A MAN AT FAULT by Ebrima Jallow

A MAN AT FAULT

by Ebrima Jallow

(Ndaanan, Vol. 1, Issue 1, September 1971)

He used to sit on top of the packing cases, his pipe clenched in his teeth. His name was Ali and he was an old retired soldier, still wearing a heavy, old army coat, even though it was quite hot under the sun. He had a grim, haggard and deeply lined face, thick and bushy eyebrows: hair sprouted from his ears and he looked every inch the old soldier that he was. Although small and lean, there was nevertheless something impressive and authoritative in his bearing, and his startlingly red eyes—suggestive of temper—looked at you quite steadily. He was careful, simple minded, dogmatic religiously and a great believer in law and order. In fact, his private belief was that obedience and discipline were only achieved by beating. As a consequence, he distributed blows indiscriminately on the face, chest or back of his children, in the certainty that there was no other way to bring them up.

Some people hinted that he was afraid of his wife. Others pointed out sen­tentiously that his wife must have used a ju-ju on him, else how could one explain the fact that this man of dignity, this old soldier who had already proven himself in the sands of far-off North Africa, let his wife scold him and generally dominate him?

Then pay-day came. Ali, old soldier—now turned watchman—was very happy going home. He had ten pounds in his pocket. Few Gambians of his age and station could boast of as much as ten pounds on pay-day in his day. Yes, he was indeed lucky in his job. This luck he naturally attributed to the intervention of the Almighty in his troubled existence. He nearly caught himself wishing that God had intervened in his domestic affairs instead. He budgeted his salary in his mind as he walked along Wellington Street on his way home: coal, firewood, rice, cooking-oil, lamp-oil, something held back for his mother and a little cash for his in-laws. Tumata, his wife, would be happy today, he thought. He knew by heart what she would say, and he would not give her a chance to say all of it this time.

"Don't come complaining to me about being broke, Ali!" Her voice would be sharp with resentment and there would be desperation behind it. In the early days of their marriage the sharpness had been less, more a thing of tone than of emotion. These days it scraped at his nerves.

"Don't come complaining to me because you have no money. You think you'll ever have money if you are arranging to have another wife? But you have no sense at all; these women will take all they can get even if it is blood. They are going to take it and expect you to say 'thank you'."

"You don't understand. You are so rough on me and yet you don't even try to understand."

"That's not my fault."

"God knows it is not your fault, but there's nothing we can do about it. You know very well, Tumata, 1 would never marry another wife if I already had even one son only. But we have no son, so I have to marry again."

"That's not the reason why you are planning on marrying again. The real reason is that you think that you are quite a lady's man still. Why don't you be honest, Ali, and admit that you just want a young wife?"

"But I have to have a son. You understand that at least, don't you?”

"But you know that I am all right row. My stomach has ceased troubling me." Then it would go on. Ali's voice quiet, soft: Tumata's voice rasping. It hadn't been like that when they first started living together, just after he and his first wife, Sala, had separated. Now the nagging was wearing him down.

Usually, after a few hours of it, he would leave the house, sometimes slamming the door, more often letting it close behind him softly. Then he would walk, his legs heavy with weariness, the meal Tumata had given him a burden in his stomach. Most of the time he went to Alpha's shop and sat slim and straight on the counter chewing his cola-nut slowly and contemplatively, making it last until he knew Tumata was in bed. Sometimes he had a little money he had held back, and then he would have a ginger or even occasionally some mineral water. If he didn't have the money even for a cola-nut, Alpha would trust him, smiling at him but saying nothing. When Ali went home, it would not matter how harsh the words had been earlier. He would move quietly as he always did, undressing in the dark, slipping into bed beside the tired woman who was his wife. Then a slim brown hand would reach out and he would grasp his wife's shoulder tightly, holding onto it as if desperate. This way, sleep crept on him, obliterating the ache of living.

But tonight, yes, tonight was pay-day. Tonight, there would be no need to leave the house, no preliminary quarrelling or nagging. He would not let her get to that stage before he pulled out the ten pounds and tell her all about how his salary had been increased. He thought of telling her that he had given up his idea of marrying a second wife. But he knew this would be futile. She wouldn't believe him. Ali's face assumed a vacant, far-away look. "My salary had been increased" he said to himself. "I am no longer a young man, in fact at forty-four, I do feel that I am not far from old age. No, I don't think I'll marry another wife. It's not Tumata's fault that we have no son. It's all my fault. I am a murderer. My mother warned me that with these red eyes of mine, I should be more watchful over losing my temper than other men with ordinary eyes. I paid no heed and I killed my Son."

Ali, as he walked, was blind to all movement around him. He saw himself again on that fateful day three years ago. Tumata was pregnant. In his blind rage, he had one day given her a terrible beating. At the end of it, Tumata had crumpled on the floor, unmoving. He was certain she was dead. But later at the hospital, where Ali's neighbours had taken Tumata, he was informed that Tumata had had a mis­carriage. The still-born baby had been a boy. To the doctor's inquiry about how Tumata came to be in such a condition, Ali's neighbours conveniently explained that she had slipped on the slime in front of their gate and unable to stop herself, had rolled into one of the open gutters near the fence.

On Sundays, when Ali sat with his friends at Alpha's shop, they would all make jokes about how Ali allowed his wife to bully him mercilessly or they would ask him why he allowed her to rule him so. To all this Ali would make no reply. He would sit immobile, chewing his cola-nut slowly and contemplatively. But deep in his brain he knew his guilt. He had murdered his son. Let his wife scold him, let her bully him. He would never retaliate.

Nevertheless, Ali still believed in obedience and discipline and in his own par­ticular method of remedying any lack of these two factors in his own children. Any­time any of his daughters misbehaved, he beat them.

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(At the time of publishing this short story, Ebrima Jallow was a young graduate in science working for the Fisheries Department)