His shadow had spoken. Lundu was certain of it.

Seated on a threadbare sofa set with hard armrests, he shoved balls of ugali and bitter green vegetables into his mouth.

On the table, beside his plate, stood a kerosene lantern, the source of a warm fuzzy glow in his one-roomed house, and his shadow across the room, mimicking him from its own shadow-sofa, lay across a tin wall plastered with old newspapers and the faded pages of glossy fashion magazines.

It was one of those rare nights when the noisy children next door were silent and Lundu bending over his plate entertained thoughts of Mama Atieno’s fried fish down the road. But it was mid-month and fish was a luxury he couldn’t afford.

“Lundu, you need to wake up!”

He sat up. The voice was clear and sharp, as though the speaker were seated right beside him. A quick glance around the room confirmed what he already knew; that he was alone.

It was in quiet trepidation that he observed his shadow lean forward and in the same voice say, “Open your eyes.”
They were, wide and unblinking.

“The fridge, Lundu, the fridge!” the shadow snapped its fingers.

Lundu struggling to find his vocal chords stumbled upon a shaky almost-whisper, “What do you mean? What fridge?”

There was no reply. The shadow retreated into itself, a lifeless, black form on the newspaper-plastered wall, whose sole purpose was to ape its master.

Once again, Lundu’s eyes swept across his single room. A bed against one wall, partitioning curtain rolled up, two jerrycans of water, wooden cabinet with two cooking pans on top, stove, sofa, table, lamp. Shadows. But no fridge.

Feeling silly, he turned back to his plate.

Later, he lay in bed, enveloped in darkness and myriad of unsettling thoughts. Maybe he was on the threshold of insanity, one more step and he would be inside.

Perhaps it was his dead father’s spirit reaching out to him, he thought. When his cousin Musa’s mother died, her spirit inhabited the mango tree outside their house, and every time he passed by or stood under its shade, she would whip him with the branches.

“When will you get off your lazy butt and do something useful?” the tree hissed. The same words his mother used to scold him when she was alive. A family meeting was convened.

Cutting down the tree was an option but the majority were against it. It would be tantamount to sending Mama’s vexed spirit to occupy something else — with dire consequences. Instead, they found Musa a job as a cleaner at a Nairobi restaurant. His mother’s spirit rested.

Couldn’t relocate

As far as Lundu knew, his father had died a happy man and had rested quietly for close to 15 years. What could he possibly want from him after all this time? And if this was the case, how would he be helped? He couldn’t just relocate and leave his shadow behind.

Sleep crept up on him long after the distant throb of rhumba music from the Onesmus Pub had died down.

The next morning, he walked into the reception of the Ministry of Water, where he worked as a messenger, to hear Betty’s welcoming voice.

“Morning, Simeon.”

She was at her usual place, behind the reception desk.

He loved how she said it. Simeon. It gave him a sense of purpose, stand taller. Made him feel like he was on the verge of something great. He loved her smile, the gap between her front teeth, and her skin so light, it made him want to spread blue band margarine on a slice of bread.

“You didn’t sleep well?” Betty asked. “You look washed out.”

“It was a long night.”

Betty smiled, “Mr Nyaga was asking for you.”

Lundu made for the assistant minister’s office, through a corridor with wood-panelled walls, feet sinking into a plush red carpet. He was going to marry Betty someday. She didn’t know it, but he was sure.

He rapped Mr Nyaga’s door and pushed it open.

“Good morning sir, you asked for me?”

Mr Nyaga, bent over a silver LG mini-fridge by the window, straightened, a bottle of water in his hand.

“Yes, Lundu, good morning.”

A small bespectacled man with a sense of uneasiness about him, he strode to his leather chair behind a huge mahogany desk.

Lundu’s eyes remained glued to the fridge he had seen countless times before and had even helped stock once in a while, as though he was seeing it for the first time. The fridge.

“Mr Roderick informs me that my package is ready. I’d like you to pick it up at the embassy. And these letters need to be posted, but this white one should be hand delivered…”

“Lundu? Lundu!”

“Yes, sir... Mr Nyaga,” Lundu snapped out of his trance.

“Are you ok?”

“Yes, sir.”

Mr Nyaga looked at the fridge questioningly, “Would you like something to drink?”

“No sir, I’m fine.”

And that was the beginning of his fascination with the small silver fridge. He had trouble pushing it out of his mind, even when he sat with Betty for the computer lessons she was giving him free of charge.

Usually, he would pull up a chair during their lunch-hour break and she would show him the basics of Word. He would draw closer with each keystroke, delighting in her warmth. That was before. Now all he could think about was the coolness of the fridge’s interior.

Fridge was calling

“No, not like that,” Betty took over the keyboard and for the third time showed him how to insert a header. “You’ve been so absent-minded lately, what’s the matter?”

“Nothing.”

How could he tell her that the fridge was calling out to him? The thought of it terrified him.

Government offices did not open at the weekend. So Lundu showed up on Saturday morning at 9am carrying a medium-sized empty carton.

“There’s a package that was to be collected yesterday but wasn’t,” he told the bored guard, “now I have to deliver it myself.”

The guard let him in.

He took a bunch of keys from one of Betty’s drawers and let himself into Mr Nyaga’s office. The small silver fridge stood by the window, gleaming in the early morning sunlight.

Lundu set about the task he had played over and over in his head: He emptied it of its the contents – bottles of water and soda, cans of beer, boxes of juice, a slice of pineapple – and packed it into the carton.

He then let himself out of the office and out of the building. The carton was heavy, but not too heavy for him. The guard waved him goodbye at the gate.

When he got to his house in Kawangware, he found Igunza, the son of his father’s cousin, whom he was hosting as his mother had died and his father was a hopeless drunk, mopping the floor.

Igunza watched, at first curiously, as his cousin opened the carton, and then in amazement as Lundu drew out the fridge and carefully set it on the table.
Lundu pulled out the fridge’s white cord and stopped abruptly, the plug in his hands.

It was Igunza who spoke.

“Cousin, you bought a fridge and we have no electricity?”

Lundu was angrier with Igunza for seeing what he had apparently overlooked than with himself.