FATE HATH NO CHOICE - SHORT STORY

FATE HATH NO CHOICE Short Story by ANANIYA ALICK PONJE Above the cold silence, the wailing was very piercing. Nakana, the mother of the diseased, narrated between her wailing how much she had expected from her son, her only child who was now peacefully resting in a gleaming coffin that was coated with white Formica and was partly draped with a white linen. To the poor bereaved woman, life meant nothing in the absence of her only child, her only pillar of hope. She had banked all her pride on him, but now he was a corpse waiting to be interred in no more than an hour. She remembered how much she had struggled single-handedly to send him to school – those winter mornings when she could cover distances of not less than ten kilometers on bare foot to look for piece-works just to make sure her only child got the best education so far. Her husband had only been spending the little money he had had on drink. She also remembered those gentle jokes her son would crack when he returned from school. They were all gone. His soft smiles would never be seen on any other human being’s face. They were gone. “What shall I do?” lamented Nakana. “Richard, my only son, you should have waited and depart a little later. Why this to me now? Why? Who sent you, my son?” The lamentation was a complete story that narrated how the young man lying breathless in the coffin had come to the end of his twenty-two-year chapter. “It is not long ago since your father closed his eyes eternally and you have decided to go and join him, my son. You should have told me and I would have organized a farewell party in this life. What do I have to do now? I am left with nothing. What should I live for?” Those trying to comfort her had a hard task and their efforts came up against a brick wall. The wailing reached the climax when finally the coffin bearing the remains of Richard was being lowered into his final resting place. His school mates lowered their heads in sorrow and paid their last respect to their departed colleague as her mother jumped in ultimate sorrow. “…dust to dust…,” bellowed the Reverend. Nakana was now banging her frail hands on the wreaths laid on the fresh tomb. She wished it were a nightmare from which she could wake up and breathe a sigh of relief. Why would lightning strike in the same place twice? Only three months ago, she had been sitting at the breakfast table with her husband who had revealed nothing about his failing health or that he would be visiting his doctor. He had been diagnosed with a disease of the inflammation of lungs and he had not told his wife either. When she had arrived at the hospital three hours later, her husband had been lying there on the hospital bed that had become his deathbed, breathless, eyes closed and a thick black lined wrapped around his belly. Stains of blood had been clear on the linen. It had been an unsuccessful medical operation. His facial features which had looked so strained at the breakfast table five hours earlier or so had relaxed. And now it was her only child – from whom much had been expected since much had been given. Above all, life meant everything. All her dreams had been shattered into smithereens. What a painful and sad return for her unwavering efforts to educate her only child. “…death saddens the heart but it is a perfect tool of sharpening our understanding. When man is born, all is left of him is to die. Birth is life’s most wonderful moment; death life’s most painful reality,” the Reverend preached as the burial ceremony was approaching the end. The preaching only exacerbated Nakana’s sorrow and now her eyes were becoming turgid. Tears could no longer flow from them. Picking her late son’s necklace, she slipped its pendant between her fragile fingers. The object was going to be the epitaph to the twenty-one years she had spent with her son and now she was sorrowing with every fibre of her being. “But death has no choice,” Nakana whispered through the cool atmosphere. As the sun was setting, Richard’s death was an absolute reality to his mother. She decided that she had to live to make a virtue of necessity for she did not find the deep essence of living. Richard was an awfully principled man. He was also a hard-worker when it came to school. After being selected to college, many people from his village had challenged him that he would finally succumb to peer pressure and lose all his sound principles but he proved them wrong until when he was in his fourth year. As he walked in corridors, girls stood still, feasting their eyes on him. Handsome and always smart, he had no parallel. When the temptations of the fresh came his way, he did not fight tooth and nail to deal with them. The statement ‘I am on a mission’ would comfortably escape from his mouth and waft into his tempters’ ears. That was all – he was on a mission and he had to accomplish it. “What is your mission, Richard?” his room-mate asked him one calm night before the two drifted off to sleep. Richard smiled and cleared his throat as if he was about to address a very big rapt audience. “You see, mesho, I want to leave by example. This college is associated with all sorts of nasty things. People here drink like fish and the place is a den of all disreputable people and you know what – when you go out there and tell people you are from this college, they have no respect for you. All they see in you is hell.” He paused as though allowing his room-mate to absorb what he had said. The moon shone fitfully in the heavens and partly illumined Richard’s bed. He heaved a deep sigh as though a heavy load had been taken off his shoulder. “The kind of freedom that we have should not be something to make us go astray. We have to make good choices out of our own free will. There is a big cattle ranch in Iponjola but it has no fence. People always wonder why the cattle never wander away. It is because of the green pastures on the ranch. We should not go astray in virtue of freedom but we should look at the good things that surround us. They should pull us towards where they are.” Richard’s room-mate nodded in approval. Exactly three weeks before writing his final year exam, Richard’s friend, Luntha, visited him after being tied up with assignments for about a month. He put up in another hall of residence. He appeared to be a young man who was in perfect harmony with his soul. “Have you heard that we are demonstrating against the government’s delay to give us our book and stationery loans?” Luntha asked with keen interest. “Of course I do.” “So what are you here for?” “I am on a mission.” “You have always said that, Richard. Come on; let us be part of it. After all, what sort of mission would be greater than the mission to fight for a good cause? Moreover, it is going to be just a peaceful demonstration,” he tried to convince him, blinding him with all sorts of philosophies. Richard tried to resist but he could not find enough ground on which to base his refusal. And so he finally gave in to his friend’s wish. What was supposed to be a peaceful demonstration turned into a horrible violence. The students went on rampage, vandalizing everything within their vicinity. The police tried to contain the violence by threatening them by shooting in the air. It never worked. Meanwhile, the students attacked the police themselves. One policeman lowered his gun and shot several times at the demonstrating students. As they dispersed, three of them were lying on the ground, blood oozing from different parts of their bodies. Two hours later, news about the death of the three students was disseminating like wildfire. Among them was Richard, the man on a mission.