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Borrowing and Vanishing

I had an early-morning caller, who could not conceal his anxiety to see me immediately. His bangs on my door were deafening, bad for the Ear, even frightening! If I had heard the unsettling bangs after 11:00pm, I would have proceeded towards the door armed with our kitchen knife or tiptoed towards it to first try a peep through its identity–revealing key-hole.

“Am I in trouble? Who’s got into one, just now?”

My thoughts began to race wildly, my heart a keyboard as I slid out of my pajamas for formal trousers that fetch wearers greater respect after 7:00am. By choice, I was not thinking of an early-morning thief, house-breaker or door breaker. It must be a friend in need or perhaps, a brother full of some terrifying news about another relation of ours!”

My first guess was the accurate one; for no sooner had I unlatched the bangs-receiving wood door than I saw Ugochukwu standing damned close to it, looking as worried as Hell! Disappointingly, Ugochukwu, Twenty-Three, didn’t seem ‘The God’s Eagle’ exact interpretation of his name. He was rather wearing a very perturbed facial expression with dismal creases on his forehead.

Fair Ugochukwu Evans, who could no longer his studies advance, was my childhood friend, playmate and school mate in The Primary but also one of the few guys I could confide my scandals to and listen to their late-hour counseling, genuine sighs or listeners’ coughs.

Ah! Ugochukwu, don’t try to tell me you’re in some shit or that somebody I know has slept with his sister!”

“My Hypertensive Mother” Iyk.” He replied.

“And you know what – I shan’t be my true self, until you’ve lent me N20,000.00… Actually, I need Thirty!”

“Twenty What! Where The Heavens will I get that kind of money for a lending?”

Still for all my desperation, I showed undisguised interest in a true picture of Ugochukwu’s mother’s immediate conditions. I thought I heard Ugochukwu heave a sigh of relief and actually saw him half-smile. No doubt, my curiosity about the very color and smell of his mother’s problem had wrought The Magic! There and then, Ugochukwu Evans stripped bare how his Mother’s High Blood Pressure had hit the crisis point, yester-night, The Poor Lady helplessly turned into a writhing bundle on bare floor, with the pitiable drama stretching into the wee hours. Genuine fears that she would give up the ghost if nothing was done made him rush her to a nearby clinic reputed for handling such cases with relative success. Incidentally, The Doctor Owner of the clinic had specialized in Cardiology and purportedly, along roads while he walked them, often saw in the air very bad hearts and what he should do about them! All the same, Ugochukwu had continued, The Doctor who had taken up her treatment would discontinue it, if a deposit of N20, 000.00 was not made in her behalf by the concerned in the next twelve hours! Promptly, Ugochukwu wove in that he would give me back the money in a week’s time. No Full Story nor Half…

Of a certainty, I knew about Ugochukwu’s Mother’s Battle with High B.P and later noticed that the sixty-five-year-old woman was particularly selective about the kinds of foods she ate - mostly, dishes with little or no salt in them as well as the cholesterol-free.

“Can she have risked some very salty meal or the fatty and with that authorized blood flow to go hay wire?”

In short, I had no more struggling doubts that Ugochukwu had told me Abrahamic Truth… and because Irreplaceable Life was involved, I did not want to pretend any longer that I would first get to my bank to withdraw money, before he might get the wished sum.

A sum of that amount was in my inner room, having had to go to bank some two days ago to make a withdrawal for a different purpose.

With my concern spreading my feet, I hurried them to my cupboard quartering a suitcase in which I kept money and coolly resting N20, 000.00. The N20, 000.00 I had agreed to hand Ugochukwu I did and further wished him The Best of Luck.

Ugochukwu was thrilled like there had not been a terrible yester night. He was off his feet swept by amazement; grateful. A Human Excitement!

God knows “Why?” he soon blew me a kiss - A Wild One! – which I would have rejected in public and, repeating his promise to return the money in a week time, sped off.

That was the end! Ugochukwu was to remain unreachable after a full week, Two… Three. Astonishingly became invisible!

At their dilapidating family house, I met his elder sister. She had not a single valuable word she could vomit about his whereabouts.
“Your Mum, I believe, is much better now” I politely remembered to state, trusting its having implied my knowledge of her having been sick, lately.

I was not sure Ugochukwu’s elder sister’s wordless nod to the remark included the idea that their mother had received emergency medication from a cardiologist doubling as owner of a clinic. The nod, a carelessly brief one, however did not negate the fact of a sick mother, whose brave battles had been with an off - and - on High Blood Pressure.

“Then for Sweet N20,000.00 Ugochukwu purposely and shamelessly worsened his mother High B.P”

Of all the things I could be moved to do, it was a snort that clinched selection… When I might have whined like a puppy, whimpered like a child or snarled like a hyena!

Even, after a full month, Ugochukwu remained inaccessible…

Then, on every alternate day, I would surface at their doorstep to ask about him all over again but was not receiving helpful answers.

Not long, suspiciously, my appearances at Ugochukwu’s house for him began to coincide with his exits only a couple of minutes earlier, the bearer of the information his brother, whose fire-spitting eyes and developed muscles forbade me from prudently proposing waiting for Ugochukwu in their sitting room.

It was not until three months after that I caught sight of Ugochukwu in a remote part of Umanaran Town. I gripped his waist, lest he should run for it! Irreversibly, it was an ugly scene for two persons who had been getting along as the best of pals. But the important thing was my Twenty Thousand Naira and its repossession. I had to follow Ugochukwu to where he said he had kept a sum of money of that amount, got it from his and fled.

A Beautiful Rare Miracle, warranting a testimony!”

Would you believe it? The Ragamuffin surfaced again at my door a month later to ask me a similar favor, though, this time a mere N5,000.00. He needed it to complete the sum he already had for the purchase of an examination form, whose sale was ending on that day in all the banks.

There was a big anxiety on Ugochukwu’s face: a far greater desperation than the one which was engraved on his face, when it had to be Twenty Grand. Ugochukwu was even kneeling down before me, hands worshipfully clasped and lips with eyes promising to repay the loan that very night!

Of course, I had more than the amount on me… Five or six of it!

But I was not in the least moved to look in Ugo’s direction. When I did it was with a “Hey Guy! I have an appointment I dare not miss and now wish to lock my door!”