The Frowning Face Of a Big Man's Corpse, By Mazi Anayo Nwosu

I didn't go to the mortuary to see this man but to quietly deposit my relation who had just died. 

But the man's face was visibly frowned and twisted like a towel being squeezed to let go all its retained water. 

He must have struggled with death and didn't accept that he has been defeated by death or that he had lost the battle to continue living.

I was tempted to think that the man's face was mirroring his agony in the world beyond as his face betrayed the soul of someone receiving several latches of spiritual canes in Hell or Gehenna.

Interestingly, the dead man's darken face caused by formalin preservative didn't make me not to recognize him.

He was a customer in my former bank.

This guy contested all charges passed into his accounts and would demand and receive reversals for wrong debits. He was that meticulous.

The corpse was unmistakably that of Chief Akuefuna.

He was a very wealthy man known for not losing money. He would gain all the time.

Everything for him was a profit.

The mortuary where this man and his dead neighbors were carelessly laid on a bare floor or on drawer-like wood is owned and managed Anglican Diocesan Hospital, Akwudo, Nnewi.

This small bungalow with no decorations has now become the temporary home for all dead citizens of Nnewi and adjacent towns until their relatives decide to come claim and bury them.

In the mortuary, the poor and the rich are treated alike; no front row or service until the living disrupt the equality by bringing discriminatorily priced caskets to adorn their corpse to his or her permanent refuse dump or grave.

Why wouldn't Chief Akuefuna have such a permanent frown on his face?

Leaving a huge bank account balances, real estate and goods in his numerous warehouses is enough to tighten his face.

While alive, Chief was a sole signatory to all his accounts in banks even at the age of 63 years.

He never took chances with his life as he would make his wife taste any food set for him to eat at home just like he never left his used condoms to be disposed by any of his mistresses.

He regarded his sperm as himself in a summarized form; and that whosoever took his sperm to a ritualist had taken him caged in a rubber for rituals.

He was very alert as he was discrete. Nobody counted him amongst serial womanizers. But he liked them young and beautiful.

Chief Akuefuna was a very intelligent man too.

He could accurately predict the directions of the Nigerian economy and would take positions.

The chief could not predict that a simple movement of his waist could ruin his entire heart economy.

Nobody believed that a mild heart attack would fell the almighty Chief who had  survived the last currency devaluation that made him sell off some of his buildings to pay back his bank loans.

Police report, we were told, showed that Chief Akuefuna died of heart attack in a hotel room while trying to satisfy a 24-year old girl who kept urging the old man to  "continue, continue, keep it harder, Chief!"

The girl made a statement to the police and a waiter passing by corroborated her story.

Why would Chief Akuefuna's face be frowned if he died in ecstasy or super happiness?

His corpse should have looked happy or at worst sapped or exhausted.

Perhaps, the high chief was frowning at what  tales people, especially members of his church, were telling with his good name.

He was an elder in his church that never spared or treated fornication, adultery and infidelity with levity.