When Flowers Grow Again

By Chamunda Sichilongo

Set in Zambia in the 1990s, When Flowers Grow Again is about Thomas Mutambo, a vibrant entrepreneur whose father was murdered by a brutal regime twenty years earlier. Thomas is now pondering a career in politics, but he fears for his life, what with extrajudicial killings still going on.

He also feels pressured to make his wife, Nomai, pregnant. At the same time, he is wickedly drawn to the innocently alluring beauty of his manservants daughter, Selafi, who is also his personal assistant.

Amidst this, he is deeply troubled as to why his wife suddenly hires a new and younger manservant, Jonathan.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris UK
• Release date: Sep 15, 2015
• ISBN: 9781514462928

Chamunda Sichilongo

Born to Charles (deceased) and Mary in 1970 in Zambia, Chamunda Sichilongo comes from a family of nine and holds a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering. He has written, produced, and directed several stage plays. The story in “When Flowers Grow Again” was first produced as a stage play entitled “Price to Pay” in 1990 and was developed into a novel in 2004. Chamunda lives in Lusaka with his wife, Sharon. They have three sons—Suwilanji, Wamusechela, and Ichawila-ntaombela. He is a partner in an engineering and road construction practice in Zambia and continues to write on a part-time basis.

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Copyright © 2015 by Chamunda Sichilongo.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 09/04/2015

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CONTENTS

BOOK ONE

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

ELEVEN

TWELVE

THIRTEEN

FOURTEEN

FIFTEEN

SIXTEEN

BOOK TWO

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

ELEVEN

TWELVE

THIRTEEN

FOURTEEN

FIFTEEN

BOOK THREE

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

EPILOGUE

This book is dedicated to Sharon, my most devoted critic;

and to my mother, Mary Chipulu, who forgot to teach me how to give up and whose eternal love set forth a fire in my spirit and the embers have since refused to extinguish.

It is also written in remembrance of Charles Kafwatula Mwanachali Sichilongo – a father, a friend, a critic and a story-teller, whose love and patience knew no bounds.

And in remembrance of Tisa Chifunyise, who taught me to believe in myself. . .

BOOK ONE

ONE

HER NAKED REFLECTION was exquisite.

Selafi stared at it for a long time. The reflection stared back with dark, passionate eyes. It had long, freshly braided hair framing a heart-shaped, high cheek-boned face. The hair fell gracefully over gorgeous, rounded shoulders.

Conical breasts. Small and pointed. Standing high and firm on her chest. Ripe-mulberry nipples. Angling slightly away from each other in subtle dissent. They were surrounded by a coffee-brown aureole, the proud badge of her blossoming womanhood.

She smiled, happy with what she saw in the mirror.

The reflection smiled back. An enchanting, even-toothed smile. That full mouth. Pouted lips. The men at the office mischievously described her as sexy.

Selafi enjoyed admiring her naked reflection. She considered herself the perfect, African woman. Her chocolate brown skin glowed with youthful succulence with the tips of her breasts thrusting out for the whole world to see. Her waist narrowed elegantly, then swelled into hips that enhanced the sensuality of her stunning figure.

She was holding her arms upwards, the better to observe herself. She studied the gentle, virginal swelling of her belly, wondering how big it would grow when she finally conceived the son she wanted for the man she had loved since girlhood.

She was like the embodiment of Africa – pristine, interminably perched on the verges of discovery - of glory and of splendour - stretching forth for the world to see, but still waiting for that special man that would cause her to blossom; to bring forth that sweet sensation of her womanhood, to cause her to conceive that which she was destined to bear from the beginning of time.

She recalled that heart-stopping sensation she got when Thomas Mutambo – Managing Director at Zen Investments – put his arm about her shoulders and squeezed gently to comfort her at her half-sister’s chronic illness. She had discussed it with her friend, Lwendo, who was in University. Lwendo told her not to show too much willingness if she really wanted the man.

Why not? Selafi asked naively.

Man is by nature a hunter, Lwendo replied, patting her friend on the small, tight butt with obvious superiority. He never enjoys anything that dies on its own. If you want a long-term affair, make it difficult for him.

Have you done it before? Selafi asked, giggling.

You mean you’ve never had sex before? laughed Lwendo in mock shock.

Do you use condoms?

If I like the guy, what for? Give it to him live and hot, Baby. Lwendo gyrated her hips in slow, obscene motions. But, if I dislike him, he better use a condom.

How can you make love to someone you dislike?

Make love? laughed Lwendo. A man is incapable of love, my dear! Men play at love to get sex. Women play at sex to get love. Sex. Call it sex. Or intercourse. Love? A man? Never.

Still, I think you should protect the one you love.

Protect him from what? Lwendo had retorted. You can’t protect him from himself. Whether you give him or not, he will still go somewhere else. Those are the ways of a man.

Selafi knew Lwendo was wrong. There had to be something special – a sweet, thrilling secret, which only those who were specially gifted would discover. She knew she was one of the few.

As for Lwendo, had she no shame? All the men she was sleeping with must have been comparing notes and giving each other turns, knowing that she was easy.

Yet, Selafi envied her friend’s freedom to flirt. Selafi would never do that. Her keen sense of pride and integrity would never let her. The glory of her nudity was for one man only. The splendour of her virginity was for her husband and she knew who her husband would be even though it seemed immoral.

So, how does it feel? Selafi asked timidly.

Nothing special, Girlie. He slobbers his slimy mouth all over your face – groping and grappling and trembling – and shoves himself inside you. Wriggle for him and he’s gone! Before you know it, he’s finished. End of story.

How many men have you had?

You don’t want to know.

Are they all the same?

No substantial difference.

Are you not scared?

Of what?

Contracting AIDS! Lwendo, you could die!

Lwendo shrugged indifferently. Only diamonds live forever.

This left Selafi wondering at how careless people could be. She was never going to let another man touch her except her Secret Lover. And, she knew there would be something very, very special when she gave herself to him.

Presently, the reflection studied her thighs – long and shapely and slender, with that tantalizing chocolate brown hue that she dreamt would one beautiful night mesmerize her Secret Fantasy to the point of divorcing his wife and marrying her instead.

Selafi became aware that she had been sensually running her fingers in her inner thighs, imagining them to be the strong, capable hands of her man, endeavouring to arouse her.

She thought of him now like she did every waking moment of her life, letting her fingers touch her body as if they were his – gentle, but firm. Assured. Mature. Capably, they sought the erogenous zones of her beautiful body, sending that wonderful, erotic sensation down to the core of her womanhood.

Selafi thought of her twenty-one years of life; of growing up in the backyard of the Mutambo Residence when her mother had been the wife of Hamanjanji, the Mutambo manservant; of her dreams of grandeur, of being specially endowed to live a rich, sumptuous life; of playing around the places where Thomas Mutambo would notice her.

She was thoroughly stupefied by the enormity of love that she felt for him. She began her crusade to win his love when she was barely eight years old and he was already a grown man in his twenties, studying for his Bachelor’s Degree in Engineering. She would expose her stick-like thighs to him, laughing loudly when she knew he was home. Sometimes, she would sit under his bedroom window, singing songs of love to him.

He never seemed to notice her.

Her parents did not allow the children to venture near the main house, but Selafi sneaked away as often as she could to monitor Mutambo’s movements, silently criticizing his fiancée and thinking whatever she gave to him, Selafi had better to offer.

As she grew older, she carried a picture of him in the secret places of her heart. Whenever she was lonesome and hurting or whenever she was seized by those strong, physical urges, those urgent, aching feelings which she could barely understand and which would not depart from her, she would take that picture out of the shelf of her memory and satiate herself like one giving a sacred offering to her god of love.

In her early puberty, the gap in age between them seemed so vast, like a huge hiatus that could never be bridged. But, five years later, that gap had miraculously shrunk and they stood shoulder to shoulder on her stiletto shoes.

When Thomas married Nomai, Selafi was devastated.

She had always believed that she would be his wife, his only love. Unfortunately, this coincided with her mother’s discovery that her own husband had a parallel family elsewhere. Mother, battered by an unfaithful husband because she had dared complain, together with Selafi and her two younger sisters, packed their belongings and left for her grandmother’s place in Kabwata Estates.

So obsessed with Thomas Mutambo was she that she followed his progress obsessively. Every evening, she would write him a letter, telling him how much she loved him and how she would be faithful to him for always. But, she never posted them. She would then write the reply from him in a different hand and show it off to her friends to whom she talked about her mysterious lover who never failed to satisfy her every longing.

Her mother went to vend at the market in order to keep her in school, for she was extremely intelligent. Whenever she had spare money, she spent it in a Zen Supermarket. To go to school, she used exclusively Zen Buses so that some of the bus crews came to know her and offered her complimentary bus rides.

Her whole life was Zen. She even visited the Zen Offices, pretending to look for some imaginary boyfriend in the hope of meeting him in the corridors.

Through all these years, Selafi felt an instinctive sense of captivity, of a desire to break away from this infatuation, which relentlessly tormented her soul. She sensed that the zeal with which she loved another woman’s spouse was not right and in her quiet, sensible moments, she prayed sincerely for freedom from this obsession.

When Selafi completed her Grade Twelve, she did something that even she could not believe. She went directly to the office of Mutambo, introduced herself to the Secretary as Mutambo’s niece and blatantly lied that the man had called her for a private interview. She was told to wait while the Secretary consulted him. She heard him issue a harsh tirade, telling her to let no one into the office because he was too busy to be interrupted.

Selafi was right behind her.

Who are you? growled Mutambo.

Selafi, she answered simply. I’m sorry I’m late.

Late for what?

My father told me to come before you get too busy.

Your father? He studied her closely. I know you…

I grew up in your backyard, Sir.

He looked her up and down. Not a flicker of interest in his eyes. To that day, she had never stood before a man who did not stare with obvious admiration. Teachers, the headmaster, relatives, callboys, passersby, husbands to neighbours! Every male individual turned to stare with undisguised appreciation.

Yet, the only man who meant something to her did not even see her for what she was – a classical beauty.

The next day, Selafi began work at Zen Investments.

That was three years ago. Mutambo was impressed by the girl’s confidence and forthrightness. He had given her a chance and, while her friends went off to University, she began to build a reputation at Zen.

It amazed Mutambo how quickly Selafi learned her role in the firm. She earned a place as his Management Assistant. Soon, she became a trusted confidant, handling delicate company documents for him. She took short courses in Secretarial Work, Computers, Accounting and Marketing, and played hostess whenever he had important guests.

Now, she lived with her two younger sisters in a Zen flat off Addis Ababa Drive in Longacres, but currently the two girls were in boarding school in Choma. Zen had given her a loan to furnish the flat and she had made the most of it, decorating the flat with colours that contrasted delightfully. Upon the wall hung a picture of herself sitting beside Thomas Mutambo while he addressed the workers at one of the Zen gatherings.

Her childhood dream had never wavered. She was his woman, the mother of his offspring. It pleased her no end when she discovered that he had no children with his wife. She knew it was the hand of the gods.

Yet, try as she might to get him to notice her for what she was – a willing woman – he carried on with his steadfast manner of being a paternal uncle.

TWO

When Nomai mentioned the new servant, her husband went very quiet.

He was holding a cup of tea in one hand. The other was frozen between wiping his face and drawing the curtains. Nomai absently stirred her tea, unaware that she was spilling it. Her husband’s back was turned to her, yet she knew that something was wrong, seriously wrong.

Her heart began to beat rapidly. She hated what she was doing to him. Yet, she knew she had to do it.

After an absurdly long period of time, Mutambo sighed. He decided against wiping his face. He parted the curtains instead. The rays of the morning sun instantly flooded into the bedroom. The Milemu trees standing on the eastern side of the yard filtered the sun and, as it streamed into the bedroom, it plastered a spotted pattern on the far wall, making it look like diseased skin.

Mutambo stared at the mottles of light with sick fascination. Irrationally, he was thinking that it appeared like his marriage – leprosy and unpleasant and incurable. But, he instantly expelled that thought from his mind.

Suddenly, he made a growling noise of frustration. It startled Nomai. He took a noisy sip of his tea, giving the distinct effect of a snarling predator.

What is it? she asked, her voice anxious.

There was no knowing what was going on in Mutambo’s mind. To Nomai – expecting her husband to be suspicious – the sound had overtones of accusation.

Why this new servant? he demanded.

Nomai first raised the issue of the new servant two nights previously. Her husband had been considerate and gentle – his usual self. But, having no time to pursue it further – which was often these days – he put it off for later.

Nowadays, he put off everything that demanded his attention in the house, dashing off to his office. It made Nomai feel as if he was running away from her.

Yesterday, she raised the matter again at breakfast. He promised to discuss it that evening. But, he did not find time. Nor energy. He expended both on the unending meetings with his business associates and his political contacts. He returned late in the night, all his energies depleted. He usually fell asleep in front of the TV, fully clothed.

Last night, she waited up for him, sipping wine. Her mind was swinging between thoughts of two men – one of whom she needed because she loved the other. Like so many times of late, she nursed the suspicion that her husband of five years was harbouring a mistress somewhere.

Without hesitation, a clear picture of a small, pretty girl with a dimpled smile burst into her mind, intruding her awareness with rude arrogance.

Selafi, the unique name sprung forth, like the mesmeric whisper of the wind in the distant Milemu. But, she instantly dismissed it. Not Thomas. Not her husband.

Presently, Mutambo moved away from the window and a shaft of light blinded Nomai. At that moment, the thought occurred to her – clear as the persistent toll of a remote death knell – that unless she took matters into her own hands, she was going to lose this man.

Old Joe is coping perfectly, Mutambo said.

Think carefully, Thomas, she urged him.

Her argument was that Old Joe, the manservant they inherited from his father along with Zen Investments, had an overload of work, not to mention his daughter in hospital suffering from kidney complications. Old Joe needed some relief, she argued. Mutambo had agreed with her yesterday.

Some more? she enquired when he drained his tea.

He nodded, saying; Old Joe has always worked well.

Will he still work well, old as he is?

Old? Mutambo chuckled. You must be joking!

They could hear Old Joe going about his chores downstairs. His energy was limitless. He worked with untiring enthusiasm. They often joked at how miraculous it was that despite the sickening noise levels with which he banged the chinaware, nothing broke.

Old Joe is still a very energetic man, Mutambo said.

But, for how long, Thomas?

Sensing her irritation and knowing that she tended to act irrationally, Mutambo quietly picked up the tea she had just made for him and moved back to the window.

For how long? Nomai repeated. He is aging. He needs help!

Mutambo agreed. Yet, a wispy tendril of doubt nagged at him. It was like a vital trust he had for her was slithering away into a dark, hellish void whose depths he could not fathom. In his mind, there was an uneasy, deceptive calm that he could not recognize.

Thomas, do you understand?

Understand what? he retorted harshly.

She stood up, startled by his unusual roughness.

What is there to understand? Mutambo demanded. From nowhere, a new servant! Why? You tell me why – ?

Thomas – !

Just the other day, Old Joe was a hardworking, old guy. You called him that yourself. Today, he’s too old!

Thomas, listen – !

No! You listen! he shouted. Old Joe is fine. We do not need a new servant – !

Thomas, no – ! she gasped.

Yes! He retorted. And that is final – !

Nomai edged closer to him, gasping with annoyance. Thomas! she hissed. Don’t you raise your voice to me like that – !

Just shut up!

She slapped him. Viciously. Unexpectedly. Like a creature of prey, her clawed palm landed squarely. It stung on the bare skin of his cheek, moistening his eyes. For a space, he stood in stunned immobility. He knew that Nomai was given to violent outbursts, especially of late. But, not over a matter of this nature.

She slapped him again – backhanded, brutal and stinging. He grabbed her by the shoulders. His thumb hooked into the soft, cupped flesh behind her clavicle. She lunged out ferociously. Her knee aimed for his crotch.

But, he had anticipated it. He twisted his body to one side. Her knee landed on his thigh. He applied a paralyzing pressure on both her clavicles so that she pummeled and clawed uselessly at his chest, screaming in outrage.

Mutambo hoisted her up. Her weight was insignificant in his arms. With a practiced heave, Mutambo balanced her body in the crook of one arm. For a moment, she was suspended with her backside in the windward course of his right hand.

Then, he struck her. The brute force of the blow threw her on the bed. She gave a gasp of pain, disbelieving his viciousness even as she landed. Her legs flew up in counter-balance, exposing slender thighs and lacy, crimson knickers.

It was like the world had come to an immediate suspension. Nomai kept perfectly still. So did her husband. The overwrought silence was unbearable.

Then, there was a sudden resumption of the metallic pound of a running tap downstairs. The bedroom curtain made swishing noises, caught in the draught of the morning wind that swirled into the room. Unconcerned bird-life could be heard warbling excitedly by the window, preoccupied with its own mating games. The dogs could also be heard, secured to their kennels and whimpering in primal distress at the enforced captivity.

At length, Nomai sighed, resisting the overpowering temptation to rub her backside. She gave her husband a withering look, rolled over and folded herself into a fetal posture. She was instantly raked by the spasms of her soundless sobbing.

Mutambo remained standing, unable to believe the enormity of what he had committed. Suddenly, the shame of his actions thundered home into his conscience like a dark, foreboding thunderstorm, making him feel thoroughly disgusted with himself.

Hastily, he fastened his shoulder holster, shoved in his loaded revolver from the bedside drawer and donned his jacket to conceal the weapon. He grabbed his briefcase and, without so much as a look at his wife, he hurried downstairs.

Without reason, the thought of Selafi jumped into his mind, giving him a silly mixture of shame and excitement.

THREE

That night, Jonathan Malama came to the pub yet again.

Sounds jostled with other sounds – all at ever increasing levels. There were sounds everywhere, dreadfully blended and irritating to his drunken mind. Blaring rumba music from dirty, scratchy speakers of dubious, oriental quality filled his head so that he could hardly hear himself think. Drunken voices, fighting nonsensically to rise above the ever-rising sound of music, filled the place. The pub was engulfed in a relentless crescendo of sound.

A buxom woman, dressed in hipsters that showed every contour of her licentious body was a solitary figure on the dirty dance floor. She had puffy eyes, presumably from lack of sleep. Her tonsils were bloated in inexplicable body defence mechanism.

Her aging face – severely adulterated by the indiscriminate use of bleaching creams – was seductively turned heavenwards as though attempting to entice the gods. She was obscenely gyrating her voluptuous body – whether to the maddening blast of music or to her own sick fantasies, it was impossible to tell.

At the counter was another woman. She stood out even to the befuddled perception of Jonathan’s drunken mind. She was pretty, her complexion cream-brown. Her eyes had that unfathomable, sickly grey – as though in the stillness of death – of Muzungu eyes.

She was in her late twenties, definitely expert in plying the ancient trade. There was something familiar about her dejected look and she carried a helplessness that touched his soul.

She was watching him. She had been watching him for some time, her smoky gaze concentrated on his face. The mere look of her made a strong, physical urge lurch inside of him.

But, that was not what he wanted that night.

Drunken men – husbands and fathers, sons and fiancés – struggled uselessly to be heard above the thundering pulse of music. Every so often, one of them would approach the woman at the counter, but she shrugged them off impatiently.

Her attention was focused on Jonathan although the full concentration of the house remained steadfastly on the dancing woman, the only one who spoke a language that seemed to transcend the barrier of sound.

In this dimly lit, smoky pub in the unsanitary, epidemic-ridden fringes of Kalingalinga Township, Jonathan had taken his first tentative taste of beer. In this place, he had puffed in naïve curiosity at his first cigarette – which choked him, sending him into an instant paroxysm of coughing. Here, he spent long, beery nights, engulfed in that blissful vortex of reckless intoxication. Here, he came every night to unknot the keen spots of his sorrows and misfortunes and to enhance the exhilaration of his transitory successes.

He came here the night his parents separated amid a roaring thunderstorm of shattering chinaware, flying pots and pans, and obscene, verbal assaults. To date, those angry, vindictive words reverberate in the precincts of his mind – still unforgiven, still rioting around like rodents in captivity, still trapped in his mind to haunt him for eternity.

It is here that he came not so long ago on the day he returned home to find the wasted, soiled body of his father dangling from the rotting rafters in the Sitting Room, his countenance even uglier in self-inflicted death.

The stench of his final, undignified disembowelment was like a tangible substance in the room – intense and overpowering. Creditors had collected every piece of furniture in the poverty-stricken house.

Slowly, the predicament in which he was born unfolded to him. He collected an episode from this relative and another from that relative, until the whole sordid jigsaw – intimately known all the time, but unacknowledged in the selective corners of his mind – came together.

It was a story that he hated, a story he vowed never to tell another living soul.

Who would want to tell the world that his mother was a practicing prostitute, pimped by his father and that the reason for their divorce and his mother’s eventual death by depression was because his father was bent on introducing his teenaged sisters into the family business – prostitution – and that his mother had finally found real, but wrong love?

It is in this pub that Jonathan came the day he entered University. And, it is here that he came when he was admitted to the School of Law. He would not go to the Student Centre like the others. He would not go to the famed nightspots of Lusaka.

He wanted this squalid, dismal place where his father collected payments from patrons for a share of his mother’s lascivious earthly treasures, where his ambition to be successful in life at whatever cost was conceived, where his life began, where his father first hooked his mother – or was it the other way around?

Try as he might, Jonathan could not block out of his remembrance the howling, tumultuous memories that crowded his mind, clamouring to be remembered. That marriage from which he was born – that miserable, loveless union; I take thee as my lawful wedded one, his parents vowed after five years of living together in a disgusting union that seemed to mould the characters of their offspring, for all were tiny, sickly individuals… until death do us part – they never lived more apart after that.

The crunch came when Jonathan’s mother fell pregnant, the paternity claimed by his father to be dubious. When Jonathan’s sixth sibling arrived, his mother insisted it was the exact replica of Jonathan’s father. But, that was not quite true, for the boy had the craggy features of Komani, their neighbour who was a Church Elder and had so kindly lent the family money especially when his mother could no longer work due to the pregnancy.

Jonathan was to discover later that what really irked his father was that Komani, a long time widower, ate of the fruit without paying the required fee. Then, his mother had refused to let two of her four daughters to get into the practice while she was off duty on maternity leave. This was the only time that she stood up to her husband.

Comparing with his siblings, Jonathan had the instinctive feeling that perhaps this was not the only time his mother – though as upright and pious as a whore can be – had strayed from her matrimonial bed. And, with good reason, for she had never found enough love with her husband.

Was it not possible that Jonathan too was not a biological product of the pimping father? Was it not possible that a man of far stronger character and greater destiny had in fact sired Jonathan in the course of one of his mother’s sexual jaunts?

He had once attempted to ask his mother, but her response was one of extreme irritation! What did he think she was, going out to have children with every man in sight? He never followed it up any further.

Presently, Jonathan took a swig at his bottle and the amber, frothy liquid dribbled down the side of his mouth. He rubbed it off impatiently with his sleeve and myopically studied the level of the contents. Failing dismally, he gave up the effort with a sharp curse.

He realized somewhat belatedly that he felt a keen sense of irritation at that small failure. It seemed to embody what his whole life was. Six siblings needed a home and food in their insatiable bellies. They needed to go to school, to secure a future or the semblance of one.

What else could he have done?

In this place, at the age of fifteen, Jonathan picked his first prostitute. That was seven years ago. Deria or Delia. He had never been quite sure because the immoral woman, almost his mother’s peer, had inherent problems with her pronunciation of ‘r’ and ‘l’. She sneaked him into her bleak, smelly abode.

The following morning, Jonathan awoke to absolute disgrace. The woman had been a beautiful maiden on that alcohol-drenched night. In the light of day, she turned out to be a worthless whore, tottering at the furthest tether of a blatantly unsuccessful career.

As if this was not bad enough, a severe itch began within the week in his genital area. By the time he realized what had happened, he had suffered such excruciating pain that he decided he would never get involved with women again. They were worthless and untrustworthy. He would use what he could, deliver to them the ultimate indignity, but never get emotionally involved. Always, he would use a condom to protect himself. From then on, Jonathan had never had intercourse without a condom.

Not until last week.

It is here that he came the night Utter Belenga breathed his last, the memory of him still keen in his remembrance. Utter had been a good friend for many years, a trusted confidant, devoured mercilessly by the strange scourge of AIDS and buried with huge, acrimonious eyes, which refused to close in death. The eyes had stared at Jonathan in perpetual, unsighted accusation for it was Jonathan who chose Utter Belenga’s first prostitute, unearthing an uncontrollable, demonic craving in a hitherto subdued individual.

Like all the drunkards in the pub, Jonathan was following every rippling gyration of the bosomy woman. However, his despondency with the womenfolk was roused afresh so that all he felt was a feral lust – that familiar, searing tightness in his chest, that animal desire for the invigorating sense of triumph he got from the sultry confines of shimmering thighs.

By daybreak, it would be gone – leaving guilt and self-disgust.

The coloured woman seated at the counter had been nursing her beer for far too long. Again, he thought there was something vaguely familiar about her, the chocolate brown countenance struggling to emerge through the enduring mists of time. But, to him, all prostitutes were familiar, regardless of colour, race or creed. With good reason too.

How could they not be familiar after what they had done to him? Ever since that first woman, Jonathan had failed to contain the urge. He got no satisfaction from the over-polished University girls, and no satisfaction from any other woman. It had to be a whore – much like the hapless Utter Belenga, even now putrefying in the unforgiving bowels of the earth.

The coloured woman had her smoky gaze trained squarely on him in a forthright, rather disarming way. What could a woman of her class be doing in a place like this? Not only was it too dangerous for her, it was also impossible to find a customer who could afford such exotic wares. Jonathan expected that before long, a drunken syndicate of randy youths would pounce forcibly on her. That was what she was asking for by coming to this place.

But, Jonathan turned his mind away from her and from others like her. A pity. He should have turned away seven years earlier. He should have realized the utter futility of a loveless, purposeless life. Did he need to die in order to comprehend the true value of life? How much more useful would he have been had he known then what he knew now?

But, truth be told, Jonathan craved desperately for love, for freedom from hatred. All along, it was the unacknowledged fact of his mother’s way of life that drove him. He was too weak.

Love is for the strong, the stout in spirit. It is more treacherous than hatred, more tragic than warfare – a foundation set on quicksand. Slow and tender in growing. Snuffed out suddenly. He lived in mortal fear of love. Whenever he laughed, there was only pain and anguish inside of him. He was shrunken – like the backside of an old man – at the fear of falling in love.

And now, he allowed the tentative memory of that woman to come to the fore of his conscience. Not the one at the counter. Another one. A strange one. She had requested him to take an HIV Test before they could have intercourse. And she had taken control of the relationship