The Man Who Borrowed Time

I never forgot the day the drumbeat changed. It sounded like a question, sharp and deliberate, as though the village had agreed to measure my father’s days by its rhythm.

My father, Mbe, carried himself like a man who believed life owed him an endless debt. He had the sort of confidence that made people laugh too quickly at his jokes and lean in when he spoke. From childhood, I learned that his charm was sharper than any machete. He always returned from the market with more than he left with, though no one could say how. What unsettled me most was how he spoke of death—not as something final, but as something to be delayed, bargained with, or cheated.

When he told me he had found a way to add years to his body, I felt the ground tilt beneath me. He explained with the same calm he used when teaching me to count cowries: life could be borrowed, like a favor. The unborn were rich with it, and he had discovered how to take small pieces without anyone knowing. He said it with pride, his face glowing as if he had built a compound from nothing.

At first, it seemed harmless. He grew stronger, his back straighter, his laughter heavier. The villagers whispered that Mbe had the stamina of a boy. My mother, long gone to her grave, would have recognized the gleam in his eye—restlessness disguised as genius.

But as years slid on, he grew restless in his victories. He sat longer by the hearth, watching the flames with an impatience that unsettled me. Friends died. Playmates from his youth vanished into the earth, leaving him surrounded by people who bowed to his wit but never truly knew him. He drank more palm wine, and sometimes I saw his smile falter as though he had glimpsed the tally of stolen days.

The evening he came to me with his newest plan, I felt my chest lock. I was heavy with child then, and he looked at me with the hunger of a man staring at a yam in famine. He wanted to borrow from my daughter, the one who had not yet seen light.

“I am your father,” he said, his voice low, steady. “Without me, you would not be here. Without me, this child will never know the warmth of her lineage. I only need a little. A breath. Nothing more.”

I stared at him, the man who had once lifted me onto his shoulders to watch masquerades, the man who boasted about my stubbornness as if it were his greatest gift to me. His face carried no malice, only certainty. He believed life was his right to claim, wherever he found it.

My hands clutched my belly. I thought of the child inside, her small heart beating unseen, her days uncounted. I thought too of my father’s hands, calloused, strong, trembling now in their desperation. I had never known him to ask permission for anything. That he asked me proved his fear.

I wanted to scream at him, to remind him that a grandfather should prepare the ground for a grandchild, not strip it bare. Instead, I said nothing. My silence was refusal enough. He studied me for a long moment, his jaw set, and I felt the bond between us thin like an old rope.

That night, the drumbeat shifted. The pattern was unmistakable, heavy and deliberate, a rhythm reserved for a life nearing its end. My father sat outside, his eyes fixed on the horizon, listening. I watched from the doorway as his shoulders slumped—not in defeat, but in recognition.

For the first time, he seemed smaller, almost ordinary. And I knew then that the drum no longer asked a question. It had given its answer.

Origin Note

This tale is inspired by the southeastern Igbo people’s oral traditions, particularly among the Anambra and Enugu regions, where the tortoise (Mbe) symbolizes wit and trickery. Folklore often uses Mbe to explore themes of greed, consequence, and community justice. This story reframes those ideas with emotional and moral complexity for a contemporary flash fiction lens.