The worst things about being on death row are the waiting, the nightmares, the interminable introspection and the verdicts you pass on yourself. In the darkness, in the night, the verdict—whether guilty or not—keeps coming back. So does the incident, that one moment of madness that will haunt you till the noose tightens around your throat. That was Santi’s ordeal as he sat on the cold floor in the damp, overcrowded cell, his mind refusing to believe that he was just a number waiting to be scrubbed off the board.
He had been reading that night, that first night, when the call came in. He answered the phone, an unfamiliar number.
‘Hello,’ he said huskily.
‘Hello,’ replied a honeyed, female voice.
‘Yes?’ He did not recognise the voice.
‘Hello, who is this?’ she asked.
He felt offended. ‘Excuse me, you called my number. I should be asking you that.’
‘I want to speak to Sylvia.’
‘Ah, I think you’ve got the wrong number.’
‘No, this is definitely her number.’
‘I don’t think so. This has been my number for close 110to a year now. Perhaps you should check the number again.’
‘Well, okay.’ She terminated the call.
She had a wonderful voice, he thought, as he put down the handset. She reminded him of the little birds twittering at dawn from the palm grove. He resumed his study, squeezing his eyes to readjust and focus on the tiny print. Then the phone rang again. In the silent night, it had sounded loud, like an angry bell tolling.
‘Hello,’ he said.
It was her again.
‘Hey, I think you are right,’ she had said. ‘I got the wrong number.’
‘Oh!’ he chuckled. ‘Okay.’
‘I forgot to apologise for waking you up. I know it’s quite late.’
‘Well, no problem. It’s all right.’
‘I did wake you up, didn’t I?’
‘No, I was just eh … doing something.’
‘Something? Like what?’
He wanted to tell her it was none of her business but thought better of it. ‘I am reading.’
‘So, you are a student then?’
‘Yes, and you?’
‘Same here. Computer Science.’
‘That’s great. That’s what I am studying too,’
‘Where?’
‘Jos. What about you?’
‘Zaria, ABU.’
‘That’s … terrific. So, what’s your name?’111
‘Farida. What’s yours?’
‘Santi, they call me Santi.’
That was how it started. They talked about their studies, comparing notes; he was an orphan and a scholarship student. She was been sponsored by her parents who seemed to be wealthy. Soon enough, they got personal. Every night, a little past midnight, she would call him and they would talk for hours about the rains, about the future, about randy lecturers, and soon they started talking about love. That was how he fell in love with the honeyed voice at the other end of the line. They exchanged pictures through MMS. Her beauty, he thought, matched her voice. She was slender like a fresh stalk of budding bean and had a smile that reminded him of a clear spring running gently over white rocks.
Two months later, she invited him to Zaria so they could meet face-to-face. He had been looking forward to seeing her, so he went on a Saturday, when the sun had risen with a smile. He got to Zaria and took an okada. She guided him on the phone to the threshold of her heart, her home. She was waiting for him at the door when he arrived and he realised that she was even more beautiful than in the pictures. He thought about that clear spring each time she smiled. She asked him in, served him food and a soft drink, and had sat by him. Overwhelmed, they just kept looking at each other, smiling, sighing, happy to abide in the fragrant presence of a promising love.
‘See what GSM has brought me,’ she said, and they both laughed. They talked, excited like teenagers after their first kiss, hidden away in an empty classroom. Her 112grace charmed him, and he watched her every move and gesture with eyes veiled with adoration. She grew in his mind, from the myth on the phone to a living goddess—his Aphrodite. She took his breath away and he was willing to surrender his life, in the fatuous manner of lovers, so that nothing else could wipe away the memory of that enchanting sight of her.
Then she excused herself and went to the bedroom. He stood up and, looking at her framed photographs on the walls and on the mantelpiece, he began to wonder if she lived alone. Then he heard her scream. He raced to the bedroom, calling her name, his heart thumping wildly. He rushed in and felt a blow to the back of his head. He fell face down and next to him he saw the gaping face of a man, frozen in death. He recoiled just before he was struck again. There were two other men in the room, hefty like prized wrestlers. Farida was behind them, and watched as they trounced him. His screams filled his own head, which felt dull and heavy like water, before he lost consciousness.
He woke up on a damp floor that gave off the offensive smell of stinking shoes. He was cuffed and shackled and almost blind in his left eye. He was conscious of what he believed were his bloated internal organs and thought that all the bones in his body weighed twice as much as he remembered. Three policemen entered the cell and a sergeant ordered him to sit, straddling a chair. He said he wanted to take a statement. Santi explained what he could remember and the policemen started laughing. The sergeant nodded to one of them and they brought 113out a prepared statement and asked him to sign it. They refused to let him read it, they just wanted his signature, and beat one out of him.
Weeks later, when he was arraigned in court for the murder of Farida’s husband, he was still unable to believe it. The First Information Report said that he went to see the deceased and they started arguing about money. Farida’s husband, the FIR said, went into the bedroom to get some money and that was when Santi followed him and stabbed him fourteen times. Farida screamed and passersby came and apprehended him in the act.
Santi could not afford a lawyer and so he was unable to prove that the statement was obtained under duress. The police had three eye witnesses–Farida and the two giants. So, after months of attending a trial that was designed to convict him, he was found guilty and sentenced to death. Thrown into prison, his long wait for the hangman.
Somehow, Santi developed a relationship with one of the warders — an elderly man who had the courtesy to listen to his story. In Santi, the warder saw himself when he was younger. Listening to the convict’s tale, he thought they were even more similar than he had imagined: the naïveté, the lure of a promise of love, youthful fantasies … utopia built on mire. He sighed and shook his head. Sometimes, he smuggled in bread, garri, soap, salt, at times even pepper. He wanted to give the prison’s intolerable meals the semblance and taste of something edible for Santi.
Farida surprised Santi when she paid him a visit in prison. He thought she would be remorseful, but she 114smiled with the hint of triumph when she saw him in his ill-fitting death row uniform—as if she had won a bet. The only thing he thought to ask was: ‘Why, Farida?’
She shrugged. ‘They have not been treating you well here,’ she said. ‘That’s not right. They should treat you well. See how wretched you are looking, God!’
‘Why did you do this to me?’ he asked, looking deep into her eyes.
She laughed this time. A demon stirred in him, urging him to wring her throat so that he would, at least, die for having actually killed someone. But his hands were cuffed.
‘I don’t know,’ she said at last. ‘Maybe I shouldn’t have done that to you. You are such a handsome guy. We could have had a thing together, you and I. We would have made a wonderful couple.’
He gaped, startled by her impunity. He still could not believe she could have done such a thing. Her smile, her warm tender eyes and her honeyed voice just did not fit with her actions.
‘I should kill you,’ he said through his teeth.
She looked deep into his eyes and shook her head. ‘You can’t do it, Santi,’ she said. ‘You don’t have the eyes of a killer.’
She gave him the fruits and other items she had brought for him. He looked at the bag and tipped it over the edge of the table. The things scattered onto the patchy floor.
‘Just get lost, okay!’ he shouted. ‘Just go, enjoy yourself while I take the fall for you. What pains me is that I could have done it for you, for love. I could have taken 115the fall for you, on my own terms. I am that stupid, you know. But you just had to set me up, you bitch! God!’
The anguish and sincerity in his voice got to her. Perhaps for the first time, she felt a tinge of remorse. She stood up with tears in her eyes. ‘Santi,’ she sighed, ‘I have been most unfair to you. Perhaps, I should explain why to you. You deserve to know that, at least. I will tell you next visiting day, I promise.’ She turned away and was let out while he was taken back to his cell, seething, hating himself.
Eventually, he told the aging warder about Farida’s visit. The old man, who had a clearer head, was the first to see the opportunity.
‘We could get you out of this,’ he said, excited. ‘If we get her confession on tape, it could give you some leverage. You could walk out of this.’ So, the warder smuggled in a cheap recorder with new batteries and a tape. He would keep the gadget for Santi until the next visiting day.
They tried it out, it worked. The only problem was that the buttons snapped with such a loud kpak that they would be sure to give them away. Santi would have to start recording before he was really close to her. The idea gave Santi a new breath of life and he looked forward to visiting day with the candle of hope burning brightly in his heart. The day came. They had the tape hidden on Santi. They waited and waited. The hours crawled until the day went by. She did not come.
Then one day, unexpectedly, she came. They rushed to conceal the recorder under his clothes after making sure it still worked. Weakened, Santi trudged to the visiting 116room, where she was waiting in her angelic splendour. She had brought him food and some other things. She had had to bribe her way in, she explained.
‘So, you are back,’ he said. ‘Why the hell are you back? What do you want with me?’
‘I heard you were sick. I knew this condition they were holding you in would certainly kill you,’ she said. ‘How could anyone live like this? It’s inhumane. Anyway, I have been thinking about you. I missed our night calls, our … conversations. You won’t believe how much they meant to me, those conversations.’
‘See where they got me, those … conversations.’
‘I know how you feel. The truth is I am actually really in love with you.’ Her voice quavered. He looked into her eyes, startled. She was close to tears. ‘I have been missing you but I know you will not believe me,’ she said.
‘That hardly explains anything, does it?’
She dabbed her eyes. She was actually crying. ‘What is killing me is that you will never believe me.’ She went on to describe how much she missed him, how she could not sleep at night because she was thinking about him and their night calls. She cried so much he wanted to hug her but feared that, if he had the chance to, he would strangle her. All that rambling would not help him, though. He would soon run out of tape if she kept going on like that.
‘Explain it to me, Farida, because I don’t understand,’ he said. ‘If you love me, why would you do such a thing to me?’
She took her time dabbing her eyes. ‘I will tell you my story, as I promised. I will tell you why I did what I did.’ 117She told him about her marriage to her husband—how he had bought his way to her parents’ hearts, how they had forced her to marry him, how she hated the man’s guts and how she had long planned to free herself with the help of her boyfriend. She claimed that it was this boyfriend who, having learnt of her relationship with Santi, had planned the frame up and executed it. She told Santi how he had threatened to kill her if she did not cooperate and to kill her mother if she refused to marry him. She told him how she, too, was a prisoner and, like him was waiting for her own hangman.
‘I don’t think you will see me again,’ she said at last. ‘But I just thought you deserved to know the truth, and to know that I truly love you.’ She rose to leave. ‘I will pray for you, Santi, everyday, until I die.’
The old warder was waiting. Anxiously, he seized the recorder. ‘Did you get it? Did she confess?’
Santi nodded.
The warder played back the tape. The recording was scrappy and static spat out from the device but the voices were audible. ‘Ah, so she loves you, eh?’ he smiled and fast forwarded the tape. He pushed the play button and listened. ‘Yeah, yeah, more love talk.’ Again he hit fast forward, then play. ‘This girl really has a thing for you,’
‘Just a little further, now,’ Santi said.
The warder forwarded the tape and pushed the play button.
‘I will tell you my story, as I promised,’ Farida’s voice was saying.
‘That’s it,’ Santi shouted, excited.118
‘I will tell you why I did what I did. You see, my husband was a rich man but I did not want to marry him because I had this … boyfriend I really liked. He was—’ There was a brief silence, then the device snapped to a stop. That was where the recording ended.