LOVE IS OLDER THAN MANKIND

LOVE IS OLDER THAN MANKIND

Walking lazily, bottled mineral water sparkling in his hand, MacKay hoisted his rumpled jacket as he entered the waiting room and headed straight for the counter to buy a train ticket to Monze. There he dropped his bag on the floor to take a long swig from the bottle before edging closer to address a brown diva wearing some green chiffon and a Man U red scarf around her neck.

“May I buy a ticket, please?” he was now speaking softly because his eyes started feasting on the diva’s beauty which was far more refreshing than bottled water. The diva had pushed back a swirl of charcoal black hair done in attractive waves. Her eyes lifted up to blow him a wide green ocean spray that seemed to wash over like the scent of fresh champagne. Suddenly, he started feeling as fresh as a tender leaf, very much alive again.

“Oh sure,” she wowed, throwing one end of the scarf over her head before dropping her eyes to the ticket book lying on her laps.

“How much is the ticket?” Mackay’s mouth was having problems pronouncing words. The information from the eyes was crippling the brain. The lady was beautiful and it would be foolish not to try to impress her with new ways of pronouncing words. The effort made his body start trembling too anxiously; he ended up dropping a twenty kwacha note on the floor. The cool voice sneaking out of her beautiful lips as he bent down to pick the money sent another adrenaline surge clogging his bloodstream.

“But you haven’t told me where you are going sir, have you?”The girl’s face muscles vibrated delightfully as she tilted her head to look at him from the corner of her left eye. The tremor in Mackay’s heartbeat increased to a roaring earthquake. Her little laugh, a minx laugh carried by a wave of romantic mischief, was evidence that she was aware of the harm her pranks had caused.

“You are very right,” Mackay tried to hide the raging confusion suddenly crippling him completely like an overdose of liquor. It was the confusion of a man attracted to a woman who is too good to accept him no matter how many times he would quote the manifesto book. He knew it and in a funny voice he struggled to say; “I am going to Monze.”

“That is twelve kwacha, here is your ticket,” the diva tore a page from a thin brown book and gave it to him. Her long nail, painted with red lacquer, flicked over the ticket as if she didn’t want to let it go, it almost made contact with his hand before she hastily pulled it back, well in time. The encounter almost ended harmlessly, as a little scratch, a small faux pas. And Mackay’s attraction would have been just that, an attraction. It didn’t.

In the next two seconds, the diva completely changed the tempo of things, ravaging his circulatory system like a cyclone raking up a village.

“And your change, sir,” she had said, her eyes lifted to look into his had a devastating appeal; ambushing him with dark pupils twinkling under permed eyelashes. Yes, it was a deadly ambush at point-blank range like a furious burst of an AK-47. It had to be the way the eyes were bristling with each blink that did the trick. Or the way she was closing and opening them. Whatever the case, they lit up his dark spirits like lighting a candle flame in a dark room. The melancholic nostalgia which had dominated his preparations was replaced with the burning enthusiasm of a dog that suddenly finds it walking on two legs.

“Change, did you say?” he asked imitating a dialogue from Shakespeare which he had memorized a thousand times. Thank God he was able to remember it in this delicate situation. To suit the occasion he twisted the mustache slightly into a thin curved line. His other pick from a movie actor, except that he had cracked lips and froth at the corner of the mouth.

 “Yes sir,” the diva whispered in a bedroom tune like someone on a mission to kill. Her voice was one voice experts would describe as mild when normal but devastating in a whisper. And to finish him off completely, she put a pen on her lips and pouted her mouth to make dimples on beautifully shaped orange cheeks. MacKay had seen dimples on women before; more than a thousand times if numbers did matter, but dimples plus a pouts equal devastation. His entire data processing system crashed like a crippled missile guidance system.

Rallying his troops, he massaged his chin in a male predatory fashion and narrowed his eyes to slits in preparation to stake his claim to her heart even if it would be like climbing Mount Everest, “I don’t take chang …”

He didn’t finish the sentence; he was not going to, not in this place or anywhere else for that matter.

A hurried, nudging movement, just behind him, somewhere to his left, startled the diva greatly.

She swept to her feet and hurriedly pushed his change under the slot. She was tall, moderately slim, and slightly firmer than a rake. Her breasts stood sharp on a flat chest like bottles standing at an angle. The thin waist just above some huge bust made her resemble a huge wasp. He was now consumed by her beauty and forgot that she was talking excitedly to a rival; treating him as if he no longer existed.

“Yes, Mr. Banda, I am delighted to see you again,” she was yapping happily like some small goat drunk with milk, and she looked truly happy to see the other man. If not, then she must have been an excellent actress.

 Mr. Banda was a middle-class man, clean-shaven, and wearing a well-cut business suit. He was a successful man; no doubt, it showed in what some dude referred to as power dressing. The suit was a hundred times the price of what Mackay paid for his rumpled jacket. The comparison in the dressing was funny, like comparing a rat and a buffalo in size.

 Mr. Banda broke into an unbridled roar of a laugh, instead of just responding to the greeting.

“Hahahahaha! Stembile my dear. All pleasure is mine,” he was roaring like someone who owned the whole waiting room. Many heads turned to see who could break the unwritten ‘curfew’ on loud talking.

“I brought you something for a little lunch.” Mackay saw him pull out a pudgy hairy hand from the pocket and roll out a pile of khaki hundred kwacha notes which he dropped into the girl’s hands before leaving the counter hurriedly, not even waiting for the inevitable thank you.

Stembile’s eyes, wide as an owl’s, didn’t watch Mr. Banda’s dancing shoulders disappearing into the throng; they were perfectly occupied glaring at the money in delightful wonder. Even her mouth failed to say the humanly ‘thank you sir’ because it was busy yapping ingloriously “Oh my God! Oh my God!”

Now, on the touchline, MacKay’s eyes also bulged, but by conditioned reflex action. No one sees a huge pile of money and is able to control the heartbeat easily. The sight is never easy for anyone, especially mortals who don’t have it enough. And the pile surely would be close to fifty notes which this fellow was calling a little lunch. What then was a normal lunch to him, if there is any such thing?

Worriedly, he tried to steal another glance at the diva, just a glimpse, maybe wangle some chance to resume the earlier talk. She never spared him a second glance; she was busy stuffing the five thousand kwacha into a goatskin purse before picking a puff powder, giving him every indication that she was not aware he existed at all.

There was no way he could renew the earlier talk under those circumstances. He was beaten fair and square, that was clear. The realization was crippling to his spirit if not galling. Dropping his gaze and angrily crumpling the ticket, he walked towards the row of benches to joint fellow passengers awaiting the arrival of the train.

It hurt his soul. But what completely killed it was the feeling that almost every eye in the waiting room was now looking at him.No.Not just looking at him, but also laughing at him. Damn them, don’t they have anything to do? His head drooped like a disgraced peacock; he didn’t notice that he was joining a young man, about his age, seated on a long wooden bench.

A gregarious young man, it was to be, who would not let him rest his bruised pride even a minute.

“Hi! I think I remember seeing you….” The gregarious young man was speaking excitedly and already extending a hand for a friendly handshake. He was cut short, a bit too savagely.

“I don’t think it matters whether you saw me at the counter or not,” Mackay answered rudely and the way he twisted his face indicated that a conversation with anyone was worse than contracting convid-19. “I have no time for trifles.”

“I am sorry to have disturbed you, sir,” the young man said sadly. “But I just wanted to remind you of...”

“You better be, and please desist from reminding me of anything. There is no need,” Mackay answered while unfolding a newspaper. The hurried way he manipulated his fingers on the paper indicated that he had no interest whatsoever in the young man. The newspaper was, however, to be his next shattering disappointment.

He tried to read, but something couldn’t let him. His heart. It was smarting from the humiliation at the hands of the gorgeous diva. It was tugging at his entire soul like a crane uprooting a tree and making the newspaper words in front start teasing him. The words were dancing in front of his eyes like Chinese hieroglyphics performing strange calisthenics.

However, like a real warrior, he plowed on; hoping that diversion would be the only treatment for his wounded heart.

But it was not to be, and worse still, trouble would come from the same diva. She had left the ticket office and was now dance-walking along the aisle, coming to pass a few paces from his bench. Her mission: trying to direct some old man to a seat. Why would she even do it? It was not her job.

To Mackay, it didn’t matter who she was helping, her undulating backline, suddenly brought nearer, was like a terrible sledgehammer to break his spirit like breaking bones.

He eyed her hungrily, with a mouth inelegantly agape, like a man short on breath. Saliva was now oozing out from his under lip like Pavlov’s experimental dog attempting to swallow a hot egg. Why was she sitting in his heart so right and yet beyond his reach?

And even her, probably lacking advice from some granny, if she had any, why would she came to stand two yards away from a man who was dying to have her, and giving him the back, sure? And what a back it was?

The bareback opened up to reveal a soft brown skin curving down from the contoured nape like a whale. The rest was a delicious curve outline of her body under the green chiffon which though hidden, was electrifying.

But what would not be electrifying were Mackay’s derelium utterances. He was yapping ‘mamamama’ sounds like someone in a dream until the newspaper clattered to the floor…his neighbor deserved a Nobel Prize for halting his disgraceful slide into a psychopathetic meltdown.

“Friend, the train has come, let’s go,” he broke into Mackay’s horrifying miasma.

But, as they stood up to go, Stembile suddenly turned around and shouted excitedly, “Sir, yes, you there, I didn’t get your cell number.”

She was pointing at Mackay, what a disaster? What was this diva playing at? Everyone paused to see the new game, but no one could understand why she would need a traveler’s number.

………………………………………………………………………………………………………

The feeling Stembile felt when she looked into Mackay’s eyes convulsed her into a new being. It was the type of feeling you experience when you are alone, probably bathing and touching yourself while imagining someone giving you beautiful moments. Or smiling to yourself while expecting a lover and talking nothings into your pillow. It was definite, jarring; it immediately swept her off her feet.

Quiet right he was wearing rags for clothes, probably stolen from a scarecrow, but he had the courage to go for a well-dressed woman, one way above his class. That is spirit, perhaps something stronger than a spirit, a nerve. She liked men with a nerve. They always got things done.

She was hoping he would call her now that she had come nearer but then she saw him stand up, rushing for the train. He was going away, going away from her heart, going forever. She would never see him again-what a disaster? Her heart started beating wildly in panic, her eyes widened in pain and her mouth yanked open in desperation.

Quickly she let go of the old man almost pushing him into a fall as she whirled round to shout to get his attention.

“Go now, the train is leaving, but please call me, tonight” she advised him while shoving a hard thing into his hand, her business card.

Mackay could hardly believe the turnaround of events. He said, “I have changed my mind, I am not going anywhere.”

They looked into each other’s eyes and knew it; they had found each other. People from two different worlds loved each other indeed. Love is older than mankind.