by Ben Okri
And because of them – those faces – her decision to leave her husband grew stronger. She saw him now not just as a frightening man, but as an ancient, unyielding force that stood between her and her destiny, as an incubus who kept pressing her down, hiding her books, trying to make her illiterate, trying to make her like all the other women around. For the first time in her married life she saw her husband as a natural enemy, whose domination she would have to free herself from if she was going to have a chance to live.
She saw fully how her initial compromise had betrayed her. She should never have accepted in the first place. She might now be living her real life. She could see the true destination of her acceptances: she would become the sort of old woman of the ghetto, with a stinking wrapper round her waist, her mouth toothless, her breasts flat and drooping, whom the children think of as a witch.
It saddened her that, apart from her mother and the uninspiring teachers at school, she had met no other woman to look up to, who could have guided her. Then she became angry that she had allowed herself to be so cheated of living. Revulsion seethed within her. Her mind teemed suddenly with images of death, of drowning. She was torn between what she didn’t know for sure, and what she might now never know.
She felt deserted. Shipwrecked. She thought sadly that not even love could save her or help her avoid the lacerations that kept swooping in her like a large predatory bird. She felt that love had betrayed her even more, had made her accept more in its name, made her suffer and endure more, had kept her in the ghetto, in her husband’s house, a servant and a possession. Besides, she knew only too well that Omovo had his own dragons to fight, his own demons. The landscape of losses had trapped them both in simple acts of existence. She thought of the dead, mutilated girl in the park. She felt a little like that girl, mutilated and no one noticing. She felt she went around mutilated and no one saw just how the world, how her husband, was wounding her every day. She had to run away. She knew this calmly. Her spirit was forgiving. She forgave everything, everyone, and even herself. And then she cursed everything, everyone, and even herself.
In the dark she planned the day ahead. She gathered her things. Her husband stirred on the bed. He began to snore again. She saw her homecoming. She saw herself receiving a heroine’s welcome, with people she didn’t recognise rushing to greet her and touch her, singing her name in praises, urging her spirit on to possibilities of greatness. She imagined it would be a bright day after rain when she arrived. She saw the trees swaying in the warm, earth-scented wind. Her husband stirred again. She listened to the changed gear of his snoring while she let the certainty of her decision sink into her nerves. She drifted off into her last night’s sleep in the city.
Her husband spoke lovingly to her in the morning. His mouth stank. He kept smiling. Kept petting her. He was unusually kind, paid attention to her moods, and kept asking if she felt better after the night’s rest. He even gave her fifteen Naira to buy things for herself. She accepted the money in the humblest spirit. He talked about the future, how he was going to open out. He talked about the beautiful children they would have together, the house he was building, the car they would drive.
‘I want us to enjoy life more,’ he said.
She nodded.
While he spoke he cleaned his teeth with a chewing stick and spat the mangled wood fibre on the floor of the room. She fetched water, and warmed it over the wood fire. While he had a shower she listened to the rats scratching in secret places of the room. She made his food, the choicest dish she had ever cooked in the house – fried yams and plantain, stew with crayfish, and soft goat meat spiced with herbs. He ate happily. He told her amusing stories about his various customers. She laughed where she was expected to: her laughter surprised him. She told him the story of the debate at school.
‘I agree with you,’ he said. ‘You should have won the debate, my good wife.’
When he had eaten he lingered about the house. She became silent. Reluctantly, he went out to the city centre to buy much-needed provisions for his shop. When he had gone she sat on the bed and looked around the room she had hated all these months. She looked at her little table, her clothes on the ropes, his big shoes and torn slippers, the cupboard, the single bed, the chairs, the door, the window. It made her feel strange that she actually felt sad at leaving them behind forever. She was surprised that she had, in spite of it all, come to feel attached to some things in her condition.
She thought of the first day she had arrived in the city and in her husband’s room. She wondered at how it could be that at the time she had missed her village from which she wanted to escape, and now she was missing in advance the details and moods of the room she had to escape from. Life is a terrible mystery, she thought. She wondered why no one ever told her things she needed to know, why no one gave her the keys with which to unlock doors of understanding.
She swept the floor. She sang in a sweet sad voice. She made the bed, cleaned out the cupboards, washed the dirty plates and pots, and ensured that everything in the room was neat, tidy, and bright. That morning she felt she had mysteriously recovered. She felt a new lucidity, as if she had been asleep all her life and was just waking up.
She took up a pen and began a letter to Omovo. But she couldn’t think of what to say. Or rather, she had too much to say and didn’t know where to begin. He should understand, she thought. Then she left a note to her husband. ‘I have gone,’ it read.
She packed hurriedly. Dressed in her ordinary clothes, as if she weren’t going anywhere special, she left the room and put the key under the doormat. Her box was light. She took only her books and a few clothes. It saddened her that she had nothing of Omovo, no photographs, not even one of his drawings. She went to the backyard and looked at everything. She greeted the neighbours in a bright voice. They didn’t notice anything unusual about her.
When she left the house she didn’t look back, didn’t even look at Omovo’s place, didn’t dare hope to catch a glimpse of him. But she felt certain she would see him again and that they would be together. All around the children played. The wind blew the ghetto litter at her, in swirls. She saw two dogs making love, stuck together. She saw old men sitting on chairs, staring at the street with rheumed eyes, clutching at their cigarettes and their bottles of ogogoro as if at things that would prolong their lives. She noticed how aggressive and confused the young unemployed men were. No one seemed to notice anything, any betrayals. Everyone seemed to accept that this was the only way life could be, the way it always would be. For the first time this realisation shocked her: that no one could see alternatives, the other ways to the seas that Omovo’s brother’s poem had talked about. She felt sorry to leave things behind. But she also felt as if she had been living on a river and that the water had drained away from her existence.
She felt sorry for Omovo and she said a prayer for him. It was a bright afternoon and mirages shimmered everywhere. As she left she felt sure she saw ghosts everywhere, that the ghetto was becoming a ghost town, that things were changing without people’s knowledge or consent, and that the ghetto-dwellers were becoming ghosts and shadows without voices.
5
Omovo had also been ill for three days after the beating. He couldn’t send a message to the office and he was certain he had been sacked. He developed a high fever, his eyes kept pulsing, and his head seemed to keep expanding as if his brain were about to burst. He slept badly and things got so mixed up in his fever that he wove in and out of strange mental territories. He hallucinated about Ifeyiwa, and about his mother. He dreamt that his brothers had returned and ransacked the house, kicking things over, destroying tables and chairs, and pursuing his father round the compound with an axe.
Blackie frequently came in to treat him. He tried to repulse her attempts, but in the end his energy failed and he had to submit to her pepper soups, her hot compresses and her ointments. While she tended to him she was vaguely solicitous, she seemed to keep trying to formulate a plea, but his silenc
es distanced her and when she left he lay sprawled on the bed, thirsty, worn down and shivering.
On the second day of his fever he was no longer sure if he was hallucinating or not. His father kept appearing and disappearing, dressed in the full regalia of his traditional clothes, with his long wrapper, his duck-tailed shirt, a fan of eagle feathers in one hand, cowries round his neck, and a flywhisk in his other hand. When he appeared, like an apparition, like a descendant from a powerful line, he would exhort Omovo, boosting his spirit with deep proverbs; he would start to tell stories of magic rivers, and mermaids, of ancient heroes, but he would never complete them.
Later that day, weakened by the heat, his head throbbing, he had another hallucination. Dr Okocha appeared to him. He wore his agbada, and on his back was the burden of all the signboards he had ever painted. He looked very sad, his eyes were deep, his forehead was crinkled and sweat ran over the cracks. With his pained expression he stood over Omovo and said in a quivering voice: ‘Everything that is happening to you now is only part of your preparation.’
‘What preparation?’ Omovo heard himself say.
‘For living. This is merely a secret apprenticeship.’
He stayed silent. Omovo watched him.
‘Why do you have all those signboards on your back.’
‘I’m going to destroy them. I’ve been going round collecting them. They shame me. They have weighed me down for thirty years. If I had done five paintings I wanted to do instead of all these I would be dead now, but the five paintings would be living. So I am dying now.’
‘Why did you do the signboards?’
‘To feed my family, why else?’
‘You mean...’
‘Yes.’
‘You mean the signboard at the hotel…’
‘I’ve torn it down.’
‘And the one for the tailor…’
‘Wrenched from the door, yes.’
‘Didn’t they try to stop you?’
‘No. I took them at night. I’ve never felt so free. I will never paint another signboard.’
‘But you do the best signboards in Lagos.’
‘And I could do five of them a day. But I’d rather do a small portrait of an eagle. Or the face of the old man of the ghetto…’
‘Who’s he?’
‘He’s our destiny. If we’re not careful. He’s my friend. We drink palm wine and play draughts once a week. He’s full of tricks. I have never beaten him and that’s why I go on playing him. He never laughs. One day…’
‘Can I meet him?’
‘One day. Not yet. Not for a long time.’
‘Why not?’
‘The young make him weep.’
‘Why?’
‘I’ve never asked.’
‘Is he jealous of youth?’
‘No. He weeps for youth.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘You’re not well. Get some sleep.’
Then the old painter disappeared. Omovo slept soundly and woke up in the middle of the night, convinced he had been talking with dead bodies he had seen during the war. He lay on the bed, watchful, till dawn broke.
On the third day, as he got a little stronger, he heard songs that reminded him of his mother. He wandered through the compound. Everything seemed a little strange to him. His father was nowhere around. One of the compound women told him Blackie had gone to the market. He encountered Tuwo in the backyard, washing his clothes, his underpants, and his socks. Tuwo started to say something to him, but Omovo, unable to confront his eyes, fled back to his room. In the afternoon he ventured out of the compound and went to see Dr Okocha. His workshed was locked. The people around said they hadn’t seen him for days. Wandering back through the heat and dust, the noise of blaring record shops, the smell of garbage in the streets, and the sight of old men and women, increased his debilitation. He went back home. He tried to paint, but felt too weak to hold a brush, and the effort of concentrating wearied him. His eyes still hurt and his perception of objects in space had become temporarily distorted. He lay in bed and read and slept till evening came.
He was half asleep when he heard an argument raging between his father and Blackie. He heard his father shouting about Blackie’s mysterious absences, heard her defending herself. She said she had gone to the market and couldn’t get the best choice of food items which he especially liked and that she had to go back in the evening. She said as she returned she met one of her relatives and went home with her to see her newborn baby. Omovo stayed in the room till the argument burnt itself out. When the house was silent again he ventured into the sitting room. No one was around. He went to the compound front and sat with the compound men, hoping to get some word about Ifeyiwa. He learnt nothing. The compound people, offering their sympathies about his fever, were curiously distant towards him. Tuwo wasn’t amongst them.
That night as he lay in bed, weakened by the day’s heat which seemed to have stoked his fever, Tuwo appeared to him. Omovo tried to escape his presence. Tuwo kept reappearing, begging his forgiveness. Omovo woke up and found that the lights had been seized. He lay down again, shut his eyes, shivering. Tuwo appeared again. He was completely naked, he had an enormous erection, and before Omovo’s gaze he began to make love to Blackie. They both begged his forgiveness as they made love with urgent lustful intensity. And as their enjoyment mounted, as their motions got more frenzied and peaked, so did their pleas. When they had exhausted themselves, when an expression of disgust appeared on both their sweating faces, they found they were stuck, like dogs, and couldn’t separate themselves. They tried and they couldn’t. Blackie became terrified. Tuwo turned a frightened gaze to Omovo. They both began to beg him to help them separate. Omovo’s mother appeared and began to laugh dementedly. Then suddenly his father materialised, with a machete in his hand. The couple started running clumsily around the room. Blackie was bent over, Tuwo behind her. They looked like trapped animals, bound. Omovo’s father followed them slowly, with dreadful dignity. He came up to them where they stopped. He lifted up the machete with both hands, a mad and serene expression in his eyes. Tuwo yelled. Before his father cleaved them apart Omovo woke up. The lights had returned. The fan was whirring. Omovo didn’t sleep well the rest of that night. He didn’t see his father or Blackie in the morning. In spite of feeling weak, his limbs aching, his face still swollen, he decided he had borne enough of being bed-bound.
For the first time in weeks Omovo went early to work. He found that no one else had arrived in the office. It was nine o’clock. He sat at his desk, confused by its new arrangement. His documents were mixed up, some were missing, the files and cards were in utter disarray. He saw errors in allocations, he noticed that the handwriting on letters was completely strange to him. Alarmed by huge mistakes in the counting of chemicals, he went to the warehouse. Everyone looked at him as if he were a ghost. The warehouse manager hadn’t arrived at work either. He went to the accounts department. Only two people were in. Joe was nowhere around. He went to the canteen and had breakfast. It was nine thirty when he got back to the office.
The place was cold. The air conditioner had been turned up to its limit. No one looked up when he came in. Simon was eating his tea bread, dipping it in a glass of water, and staring at the semi-nude white woman on the wall calendar. He had a faraway expression in his eyes. The supervisor tapped away intensely on his pocket calculator, as if his life depended on the figures it produced. Chako paused from the scrutiny of his football coupons to snap off a bedraggled piece of kola-nut. Then he blew his nose. He looked very sober. It was clear he had lost a lot of money on the previous week’s betting. He looked up at Omovo, looked right through him, inhaled a thumbful of snuff, shook his head vigorously, and sneezed. At that moment the kettle began whistling. The steam kept lifting and dropping its metal flap.
Omovo hovered around his desk, feeling curiously displaced. The mood of the office had changed. Omovo felt a shiver go through him. The supervisor sighed and then put away the
calculator. He seemed satisfied with his manipulation of the figures. Turning in his chair, his features now set in his mask of new authority, he said to Omovo:
‘What happened to your face?’
It was only then that the others acknowledged his presence in the room. They looked up and studied the disjointedness of his features.
Chako said: ‘Or were you caught stealing?’
‘Maybe he was in the wrong place at the right time,’ came Simon.
‘Abi you painted the right picture of the wrong woman?’
‘Or maybe he refused to pay a prostitute and she punched him?’ came Simon again.
‘Hey, Simon!’ the supervisor shouted in mock disbelief. ‘So you sabi how prostitutes dey punch, eh?’
They laughed.
‘Maybe he got a friend to do it?’
‘Why?’
‘After all he didn’t come to work for three days. You never know the tricks of these young boys of nowadays.’
The supervisor directed the next statement at him. ‘You better have a good excuse.’
‘I was attacked at night.’
They all burst out laughing again.
‘By women?’
‘Thieves?’
‘Did you try it on a neighbour’s wife?’
‘Or did you go around with your notebook, drawing people unnecessarily?’
‘Did you stay up too late?’
‘Or did you get drunk and forget yourself?’
‘I was attacked,’ Omovo said firmly.
‘It shows,’ was Simon’s verdict.
‘It doesn’t,’ said the supervisor.
‘And then I came down with a fever,’ continued Omovo.
‘A fever?’ said an unbelieving Simon.
‘He actually came down,’ added the supervisor.
‘Down to earth,’ said Chako.
‘I couldn’t move for two days.’
‘Two days!’
‘Two whole days!’
‘Yes.’