In Ignorant Bliss

News of the impending marriage party for Okwuchukwu’s son spread like a plague. All looked forward to the burgeoning duet of Tatu and Nnedi that had become talk of the town of late. So much that even as the event commenced, all in attendance were riding the crest of its wave from the word go. First, it was as if the day would never come. Now that they were at the event, they basked, one and all in effulgent glory.

True to expectation the two of them were at their possible bests. They sang as if they had been singing together from the womb and were bound to keep at it till the grave. This came to a head when they called up the well-known song that no one in the village could say when it was composed and by whom. Though the most commonplace song there could ever be, they gave such a stupendous rendition of it that it left the two of them - as well as many in the audience - in tears of joy.

Like the characters in the song Tatu and Nnedi were both hit by the thunderbolt of the secret admiration they have always had for each other. It happened while they were in the middle of the song. As Tatu wound down his solo he appeared to have acquired a beatific aura that had Nnedi needing him there and then. His soul was opened up for her to ransack and, though they were supposed to be acting out an ageless song, they both melted into each other’s arms.

However, as glaring as the incandescence they irradiated was, none in the audience got as much as a hint of it. Not even when they still clung to themselves as they did the next song, a not exactly romantic song about the tortoise and the hay. Carried away themselves, each in the audience had instead been seeking to be the one by Nnedi’s side there on stage.

None the less so than Nnana, the son of Otugo; he had even fixed a rendezvous with her for the day only to be thwarted by the late invitation for her to sing at this event. In fact he was only physically prevented from making the advance to the stage by an ejaculatory wetness that suffused his loincloth at the climax of the urge. Rather subdued by the faux pas, he withdrew to a corner to get back his sangfroid.

The cat was not let out of the bag till the very end of the fete. Pushed by an unabashed fondness for each other Tatu and Nnedi could not wait to make it backstage to lock themselves in a tight embrace that was only broken when they announced their engagement there and then in emotion-laden voices.

“I’ll love you till the sun refuses to shine,” Tatu vowed to the disbelief of the assembled who had sallied closer to them at the end of the event.

“I’ll stand by you even if the moon fell from the sky,” Nnedi reciprocated forcing the crowd to retreat to give them the necessary privacy to pour the contents of their hearts without let. And perhaps consummating it with a physical bout at the end of the night.

All but Nnanna, the son of Otugo who still stood there as if transfixed at his spot as the lovers carried on as if he was not there. He stood there ruing missed opportunities. Unknown to him, it would have come to a fruition had not Okwuchukwu decided of late to engage Nnedi to sing at his son’s wedding party at his friends advice.