Short Story: Holding down butterflies

The short story is a guest post by Ben Ochuba K. It is a fictitious account of a student who captions memories with his camera (analogue) and who sees frightful meanings on the film’s negatives. We hope you enjoy reading it as we did.

 

The story…

They are tiny, these feelings of joy. They have life cycles too, which in retrospect appear to be too short.

David knew this, that was why he never let any moment of happiness skip past without him an attempt by him to trap some of it into a frame that he could go back to from time to time to savour its sweetness.

Bouncing on his heaving chest that sunny morning was his camera. The harmattan dust that was said to have forgotten its cold partner somewhere in the windy cycle was swirling outside and his wild afro had captured on the edges some brown dust. But he was almost late for class so he was not minding much his appearance that day.

He got to the door at the same time the bald lecturer with his reading glasses seemingly permanently perched on his nose got there, though from opposite directions, one from the outside, the other from the inside. The staring contest that ensued was one-sided as David kept trying to avoid a direct eye contact and the lecturer remained intent on looking for an excuse to stop him from joining the class.

“What is your time saying now?” the man finally asked. His breath was almost fresh but there was a lingering smell of garlic in the space between them that David needed to steel his feet to avoid stepping back instinctively.

He cast a glance at the wall clock above the blackboard that was still devoid of any writing and replied, “11 O’clock.” He was on time.

The lecturer stepped back to let him in and shut the door. David could not tell the number of students in the class as he made his way to a seat beside Ifekandu at one of the back rows.

“Cameraman, what is your name?”, the lecturer asked and a chuckle from the front row spread across the classroom.

David replied promptly as he knew it would be a futile exercise to correct him that he was not a cameraman. “David Onuoha,” he answered.

“Well this is a Physics class, not an art class and I wonder what you will be doing with a camera,” the lecturer remarked as he ticked him present in a long brown hardcover book.

 

 

David didn’t wonder…

His room back in his uncle’s house from where he goes to school held the answer. All his former roommates had been unable to cope with the way he hung pictures on the wall and David had after four failed attempts at living like a ‘normal student’ with a roommate decided to go live in his uncle’s house that was two drops from school.

In his mind’s eyes, he could see walls with the photos. From the top was a kitten imitating the manoeuvre of its mother. He had taken that shot on his way to the cafeteria a day after he got his camera many months ago.

There was also a picture of Ngozi who had dropped out of school because she could no longer afford the fees after her mother left her father. He had taken the picture on an evening after she had successfully gotten the short stories compilation of Lesley Nneka who she claimed was the most brilliant writer to grace the earth. She had held the book high just outside the class by the railings and the sun was beginning to set, casting a shadow and fingers of red light on her happy face. He looks at the picture to remind himself of the importance of every moment though it made him sad that she herself had never seen it.

On the far-right of the same wall was that of a little beggar that had accosted him in the market one time and hadn’t let him go until he parted with the only money he had on him, leaving him with no other option than to trek back home that day. The photo of the girl in a half leap, her bare feet leaving the paved road just at that instant was more than satisfactory.

He didn’t wonder what a Physics student needed a camera for…

The lecturer was doing some manipulations of Lagrange’s formulations and the sobriety of the whole class told what sounds cannot –  that they were all finding it difficult to understand the meanings of the white markings on the blackboard. When the lecturer wiped the same line for the fourth time, David knew he too was confused.

 

 

The lecturer tilted his head this way and that, tried again and when he did not wipe the line again, the students sighed in relief. Some equations later, the proof was done and the lecturer turned to the students with the widest grin they would ever see on his face to announce that the proof was complete.

David pointed his camera and froze the moment from an angle that caught the collection of heads from the seats in front of him to the radiant smile of the lecturer. The flash setting was turned off as was the sound setting making the shot go unnoticed by most in the classroom.

He printed the photograph of the class picture ten days before he heard the news that the lecturer had lost his wife in a car accident. Someone had said the car ran under a broken down trailer but somehow, her four months old baby in the back seat had survived.

He pulled the print off the wall that he had shaded into grayscale and folded it into an envelope, on the back he inscribed: to holding down butterflies to remind us that the sky will always be there but not with as many colours.

David slipped the envelope under the lecturer’s door the next day but he had no knowledge of what became of it until the next semester when he had accompanied the class representative to submit an assignment to the office. On a polished frame was his blown-up picture with his caption in a stylised font.

He smiled sadly on his way out of the office at the memory of the negative of this photo. The smile that had brightened the lecturer’s face was replaced with upturned lips that told tales of the struggle within to keep tears at bay, and the congregated heads of the students were nothing but white backgrounds with dark clouds seeming threatening to rain more sorrows.

The impending doom had been clear from the moment he had been washing the film, it was like that first picture of the kitten: the negative showed it being cut nearly in two by the talons of a large hawk and its mother in a half snarl. It had taken David some time to fully understand.

 

 

The day he had shot the photo of the girl bounding towards other beggars after she had successfully extracted the last fifty naira from him, the negative had shown her from the back with her feet nearly touching the ground and her hands tied to a pole. Dried patterns of blood ran down her thighs and her neck was twisted at a very unnatural angle. He had been unable to eat nor sleep well nights after that and had carefully kept the negatives hidden from then on.

He once attempted to tell Ngozi about hers after he saw the negative. Her mother on her left with her face swollen in various places and her father with a murderous look and Ngozi in the middle, an upraised hand holding a Bible and the beginning of dawn in the background. She could not understand what he had tried to describe and showing her the film would not have done any good.

Some insights were too heavy, which was why he never allowed anyone take a shot of himself with his camera.

End.

 

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