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 Part One - The Man Who Would Not Fight

 

A Five-Part Series on Decisions, Beliefs and the Architecture of Revenge

Joseph stood there, dumbstruck by what he had just seen. His boss. His girlfriend. His bedroom. There are moments when the mind refuses to process information because it arrives too quickly.

This was one of them. For a few seconds, his life flashed before him. The first time he had met Mercy. The things he had done for her. The promises he had quietly made to himself.

For her, he had told himself, he would travel to the moon and back. He would work hard, make a difference and give them a comfortable life. Now the woman he had imagined that future with was hurriedly pulling her clothes together.

Joseph coughed. It was a small cough, but remarkably effective. The embarrassment on their faces shifted from surprise to shame, and then — almost impressively — to entitlement.

“What are you doing here?” Michael, his boss, pulled himself together. Joseph almost wondered whether he was expected to apologize for entering his own house. Michael looked at him with something close to contempt. He had always disliked Joseph, not because Joseph was incompetent.

Quite the opposite.

Joseph had joined his company straight from college and quickly demonstrated an unusual knack for numbers. He could look at a project and almost instinctively tell whether there was profit hiding somewhere inside it.

Through Joseph’s work, Michael’s paint business had expanded. But Michael despised one thing about him. Joseph never seemed able to stand up for himself. Give him a choice, and he would elevate others. Give him more work, and he accepted it. Ask him for a favor, and he somehow found a way to honor it. This grated Michael greatly. Behind his back, the office called Joseph the Super Yes Man.

On Friday at 8 p.m., when everyone else had disappeared into Nairobi traffic, or into nyama choma, alcohol, romance, or whatever responsible adults do on Friday evenings, Joseph’s cubicle would still be glowing.

Michael once threw a file onto Joseph’s desk in disgust. “What kind of stupidity is this? Don’t you have a spine?” Joseph simply looked at him. That irritated Michael even more.

Michael’s father had taught him that a man conquered. A man took what he wanted. A man laid claim. His father had also been a philanderer who abused Michael’s mother and had countless affairs. Michael both admired and loathed him. Human beings are strange that way. Sometimes the behavior we hate most is the behavior we secretly consider a strength. And Joseph seemed to embody its opposite, a shadow image contradicting Michael’s belief.

Then there was Mercy. She was beautiful, easy on the eye, and considerably more exciting than Joseph. She sort of liked Joseph, though she also found him boring. Yet whenever life collapsed, Joseph was there.

When she had a pregnancy scare at twenty-two, Joseph helped her. When a wealthy man dumped her in the middle of nowhere without money, she called Joseph. He sent the money. When her requests became increasingly outrageous, he still somehow met them.

Eventually, she moved into his house, not because Joseph asked her. She simply discovered that living without paying rent was an attractive economic model. Then one afternoon, she visited Joseph at work.

Michael saw her. “Joseph, why don’t you introduce me to this lovely lady?” Joseph did. Soon, Michael and Mercy began meeting. Their meetings became rendezvous. Rendezvous became an affair. And an affair eventually became something almost everyone in the organization knew about.

Except, apparently, Joseph. Or so they thought. Now the three of them stood in Joseph’s house. “You are a useless man,” Michael finally said. Joseph stayed silent. Mercy pulled her clothes back down. “You have never even been intimate with me. What did you expect?” She added.

Michael stared at Joseph for a moment, then laughed.

“What kind of man are you?” Joseph looked down. For several seconds, he said nothing. Then he turned and walked out. Michael smiled. Mercy shook her head. Both saw exactly what they expected: a weak man. A coward. A man incapable of fighting for himself.

What neither of them knew was that Joseph had spent years preparing for moments exactly like this. As he walked away, one sentence from his dead father returned to him.

Son, when the pressure rises, notice what happens inside you before you decide what happens next.

Joseph had noticed. The anger was there. So was something else. Something far more dangerous. Patience.

CONTINUED: PART TWO — THE LESSON HIS FATHER LEARNED TOO LATE

 — -

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