THE TEMPEST

by
A. Igoni Barrett

It was the first rain of the year. Only, at first it wasn�t rain but wailing wind that leaped into the sudden calm with a fury long withheld, and then proceeded to, with gusts so brutal they rendered protestation futile, rip out the city�s guts. First it wafted up discarded paper scraps and plastic bags and rags, and sent them jigging skywards on its turbulent breath; then it whisked off wigs and whipped up skirts; then it paused on the reeking rotting garbage mountains and spun itself into view; then it stirred up a dust haze to hide this borrowed face from the heavens� gaze. And then for no reason apparent it suddenly lost its mind, and, with methodical vindictiveness, set upon a path of destruction never again witnessed as it toppled colonial statues and giant billboards and power masts and stripped mighty trees bare, and smashed car windscreens with the hurled bodies of screeching birds, and crumpled the whole west wing of our city�s most venerable Catholic chapel, carting away � with marble arms outstretched � the weeping Mother of God. And at the apocalyptic height of its fury, with thunder crashing and lightning flashing and rain sheets lashing, it tore the roofs off the defenceless shanties, and reaching within, plucked from the arms of mothers their infants, and bore them chortling out to the foaming sea.

Really, there was one known case of an infant stolen by the storm. It was reported by the bereft mother � and sole witness � to the crowd convened by her cries. Her name was Onari; and she was a child herself, barely sixteen; and unmarried; and alone.

Nobody believed her story but her tears were real.

She was five months heavy when she moved from nowhere into our tenement. She was an instant hit with the male tenants, being young, and pretty, and of that female type at once brazen and excessively shy. And, she was destitute, relying for daily subsistence on the good-neighbourliness of others.

It was something pathetic to see grown men hovering about that child, manfully vying for feigned attention. She wasn�t the first expectant mother we�d shared our tenement with, nor even then the only one. And yet it was �Onari this� �Onari that�, �Onari sit back and rest your back� � all day.

�Onari gimme a kiss to lemme know I will be missed.� This was Bayo, by way of farewell whenever he left Onari�s side. He was her most persistent, and barefaced, admirer, frittering each day away in her company playing cards or ludo or the physiotherapist. He had a fianc� called Kelechi, who he had left hanging on the precipice of connubial bliss for so long that her youth had grown tired of waiting and had abandoned her in his arms. She � perhaps with reason � looked upon everything on two legs as a threat to the attainment of her life�s one aim. She was a dancer. She brought along gifts of foodstuff for Onari whenever she visited.

As Onari�s bulge grew so did Bayo�s infatuation, and the size of Kelechi�s gift offerings � till Onari was living wholly off Kelechi�s fears, and, by self-seeking design, stoking the fire in which her good fortune was smelted.

For instance, with Kelechi around Onari would burst into Bayo�s room and burst out: �Feel it, Bayo � touch it! Can you feel the kick? He�s asking for his namesake you know. You have abandoned us.� Or, lying on her bed with Bayo beside her, and Kelechi banished to a chair and the role of spectator, she would hitch her gown to the top of her thighs and place her ankles on Bayo�s beer-belly, and wheedle: �My feet, Bayo. Only your hand does anything for my pains.� And helplessly Kelechi would return her shy smile, and grip her thigh insides bloody in silent anguish, watching all her efforts destroyed, by a foot massage.

But Onari overplayed her hand. She was too pretty and too pregnant to be convincing as a coquette. The other men began to stay away, convinced that they had lost out to Bayo in the battle for her affections. And Kelechi discontinued her plea offerings.

Bayo had Onari to himself. But Bayo was a loafer � his love couldn�t make up the shortfall that another�s jealousy had provided for. Faced with this truth, in a twinkling fawning Onari turned termagant. She was pitiless. It wasn�t long before Bayo scuttled back to Kelechi, a better man for the experience.

Vicious rumours maintain that it was the hunger pangs that brought on early labour. The first scream rent the air seven weeks early; the midwife was rushed in, the baby pushed out. It was a puny, prune-skinned thing that weighed less than a drenched feather, and it was a girl � thus Onari�s intention of owning a Bayo was finally defeated.

The infant � whom Onari refused to name, calling it �smallie� whenever the occasion arose � was in spite of its puniness a howler on grand scale. The sounds that erupted from its tiny lungs had the tremolo and sustained pitch of a world-class soprano. The strength of its cry should have served sufficient warning, as, contrary to the whispers that were then making the rounds, the infant survived its first week. And then the second. This fortnight was however one of unremitting persecution for the inhabitants of our tenement, besieged as we were by the infant�s nagging shriek (which it practiced at all times of the night, but especially when sleep was getting the upper hand of the heat) and the tear-jerking reek that prowled through the building like a vengeful spectre whenever the brand-new bowels were evacuated.

Onari�s gaze fell colder and more distant on her infant with each dawn: as it grew stronger and more demanding. While she starved it sucked her dry.

For months the heat had lain over the city like blowflies over a burst carcass. The sun, godlike in its blinding whiteness, had unleashed its wrath on unprotectable heads, day after day after day in day out. Then one day the clouds gathered in hoi polloi revolt, and blackened the kingdom of heaven. The tempest that followed was epoch-ending.

The tenement shuddered beneath the wind�s blows. Dust slipped into the rooms through cracks in the walls and under the locked doors, and swirled gigantic in genie shapes. The rain rattled down like tungsten pellets. And then, through the roar, there was a loud, prolonged creaking, like the sound of faith breaking, and in rushed a maddened gust of wind � and the roof was away. Beneath the open sky, huddled against our fate like ducks in a thunderstorm, we awaited the tempest�s pity.

There was a lull in the wind, deceitful in its intention and lasting an instant only � but long enough for her lament to be heard. Doors crashed open down the length of the tenement and as one we descended on her room. She was alone. Alone with her face turned up to the beating rain. Alone with her hands clasped tight behind her head. Bayo asked the question that was dead on every lip. Without giving an answer she unlocked her fingers fast as lightning and slapped herself in the face, palm open and fingers spread, one time, two times, three times � till Bayo grabbed hold of her hands.

�Where is smallie?� he asked again, for all of us.

�The roof � the wind � carried my baby ah ah ah,� she wailed, and tore her hands free from the loosened grip of a Bayo suddenly repelled. Her face was still lifted up to the cloudburst sky, her eyes roving. Tears, or rainwater, coursed down her cheeks.

The rain stopped the following morning. And we � quondam adulators � mustered ourselves into a search party, and set out into the devastation. We searched everywhere for the baby, or its body, making enquiries and gathering supporters as we went. We waded through gorged gutters, poking amongst the swollen corpses of drowned quadrupeds for the tiny form. We rummaged through the garbage mountains that the floodwaters had formed overnight with rumpelstiltskinian industry. We pounced on feasting curs and pried their jaws open to inspect their teeth�s pickings. We found our roof, but not baby.

Finally, we called off the search. It was with heavy hearts that we headed home, and crushing suspicions. But Onari had flown the coop. Yes, she was gone, nowhere and forever � just like her baby.

� A. Igoni Barrett
Reproduced with permission

---

Your first name:	Your URL:
Use the box below to leave messages for A. Igoni Barrett. Begin message: For A. Igoni Barrett