Horseman 2: Aisosceles

Hark, look out

The horseman’s out South

Taking that deathly route

Beneath yonder hooves, tendrils doth sprout

It is @TheVunderkind.

AISOSCELES

“You see, the isosceles triangle has two sides of equal length, leaving one irregular. It is my firm belief than when the regular has been accounted for, the irregular must now take the centre stage.” —– Aisosceles

It was Yaba market in all its raucous glory.

Right in the middle of the market, amidst the ‘buy ya jenew swade! Very original! Very jenew!’, a young man was having his pocket picked.

If we are to be honest with ourselves, there is nothing extraordinarily eye-popping about having your pocket picked. Many of us have had our pockets picked. I, for example, have once bought N3,000 worth of fufu, although, admittedly, at the time, I thought I was buying an unbelievably cheap phone.

No, there was nothing extraordinary about this man’s pocket being lightened of its burdens.

As the light-fingered thief extracted his hands from the bespectacled young man’s pockets, his heart jumped for a minute, for firmly clamped upon his wrist was the hand of the bespectacled man.

“Wetin you think say you dey do?” asked the eye-glasses.

The thief smiled, and assumed the braggadocio of one caught in the act of trying to steal the baby’s lollypop.

“Yer wallet fall for grand. I don dey run con gif you since,” and he frowned here, to show how hurt he felt at being wordlessly accused of theft.

“Sharrap,” said eye-glasses. “You think say I no cash you?”

The thief frowned. “You jus’ be bad market. Na you go be di fest pesin wey go cansh me. Thank yer luncky stars,” and he made to saunter off.

But eye-glasses’ hand was still firmly gripping his.

“Take,” he said, handing the thief a second wallet. “Na yer own wallet be dat.”

The thief was, understandably and with no pun intended, robbed of speech.

“Wait – you tiff my wallet as I dey try tiff your own?”

Eye-glasses smiled for the first time. “I no be tiff. Anyhow sha, when you wan tiff wallet, you no suppose dey waka with your own wallet for your pocket.”

“Ah,” said the thief. “Ah.”

“Secondly, I see the picture of you and your babe for your wallet. Yes, she dey cheat on you. Na your best friend, Paul, dey do am.”

“How you take kno…?”

But a train was approaching, and amidst the confusion of women yanking their precious bales off the tracks, Eye-glasses was gone.

_____

His name was Aisosceles.

He once told me his name was a portmanteau, a blend he had derived from the words “Aisosa” (his given name) and isosceles, as in the triangle.

I had asked him about his fascination with the isosceles triangle, and he had said, “You see, the isosceles triangle has two sides of equal length, leaving one irregular. It is my firm belief than when the regular has been accounted for, the irregular must now take the centre stage.”

He had an elder brother in jail, whom he rarely visited. That is understandable, of course, once you realize that he had been the one who put his brother in jail.

Aisosceles believed that the world was hinged upon logic, and that when something could not be logically comprehended, one would be wise to flee from it. He described illogic as a house with an unfathomable foundation – the house would constantly shift, settle, leaving its occupants tense and gripped by trepidation because they could not understand nor see what it was that kept the house standing.

Strangely, for one so sworn to logic, Aisosceles was a devout Christian. He once told me, “logic itself is overenthusiastic to show that there is, indeed, a Creator. Look at this place. Look at this place. This is no mistake, my friend. Someone created it all – and that someone is highly intelligent. And you know me by now – I always defer to the higher intellect.”

Aisosceles was my best friend in the world. Bespectacled, thin and with a full head of hair. We were quite the pair – Sherlock Holmes and Watson for the Nigerian people dem.

“I am better than Sherlock Holmes, though,” he had bragged.

“Oh?” I had enquired, humoring him. “What makes you say that?”

“For one, Sherlock relied on Sheer Luck – hence his name. Secondly – and probably my most profound argument here – I am a living, breathing masterpiece of life. Sherlock, on the other hand, was a fictional character.”

Aisosceles was a very interesting man. He was also my best friend.

I say ‘was,’ because Aisosceles is no more. His body is currently at the Modupe Memorial Hospital, undergoing autopsy.

I watched him die.