He preferred the sports club at this hour. The early birds had drifted off, leaving the padded track, for the regulars, the retirees. Today, his walking partner, the General, wasn’t around, so he would have to make do without a pacer. 

He picked up his pace, zipping up his dark blue Adidas tracksuit. The air was cool and the sky overcast. It reminded him of the monotonous greyness of his college days in the Netherlands. He felt energetic and he looked forward to a brisk ten laps. His breathing rhythm steadied, a slight lean in his gait, his eyes focused on the padded surface.

A younger man jogs past him. The pace, a bit fast for a steady jog and sure enough, as he deduced, the young man slows down to a trot, alternating between jogging and walking. The older man takes it all in. He is overexerting and this face is not familiar. The young man has a good running cadence and a rugby physique but no stamina and as soon as he returns to walking, a heaviness is apparent about him. They do not acknowledge each other at first. 

Two laps in and the young man stops running for good. He has a laboured walking style as he tries to stay ahead of the older man. The effort shows in the swing of his arms. The old man calculates that he could pass him by the next lap and half, and true to his estimation, by the time they loop past the terrace, the older man is gaining on the younger man. He diagnoses the limitation. It’s in his stride. Too short and too much upper body movement. Bad technique. The younger man stops at one of the cement benches around the padded track and starts to tie his shoelace to allow the old man to pass him. He gets what’s happening. Face saving. 

The young man is behind him now, his presence apparent because his breathing came in ragged hitches. The older man is now all warmed up and hitting a stride that is in contrast to the younger man’s discord. The young man finally levels up but needs to labour hard if he has intentions of overtaking this father figure and creating distance.  Instead, he turns towards the older man, nods respectfully and then offers a greeting, “Good morning, my senior”.

The greeting softens the older man who offers back a warm response. 

“Good morning, young man”.  

Well brought up, respectful. He decides to engage. It is only the two of them on the track. He is not averse to company.  

Doris, the Jamaican lady, who is a regular company at this hour, has completed her customary two laps and was seated at her corner table on the terrace, sipping her morning coffee, scrolling on her phone, probably Facebook. A creature of habit that one. 

The older one asks a simple question, “I have not seen you here before, are you a member?”

The younger man says he was a member but never ran on the track. He used to frequent the gym with his wife in the evenings and the old man asks, unable to mask the surprise, “With your wife?”

“Yes, we had a routine, two times a week.”

Still somewhat in disbelief, he repeats, 

“You go to the gym with your wife?”

“I should say, used to…as we have gone separate ways”.

The older man gives a soft grunt in acknowledgment. There is a moment of palpable silence between them and the older man can sense the harbored pain of a story waiting to be told and his curiosity gets the better of him.  

“Hmm…what happened?”

The young man began to speak and poured his heart out with a kind of honesty that at once surprised the older man.  He told the story in fragments, quantifying the magnitude of loss, starting with what he would miss the most, his purpose as a family man and the most disappointing, the kids. 

“How many?”

“Two? Boy and girl”.

He continues. They were too busy. Too much focus on their careers and giving the children a good life. He used to travel a lot for work. Wife got a promotion, senior management. Children raised by nannies and we grew apart. That is when he started the affair. He found comfort in the company of a professional colleague and it turned into a routine. They were very discreet. Things fell apart after his wife found out about the affair. 

“How did she find out?” the old man prodded.

“A moment of stupidity. She had sent me…well… aahh!…discreet photos that I should have deleted and it was my daughter who found them while playing with my phone.”

The older man shot him a look that made the young man feel like a naive school boy.

He felt the need to qualify it, in between an awkward laugh. He had known the other woman longer than his wife, more friends than lovers, a friend with benefits and her place was like a safe house.

These were interesting terms. “Friend with benefits”, “Safe house”. These were childish terms for a dangerous game but that train of thought was interrupted by sight of the curve of Doris’s neck.

They had now come alongside the terrace. Doris had her back towards them, her dark and thick locks falling beyond her shoulders and framing her lean face. She had finished her coffee and the muesli bowl was empty. She was now drinking a smoothie. Deep green. The old man wondered about the order. She needs to start with the smoothie, then the cereal and finish with a coffee. 

His mind returned to the young man who was now trying to rationalise his life choices. 

“My wife could not understand that the other woman is what kept me going. She was someone who listened to me, let me talk and even after the affair broke out, we still continued to see each other. I needed her more than I realised. I had no one to talk to”,

The old man latched onto the contradiction, 

“You said you had no one to talk to, but you just told me you had this woman who listened. Which is it?”

The question seemed to confuse the young man and he ignored it as he continued explaining how everything went south after that. 

“We became mean to each other. It was unhealthy and eventually she said she wanted a divorce”. 

It had been six months since he moved out of the family home, the house that he bought. 

“She asked me to leave… and I left everything I had built”. 

He expressed helplessness at his condition and was in clear grief about the loss of his home, family and reputation. He regretted the mistake even though he justified it as a silly mistake that he believed was blown out of proportion. He framed himself as a tragic figure, a victim of circumstance.

The Older Man didn’t offer sympathy. 

“You left your own house? Why did you do this?”

The younger man tried to explain the emotional weight of the affair and how it broke any trust that was left  in the marriage. The Old Man listened, then asked,

“I get that you were caught? But let me get this right, it was just sex. Did you have children with this other woman?”, and his voice became stern, “Were you beating your wife?”

The young man was taken aback by the confronting tone, and offered a spirited defense, 

“ No, No, No…No!, I had my flaws, and I take full responsibility but I am not a violent man. Me, I just keep quiet and walk away”. 

“Fair enough, Do you plan to marry this other woman?”

“ No, God no, No…Noo… that would be…I don’t even know what to say … .I can’t find the words…marry her!”.

“You get along, she has been steady and safe”.

“But that would make me look like a complete villain”.

“To whom ?”

“My wife, my kids, her family, our friends”

“So you love the other woman enough to remain loyal but only in secret?”

The young man became pensive. He hadn’t anticipated that the conversation would descend to uncomfortable and confronting territory but at the same time, he had an epiphany about the affair, as a desperate attempt to make up for what was lost in his marriage life. 

“Okay, let me ask a different question. What else did you do wrong, apart from this affair? Do you pay school fees, house maintenance, did you do your duty?”

“Oh yes,” a certain confidence that was absent before emerged in his voice, “always, even with her promotion, I still took care of the fees and the house, things like the car”

“But you still left the house”.

“I had to protect my sanity”.

“So where do you live now?”

“I found a small studio apartment…he paused….you know I take full responsibility for my part and I know I have really let down my kids”.

The old man could not understand the logic and offered an anecdote.

 “When I was young and living in Europe, I had my adventures. The General and I had a saying: ‘A man must clear his pipes or risk prostate cancer.’ I have my memories, and I also have a forty-year marriage with grandchildren.” 

As the old man let out a low chuckle at this memory, his eyes flickered back towards Doris, who was now standing. He could make out the contours of her full figure. She looked quite firm for her age. The General attributed it to a smoothie and yoga regimen.  

He looked back at the young man and spotting the dawning confusion, offered his insight. 

“You think you are grieving because you lost a wife, a house, your children. Children – you can repair the relationship. The bigger problem is understanding what you truly lost.  You lost yourself a long time ago. Your worth is tied to the validation of these women, your wife, and the other woman. The man you were trying to be for them… where is he now? Who is the man that existed before the title of husband?”

A long silence stretched over the next lap. The Young Man’s grief shifted. It was no longer about material loss or shame.

He was beginning to grieve for the self he never was. It occured to the old man that this consideration had never been pondered. The divorce was not a tragedy; it was a symptom. The tragedy was the hollow man who was exposed when the structure fell away.

They looped past the terrace. Doris made eye contact this time. He had seen Doris around the club for about a year now. She was more of the General’s acquaintance. He felt a familiar stir, every time he spotted her – something about the way she looked at him. He knew that look, and what it awoke inside of him. 

“Where is your other alf?” Doris shouted, her foreign accent pronounced and musical. She was talking about the General. The old man gestured as if to say, “ Still sleeping” and caught a smile flashing across her face. 

The young man had not said a word since his last statement. It occurred to the old man that he was now on his last lap. 

“Listen. This feeling of guilt is useless. You have to take care of yourself first before you can take care of your family. So find that man that existed before the wedding suit. He’s the one who has to build what’s next.”

The young man now looked visibly shell shocked and for the first time, he realised what his wife had meant when she called him a people pleaser.

The old man seeing his face, offered a consolation,

“ You are probably going to be okay but for now forget about these women. I listened to you keenly when you were talking. It is okay to grieve after what you lost but don’t get stuck there. That other man is dead. It is time to find the real one ”. 

They were now across from the terrace and the old man’s attention had shifted. He was thinking about what Doris said. Was that an invitation? It must be. Usually, she would have left by the time they were on their 8th lap. She was still here.

The two men walked the last 50 metres in silence, maintaining a brisk pace and stopped when they arrived alongside the terrace. The young man was deeply thankful for the insights. The old man shook his hand firmly, his mind still dwelling on Doris’s smile and he was soon off, up the wide stairs towards Doris. The young man watched the old man’s leave, noticing a perk in his step. He stared at him until he shook hands warmly with Doris. 

Suddenly he felt like jogging, starting off at a slow pace, the emptiness of the track mirroring the hollowness he now felt inside. 

********

Strength & Sorrow has landed in Nairobi! You can now grab your copy at 5 bookstores across the city.
– Text Book Centre
– Yaya Bookstop
– Nuria Book Store
– Half Priced Books
-Prestige Book Shop

Or simply place an order on my website https://oyungapala.com/

I hope you gain something of value from this read. Asante.