The villa stood starkly against the surrounding. It was three stories tall, with a collection of glinting windows and massive columns. The villa’s roof blazed a deep earthy brown under the sunlight, and it was surrounded on all sides by fields and farms left to fallow, so that standing at the gate was akin to gazing into the mouth of a great forest. Only from the windows of the top floor could one see the village in the distance, the small squares of huts and settlements only a short walk away.
Sadi, the gardener, lived in the villa when the residents arrived for the last three months of the year. For a short while, he could leave his farm to his brother and attend to the needs of the villa and its occupants. He had a small room that jut out into the garden. The pay was good, even more than what he’d earned in all the months before then. Even after he’d sold off all his harvest.
Sadi tended to more than just the gardens, and though Alhaji, his employer, had initially hired him solely for that activity, the villa had revealed needs of its own. He tended to the open gravelled space at the front of the house and the lush gardens at the back, set traps for the rodents that’d made their home in the nooks and crannies, fixed the old, gurgling plumbing, and now and then, ran errands for Alhaji and his wife, Amarya.
Alhaji, like Sadi, was a middle-aged man, but while Sadi was thin and strung taut from years of labour, his employer wore opulence in the tilt of his shoulders, the soft drawl of his voice. His surname, Ladan, was well-known around the country. One of those old money families who were perennial players in politics.
Alhaji’s wife, Amarya, was a quiet figure who moved around the villa like a ghost. Sadi had never heard her speak more than a few sentences, and he could never quite recall what her voice sounded like. She was thin, with marked, sharp features. She wouldn’t be called beautiful but there was something attractive about the sensuous curl of her lips, the strands of hair always peeping out from beneath her silk veils, her big eyes.
That day when they arrived, Sadi was tending to the garden. The white jeep zoomed across the gravel. The couple sat in the vehicle for a while. Sadi, hidden behind the frangipani and hibiscus, couldn’t hear what they were saying, but he could see they appeared to be having an argument. Alhaji made broad gestures with his hands while Amarya sat rooted. A moment later she exited the vehicle and trotted along the gravelled path and into the villa. Sadi waited for a few moments before extricating himself from the vines and branches. As he approached the vehicle, shears in hand, Alhaji stepped out. His beard had sprouted grey and his paunch was more noticeable.
Sadi bowed in greeting. Alhaji gave him a sharp nod and told him to take the luggage in.
Inside, the villa was crammed with pieces of furniture, luxurious and of varying styles. There were three sitting-rooms and a library with shelves of thick books. On the walls were paintings. One small room had been taken up entirely by a large television and a snooker table. The staircase was a wooden, gliding affair. Sadi went up the steps with the luggage, the thick carpeting completely muffling the sound of his feet. The bedrooms were large and airy and filled almost entirely by chests, drawers and four post beds.
Now, Sadi stopped at the bedroom on the second floor, which the couple always used. There was a ruckus going on. Voices, and something that he thought was a slap.
He cleared his throat noisily and knocked.
Amarya opened the door. On her right cheek were hand prints. Her face was smudged by ruined mascara. Her eyes were enormous. He was surprised he’d never noticed just how big they were.
“Thank you, Sadi,” she said. Her voice was breathless, just above a whisper. It reminded Sadi of a cool breeze stealing into a room in the thick of a July heat. She wheeled in the bag. Just for a moment, as Amarya made to close the door, Sadi saw Alhaji’s scowling face at the other end of the room.
Sleep didn’t come easy to Sadi that night. Amarya’s voice circled in his head like a whirlwind. He went over her teary face again and again, until they seemed to defy all definition in the eye of his mind, until she was a luminous point in the thick of the whirlwind.
**
In the morning Sadi went into the village to get fresh loaves of bread and fried fish. When he returned to the villa the couple were entertaining a visitor out at the gazebo. The man was short and thickset. His hands glinted with rings. He was leaning towards Alhaji when Sadi laid the loaves of bread and fried fish wrapped in newspaper. Amarya, off to the side, had a dreamy look on her face, and now her eyes flitted on Sadi. She blinked once, lazily.
“I heard from a good source the delegates will be meeting tomorrow,” said the visitor.
Alhaji proceeded to curse the delegates and to ask how much they’d been paid for the backstabbing. Amarya doled out the fish on white ceramic plates. She disappeared into the villa and returned with a kettle of tea. The visitor, having delivered the news, seemed to have no other opinion on the subject. He only nodded solemnly at Alhaji’s rants.
Sadi retired to his room where he had a clear view of the gazebo, and the morning air was crisp enough to carry their voices over. He stood by the window, watching. Above his head, a line of ants made a dark trail on the wall.
“We will deal with it,” said the visitor.
Alhaji grunted, blew on his cup and took a sip. “Where are you off to from here?”
“To see the chairman.”
“Stay the night then.”
“Oh, thank you, but I must be on my way soon. He must not know I made this detour.”
Alhaji was busy tearing into the fish on his plate, holding up the white flesh and fishing out bones. Amarya sat stiffly, and occasionally she’d steal a few bites of bread.
“Do you still sing?” The visitor asked.
Amarya looked startled. Alhaji barked a laugh as if the question was incredulous. He said, “She no longer does that. I can’t have her in the limelight.”
“Back in the day I used to hear you on the radio all the time.”
Alhaji sat back in his chair. He rolled out a cigarette from a pack, offered another to the visitor who lit up both. For a moment, as Alhaji exhaled, all Sadi could see was a spiral of smoke encircling his head.
“Come on then,” said Alhaji, “sing something.”
“Oh, she doesn’t have to bother—”
“But I want her to sing.” Alhaji gestured with the hand that held the cigarette. “Sing one of your popular songs. It was years ago. Do you even remember them?”
The visitor shifted in his chair. Amarya had her gaze locked on her plate. Her discomfort did not bother Alhaji who was letting out smoke from his nose. She began to sing, her voice at first warbling, then steady at the end of the first refrain. Sadi had heard the song on the radio severally. It was a song about youth and unrequited love. When Amarya finished there was utter silence, and then the visitor picked up an unsteady applause. “Such a beautiful voice,” he said, with a tight smile.
Sadi could see Amarya holding on tight to the edge of her seat. He swallowed a wave of bile.
“I think I should go lay down for a while,” said Amarya, rising. “I have a headache.” The visitor began to voice an enquiry, but Alhaji waved it away, assuring him she was alright.
Sadi watched Amarya’s slim figure trudge across the gravel and inside the house. The great doors clanged close.
**The visitor left around midday and shortly after banks of dark clouds grew on the horizon. Sadi rushed out into the garden and gathered the pots of seedlings, and by the time he took the last one in, he was dripping wet. The rain fell and lashed like punishment. It stopped as quickly as it started. Sadi changed into dry clothes. Ankle-deep water had filled the yard, and it was getting out somewhere—the gurgling sounds filled the air.
Alhaji called him from the villa’s door. The roof was leaking. Sadi went in. From the banisters of the third floor, he looked down. The distance wasn’t much. But then, heights could be deceptive, he knew. Yet, he imagined his body shifting over the edge, losing hold of the banister. Accidents happened; he knew. The line between life and death was an incredibly thin one.
He heard the couple before he saw them.
“It’s not working,” she said.
“We need more time. It has only been what—four days?”
She mumbled something.
He gave a sharp, cruel laugh. “You know I hate it when you nag. I really do.”
Her voice grew teary. “It’s not really my fault, is it? Nothing I do seems to make any difference. You used to say it’s because you were busy and unavailable… but here we are and you still can’t put in the effort.”
There was a gasp followed by the sound of glass shattering.
Sadi entered the living room. Right at the corner, where the lush red rug ended, the cream wall sported a yellow splatter. On the floor, the remnants of a glass cup twinkled.
Alhaji pointed to a section of the ceiling, stained yellow and swollen pregnant. “Get somebody to fix that,” he said. Then he went downstairs.
Sadi stood beneath the swollen ceiling. He determined the problem must be from the roof itself. He said this to Amarya. When he didn’t receive a reply, he turned around and found her standing still a few paces away, her gaze locked on the stain on the wall. From this angle, he observed her profile, her slim, lithe form. He cleared his throat and repeated himself.
She turned to stare at him blankly. “Yes?”
“I know a roofer in the village. I’ll get him.”
“Please do,” she said. “Before it rains again.”
It was very unlikely that it’d rain again, Sadi thought. Already the air was crisp with the first fingers of harmattan. He wanted to correct her but kept his mouth shut. He went to the pieces of glass and began to pick them.
Amarya rushed over. “Use something. You’ll hurt yourself.”
But already he was done picking them up. He poured it all in the remaining half of the cup’s stem. She looked at his palms, wide as shovels, thick with calluses. Her gaze was piercing and he felt the strange urge to hide his arms. This close her perfume wafted over him. He was going to say something but he’d forgotten what it was. Her eyes, as luminous as moons, stared at him, almost expectantly. He blinked twice, mumbled something and shuffled down the stairs.
When he threw the shards of glass into the bin, he saw he’d suffered a cut on the edge of his palm. Blood welled and welled. He didn’t feel the pain until he’d gone out into the village.
That night, as he lay down to sleep, a single piercing scream tore through the air. So brief was it that he thought he must have imagined it.
The next morning at the gazebo, while Alhaji wolfed down his bread and fish, Amarya sat wooden beside him. An ugly, purple bruise stretched from her temple to her jaw. The size of it was so outrageous Sadi was tempted to ask if she’d done her makeup wrong. But as he laid the fish down earlier, her eyes had flitted up to him, the right swollen grotesquely.
**Alhaji went for a walk after his meal, and when he returned, he passed through the garden. Sadi watched him from his window. He could tell the man had no taste for finery; he couldn’t see the carefully pruned flowers, wet and bursting with colours. The big bright blooms of hibiscus, the paper-like bracts of bougainvillea, the sweet-smelling jasmine. Alhaji stubbed his cigarette on the stem of the young guava tree. Sadi felt a twitch beneath his eye.
He went out into the garden.
“Sah,” he said.
Alhaji looked up at him. The junction box in his room smelt funny, said Sadi. Alhaji started for Sadi’s room, never looking back to see if he was following.
The room was dark and cold, even with the windows open, sunlight didn’t stream in. It was like the villa’s weight was a shield, an oppressive hand. Alhaji strode to the junction box, knocking the metal encasement around until he found the lever. He hadn’t removed his shoes and he’d tracked mud in.
Sadi took the shovel at the corner, raised it above his head and brought it down in a vicious arc. Alhaji let out a low groan, tumbled down, shuddered, and was still.
For a while Sadi stood there breathing in the dark. After what seemed like minutes, hours perhaps, he caught a whiff of Amarya’s perfume. She stood at the doorway, looking down at the scene. He could see her chest rising and falling.
Sadi lit his torch and the light filled up Alhaji’s face, tendrils of chest hair beneath the white jellabiya, pudgy thighs looking almost grotesque in white shorts. The man’s eyes were glazed over and empty of light. Sadi knew a dead animal when he saw one; it elicited only one of two responses from him—it was either to be skinned and eaten or disposed of. Alhaji’s eyes, looking at him, without really seeing him churned his stomach, and when he finally broke away to look at Amarya again, the light in her eyes, which for just an instant was of savage glee, made him shiver.
The gate clanged close. There were voices outside, footsteps crunching gravel. Sadi dashed to the window: it was Tanimu, the roofer and two of his apprentices, lugging between them a metal ladder and a box of tools.
“Sadi,” Tanimu called. “Are you in there? Sorry I’m late. I had to get some gum.”
They were almost at the door.
Sadi cast around wildly. There was nowhere to hide the body. Amarya hadn’t spoken, and now she sank to her knees, holding Alhaji’s feet.
She let out a wail.
—–
Image: Copilot AI remixed