Yaremi could not sleep, her mind was troubled. Her eyes drifted to a moth, trying to put out her hurricane lantern. It finally went out and Yaremi lay quietly in the dark listening to the voices of her loud memories.
She had a reality check – a series of them. She once again came to the reality that she had no head in the house anymore, no authority to keep her on her toes, give her lectures on what should be and should not be, check her excesses, or enforce obedience.
She had no warmth; nobody to whine or cry to, nobody to provoke with expensive jokes, no support or protection, no sweetness, no comfort. She wanted to feel loved, supported, protected, warm, not alone.
Her husband had disappeared like a puff of tobacco smoke in an old man’s pipe. All she had left were memories -memories that haunted her at night.
Everything in the house reminded her of Ajumobi; the sitting room, bedroom, back yard, garden. Items of his were still in their places in the house, for example, his hunting lamp and Dane gun still hung delicately on the wall – all of it sent her straight to the past.
That gun.
She remembered that gun.
Ajumobi loved it so – even talked to it like a baby.
Yaremi always watched him tend to it from afar, because dealings with a gun were known as a man’s private business. He would sit alone with his legs stretched on the ground at the back of the house. He would feed the mouth of the gun, meticulously with gunpowder and close up the nipple with the percussion cap.
It is not a weird practice, but the way Ajumobi did it sounds pretty weird – he cherished his gun. He would then rise and leave the compound quietly, the next thing that always followed was the sound of the gun booming from inside the deep forest.
He loved his gun just as much as he loved hunting. He felt powerful when hunting. He’d say to Yaremi;
“I rule the animal world. With my razor-sharp eyes, I catch the movements of all creatures nibbling in the forest of Kufi. I am familiar with the voices of the wind and the storm, the sigh of the night, and the whispers of dawn” I told you he had superpowers!
He said he knew the wailings of the bush rat caught in a trap and the chatters of the talkative parrot reposing on the tall tree. He was one with the forest and he was very, very proud of it. If you don’t believe me, ask Yaremi.
She’d tell you how he told her that he had shot dead over twenty hyenas in the forest of Kelebe and Akokura. She’d tell you how she probably laughed in her mind when he said he could sit on the skin of an ant and squeeze his body under the fingernails of his adversaries or when he said he could dig a deep trench around Kufi village with the point of a needle.
If I were Yaremi, I’d just be shouting “Agba friyoyo! After you na you! You are on the hunt! The hunt is of you! The true king of the jungle…please go to the jungle now so I can hear the word now…please”
He could become invisible…
He could be undetectable…
He could wear a python on his shoulders with no fear of danger, like a pretty ornament…
Snake! Pretty ornament?! Uncle Ajumobiiiii!!!
Yaremi remembered all this. She closed her eyes again and imagined her husband before her; holding his cutlass to the rays of the sun and going to the bush to cut firewood to warm the house as it was rainy. His heavy voice re-echoed in her ears. She saw his face.
His daunting dog came before her, pushing its warm muzzle against Yaremi’s legs hoping for a pet. On numerous nights, the dog howled through the night looking for his master, wondering why he had to stay out so late.
He made a series of promises he failed to fulfil. He was supposed to put a stop to the menace of termites eating at the doorframes, eliminate the red ants chewing the window panes of Yaremi’s room, repair the old garden fence, and cut down the big orange tree in the garden, he also wanted to marry a new wife.
He thought a new wife was like ‘undiluted wine’. “A new wife was the joy of a man’s heart, her presence at home calls for a celebration” Ajumobi once said.
I wonder how she felt remembering that.
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