by Ben Okri
When he got to the Amukoko garage there was dust everywhere. The dust rose from the untarred roads. Added to the dust and the heat were the many smells of the ghetto. The air was dense with the odours of frying oils and stinking gutters. The street was covered with litter.
The day’s work weighed down upon him. He felt depleted. He stumbled along listlessly. The sweat and the dust, caked by the dry heat, made his face a mask of exhaustion, of enervation. The maddening noises of the area preyed on him. He stumbled down the molten street as if he were sleepwalking.
When he got home he was confronted by the lifeless desperation of the sitting room. He became unusually aware of the faded pictures on the stained walls, the large centre table with its anomalous leg, the scanty furniture. He was affected by the smell of indifferent cooking, the dust and the cobwebs and the staleness that settles in a room when the windows haven’t been opened for a long time. He even noticed that the chairs were out of place and that one of the cushions was somewhat strangled between the springs. He saw an empty ogogoro bottle on the floor beside a chair. He guessed his father had been drinking.
There was no one around. Flies buzzed around the scraps of food still left on the dining table. Omovo became aware of another atmosphere in the sitting room. Things seemed all wrong. He was aware of the strange silence, the feeling of doom, a bleak finality. He shuddered. He went into his room. Then he went and had a cold shower. As soon as he got back to his room and touched down on the bed he fell soundly asleep.
‘Wake up! Omovo, wake up!’
Omovo stirred and woke, disorientated at seeing the face of a stranger becoming the face of his father staring down at him. He blinked and rubbed his eyes.
‘Is it you, Dad?’
‘Yes.’
He sat up. For a moment there was a tender silence between them.
‘Is there anything wrong?’
His father sighed and for a while he didn’t say anything.
‘Is there?’
His father, avoiding his eyes, said: ‘No. Not really.’
Omovo smelt his breath of bitterness, smelt the drink, the cigarette smoke, the despair that came all at once from his father. He took in his sweat, his smell of deep earth, of trapped animals. He noticed the restrained panic in his father’s shifty eyes. Omovo was overcome with the urge to embrace his father, to embrace him and to hold him tight. But his father, sighing, moved away and, sitting on the only chair in the room, his shoulders hunched, his head in his hands, said in an uncertain voice:
‘I want to ask you a favour.’
‘Anything, Dad. Ask me anything.’
‘This is very hard for me.’
‘Ask, Dad. Just ask.’
His father stammered. When he had mastered himself, he said: ‘I need... I am a little out of immediate funds. I need some money to pay the rent. Can you manage the money, I mean as soon as you receive…’
‘Yes, Dad. Absolutely. Is that all? Oh God, Dad, it’s nothing. Sure. I can. I will. As soon as I’m paid.’
His father looked up, a little taken aback by Omovo’s response.
‘Thanks, my son,’ he said, sighing again and straightening himself. Some of his old authority returned. ‘I will pay you back as soon as everything is all right. It’s just a temporary setback.’
They were silent for a moment. Omovo avoided his father’s eyes. Then his father got up and at the door he said: ‘Have your brothers been writing to you?’
Omovo nodded.
His father looked down and then lifted his head. Then suddenly he made an odd noise, as if he were repressing a pain that had shot through his internal organs.
‘They write to me as well,’ he said. ‘They write me letters that wound me and make me bleed inside.’
Then, abruptly, he left the room.
Omovo stared at the door, his thoughts spinning.
5
To escape the confusion of his feelings Omovo spent some part of the evening in serene contemplation of the works of the masters. Turning the pages of Great Paintings of the World had a calming effect on him. He realised, as he studied the colour prints, often making quick copies in his pad, that he wasn’t looking at them as much as bouncing off them into his own world, his own realities. He studied Brueghel, with his quivering world of nightmares; Da Vinci, with his secret mystical signs. He loved the famous Mona Lisa and remembered that it was Da Vinci who wrote that ‘perfection is made up of details, but detail is not perfection’. He exhausted himself in art, from cave paintings to the hallucinated visions of the Latin American Indians through to the modernists like Cézanne, Van Gogh, and Picasso – who he had heard described as a supreme creative plagiarist. But he returned to his four great affinities: Da Vinci, Brueghel, the wild man of the imagination, to Valasquez and his fastidious quest for truth, and to Michelangelo. Then he delved into another book of African art. He looked at reproductions of sculptings, mysterious monoliths, jujus, masquerades and serene bronze busts. But he studied them with too much familiarity, for African Art seemed to him to be everywhere. He saw the terrifying shapes, the evil fighting forms, and the ritual powers as being part of things, part of an order. They were in him. It was only later that he would learn to see them with estranged eyes, see them for the first time and be startled into the true realm of his artistic richness.
Before he stopped off his day’s study he returned to Michelangelo’s sculpture of David. Omovo never failed to be struck by the fact that Michelangelo chose to represent David at the moment before he confronted Goliath. He never failed to be moved by the inner tensions of that moment: David absorbed, about to step out from obscurity forever, to transform himself from shepherd to hero, about to step into history, religion, myth. Did he feel a current pulling him back, with voices singing to him of the sweetness of anonymity, the terrors of fame? Or was he, in his serenity, reaching to the flood of all origins, the birth of gods, touching forces of the air? What was the weight of that absorption, stone in one large hand, wrist abnormally curved, his life about to be changed forever by a stone, a sling, by the destiny of his wrist, by a timing, a grace, a precision, a fearlessness that could only have been prepared for in an apprenticeship so secret, so agonised, and so undefined?
When Omovo had finished his day’s study he got rid of the books and meditated for a while, in order to clear his mind and strengthen himself for his own work which would make one day of his life worthwhile.
An hour later he sat in front of a canvas, afraid. The flat white surface daunted him. He sat in expectant silence, waiting for something, an urge, to rise within him. He tried to make his mind as clear and blank as the canvas.
But the mosquitoes got at him even through his khaki overalls. Isolated whining sounded in his ears. He ignored them.
As he stared at the canvas, he became aware that the urge to paint wasn’t strong enough, but he felt images fermenting within him. And still he waited for the waves to rise, for the tide to surprise him. He waited with absolute faith that the hunger within him would emerge in its own time, when the moods within synchronised with the landscapes without.
But the waiting, the expectancy of being, the preparation for vision, awaiting an inner annunciation, a flow, a command, a direction, an overall picture, a single true detail, a precise image, made him miserable, made him afraid. He waited with all his being for a sign, for the waves of desire to reach an unbearable pitch.
And then he remembered an incident from years before. Okur, while cooking, was peeling off the layers of an onion. He spoke of the onion as a symbol of the mystery of being.
‘Look at this onion,’ he said, his eyes bursting into tears. ‘I will peel it off layer by layer and you would think that because it had so many layers it has a luminous heart hidden inside it. There is only pulp. There is nothing, you see.’
He paused and then went on, saying: ‘There seems to be nothing but the onion left to itself will grow, will sprout. There seems nothing but it houses life, irrepressible life. Its
mysteries can’t be dissected. Omovo, we need faith, we need St Paul’s faith as evidence of things hoped for. There is nothing but it was Neruda who said “Men grow with all that grows”. We start with one thing and we end everywhere.’
For sometime afterwards Omovo’s only memory of that incident was the way his brother stressed ‘nothing’ and the way his face shone with inspired perspiration. But time enlarged that and as he sat staring at the canvas he began to contemplate a different ‘nothing’. He felt there had to be ‘something’. He felt human beings must create, each in their own way; and that it was only by the application of vision, only by making things, that we could transform the negative ‘nothing’. He wondered if his brothers had really left home because they had perceived ‘nothing’ there. He wondered what variation of ‘nothing’ explained Dele’s scorn for things African, made Okoro continually mask his suffering, drove him – Omovo – to paint the subjects he did. Was it ‘nothing’ that murdered the girl in the park, that was responsible for his mother’s death, his father’s isolation? Was this ‘nothing’ powerlessness, impotence, failure, failure of vision, the victim’s heritage? Was it ‘nothing’ that was casting the nation continually into darkness?
Omovo’s thoughts ran on. He was confused by the complexity of his feelings, confounded by his inability to grasp them, irritated that his urges hadn’t transformed into the wild flower of art.
Then suddenly, as if something had burst in his brain, he was assaulted by gusts of emptiness and fear. He was plunged into a negative moment of being, the opposite of sufflation, ambushed by images, halls that never ended, walls that rose up to the skies, Ifeyiwa’s nightmares, empty mazes, abysms, a monumental terror of the future. He experienced the feeling of space without end, without trees, without human beings, without the sky. And it was only when he let out a short, animal scream that he began to return to a familiar reality.
The blankness of the canvas remained. At first its blankness seemed sinister, unreal, and fragile. Without anything particular in mind, he was about to launch into a free expression of himself, painting anything that came to mind, at the complete mercy of whim and luck, when he remembered something Dr Okocha had said. So long as a canvas is empty its potential is infinite. A mark limits the number of things that can be brought into being. The empty canvas can become a gateway into the landscape of nightmares or a vision of sensual bliss. Every act of painting bears a heavy risk, he had said, because every mark would correspond to the immeasurable moods, the intuitions, the memories, the fears that art unlocks in the viewer. He had also said, at another time, that the act of painting was akin to prayer, and that Omovo must be careful in what attitude he prayed, and what he prayed for.
Omovo, drawing his hand back from the canvas, was relieved to find he hadn’t marked it – for, in the good fortune of being true to himself, he knew that he wasn’t yet sure what he wanted to bring into being, what he wanted to bear witness to, what he wanted to show.
And his relief formed itself into a temporary creed, a surrogate act of creation. He decided that in his paintings he wanted to create a simple vision, he wanted to start with what he knew, and what had hurt him, what had hurt all the people he identified with the most. He wanted his work to be fed from as many dimensions as made up the human. In it nothing would be too big or too small to include. He wanted his work to awaken the emotions and the inexplicable states that he felt, the states that fed into streams, the streams that fed into great seas. He wanted the simple to contain the complex, and the complex to embody the simple. Above all, with his increasing awareness that the artist is nothing but a higher servant, a labourer, a mediator, a carpenter of visions, a channel – above all, he wanted to be master of as many secrets of art as he was able. For he instinctively believed, and seldom questioned, that the highest function of art was to make people feel more, see more, feel more fully, see more truthfully.
This is a terrible path, he thought, and many have died on it. But in his moment of contemplation he was no longer aware of the blankness in front of him. He was no longer aware of his own presence. His spirit was free. The day’s exhaustion had fallen from him. And his mind was clear.
The mosquitoes stung him. He became increasingly aware of them. He slapped one on his arm and missed. As he relaxed back into his serenity the room was suddenly plunged into darkness. Another black-out. He cursed. He got up and changed into brighter clothes. He sprayed the room with insecticide, took the blue hat that Okoro had given him, and went out to await Ifeyiwa’s sign.
6
When she went past the house he felt a quickening of his heart. She wore a cheap lace blouse over a faded fish-printed wrapper, and she had her white shoes on. She looked taller. Her hair had been combed out and it made her look full-bodied. She walked with an erect gracefulness that made her stand apart from the bustling ghetto evening. As he watched he became aware of the agitations in his blood. He attempted a series of karate steps, to give the impression that he had really come out to exercise himself, but he felt awkward and he had a sick feeling in his stomach.
Her ordinary clothes emphasised the restraints on her sensuality. And the way she moved, as if she were floating through the evening, filled him with an irresistible longing. When she made a sign to some imaginary personage in the distance he ached to go after her. Then she slowed down, deliberately, and continued with the sign language, as if she were communicating with everything around and not understanding what was being said.
He burnt to go after her, but felt constrained by the presence of the compound people who had been driven out of their hot rooms by the electricity failure. They sat on the cement platform, on chairs, on low stools, in front of the chemist’s shop, talking about the latest sex scandals in the city, or arguing about politics. Some of them stood at the house-front, surrounded by their children. Others sat telling stories from ancient lore. Their faces were dark in the shadows. He couldn’t tell if they were watching him.
While he stood there, uncertain what to do, Tuwo and the assistant deputy bachelor came up to him. Tuwo, wearing a French suit that was rather small for his plump frame, said: ‘Look at this young bachelor, he’s going to inherit your title you know.’
The assistant deputy bachelor protested. ‘My title? No way, at least not for some time.’
Omovo was irritated with their intrusion, but he smiled. Tuwo said:
‘When I was young we used to marry early. Now you young ones marry old. The world keeps turning.’
‘A wife is expensive,’ the assistant deputy bachelor said.
‘What do you think of all this, Omovo?’ asked Tuwo, in an oily voice.
Omovo nodded absent-mindedly. The two men began to tease him, about his youth, and about how dangerous young bachelors were in a compound full of women and girls. Omovo responded nonchalantly. But it was only when he began another series of karate movements that he could gradually move away from them. When he felt he had waited long enough, and that the moment was right, he sauntered away from the compound. As he left he heard Tuwo calling him. Omovo ignored the voice and moved aimlessly at first, as if he wasn’t sure of where he was going.
Then, with timid resolution, he went in her direction. He pretended that he was trying to buy provisions from the street-traders and couldn’t find the right brands. While keeping up the pretence he looked for her and found that she had vanished. Exasperated, he turned to go back home when he saw her under the shadows of the deserted shed where they had met the last time.
He put on the blue hat and, feeling a little more secure beneath the disguise, set out after her. But as he got closer to her she suddenly walked briskly away. He was puzzled. She stopped near the hotel and waited for him. As he approached she set off again, crossing the street, hurrying down a side road. He followed. She kept on, leading him round the area, till they got back to their street. And then she went towards a sprawl of smoke-coloured bungalows mostly inhabited by Hausa and Fulani traders. She had been walking so quickl
y, taking the most unusual detours, dipping into compounds and emerging at other streets through mysterious corridors, that when they re-emerged at their street he didn’t recognise it for a while. He was so confused by what she was doing that when she stopped suddenly and made a sign at him he felt dizzy and a new darkness, exploding in gentle colours, swam before his eyes.
A moment later he saw her go into one of the sinister bungalows. The outer walls were blackened with smoke. There was a patch of mud in front of the disintegrating stairs. In an open kitchen at the side of the house three women sat round a smoke-belching fire. They had deep ritual marks on their glistening faces and they argued in a language which Omovo couldn’t understand.
The women regarded him darkly. He jumped over the patch of mud, climbed the short cement stairs, and paused at the doorway. The smells of the compound rose up to him. The smells of dried fish, of roots, of mustiness, of the bucket latrine, of overcrowded rooms, of kerosene lamps, of unwashed rags, and of garri sacks. The hallway was dark. When he looked up he saw masses of cobwebs clinging to the beams. The cobwebs kept moving, kept palpitating. They seemed to be possessed of a strange inner life.
He couldn’t find Ifeyiwa in the darkness of the hallway. He was a little afraid. The wind howled gently about his mind. Above him, on the awnings, the cobwebs writhed. Behind him the night was pierced here and there by the lighted lamps of street traders. Mosquitoes whined in his ears. Fireflies fleetingly lit up the darkness, but they didn’t help him to see.
It was only when he heard her voice calling him softly that he shook himself. He made his way to the room from which dull lights came through the keyhole and under the door. He tripped on basins and babies’ potties as he went.
The room was bare. Ifeyiwa was sitting nervously on the edge of a bed. There was an uncertain smile on her lips that made him look around. The room was unswept and musty. The floor, uncarpeted, had been painted a dull red colour. An oil lamp burnt steadily on a stand in a far corner. The walls were half painted, so that the bottom halves were blue and the rest remained the colour of plaster. The white ceiling was stained with the accumulated spirals of smoke from the oil lamps. The smell of old cooking was strong in the air.