The Comedian (Fragmented notes at the mausoleum)

Kanyinsola Olorunnisola

In partnership with Writivism, Arts and Africa is publishing the shortlisted winners of the The Koffi Addo Prize for Creative Nonfiction 2019. Kanyinsola Olorunnisola’s ‘The Comedian (Fragmented notes at the mausoleum’ is one of the shortlisted stories.

“He had learned the worst lesson that life can teach — that it makes no sense.” — Philip Roth [American Pastoral]

The story could start with you in the coffin, a body losing light and colour; the whole world is mourning you while I stare at the coral beads adorning your neck and marvel at how royalty suits you, even in death. I smile, for the first time in what feels like a lifetime, because I now know what all of this is — a divine, macabre punch line to a joke told by God.

No one is laughing.

I

I STEP out of the room where you have been placed for public viewing and sympathetic eyes trail me as I take my seat quietly at the terrace. They must wonder why I am not in tears like my mother and my sister and my brother and everyone who calls me family.

I am detached from it all. My grief is a private thing. Everything about me is a private thing: my thoughts, my loving, my memories, my mourning. And this is why it has taken me two years to write this.

Three days before your death, you return home, to Ibadan, to see your sons. My brother has just returned from his youth service in Ebonyi and you have not seen him in a year. I just finished the session in school and you cannot wait to hear about the new awards I won. I have not told you I won anything, but over the phone you say you are convinced I have new awards to show you. You are always like that — expectant of something groundbreaking from your kids, as if we were androids programmed for excellence.

You return home for the weekend, to hugs and wide smiles — the triumphant entry before the crucifixion. Mother is at work but this makes no difference to you. You see her often, anyway. You have come to see the boys. We get busy in the kitchen and whip you up something. It must have been àmàlà and ewédú, or what else would you eat on a Saturday evening, right? As we eat, you make a comment about how your sons are great cooks. This is the last supper I will remember.

When my sister tells her four-year old son that his Grandpa is dead, he just nods. I wonder if he understands what death means. No more barging into his room when they come visiting. No more jumping on his bed to wake him. No more playing with his white beard and calling him “Kampa”. The boy takes it in with an indifference that unsettles me. He is too young to understand, I say to myself. Only the grownups know that death is tragic. Or perhaps, death is tragic because we make it tragic. Because we cannot carry on with the weight of the memories. Because when we mourn, we mourn our own loss, not that of the dead. Do the dead lose anything when they die? Or are we the ones being dramatic and making it all about us?

This is a funny story. I just don’t get the joke.

II

THE STORY could start with surprise birthday parties at Mr Bigg’s, Ferris wheel rides at Trans Amusement Park. Goofy days spent dancing to Angelique Kidjoe’s “Agolo”. But how do you start a funny story with memories of laughter? Where’s the poetry in that?

Maybe we should begin with tears; that always seems fitting.

I am nine when I first see you cry. You are crying because you just saw Ìyá Òṣogbo’s body in the morgue. I did not know your eyes were even capable of tears. Those bright, brown eyes bearing chinks of light. It is then that I learn that emotion is not reserved for the weak. It cannot be, because you are everything but weak. It is nothing but an expression of our humanity.

But why is it that you get to be in your fifties when you bury your parents but your own children are barely adults before their father’s heart gives up? I am at your grave as they lower you into the ground. Again, everyone is crying except me. Is this shock? No, I have had two months to process your death. I just do not understand the logic of life. I am not sad. I feel an infinite chaos in my blood, threatening to erupt into a volcano of volatile emotions. Why do we live at all if we end up dying? Why do spend years toiling only to end up becoming an unborn? It feels like God presses Ctrl + Z on us when we start to bore him. That terrifies me.

“God has a plan.”

“Everything happens for a reason.”

“Who are we to question the Lord?”

“God loves you.”

“Your dead father is watching over you now.”

“Pray for the soul of the dead.”

“Be strong. You are a man.”

“Blah. Blah. Blah.”

“[Insert similar bullshit]”

Different voices whisper into my ear. Voices. Noises. White noise I tune out with my own thoughts. Why do we try to rationalise something that obviously has no logic to it? We are mere characters in a story, gifted with the curse of self-awareness. We are born. We die. What happens between is a long, numbing silence we attempt to fill with music and life. It is indeed a tragic irony, this race from crib to catacomb. Yet, something feels strangely comedic about this disaster of ours. Our lives are part of a nihilistic comedy written by God; with the joke being that our lives do not have plot, that our magnificent lives have no meaning. We are each doomed, it depends on how fast we realise it and stop trying to make beauty out of this world of darkness.

God says this is a funny story. And the joke’s on you and me.

III

MY PREGNANT sister collapses on the ground when she alights from the car, her husband rushing to her aid. She came as soon as she heard the news. The sympathisers guide her to the living room where she finds my mother and my brother and a horde of sympathisers. She rushes to hug my mother, sobbing uncontrollably. This is not the kind of reunion anyone ever prays for.

She pulls me to her, the baby of the house. If she is shocked by my lack of emotion, she does not show it. She tries to console me, even though she is the one in need of soothing. She should not be consoling anyone. You were her father too. Someone guides her to a seat and she keeps bawling. That is what happens when you die without a warning. Those you leave behind will be traumatized, knowing that no matter how much time heals the wounds, they are scarred for life. I am scarred for life. And that does not leave sadness. It leaves a gaping emptiness nothing will ever fill.

IV

I am at your grave. Again, hello. It is the second time, over a year after we buried you. My mother and my sister and her husband are here with me. We have come to clean up the surrounding and pay homage to you. I type random notes I will edit later. Mother asks me to say a prayer. I close my eyes and whisper gibberish. I do not believe spirits answer prayers. Or that they can even hear prayers. A lot of things I believe are because of you. Christianity was handed down to me by you. It is odd because you were barely a Christian. In my life, I only remember you going to church three or four times, preferring to stay at home on Sunday mornings reading newspapers. I do not remember you ever praying except at special gatherings. You probably had more reverence for Òṣun than the Jewish God. I start to think that Christianity was merely passed down to you too. Your father was a Christian. And you were only one by formality.

Your death becomes a point of self-reflection for me. How much of my life is defined by you? My writing passion is a direct inheritance from you. My love for journalism was passed down in your genes to me. I am only an accidental Christian because you happened to identify with Christianity when I was born. I am not going to stick with a faith just because it was picked for me before my birth. At what point do I become my own creature and not just an extension of you? Is it an unforgivable betrayal to want to find out who I am beyond my father’s definition?

The truth is that we are all replicas of our former selves. You gave me my middle name, Babátúndé, to prove this. I am your father reborn, the latest in the long line of incarnates housing a single soul across times and cultures. I choose to hold on to this truth for its fittingness within my reality. It does not seem any more outlandish than the countless fairytale-like Abrahamic myths the mainstream idolises. And because it helps lighten the weight of hopelessness when I think of the finality of your existence. It relieves me, the thought of your soul living on to find another host in the future. Maybe you will come back to me, when I have a child of my own. My dead father returned as my son. Hey, there’s the poetry we were looking for.

V

DISTANCE. THAT was a thing between us. You were a beautiful, glorious man, yes. But distance was still a real thing. Unlike Mother, who has always been a hovering presence in my life, my relationship with you was always one defined by distance. And through no fault of your own, of course. You only came home on weekends. Your work often took you away. Being the Ọọ̀ni of Ife’s spokesman surely was a busy job. And yes, you had another family.

In your final years you came home more frequently, calling me to your room in the middle of the night to have long talks about random things. Sàláwá Àbẹ̀ní. Poetry. Princess Diana. Philosophy. My nephews. I really do not remember details about those conversations anymore. They were not exactly meant to memorable, I suppose. But isn’t that the point? The signs of a true connection are in the silences and unremarkable instances of serenity. The memory of the existence of those little moments of pure, unadulterated joy; you and I talking about everything and nothing at once, is what I will hold on to.

Your leaving changed me. Something twisted inside of me and I found myself increasingly flung farther from who I used to be. It might be excessive to say that my mind broke but it certainly did not remain the same. When you left, I was increasingly fascinated by the idea of death, that devious claimant of all beautiful things.

I became something else. I have become something else. My obsession with the morbid has gone beyond mere philosophical reflection to a gaudy embrace of it. All of my writing is shaped by grief and loss and brokenness and gloom — and you, your leaving. I sometimes stay up at night to watch YouTube videos of people talking about their grief. My taste in music has changed. I discovered Leonard Cohen and David Bowie. The darkness in their songs pulls me in and I gladly fall into the abyss of their somber discography. This cannot be what it means to process grief. I must be doing it wrong. But, at least, the grief is mine to own.

I am angry, daddy. I am livid with the world. With death. With God. I am filled with rage when I think of you — the randomness of your leaving. I find myself asking: is it such a terrible thing to love someone that one must be punished for it? Why bring people into our lives if you only plan to take them whenever it suits you? It has been two years, so why is there still this tightness in my chest? What did we ever do to deserve this?

Don’t let this be misunderstood: this isn’t me seeking closure. This is me saying I will never heal from this intimate wound. I am dying inside. Amidst all of this, I still picture God having a laugh. How arrogant of us mortals to try to make significance of an accidental existence. This must be all comical to him, the scintillating humourist, the perfect comedian.

Call it sadistic humour. Call it the killing joke.

VI

I AM jeered awake by the loud ringtone from my brother’s phone. He is lying right beside me and reluctantly picks up the phone. Immediately he does, a mysterious dread grips me. What it is, I do not know. A gut feeling? A spiritual presence? I watch as his face goes blank the moment he hears the voice from the other side of the phone. He jumps down from the bed and speeds to Mother’s room.

“Kí ló ṣẹlẹ?” I ask, running after him.

As he kicks open the door to her room, Mother wakes. She rushes out of bed, seeing my brother looking stunned.

“Jesus! Kí ló dé?” she asks, eyes bearing confusion and fear.

He begins to cry. For the first time in our adult lives, I see my older brother cry. I sit on the cold floor. I know. I can tell what has happened. Fuck!

“They said…they said my father is dead.”

A few days later, sympathisers have filled the house. Everyone is in tears. Except me. I have been in the living room with my family for hours, watching everyone wail and curse. I ask to be excused briefly and escape to a private living room which no guest, thankfully, has discovered yet. I pull out your 60th birthday photo album from underneath the center-table. I sit on the floor. As I flip through the pictures, I see the face of the man who I will never see again. I see him smile. I see him dance. I see him laugh. I see him cut a cake. I see him plant a kiss on my mother’s cheek. I see him with celebrities and kings. I see him.

I burst into a sob of tears which wrack my entire being, causing my body to shiver. In the dark quiet of that room, I cry for my dead father.

VII

TWO DAYS to your death, I show you the latest anthology I have been published in and a new national writing award I just won. You read my poems and marvel at the words, wondering how I conjured them. I smile sheepishly. It is a common routine neither of us ever gets tired of.

“You have such a bright future.”

“Thank you, sah.”

“I can’t wait to see how far your writing career goes. I cannot wait to see just how far you go in life.”

I smile. You smile back. But God is somewhere mocking our foolishness. If only we knew. If only we got the fucking joke.

About the author: Kanyinsola Olorunnisola is a poet, essayist and writer of fiction. His work interrogates anxiety, broken lineage, [in]sanity, grief and the black body as a warfront — you know, typical stuff happy people write about. His debut collection of nightmares, In My Country, We’re All Crossdressers was published as a chapbook by Praxis. He is the founder of the SPRINNG Literary Movement. He has an unhealthy obsession with James Baldwin and Jack Keroauck. He is very, very famous on Twitter, where he spends his pastime tweeting about the socialist revolution and all that jazz to his 32 miserable followers. @K_tops