ANGEL

Angel

One night, my restlessness took me to one of the female hostels in search of Emmanuella. That was how I met Angel, a fresher. She had just spent a semester in school. Though she was average in height, her elegance, charm, great sensuality, and ebony complexion were something to behold.

Angel had the most pacific lips I had ever seen, as well as inquisitive eyes, blended with fairy-fading dark but rich hair. She had the most invigorating accent I had ever heard. These were no exaggerations. Truly, these were attributes nature bestowed upon her, an amazing beauty. I couldn’t talk to her that first night that I met her, for I was completely dazzled beyond description. I had to wait for another day, perhaps slow down the pace. The music that my heart composed that day was unrhymed.

When we eventually met in her room the next day we talked at length and admired each other so much as if we had been old friends who had just been reunited. Things did happen like that, sometimes. I fell in love with her from the word go and that became my sin.

The passing of each day brought us closer and more united. We began to understand each other. We communicated through letters, poems and met almost every night in her room. She sometimes escorted me to my hostel and said goodnight, only for me to escort her back again and discover that the porter had closed the door leading to her hostel. When we found ourselves in such situations, we normally begged the porter, but each time our appeal fell on deaf ears. So we slept in the open, on a slab in the Social Science Quadrangle. Ours was simply madness, madness that knew no limits. We were foolishly and desperately in love. We were not afraid to experiment. We tossed love around. People read it in our walk, in our talk, and in our smiles. During one of these occasions, she told me that I meant the world to her. And for me, she was my breath. When it ceased, what else would be left of me?

“Darling, I’ve never known so much happiness.”

“This is just the beginning of life and love for us,” I reassured her.

Things were happening so fast that I couldn’t comprehend them. We shared life together: our dreams, hopes and aspirations. And even began to forecast our future together.

“We’ll have two kids,” I would jokingly tell her.

“No, I need four,” she retorted “Two for you and two for me.”

“Darling, two would be okay.”

“Why do you insist on only two?”

“So that we’ll have enough time for each other and still love each other like the first day we met.”

“You are funny”, she smiled, caressing my hair.

I couldn’t tell her the truth; I had watched and studied women. They tend to put more emphasis on their children and this disturbed the total love they initially had for their men. Women thought first of their children before anyone else, especially their first male child – a situation of the man marrying the woman and the woman marrying her first male child. I couldn’t tell her I was afraid to see her lose her youthfulness and pointed breasts. I couldn’t tell her I was afraid she wouldn’t have enough time for me if the children were more than two. Over the years, I had learnt that life liked to make a mockery of weak men and retard their quest for grandeur. What it gave with one hand, it took back with the other. Our love was envied by all who knew us. It became the greatest words on students’ lips. We could never be separated. We were born for each other and loved each other dearly. No woman ever loved me the way Angel did. She was my rising sun and setting dusk; my breath, in fact, all my existence. Without her, every second, every minute bored me to death. It was during this period that it occurred to me that my days in school were numbered; graduation was fast approaching.

Graduation soon came. While others were busy celebrating, I sat quiet, thinking of the pains I would go through without Angel near me. That night we cuddled and kissed each other. We couldn’t stop the tears from rolling down; sometimes they rolled down our cheeks. But we dried them with our tongues. We hated life. We hated nature. Why did it bring us together only to separate us? Then a fleeting thought broke my feelings. I had to be strong and console her; after all, I was the man.

“Sweetheart,” I cuddled her, “don’t cry anymore. Fate that separates us now shall reunite us again.”

She kissed me, sobbing.

“Promise me you will write and visit me”, she begged.

“Of course, I’ll. Why wouldn’t I?”

“I’m afraid”, she sobbed.

“Afraid?” I asked.

She looked at me closely in the eyes as if it was going to be the last time she would ever see me.

“To lose you”, she replied.

“Lose me? Never!” I confidently reassured her. “I’m yours forever. So, why the fear?”

That night we wished the night would stand still. But it moved on. That same night I knew that man might have power over everything on earth, but not over time. Time just kept moving.

Memories

How time flew. It had been eleven months since I last heard a word from Angel. So, I brought out one of the letters she had written to me in the past, the very first letter. It was while I was reading this letter that Chike knocked on the door and handed me Angel’s letter. The letter brought me so much relief. At least, it meant she had gotten my letter as well.

In my new school, I taught Physics. The students loved me so much, especially the way I simplified the subjects. But my happiness was in parts, like a broken vase; my other half was far away in the east. So I patiently did my job to my utmost. But before then, I had sent money to her to help me pick a form for my master’s degree. When the service year would have come to an end, I would gladly return to her.

One morning, with the wind blowing from the Sahara desert, I boarded a luxury bus without hesitation. I had to be reunited with Angel like I promised her the previous year. But it was not to be, as I headed to Lagos to visit my family first.

It was two years later that I returned from my sojourn to meet her. The urge to expand my academic horizon, especially in the absence of the good job brought me back to my old school. By this time, Angel was in her third year. It was a great reunion.

That night when I went with Mike to pay her a visit, something happened. I told Mike to be the first person to enter her room while I waited outside; his mission was to inform her that I was in town. I wanted to be sure she still loved me. When he told her, she ran outside believing I was hiding somewhere and when she couldn’t find me, she returned to her room. I then appeared from behind the door. I had entered when she went searching for me. She was dumbfounded and couldn’t control her tears as they rolled down her cheeks. I would never forget how they became the water she offered me to drink as I kissed all of it, not wanting it to fall.

“Darling, it’s okay”, I tried to be strong and held my tears from falling. “We can never be parted again”, I reassured her with a kiss.

Another night that I found hard to forget happened during the Nigerian Universities Theatre Arts Festival (NUTAF) which coincidentally was hosted by our school. We had planned to complete the last in the series of dramas lined up by the organizers. When I came into her room, she hugged me for a while.

“Honey”, she smiled charmingly.

“Sweetheart, let’s get going”, I told her. “I don’t want us to be late.”

“We won’t. It isn’t time yet.”

“Who said so?”

“Honey, my roommates are going with us”, she said, scrutinizing me.

“Cool, baby”, I replied, pretending it was okay with me.

Smiling, she hugged me again, this time warmly, and told me she would add to the gate fee if I hadn’t enough money.

“What for?” I questioned. “You know this isn’t anything.”

“At least, I didn’t inform you beforehand.”

“Don’t worry, my Angel; I can afford to take care of this,” I reassured her.

When it was time for us to leave, a guy walked in. For thirty minutes they were lost in an argument. My darling, carried away in an argument in my presence and not minding me! This was serious. My countenance changed.

Uju was the first to notice it, so she tried to keep me busy. I wasn’t in the mood. Jealousy ate the better part of me and my endurance was stressed to its extreme by Angel and her friend who talked in my presence as if I was invisible and the world belonged to them. To walk away would make me look childish. To overreact would amount to disgrace. Suddenly, Angel, as if the spirit that bound us together whispered to her, left the stranger and walked up to me.

“Darling, I’m really sorry. There were few things we had to settle.”

“It’s okay”, I muted.

Deep down, it wasn’t.

“Who’s this guy? And what’s he to Angel?” I asked myself.

If someone had told me that another man would wield so much power over Angel, I wouldn’t have believed it. All these questions I couldn’t ask her out rightly, at least not there and then.

“Honey, can he go with us?” she murmured as she got closer.

“With who? Goodness me!” I thought.

By this time, she tried to calm me down and looked into my eyes disconcertedly.

“He is nothing to me, only a classmate who likes to hang around.”

“Let’s get going; we have certainly missed the opening?”

I wasn’t intimidated at all and I craved to assert it. Nobody would tell him to back off. I was sure of that.

Besides Angel and myself, there were Uju, Nkechi, Chinasa, and the stranger. On our way to the Theatre, Angel bought some biscuits and popcorn to keep us busy during the performance for the night. As the play went on, we fed each other at intervals. We could feel our heartbeats and the girls loved the way we played. They occasionally smiled at us whenever our eyes met. But the day’s performance was more on our minds, while the prevalent clapping and hilarity availed us from thinking of the slithering feelings going on inside of us.

“I love you”, Angel momentarily whispered into my ears.

Those words were strong and had a sumptuous effect on me. She had never used those words. I had used it infinitely for years but that night she used it like water.

“Honey,” she would say, “do you know life tastes well with you as a friend? You remain, as long as I live, the greatest gift God has given to me. I will never forget you.”

That night the earth met the sky. I had no doubt in my wildest imagination that every word spoken by her was pure in its entirety. She had stood by me during the best and the worst times. Had she waited all these years without using the word ‘love’ only to rain it that night or was it deliberate? I presumed it was not.

To be continued…