My Neighbour of the Mud House

There was a man I used to call my neighbour. He lived across the hedge where the old desolate mud house now stands in fatigue. He lived with his wife and his children and his cow in the mud house. He was an awe, my neighbour of the mud house, admonished even by the novices of life.

He had resigned from tilling his fields. He was a rarity in his own home, and his station was with the brewer where his ration was the cup of liquor he got for his labour. He had sold his ware for the tots. His mud house was sorry to the sights. His wife was a beggar of sorts. His children walked bare, save for shorts torn at the breeches, and were the laughing stock of their mates.

In the small hours we would hear his voice drone as he staggered his way home, carrying nothing but drunken rage to bestow on his own, who eventually abandoned protest. They chose to be mum, taking all the derogations with eyes looking down, and the floggings with screech upon scream.

On the last day I saw him, there was a fracas in his home. He was atop his mud house at the crack of dawn, stripping his own roof to take to pawn. When we had forced him to alight we questioned him on the whereabouts of the proceeds from the cow he had carried off to auction hardly a week past. The more youthful among us waved their machetes. The women were screaming blue murder. But even in the sea of red fury his wife was speechless, and they had to scream at her to get her to start packing.

There was a man, I dare remind you, a man I called my neighbour — my neighbour of the mud house. But he is no longer my neighbour. And he was not a man — he was half a man. His other half had been lost somewhere, somehow. The hospital where we exiled him did promise that they could find it through rehabilitation.