Innocence Betrayed

By Dumo Kaizer J Oruobu

If you want to know in what way guilt means innocence, how innocence means guilt, in what way guilt and innocence are not related in any way, one to the other, or how they are one and the same thing, then you must read Innocence Betrayed.

In Innocence Betrayed, Dumo Oruobu has elevated The Penguin – an ordinary bird, to the level of a Pantheon – a myth and a delight, and for that bird which is a bird only because it has feathers and wings – only those, but is not a bird in any other way that most birds are known to be, not only because it cannot, and does not fly, but also because, on the frontier of love and loving – chastity and faithfulness – marriage – certificated marriage about which it does not know, it is faithful to it’s Mate or Partner from the first day of that their Partnership until it dies on it’s last day on Earth in obedience to The Will of God The Almighty Architect of The entire Universe and all that are in it which obey Him except man, and, as Dumo says, woman – woman grotesquely personified and portrayed in here by Kalaiyiingibo, to their eternal shame.

His Stylistic fervour in the employment and deployment of the elements of surprise, of making the obvious look mysterious and not there, his Commentaries on issues long discussed and dismissed as over with but present in the now as though they were new break away glitters of sunshine from clouds shining bright but covering the sun’s shine, hits you as a very benign Gobo but makes you pulsate with a desire for more of what he is taking you through effortlessly. The train is moving on with uncanny rapidity, and you know it – you can feel it, yes, because you are on it, and enjoying the ride, the ambience of it’s interior, and the wonders of the mesmerizing Scenery as it glides by, and yet you’ve got other fish to fry and desire desperately to get down to go frying those other fish, but you are fixated… you are numb and dumb, and cannot say stop. You lack the will power to say STOP!

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Oct 13, 2018
• ISBN: 9781546299578

Dumo Kaizer J Oruobu

DUMO KAIZER JOHNNY ORUOBU was born in Ogurama in Degema District of Nigeria’s Rivers State of Th e Niger Delta Region to Christie and Chief Kaizer John Oruobu on September 22 in 1952. He studied at Baptist Day School, Old Bakana, Zixton Grammar School, Ozubulu, Government Comprehensive Secondary School, Borikiri, County Grammar School, Ikwerre-Etche and Baptist High School, Port Harcourt between 1959 and 1973; and in 1975 went on to study English Language and Literature at Nigeria’s Prestige University Of Ibadan, graduating in November, 1978. He is an accomplished Singer, Poet, Inspirational Speaker and Preacher of Th e Word of God. He is a Prize Writer in all the genres, an accomplished Print, Radio and Television Journalist and is fi rmly rooted in Entertainment, Advertising, Marketing and Public Relations. He has written well over eighty Novels out of which sixteen have been published between 2016 and 2018. He is a Fellow of Nigeria’s Institute Of Corporate Administration and is a Member Of Th e Nigerian Institute Of Public Relations. He holds two Traditional Chieftaincy Titles – Anyawo XI Of Ogurama and Amaibi Dokibo Se Erena XII Of Kalabari. He loves Travels, People and Makes friends very easily.

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© 2018 Dumo Kaizer J Oruobu. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse  10/12/2018

ISBN: 978-1-5462-9956-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5462-9957-8 (e)

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

CONTENTS

Zero Quotation Marks – My Experimentation Continues

Appreciation

Dedication

Chapter One

Prologue

A Mission: It’s Crack… Success?

Chapter Two

Prologue Two

A Mission: It’s Quake… Failure

Chapter Three

Kalaiyingibo And Children Tutored To Wait

Chapter Four

A Man Called Moses

Chapter Five

The Invasion Of Penguins

Chapter Six

A Walk Back In Time

Chapter Seven

The Safety Nest Of A Mother…

Chapter Eight

Valuable Hint For Advice And Lessons

Chapter Nine

Why I Am Stuck On Him

Chapter Ten

Joy And Pains Of Twin Babies

Chapter Eleven

Kicked Around And About

Chapter Twelve

Life Sweeter Than Honey

Chapter Thirteen

God Mightily Upon His Throne Of Grace

Mission Accomplished?

Chapter Fourteen

A Feast Waitng To Happen

Chapter Fifteen

Wrong All Along

Chapter Sixteen

Fire Out, Cold

Chapter Seventeen

A Strange And Unique Bird

Chapter Eighteen

Here It Is

Chapter Nineteen

Epilogue One

There Is Trouble, Mommy

Chapter Twenty

Epilogue Two

Not Pride, Not Shame

Chapter Twenty One

Epilogue Three

Penguin A Damned Bird…

ZERO QUOTATION MARKS – MY EXPERIMENTATION CONTINUES

In Innocence Betrayed I have continued with my experimentation with doing completely away with quotation marks as sign posting dialogues, polylogues, duologues, monologues and every known logue in existence as a deliberate ploy, not to distract the attention of the Reader, and for the story to flow on as naturally as a River or Stream on the move, free, since in our everyday lives, we do not see those inverted comas in the air in front of us as we speak free and easy, and understand ourselves in everything that we convey to ourselves.

I have also introduced two other logues here in a way that I have not seen them being used before – the prologue and the epilogue which are used very generously here, in multiple places, instead of appearing only once in each case – in the case of the epilogue three times!

I am certain that you will understand why I have done that.

My objective is to take you to the end of the journey at the same time as you are taking your very first step, reminding you constantly of the road that you are travelling – it’s length, it’s width, it’s roughness, it’s smoothness, the joys, sadness and pains that you are likely to encounter as you go, and what may be responsible for each and every one of them in each and every case, so that you are not left in the labyrinth and maze of confusion, uncertainties and dream, even with your eyes very wide open.

The world, I figure, will be too boring a place for us, if we should all continue to walk the same paths in exactly the same way each and every time, with no change, whatsoever.

A few of my Characters have no names too – they have no names – names which I leave every Reader to provide by themselves wherever they feel inclined to do so, should they feel that it is necessary – for instance, the man with the guttural frightful voice at the Museum Kitchen.

Do we need to give him a name for him to do what he should do, and what he has done?

I don’t think so. It is my way of saying that each and every one of us is like that man, who, we all contribute immensely to the growth and development of our Society – our Sociology, but, who, we are not being recognized, who we are not appreciated in any way, but who, we are taken for granted – we are roundly or squarely ignored, but who, we are allowed ample space to display our talent – our innate and acquired competence and gifts of God on whatsoever theatre of the world, our world when emergencies stare us in our sorry faces – at critical crises points – at the nick of time, when all else fails us, to the consternation of the world, after which epochal contributions too, we are also forgotten – forgotten in the same ways as we do forget the glow and intensity of the fire when what is left before us are the cold ashes that appear as a consequence of the fire that burned before, as soon as those crises are over.

APPRECIATION

Once again, I am grateful to Miss Mavis Abiye Jack and to Miss Chioma Judith Nwakuna, for their contributions to the making of the Manuscript that led to the production of Innocence.

May the favours of God Almighty never ever depart from them in any endeavour of theirs. Amen.

DEDICATION

Innocence Betrayed is hereby being dedicated with all my heart and as with the beauty of a bird in flight free and unfettered in fair weather, to:

                         *Engineer Mayne David-West (Senior)

                         *Admiral O. P. Fingesi

                         *Francis Ola Falemara,

the first of whom loved me passionately even before we met each other face to face for the very first time in our lives – and that too, at his own love of mankind kind of humane Engineering, and has remained as supportive of me, as he has been to many other Homo Sapiens like me and like him, with total self-effacement and anonymity, but with nothing lost in the grace and beauty with which he does it at every opportunity that had presented itself to him for him to do it; the second of whom, like the first, and yet unlike the first, about whom I knew nearly everything that there was to know, but never met until forty four years after I first heard about him, but who, when we met on the Bank of Nature’s Mighty Ocean that he sails, loved me as though we had known each other before the beginning of Creation itself, and the third of whom, even though he has gone beyond our normal boundary, still turns my sunshine to rain, my rains to sun shines, and is never far from me on all the Planes on this side of the Great Divide even though he is There and not here at the same time.

May he rest, happy, in what I am doing here in his absence, and in this space where he is now a huge void which I can see as clearly as my fingers even though it is all but a void that I can see.

Innocence Betrayed, as usual, is finally dedicated to God Almighty Whose doing it is that I could do it, and Whose Grace and Will it is that I have done it, sinner that, like everyone else that He Created, I am, with my constant prayer to Him for His Forgiveness, for His endless Favours, for His boundless Grace, for His Abundant Blessings and for His Anointing upon my life which I joyfully and whole-heartedly Receive as I Answer Amen!

Dumo Kaizer Johnny Oruobu

November 27, 2016, Port Harcourt, Nigeria.

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CHAPTER ONE

PROLOGUE

A MISSION: IT’S CRACK… SUCCESS?

Five hours had flown slowly or rapidly past – slowly or rapidly past, each of those adjectives qualifying the manner of time’s movement or passage as the saying goes, depending, yes, depending on the timer’s state of mind since Enefaa the only friend of his wife’s that Chief and Professor Asati respected and loved, stepped into his lush Sitting Room at the Yoruba Quarters of the City of Awu Kiri with his truant, with his erring, with his run away, with his renegade, with his a-politically rebellious, yes, with his ethically jaundiced but senselessly pig-headed wife called Kalaiyiingibo – yes, Kalaiyiingibo, formerly Miss Nnanna, who he had not set his eyes on for more than one Calendar year, and all through which five long hours and for even a little longer than those five hours, she had remained glued to his two legs while kneeling on the ground upon which he placed those his two legs, no matter in what kind, endearing and affectionate manner or otherwise, he and her best friend Enefaa pleaded with her to rise – yes, to get up and sit down on a sofa or on any of the chairs available in that space.

Kala as everyone close to her called her, would not get up. Apart from holding on to her husband Asatibo firmly on his two legs, she did nothing else but cry. She cried until her eyes were all oxblood red in colour and the plegm that accompanied the tears through gushing from her nose and throat wet her whole body as though she were submerged in a pool of water swimming.

The tears that she cried – the tears themselves had all dried up. Yes, her eyes were now dry – quite dry, yet anyone and everyone around could see that she was not done crying yet, nor did she show any sign of holding the fire of those tears that she cried as she sobbed, sometimes quite uncontrollably, and at other times as calmly as gentle Surfs softly cascading upon ridges of the Waves on a calm Sea flowing musically to no Shore in particular but flowing racilly none the less – yes, flowing all the same, not minding who was on it’s path or was not there.

What do you want me to promise you or to pledge to give to you just so that you can get up, my dear Robo-robo-robo-robo-robo? Asati asked his all in time past, calling her by the pet name which he gave to her when he first met her, in his admiration of her glassy and soporific physical frame, which, he said, set his heart on fire each and every time that he set his eyes on her.

And still she hid her face, clinging on only to his legs the way that the Psalmist wrote about committed Christians’ determination to cling on to the Old Rugged Cross in profession of their Faith – yes, Faith only on the upward swing, and for which they themselves were also ready to pay the supreme price – yes, die, and kept on sobbing.

She refused to yield to the countless appeals thrust at her by her best friend Enefaa and by her estranged husband Asatibo that she should rise – yes, rise. But Asati, unknown to him, had struck more than just a passing note of harmonious and melodious floatation which clicked and sent shock waves down her spine by his calling her by that golden sobriquet that he loved to call her, and which sobering and mesmerizing fond name Kalaiyiingibo herself treasured, even though she never let him know how much she treasured it the way that she hid several things about her life from him – the way many things about her life were also hidden from her – the owner of the life sweeter than honey, sugar or any thing sweeter than those sweet things in combination in the world.

Enefaa herself was horrified. She and Kalaiyiingibo had talked about it as one of their modus operanda to employ, it was true. They had talked about her flinging her entire frame at her angry husband Asati and hold on to his legs as she asked for his unconditional forgiveness until he asked her to let go of those his legs and stand up. She would hesitate for a fleeting number of seconds just to humour him, but then rise and sit there in the next available space near him.

Yes. But none of the two friends gave a thought to how long that symbolism of painted and rehearsed humility and total submission to her husband for the desperate quest for his forgiveness should last. They had thought that after a few seconds flew past, whether Chief Asati did something dramatic or not, she would rise – yes, that she should rise, sit beside him or sit as near or as far away from him as possible so long as she remained in a space within the hollow of that Sitting Room as prelude to what they would say to the man Asati just as the Sunday School Service that heralded the early morning Service of the Baptist Faithfuls did, and which in the end would tow the ice or stone on Asati’s heart for him to speak forgiveness to Kalaiyiingibo his wife.

Even should that fail to materialize at that material time, they had prefigured clinically efficiently, they would be very happy to take leave of the man and promise to come back to speak with him on the same subject and mission again at another date and time, knowing fully well that cocoyam did not get fully cooked or properly seasoned with the first tranch of a calabash of water poured into the old woman’s pot to cook it and for it to be ready to be eaten. No. They knew all that and they were ready to make subsequent visits and tries there until that cocoyam could be eaten.

Yes. They knew that there would be subsequent visits by the two of them, and, later, by Kala alone, for them to continue to seek his grace, and plead with him for his forgiveness, he having become the Confessed Cross Bearer and Professor of The word that he was also now very well known to be by nearly everyone in the neighbourhood and beyond.

Kalaiyiingibo had gone way outside and beyond the script that she and Enefaa her best friend had crafted on their way to Asati’s house for her to act out.

She was now acting a script altogether her own – a Play in motion – a Play in unstoppable motion in which Cast she was Sole Dramatis Personae, Director, Choreographer and Producer all in one.

What could have happened in between? Enefaa tried to figure out. What could be the cause of this her unscripted scene in the drama that they had come prepared to enact in a certain known way which is now altogether unknown and has become a mystery even to her who she was a member of the Theater House of Horror? Enefaa wondered, no answers coming her way.

Kalaiyiingibo herself could not quite believe what she had done and which she was still doing where she knelt as what she was enacting on her own free will, her knee caps also beginning to hurt her very badly as she endured that ordeal which was totally self inflicted.

Yes. That was the situation. She and Enefaa her best friend were all in uncharted territory now – one of them Kalaiyiingibo acting, the other – Enefaa totally oblivious of any word of the script that was being acted out before her. None of them knew the Division – the Act, Part or Scene of that Play in motion, neither for how long nor where it would end.

Robo-robo-robo-robo-robo my darling! Asati called her again, this time he himself beginning to shed tears of his own purely out of his own fears and concerns about what even he himself did not know was going on before him – what Kala’s action could lead to.

Ah! Ibi Ama! Enefaa screamed. The beautiful land that it pleased The Lord God Almighty to make me to be born into! Kala and Asatibo too! Yes! Ah! Kengema Kalabari! Husband and wife! Enefaa exclaimed again at the top of her sonorous voice, and almost as though she were now reciting lines of her own in a tragic play – another play which she had written herself, and a play which was also in unstoppable motion – being shown live to, and being watched by a crowded but dumb Amphitheatre Audience. Have you brought me here only to make me remember how much I do not have what the two of you have? Do you people want me to kill myself because I have no one that I can love or to call my love? That I do not have a friend or any Supporter within my entire space that anyone can see? A love that I have offended to whom I can also say that I am sorry? And from whom to ask for forgiveness?

She spoke, every word that she spoke becoming more and more pungently and musically mournful and dramatic in it’s resonance – in the bounce back of their echo effect.

Chief, my dear Chief Asati. She said. Kneeling before you there within your arms is your wife Kala who you know much more than me – Kala who you know, and know much better than I know her myself and anyone else in Christendom.

Something snapped in Enefaa’s chest at that moment. Could that be true? She asked herself. That Asa knew her friend Kala the way no one else knew her in Christendom? She knew that that was not true. No. she knew very well that it just was not true.

Forgive, Lord. She said to herself. Please forgive, Mighty One! I have spoken what is not true. What I should not have spoken. No, good Lord, no!

She returned to her script, speaking out loud once again as though God to whom she prayed did not hear words not spoken out loud.

Please do everything that you know how to do, Asa, to tell her to at least get up and sit down so that we can talk, discuss or maintain a dignified silence, and not go through this head swirling cries of the two of you – best of friends in time past that I know and cherished, which is making me – making me – mmmm-mmmhh-mmmff-making me cry too! Enefaa said, beginning to stammer the way that she did stammer whenever she was angry or when she was emotionally overcome.

She walked on to the place where her friend Kalaiyiingibo knelt and then knelt down beside her and held her around her waist as well as held Asati on his left leg with her own right hand, shaking with epileptic fervour.

If that is what you people want. Enefaa said. Let us all kneel down here like this until God Himself comes down from His Throne in Heaven above