Deserve to Die

The silence that greeted Mbaluto when he had unbolted the door to his house was too eerie for him to bear. He felt like locking the door and walking back into the night but where to? Glancing at his watch he realized that it was one O’clock in the night. The night was so quiet behind him, not even the crickets chirped. He had to get into the house, his house.
He had never envisaged the fact that this house would be so unwelcoming without her. Why was she doing this to him? Couldn’t she at least forgive him? He was sorry, truly sorry. He would do anything to prove this to her. But where was she? She should have stayed, should have given him a chance to express his remorse but she did not. She chose to go. And now that she was gone, he could not even enter his own house.
In the past three days, he had been coming home dead drunk. This way, the telling silence of his house could not reach him in his drunken stupor. He would get home, collapse on the bed and light a cigarette. Sleep would prevail upon him by the time the cigarette’s ember was crossing over to the filter. In the morning, he would take a shower and quickly dash out of the house on his way to his workplace. This had become life for him since she went away. Always running away from his house, her house, their house.
On this day, he had gone to the pub but he could not drink. He had to get used to his house and the only way to do this was to get home while still sober. So he had just sat at the pub, smoking cigarette after cigarette while trying to get the courage to go home.
Mbaluto was now at his doorstep but he couldn’t get into the house. He fiddled with his pocket and got out a cigarette lighter. He lit it and pushed open the door. The lighter’s orange flame made everything in the sitting room glow in a golden manner, so romantic …
Yes, it was in this very sitting room with this very same golden glow that he first knew her depths. It was two years ago and he had just been employed as a journalist with one of the leading papers in the country. Naomi had just joined a medical college then.
On that particular night, Naomi had come to his house for the first time. He had gone through the pains of strategically placing candles in the sitting room. All lights were off. The candles’ orange flame made everything in the sitting room glow in a golden manner, so romantic … He had kissed her on the couch and on the thick carpet on the floor. And it was there on the carpet that he had known her insides. God! She was beautiful, so beautiful and warm. He was a man in love and he wanted her, all of her.
These memories of that night left Mbaluto empty inside. He was like a deflated balloon with no inside. He quickly blew off the lighter to wipe the memories away. It was then that the darkness and silence started weighing down on him once again. In the darkness, he stumbled his way to the switch and turned on the lights. He then saw that he had left the door open. He walked over to it and shut it. He was now alone in the house. This made him lonely. He missed Naomi with all his being. He gave the house one look, everything was pointing at her absence.
Were she around, his shirts would not be lying unwashed on the chairs the way they did. The carpet he had once treasured would not be smeared with mud as it was tonight. The utensils would be washed and neatly arranged in the cupboard. The ashtray on the table would be emptied of all those cigarette stubs. Everything would be in its rightful place only if she were around.
He then saw her face on the wall. His heart started thumping audibly faster. He walked to the wall and with trembling hands, he brought down the framed picture. With the picture in his hands, he sat on one of the sofas. That was Naomi in his arms on their wedding day. He looked at Naomi and himself in the picture as if he was looking at it for the first time. Ice-cold tears rolled down his cheeks. He hugged the picture and let himself cry.
When he had landed himself a job two years ago, Mbaluto’s future seemed bright. There was no stopping him. He had a good salary and a good house. What was missing in the picture was a wife. Didn’t they say that behind every successful man there was a woman? The only problem was that Naomi, his all, had just joined a medical college and he had to wait for her to clear her schooling. Four years! That was too much for an impatient man like Mbaluto. He managed to convince the tender minded Naomi that she didn’t necessarily need to have a job. His salary was enough to take care of them and the children they would raise in the future. He went as far as paying her parents for interfering with their daughter’s education. Since when did parents refuse money especially if it was for their daughters? The deal was sealed.
Their wedding was so wonderful and this picture he was holding held all the day’s memories. The onset of their lives together, Naomi and himself.
What went wrong? Was it fate, was this destiny? How could he hurt the one he had once loved? So many questions. He looked at Naomi yet again in the picture. She was so beautiful. He was realizing this after a very long time. What had gotten into him? What had led him outside, away from her? What made him become so brutal towards her? She must have gone through a lot. It was funny that he was realizing this after she was gone. If only she were around, he would make it up to her. He would do anything to earn favour in her eyes again. But she was gone. Gone to the winds. Blown away from the surface of the earth. The worst part of it, she wouldn’t forgive him, she just wouldn’t.
He had pleaded with her on her deathbed in this very house but all she did was shake her head in refusal. He had promised her that she would get better. He would treat her as the queen that she was. He would never drink again. He would never hurt her, never lay a hand on her, never. He even cried, real tears. He was sorry. She did not buy it. She was indifferent to his overnight conversion. All she did was shake her head from side to side. No, she would never forgive him.
As he sat on the table looking at the picture, a deep-rooted hatred for her developed at the pit of his stomach. Why wouldn’t she forgive him? Did she have to subject the rest of his life to guilt? Hadn’t she once vowed to stand by him through thick and thin? Why didn’t she forgive him? He was truly deeply sorry. This haunted him. It made him guilty. It made him a stranger in his own house. He now hated her. Hated her so much for not forgiving him.
A thought struck him. He was going to get rid of her from his life and house once and for all. He went to the window, opened it and threw the wedding picture into the night. He heard the glass on the picture’s frame shatter to pieces in the quiet night but he didn’t care. He headed straight for her wardrobe in the bedroom. He would evict all her clothes from his house and burn them. He opened the wardrobe and with one sweep of his hand all the clothes were of the hooks. He threw the clothes on the floor and on looking back into the wardrobe, he saw it.
It had been pushed to the far corner of the wardrobe. He looked closer at it. It quietly lay at its place. It seemed so unperturbed and provocative. So inviting. In it lay the script by which her life had been lived. It was her diary. The last episode! The last entry – he thought. He wanted to read their last encounter in her words because it was here that the key to his confusion lay.
He grabbed the diary and walked back to the sitting room trampling on the clothes he had thrown on the floor. Once on the sofa, he started flipping through the diary. He did not care to read earlier entries. All he wanted to do was read the last episode.
Had he read earlier entries he would have seen something like this;

Saturday 12th April 2004

Mbaluto came home drunk as usual. It is not this that bothered me. What bothered me is that in his drunkenness, he forced himself on me. I know I am his wife and it is part
of my marital duty but for heaven’s sake not when he is drunk! Where is the man I married?

Mbaluto did not have time for this and other earlier entries. Those of her sufferings at his hands. Of the beatings, of the cheatings, of the insults. Just because she didn’t have a job of her own. Just because he had to give her everything. Mbaluto did not have time for these entries. All he wanted was to read the last episode. To revisit the scene in his sober self, from her point of view. At last! There it was. He had opened the page that contained the last entry. It was quite lengthy as he had expected it to be. He reached for a cigarette, lit it and drew in a long puff. Let the reading begin.

Saturday 15th June 2004

Mbaluto has killed me. He came home drunk as usual and I served him Ugali and fried meat. He didn’t eat the food. Instead, he demanded to know where I had gotten the money to buy meat. The money he had left behind could not afford a quarter of a kilo of meat.
I didn’t work, he said, and so there was no way I could have my own money unless I was seeing another man. So where did I get the money?
I told him I had found two hundred shillings in his trouser while doing the washing yesterday and before I could even finish talking, he slapped me. Mbaluto slapped me so hard that I fell onto the carpet.
He was angry. Hadn’t he told me to give him all the money I found on his clothes? If I wanted money from him I had to ask. He kicked me on the floor and threw the plate of meat at me. Why was I stubborn, he was asking. Why couldn’t I simply follow instructions?
I told him that I did not find the two hundred shillings alone. That I also found a receipt for two at the Lucky Star Hotel. That the dinner, a room for two for the night and breakfast had cost him two thousand five hundred shillings. So I saw no problem in using just two hundred for a decent meal in the house.
I have never seen Mbaluto so mad. He beat me. So I was spying on him. So I was trying to curtail his freedom as a man. How could a woman try to ‘limit the oxygen’ of a man, was what he said.
He then kicked me on the chest, kicked me so hard on the chest as if he was fighting his fellow man. I felt a sharp pain in my heart. Vomit filled my mouth and when I let it out it was pure blood. Mbaluto has killed me.
This man I once loved. This man I once cherished. This man I once adored has become my undoing. He deserves to die. I will never forgive him for what he has done to me. Men like him deserve to die.
By the time Mbaluto finished reading the last episode, his whole shirt was awash with sweat. He should have taken her to the hospital. But how would he have explained it to the doctors? He thought the vomiting was mild and would stop on its own but it didn’t. She vomited blood until the day she died. He had killed her.
Her words rang in his head like the churchman’s bell. She would never forgive him. He didn’t deserve a life. Men like him should never be forgiven. They deserved to die. He, Mbaluto, deserved to die.
Why hadn’t he seen it before? It was so simple and it lay right below his nose. He deserved to die. He pulled out another cigarette and lit it. At last he felt at peace with himself. All the tension and anxiety had left him. He slowly pulled at the cigarette, probably his last. He looked at his house for the last time. He would miss it so much. It was four O’clock in the night. Now he was around but when the sun will be peeping in the east he will never be around!. He deserved to die. When tomorrow comes, he will be gone to the winds, blown away from the surface of the earth!

©2008 Otiato Opali