CHRIST AND MY LOVER
SCENE ONE
Chima’s bedroom. It is a little dark outside, but the two-window room makes fire from wired-lamps. The room is devoid of decor. There is a foam on the bare floor, with two pillows atop. The foam is draped in a black bedsheet, the pillows also in black pillowcases with white floral designs. At upstage left is a bookshelf, filled with books. The labels on the shelf are readable: “Queer Literature,” “African Religion,” “Theology,” “Philosophy,” “History,” “Poetry,” “Other Literatures.” Opposite the foam, at upstage right, is a plastic three-tiered shelf holding only a toothbrush and a tube of toothpaste. A white cassock hangs on the wall above the bed. Chima, 24, is seen topless, sitting in a blue plastic chair and writing in an exercise book placed atop a blue plastic table. Many other books are scattered all over the table, most of them open and placed facedown. A knock is heard. Chima opens the door and a tall dark woman, Adaeze, 23, enters.
Chima: (Smiling and hailing Adaeze) My baby girl. The daughter of a mighty king who topples mountains and fills oceans with only a shovelful of sand. The princess of Africa. The black beauty in whom I am most pleased. (Opening wide his arms) Bịa bie m ọma, nwa ọma. Come, come and hug your boy. Oh, how so much have I missed the calm of your bosom.
Adaeze: (Laughing. Falls into Chima’s extended arms.) Chima, the hype master. You won’t kill me with your whining1. Who said that my father, a man trying to eke out a living from a car park in the village, is a mighty king or do you pretend not to know that my name has nothing to do with my earthly father? (Winces in mock pain.) Ah Chima, don’t squeeze me to death. If you continue like this my breasts will flatten like that slippers you have refused to replace and it is not as if you will marry me.
Chima: (Releases her, laughing.) The slippers you speak of is for the bathroom and no matter how flat you think it has become, it still serves its purpose.
Adaeze: Which is?
Chima: Which is definitely not for a fashion parade. Which is to protect my feet from the bare floor of the bathroom. Which my not replacing it since it still serves is me being frugal.
Adaeze: You know when a man cannot afford milk in this Bulaba2 economy he claims to be lactose intolerant. Tọk true, na frugal you frugal abi na poor you poor?
Chima: (Arms raised in mock surrender and laughing.) Ọya, ọya, you don catch me. Say no more before you unmask a spirit.
(In a lighthearted manner befitting of good friends, they laugh at their jokes. Adaeze moves to Chima’s bed while Chima returns to his chair, the only chair in the room. He turns away from the table, facing Adaeze.)
Adaeze: So, Mr. Queer Literature, why did you invite me today? You know you only call me in your moments of sorrows…
Chima: (Cuts in) And celebrations.
Adaeze: (Nodding) Yes, and celebrations. True. But never in normal times.
Chima: (Musing) Normalcy is boring, Adaeze. Normalcy is not the way of life. Life should be filled with happenings and agitations. A gunshot here, drum beatings there. A book reading here, an author and a critic throwing pebbles over a book review there.
Adaeze: Life is not an action movie. Normalcy is the order of life.
Chima: The order of mediocre lives, Adaeze. Mediocre lives!
Adaeze: (Mildly annoyed) Are you saying I am a mediocre?
Chima: (In a slightly raised voice) May Amadiọha dislocate my jaws should I ever utter such thoughts. May my tongue fall off before such words fall from it. May the Earth Goddess turn me upon my head should I ever insinuate that. May …
Adaeze: (Cuts him) It is okay! You and your Amadiọha and all that. (Softly) I was only saying that I want to be a part of your normal life. I avoid extremes for they are like the edge of a cliff, a step forward and we speak not of progress but of doom. It is a place not to be but you have always placed me at the extremes of the spectrum that is your life. I want to be closer to you. I want to feel closer to you.
Chima: (Stands and joins Adaeze on the bed. He lies down and places his head on Adaeze’s lap. Adaeze caresses his hair, plaiting it in the process.) Ada, you know you are the woman closest to me, closer even than my own mother. See (touches his chest) there are only two women here and you even occupy a larger space than my mum’s. You are my best friend.
Adaeze: (Pushes his head off her lap and stands. Chima sits up.) And that is the problem! That exactly is the problem!
Chima: (Confused) What exactly is the problem?
Adaeze: (Fuming) What exactly is not the problem, Chima? Chima, what exactly is not the problem?
Chima: (Stands and moves tepidly toward Adaeze. Adaeze crosses to the other side of the room, leaving the space she was occupying to Chima. In a pleadingly soothing voice.) Ada, please tell me, what have I done wrong again?
Adaeze: What have you not done wrong, again? What have you not? What am I to you? A best friend? Like your mother? Do you ever stop for a second to see me as a woman? (Balances her breasts) Do these breasts not have any effects on you when you hug and squeeze me? Did they make you blind to women during your days in the seminary?
Chima: (Smiling. Moves to Adaeze and holds her. She removes her hand and is held again.) Ada m. Ugegbe m. The melanin that melts gold and freezes a volcano. Legodị nwa na ebube ya. Ada turn, turn in your glory. (Adaeze smiling, takes a revolution.) Baby girl is well endowed. Which man born of a woman cannot see the woman you are? Even the blind sees that perfectly. (Drops his tone) But you know how I feel. You know how I am.
Adaeze: (In a low pitiful tone) I understand perfectly, Chima, I understand. But that does not mean I do not feel bad, still. That does not make the rejection less painful. You know I started reading Queer Theology just to reconcile you and the faith …
Chima: (Cuts in smiling) Miss Queer Theology.
Adaeze: (Laughing) Mr. Queer Literature.
Chima: Miss Queer Theology.
Adaeze: (Laughing) Your trick will not work on me. You think I do not know you are trying to divert my attention and reduce our discussion to a mere exchange of banter, abi? (Teasingly) Smart guy. But the devil has already lost the battle.
Chima: (Still laughing) Ọya continue, Miss Devil Defeater.
Adaeze: (Smirkingly) Anụọhịa3. (Moody again) Even with all I have learnt, I still find it difficult to understand how you cannot feel half of what you feel for that boy…what is his name again?
Chima: Paul.
Adaeze: Yes, Paul. I still do not understand why God cannot make you feel half of what you feel for him for me.
Chima: You and God again.
Adaeze: Is He not my heavenly Father, the mighty king whose daughter I am? Did you not say he levels mountains and fills oceans?
Chima: You know I was not talking of any heavenly father.
Adaeze: I don’t know anything.
Chima: (Tickling her) You know.
(They both start laughing. Chima lifts Adaeze and places her on the bed. They return to their previous position, Adaeze sitting and Chima lying with his head on her lap.)
Adaeze: So, Chima, the husband of Paul. Chima, the priest who wouldn’t be because he cannot stop loving his fellow men, for what extreme have you called me today?
Chima: (Smiling) I am still a priest, a prophet and a king by the virtue of my baptism.
Adaeze: Silly boy. Don’t play that theological trick on me. You know I am talking of sacramental priesthood here.
Chima: (Feigning confusion) Is baptism not a sacrament?
Adaeze: (Slaps him on the forehead) Holy Orders, anụ. Holy Orders.
Chima: (Dismissively) Whatever (Adds jokingly as a warning.) If you continue like this, I will return to the seminary and continue from where I stopped.
Adaeze: And become a gay priest? That will be a win for Queer Theology.
Chima: (In a slightly raised pitch.) I am not interested in any Queer Theology.
Adaeze: I know. Biko I no get energy for your arguments. Just tell me why you called. I suspect it has something to do with that boy.
Chima: Paul! His name is Paul.
Adaeze: Ok, Paul. Does it have anything to do with Paul?
Chima: Yes. It has everything to do with him.
Adaeze: I am all ears.
Chima: (Yawns.) The night is here, already. Let’s sleep and leave the problem for dawn. Who knows, morning may bring a knife to this tumour of my heart. Remember joy comes in the morning.
Adaeze: And who says I am sleeping over, ehh, nwoke m?
Chima: Who says you are not?
Adaeze: That is not an answer but a question.
Chima: The tortoise is his shell, the question its answer.
Adaeze: I no blame you; na me wey allow you see me finish I blame. Now, you have turned an emergency elder on my head, spinning verbs and proverbs.
Chima: Well, I have always been older than you, so, you see, I didn’t just turn an elder.
Adaeze: Stupid boy (Pushes him slightly) Shift inside and don’t turn karate kid on me o. Let this not be one of those nights I sleep on the foam and wake on the floor.
Chima: Lucky you. Some sleep on the floor and wake in a pit.
(They continue to exchange playful banter as their voices fade into the darkness.)
Light falls.
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SCENE TWO
Light falls on Chima’s room. The room is the same as before. Chima, wearing only a pair of boxers and a singlet, is alone, pacing the breadth of the room, a sheet of paper in his right hand. He is reading aloud from the paper, nodding his head at intervals, obviously enthralled by what he is reading. Three quick successive knocks are heard on the door. Chima neither pauses in his steps nor in his reading. After a few seconds the knocks are repeated. Chima moves to the door and unbolts it. A young, dark, handsome man, 21, walks into the room.
Chima: (Embraces him) Paul, the beloved!
Paul: (Extricates himself gently from the embrace.) John was the beloved, not Paul.
Chima: For Christ and Paul for me.
Paul: OK ooo. (Changing the topic.) What gem keeps you up and pacing? From which river is the precious stone picked?
Chima: You see why I love you? (Cheeks widening further.) You wax poetic. And life you see is poetry, as much as poetry is life. And the precious stone, the gem that animates me this afternoon, is picked from a river even Shakespeare himself fished in. (As if just unravelling a philosophical mystery.) You see, poetry is always alive and is not intimidated by time. And if you love poetry, like myself, time too won’t intimidate you. You reach to its ends, to the very depth of the water, to extract your precious stones.
Paul: And to what end have you gone to extract that? (Stretches his hand and receives the sheet from Chima.)
Chima: To the beginning of the writing of sonnets in the language of our colonizers, when the Italian Francesco Petrarch inspired those who would later guide Shakespeare, the one brought to us by the colonists—one of the few good things they came with, by the way. I am speaking of going to the time of Sir Thomas Wyatt, a man who hunted and hunted and hunted and yet could not be called a hunter, for what makes a man a hunter is not the traps he sets for the animals but the animals seen hanging on his neck as he leaves the forests, animals that have been captured by his traps. And the poem, that beauty of words, is Wyatt’s lamentations of his status as a hunter without the hunted.
Paul: Whoso List To Hunt?
Chima: I know where is an hind!
Paul: (Moves to the chair and sits.) This sounds interesting.
Chima: To call it interesting is to be limited by words in the face of sheer beauty. Of course, it is interesting. It is marvellous. It is terrific. It is stupendous. It is awesome. It is fabulous. It is fantastic. It is glorious. It is superb. (Breathes like one who just finished a sprint.) Of course, all these words only scratch the surface of what the poem is. It is best experienced. (Recites the poem by heart) “Whoso list to hunt, I know where is an hind,/But as for me, hélas, I may no more./The vain travail hath wearied me so sore,/I am of them that farthest cometh behind…”
Paul: (Cuts in) Hmmm. This reads very nicely.
(Paul goes on to recite the poem in full from the sheet, more slowly, less animatedly, and more thoughtfully than Chima.)
Paul: Old English.
Chima: You say?
Paul: It’s written in the Old English. I am struggling to understand it. Is a deer and a hind the same thing?
Chima: (Still excited) Yes. Of course, they are. A hind is a female deer.
Paul: (Contemplatively) So Wyatt is saying that he knows where hinds can be caught and is even ready to show anyone willing to hunt this place even though he “may no more”? (Shakes his head) No, this reads like a metaphor. (Looks expectantly to Chima.) Is it?
Chima: Of course, it is. The female hind can as well be a lady Wyatt wooed but was unsuccessful.
Paul: (In realization) Oh, so it is a love story rendered in verse.
Chima: It is. Tragic tale of love unrequited. Of love scorned.
Paul: The ever-familiar story of the elusiveness of love.
Chima: And loving who does not love us while not loving who loves us.
(Paul shifts a bit uncomfortably on the seat. Chima on the other hand goes to sit on the foam).
Chima: I can easily relate to Wyatt’s frustrations. I have known what it means to love without being loved, and I have experienced what it means to love who belongs to another, even when the other doesn’t even want to claim him in public, even when the other claims to be in love with yet another other and only calls him when he needs someone naked by his side, even when …
Paul: (Cuts in) Don’t you think I know the story of your first lover and the priest he played hide and seek with very well at this point?
Chima: I am sorry I got carried away. I was just trying to show you how easily I connect with Wyatt’s poem. Look at how the poem ended. Read out the last four lines again, abeg.
Paul: And graven with diamonds in letters plain/There is written, her fair neck round about: Noli me tangere, for Caesar’s I am,/And wild for to hold, though I seem tame.
Chima: (Repeats after Paul) Noli me tangere, for Caesar’s I am. For Caesar’s she is. How painful it must have been for Wyatt to see that the girl he wants has been claimed by Caesar, who may not even be around, and now he must give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar else sithens in a net he seeks to hold the wind, an activity in folly and in vain.
Paul: How are you so sure that Wyatt is the poem-persona?
Chima: (In mock shock) Are you joking or what? Of course, our knight, Sir Thomas Wyatt is also our poem-persona. You think that sort of raw beauty can come from someone who hasn’t been heartbroken? (Pauses as if waiting for an answer) Of course not. The poet has lived that experience. What talent and skill did for him there was only to help him write of the experience in such an elevated manner.
Paul: If that is the case, don’t you think Wyatt was also wrong to think of women as animals to be hunted, captured and owned?
Chima: What are you even saying? The poet was being realistic there. Getting a woman, whether we call it wooing or seduction, is a game similar to hunting. That is how it has always been, that is how it still is. The man weaves his net like a spider its web, with sweet talks about things both real and manufactured, and attention—whatever that is defined as—and most importantly, money, for that is the engine without which the car, no matter how beautiful the chassis is, cannot run. “Whoso List To Hunt” as a poem does not paint the ideals but the reality. If you think that reality depicts women horribly, it may be because their real position in our world is horrible. (Takes a short pause) I mean, look at you. You see, it is not only about women. Even though I did not chase-chase you because you were already feeling what I was feeling, and that made my chase a dash instead of a marathon, but I still chased, didn’t I? Luckily enough, unlike Wyatt, I (Smiles mischievously) caught my hind.
(Chima gently attempts to drag Paul away from the seat. The attempt is resisted which leaves Chima confused. He repeats the attempt and is again rejected. He stands, his right hand on the seat’s back, looking at Paul.)
Chima: (Puzzled) Is there any problem? (Silence. He bends his face towards Paul who moves away from him.) You’ve been somewhat withdrawn since you came in. What exactly is the problem?
Paul: The vigil was last night.
Chima: Yes, yes. Ịmakwa, I totally forgot about that. Not that I’d have come anyways but I’d have at least asked you how it went before continuing with Wyatt. So, how was it?
Paul: (Ignoring the question) Why wouldn’t you have come?
Chima: (As if in realisation) Wait, wait, wait. Don’t tell me you are acting up because I missed the vigil? Ahn ahn na, fine boy no be soo. (Touches him lovingly on the face. Paul doesn’t flinch nor acknowledge the touch. Chima withdraws his hands and gets all serious again.) You know how these things are with me na. You know I’m still trying to figure out if I still believe in God.
Paul: (Accusingly) You are still trying to figure out if you still believe in God even when (Pointing at the hung cassock) you proudly display the sign that you once served him in a special capacity?
Chima: Served him or served a group of people united under a common purpose with a divine colouration?
Paul: I don’t have time for your grand philosophies.
Chima: Ọya, I am sorry for missing the vigil, fine bobo. (Touches him in a seductive manner) Ọya, gbaghara. Forgive me. In fact, is there any vigil holding tonight? Tell me of any and I will follow you there, even serve as an usher if you want.
Paul: (Not moved by the joke. Removes Chima’s hand from his body.) That is not my problem though. I am just here to tell you that I am healed now.
Chima: Healed? Were you sick?
Paul: Healed, as in delivered from the demons that make me do this thingwith you.
Chima: And what’s this thingthat you do with me?
Paul: No, Chima, no. This is no time to play this question-and-answer game of yours. I am not here to play it with you. (Holds Chima’s hand.) See Chima, I spoke with my pastor. You too can be healed; you too can be delivered, saved from this iniquity, this sin that consumes us.
Chima: (Removes Paul’s hand while trying to control his anger.) What exactly are you talking about? What has happened to you, Paul?
Paul: Nothing has happened to me except that I now know what it actually means to give one’s life to Christ. I have given my life to Christ and this time it is real. When the pastor preached against homosexuality last night, I felt like he was talking directly to me and I was led by the spirit to give up this lifestyle. You said earlier that Christ chooses his beloveds, right? Let’s say that Christ has chosen me as his beloved. I understand the love that you have for me and I appreciate it. But that love, that thing we thought of as love, is actually a malformed and disordered form of love, an inversion of what God has ordained. The real love is to be found in Christ and how he has designed love to be. Think of me as the girl in Wyatt’s poem. “Noli me tangere, for Christ’s I am.” But unlike that girl, I am not totally lost to you. (Stands to Chima.) Christ calls us all to be his beloved, and this is a call you should answer yourself. You will see how light you will feel when this burden is carried off you and then we can share a holy brotherhood in Christ.
Chima: (Annoyed. Gives him a mocking applause.) Wow, wow, wow. Guess who we have here. Pastor Paul. Sorry, Senior Apostle Paul. You forgot to add that last night was your road to Damascus encounter. (Unable to contain his anger, moves and opens the door. He holds it open.) Now, come and be going. Leave my house.
Paul: (Shocked) You are driving me out?
Chima: No, I am not driving you out. I cannot afford a car yet. I am throwing you out. At least I have muscles for that. I am not interested in your (in mimicry) brotherhood in Christ. Leave the house of this sinner since you have learnt to hate yourself.
Paul: (Angrily walking out of the room.) My pastor was after all right when he said I should cut contact with you else you lead me back to sin. I was deluded to think I could save you.
Chima: Christ the Saviour. Go and meet your pastor on his bed so that you can thank him for saving you from damnation. Ndị ara4.
Paul: (Visibly hurt) Not every man of God is like the priest that your ex went to. My pastor is happily married to a woman and they have three children.
Chima: And now he has a second wife.
(Paul angrily leaves the room while Chima slams his door shut.)
Lights fall.
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SCENE THREE
(Subdued brilliance of waking lights filters through the windows. The room is the same as in Scene One. On the bed is Adaeze, covered in a blanket. Chima is seated at the table, a piece of paper held to his face. He reads aloud from the paper, but is inaudible. Adaeze stirs, kicking away the blanket. She stirs again and wakes up. She sits up and addresses Chima, who has turned away from the paper to witness her waking moment.)
Adaeze: Good morning, Chima. You are already up reading?
Chima: Good morning, Ada. Yes oo, what else can a man rejected do save to find succour in the lightning lyrics of poets gone?
Adaeze: (Smiles) And your words are verses, the verve of a poet present.
Chima: (Smiling) Present and scorned.
Adaeze: (Recollects) That reminds me, I was summoned to pick up the pieces of a heart scorned and broken.
Chima: (Laughing) Remind me, who again did you refer to as the poet present? Because it seems you are the poet now.
Adaeze: (Also laughing.) Bikokwa. I am not a poet ooo. Don’t lay upon me the big title that crumbles the dog. (Becomes serious) So, I am listening. What happened between you and your lover?
Chima: My ex-lover.
Adaeze: Your ex-lover. What happened between you and your ex-lover?
Chima: Is it wise to start the new day with a tale of things lost and mourned?
Adaeze: Was I the one who spoke of love scorned in response to a morning greeting?
Chima: Even at that, isn’t it unwise to recount the darkness of the dusk at the light of the dawn?
Adaeze: Chima, what happened between you and your ex-lover?
Chima: Paul is his name.
Adaeze: (Irritated. Slightly raises her voice.) You think you are smart, abi? Where do you think you are going with all these your diversions? Where?
Chima: (Weakly) I don’t just feel like recounting the event again. Can we just forget it and take every buzz and bite of last night to have been the mosquitoes?
Adaeze: What bit me last night were bedbugs and not mosquitoes and I can’t pretend otherwise. I am here for the story and you must tell it oo.
Chima: (Patronisingly) Ahh, Adaeze m. The prime princess of a powerful paradise. Do you want it said that you reopened the healed wounds of your best friend?
Adaeze: Are the wounds truly healed though? What I see is a fresh open wound whose owner is trying to run away from the touch of a disinfectant and since that owner is my best friend, I will tie him to the ground, if need be, and treat the wound.
Chima: (Laughing) Ahhh. You are making it seem like war o.
Adaeze: (Maintaining a mean disposition.) Maybe it is war.
Chima: Nooo. E never reach that level. OK, I will tell the story but there is a condition.
Adaeze: (Laughing) T&Cs apply?
Chima: (Also laughing.) Yes ooo. T&Cs apply.
Adaeze: Ọya talk, let’s see the mischief you are brewing.
Chima: I brew no mischief, gentle me. It is the simple condition that I will only tell the story resting my head on your lap.
Adaeze: (Laughing) That one has never been a problem. Once you agree you will join me in morning prayers after you have told your story.
Chima: (Feigns seriousness) Ọya carry your lap dey go, I no need am again.
Adaeze: (Still laughing) So person no fit play with you again, abi? (Endearingly) Come to mummy and pour out your frustrations, my baby.
(They both laugh. Chima joins Adaeze on the bed, lying with his head on her lap, looking up at her. Adaeze pats his head, drawing lines on his face as he begins to narrate his last encounter with Paul.)
CHIMA: My first boyfriend I lost to a consecrated servant of Christ and Paul to Christ Himself. It seems my duty is to find a lover and Christ’s to take him away from me.
ADAEZE: (Laughing) Ah Chima, what are you saying? (Tries to stifle her laugher) I shouldn’t be laughing at this blasphemy.
CHIMA: (Laughing) But you laughed which is a good thing since I won’t be missing my best friend in hell.
ADAEZE: Holy Ghost fire! Na only you dey go hell o. Me I’m bound for heaven and nothing can change that.
CHIMA: (Teasing) Is that what you learnt from Queer Theology.
ADAEZE: (In mock annoyance) I don’t blame you. Continue your story jare.
CHIMA: The young man came on a Saturday morning to tell me that he has given his life to Christ during a Friday vigil and cannot continue that thinghe does with me. That thing, that was what he called it.
ADAEZE: (Laughs and feigns ignorance) That thing? What can that thingbe? I am sincerely lost o.
CHIMA: (Laughing) You are sincerely evil not lost.
ADAEZE: Me? Evil? You know that cannot be. I am the sincerest person on this earth.
CHIMA: Yes, yes, yes. I believe you. After all Moses was the humblest man on earth in a book written by Moses and John the apostle whom Jesus loved in the Gospel of John.
ADAEZE: (Mischievously) He now loves Paul too.
CHIMA: You want to know what I will say, abi?
ADAEZE: But come to think of it, what if Christ is frustrating your efforts to have a stable relationship because the only stable relationship you are supposed to have is with His Church as a celibate priest?
CHIMA: (Rolls his eyes at her) See person way suppose dey console me.
ADAEZE: Console you? When you are not even the victim here. The biggest victim in this is the one who has been led to see his desires as demonic and immoral and sinful.
CHIMA: Aren’t those what they are according to the Bible?
ADAEZE: No, it is…
CHIMA: (Cuts) So in your Queer Theology, premarital sex is not a sin?
ADAEZE: I won’t dignify that question with an answer because I know you know better not to reduce a whole sexual orientation to just sexual intercourse.
CHIMA: (Tired with the conversation) Can we read a poem, something refreshing to break the new day instead of this?
ADAEZE: Whatever. Read your poem I will listen.
(ADAEZE caresses him for a few moments in silence. CHIMA rises from her lap and picks up a copy of Christopher Okigbo’s Labyrinths from the table. He starts reading aloud while the lights slowly fade.)
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Notes
1. Whining is Nigerian slang for excessive praise and exaggerated rendering of someone’s positive aspects especially while in a direct conversation with the person. It is similar to hype.
2. During his presidential campaign, the president of Nigeria, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, mispronounced hullabaloo as balablue, and in his attempt to correct it, pronounced it as bulaba. The clip immediately went viral. The two words have become favourites in describing the economic turmoil the country has witnessed under his administration.
3. Wild animal. The other variation, anụ, simply stands for animal.
4. Mad people.
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Image: Bastian Wardana Unsplash