The Dancing Man on the Bridge
Tags: Dance, Mental Health, Profiling, Pain, Emotions

On the eve of my sixteenth birthday, a grand crowd assembled on the Mokola Flyover Bridge, restricting most of the traffic flow towards and from Dugbe, because there was a dancing madman in the middle of the road. That was what they called him. No one knew who he was or where he had come from, only that he had parked his vehicle in the middle of the road, hurried out and begun to dance. My uncle’s car was a hundred feet away, trapped in the gridlock, but he wanted to witness the spectacle for himself so we climbed out of the car and pushed our way through the thickening throng until we found a spot atop an abandoned taxi cab. There he was, the madman, his lanky frame locked in a frenzy, sweaty obsidian skin aglow in the sunlight. He danced without music. The swelling audience had afforded him a wide berth, but it was unclear whether it was so he could dance or to protect themselves from a possible contagion.

Upon careful inspection, I found myself wondering if this man, crazed as he appeared, had indeed lost his marbles. The madmen I had seen had dirty dreadlocks and traipsed about aimlessly, their blackened penises swinging like pendulums through the holes in the rags they wore, but this man had on a suit and striped tie. His head was smoothly shaven, his clacking shoes carrying a soft gleam. In-between his erratic gestures I caught glimpses of a silver necklace and a gold wristwatch. He seemed like a perfectly regular man dancing, but these spectators had called him a madman, thus it was nearly impossible to behold the sight of him without thinking about dirty men with wide grins and tattered clothing. It was not until I concentrated on his face that I noticed his watery eyes, and knew.

This man was not mad. He was in pain.

Laughter rippled through the crowd as the man burst into a slew of exertions, tossing himself to the ground and rolling to his feet, his limbs jerking as if trying to break free of his body. Amidst the excitement I heard bits and pieces of the spectators’ comments. Some were convinced that the man had overdosed on drugs and was reaping the consequences. Others claimed he must have fornicated with the wrong woman and ended up possessed by evil spirits. They all stumbled backwards as one whenever the man got too close.

“Mmaduabuchukwu, see,” said my uncle, shaking his head. “This is what happens when you read too many books. They will say that he took cocaine or heroin, that he used to smoke igbo. Look at this man. Does he resemble a smoker to you, gbo?”

I said nothing. I did not understand what a man’s clothing had to do with drug abuse.

“It is obvious that this man has put too many books inside his head. People don’t know that too much of anything can make you run mad. I’ve warned your father a thousand times not to take you to the university, but he has refused to listen, because he wants an educated child that will carry on the family name. When you come home a lunatic, he will clap himself on the back.”

This time, I could not help myself. “Uncle, I don’t think this man is insane,” I blurted.

“Then you, you must also be insane.” His lip curled and he sucked his teeth. “Maybe you need to get your head checked. Onye iberibe.”

He droned on, but I tuned him out, returning my gaze to the dancing man. I was able to regard him differently now that I knew he was not insane. He was not a madman, just a man who was in agony and had elected to express it by dancing, just as one might scream or cry or destroy property to express themselves. He was dancing. Admittedly, it was a little strange to see, but soon I found myself wondering what could possibly have caused this man so much distress. Perhaps he had lost a fortune or a significant other. There were a million and one possible reasons as to why he was behaving this way, but these people had chosen to affix their reason upon him. And so he was insane not because he had a problem but because they had a problem with him.

As the crowd hollered insults and fell over one another with laughter, I observed the man’s movements. There was no subtlety, no elegance about him. He danced as though the asphalt had burned right through the soles of his shoes. Nothing could be a clearer indicator of his feelings. Joy came gently, like a warm glow spreading across the horizon, and often you didn’t notice its intensity until you paused and observed yourself, because it was already one with you. Pain insisted on being heard and felt. It demanded your total awarenes, filling you with unforgiving absoluteness. That was what I saw now, when I gazed at him — a forced awareness of an internal laceration. Perhaps there was no reason for it. Often, I had been sad without cause, just as I had often found myself bubbling with spontaneous laughter. I could not wrap my head around the idea that this man needed a reason to be the way that he was. I had at this point begun to ponder not his sanity but that of everyone else.

The man thumped his chest once, twice, and dropped to the ground, his mouth open in a silent scream. In a flash, he was back on his feet, twisting and jerking and jumping with a wild look in his eyes, much to the crowd’s delectation. By now, there were tears streaking down my face, not just because of this man’s pain but also the sheer beauty of it. I had come to know pain as a force to be despised and suppressed, but with each spasm of the man’s extremities I saw a thing to be felt. It was an experience, one of the finest facets of a fleeting existence. It was the thrilling fear from closing one’s eyes on a speeding motorbike, and sadness from making a toast to a love that never was. For the first time ever, I gazed into the mouth of pain and was awestruck by its marvellousness.

He whirled about again and for a few seconds our eyes met, and my heart fluttered and slowed to a quiet stop, because this man with the wild eyes was staring right at me. In that moment, time froze and our surroundings ceased, leaving me and the man behind, locked in a meeting of minds with a single thought: I understand. Then it was over and the man continued to dance as though he had not once noticed my presence. I choked back a sob, holding my arms firmly at my sides to keep them from twitching, resisting the sudden urge to burst into laughter at the realisation that perhaps I, too, had gone mad.

Just then, an explosion reached my ears and stunned the crowd silent, and a voice shrilled, “POLICE!” It took me a moment to process the meaning of that word, but by then my uncle, who had somehow maintained his presence of mind, had clambered off the bonnet of the taxi and was screaming at me to get down before I got shot. At the same time, the spell on the crowd wore off and in seconds everyone was stampeding about in a bid to return to their vehicles, the berth completely forgotten. In the chaos I glimpsed my madman tearing across the asphalt towards the edge of the bridge. One second he was there, and then he wasn’t. Two gunshots sent screams rippling through the crowd and a dissonance erupted in my head. Suddenly, a large arm grabbed me and my uncle was shrieking in my ear as he pushed me through the maze of people and vehicles.

I didn’t hear a word of what my uncle was saying. All I could think about was the man who had danced on the bridge and made me cry. I wasn’t sure what had happened to him, only that now a piece of him lived within me, lying dormant until the day that I, too, would dance for all the world to witness and understand.