The Moment of Truth

By Mateso Kazembe

It was a few minutes before midnight and Kabudula had not eaten anything since morning. An almost empty bottle of kachasu and a tumbler stood on the untidy floor within reach of his dangling arm. He reached down for it and poured what remained of the kachasu into the tumbler, raised it to his lips and guzzled the contents. He shuddered as the raw spirit went down his throat.

His house was in a mess like a garbage pit. The floor was unswept and gritty with sand. Dirty plates and mugs lay higgledy-piggledy on the table and a column of black ants was climbing one leg to reach them. To his left, there was a frying pan and pots which were greasy with congealed leftovers.

Kabudula was in helpless bondage to earth’s cruelty. His life had been ransacked of every good thing it used to have after his parents died intestate. Kape, his uncle had pounced savagely on what they had left. He had taken up everything even the bric-a-brac leaving him with practically nothing. His life had turned topsy-turvy then. Financial problems had become acute. Every plan he had in store had crumbled to dust and his prospects for a good future had vanished.

Pain that even faith would never relieve had bivouacked in his heart. He had slided into drinking then and his life was now a mess. He had become bibulous and an inveterate sot.

As he sat on his only chair with the empty tumbler in his hand, he glanced at the empty bottle of kachasu and instantly began conceiving plans of refuelling it. Beer was his only acquaintance who lessened the sharp edge of problems and gentled down the pitiless sun of reality that beat down on him.

Next morning as he was coming from refilling his bottle, he met Burandi an old friend of his father who was shocked to see him in such a state.

“Oh! Kabudula, why are you doing this to yourself?” he asked struck with pity at how he looked.

“When did it become your business how I look?” he dismissed him and swallowed some beer into his mouth. “Just leave me alone old man or do you want some?” he asked with a soup-con of malice in his voice as he swished the kachasu through his teeth, rinsing his mouth with it and Burandi refused by shaking his head. “This is the only solace I have after everybody has deserted me,” he confessed helping himself again and marvelled: “Nothing like it.”

“I understand you, son,” Burandi said with a sorrowful mien, “I know it’s painful to lose parents and everything. Really painful. But don’t be so disheartened by it. You’ve to acknowledge that death is the final phase of life; everybody will go through it. You see, life is never ‘all beer and skittles.’ Sometimes, you need to be a brave man that smiles in the face of adversity, who learns to take the smooth and rough as they come.”

In his drunken stupor, Burandi’s words revitalised his hopes. His tongue was a hermitage of hope and inspiration for Kabudula. He was a soothing voice he had needed, offering words of comfort that bandaged his wounded being and assuaged his pains.

Miraculously, Kabudula’s life took on a new pattern. He sponged out the past bitter memories and looked forward. He entrusted his faith in books just as the saints put theirs in God. There developed something in him that constantly demanded more and he fought for it. He studied with unfaltering determination and unflagging energies; tackled problems with unswerving devotion and became a voracious student for more knowledge. As studying became a quenchless urge in his quest for gold, exams found him armed to the teeth. He made it college and graduated with flying colours.

Twelve years later, on a sombre weekend, Kabudula was at the veranda of his magnificent home when he saw a gaunt reed thin man coming towards his house. The stranger, with lips that were chapped and rough, had a wizened face grimed with dust. He was really a pitiful sight. As he concentrated on his face, he was struck by something familiar about it. When he struggled with the memory, he was breathless to realise that this was Kape, that meretricious rascal now emaciated by illness. The disease he was suffering from had reduced him to a tiny shrivelled figure without juices or vitality.

“What’s it you want from me you heartless old man?” he heckled with asperity when Kape reached the foot of the veranda.

“Son,” he said rubbing sweat from his cadaverous face with his fetid clothes, “I know I don’t deserve to be here. You’ve every right to chase me for what I did to you. But Kabudula, I’m here for your forgiveness. I’ll soon kick a bucket and I wish to die a happy man. Would you forgive me, please,” he confessed and each word came hard.

Kabudula kept mum, short of words. Kape’s state aroused compassion in him. Of course, he had sworn never to forgive him for the injustice he had done to him, but he had not conceived he would die like this. His body had surrendered to a pearly withering and he was nothing but a bag of bones.

“I’m ashamed of my avarice, son. I don’t know what came over me. I was a fool,” he scolded himself shaking his head in incomprehension. “I apologise to you. I’ve been thinking about the life I’ve lived these past years. There are things I did that I don’t even know who that person was that did those things; he doesn’t seem related to me. Son, it’s a shame you’ve to be dying to know this,” he said weak voiced and edgy and began crying. He came apart as if he had thrown a piston in one of the valves of his heart and absently, Kabudula approached him and embraced him.
“It’s ok, uncle,” he said, “It’s ok.”