Skip to main content

THE MISERABLE MAN

 

excerpt.





Asuama has just arrived from tapping his early morning palm-wine.


He was an handsome man of early 40s though hardship has dealt him a blow and took off his youthful skin, also plugging the flesh off his eye sockets too, making Asuama look like a 70 years old man.


He hummed one of his favourite traditional songs, walking  up and down his courtyard in  search of the palm-wine keg he kept the night before.


The sun was taking a walk towards the centre of the sky that morning and Asuama was already troubled by the many problems he has been facing lately.


His first son, Itém  light finger have fetched Asuama a new name among his kindred, 'father of a thief' and his palm-wine business was not progressing either.


Life has become unbearable to him and his household.


Asuama humming of this traditional song was to at least lift his spirit a bit.


As he was searching every nook and cranny of the courtyard, his wife, a middle age woman, Ikwo returned from the market where she went that morning to sell her bunch of plantain in order to buy other food condiments.


Ikwo suddenly  noticed with the voice she heard from the courtyard that her husband Asuama was home.


'My husband, welcome... I hope you had a good tap today.' She said inquisitively.


'Hmm...' Asuama replied indifferently with his voice within his tummy as he continued searching for the palm-wine keg he kept at the courtyard the previous night.


'My husband, what are you searching for?....' Inquired Ikwo, approaching the courtyard.


'Where has your good for nothing children thrown my palm wine keg?... Asuama interrupted without allowing for further questions from the wife. 


'I have warned this your useless children countless times to allow my belongings to remain where I keep them but since their eardrums are leaking, they wouldn't listen.


'I hope your light fingered son has not sold my keg too.' Asuama added.


'Which children are good for nothing Asuama?' Ikwo couldn't hold her peace. She was known for being a cheeky type.


'So when you can not fend for your family, you pick a fight at every little thing like a keg of palm-wine you kept at who knows where...' Ikwo flared


'When I told you immediately after  my higher instutution that you and I should first secure our future before venturing into reproduction of children, you paid deaf ears to my warning and for the fear of not allowing Nkasi to  marrying me before you, you  hurriedly paid my bride price with the little money you had... and now you have dragged me into your poverty stricken life.


'Asuama don't start this morning....


Asuama watched as his wife white washed him with insults.


'What happened to the money your uncle gave you to start up a business? You used it on available palm-wine joint everywhere your 'bee  like life' takes you to....' She rant


'Please hold your tongue this morning.' Ikwo added with a packed face like agama lizard ready to lunch an attack on a cockroach.


Asuama couldn't believe his ears. His wife has just rain insult on him and the little of the man in him was completely washed off by Ikwo's tongue.


'Are you talking to me in that manner woman? 

Asuama asked with a thunderous voice as if to leap on the wife.


'When did you start having the audacity to rain insult on me Asuama like that?... He roared.


'You have made this children lack a single respect for me in this house'.


Asuama was about to pounds on the wife but remembered that he has just settled a dispute between themselves about a week ago and the father-in-law only allowed his wife followed him back home on the account that he wouldn't raise his hands on Ikwo again.


Asuama seemed toothless at the remembrance of his last encounter with the in-law.


With this, he sighed as  he  walked out of the courtyard shaking his head in disagreement of what life has brought to him.


Poverty has imprisoned his position as a man in the house, and rendered him voiceless.


The following morning Asuama woke up very early unable to sleep due to the encounter he had with the wife.


Thoughts of so many things wrestled themselves against each other in his head.

As soon as the cockcrow that morning, Asuama put on his usual palm-wine tapping dress, took his palm-wine keg, his machette with his tapping knife.


By this time, his wife and the children were still having their fair share of the morning sleep.


Asuama set for the tap and never returned...


TO BE CONTINUED.


Happy New Month guys.


✍️ Patrick Ekong

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

DON'T LEAVE WHEN IT IS TOO LATE.

The story . Udauk was too weak to continue with the evening chores around the house because of her pregnancy. She bent over the kitchen cabinet in search of a tuber of yam she was to prepare before her husband returned from work. At the point of stretching her hands to reach the tuber of yam under the cabin, she felt a sharp pain down her abdomen. Her left lap was swollen from the beating she got the previous night from the monster's husband. She was still short of three months from her due month. That's when she was to put to birth. The shape pain was accompanied by a loud scream. She dropped the knife she had with her and tried to settle on a table-size stool lying close to the gas cylinder in the kitchen, but she couldn't. She fell and started screaming, reached out to her phone, and dialed her husband. Mr. Sam had branched  Madam G's Native Kitchen to settle for a while before heading home as his habit demands. He was busy at his usual joint with a bottle of chill ...
4 comments
Read more
Social Media: Are we swallowed by it? It is alarming yet no longer news the rate of social media usage since the turn of the millennium. Social Media has become a tool in nearly every 9/ 10 persons we meet everyday of our lives. In fact it is estimated that youth particularly engaged in social Media taking 8/9 hours a day out of the 24hrs. Without doubt, social media has come to enhance and add more meaning to our daily life. Since the advent of social media in the early part of the millennium, the rate people get involve in these wonderful platforms keep increasing on a daily basis. To some youth and some fraction of older people, social media is like oxygen. They can't stay a moment without. A lady once said that she can't stay without visiting her Facebook page in a day. With the number of people flooding the Social media on per second basis, one will wonder if these technology has any bad effect at all. Millions of people use social media as it is the trend now, ...
4 comments
Read more

TILL DEATH DO US APART

 The story.  She wanted to fix this once and for all. She felt it was her obligation and responsibility to try and fix her marriage. It is true that when love can no longer sustain the marriage, commitment,  and sense of responsibility does. This was Elma's concern. Though things were never what she expected, especially after having an affair with her personal assistant, she felt she could rekindle the love and bring her home. Shutting the door of the penthouse behind Mark her boyfriend, Elma warned him never to call again, not when she was trying to fix her home and get back with her husband. After Mark drove off, Elma took a step backward from where she was, fell on the bed and sobbed profusely. It was hard for her to see him leave. In the past six months of knowing Mark, he made her feel loved again and provided her a shoulder to cry on. He made her forget the horrors George her husband made her pass through in the last three years.  Elma left the penthouse that n...
4 comments
Read more