Just After He Disappeared!
With a furrowed forehead I would give it a long thought that produces answers. In the end it would turn out a wish washy exercise with not a single helpful clue to the puzzle.
Why are humans later worried about the absence of persons they skeletally cared for, while they were still within a reach? How is it that we often lose appetite and go through worse emotional stress, after the relocation of men and women, who had mattered little to us as next-door neighbors?
Sure, it would have jolted an onlooker how Basil Amos had made a routine of breezing into Augusta’s house each morning to drop his “Hello”, flash her arch smiles and place a solidarity right hand on her right or left shoulder, sometimes with an enquiry if she needed his help or anything.
“Oh! Thanks for your concern”, Augusta would reply to such, reeling off her gratitude like some memorized verse. Mostly, Augusta would be anxious to see the back of Basil and openly dreaded his wanting to continue his solicitations…
But Basil, A Good Mind Reader, always devised a way of quickly withdrawing from Augusta John’s presence by way of saving his face...
“Ah! I’ve just remembered an appointment I’d better keep with a police officer on behalf of a friend! Or “Alas! Augusta, it’s nearly time I took my evening dose of the anti-malaria a doctor had placed me on!”
No exaggeration intended, any witness of the pitiful scene would have spared Basil The Biggest Sorry or Second Biggest while trying, last minute; to repair what has gone bad!
“Well, hasn’t this got a thing to do with my being in this ruthless woman’s village”, Basil had once thoughtfully felt to ask self, as he got his legs moving.
Perhaps, Basil should have alternately wondered whether or not Augusta’s shocking coldness towards him hadn’t a lot to do with his being a holder of only a First Degree, for Augusta’s last rejected eccentric boyfriend held a Masters in Sociology. Augusta shall have been less the wiser, by the time she settles for a new guy with a lower academic qualification! Still possibly Augusta, A Pathological Hater of The Broad-Nosed could easily observe, each time Basil popped in for his Ridiculous Hello, that he had luckily escaped it with a Glorified Pointed Nose, in reality A Flat or Broad one. On Augusta it never dawned that whoever genuinely judges another a deserving subject of loathing often finds the tireless imagination for exhibiting it.
Never for once did Augusta John express a wish to have back Basil Amos’ company after attending to the imagined emergency. To her each was a release from a killing pressure and unauthorized male intrusion into her contented world.
Often, Basil regretted his having crossed Augusta’s Path and start recreating the scenes in which he had got rebuffed, as he tried to get closer to her. On some days he would be weighing the possible lasting solutions to The Entire Rubbish?
He, Basil would not be in a hurry to forget Augusta’s last painful snobbery of his person, when he had attempted to join them in a fresh Ludo Game upon meeting the conclusion of a previous one between her and a male co-player. Augusta John had looked like she would immodestly dump the game, if Philemon, the other fellow, approved of Basil’s inclusion in it. With an as much immodestly knit brow, Augusta had to remind Basil that a mature human being returning from work and heading for home would never for Sweet Ludo Game decide to switch directions…
“And exactly you want to do whereas you know it’s also a bit abnormal”, Augusta honestly felt she should add.
Basil had to, shame-faced, take Augusta’s wise advice to go home, take his bath, eat, rest and later, if he still felt like it, resurface for a ludo Game with her…
In the end, Basil was sure that the person to viciously attack on this matter or keep silently hating his very existence was Frederick John, Augusta’s elder by three years, who had taken a special liking to him and sworn to make him brother-in-law by pairing him up with Aug. Then, Basil was a newcomer in their village and to their only secondary school, where he was Senior English Teacher. Frederick had got his Aug. sister introduced to Basil and in her presence made a point of capturing his fine points. Interviewed Basil would admit that it was his prettiest moment with Augusta John, as then she showed none of her present bossy air, besides being wonderfully attuned to his company. That day, too, Augusta was in her imaginative best, volunteering as she did to quench Basils’ thirst with a cup of cold water after reading it on his face and further contriving running one more useful errand for him!
“Indeed, the person I should hate the shit out of is Fred… Even kill him!”
Basil had no qualms about vocalizing his wish that God, some day, take The Soul of Fred for making this unsolicited match.
But No! God righteously preferred to grant Basil a request he should have made for being inoffensive and much cleaner: A Dramatic Transfer from his present station and school to a new one!
“What!”
Overjoyed Basil Amos could not help exclaiming another “What!” His sense of triumph had the quality of that of The Still Cultural African fathering his first child and it had turned out The Treasured Male! In a manner of speaking too, like the United States of America after successfully pounding the strongholds of Enemy Terrorists…
For all his elation, Basil guardedly hid the transfer development from every human and animal in Giara while he kept assembling together his things for journey time.
It was on the very day of his resumption of duty at his new school-station that he mischievously released the bombshell to the Family of Augusta…
“No! You don’t say that one more time”, Augusta’s immediate younger sister, Lucy, had said like a warning, with it betraying for the first time that Augusta wasn’t going to bless nor thank God over the new development.
Two weeks and no Basil Amos looking in to simply drop his “Hello!” dried up Augusta John: made her start walking with unsure steps!
It was time to start asking people, whom she guessed had Basil’s phone number to spare her the eleven figures, beginning with elderly Fred.
Unbelievably, Fred had either omitted or not bothered to ask Basil his GSM number nor release his to him…
“And you’d kept spreading the fantastic news that both of you are in-laws”, Augusta blurted out to a great length disappointed. Ready she seemed to materialize at Basil’s new station miles and miles away, if he would be kind enough to call her on the phone and make it a request.
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