues to deal with.
Tanya has asked me twice if I have anything going on with Adelaide after she saw us smile at each other as we both danced with our partners. I have told her that Adelaide and I both arrived the USSR on the same day and that we have since remained casual friends. But Tanya doesn't seem satisfied with my answer and has been asking me if I think that she is as beautiful as Adelaide. And she no longer wants to let me out of her sight.
Tanya has just told me that she is in love with me and I am feeling flattered by her attachment to me, but beyond sympathy, I cannot feel anything else for her-not just yet. She is holding my hand right now and has just squeezed it-I am squeezing it back and I am now smiling at her; she is, without doubt, a very attractive woman…a very attractive traumatized woman. And I sense a veil of sorrow in her eyes, which is making me to wonder if I am the man who will be able to help her find the self-esteem and the feeling of security that she so desperately needs.
Tanya needs to go home now as she is not used to being out beyond 10pm; her babushka becomes increasingly anxious for her safety once it starts to get dark and will be standing at the window of the house and waiting for her to come home. She sometimes walks down to the nearby tramway stop, which is located several metres away from their house and will stand in the cold waiting for "maya Tanushka";that’s the affectionate way that she calls Tanya-my Tanushka.
Babushka has always been very protective of her ever since she started coming home from school so many years ago crying because the other children would call her bad names and would sometimes physically abuse her because of her slightly different skin colour. But as she’s grown older Tanya has gotten used to all those unpleasant taunts and has resigned herself to the fact that she is different and that there’ nothing she can do about it. But she knows that one day, when she has met the right man, things are going to be okay. She tells me that she thinks that i am the right man for her…
“Pa’ idyom?” Tanya is asking, wanting to know if we can start leaving. I have told her that I will like to travel with her up to that tramway stop next to her house to make sure that she gets home safe, but she feels it will be a lot safer for her if I walk her only up to the bus stop on Engels street. She says that if some of her neighbours were to see us together they will “…start gossiping again“.
“I understand” I say.
We have gotten up from our seats and are making our way to the exit. I have noticed Adelaide dancing to a slow track with Pedro, with her head placed on his right shoulder and I am wondering whether it is love that holds them together or if they are just two hurting individuals assuaging each others pains.
I have caught Ugo’s eyes as he dances with Sveta in one corner of the hall. He is winking at me and I smile back wondering how comes I am not able to take life as easy as he is doing. He doesn’t seem to be bothered by things around him; he just gets on with his life and he seems so happy and confident about his future-or is he just good at pretending ?
What a coincidence! I am thinking as we leave the hall; the track that is playing seems to be about a great pretender. I am hearing this song for the first time and I am really enjoying it. I have slowed down my pace so that I can listen to it a little longer but I can't quite make out all the words it's singing. I should try and get a copy of the song from the DJ tomorrow since he lives in our hostel.
"...I seem to be what I'm not you see,
I'm wearing my heart like a crown..."
The door of the ballroom has quietly closed behind us and shut out the rest of the song. We are now walking towards the stairs. Tanya is holding on to my hand and it feels as if she is afraid to let go.
Tanya has asked me twice if I have anything going on with Adelaide after she saw us smile at each other as we both danced with our partners. I have told her that Adelaide and I both arrived the USSR on the same day and that we have since remained casual friends. But Tanya doesn't seem satisfied with my answer and has been asking me if I think that she is as beautiful as Adelaide. And she no longer wants to let me out of her sight.
Tanya has just told me that she is in love with me and I am feeling flattered by her attachment to me, but beyond sympathy, I cannot feel anything else for her-not just yet. She is holding my hand right now and has just squeezed it-I am squeezing it back and I am now smiling at her; she is, without doubt, a very attractive woman…a very attractive traumatized woman. And I sense a veil of sorrow in her eyes, which is making me to wonder if I am the man who will be able to help her find the self-esteem and the feeling of security that she so desperately needs.
Tanya needs to go home now as she is not used to being out beyond 10pm; her babushka becomes increasingly anxious for her safety once it starts to get dark and will be standing at the window of the house and waiting for her to come home. She sometimes walks down to the nearby tramway stop, which is located several metres away from their house and will stand in the cold waiting for "maya Tanushka";that’s the affectionate way that she calls Tanya-my Tanushka.
Babushka has always been very protective of her ever since she started coming home from school so many years ago crying because the other children would call her bad names and would sometimes physically abuse her because of her slightly different skin colour. But as she’s grown older Tanya has gotten used to all those unpleasant taunts and has resigned herself to the fact that she is different and that there’ nothing she can do about it. But she knows that one day, when she has met the right man, things are going to be okay. She tells me that she thinks that i am the right man for her…
“Pa’ idyom?” Tanya is asking, wanting to know if we can start leaving. I have told her that I will like to travel with her up to that tramway stop next to her house to make sure that she gets home safe, but she feels it will be a lot safer for her if I walk her only up to the bus stop on Engels street. She says that if some of her neighbours were to see us together they will “…start gossiping again“.
“I understand” I say.
We have gotten up from our seats and are making our way to the exit. I have noticed Adelaide dancing to a slow track with Pedro, with her head placed on his right shoulder and I am wondering whether it is love that holds them together or if they are just two hurting individuals assuaging each others pains.
I have caught Ugo’s eyes as he dances with Sveta in one corner of the hall. He is winking at me and I smile back wondering how comes I am not able to take life as easy as he is doing. He doesn’t seem to be bothered by things around him; he just gets on with his life and he seems so happy and confident about his future-or is he just good at pretending ?
What a coincidence! I am thinking as we leave the hall; the track that is playing seems to be about a great pretender. I am hearing this song for the first time and I am really enjoying it. I have slowed down my pace so that I can listen to it a little longer but I can't quite make out all the words it's singing. I should try and get a copy of the song from the DJ tomorrow since he lives in our hostel.
"...I seem to be what I'm not you see,
I'm wearing my heart like a crown..."
The door of the ballroom has quietly closed behind us and shut out the rest of the song. We are now walking towards the stairs. Tanya is holding on to my hand and it feels as if she is afraid to let go.
Friday 16 November 2007
Spring/4
“Kasi meet Tanya my very good friend. Tanya meet Kasi…” Sveta is saying as they come up to where we are standing.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you” I say stretching out my hand. She takes hold of it and I am holding on to her outstretched hands gently, refusing to let go. And she doesn’t seem to mind.
“Well guys lets go and party!” Ugo says and puts his hand around Sveta’s waist.
“Davaite!” Eddy says in agreement and locks his hands with Natasha’s as they too start walking into the lobby area and head towards the stairs.
I am holding her hands as we walk behind the couples in front and I am thinking that she looks ever so lovable. “You are very beautiful” I say “…I am already attracted to you…”
She smiles again like a little child who is being paid a compliment but says nothing. Instead I notice that she is blushing and it is clear that she is a very shy person. I am already starting to feel protective of her as we make our way through the doors and into the large ballroom.
The master of ceremony is in the centre of the room and he is making an announcement about the food that is about to be served. Ugo and Eddy with their dates are making their ways to different seats that they have been able to locate in the long L-shaped table but I am standing at the door and surveying the room with my eyes as soft music begins to play in the background .
The hall is almost filled up and there are very few spaces left to sit down. And then I notice that somebody is getting up in the far corner and adjacent to where the person was sitting, I can see two vacant seats.
We make our way to these seats and I am feeling very proud of having Tanya by my side as I notice the surreptitious glances of admiration from some of the guys who are already seated at the table. I catch one guy staring at her as I pull out the chair for her and then finally sit down next to her.
Adelaide with her friend Pedro is sitting directly opposite me! And as she sees me, she smiles; her smile is one of acknowledgement-nothing derisive or discountenancing-just a simple smile of one acquaintance who wants to acknowledge the other; a simple smile that reminds me of how beautiful she is and which is making me to once again realise how much I need her.
Our story is not yet finished Adelaide, I am thinking as I look at her; our story will remain for as long as I feel this way towards you and it has to be completed...
“Well sit down!” Tanya says.
“Okay!” I say and sit down; I had remained standing after I saw Adelaide and I am now feeling a bit uncomfortable about her sitting across the table from me. Why is fate playing such a prank on me?! Why does it have to be these seats of all the ones in this large hall that are vacant? I am looking at Pedro and I feel a tug of jealousy on my heart. He is just sitting there and is looking past me as if I do not exist in his world.
Tanya is looking at me now with a question in her eyes “Er…so tell me about yourself” I eventually say.
“And what do you want to know?”
“Everything!”.
“Okay.” She says and starts to narrate to me the story of her life. Tanya was born and brought up in Rostov, and had never met her dad who was a Nigerian student studying at the Rostov Institute of Engineering at the time. Her mum was originally from Novercherkassk, the same place that Natasha her friend comes from and which is just a few miles away from Rostov.
In those days, Tanya’s mother would regularly visit some of her friends who lived here in Rostov and on one of such visits she had met her dad. Then one thing lead to another and several months later her mother was pregnant for the African.
Her grandparents on realising that she was going to be born with “black skin”, had bundled her mother out to go and live with her "Babushka"-an elderly distant relative of theirs-who lived alone in Rostov and who had no family of her own. They had threatened her father with death if he didn't keep away from their daughter since for them it was inconceivable for her-their only daughter-to get married to a black man from Africa.
Tanya heard that after she was born, her mother became a victim of regular racially motivated attacks and taunts of being a “prostitutka”. She said that as a result of this life became very difficult for her mother and that she started to find it difficult to move forward with her life. She gradually realised that Tanya had become a burden that she didn’t feel quite able to carry. So one day, she got up, packed her bags and left.
Tanya was 3 years old when her mother left. She has not seen her mother since that day 15years ago when she left her with the Babushka who brought her up and whom she still lives with. Tanya just turned 18 and says that she is looking for a Nigerian boyfriend who will take her back home to Africa one day. And as she talks I am looking at her and feeling very sorry for her.
The waiters have started to serve the food and I notice Adelaide has gotten up from her chair and is slowly making her way towards the exit of the room. I am thinking that she is going to the ladies room and I am staring at her as she walks across the floor.
“What are you staring at?!” I hear Tanya asking. She has been following my eyes and i think she must have noticed the way I was staring at Adelaide.
“I wasn’t staring at anything“ I lie “I am just thinking about the things you have just told me.”
I cannot afford to hurt this girl because she must have suffered so much in her life. I have to make the extra effort to treat her right and maybe I will come to love her and then everything will be alright for the both of us, I am thinking. But I can’t get this need for Adelaide out of me; this need which now pulls on my heart so strongly since I met with her again this evening.
I will have to make the effort to ignore Adelaide for the sake of this poor young lady who is now sitting here by my side...looking at me.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you” I say stretching out my hand. She takes hold of it and I am holding on to her outstretched hands gently, refusing to let go. And she doesn’t seem to mind.
“Well guys lets go and party!” Ugo says and puts his hand around Sveta’s waist.
“Davaite!” Eddy says in agreement and locks his hands with Natasha’s as they too start walking into the lobby area and head towards the stairs.
I am holding her hands as we walk behind the couples in front and I am thinking that she looks ever so lovable. “You are very beautiful” I say “…I am already attracted to you…”
She smiles again like a little child who is being paid a compliment but says nothing. Instead I notice that she is blushing and it is clear that she is a very shy person. I am already starting to feel protective of her as we make our way through the doors and into the large ballroom.
The master of ceremony is in the centre of the room and he is making an announcement about the food that is about to be served. Ugo and Eddy with their dates are making their ways to different seats that they have been able to locate in the long L-shaped table but I am standing at the door and surveying the room with my eyes as soft music begins to play in the background .
The hall is almost filled up and there are very few spaces left to sit down. And then I notice that somebody is getting up in the far corner and adjacent to where the person was sitting, I can see two vacant seats.
We make our way to these seats and I am feeling very proud of having Tanya by my side as I notice the surreptitious glances of admiration from some of the guys who are already seated at the table. I catch one guy staring at her as I pull out the chair for her and then finally sit down next to her.
Adelaide with her friend Pedro is sitting directly opposite me! And as she sees me, she smiles; her smile is one of acknowledgement-nothing derisive or discountenancing-just a simple smile of one acquaintance who wants to acknowledge the other; a simple smile that reminds me of how beautiful she is and which is making me to once again realise how much I need her.
Our story is not yet finished Adelaide, I am thinking as I look at her; our story will remain for as long as I feel this way towards you and it has to be completed...
“Well sit down!” Tanya says.
“Okay!” I say and sit down; I had remained standing after I saw Adelaide and I am now feeling a bit uncomfortable about her sitting across the table from me. Why is fate playing such a prank on me?! Why does it have to be these seats of all the ones in this large hall that are vacant? I am looking at Pedro and I feel a tug of jealousy on my heart. He is just sitting there and is looking past me as if I do not exist in his world.
Tanya is looking at me now with a question in her eyes “Er…so tell me about yourself” I eventually say.
“And what do you want to know?”
“Everything!”.
“Okay.” She says and starts to narrate to me the story of her life. Tanya was born and brought up in Rostov, and had never met her dad who was a Nigerian student studying at the Rostov Institute of Engineering at the time. Her mum was originally from Novercherkassk, the same place that Natasha her friend comes from and which is just a few miles away from Rostov.
In those days, Tanya’s mother would regularly visit some of her friends who lived here in Rostov and on one of such visits she had met her dad. Then one thing lead to another and several months later her mother was pregnant for the African.
Her grandparents on realising that she was going to be born with “black skin”, had bundled her mother out to go and live with her "Babushka"-an elderly distant relative of theirs-who lived alone in Rostov and who had no family of her own. They had threatened her father with death if he didn't keep away from their daughter since for them it was inconceivable for her-their only daughter-to get married to a black man from Africa.
Tanya heard that after she was born, her mother became a victim of regular racially motivated attacks and taunts of being a “prostitutka”. She said that as a result of this life became very difficult for her mother and that she started to find it difficult to move forward with her life. She gradually realised that Tanya had become a burden that she didn’t feel quite able to carry. So one day, she got up, packed her bags and left.
Tanya was 3 years old when her mother left. She has not seen her mother since that day 15years ago when she left her with the Babushka who brought her up and whom she still lives with. Tanya just turned 18 and says that she is looking for a Nigerian boyfriend who will take her back home to Africa one day. And as she talks I am looking at her and feeling very sorry for her.
The waiters have started to serve the food and I notice Adelaide has gotten up from her chair and is slowly making her way towards the exit of the room. I am thinking that she is going to the ladies room and I am staring at her as she walks across the floor.
“What are you staring at?!” I hear Tanya asking. She has been following my eyes and i think she must have noticed the way I was staring at Adelaide.
“I wasn’t staring at anything“ I lie “I am just thinking about the things you have just told me.”
I cannot afford to hurt this girl because she must have suffered so much in her life. I have to make the extra effort to treat her right and maybe I will come to love her and then everything will be alright for the both of us, I am thinking. But I can’t get this need for Adelaide out of me; this need which now pulls on my heart so strongly since I met with her again this evening.
I will have to make the effort to ignore Adelaide for the sake of this poor young lady who is now sitting here by my side...looking at me.
Spring/3
I have caught up with Ugo and Eddy who are standing in front of the entrance of the Intourist hotel and talking; “I told the babes that we’ll be waiting for them outside of the hotel. They should be showing up any minute from now.” Ugo is saying as he looks at his watch.
“…I’ll see you guys later…” Barry says and continues into the lobby of the hotel, where he catches up with Sampson, the Ghanaian guy, who has started to climb up the stairs. The party is taking place in the ballroom on the second floor and already you can hear music wafting from there into the lobby area each time the front door opens.
“I hope say these people no go say Africans don come again with their noise!” Eddy is saying, commentating on the noise and wondering whether people will complain.
“If say na problem dem for no allow the party at all. And besides na better music wey most of them never hear before…”Ugo responds saying that if the noise were a problem that they probably wouldn’t have allowed the party to take place.
I am no longer as excited about this party as i was this morning. In fact the whole upbeat mood, which I had been experiencing has disappeared with the news of Philips death and I no longer care about this whole issue of finding love. Its all seeming suddenly so frivolous-the party and the love business-when put before the bigger issues of life and death.
I am beginning to see that there are a lot more important things going on around me for me to wallow in my self-pity and be so concerned about assuaging my own selfish desires; there are bigger issues, which have already claimed one casualty and which now seems to be slowly driving Barry out of his mind.
I can almost swear that Barry is losing his mind; i can sense that something is not quite right with him...yet i don't know what i can really do. If i tell him about my concerns and advise him to seek help he will tell me that I am part of the conspiracy and that I want to help "them" get rid of him.
The other day he said that he is convinced that "they" are watching him...and when i asked him to elaborate, he had told me to forget about it. I am worried for him because its difficult to say what he will do to defend himself from the people whom he believes are plotting to get rid of him. And I am also worried about what he can do to Omar if he gets hold of him seeing that he believes that Omar is part of the overall problem, which he has to solve.
I am thinking about these important things and then three lovely ladies are walking towards us. I notice that one of them is smiling at Ugo and I recognise her to be Sveta, Ugo’s new girlfriend. The other two are talking animatedly about something and as they see us standing at the entrance of the hotel waiting for them, they have become more subdued.
I can make out Natasha-the beautiful red head from Novercherkassk that Sveta had introduced to Eddy only last week. And then I notice that the tall slim beauty whose slightly dark features suggests a mixed parentage is looking at me; she seems to be checking me out. And I am thinking that this must be my date. I am thinking that she is beautiful and at the sight of her my heart has started racing…
I am now smiling at her and she has started to smile back as they walk towards us.
“…I’ll see you guys later…” Barry says and continues into the lobby of the hotel, where he catches up with Sampson, the Ghanaian guy, who has started to climb up the stairs. The party is taking place in the ballroom on the second floor and already you can hear music wafting from there into the lobby area each time the front door opens.
“I hope say these people no go say Africans don come again with their noise!” Eddy is saying, commentating on the noise and wondering whether people will complain.
“If say na problem dem for no allow the party at all. And besides na better music wey most of them never hear before…”Ugo responds saying that if the noise were a problem that they probably wouldn’t have allowed the party to take place.
I am no longer as excited about this party as i was this morning. In fact the whole upbeat mood, which I had been experiencing has disappeared with the news of Philips death and I no longer care about this whole issue of finding love. Its all seeming suddenly so frivolous-the party and the love business-when put before the bigger issues of life and death.
I am beginning to see that there are a lot more important things going on around me for me to wallow in my self-pity and be so concerned about assuaging my own selfish desires; there are bigger issues, which have already claimed one casualty and which now seems to be slowly driving Barry out of his mind.
I can almost swear that Barry is losing his mind; i can sense that something is not quite right with him...yet i don't know what i can really do. If i tell him about my concerns and advise him to seek help he will tell me that I am part of the conspiracy and that I want to help "them" get rid of him.
The other day he said that he is convinced that "they" are watching him...and when i asked him to elaborate, he had told me to forget about it. I am worried for him because its difficult to say what he will do to defend himself from the people whom he believes are plotting to get rid of him. And I am also worried about what he can do to Omar if he gets hold of him seeing that he believes that Omar is part of the overall problem, which he has to solve.
I am thinking about these important things and then three lovely ladies are walking towards us. I notice that one of them is smiling at Ugo and I recognise her to be Sveta, Ugo’s new girlfriend. The other two are talking animatedly about something and as they see us standing at the entrance of the hotel waiting for them, they have become more subdued.
I can make out Natasha-the beautiful red head from Novercherkassk that Sveta had introduced to Eddy only last week. And then I notice that the tall slim beauty whose slightly dark features suggests a mixed parentage is looking at me; she seems to be checking me out. And I am thinking that this must be my date. I am thinking that she is beautiful and at the sight of her my heart has started racing…
I am now smiling at her and she has started to smile back as they walk towards us.
Spring/2
“The more I think about it, the more I am convinced that it wasn’t suicide…” Barry is saying. We are walking across the little park next to the deans office. This park opens out on to Engels street and is a few minutes walk away from the Intourist hotel. Ugo, Eddy and one Ghanaian fellow are walking in front of us and arguing about something. ”…I am beginning to think that he was killed…”he continues.
“Why would somebody want to kill Philip?” I ask.”…he hardly spoke to anybody and even when he’s drunk he was always more interested in women.”
“I’m suspecting that he was involved with the KGB and that when he started to know too much and they felt that they didn’t need him anymore, they had decided to get rid of him…”
“That’s ridiculous Barry!”
“You think so? Then Kasi you have not yet understood how subtle these people can be. And I think that‘s the problem with you docile black people; its either that you guys have sold out or you‘re too damned ignorant to care about the important issues. Look at Ugo, Eddy and Sampson over there-I bet they‘re arguing over something as silly as fighters!”
“Or the problem maybe that you see problems where there are none, Barry. “I say a bit irritated.
He is laughing. “Look around you Kasi, whether you want to accept it or not the white man is on a mission to indoctrinate us with the ideology that we are an inferior people…”
Barry is going off point again. He has become so obsessed with this whole thing of the white man wanting to dominate the black man that his whole life is becoming pigeon-holed into one way of thinking. And I am beginning to worry about some of the things I have heard him saying of late.
The other day he was telling us how there is a global conspiracy by the white man to destroy every remnant of Africa’s ancient history so that they can replace it with the lie that Africans are savages and an inferior species. “They want to make us feel inferior so that they can continue to dominate us“ He said and had then started to speak passionately about Ancient Egypt and about how the white people who discovered the Sphinx in the desert had tried to hide its Negro nose by defacing it.
But “ I now hear the spirit of the ancestors calling me” He said, because the “time to liberate Kememu from mental slavery has come…” He says that “Kememu” is the name the ancient Egyptians used to describe themselves and that it means “black people”.
A lot of the things Barry says sound interesting and show how much he has read on the things that interest him, but others are now becoming a bit troubling; now and then he springs new words on us and say that they are ancient Egyptian words that have come to him. The other day he had used the word “mmiri” for water and said that that it is also Ancient Egyptian but I had decided not to burst his bubble, because that’s the word for water in Igbo.
“…I am sensing that they will soon want to get rid of me Kasi…” Barry is saying as we approach the Intourist hotel. And he was sounding a bit scared.
“Why would somebody want to kill Philip?” I ask.”…he hardly spoke to anybody and even when he’s drunk he was always more interested in women.”
“I’m suspecting that he was involved with the KGB and that when he started to know too much and they felt that they didn’t need him anymore, they had decided to get rid of him…”
“That’s ridiculous Barry!”
“You think so? Then Kasi you have not yet understood how subtle these people can be. And I think that‘s the problem with you docile black people; its either that you guys have sold out or you‘re too damned ignorant to care about the important issues. Look at Ugo, Eddy and Sampson over there-I bet they‘re arguing over something as silly as fighters!”
“Or the problem maybe that you see problems where there are none, Barry. “I say a bit irritated.
He is laughing. “Look around you Kasi, whether you want to accept it or not the white man is on a mission to indoctrinate us with the ideology that we are an inferior people…”
Barry is going off point again. He has become so obsessed with this whole thing of the white man wanting to dominate the black man that his whole life is becoming pigeon-holed into one way of thinking. And I am beginning to worry about some of the things I have heard him saying of late.
The other day he was telling us how there is a global conspiracy by the white man to destroy every remnant of Africa’s ancient history so that they can replace it with the lie that Africans are savages and an inferior species. “They want to make us feel inferior so that they can continue to dominate us“ He said and had then started to speak passionately about Ancient Egypt and about how the white people who discovered the Sphinx in the desert had tried to hide its Negro nose by defacing it.
But “ I now hear the spirit of the ancestors calling me” He said, because the “time to liberate Kememu from mental slavery has come…” He says that “Kememu” is the name the ancient Egyptians used to describe themselves and that it means “black people”.
A lot of the things Barry says sound interesting and show how much he has read on the things that interest him, but others are now becoming a bit troubling; now and then he springs new words on us and say that they are ancient Egyptian words that have come to him. The other day he had used the word “mmiri” for water and said that that it is also Ancient Egyptian but I had decided not to burst his bubble, because that’s the word for water in Igbo.
“…I am sensing that they will soon want to get rid of me Kasi…” Barry is saying as we approach the Intourist hotel. And he was sounding a bit scared.
Thursday 15 November 2007
Chapter 7: Spring/1
“You hear wetin happen for University?” Ugo is asking as I sit on a stool at one end of the corridor in our wing of the hostel. He is standing behind me and has just started barbing my hair and he's asking if I have heard what happened at the University.
“Wetin happen?” I ask moving my head briefly away from his clipper“…take am easy now, this your clippers need sharpening”. The blades of the clippers he is using feel blunt on my hair and this makes the clipping to be very painful.
“I know, I suppose buy new one but dem no get am for here”
“So what were you saying about the University?”
“ I hear say one black bobo kill himself“
“What?”.
“Dem say one booze-man from Uganda wey dem call Philip been jump from the 9th floor of him hostel after him drink Vodka finish…”
“Are you sure? “I ask. I cannot believe what he is telling me; somebody called Philip at the University has jumped from the 9th floor of his hostel and killed himself.
“Na so me I hear am O…“
“But I know Philip very well! I protested. “ I was with him only last weekend!”
“Yes, but he killed himself 2 days ago. Barry was at the University yesterday and he says its true…”
I am speechless. Why would Philip kill himself? I know he had his issues about his identity but I didn’t reckon that they were large enough to make him commit suicide. Shit! I am remembering his face and the sound of his voice and the sadness when he had talked about his only identity being a shrivelling penis.
I am wondering if that poem was his suicide note to the world and if by it he had been crying out to those of us who were there with him…crying with him tearlessly…when he spoke to us about his feeling of impotence. And I remember how his words had started to reverberate in my soul and had started to sound like the scream of someone who is lost.
Why has Philip killed himself?! I have come to see him as my friend as I am beginning to understand his silence and to see beneath the façade that he tried to build around himself; a facade to keep people from witnessing how vulnerable he really is. And I am starting to see how his pain almost echoes my own existential issues.
But how was I to know that the piercing scream, which I discerned on that day-as he recited his poem-was the piercing scream of one who is petrified because he sees himself sliding slowly but inexorably down a lonely dark tunnel that leads to death?
They say that one of the female students who was waiting at a nearby bus stop had seen his mangled body sprawled on the ground next to the shrubs by the side of his hostel. They believe he fell from one of the balconies of the 9th floor because they had found his key and some empty bottles of Vodka on that balcony.
Some of his course mates say that in the days leading to his death, he was not attending his courses regularly and that on the few occasions when he had managed to come for his courses that he was drunk and quite labile in his mood. They had all suspected that something was going on with him, but nobody could have guessed that it had been as bad as to make him commit suicide.
“Ol boy why you dey cry?” Ugo is asking and he stops barbing my hair because the up and down heaving of my body-from trying not to cry-is making it difficult for him to continue” …me I no go waste my tears for anybody wey kill himself, because the person na real coward hin be and suicide sef na sin…” He is asking me why I am crying and then telling me that he will not waste his tears on anybody who kills himself, because only cowards kill themselves and suicide is also known to be a sin.
No words come out of my mouth because words cannot describe exactly the way I am feeling. How do I start explaining to him that all my childhood insecurities are suddenly bursting forth and that I am now so conscious of death?
But Isn't the fact that my mate has just killed himself a good enough reason to cry? I am trying very hard to hold back my tears but my body continues to heave uncontrollably and the tears continue to flow like a river that is flooding over its banks. And I am wondering if the God of Ade will have mercy on the soul of my now lost friend…
“Wetin happen?” I ask moving my head briefly away from his clipper“…take am easy now, this your clippers need sharpening”. The blades of the clippers he is using feel blunt on my hair and this makes the clipping to be very painful.
“I know, I suppose buy new one but dem no get am for here”
“So what were you saying about the University?”
“ I hear say one black bobo kill himself“
“What?”.
“Dem say one booze-man from Uganda wey dem call Philip been jump from the 9th floor of him hostel after him drink Vodka finish…”
“Are you sure? “I ask. I cannot believe what he is telling me; somebody called Philip at the University has jumped from the 9th floor of his hostel and killed himself.
“Na so me I hear am O…“
“But I know Philip very well! I protested. “ I was with him only last weekend!”
“Yes, but he killed himself 2 days ago. Barry was at the University yesterday and he says its true…”
I am speechless. Why would Philip kill himself? I know he had his issues about his identity but I didn’t reckon that they were large enough to make him commit suicide. Shit! I am remembering his face and the sound of his voice and the sadness when he had talked about his only identity being a shrivelling penis.
I am wondering if that poem was his suicide note to the world and if by it he had been crying out to those of us who were there with him…crying with him tearlessly…when he spoke to us about his feeling of impotence. And I remember how his words had started to reverberate in my soul and had started to sound like the scream of someone who is lost.
Why has Philip killed himself?! I have come to see him as my friend as I am beginning to understand his silence and to see beneath the façade that he tried to build around himself; a facade to keep people from witnessing how vulnerable he really is. And I am starting to see how his pain almost echoes my own existential issues.
But how was I to know that the piercing scream, which I discerned on that day-as he recited his poem-was the piercing scream of one who is petrified because he sees himself sliding slowly but inexorably down a lonely dark tunnel that leads to death?
They say that one of the female students who was waiting at a nearby bus stop had seen his mangled body sprawled on the ground next to the shrubs by the side of his hostel. They believe he fell from one of the balconies of the 9th floor because they had found his key and some empty bottles of Vodka on that balcony.
Some of his course mates say that in the days leading to his death, he was not attending his courses regularly and that on the few occasions when he had managed to come for his courses that he was drunk and quite labile in his mood. They had all suspected that something was going on with him, but nobody could have guessed that it had been as bad as to make him commit suicide.
“Ol boy why you dey cry?” Ugo is asking and he stops barbing my hair because the up and down heaving of my body-from trying not to cry-is making it difficult for him to continue” …me I no go waste my tears for anybody wey kill himself, because the person na real coward hin be and suicide sef na sin…” He is asking me why I am crying and then telling me that he will not waste his tears on anybody who kills himself, because only cowards kill themselves and suicide is also known to be a sin.
No words come out of my mouth because words cannot describe exactly the way I am feeling. How do I start explaining to him that all my childhood insecurities are suddenly bursting forth and that I am now so conscious of death?
But Isn't the fact that my mate has just killed himself a good enough reason to cry? I am trying very hard to hold back my tears but my body continues to heave uncontrollably and the tears continue to flow like a river that is flooding over its banks. And I am wondering if the God of Ade will have mercy on the soul of my now lost friend…
The University/7
I am walking back from the grocery store across the park and I notice for the first time that the flowers are in bloom. I also hear the occasional chirping of birds from the trees, which have started to sprout new leaves and for the first time in many months I am feeling upbeat .The birds are singing their mysterious songs of spring and I am wondering what they are communicating with each other as they sing. And then I start to hum the tune to one of my favourite hymns about morning breaking and a blackbird speaking…And I am trying to remember the wordings of the hymn but can’t get past the first stanza.
The cold air feels very refreshing. I breath in deeply to fill my lungs and then I exhale slowly-spring is here; there’s magic in the air and it is feeling as if a refreshing breeze is blowing away the stale air of gloominess, which had hung over my daily existence for the past few months and which had until today left me with a nagging sense of worthlessness and filth.
Maybe things are not as bad as I am making out, after all; suddenly I am not able to understand why I had been feeling so low in mood and why I have not been unable to live my life over the past few months without that burden of guilt-like the sword of Damocles-hanging over me. It is suddenly feeling as if a thick veil is lifting inside of me and I am feeling young and free. I fill my lungs again with a gulp of crisp fresh air. It is permissible to make mistakes in ones youth, I tell myself. Because youth has always been associated with folly anyway. I am young and its spring; the time when the earth is reborn and when the scent of love hangs thickly in the air.
I am thinking about love now and with the thought of it, the image of Adelaide is breaking forth into my conscious mind. That image that refuses to go away and which is always there lurking almost imperceptibly on the margins of my consciousness; lurking in the shadows but still very much there. And in the last few months I have been trying to distract myself from her; I have gone to extra lengths to ensure that I do not run into her in the hostel or at the preparatory faculty. I have been mostly successful but sometimes I have caught a passing glimpse of her in the distance and I have realised that I still need her. But it is clear that she belongs to the other fellow whose name I have learnt Is Pedro.
I have resigned myself to the knowledge that I have to move on beyond her and in my quest to forget her, I have come to know quite a lot of women. Yet in this knowing I have also come to understand that I need something much more deeper than the superficial intercoursing of the flesh, which I have been experiencing with the many “fighters“. A lot of guys like Ugo and Eddy-and the guys at the university-seem to be very comfortable with the no-strings-attached fighting as if they do not feel up to engaging with the women emotionally, but I do not feel cut out for that because it feels as if my own journey is different.
I find it difficult not to emerge from the “fighting” without feeling guilt-ridden. And i also find myself loathing the women whom I have slept with to the point where i never want to set my eyes on them again...until I once again numb my conscience with the Vodka and then the desire is there again throbbing strongly in my loins.
I have resolved that I will not continue like this. My heart longs for that pure relationship, which would have developed with Adelaide; my heart needs to love a woman. Because I know that the journey of love is one that I must make in order for me to complete my rite of passage into a real man and I have now decided that if it is not going to be with Adelaide then it will be with someone else; I can no longer be chained to my unattainable fantasies of her seeing that she belongs to someone else and I have blown my chances with her. I must now move on; it is as simple as that.
Tonight the Ghanaian’s are celebrating their Independence Day at the Intourist hotel and they want to have an even better party than the Nigerians. Ugo’s most recent girlfriend, Sveta-who he says is a good girl because she has never really had a boyfriend up until she met with him 2weeks ago-is coming to the party tonight with a close friend of hers. I am looking forward to meeting with this person and hoping that she too is a good girl; I am hoping that with her I can start my love story all over again and that through her I will be exorcised of the image of Adelaide.
I am going to collect the white silk suit, which Eddy has promised to lend to me for this evening. His trip to Turkey went very well and him and Ugo got very good returns on their investments. They had immediately re-invested part of the money in another trip that Ugo's friend in Moscow had made to Nigeria to sell antibiotics to some private hospitals and now they've become the big boys in the hostel with the money to burn and the clothes to show for it...and with an even larger stream of women, trooping in and out of their room at the weekends. I am beginning to envy them two guys.
Oh well, my time too will come! I am thinking as i decide to go and remind Ugo about the haircut that he's promised to give me later on this evening. Tonight I must look special because tonight a new chapter in my life is about to begin and its important that I begin to look the part.
The tunes of another familiar song begins to play in my heart as I begin to think about tonight. I am feeling increasingly excited and wondering what this girl-whom Sveta has promised to acquaint me with-will look like. I am hoping that she is beautiful and that I can fall in love with her.
Love is in the air, everywhere I look around...
The cold air feels very refreshing. I breath in deeply to fill my lungs and then I exhale slowly-spring is here; there’s magic in the air and it is feeling as if a refreshing breeze is blowing away the stale air of gloominess, which had hung over my daily existence for the past few months and which had until today left me with a nagging sense of worthlessness and filth.
Maybe things are not as bad as I am making out, after all; suddenly I am not able to understand why I had been feeling so low in mood and why I have not been unable to live my life over the past few months without that burden of guilt-like the sword of Damocles-hanging over me. It is suddenly feeling as if a thick veil is lifting inside of me and I am feeling young and free. I fill my lungs again with a gulp of crisp fresh air. It is permissible to make mistakes in ones youth, I tell myself. Because youth has always been associated with folly anyway. I am young and its spring; the time when the earth is reborn and when the scent of love hangs thickly in the air.
I am thinking about love now and with the thought of it, the image of Adelaide is breaking forth into my conscious mind. That image that refuses to go away and which is always there lurking almost imperceptibly on the margins of my consciousness; lurking in the shadows but still very much there. And in the last few months I have been trying to distract myself from her; I have gone to extra lengths to ensure that I do not run into her in the hostel or at the preparatory faculty. I have been mostly successful but sometimes I have caught a passing glimpse of her in the distance and I have realised that I still need her. But it is clear that she belongs to the other fellow whose name I have learnt Is Pedro.
I have resigned myself to the knowledge that I have to move on beyond her and in my quest to forget her, I have come to know quite a lot of women. Yet in this knowing I have also come to understand that I need something much more deeper than the superficial intercoursing of the flesh, which I have been experiencing with the many “fighters“. A lot of guys like Ugo and Eddy-and the guys at the university-seem to be very comfortable with the no-strings-attached fighting as if they do not feel up to engaging with the women emotionally, but I do not feel cut out for that because it feels as if my own journey is different.
I find it difficult not to emerge from the “fighting” without feeling guilt-ridden. And i also find myself loathing the women whom I have slept with to the point where i never want to set my eyes on them again...until I once again numb my conscience with the Vodka and then the desire is there again throbbing strongly in my loins.
I have resolved that I will not continue like this. My heart longs for that pure relationship, which would have developed with Adelaide; my heart needs to love a woman. Because I know that the journey of love is one that I must make in order for me to complete my rite of passage into a real man and I have now decided that if it is not going to be with Adelaide then it will be with someone else; I can no longer be chained to my unattainable fantasies of her seeing that she belongs to someone else and I have blown my chances with her. I must now move on; it is as simple as that.
Tonight the Ghanaian’s are celebrating their Independence Day at the Intourist hotel and they want to have an even better party than the Nigerians. Ugo’s most recent girlfriend, Sveta-who he says is a good girl because she has never really had a boyfriend up until she met with him 2weeks ago-is coming to the party tonight with a close friend of hers. I am looking forward to meeting with this person and hoping that she too is a good girl; I am hoping that with her I can start my love story all over again and that through her I will be exorcised of the image of Adelaide.
I am going to collect the white silk suit, which Eddy has promised to lend to me for this evening. His trip to Turkey went very well and him and Ugo got very good returns on their investments. They had immediately re-invested part of the money in another trip that Ugo's friend in Moscow had made to Nigeria to sell antibiotics to some private hospitals and now they've become the big boys in the hostel with the money to burn and the clothes to show for it...and with an even larger stream of women, trooping in and out of their room at the weekends. I am beginning to envy them two guys.
Oh well, my time too will come! I am thinking as i decide to go and remind Ugo about the haircut that he's promised to give me later on this evening. Tonight I must look special because tonight a new chapter in my life is about to begin and its important that I begin to look the part.
The tunes of another familiar song begins to play in my heart as I begin to think about tonight. I am feeling increasingly excited and wondering what this girl-whom Sveta has promised to acquaint me with-will look like. I am hoping that she is beautiful and that I can fall in love with her.
Love is in the air, everywhere I look around...
Wednesday 14 November 2007
The University/6
I notice a police car parked just in front of our hostel as I walk down the street, which leads from the bus stop on Engels street to 212 Pushkinskaya. As I approach, two very tall police men come out from the hostel and are entering their car. They are now driving in my direction towards Engels street and as they speed past me I am wondering what on earth has been going on in our hostel since I left for the University yesterday evening.
In the lobby area one of the porters is mopping the floor but I can still see some stains of blood near the porters desk. A few students are standing nearby and talking, probably about the incident that must have just happened and I notice one of the Nigerian students standing near the steps conversing with a guy from Ghana.
“ What happened?” I am asking as I walk up to them.
“ Barry head butted Omar and he’s had a noise bleed!”
“Who’s had a nose bleed?“
“Omar…”
“ Na wao for this Barry” I say “…the guy should take things easy. We‘re not at war…”
“What lead to the head butting?” I ask.
“Guys, I’ll see you later I need to go” The Nigerian student says and leaves.
“ Charlie…” the Ghanaian said refering to me with the generic name Ghanaian’s call people “…you know say Barry is always complaining about Omar. I heard that he called Omar an Arab slave. And then one thing lead to another…”
“What did the police do?”
“Took their statements and then left without saying anything; you know, the usual thing they do when it’s a problem between two Africans…”
I am not surprised that Barry attacked Omar; he’s been promising to do that for some time and had even warned Omar to run from him anytime he’s on his own! Omar is from the Sudan and is Moslem. Him and Barry have been having a lot of arguments about Omar’s racial origins since Barry first noticed that Omar prefers to hang around Arabs than with black Africans.
The other day one of the guys from Morocco had mentioned in passing how he finds Omar’s rejection of everything black African to be disgusting and since then Barry has been waiting for an opportunity to have a show down with him.
“How can some body be so self-loathing as to deny his own race?” Barry would ask “…the moron doesn’t know that Arabs don’t really like Africans and that for them, every black African is supposed to be a slave. Even the word for black people in Arabic translates as slave…”
“But why is that your problem?” I asked“…If that’s what the man wants to call himself, who gives you the authority to confront him about it?”
“It is my problem and I’m going to fuck Omar up. I‘m going to take him on man to man and then beat sense into him until he begs for mercy and accepts that he is a black African!”
“Fighting him will not make him change his opinion”
“It will make me feel better!“ Barry said.
I caught up with Barry in his room. There was a group of other guys there trying to calm him down, but he seemed to be winding himself up even more.
“You guys should have let me hit Omar a few more times!" I heard him saying as i entered his room "...I feel a lot of rage at his nonsense; stupid Arab slave! When will we Africans wake up and stop allowing every other race to humiliate us? “
“Ol’ boy calm down” one of the guys was saying“…you cannot change what has been in history. And you certainly can’t change the thinking of millions of people by just fighting one man.”
“I can’t change him, but I can at least make him feel the physical pain of being humiliated as a man, in addition to the shame he feels about who he is. I‘m not yet finished with him though. I want Omar to start having nightmares about me. I want him to wake up in the middle of the night sweating with images of my big black African fist terrorizing his enslaved mind. Because the next time I meet him on his own, my fist is going to smash into his broad Negro nose…”
The look in Barry’s eyes as he is talking tells me that he is not making idle threats; he means everything he is saying and at this very moment I do not envy Omar.
In the lobby area one of the porters is mopping the floor but I can still see some stains of blood near the porters desk. A few students are standing nearby and talking, probably about the incident that must have just happened and I notice one of the Nigerian students standing near the steps conversing with a guy from Ghana.
“ What happened?” I am asking as I walk up to them.
“ Barry head butted Omar and he’s had a noise bleed!”
“Who’s had a nose bleed?“
“Omar…”
“ Na wao for this Barry” I say “…the guy should take things easy. We‘re not at war…”
“What lead to the head butting?” I ask.
“Guys, I’ll see you later I need to go” The Nigerian student says and leaves.
“ Charlie…” the Ghanaian said refering to me with the generic name Ghanaian’s call people “…you know say Barry is always complaining about Omar. I heard that he called Omar an Arab slave. And then one thing lead to another…”
“What did the police do?”
“Took their statements and then left without saying anything; you know, the usual thing they do when it’s a problem between two Africans…”
I am not surprised that Barry attacked Omar; he’s been promising to do that for some time and had even warned Omar to run from him anytime he’s on his own! Omar is from the Sudan and is Moslem. Him and Barry have been having a lot of arguments about Omar’s racial origins since Barry first noticed that Omar prefers to hang around Arabs than with black Africans.
The other day one of the guys from Morocco had mentioned in passing how he finds Omar’s rejection of everything black African to be disgusting and since then Barry has been waiting for an opportunity to have a show down with him.
“How can some body be so self-loathing as to deny his own race?” Barry would ask “…the moron doesn’t know that Arabs don’t really like Africans and that for them, every black African is supposed to be a slave. Even the word for black people in Arabic translates as slave…”
“But why is that your problem?” I asked“…If that’s what the man wants to call himself, who gives you the authority to confront him about it?”
“It is my problem and I’m going to fuck Omar up. I‘m going to take him on man to man and then beat sense into him until he begs for mercy and accepts that he is a black African!”
“Fighting him will not make him change his opinion”
“It will make me feel better!“ Barry said.
I caught up with Barry in his room. There was a group of other guys there trying to calm him down, but he seemed to be winding himself up even more.
“You guys should have let me hit Omar a few more times!" I heard him saying as i entered his room "...I feel a lot of rage at his nonsense; stupid Arab slave! When will we Africans wake up and stop allowing every other race to humiliate us? “
“Ol’ boy calm down” one of the guys was saying“…you cannot change what has been in history. And you certainly can’t change the thinking of millions of people by just fighting one man.”
“I can’t change him, but I can at least make him feel the physical pain of being humiliated as a man, in addition to the shame he feels about who he is. I‘m not yet finished with him though. I want Omar to start having nightmares about me. I want him to wake up in the middle of the night sweating with images of my big black African fist terrorizing his enslaved mind. Because the next time I meet him on his own, my fist is going to smash into his broad Negro nose…”
The look in Barry’s eyes as he is talking tells me that he is not making idle threats; he means everything he is saying and at this very moment I do not envy Omar.
Tuesday 13 November 2007
The University/5
“Comrade…” The man sitting next to me on the bus is saying, distracting me from my thoughts on Philip“…how are you?”
“Fine thanks”
“Where are you from?”
“From Nigeria”
“But you look African”
“Yes. Nigeria is in Africa”
“Is it a village or a town in Africa?“
“No it’s a country…”
“I hear that there’s war and famine in Africa…”he says as if he didn’t hear what I just said.
“I’ve heard that also.”
There’s been quite a lot of talk lately about the famine in Africa. They’ve been showing documentaries with pictures of the poor starving African children with protruding abdomen’s and with flies trying to perch on their cracked lips as they slowly die of hunger under the burning African sun. And they’ve been playing that Bono song that he used to raise money recently for the Children of Africa, where they ask if we know its Christmas time.
“It must be difficult for you poor Africans.”
“Yes…”I wish I had a book or something to start reading to give the man a little hint that I didn’t feel like talking.
“So are you a refugee here?”.
“No, I am a medical student…”
“Medical student?!” he asked surprised “…I didn‘t know you have African Medical students. I used to think that its very hard to become a Doctor these days!”.
Its moments like this that I wished Barry was here with me; much as I don’t like the way he would have become confrontational and start challenging the man but he at least had enough information to make the man go on the defensive and eventually shut up. Barry always finds it difficult to deal with these kind of questions and wouldn’t mince words about the fact that he believes that the person is ignorant…not even if he is the only black man on the bus. Unfortunately, he’s gotten himself beaten up quite a few times as well.
But I am beginning to understand why Barry feels he is engaged in a battle and why he feels so angry with most of us, especially the Nigerians whom he says are "squabbling over petty tribal issues" while the rest of Africa waits for us-"as the most populous black nation on earth"-to lead. “You guys are an embarrassment to the rest of the black race...” Barry would say.
He also says that all white peoples minds are made up about Africa and Africans anyway and that asking them to change that opinion would be challenging them to "change their conceited opinions about themselves".
"Why would a people want to stop thinking of themselves as better human beings anyway?" he would ask...."It is such beliefs that keeps them from confronting their own vacuous lives, so tell me why a person would replace a feeling of security with nothing. Most of them are either too conceited or too ignorant to believe in God so what is left for them to believe in? Tell me."
I usually don’t know what to say when he begins to talk about people's beliefs because i have my own unresolved issues. But I am beginning to see that its human nature to want something to believe in and that it doesn’t matter whether its true or not because what‘s most important, at the end of the day, is the function of that belief for the individual-or group of individuals.
“How did you become a Medical student?…”the man is asking.
The bus is trying to park at the central market where we all need to get off and I don’t want to answer his questions anymore, so I pretend that I didn’t hear him.
“Fine thanks”
“Where are you from?”
“From Nigeria”
“But you look African”
“Yes. Nigeria is in Africa”
“Is it a village or a town in Africa?“
“No it’s a country…”
“I hear that there’s war and famine in Africa…”he says as if he didn’t hear what I just said.
“I’ve heard that also.”
There’s been quite a lot of talk lately about the famine in Africa. They’ve been showing documentaries with pictures of the poor starving African children with protruding abdomen’s and with flies trying to perch on their cracked lips as they slowly die of hunger under the burning African sun. And they’ve been playing that Bono song that he used to raise money recently for the Children of Africa, where they ask if we know its Christmas time.
“It must be difficult for you poor Africans.”
“Yes…”I wish I had a book or something to start reading to give the man a little hint that I didn’t feel like talking.
“So are you a refugee here?”.
“No, I am a medical student…”
“Medical student?!” he asked surprised “…I didn‘t know you have African Medical students. I used to think that its very hard to become a Doctor these days!”.
Its moments like this that I wished Barry was here with me; much as I don’t like the way he would have become confrontational and start challenging the man but he at least had enough information to make the man go on the defensive and eventually shut up. Barry always finds it difficult to deal with these kind of questions and wouldn’t mince words about the fact that he believes that the person is ignorant…not even if he is the only black man on the bus. Unfortunately, he’s gotten himself beaten up quite a few times as well.
But I am beginning to understand why Barry feels he is engaged in a battle and why he feels so angry with most of us, especially the Nigerians whom he says are "squabbling over petty tribal issues" while the rest of Africa waits for us-"as the most populous black nation on earth"-to lead. “You guys are an embarrassment to the rest of the black race...” Barry would say.
He also says that all white peoples minds are made up about Africa and Africans anyway and that asking them to change that opinion would be challenging them to "change their conceited opinions about themselves".
"Why would a people want to stop thinking of themselves as better human beings anyway?" he would ask...."It is such beliefs that keeps them from confronting their own vacuous lives, so tell me why a person would replace a feeling of security with nothing. Most of them are either too conceited or too ignorant to believe in God so what is left for them to believe in? Tell me."
I usually don’t know what to say when he begins to talk about people's beliefs because i have my own unresolved issues. But I am beginning to see that its human nature to want something to believe in and that it doesn’t matter whether its true or not because what‘s most important, at the end of the day, is the function of that belief for the individual-or group of individuals.
“How did you become a Medical student?…”the man is asking.
The bus is trying to park at the central market where we all need to get off and I don’t want to answer his questions anymore, so I pretend that I didn’t hear him.
The University/4
I am on my way back to the medical hostel. I left while Philip and the fighters were still sleeping as I didn't see any point in staying on any longer; with morning people should get up and get on with whatever remains of their wretched lives.
I am thinking of Philip now and wondering how come he is such a quiet person when he is sober; a totally different person from his inebriated self. And I am wondering what really goes on behind those sad dark brown eyes of his that always looks down when you try to meet his gaze. The only thing I know about his past is that he is of mixed race and that he never knew or liked his white father. He also usually felt uncomfortable around white males but until a few days ago-when he had decided to recite a poem, which he'd recently written-I didn’t really think that he had any serious identity issues.
I was sitting with him and two other guys in his room and we were drinking as usual, trying to get slowly drunk while we waited for his fighters to arrive. And then he suddenly announced that he is working on a poem and that he wants to entertain us with it because he heard the rumour that was going around about him having a big penis.
"I have written a poem about my penis!” he announced.
I am not suprised at his choice of topic. I thought as i quaffed my Vodka ,waiting for him to hit us with the expected punch line of what i assumed would have been a crude joke.
But he suprised all of us; he came out instead with something very profound and very sad. I am now trying to remember the exact words,which he had used but most of his words are gone. And I know that I must get hold of the rest of the words of the poem because as long as I don't have them, their silence will continue to haunt me.
I have met up with him twice since then but he has always been too drunk to care and would laugh at me calling me "Oga...", the Nigerian way of refering to someone in authority "...why you like this penis matter sef?" he would say in his broken pidgin English.
I remember that he started off by saying something along the lines of him being just an appendage to his penis! And then he continued in a beautiful recitation, which his East African accent lent a certain cadence that could only have come out of Africa. And which keeps on reverberating in my innermost being like the piercing scream of a friend lost in a dark and lonely tunnel.
I watch the trees running past the windows of the bus and around them I see the white snow-capped landscape of southern Russia; but in my heart I hear his voice...
“It is my penis that defines me
It gives me a sense of belonging
not my colour...
I feel lost
in the eternity
which separates these two colours that have birthed me…
I don’t dare to call myself a man
for i am dispossessed of the pride of manhood
when I ponder the humiliation
that my mother felt at the point when she was raped;
the point when I was conceived
I am not coloured;
i will not let colour to define me….
Now you spit on my humiliated face
and tell me
that i am not a man;
You then remind me of my impotence
on the bed of history
where you ravaged my innocent black mother
No; I am not a man-men do not sit back
and watch their mothers defiled
I am just a creature
that is attached to one shrivelling colourless penis…”
There was a lot of sadness in his voice and I remember that we had all remained silent after he read his poem; not even the sound of clapping was heard. Instead there was the sniffling of restrained tears as we all sat looking into our glasses of Vodka not wanting to look at each other; African men are not supposed to cry.
Perhaps this is the silence that Philip carries with him in his moments of sobriety; perhaps this is the silence that he is always seeking distraction from when he reaches for his Vodka and for the embrace of his many fighters.
I am thinking of Philip now and wondering how come he is such a quiet person when he is sober; a totally different person from his inebriated self. And I am wondering what really goes on behind those sad dark brown eyes of his that always looks down when you try to meet his gaze. The only thing I know about his past is that he is of mixed race and that he never knew or liked his white father. He also usually felt uncomfortable around white males but until a few days ago-when he had decided to recite a poem, which he'd recently written-I didn’t really think that he had any serious identity issues.
I was sitting with him and two other guys in his room and we were drinking as usual, trying to get slowly drunk while we waited for his fighters to arrive. And then he suddenly announced that he is working on a poem and that he wants to entertain us with it because he heard the rumour that was going around about him having a big penis.
"I have written a poem about my penis!” he announced.
I am not suprised at his choice of topic. I thought as i quaffed my Vodka ,waiting for him to hit us with the expected punch line of what i assumed would have been a crude joke.
But he suprised all of us; he came out instead with something very profound and very sad. I am now trying to remember the exact words,which he had used but most of his words are gone. And I know that I must get hold of the rest of the words of the poem because as long as I don't have them, their silence will continue to haunt me.
I have met up with him twice since then but he has always been too drunk to care and would laugh at me calling me "Oga...", the Nigerian way of refering to someone in authority "...why you like this penis matter sef?" he would say in his broken pidgin English.
I remember that he started off by saying something along the lines of him being just an appendage to his penis! And then he continued in a beautiful recitation, which his East African accent lent a certain cadence that could only have come out of Africa. And which keeps on reverberating in my innermost being like the piercing scream of a friend lost in a dark and lonely tunnel.
I watch the trees running past the windows of the bus and around them I see the white snow-capped landscape of southern Russia; but in my heart I hear his voice...
“It is my penis that defines me
It gives me a sense of belonging
not my colour...
I feel lost
in the eternity
which separates these two colours that have birthed me…
I don’t dare to call myself a man
for i am dispossessed of the pride of manhood
when I ponder the humiliation
that my mother felt at the point when she was raped;
the point when I was conceived
I am not coloured;
i will not let colour to define me….
Now you spit on my humiliated face
and tell me
that i am not a man;
You then remind me of my impotence
on the bed of history
where you ravaged my innocent black mother
No; I am not a man-men do not sit back
and watch their mothers defiled
I am just a creature
that is attached to one shrivelling colourless penis…”
There was a lot of sadness in his voice and I remember that we had all remained silent after he read his poem; not even the sound of clapping was heard. Instead there was the sniffling of restrained tears as we all sat looking into our glasses of Vodka not wanting to look at each other; African men are not supposed to cry.
Perhaps this is the silence that Philip carries with him in his moments of sobriety; perhaps this is the silence that he is always seeking distraction from when he reaches for his Vodka and for the embrace of his many fighters.
Monday 12 November 2007
The University/3
I wake up with a start. It is still very dark in the room as morning has not yet broken and I am finding it very hard to get my bearing. My head is throbbing with a pulsating ache and there’s somebody lying in the bed beside me…the person has just started to snore. I try to peer through the darkness to see if I can make out the form of the person and I notice-as I begin to edge closer-that the long tangling blond hair, which is slightly visible from beneath the duvet, belongs to a woman.
I move even closer to the warmth of the body and my groping hand connects with bare flesh; she is naked and I am suddenly aware of my own nakedness. Where am I and who on earth is lying here beside me? The effort to remember the events of the last few hours is making my head to ache even more intensely-but I must remember. This is not the first time in the last few days that I am waking up like this.
What happened last night?…I am beginning to remember now:
Our winter holidays started almost 2 weeks ago and I’ve been spending a lot of time at the University since Ugo travelled to Moscow to meet up with some of his old friends last week. He heard that one of his class mates from College is studying at the Patrice Lumumba University and he‘s gone to discuss business with the fellow. Eddy travelled to Kharkov to meet up with his brother with whom he is to later travel to Turkey to buy leather jackets.
I have been finding the rest of the guys in my hostel to be too boring; especially my room mate Ade, who thinks that I am now “a lost soul”. I have also been finding Barry a bit annoying because he’s always talking about racism and the black cause. I am beginning to think that the guy has some serious issues because he is damned too rigid in his thinking and sometimes comes across a bit belligerent when anybody disagrees with him.
Clements and Ken have also travelled for the holidays but I have been hanging out at the University with Philip-a 3rd year Law student from Uganda who loves his Vodka and his women. He likes to call the women "fighters" and is not concerned about the fact that most of them have done the rounds of most other guys in the hostel. But he seems to be particularly successful with them as he is always having a constant stream of them visit him; to the point where people actually come to him for help. And I am beginning to think that I know the reason for his popularity with the women; the other day I had accidentally caught a glimpse of his manhood and the size of it has left me feeling very very insecure about mine ever since.
I am in Philips room now and I am sure that he is in the bed across the room with one-or two-of his fighters. Yesterday evening I had come round to the University to meet up with him and as always he was drinking in their company. And as always I decided to get drunk in order to free myself from my reservations about fighting-a freedom, which now feels like an even worse enslavement because as always when I emerge out of my labyrinth of drunkenness and I am confronted with the reality of what I am gradually becoming, I am overcome by a certain sickness of spirit. I feel like one who is held captive in the grips of carnality and who is completely yielded to seducing spirits who now lead me deeper and deeper into a dark pit of depravity from which i will not be able to come out…I am a lost soul, Ade says-a person in need of salvation.
But where lies this salvation that Ade talks about? How can I, by just listening to the words he tells me, be cleansed of the darkness that torments my soul? How can my polluted spirit be purified? How can the memory of my childhood injustice and the pain from this guilt, which gnaws away at my soul, be washed away?
What will fill this emptiness that seems to be ever enlarging with the passing of each day; this dark and encroaching emptiness that is seeking to completely engulf me…and which seems to always linger with me until I can find something to distract me?
I am now reaching towards the softness of the body that is lying next to me; I am edging even closer and I am beginning to feel the hardness in my loins as my hands are now finding her warm moist softness. She is turning towards me and is now beginning to part her legs as she begins to moan-I need this distraction…
I move even closer to the warmth of the body and my groping hand connects with bare flesh; she is naked and I am suddenly aware of my own nakedness. Where am I and who on earth is lying here beside me? The effort to remember the events of the last few hours is making my head to ache even more intensely-but I must remember. This is not the first time in the last few days that I am waking up like this.
What happened last night?…I am beginning to remember now:
Our winter holidays started almost 2 weeks ago and I’ve been spending a lot of time at the University since Ugo travelled to Moscow to meet up with some of his old friends last week. He heard that one of his class mates from College is studying at the Patrice Lumumba University and he‘s gone to discuss business with the fellow. Eddy travelled to Kharkov to meet up with his brother with whom he is to later travel to Turkey to buy leather jackets.
I have been finding the rest of the guys in my hostel to be too boring; especially my room mate Ade, who thinks that I am now “a lost soul”. I have also been finding Barry a bit annoying because he’s always talking about racism and the black cause. I am beginning to think that the guy has some serious issues because he is damned too rigid in his thinking and sometimes comes across a bit belligerent when anybody disagrees with him.
Clements and Ken have also travelled for the holidays but I have been hanging out at the University with Philip-a 3rd year Law student from Uganda who loves his Vodka and his women. He likes to call the women "fighters" and is not concerned about the fact that most of them have done the rounds of most other guys in the hostel. But he seems to be particularly successful with them as he is always having a constant stream of them visit him; to the point where people actually come to him for help. And I am beginning to think that I know the reason for his popularity with the women; the other day I had accidentally caught a glimpse of his manhood and the size of it has left me feeling very very insecure about mine ever since.
I am in Philips room now and I am sure that he is in the bed across the room with one-or two-of his fighters. Yesterday evening I had come round to the University to meet up with him and as always he was drinking in their company. And as always I decided to get drunk in order to free myself from my reservations about fighting-a freedom, which now feels like an even worse enslavement because as always when I emerge out of my labyrinth of drunkenness and I am confronted with the reality of what I am gradually becoming, I am overcome by a certain sickness of spirit. I feel like one who is held captive in the grips of carnality and who is completely yielded to seducing spirits who now lead me deeper and deeper into a dark pit of depravity from which i will not be able to come out…I am a lost soul, Ade says-a person in need of salvation.
But where lies this salvation that Ade talks about? How can I, by just listening to the words he tells me, be cleansed of the darkness that torments my soul? How can my polluted spirit be purified? How can the memory of my childhood injustice and the pain from this guilt, which gnaws away at my soul, be washed away?
What will fill this emptiness that seems to be ever enlarging with the passing of each day; this dark and encroaching emptiness that is seeking to completely engulf me…and which seems to always linger with me until I can find something to distract me?
I am now reaching towards the softness of the body that is lying next to me; I am edging even closer and I am beginning to feel the hardness in my loins as my hands are now finding her warm moist softness. She is turning towards me and is now beginning to part her legs as she begins to moan-I need this distraction…
Sunday 11 November 2007
The University 2/
It’s a quarter to midnight; the room is now very crowded and I am beginning to feel really drunk. I really should have taken Ugo’s advice and kept to one type of alcohol but I had started to sample the Champagne and the Cognac and then tried a few bottles of the Djugulovsky beer after Bertha had taken a fancy to someone else.
I can make her out now dancing with the Latino fellow who chatted her up almost 2hours ago…undoing a lot of the work that I had done. And from the movement of both of their hands on each others bodies as they stand in the corner pretending to be dancing I can see that they are making quite a lot of progress with each other.
But they don’t bother me any more as I begin to see the funny side in everything; life is a load of shit anyway. I mutter to myself as I take another sip of the Cognac in my hands. I just tried chatting up the girl sitting next to me but she glared at me because I had started to laugh after she told me that she can’t understand what I am saying-when it was so clearly Russian language that i had spoken. At least it sounded that way to me!
“Its Africansky Russky” I told her and started to laugh.
“You’re drunk!” she responded and turned away hissing. And I can swear that I heard her say something about a drunk abezyan and that got me laughing even more as an image immediately flashed through my mind of what I might look like for her to have said that; can you imagine a drunk abezyan?; very funny indeed!
But now I am feeling really pressed to go to the toilet before I wet myself; this is going to be like the third time in the last one hour and I’m trying to wait until the last moment because the thought of having to press through this crowded room is not looking very appealing; the last time-barely half an hour ago-I had pushed into a fellow standing near the door and he had spilled his glass of wine onto his shirt and then wanted to start a fight with me if not that some people intervened.
I don’t like fighting and am looking around the room to see where some of my friends are in case I run into the guy again and he wants to start another fight. I can’t see Ugo or Barry in the crowd but Ken is standing next to the DJ at the corner of the room and seems to be giving him some instructions.
I check my time and notice that It’s less than ten minutes to midnight. Maybe I should wait until we toast to the new year and then I’ll go to the toilet…Shit its coming…I can‘t wait any longer!
I’m getting to my feet and suddenly I’m feeling really queasy. Shit! I hope I don’t throw up here. I push my way through the crowd and make it to the corridor just outside of the door but there’s a queue waiting to use the effin toilet! Shit. I’m finding it very difficult to keep the vomit and the urine from embarrassing me in front of everybody. I‘m rushing to the nearby balcony but I start to throw up just before I get there and I notice that I’ve been equally unsuccessful in keeping in the urine so I‘m unzipping to do it from here onto the ground below.
I start to hear people shouting; "S' novim god'om!...Happy New Year...!” They’re welcoming the New Year; so its here already, I am thinking as I watch my stream of urine make its way from the balcony and disappear into the snow covered ground six floors below; 1987 is being born and I am a f!@ked up drunk pissing from the balcony of a hostel in the heart of Russia...my stepmother would be so very proud of me.
I can make her out now dancing with the Latino fellow who chatted her up almost 2hours ago…undoing a lot of the work that I had done. And from the movement of both of their hands on each others bodies as they stand in the corner pretending to be dancing I can see that they are making quite a lot of progress with each other.
But they don’t bother me any more as I begin to see the funny side in everything; life is a load of shit anyway. I mutter to myself as I take another sip of the Cognac in my hands. I just tried chatting up the girl sitting next to me but she glared at me because I had started to laugh after she told me that she can’t understand what I am saying-when it was so clearly Russian language that i had spoken. At least it sounded that way to me!
“Its Africansky Russky” I told her and started to laugh.
“You’re drunk!” she responded and turned away hissing. And I can swear that I heard her say something about a drunk abezyan and that got me laughing even more as an image immediately flashed through my mind of what I might look like for her to have said that; can you imagine a drunk abezyan?; very funny indeed!
But now I am feeling really pressed to go to the toilet before I wet myself; this is going to be like the third time in the last one hour and I’m trying to wait until the last moment because the thought of having to press through this crowded room is not looking very appealing; the last time-barely half an hour ago-I had pushed into a fellow standing near the door and he had spilled his glass of wine onto his shirt and then wanted to start a fight with me if not that some people intervened.
I don’t like fighting and am looking around the room to see where some of my friends are in case I run into the guy again and he wants to start another fight. I can’t see Ugo or Barry in the crowd but Ken is standing next to the DJ at the corner of the room and seems to be giving him some instructions.
I check my time and notice that It’s less than ten minutes to midnight. Maybe I should wait until we toast to the new year and then I’ll go to the toilet…Shit its coming…I can‘t wait any longer!
I’m getting to my feet and suddenly I’m feeling really queasy. Shit! I hope I don’t throw up here. I push my way through the crowd and make it to the corridor just outside of the door but there’s a queue waiting to use the effin toilet! Shit. I’m finding it very difficult to keep the vomit and the urine from embarrassing me in front of everybody. I‘m rushing to the nearby balcony but I start to throw up just before I get there and I notice that I’ve been equally unsuccessful in keeping in the urine so I‘m unzipping to do it from here onto the ground below.
I start to hear people shouting; "S' novim god'om!...Happy New Year...!” They’re welcoming the New Year; so its here already, I am thinking as I watch my stream of urine make its way from the balcony and disappear into the snow covered ground six floors below; 1987 is being born and I am a f!@ked up drunk pissing from the balcony of a hostel in the heart of Russia...my stepmother would be so very proud of me.
BOOK 3. Chapter 6: The University/1
“Gorby is a member of the illuminati…” the guy sitting just to my left was saying as we sat talking about the unfolding events in the USSR. This was Wednesday 31st December 1986 and almost 3 month since the day of that incident.
Ugo and I had come to the University earlier that day for a party that was going to take place in Clements room later that evening to usher in the new Year. It was supposed to be a small party and none of the students from the preparatory faculty had been invited but Ugo had heard of it anyway and invited me to gate-crash with him. Eddy had initially wanted to come along but him and Ugo decided that it would make more economic sense if he travelled to Kharkov to meet with his brother and to plan for an upcoming trip to Istanbul. They heard that you could buy good leather jackets in that city and then make lots of profits from selling them to the Russians. So they had agreed to pull together their resources-in order to maximise profits-and that Eddy should discuss with his brother about getting buyers for the goods in Kharkov since Rostov was still a bit unsafe for business.
I am sitting with a glass of Vodka in my hand in Clements room. This room is quite spacious as the bed and most of the furniture has been taken out to create space for the party. Ugo has just gone out with Ken to buy more drinks and some food while at the far end of the room, Clements is bent over trying to set up the music system. Sitting just to my left and smoking a cigarette is a guy called Barry or Bartholome-as Ken prefers to call him.
Barry is also in the preparatory faculty of the medical school and is originally from the Republic of Zaire. He is very fluent in English and French and seems to be very interested in politics and African history. I watched him as he talked about yet another conspiracy. I wonder where this guy gets all his information, i thought. His hair cut was low cut giving him a military look and he wore the type of-almost characteristic-oversized designer clothes, which was casting the Zairian’s as the best dressed Africans in town.
Barry believes that there is a grand plan by the white race to discredit everything that people of African origin have ever done and for him Cheik Anta Diop is an African hero-“a modern black Pharaoh” he likes to call him. I had never heard of the man until I met Barry who would say that apart from the fact that Cheik Anta Diop was an all round genius, his works also challenge the “Eurocentric lie that Ancient Egyptians were not black Africans”. Barry seemed to have a lot to say about so many other things as well.
“…you people are naïve if you think that Gorby’s perestroika has not been orchestrated by the illuminati…”he was saying.
“Who are they?” I asked
“The people who control the FBI; the people who control America; the people who control the world…Kasi, you want to tell me that you have never heard of the illuminati?”
“No…”
“I have…” Clements said still fiddling with the electrical appliances across the room “…but I don’t believe they exist; I do agree with you that Gorby is an agent of the West though”.
“Why do you say that he‘s an agent of the West?” I asked never having been previously interested in politics until I started listening to the things that Barry-and a lot of the other guys at the University-had to say. I am starting to realise that I have been reading the wrong books…
“Well. Look at all this Glasnost and Perestroika business that the man started to introduce since he came into power last year; he is re-structuring Communism, for crying out loud! He wants to make the USSR to become a more market driven economy and then to make the system more democratic; Aren’t market-economy and democracy mantra’s of the Capitalist West?” Clements was saying.
“Yes, but things are even a lot more covert than you think Clements! Perestroika and Glasnost are ideas whose times have come in the grand scheme of things for the powers that be. The so-called cold war and indeed the world wars were all gimmicks to distract the gullible from the Illuminati’s agenda to consolidate on power before gradually moving on into the next socio-economic era-the era of the new world order. And that‘s why Gorby‘s doing what he’s doing…”
“ But I don’t understand how the world wars or even the cold war could have benefited their cause…”
“Kasi, your ignorance amazes me! “ snapped Barry sounding a bit irritated, “…even in the political economics classes that they’ve been teaching us so far in the prep faculty have you not heard them go on about the thing they call dialectics. What do you think that it means in practical terms. Do you think its only about arriving at truths through arguments?; Its about making progress through the creation and resolution of conflicts…”
I couldn’t respond to what he was saying because I lacked the information to be able to say anything.
“Interesting angle you have there Barry…” Clements said"....but i believe you're really talking about dialectical materialism. Right?" And at that moment there was a knock on the door.
“Dver Otkrita!” Clements shouted saying that the door is open. The door opened and three women came in.
“Hello krasavitsi! Come right in and sit down” Clements said…” Ken has gone to buy some more stuff for the party“.
The women stood just inside the door looking a bit unsure if they should come in.
“Did we come too early?” One of them asked.
“ Not really. People will soon start trickling in, so the earlier you come the better so that you can get a good place to sit down. Because its looking like we’re going to have a lot of gate-crashers today”. Clements had looked at me when he’d mentioned the word “gatecrashers”.
“Maybe we go and come back later?” she said.
“You might as well start settling down. I’m almost done with the music system. Once I’m done its kicking off. So what’s the point of going? . Meet Kasi and Barry from the medical school. Kasi meet Heidi, Gretchen and Bertha from East Germany”.
The three women were part of a group of University students who had recently come to Rostov for a few months exchange programme to study Russian Language at the University. Ken was already dating one of them-the one who had done the talking and whose name is Gretchen. He had invited her to come with two of her friends to the party. While Clements had done the introductions I found myself attracted to the one called Bertha and had tried not to make it so obvious that I was checking her out. But she caught me looking at her and had smiled.
Bertha did not look German. Well not to me she didn't; I used to think that German’s were all big with blonde hair and blue eyes and were always serious. But she was petit with very dark short hair and full lips. I could not quite tell the colour of her eyes from where I sat but they looked a certain shade of brown. Her hips looked a bit small while her large chest gave her the figure “9” in profile. You probably wouldn’t describe her as being beautiful, but she certainly was very sexy and was now filling me with a lot of lust…
“Ah! Its done,” Clements announced and he slotted the popular Eurhythmics song-sweat dreams are made of this-that had come out just a few years ago. “Let me get you beautiful ladies something to drink. What do you want?”.
“ Do you have sweet Champagne?”. The one called Heidi asked.
“ Sure. And Gretchen…Bertha?”
“The same thanks”
“Some sweet Champagne coming up!” Clements announced.
Ugo and I had come to the University earlier that day for a party that was going to take place in Clements room later that evening to usher in the new Year. It was supposed to be a small party and none of the students from the preparatory faculty had been invited but Ugo had heard of it anyway and invited me to gate-crash with him. Eddy had initially wanted to come along but him and Ugo decided that it would make more economic sense if he travelled to Kharkov to meet with his brother and to plan for an upcoming trip to Istanbul. They heard that you could buy good leather jackets in that city and then make lots of profits from selling them to the Russians. So they had agreed to pull together their resources-in order to maximise profits-and that Eddy should discuss with his brother about getting buyers for the goods in Kharkov since Rostov was still a bit unsafe for business.
I am sitting with a glass of Vodka in my hand in Clements room. This room is quite spacious as the bed and most of the furniture has been taken out to create space for the party. Ugo has just gone out with Ken to buy more drinks and some food while at the far end of the room, Clements is bent over trying to set up the music system. Sitting just to my left and smoking a cigarette is a guy called Barry or Bartholome-as Ken prefers to call him.
Barry is also in the preparatory faculty of the medical school and is originally from the Republic of Zaire. He is very fluent in English and French and seems to be very interested in politics and African history. I watched him as he talked about yet another conspiracy. I wonder where this guy gets all his information, i thought. His hair cut was low cut giving him a military look and he wore the type of-almost characteristic-oversized designer clothes, which was casting the Zairian’s as the best dressed Africans in town.
Barry believes that there is a grand plan by the white race to discredit everything that people of African origin have ever done and for him Cheik Anta Diop is an African hero-“a modern black Pharaoh” he likes to call him. I had never heard of the man until I met Barry who would say that apart from the fact that Cheik Anta Diop was an all round genius, his works also challenge the “Eurocentric lie that Ancient Egyptians were not black Africans”. Barry seemed to have a lot to say about so many other things as well.
“…you people are naïve if you think that Gorby’s perestroika has not been orchestrated by the illuminati…”he was saying.
“Who are they?” I asked
“The people who control the FBI; the people who control America; the people who control the world…Kasi, you want to tell me that you have never heard of the illuminati?”
“No…”
“I have…” Clements said still fiddling with the electrical appliances across the room “…but I don’t believe they exist; I do agree with you that Gorby is an agent of the West though”.
“Why do you say that he‘s an agent of the West?” I asked never having been previously interested in politics until I started listening to the things that Barry-and a lot of the other guys at the University-had to say. I am starting to realise that I have been reading the wrong books…
“Well. Look at all this Glasnost and Perestroika business that the man started to introduce since he came into power last year; he is re-structuring Communism, for crying out loud! He wants to make the USSR to become a more market driven economy and then to make the system more democratic; Aren’t market-economy and democracy mantra’s of the Capitalist West?” Clements was saying.
“Yes, but things are even a lot more covert than you think Clements! Perestroika and Glasnost are ideas whose times have come in the grand scheme of things for the powers that be. The so-called cold war and indeed the world wars were all gimmicks to distract the gullible from the Illuminati’s agenda to consolidate on power before gradually moving on into the next socio-economic era-the era of the new world order. And that‘s why Gorby‘s doing what he’s doing…”
“ But I don’t understand how the world wars or even the cold war could have benefited their cause…”
“Kasi, your ignorance amazes me! “ snapped Barry sounding a bit irritated, “…even in the political economics classes that they’ve been teaching us so far in the prep faculty have you not heard them go on about the thing they call dialectics. What do you think that it means in practical terms. Do you think its only about arriving at truths through arguments?; Its about making progress through the creation and resolution of conflicts…”
I couldn’t respond to what he was saying because I lacked the information to be able to say anything.
“Interesting angle you have there Barry…” Clements said"....but i believe you're really talking about dialectical materialism. Right?" And at that moment there was a knock on the door.
“Dver Otkrita!” Clements shouted saying that the door is open. The door opened and three women came in.
“Hello krasavitsi! Come right in and sit down” Clements said…” Ken has gone to buy some more stuff for the party“.
The women stood just inside the door looking a bit unsure if they should come in.
“Did we come too early?” One of them asked.
“ Not really. People will soon start trickling in, so the earlier you come the better so that you can get a good place to sit down. Because its looking like we’re going to have a lot of gate-crashers today”. Clements had looked at me when he’d mentioned the word “gatecrashers”.
“Maybe we go and come back later?” she said.
“You might as well start settling down. I’m almost done with the music system. Once I’m done its kicking off. So what’s the point of going? . Meet Kasi and Barry from the medical school. Kasi meet Heidi, Gretchen and Bertha from East Germany”.
The three women were part of a group of University students who had recently come to Rostov for a few months exchange programme to study Russian Language at the University. Ken was already dating one of them-the one who had done the talking and whose name is Gretchen. He had invited her to come with two of her friends to the party. While Clements had done the introductions I found myself attracted to the one called Bertha and had tried not to make it so obvious that I was checking her out. But she caught me looking at her and had smiled.
Bertha did not look German. Well not to me she didn't; I used to think that German’s were all big with blonde hair and blue eyes and were always serious. But she was petit with very dark short hair and full lips. I could not quite tell the colour of her eyes from where I sat but they looked a certain shade of brown. Her hips looked a bit small while her large chest gave her the figure “9” in profile. You probably wouldn’t describe her as being beautiful, but she certainly was very sexy and was now filling me with a lot of lust…
“Ah! Its done,” Clements announced and he slotted the popular Eurhythmics song-sweat dreams are made of this-that had come out just a few years ago. “Let me get you beautiful ladies something to drink. What do you want?”.
“ Do you have sweet Champagne?”. The one called Heidi asked.
“ Sure. And Gretchen…Bertha?”
“The same thanks”
“Some sweet Champagne coming up!” Clements announced.
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