Fiction

Frank Njugi

                           CREDITS: ARTHUNTER

                    

                                

                                  MIRRORS 

                                            i                                  

The journey is not that long. Just more or less an hour of being constricted with strangers in this poky van his people call a matatu . He sits in silence in this bubble of travellers deeply contemplating on the impact of what he is about to do. At the same time his nostrils are faintly discomforted by  the odour habitual to the blend of human sweat and perfume his people tend to apply in surplus while travelling.  It is as if the smearing of these manufactured fragrances serve as a figmental mark of a human on a path to achieve in which they are not to be disturbed.

 At some point in his journey he looks to the exterior of the vehicle through the dirt grimed glass-in-glass window. The motion of the matatu makes vegetation on the arable fields seem to appear miraculously like an unprecedented gift from nature and then evanesce as fast as they had materialized. On parched ones he sees dust rising and falling on instinct like tribesmen aroused from their boredom by the sound of the rattle players playing their kigamba. His mind reflects on this and he feels it tells him is that truly life is like a passing zephyr that should be roistered at with cheerfulness for the moments of true satisfaction appear and disappear like a whim. Maybe this same realisation is why he is making this trip. Maybe the universe in all its goodness is reassuring him that he is doing the right thing.

This is a trip he knows his parents would recoil at him with anger for taking. He reckons this is a trip they most certainly would damn him for. But he feels he has no other choice but to try and skirt away from their firm hold. He feels he has no alternate but to seek out the help of Kamau in doing that which he has been procrastinating for so long. Today Is the day he starts to fight for what he wants ; however inconsequential his parents might deem it to be. Today is the day his manumission from the shackles they have placed on him begins and he starts proclaiming his self-determination.

The matatu arrives at his destination in no time and to his satisfaction he finds Kamau waiting for him at the bus stop. There is a smile in his face when he sees him alight. He knows too well it is because he is happy  he finally found the courage to take control and do what he has been advising him to for so long.

“Are you ready to do this?” These are the first words he says to him as he takes his case from his hand and helps him carry it.

“I think it’s time,” He replies and without another word  the two start making way to Kamau’s house.

They walk for about five minutes and when they finally arrive Johnson wants to waste no time as he says

“We must do this fast. My dad still thinks am in French class and I don’t want going back to that house late. You know how he can be.”

“Then let me set up everything,” His cousin says and gets to work.

First he sets up his camera in a tripod. He then places a wooden stool in-between the tripod and a wall . He tells Johnson to sit on it with his back to the wall as he positions his camera to his eye-level.

“I think now we can start,” Kamau says and gestures him to begin.

Johnson complies by taking his violin out of his case, placing it in between his jaw and shoulder and begins to hit both high and low positions in a manner that leaves Kamau gaping at him in pure admiration.

    

                                              ii                                                              

George  paces in his office frantically like an agitated Labrador, a true picture of worry and anxiousness. It has been two hours since his secretary delivered the letter and he hasn’t been able to get out of the stupor of worry that has been his forte since he read it. He always had a perception that this day would come and now that it  has arrived he can’t help but feel that this foreboding feeling is the least of what is coming. He should have done more to ward off his son from going against his wishes. He should have done more to convince his son that his strives  at preventing him from putting his face out there  was a requisite safeguard for both of them.

While still standing he crouches towards his mahogany office table and picks up his phone. The number he dials is one he should have called the moment he read the letter but the shock of this anticipated threat had left him in a daze he didn’t know was feasible.

He waits for the receiver to answer and after three dings a female voice swiftly occupies the medium that the dial tone had.

“Hello.”

“I received a letter, Nancy,” He says immediately in a dulcet tone which reveals to his wife the kind of letter he is referring to.

“When did you get it?”

“Two hours ago.”

After a minor period of silence between them his wife finally says in a decisive tone, “just come home and let us figure out what we are going to do together.”

“Okay.” He says, silently agreeing that is the best course of action .

As he leaves his office  in the middle of the buzzing Nairobi CBD his mind is in a rabble of trepidation about the future. All his life he has always had a say in the happenings in his life and right now he feels like for the first time he doesn’t.  The traffic today is terribly bad but thanks to the privatisation of roads in order to serve him and his kind, he escapes this inconvenience with ease.

As he drives he cant help but reminence on how all this had come to be. With his eyes on the road his mind starts recollecting bits of how the crisis that is threatening to arise had been self-instigated. He remembers detail by detail how his immense love for his wife had resulted in him experiencing this grotty day.

                                           *******

George and Nancy had married young. The two were always unfailingly known to be a fine evocation of domestic bliss even before they decided to undergo marital nuptials. They had met when they were just youngsters and since then George would always be heard saying what a peach Nancy was  to anyone in his hearing vicinity. Anyone around knew that even though the man was arrogant and mollycoddled with money,  he truly loved his wife.

As he drives home he starts to look back on the circumstances that set him on this path of distress he was in today. 

Proposing to Nancy had been more of a formality than an unexpected occurrence. The two were always  meant to be in the arms of each other and they knew this from the first time they met. The spark between them was like the revelation of a destiny to be shared together and with this uncommon flare they ultimately knew they would last with each other.

Being two career people it was not a nonplus that  they took their time before trying to have children. A few years in their marriage was when they started going back and forth on the usual questions that were germane to the important decision. Are we ready?  Are we not ready? When do we start ? Until eventually they were ready to start trying. 

They tried for sometime and when no success seemed to come they decided to seek the opinion of a fertility doctor. He can vividly recall the moment the doctor dropped a bombshell when he revealed that Nancy could not have children. He remembers the subsequent days when he had to do everything he could to re-assure his wife who was grieving the loss of something that had not been there in the first place . And also the months of an essence of desperation that engulfed their household.

But the acme of it all was when one day he came home from work to the sight of his wife huddled in a corner a sight of tears with her whole body shaking in silent sorrow.  Never before had he failed to find the words to soothe or show affection to his wife. Never before had the sight of the one he loved being so dejected caused a plucking so deep in his heart that he failed to find the words to cease her pain.

Later on at night when he looked at their bedroom mirror instead of seeing the man he had always thought he was ,  he saw a debacle of man who was nothing but a failure.  His eyes shifted back and forth between the mirror and his wife sleeping on their bed and he couldn’t help but feel as if the mirror was the reflection of a labyrinth he didn’t know his life had. This mirror uncloaked an image of him that his elite self had not seen before. It showed him that underneath all his opulence was a vulnerability that had not revealed itself until now. It startled him. It made him terrified of his existence, of the present and the future.

But he was also a man who believed with his money he could wangle his way into getting anything he wanted. And that night in that mirror he also resolved to strive with everything he had to procure that which his wife’s heart desired most. A little one to delight her soul and carry on her husbands family name and legacy. He searched in all the right places and asked all the right questions until three weeks later he had a meeting with someone whom he was told could give him what he wanted.

He hand-picked to meet him at Adams Arcade shopping centre in Ngong Road. One thing he knew was that  when dealing with the illegal it was always wise to use a place in your home turf. A new place for your opposite party but one familiar to you. He remembers walking inside the mall and subsequently heading for Java House unswervable in what he had set out to do . He cajoled himself by saying to his conscience that he was doing this for love. He heartened himself by presuming that he was doing this because he lacked a fall-back. He was playing life’s game according to the hand he was dealt with. He was playing life’s game because at the moment he seemed to lack the endue of the almighty’s hand.

The guy he was meeting was seated at the back of the restaurant, looking like one who did not belong in such a place. As he made his way towards him he noticed that he was quivering impatiently like one who wanted to get the meeting over with. He sat down on the seat across from his.

“Hello.”

“Let’s get this over with. No need for pleasantries. What do you need? ” The man said in a sedate manner.

George was not at all surprised by his cold tone.

“My wife has trouble conceiving and I was told you are a man that can help me with that”.

“Yes I can help with that, and judging with how neat you dress I can tell you will not have a problem paying what I ask for. Which is pretty much”.

“Money is no problem. I just need to bring back a smile to my wife’s face.”

“What do you want ? Boy or Girl”

“Preferably a boy,” and then he hesitantly asked “How will this work?”

“You have  two options. A ‘deceased’ baby taken from a mother or a twin taken from an unknowing mother.”

“I prefer the latter,” He firmly said as he guilty weighed and concluded that the former was more heartless. At least by the latter he was choosing the lesser evil. He thought to himself.

“Then I will be in contact”. The man replied and swiftly his short heavyset body got up and he made his way out of the restaurant without a goodbye.

George did not leave after the guy but instead ordered coffee which he drank while deep in his own thoughts. He felt a mixture of guilt with a tiny spec of triumph underneath it. Was he really doing the right thing? He was pondering. And at some point in-between his sips and thoughts he raised his head and looked at an antiqued mirror wall behind the seat the man had been on. It told him what  he wanted to hear. He was a man who took charge and what he was doing was what he had always done. He was controlling his fate and that of the one he loved.

                                       *********

He arrives home in no time. The usual thirty minutes it takes to get from his office to his home have refashioned into twenty five today but he doesn’t beat himself up pondering on  the complexities of time. After all he has spent the entire drive reminiscing of the past. He needs to now start thinking of his and his family’s future. Their hard built ménage is being threatened by an external force and he needs to know how to counter it.

He enters his house and finds Nancy standing in the living room pacing around in agitation. She doesn’t see him enter at first but when she eventually does she seems to let loose and falls straight into his arms. George fondles and caresses her back gently while she says

“I can’t loose him, George. I just can’t. I won’t be able to live with that.”

“No one is losing anyone. Not while we are still around,” He says firmly while letting her free gradually.

“What did the letter say?!” She asks and her husband reveals a folded piece of paper from his pocket. 

She grabs it in haste and sits down to read it.

Dear Mr Kimani,

It has been a long-time since we saw each other. In the twenty years since  then , you and your wife have managed to build a family  life of happiness Sorely based on an understanding you had managed to uphold until recently. It has come to my attention that you unwisely  let your son dive into the limelight and risk exposing what our Organization helped you with. I believe you know this is something we cannot accept. You must remember your choice and your choice had a price. You choose to take the second one which we allowed based on the agreement that you would combat any form of activity that risked our transaction being revealed. I am sure you all too well remember the words I said to you when I handed over baby Johnson...

I just have one thing to tell you...

Our people have a saying ;

“Kuanguka mwanguko wa mende mdani ya chupa ya mafuta”

(Falling like a cockroach in a bottle of oil...)

You will be hearing  from us soon

Your long-time Friend...

After she is done there is a period of silence between them and eventually she says:

“Do you think they will do anything to harm us or Johnson?”

“I don’t know, Nancy,” He says this in a measured voice while  joining her in their polyester cushioned couch.

She looks at his face and for the first time she realises that this man who has steered their marriage for many years is not sure on the next course of action they should take.

There is a dense silence for sometime and eventually she breaks it by saying.

“I think we should tell him.”

He doesn’t answer and he knows that’s a sure sign of his resignation. He is handing over control

“Not all of it but we can twist it to look like we are also victims.”

He also doesn’t answer this and now she knows that she is in total control.

“Leave the speaking to me,” She says in a settling tone while she gets up and goes to summon their son. Leaving him sitting as silent as a rock. A sight of a man who for the first time is not in charge of the happenings in his life.

                                             

                                           iii

Johnson’s video did not gain traction in the first few weeks. In fact he was almost losing hope in regards to it until a famous music blogger reposted it on twitter and compared him to Randall Goosby. And with that the next few days came at him like a tornado. He remembers moving from two hundred followers to almost five thousand in a jiff and by the time his parents found out about his video a week later it was at five hundred thousand you tube views. Finally he had done it. Finally he had found the cool-headedness to do what he loved.

But this was not the main out-turn from his video as the major ripple came three weeks later when a rather random comment led him to a startling unearthing. He had been sited in his room alone going through the comments under his video and basking in the glory they showered;  Doing all this mostly to escape his parent’s frustration and the inscrutable anger they had extricated towards him when they found out about the video.

In a Larghetto pace manner  he went through the comments , replying to some , ignoring others , until he came about one that randomly said,“hey there, nice intonation. You really look like a friend of mine, though. Check him out.” And this was followed by an Insta profile link. Being the eccentric curious guy he was he instinctively clicked on the link and saw something that made him leap into a state of uncertainty and confusion.

The owner of the account was like a mirror of himself. From the jawline to the lining of his eyelashes which his whole life he had been told were slightly curved . He was looking at his face and body in another person and he failed to find thoughts or emotions that could explain what he was seeing. For the next hour he dithered on what to do and on a few occasions he resolved to just close his pc and not think much about it. But this would last only for a few minutes because he would open the profile again and would become even more startled in each occasion. It was after a while that he decided to poke the monster that was this revelation of a doppelganger and sent a text to the owner of the account.

                                         *****

The two  agreed to meet at MC Fry’s restaurant also located at the Adams arcade shopping centre. They were distinctly unperceptive of the fact that somewhere in that mall twenty years before a meeting to sunder them had been conducted. At first their meeting was awkward and they were both immensely ill at ease. None of them knew the right words to say nor the right topic to talk about. None of them firstly knew why they looked so similar and they felt intensely uncomfortable when they looked at each other. To be seated in a restaurant booth with a person who is an atypical reflection of yourself was something Johnson had not anticipated in his lifetime.

Their conversation contained periods of dense silence but  after sometime when Johnson suggested they show each other pictures of their parents a lambency of realisation made them start to view their situation in a new light. 

Johnson was leaning towards his phone while he was saying:

“This is my Mum. She was a musician before cancer took her...She loved playing the violin like you.” And Johnson Lifted his eyes from the phone and looked  at his face wowed by what he had just said.

He looked back at the picture on the phone ,at the eyes of the woman and felt a spasm that rocked every sparkle of the cells in his body. Those eyes looked at him like they knew him. Those eyes looked at him like they were conscious of his existence. In those eyes for the first time in his life he felt like he was seeing a true reflection of himself.

“Do you know what this might imply ?”

“That based on your mutual love for music you might be my mother’s son also !” He replied with something he had already thought about much earlier.

“This might not be a confirmation but I feel something when I look at her face. I have never really experienced this with my parents.”

“She was a good woman. I wish she had lived to realise she might have another son.” And with this Johnson and him looked at each other with an understanding that came from the confines that was the depth of both their souls. Their hearts knew what they were and those eyes in the picture positively confirmed to Johnson what they were.

“You know I used to think having a Twin was like having a kaleidoscope of yourself. Getting to see your flaws and capabilities all in another person.”

“Like a mirror of yourself?”

“Yaah,” He said and they both smiled at the shared thought.

“Mirror, Mirror on the wall. Reveal myself and not them all.”  Johnson instinctively said aloud

“For me it is more like, Mirror , Mirror on the wall . Reveal myself and show them all”. And they both laughed  this time much louder, with much more conviction and discernment.

Johnson finally felt he had found someone who maybe might understand the person he was .  He felt like he had found  something he had been lacking his whole life . And he also finally realised why all his life he had felt detached from those he thought to be his parents. 

As they said goodbye to each other,  both their minds were in a rabble of the new found relation. And Johnson felt an err profound feeling of satisfaction when he said to him.

“Next time you will tell me all about your Violin and I will tell you all about My football...” 

 And he reckoned all too well that there would indeed be a next time...And both of them ultimately knew there would indeed be a lifetime to be lived with this new knowledge of each other...

                                           

                                  ****************

He is not at all surprised when he is called by his mother to join her in their living room. The fact that his father is also there at daytime is a clear indication that what he  has been waiting for is about to happen. He can’t wait to hear the misconstrued tale they have come up with . He can’t wait for them to make a fool of themselves in front of him. He knows he is going to delight in every second they try to make a halfwit of him by telling him the libel of a tale they have made up. For the first time he has got one over them and they don’t know it yet.

He takes his time to come out of his room , mostly doing it to annoy them and when he eventually does he finds them hauled together on the couch , a satisfying sight of two worried beings. He sits on the one across from theirs and his mind starts to count the seconds when this circus will start

His mother clears her throat before beginning the performance.

“Johnson. There is something we think you should know...”

And he sits silently as the strangers before him tell him a falsified anecdote  oblivious of the fact that his emancipation from the hellhole they created for him is due...

                                              

Frank Njugi (He /Him) is a Writer and poet originally from Naivasha, Kenya. His work has been featured or forthcoming in platforms such as 20.35 Africa, KalahariReview, Ibua Journal, Writers space Africa (PoeticAfrica), OneBlackBoyLikeThat Review and others. He currently lives in Nairobi and you can find him @franknjugi on all platforms.