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…