Short Fiction: Wobbly Akara

The label on the door read: Dr. Nnamdi Otuka, BSc. M.Sc., M.Ed., Ph.D.

Avan, Seyi and nine others had been waiting in front of it since 9 a.m. They were huddled in front of it like victims in search of refuge. It was important to appear pitiful when Doctor arrived. It was crucial to not look bold and confident but rather to look remorseful for an offence you were unaware of or perhaps, you were aware of but found very difficult to come to terms with. 

There were rumours that the man was mentally disturbed. Some said he was the leftover of a terrible cocaine addict. Others blamed it on excess information weighing down his brain. Though, it still remained a speculation whether or not he had a mental condition.

11:47 a.m. 

Doctor appeared. He was wobbling in his characteristic manner along the long corridor.  His head, as usual was bowed and so Avan and the rest could see the whiteness covering his scalp. They did not straighten or adjust. They just remained there, sloppy looking and in a cluster. 

A heavily stuffed bag encumbered Doctor’s left shoulder, and a pile of papers in a worn-out cardboard file, nestled in his right arm. The items made his wobbling quite glaring. It wasn’t difficult for students to make jokes that years of carrying such burdens, caused Doctor to wobble. 

 The pack that awaited him knew better than to help with his load.  Again, rumor had it that he would snap and over react and over explain till the offender became certain that the anger was beyond the offence and towards a conflict his life was all about. A conflict he woke and slept in, a conflict that caused him to wobble along the corridors and between the aisles of the lecture halls. The rumormongers were divided.  Some said the conflict had its roots in years during which Doctor sniffed hard drugs in America. Others swore his brain was almost flattened out by the weight of knowledge.

‘Good Morning Sir’ the group greeted in chorus.

A little startled, Doctor raised his head and revealed a mildly winkled face with scars left by eyeglasses and little sleep. His eyes looked tired and ready to quit. 

He said nothing.

Dropping the cardboard file gently and dramatically on the ground, he began to search the bag for something. By now the group had moved and aligned themselves to a doorpost. His silence did not bother them. 

Doctor grumbled, quietly at first, and then more vocally as whatever he sought seemed to evade his fingers. He put down the stuffed bag and began a rather thorough search of it.  He paused and looked up at the group.

‘Get away from here, I can’t find my keys. Leave at once!’

‘Sir, can we be of help in any way?’ a neophytic jambite asked.

‘You must be deluded to think I need help finding my own keys.’ 

The ten others were already a safe distance away.

‘Sorry sir’ the fresher said, in a less confident tone. The rumours she had heard where true. The man was mad.

‘Get out!’ Doctor barked.

12:30 p.m.

Avan and Seyi, knocked on Doctor’s door and eased in before he responded. They had resolved to be defiant. How could they have stood in front of his office for so long, only to be chased away? If the man was mad, they were crazy, they had said, to each other. 

They immediately regretted the action. No sooner had they entered, did they see Doctor, seated at his large desk, dabbing his eyes with a small towel in an obvious effort to prevent whoever was coming in from seeing that he had been… yes… he had been crying.

Time paused from its usual frantic hurry. An awkward silence reigned in its stead, aided by hesitation. Avan kept his hands on the door knob. Seyi had his right leg still raised, hesitant to take the step forward.

‘Yes?’ Doctor saved the day.

‘We…about…’ Seyi gibbered.

‘Yes’ Avan nodded in agreement.

‘No’ Avan shook his head again, this time in disagreement, having realized that Seyi did not make any sense.

They still hadn’t moved. Only that Avan’s hand was no longer on the door knob, rather it fondled with the hem of his shirt and Seyi’s right foot sat nervously beside the left one; it had retracted. 

‘We are three hundred level…’

‘We are in three hundred level. Our result correction’

Seyi gabbled on.

‘I don’t understand’ Doctor still dabbed at his eyes, but now in pretense, feigning that something had gotten into them which he was trying to get out.

‘Come; take your seats’ he pointed at two worn-out seats.

The duo walked cautiously, careful not to step on any of the pieces of shattered glass, scattered on the floor. There was also a broken, silver coloured photo frame and an A5-sized photo of a middle aged woman. She was smiling in the manner of photographs.

‘So, what were you saying?’

As calmly as he could, Seyi began ‘We are third year Sociology students. We have problems with our results from last semester. The course you took …’

‘Are your lives filled with untold frustrations and crisis?’ Doctor interrupted.

The young men exchanged glances four times. Avan even looked over his shoulder to confirm that the question wasn’t directed at people whose presence had escaped his attention. Then he began to shake his head sideways at Doctor.

Seyi muttered ‘No, sir’

‘No, take your time. Think before you respond. Oh! My bad, if it is, you won’t have to think too deeply to know. So the answer is no?

’

‘Yes, sir’ they exchanged glances again.

‘Then keep it that way. Drop out of school and don’t get married.’

His tired eyes darted between their faces, from one to the other. They could now see the collar of his shirt and the thick brown line that ran along its edges. His necktie looked like he picked it from an antique shop. His shirt was rumpled and Avan imagined that his mother would compare it to a shirt stuffed in a little bottle.  The suit he was wearing was the same one he had worn every week since they knew him. The same black one that had lost three of its six buttons, and showed a little tear at the shoulder.

‘Do you understand?’

The dumbfounded lads just stared at him. Avan took in his hair that resembled koko garri, only that it was black.

‘You see, just like you two, I used to have a very happy life. See, I went to amusement parks when I was a child. Yes, I had a good time. Even as a young adult, my life was happy. It was bright. Until that damned Professor drew a line across my final year research project with a red-inked biro. So, I did not get the scholarship to study in America, Master’s. But shame on him! I have two Master’s degrees now…’

There was a knock on the door. Seyi and Avan were grateful. It opened and a human head appeared.

‘Get Out!’

Things happened in reverse order and the door clicked shut. 

‘Are you hot?’ Doctor asked.

‘No sir’ they chorused, Avan shaking his head sideways.

‘But you are sweating’

Silence

‘They won’t come and fix my air conditioner. I have complained over and over again’

He walked up to the window and lifted the old curtains.

‘Let’s allow some fresh air’

The chair squeaked as he took his seat.  

‘That was the beginning of the worst. Then I married a woman who took me to the very end of it.’

Silence

‘He died last year.’ Doctor continued. ‘I saw it in the papers. Some loser wrote that he was a highly respected academic and that he died a happy man. I’ll kill him. Yes! He’d lose his afterlife by my hands. I should have done it here but the fear of going to prison held me back.’

The young men sat mesmerized.

‘But she is yet to die. At the look of things, she would cause my death’

He had a hand on his chin and his eyes on the ceiling. 

‘Look!’ he shouted abruptly, banging a clenched fist on his clustered desk. 

Avan jumped. Seyi’s heart skipped two beats.

‘If you attend my burial, find a way to slip a dagger into my stiff hands. Please find a way. I’d be back for her.’

His eyes moistened and he picked the towel.

Seyi and Avan exchanged glances. 

A light wind blew in through the open window, and disturbed the curtains till they gave up and fell, covering the window.

‘Has that Akara woman come? Doctor asked

Akara woman?

‘The one that sells bread and Akara under that tree, at the Faculty of Arts’

Oh! Yeah, that woman

‘Yes… Yes sir’

Avan kept nodding long after Doctor had gotten the point.

The old man fingered around the inner pocket of his suit. He produced a crisp two hundred naira note.

‘Please, buy me fifty naira worth of Akara and two loaves of bread, forty naira each, I think?’

‘Yes sir’

‘I’m famished. I have not had breakfast. I won’t eat her food. I know she can poison me’

The young men tottered out of the office, certain about the condition of Dr. Okuta’s mental health.

Yet when they were asked later about it, the sincere response was ‘We are not sure but we think so.’

And every time they encountered a rumormonger who attributed Doctor’s attitude to cocaine abuse in America, they responded fiercely ‘It’s a lie! He never even went to America! A damned Professor drew a line across his research project with a red-inked pen.’

THE END