An October Sunset
In which a boy runs out into the sunset and into the problem of sharing a feeling
Through a crack between the curtains over the sitting-room windows, an interesting shaft of light caught Arinze’s attention. He parted the curtains and looked out. It seemed as if he looked out on a Polaroid picture shot in too much heat: with an orange tint. He gaped out open-mouthed.
Responding to a domineering irresistible impulse that came upon him suddenly, Arinze drew the curtains shut, ran across the sitting-room, leaped over the coffee table, kicked into a pair of slippers by the door leading into the kitchen, and ran past his mother making dinner in the kitchen out unto the backyard balcony. He slammed the door.
“Take it easy with that door!” yelled his mother. “Are you a barbarian?”
“Sorry, ma,” he yelled back over his shoulder, flying down the first flight of stairs from their second-story apartment.
“Where to?” she yelled at him, already on the second flight.
“Out to play!” he yelled back before leaping down the last flight. He did not hear her shout, “Take it easy,” one last time, nor would he have cared if he did.
Their block was one of several houses that ringed a circular cul-de-sac at the end of the close in a large gated estate. Looked at from above, the tarmacked open area separated from the houses by Ixora hedges and chain-link fences resembled the ball end of a thermometer. The area served as a garage and playground for the neighborhood. Arinze ran out of their yard into this playground and looked up.
It was a late October evening sunset. It was one of those rare sunsets only witnessed a few times in one’s life if they paid any attention, and saw only in pictures (such a shame) if they didn’t. In the west where the sun should be, the sky was a smudge of yellow, the color of radioactive egg-yolk, within a splotch of orange a tint away from tomato red. Generally, though, the sky a vast blue head with white curly waves. Between the sun and the sky, purple seeps of color created an interesting interplay.
With the setting sun behind them, the houses in the cul-de-sac took on a moody profile, their faces set in blue-gray shadows. By some trick of light, however, all shapes between him and the sunlight (roofs, the waving fronds of coconut palms between the buildings, streetlights) were outline in a bronze luminescence, as if the very edges gave off this light. Even the windows reflected a smoky golden glint. The contrast of burnished edges and shadowed bodies cast a strange mood on the evening.
Arinze steeped himself in the ambience. It was not an experience one thought about, because thinking about it broke it. It was as intangible as a whisper, even the slightly warm October air, neither humid and oppressive like the rainy season’s nor dry and itchy like the harmattan’s, but a ghostly inbetweener that sang soft against his skin. Lurking behind this para-sensory feeling was an even vaguer sadness at the dreamy and brief nature of the experience. All these he sensed when he came out and tilted his face up and spun slowly, getting drunk with vertigo.
A bubbly feeling rose inside him, filling his stomach and his chest rose, and it made breathing tight but sweet, a fizz that would either buoy or burst him if he remained still one more moment. Giddy, he laughed and leaped into the air, and dashed madly off, singing and skipping like a goat kid.
He called on doors for a playmate. Block B, Flat 6: Chibuzo’s mother had him washing plates, and he would take a while. Block D, Flat 2: Zubby was taking a nap—what a pity! He would not call on Block A’s Chioma now; she would not skip and kick and yell and this was such an evening it made no sense to do anything else.
He called on Paul from Block C, Flat 6 whose old football had fraying stitches. They kicked the ball about, a patch almost peeled off flapping about, giving the ball a curious spin and a frivolous character — Arinze thought the patch looked like the ball was sticking out its tongue at them and he laughed at this. And the two boys ran headlong and swung their arms from the shoulder and flung their legs from the hips after the ball that spun off-kilter. They sucked in breath in full and expelled it in full, without reserve, losing the sense of boundary time and space was in the magic the sunset wrought.
And as was likely, Arinze stumbled at full speed, went airborne, and sprawled on the ground, scraping his knee against the pavement. He began to wail.
Paul stopped in his tracks and frowned. He put the ball under his arm and walked to Arinze where he sat, cradling his scraped knee and sobbing.
“Ah, Ari, sorry,” he said, patting Arinze on the shoulder. “Don’t cry. Look, it’s only a small wound. You just struck matches.”
In playground football parlance, striking matches is what a minor abrasion is called. The epidermis is scraped exposing a white underlying layer that immediately turns red and runs with thin blood. After a few wipes, the wound runs clear serum, and a scab soon forms over it. A player striking matches rarely interrupts play.
The brilliant thrill of the sunset tinged bittersweet with the sadness of its evanescence, plus the rabid excitement of their play, and the sharp sting of the match strike, and the tender touch of Paul’s consoling hand on his head seemed like a compounding rush of waves of emotions too varied and overwhelming for him that he could not help crying. In fact, his sobbing was yet another wave in this maelstrom. His sobbing made no sense to him and he tried to stem its flow, but this only caused him to weep even more.
Now Paul stood off away from him, disgusted. “What’s wrong with you?” he asked. “Common matches and you are crying? I’m not playing again.” He stalked off, and Arinze watched him leave with their playmate, the old ball, sticking its tongue out at him.
Arinze’s crying stopped abruptly, as if a crosscurrent smashed into the build-up of waves, disrupting it. Infected by the feeling of disgust left behind by Paul, he felt silly sitting on the ground cradling his scraped knee and he rose up and limped towards the edge of the playground. He limped not because he was hurt but because he had become self-conscious, was aware of the absurdity of his weeping and had to justify it to himself. Then, he realized how ridiculous it was to limp to feign hurt when no one was watching and he straightened himself up. At the base of a coconut tree in front of Block D, he reclined and calmed down.
The sunset had calmed and the magic effect it had thrown across the sky and over everything it touched was lost, and this affected Arinze, too. The way the play ended left in his mouth the taste of a wonderful experience ruined, but the muted colors of the sky seemed to suggest to him that even smashed, some things could still be redeemed, if only marginally. He relaxed into this feeling, to savor the cud of an experience he had gorged on. Thinking of nothing in particular but wading a mindless stream of thoughts, he ignored the mosquitoes that bit him and watched the movement of people and cars in the street as the sky turn ashy blue, inky blue, and black spotted with stars.