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…