Job Fongho Tende
A REASON TO FIGHT BACK
**********
The noise and grumble that now chased the youth out of the house was a familiar tune although he was never conversant with their echoes.
“…where do you think you are heading to? Work will…remember, farm has…” “…and the money and years wasted in school… what results? Why don’t you…”
If he was grieved by what he was told, it was evident in the way his well-marked forehead contoured with irritation. He stared in the wild with the somnolence and disillusionment typical of a refugee, contemplating over his country lying in a pile of rubble. Mingling with the parental outburst of frustration and strained feelings, the faint voices of his siblings fought for attention in their cry for care. Tasha had had enough for the day, that day, and meant to take his Entry all the way to the Post Office.
The solace his family environment failed to give him, he would seek to find from birds miles away. So he thought, nevertheless, nurturing no grudges against his own. He could not altogether blame them; the source of their aches he knew so well…
He ascended to the University gate, which had a Post Office within it premises. The Post Office, to him, was the only spark of hope in a world prevailed by dark forces. He peered disinterestedly into the Amphitheatres, to give a face to the voices he thought were familiar. The great Profs were in there again, following their ancient tracks of cobweb-covered résumés. It was easier to apply the old tracks, and academia was faithful, unfortunately, to their pattern. A breathe more of that scene and Tasha was sure his pregnant tongue would have fetched him unnecessary trouble. “Not now!” He whispered to himself looking at and feeling his package in his hands. “Another day, another style, I will definitely have to vent my spleen of this…” his whisper died down before he had expressed his thought. Even then, his round soft lips continued to let flow soundless words.
Tasha was a boy in his mid-twenties; a man, by others’ standards, stirred by great ambitions. Far back in his high school days, he had dreams of himself as a major face in the pantheon of Nobel Prize winners, Literature category. His hands were swift wings soaring over the domain of Poetry: Wole Soyinka, Mazisi Kunene, Richard Ntiru, M.S. Dipoko, he counted them well; Tennyson, Yeats, Eliot, Blake, their melody he loved and savoured with delight. So the dream of one day becoming one in their order he entertained longing for the University gates, which he believed will arm him for the purpose.
Tasha was now a 3rd year University student, a 3rd year that had sadly dragged for three long years, and was the source of all the trauma back home.
“a 3rd year…a 3rd, year 3 years old!
“I am “33” export student” he at times fashioned a sort of macabre humour around his very gruesome situation. Surprisingly enough it used to earn him a nature of catharsis. In such instances, he would open his mouth to present a set of teeth, tightly closed, analogous only to the sordid bars of a Nazist incarceration camp.
The little fellow made a small stroll in the direction of the scoreboard, notorious for bloodshed in many an unakademic student’s life, to find out what fate was reserved for the individuals that he represented. In the midst of several other third year students of his field, most of whom he could hardly make out, Tasha pressed his parcel to his chest and with scanning eyes searched the cold release. Though campus was particularly deserted on that blessed day, the scoreboard area was crowded and rowdy. Yet, Tasha felt an unusual silence pervading the pandemonic atmosphere with subtleness. The quiet that now prevailed brought to his notice the most unusual. He could hear his heartbeats pounding high like a Bantu’s man’s tam-tam, and he could feel each molecule of air running down his lungs.
Tasha’s eyes perused the release and finally settled on his results. If the outcome was not shocking, it could be due to any other reason but good results. Maybe it was because more than fifty percent of the class shared that same fate or maybe it was thanks to the deadening effects of a reoccurring history.
Lesley Ayuk -----------UV316--------6.5-----------NV[1]
Ama Fidele--------------UV316--------7.99---------NV
Bacham Eric-------------UV316--------9.99---------NV
Tasha Ebong-------------UV316--------4.05---------EL
Emilia Sonne------------UV316---------10.00--------P
Effectif: 300
Valide: 140
Pourcentage: 47.5
“Has NV become a family name?” He murmured to himself at the verge of tears when a fellow passing, who saw him transfixed and alone before that slaughter slab asked aloud: “Son of man, what be thy care flirting, as it were, with results now two years old?” It was only then that Tasha realised he was the only one around that time forgotten scoreboard. The others were mere forms of his imagination, brought to life by his stress, and now dead by his wake. He felt his parcel once more and remembered that the Post Office was his destination.
“Give to AKADEMIA what belongs to AKADEMIA and to men of refined appreciation novelty.” This saying was familiar around campus and was the guide rule for the ‘I read to pass’. How could Tasha understand the rule when learning to him had not as ultimate goal succeeding at an exam but the cultivation of the self? Academia’s whips on his flesh were irrefutable; the “33” export stamp certified his non-akademicity.
The way to the Post Office was by a part of stairs, covered by the cool shadows of some well-canopied trees. The sunrays danced in-between the small overtures granted by the swaying effect of the wind upon the leaves. It was cool and pleasurable. Tasha enjoyed it. His eyes sparked with the reflection of the sun as he descended up towards the Post Office. Soon, he thought, his non-akademicity was to face a foreign appreciation. He yearned to find out if there were any minds on God’s earth, on God’s big big earth, who could interpret sense from the work of his brain.
The Post Office yard had nylon papers and dry leaves everywhere. An old cupboard, a very old one indeed, which in time long melted must have enjoyed the good graces of some distinguished senior administrator, now stood isolated under the moistening shadow of a staircase.
****
A child, enjoying the benefits of a war-free country, now and then, displayed his unskilled Samurai skills on the staid furniture. If it was a human, it should have been laden with rheumatism of a despicable kind.
Tasha threw an impassive glance at the child, and then braved the doors of the Post Office wherein he offered himself a postal stamp at five hundred francs CFA. It was one stylised with the complicated road network of a Western metropolis.
“Non monsieur, c’est par l’autre entrée.” A French-speaking female clerk directed him before he could slip his overseas-destined mail the wrong way.
“Mille fois merci mademoiselle.” He answered with decorum, and then sent in his mind for a test in worlds away, in circles of different times.
Out of the office bloc, Tasha sat on a low concrete wall built to canalise the flow of water during the rainy seasons. From there, he observed the child and the cupboard in battle. A fascinating battle it was, though. The infant fought with legs and hands, head and sword. He slapped, boxed, smashed…with all the techniques of his art. Yet the obsolete cupboard stood its grounds, apparently unhurt. But why? Did it still hope that it was going to regain its place of honour in the offices one day? Did it not realise that it had outlived its time and was now only good for museum shelves? Or did it in any way harbour the thought that its old fashioned drawers and metal designs could be of any relevance to the present time?
Tasha felt hunger pangs ragging in his belly, but the image of home he had left with earlier that day solved the thoughts of hunger. A sudden wish to take a stroll around some national monuments tickled him, but even that wish was checked by a price to pay in cash. For all he knew, cash was not what he possessed as luxury. For a boy of his age, it was pitiful to know that he had never once had a single sum of twenty thousand francs of his own. He stood there carried by events. He watched with envy the swallows and sparrows flying in the limitless blue roof of the earth. They were so free but him, never. In his misery, Tasha seemed to hear the voice of an unknown deity whispering to him: “O man is it not I who choose you? Stand therefore and view the land. Get to this highest pinnacle and behold the country. Your home, the national museum and monuments, and all the fare of the land. Verily, verily I say unto to you none belongs to you—none belongs to you—none belongs to you!
Akademia was very strong and imposing, and seemed to have support from all over the nation. It fought novelty like a leading male beast of prey rivals its potential. Family on its part misconstrued the artists and swayed them to a rhythm foreign to their visions. A rhythm neither their pens nor souls could feign dance.
It was November soon. Tasha knew that the time to visit the slaughter slab; to listen to the melancholic melody of the hundreds who in Akademia could not find a kindred was at the corner. Still from the internet, he read it was the season for the august foreign verdict upon his brainchild. With ambivalence, he embraced the present and he well knew why. Slaughter slab or the internet, his choice balanced indecisively between the poles. His symmetric inverted V-shaped eyebrows played to the tune of his indecision. After a good moment of internal battles, the young man solicited the internet, and there he went.
He activated his account and entered his box, and found a lone message highlighted therein. He felt his heart grow big with fear, fear of the unknown. Had he been on the road, he could swear, he would have ominously kicked his right foot against a stone or something. His hand trembling then held the mouse and clicked on the inbox icon that gave him access into the mail content:
Your entry ‘this time last year’ by this year’s judges has proven to be the most competent and original entry. Base on issues of creativity, literary beauty and their strong marriage with time and subject matter you were graded and deemed matchless…
Your reward, five thousand pounds shall be sent to you via your postal address. Along with your reward in cash we send you a badge and shield to attest your exploit wherever need may arise.
All eyes in the local cybercafé gave him cold aggressive glances, which told him he had not been private in manifesting his joy. Little did he care. They could have as well gone to hell for all he cared!
On a piece of paper, in bold capitals, Tasha proudly wrote down the title of his entry THIS TIME LAST YEAR. By some kind of coincidence, it happened to be the same month, the same day he had mailed his entry, but for a year’s leap. He felt light, and virtually soared to the slaughter slab of a scoreboard whose verdict was more or less a cliché. If the scoreboard intended to tear Tasha down, Tasha on his part had reason to fight back.
Standing there, in the midst of the hundreds in-wait to discover what fate had in store for them, Tasha threw a bold and determined look which unmistakably caught the columns bearing his fate.
Tasha Ebong-----------UV312------3.3-------EL
/ / / / / / / / / / / / / / / /
Tasha Ebong----------UV316-------9.99------NV
Effectif: 200
Validé: 20
Pourcentage: 10
It read with all gruesome effects. However, this time the boy little cared. He held out his entry’s title to the hostile scoreboard as if to bat off an invisible tennis shot. His keen ears, amidst that heartbroken gathering, heard the deafening sound of breaking wood. The noise took his mind to the old cupboard. The old wooden cupboard left in oblivion under the Post Office staircase.
An urge of curiosity impelled him to check on the old furniture of many circles ago. He was bewildered on reaching the venue, as he found that the cupboard was no more. Little bits of wood dust and bended pieces of iron were the only items to tell that there had once been a cupboard there. He pictured from the depth of memory, the child in battle with the staid furniture. His kicks, his punches, his cries, floated in Tasha’s dilating eyes like a canary’s gold feather descending slowly in a gentle evening breeze after a wild rainstorm.
“This time—this time last year” he whispered softly as he climbed the Post Office’s shadow-covered staircase, returning home. It had been a difficult Day.