Chapter one

Bodi and Betty

A woman with a whip worked well on Bodi once. But Bodi had forgotten that he was attacked him on the same spot he stood now. Welts and lesions on his backside had healed, the skin stitched all right, and now crusted with dirt of neglected personal cares.

Why he was rounded up and whipped, made example of, Bodi didn’t know though the woman shouted at him, told him things he couldn’t grasp. He didn’t understand her when she barked that he was a bad treat to children. The woman had sworn any sober upright human being could‘ve done the same; whipped Bodi hard. That way deadened part of Bodi’s brain could be rekindled. And Bodi might dress up when roaming the streets next time.

Now Bodi stood six feet tall and love of his life, Betty, at her side, clueless she was hazarding herself not only for accompanying Bodi here but for her fashion of no clothes on.

The two of them leaned on a tall pillar wreathed with four-faced city clock .The pillar was painted white, the clock too, as was the inner surface of the clock where three hands twitched at digits in the circle. Floor beneath Bodi and Betty was cemented and the rest of the ground flowered, trimmed well, titillated ritually.

The area they were standing on was a wide land trapped between two blacktops running straight afar, one going into the city, the other leaving. The blacktops were beetled with vehicles.

As Bodi and Betty separately entangled with jumbled thoughts no Normal folks couldn’t bear and engines gunning about them, they laughed at nothing and talked weirdly, gesturing at objects riotous about.

Before Betty met Bodi, she was locked up, drugged ritually and sometimes she would see people, vehicles and buildings on the street while she stood behind high fence of Mathere mental hospital. She used to know people out there were blessed; otherwise she could’ve been with them, walking, talking, and riding away. One morning, she realized she wanted out so much she swayed a glancing blow at a doctor, kicked him on the crotched and as the white cloaked man staggered back, she kicked him hard below midriff, sending her victim on the wall. She watched unbothered as the respected doctor sunk down unconsciously. That was the day she escaped the hospital.

After she had fled to the gate, the guard there thought she was one of those visitors going out, allowed her out, gave her a warm send –off smile. She was wearing sporting floral full dress and flat shoes, her head shaved smooth. Free beyond the iron-gate of Mathere, Betty had trotted, went along walk-paths between buildings, crossed the streets, slipped dexterously between vehicles slowing at the zebra crossing, and went further, unheeded to her rumpling empty stomach and sweat misting her body.

In the afternoon that day, she was standing outside the hotel, looking at the people inside through glass wall, seeing them eating, her stomach still a pit overlong empty.

Even Bodi couldn’t remember that day they met. As it happened, he was a tall man leaning on the sidewall of the Paradise hotel, laughing at flies buzzing about his head. When his eyes happened on her, he stared at her with keenness. His stare, a magnet as a way to bringing her to him, worked all right. She came willingly. Betty was thinking maybe she had met him sometimes back, and she approached Bodi, just to be sure, returning his stare, which was laser than of upright person. Betty was never scared of men ; her lithe frame never dissuaded her even as she approached Bodi, looking at him straight. Standing before Bodi, looking up at him, she patted his left bicep, feeling his rough rind beneath her palm.

She said one word: “Food.”

It didn’t faze her that the man wore blue underwear only and they were standing close.

“Hungry? Bodi asked, staring into the eyes drinking him whole. He knew she was his kind. People not his kind couldn’t come close, as close as this woman was. Though she wore like them, her face heart-shaped face beautiful, Bodi got the whiff of her and was cocksure he was right about her origin.

He laughed and turned. The end she wanted achieved was food and if doing a tour to the rear side of the hotel, her guide a lunatic she seemed to trust, she had to follow closely, anxiety inflating her. Bodi’s back, she saw abstractedly, the furrow of Bodi’s spine split right down in the middle, his buttocks firm behind blue faded underwear and down his legs, hardened, callused lump glimpsing under the skin. Bodi was barefooted.

He had been having short memory for almost his entire life. The hut or rather a make-do tent he built for her he built alone.

Objects floated aboutthem.

Wind chaffed his bare skin.

Bodi liked the city. Betty too.

When Bodi built the tent he wanted it near the city but some guys ostracized him, ran his kind out the city for they were dirty and eyesore. Bodi however stood a structure not far away, used turpline fashioned of polythene bags stitched together and in the middle of the hut, and he dug a hole, inserted in a stave that went up the roof, supporting the structure. And since then they had come foraging food in the city, tourand meet friends, and in the night they’d be in their hut asleep on the earth floor and Bodi’s locking arms on her, as would a lover’s.

That day they first met, Bodi had grabbed Betty’s hand, led her behind the hotel and showed her a wastebin waist-high. Betty rifled through the wastebin brimful, found eclectic remains of chicken corpses, bones, meat, ugali andvegetable, even potatoes chips that she started off with.

It was just as well that she hadn’t eaten daylong. Seated haunches down on the cold veranda at the backyard of the hotel, she helped herself to bones that still needed further skinning, others that she sucked, siphoning out sweet marrows. She sopped up remains of ugali in the soup shallow disposable plate carried.

Bodi was watching, his eyes quite different this time. He could see her as men should. He had lost most senses netted inhis body but he was aware he was hard waist bellow, and that hadn’t happened for a very long time. Betty saw the bulge on the front of his pant, but thought nothing of it, the same way Bodi did.

She just eyed him from the side of her face, laughed in intermission, and ate in the wieldiest fashion.

Bodi had seen woman. Until now it was like he was seeing one for the first time. He gurgled with throaty laughter as if to assure her he meant no harm.

That day Bodi took her home and right on the floor, they discovered their old selves, realized they had more energy for exertion of a task they couldn’t name. Bodi was heavy when filling her but sweet all way to the moment he oozed out. Had she knew how to say thank you, her face wide-spread with delight would’ve helped the words out. When they strolled out next day, Betty had her hand in the crock of Bodi’s hand, what a husband and wife they were.

They had combed around for flotsams polluting the ambiance as though even in their world the ambiance should be made clean.

Had enough of standing as they day went passed them, Bodi stood straight, looked around as though picking clue then strode out.

It was smooth beneath his bare feet but not long for he reached the pebbled edged where the blacktop started. He stood still as he waited Betty to come. He couldn’t cross alone. Never.

Betty came, glanced up athim, her side long look beaming with smile. She always smiled at him. It was natural. Even herself not aware her lips had cracked delightfully.

They walked abreast, cut across, unbothered by the vehicles, as though saving the road-devils the trouble. Vehicles slowed, galvanized by two naked adults or restrained by the gods with peeled eyes for the likes of Bodi and Betty.

Only after they had crossed and were safe on the other side and Bodi was pacing ahead did a car hooted, a white Toyota, its driver had his elbow rested on the window frame and his head out, sight-seeing.

Betty turned tofind the driver staring at her, laughing. Before the car trundled past, Betty helped the man laugh, bent a little to level with the jeering head out the car window. She clutched at her knees with both hands, waved, looking normal in the few moments before Bodi realized the happenings at his back.

The moment Bodi find out what had went a trifle alone because Betty was catching up with another man right behind him, his jumbled train of thoughts stopped, and he canted his head back. He didn’t like what he saw.

He couldn’t walk more, not when a man and Betty were enjoying each other’s company, for that was what he saw.

Bodi kneeled fast, pried the earth for loose sizeable stone and found one before his was down on luck and his anger mounted.

When he stood he was armed anddangerous, his facecringed with anger and the hand that palmed the stone went behind him. Toyota hadn’t trundled far. That much the slow traffic ahead had guaranteed. Even better than a javelin, Bodi reared back his torso; the armed hand went back straight. Then he swung the hand, released the stone and it flew as he staggered forth, the throw depleting him.

‘Get that, idiot!’ Bodi screamed.

Ahead, at least fifty yards away, Toyota was hit at the back. The driver stiffened and squirmed, alerted to the blast right behind. Rear headlight was splintered, the red plastic cover broken, the ruins of it littering the road.

In vehicles trailing, occupants were shocked by the incidence. A man looked out through car window then thought better of it immediately, shut up the window.

It was dangerous out there. A man walking about naked, sweeping the earth hastily for another stone, and his naked woman standing aside, isolated as though unrelated to the deeds of her weirdo male companion.

Bodi was freaking them out, no doubt. He had no quarrel with them all the same, only the offending driver of Toyota. Given his nearness to success with stone-throwing, there was no telling what wreck he could do on the motorist on the outer lane, near where he stood quivering with rage and pointing at them accusingly. He wanted to pelt at them some more. He scoured around for stone, but none came to his quick use, all he saw were held tight underfoot.

Somewhere after Bodi hurled the stone, Betty elected not to partake in the attack. Not that she had parsed out that. It just happened she was herself, a woman with thoughts so jumbled sticking with one to the end was impossible.

But she had glowed at the first audience she got when that driver looked at her laughing. Now vehicles drove past, some with their windows shut, but there were eyes fastened to the scene outsides, eyes too discreet lest Bodi renew his attack.

Betty looked at Bodi cursorily, saw him standing, his body quaking. He was angrier than he could’ve been had he found a loose stone by now.

Then Betty started stomping, flailing her hands, shouting out her incoherent words.

She gathered momentum just as Bodi started to take notice of her, unaware of why she was capering about.

She held hands to her waist, and swung her waist around spanning a pretend hula hoop

‘Rejoice in the lord for time is nigh!

Rejoice!

Rejoice!

The song hadn’t been ingrained in her mind. At least Bodi hadn’t heard her singing until now.

It seemed like it had been there, readied, waiting to waft out.

She disarmed Bodi, beguiled him into a dance along with her. Bodi’s face that moments ago was contort with fury, now slackened, a cracking of smile forming.

He lurched at her side, his mind erased of everything but a jig with the lovely woman he swore was his forever.

He stayed with her in the rhythm. They sway back and forth as Betty sang, her voice fullerthan ever, sonorous.

Bodi didn’t know slightest of snatch of this song. He worked his mouth all the same.

Rejoice!

Rejoice!

Time nigh! Evil come crawling!

The lord there!

They switched from holding their hands akimbo and dancing side by side to a move that required Bodi to shake bodily in front of Betty as she to him. Like spring, they compressed, going down together. Like spring, they loosened, coming up slowly and paired.

In a big car trundling away, a woman was seated in the rear seat with her two children anda driver in the front seat. Commotion outside attracted her, willed her, and the children too pressed their faces against the closed, tinted window. The woman in the car dreaded that the move might give Bodi control over his woman. How she wished the car should swish away fast before Bodi saw Betty as the woman dancing naked as was he.

The thought hadn’t crossed Bodi’s mind even as he danced down, his genital chaffing hers in the frenzied body flow.

All he could see was her eyes, the dark storm in them readied with tears of joy, and her mouth, the thick lips behind which lies her yellowy teeth and a rusted tongue.

By now they had become a spectacle not only for the occupants in the vehicles. Behind them, it started with pedestrians quitting the walks, feeding themselves with splendor of nude adults doing weird dance at the roadside. More pedestrians joined afterwards until they were a perimeter wall crowding Bodi and Betty, two dancers free like birds.

By the time it was over, at least one hour had gone unnoticed, the evidence in the city clock unbelievable.

Betty and Bodi were beaded with sweat. Bodi’s bald head gleaming. Betty’s breath was rapid, her chest rising and falling fast.

Wall of onlookers was porous now, others having got tired of watching. And the traffic had cleared ahead. Overhead, the higher ceiling was smoke-white with cuddling clouds, the sun etched there harsh, as though it had descended down some more.

Left with few onlookers behind them, Betty and Bodi begun the walk.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Tag der Veröffentlichung: 18.11.2016

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