Mororo’s Masterpiece is the second short story in Ibrahim Adam Abubakar’s collection of short stories titled Dreams and Assorted Nightmares.
By Lechi Eke
Nigerian award-winning author, Ibrahim Adam Abubakar’s strength as a writer can be found in two things: his vivid imagination and use of words. Abubakar knows how to use words to create moods and to transport a reader to the things he writes about. He’s also very good in plot structuring.
The short story, Mororo’s Masterpiece, opens from the end of the story and shuttles back and forth to events that took place before the demise of the protagonist, to the incidents going on in the present.
The story is about the local roadside painter in Zango town. Yes, the same boundary town called Zango where a character, Lamide, suffered husband-sharing until she lost her husband in Assorted Dreams and Nightmares.
Abba Mororo, a father of five children and a husband of a humble wife, is the roadside painter. Mororo is well-known in Zango not only for his painting, but also for his painting (the town red). He’s so well-known in his town that there’s no home that doesn’t have a Mororo, either as painting or as bastard. He’s the man about town – “chasing butts”.
Mororo doesn’t discriminate between married and unmarried ladies, nor does he have respect for status in life as he’s fathered a child for a 19-year-old, a pastor’s wife, a rich man’s wife, a pauper’s wife, and the list goes on. His wild oats have been sown “widely”. And despite the fact that he has quite a reputation in that area, Zango ladies still fall for his slight frame and doe eyes.
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It is this lifestyle that sends the protagonist, Abba Mororo, to an early grave. So, the story opens with how Mororo met his end, in the hands of one of the husbands of his paramours. Everyone in Zango knows that some husband will kill Mororo one day, but no one knew it would be the husband of a very ugly woman.
Abubakar, a master of diction, chose imagery of a gate, damaged war tank wheel, and so on, to describe how ugly the woman is, whose husband sent Mororo to an untimely death. He writes: “She has eyes like a child’s squiggle in the sand, nostrils like city gates and teeth like the disintegrating road wheel of an abandoned war tank. All these set in a swarthy eczema-ravaged face.”
When the woman’s husband bursts into the room, Mororo knowing his end has come is said to have cried, “Not for one so ugly!”
For the woman’s ugliness, Mororo’s second son, Shehu, has remarked to his older brother that perhaps their father loved the woman’s “yam tubers-like breasts”, but the older son who spent much time with his father as his apprentice, tells his younger brother that their father “chased butts” when he was alive. The author again delves into the storeroom of words to fetch us vivid words that feed our imaginations with the sight of the paramour whose husband clobbered Mororo to death. He writes: “…Talle’s generous backside that floundered like disturbed waters when she walked…”
From the ugly Talle, the story moves to the one whom the residents of Zango thought her husband would end Mororo’s lecherous ways, the rich and beautiful Sakinat. She is the one who elevated Mororo’s painting in Zango buying a piece for half a million naira and requesting that the amorous painter paints her in the nude! Of course, this ends with a real-life miniature in that household and gets Mororo more nude-painting jobs of women who end up carrying his children.
The narrator dwells a bit here and moves on to Mororo’s widow, Inna, mourning his shameful departure. Every one knows that he departed on top of another man’s wife. Inna is just staring ahead, perhaps not mourning at all, but remembering his philandering for in this scene, her friend whose 19-year-old daughter Mororo put in the family way comes to condole with her. Inna’s first son who is the narrator narrates how Inna used to lash out at her dead husband for one act of infidelity or another.
Dija, Mororo’s first love, whom he would have married but for her father’s refusal because he was then a poor artist, also comes to condole with Inna. The two women have really loved the dead lecher.
This story’s plot is very strong (in a strong plot, things happen because of another). The structuring is also well planned. Abubakar keeps throwing the past into the present, one event after the other, but in a way that builds it up to a crescendo that crashes into the event leading to him losing his life.
The narrator returns to Sakinat’s husband finding out and coming to confront Mororo. Here there are insinuations in the story of Sakinat’s husband being both psychologically impotent and in virility. So, he smashes Mororo’s paintings in a clumsy impotent way instead of the painter’s head or face, and drives his foot into one painting of the town of Zango in an impotent rage. Sakinat’s husband’s rage is the impotent rage of a man who lost a battle in “za aza room”, a la PMB (chuckle).
Mororo makes a masterpiece out of this very painting for which the whole of Zango comes to see, and art lovers come from as far away as Lagos to see and try to buy. But Mororo will not sell for any price!
The whole town takes turns to see this magnus opus of Mororo, and even pays his son, Shehu, money to see the painting. A strange thing happens after Mororo finished this masterpiece, which he confesses that he put his very soul in. His numero uno paramour, the one his wife worries most about, the rich woman who takes him away several days at a stretch, the beautiful Sakinat, arrives at the roadside studio to see him. The two lovers have a PDA (public display of affection) in the presence of the staring crowd. That same day, the painting disappears.
Naturally, Mororo’s sons believe he’s given it to Sakinat, the painting that would have taken the family out of poverty as their father turned down a fifteen million naira offer for it. In blind rage, the older son, who is the storyteller, confronts his father about the whereabout of the painting. Mororo announces that he’s given it away. To who? To “the one”, he says, which is very heart-wrenching to the young man.
However, it turns out that Mororo who drained himself mentally painting that masterpiece which he called Zango trampled by a Lummox, had given the painting to his wife. In the course of the bereaved family’s conversation, it is found out that their mother, Mororo’s widow, is in possession of the painting. She is Mororo’s “the one”.
This gesture shows that the painter actually loved his wife despite all his philandering. But at this time, it is too late, the meek wife has gone out to her old boyfriend to retaliate 24 years of injustice, infidelity, of her husband trampling on her feelings. Her boyfriend of over two decades is still a bachelor, maybe waiting and hoping…
Inna tells her husband what she has done. This kills him internally. In his brokenness, Mororo goes out to find solace, but not in alcohol, but to chase more butts. This time, he doesn’t come back – perhaps, he has crossed the Rubicon! He is clobbered to death on top of a woman.
So, the story wraps up with these revelations: that Mororo gifted his magnum opus painting to his wife, that his meek wife got revenge in sleeping with her old flame, and finally, that Mororo deeply hurt by this revelation, grabbed the available butt in his moment of grief, and that turns out to be the one that ends his sordid lifestyle.
In the unexpected end of the story filled with revelations, the narrator reveals that although folks gathered for Abba Mororo, but no one really feels any pain for his departure, especially, not his nuclear family. The general feeling of his family is summed up in the words of his second son, Shehu, who says, “I’m not grieving,” Shehu said. “I’ve been learning to manage my relief.”
Literary Appreciation
Mororo’s Masterpiece is the second short story in Ibrahim Adam Abubakar’s collection of short stories titled Dreams and Assorted Nightmares. It’s written in the first-person point of view. So, we see everything in the story through the eyes of Abba and Inna Mororo’s first son. He is the protagonist’s 19 years old son and apprentice of a roadside painter while the protagonist is the painter who is known in their town as a serial lecher.
The characters are stock suitable for the theme of this kind of story, the story of serial infidelity in a marriage. We have the womaniser, his meek cheated wife, his embarrassed children, strings of paramours and furious husbands as well as scandalised neighbours.
I thought there would have been some character-development in the protagonist when the narrator threw into the mix, the protagonist giving his lawful-wedded wife the painting and referring to her as “the one”, but by him turning away quickly to find solace in a skirt, this hope is killed. Therefore, Abba Mororo is a flat character, a stereotype. So typical of womanisers who vow they love their wives but will not let go of anything in skirt. Philanderers have sex for sex’s sake with no real emotions attached to it, and this, Mororo does throughout the story.
Well, we can give his wife a round character for the change we see in her towards the end. She exhibits some character development when she snaps out of her meekness and dresses up and steps out of her home, her comfort zone, to seek her former lover. We don’t know if anything went down because to women, sex and love are synonymous. So, since it’s someone else telling the story, we do not know much about that nocturnal meeting except that she visited her old flame and her son saw her and she told her husband and this broke his gentle heart! (Story of our lives – rolling my eyes).
Also, we see a change in her character when she speaks boldly to her sons telling them that any of them who takes after their father, she, Inna, will kill that son. The two actions are decisive and bold, a change from the meek and mild cheated wife who stays there for her children swallowing the dirt.
The narrator is a round character who after watching helplessly his father ruining his family, feeling his mum’s pains and being embarrassed by his dad’s behaviour, confronts him asking what happened to the magnus opus painting. Also, he actually goes out that night he encountered his mum and her old flame, according to him, to clobber his dad. So, there is actual character development here.
The others are just stereotypical, all of them, including the one that clobbered Mororo, the one who lashed out impotently at him and the others who buried their heads in the sand like ostriches.
I have dealt with the plot structure in the plot summary.
Style or Diction, of course, Abubakar is a wordsmith. I will pick up his book anywhere I see it for his Diction. He creates moods and imaginations with words. I’ve mentioned the one about Talle’s derriere – “…her generous backside that floundered like disturbed waters when she walks… We find sentences like: “She drapes herself in folds of dignity as she sat to receive condolences from the women who shared her man.” Also, “In her mind, I imagined drifts of insipid colours crafting dunes of shame and rage.” And, “The crowd unzipped for him…”; “…whose hem kissed the ground as she walks.” Plus, some others.
The setting is great, a lawless border town where anything is possible.
Reviewer’s Comment
However, we need to see a new African woman who will rise up and say, “I’m not going to take this shit anymore, and walk out!” You may ask, is it the right thing to do? Spiritually speaking, No. But I think that if philanderers have an inkling that madam may not be docile and might do something rash like walk out, pour hot water on them while they are sleeping resting from their nefarious activities at home, or knife them when they’re vulnerable in sleep, they will sit up.
