There were times when the Oba saw his council as resentful, hungry shadows that loomed over him and were barely tethered to the line he drew for them. He imagined them picking at the same white line with their greasy hands till it became faint from each mauling. So when councilman Ewe came to him, green beads jangling against his hairy chest, Oba Odion’s reaction wrong-footed him. “But we should use this opportunity to make the stranger talk while he is weak, a little pressure and he will surely crumble before our eyes!” Ewe said. Oba Odion rocked back patiently in his, sturdy chair “Leave the man alone for now; I have other things troubling me. When he recovers, bring him to me.”
“Ah, Oba you are becoming soft, I know you are still celebrating your good news but do you not find it troubling that this pale man comes from nowhere to find himself clinging to the palace gates? This is no accident.” The Oba shook his head in annoyance, “When I speak to him, I will decide what happens to him. He may be somebody who came to the palace for help. Did you not say he was beaten?”
“Yes Oba, but let us ask why he was beaten, this is a prosperous land, and there are enemies out there willing to try anything to destroy us.”
“Ewe, I will think over what you have said.”
“Most of the other councilmen agree with me Oba.”
Oba Odion sighed wearily, “Must I have my own council’s approval on every decision? Get out.”
“Yes Oba” Ewe replied, turning on his heel, his anger smarting two steps behind him.
At that moment, Adesua was biting back her fury after discovering the brass head vanished from its home on her mantle. She could still feel its imposing presence in her chamber, shifting the air till there was a powerful undercurrent of expectation, as though something chameleon-like was coming, and menacingly entwining itself with her hot breath. So she swallowed a dose of it daily. She searched every inch of her chamber till having had enough of that pointless exercise; she hit the palace grounds barefoot. She screamed at the servants to find the thief among them who’d taken her prized piece. Gone was the uncertain young woman who had arrived at the palace, wary of the strangers surrounding her. The woman in her place had roaring flames in her eyes and barked orders as though she was born to do so.
The servants pushed by her slicing ire scoured their quarters keen to escape whatever terrible punishment awaited them if they failed to find it and kept the fact that the brass head was missing to themselves so desperate were they to make sure word did not reach the Oba. Adesua continued to search the grounds her veins swelling in anticipation. She dug her nails into her palms. Fresh sweat popped on her brow and down her back. She tried to dampen the panic that was eating its way into her heart.
In the end, it was a raven-winged bird that led her to the brass head. She watched it from the main palace flapping repeatedly above the roof of Filo’s quarters as if was alarmed, before running. She ran through the glare of disapproving councilmen, past the open mouths of servants and the glee of two other wives. She met Filo’s door open and the sound of sniffing drew her in. Filo was gripping the brass head as if she would never let it go. Tears trickled onto her raised knuckles and onto the head. Filo only looked up at Adesua briefly and then turned away, as if she had been expecting her for some time. She continued to sob, gut wrenching cries that wandered all the way back to the entrance of a palace darker than the first scowl of night. She heaved, as if emptying her insides out.
The murmurings over Sully’s presence were such that after a few days, even some of the lazy guards were bitten by curiosity. As his body slowly recovered, something else happened. The guards became less suspicious. He told them that he had travelled from the north where the golden-hued land was dry and stretched wide in endless waves lit with sunshine. Land that could break you if you did not use a gentle hand on her. He spoke of the women, dark, dusky loose-limbed nubile beauties who walked the land as though wading through water, bearing miniature reflections of themselves tied onto their backs or at their breasts. At night he said, when the brazen glow of the moon courted the pliant land, you thought you could sometimes see the fragments of light falling down from the sky.
The guards were spellbound, why would he leave such a place? He told them he was a restless soul, an explorer and that Benin had been hailed as the land of possibilities. He wanted to travel and see as much as possible. He had been coping with an unusual affliction for as far back as he could remember. His feet could not stay still in one place long enough to grow roots, as if as a child an itchy curse had been cast on them. What of his family? Surely they disapproved of his running from place to place. He told them he had no real family. Sully answered their questions, throwing a patient smile here and there, a nonchalant shrug if they attempted to pull his tales apart. He informed them that he had just crossed into Benin when bandits attacked and stole some of his belongings. Joking and laughing with all of them, he found himself telling the story several times to different guards. In each instance, he told it as though it were the first time.
On the day Sully was to be taken before the Oba, he awoke craving ripe mangoes. His limbs were still sore and thin, black scabs had formed over wounds only the eyes could see. He was quiet too, only nodding his thanks to the slight servant girl who brought him a small pail of water to wash himself. He sniffed his armpits; an, eye-watering smell emanated from them. Disgusted, he picked up the cloth left beside the sleeping mat, dampened it in the water and gently began to wash his body, careful not to wet his wounds. He waited for his body to dry before slowly slipping on the loose fitting shirt that had also been washed and dried.
Outside, the two guards sent to take him to the main palace, jokingly shoved each other pretending to play fight. He whistled his readiness and sniggering over something both men came to him, one on each side, lightly holding his arms. As they took the walk up through to the palace, he eyed the bustling, sprawling courtyards, the neat apartments for those of royal lineage and finally the high, imposing terracotta palace building, its conquests depicted in brass plaques embedded on the front view of the roof. He swallowed a bitter smile at the cruelty of the gods.
Inside, he was made to stand in a room before the Oba and his councilmen. A small river of accusatory stares followed. Oba Odion’s voice boomed “Tell me what has brought you to Benin.” Sully did so, calmly, with the right intonations of humbleness and disbelief at his misfortune. Inside, he locked away twinges of pleasure as he held his audience rapt, watching their doubts fall to the ground like fish scales. He told himself that sometimes you had to take the beginning you deserved. This was his.
Say Anon
I began calling my uninvited guest Anon. Somehow, weirdly, I’d adjusted to having another presence in the house. The blackboard in the kitchen was full of sightings; the wooden floor had small areas cordoned off with white chalk. My bedroom ceiling bore splatters of purple paint from attempting to capture her body using colour. Traps I’d set failed. Buckets of water placed in corners of my living room so she could fall inside her own image and drown. Instead, the water rippled from her breath and sometimes her wet mirror images left the buckets so there were four of her wandering through the flat. Water versions of Anon eventually collapsed into puddles I mopped dry with shaky hands. Sometimes when I turned the radio on and listened to LBC she swallowed the frequency using silence the weight of a room. And I found myself beneath it, arms and legs flailing to survive.
The days became darker.
I played drunken bingo with Mrs Harris, mulled over what to do with my inheritance money and ignored Mervyn’s phone messages. Anon persisted, she dangled off cobwebs in my throat with one finger and inserted her gap-toothed smile in the mouths of people I shot. I functioned, the way a person carrying broken things inside them does, until they start bleeding from a big wound on their face that has seemingly arrived overnight.
One evening I lay on my blue sofa, my mother’s throw covering my feet, watching a rerun of Deal or No Deal on More4, playing with the key from
the fish. I rubbed it as though it could grant wishes, Anon sat in a single wooden chair on the side. Noel Edmonds wore a ridiculously loud shirt, the clothing equivalent of a box of Smarties. In between the boxes opening on screen, with revelations of blue or red cash values inside, I listened for heartbeats Anon may have borrowed from someone else. I was resigned to us living an unsettling co-existence.
The heating was on full blast; subconsciously I thought I could make her sweat until she evaporated. The smell of weed lingered, what was left of the slim roll burned in a glass ashtray on the floor, its tiny specks of orange light with smoke curling into the amber iris of a third eye. I drained half a glass of Baileys and set it on the floor, next to it I laid two flattened cereal boxes, Cornflakes and Rice Krispies. I’d planned to use them to make robots but got distracted by my vices of weed, alcohol and television. From the kitchen, the bottle tops stuck to my notice board of weird collages rattled, releasing whispers.
Anon unfolded her limbs and walked to the kitchen. I slipped the key into my trouser pocket. In my mental fog I could straddle two planes. I was aware of her movements, a series of scratches wearing skin, rummaging through the cutlery drawer. She appeared by my side wielding my sharpest knife, the one I used for cutting stubborn pieces of meat. I saw a green vein reflected through the blade, from tip to handle. It throbbed; I couldn’t tell if it was hers or mine. A purple haze floated into a parachute, hovered above us. I felt a slick of sweat on my neck, heard the scurry of unidentifiable things in holes. Anon held me and it was like holding myself, the gleam of a blade sat between us. She pressed the knife to the left side of my head, made an incision just above my ear. She placed her mouth on it and spoke into the cut.
I found myself on a dusty, lengthy road, warm against my bare feet. Broken stones dug into them. The dark fell in swoops then broke off into marauding limbs. My blue living room curtains billowed against an anaemic moon, swirling dust tainted part of it red. Static from the TV ceased, swallowed by my eardrums and Noel Edmonds voice waned in the distance. The silence around me spun like a colourless kaleidoscope. A river situated to my right rippled gently washing over rocks that could have been heads barely bobbing above water. I saw a cluster of large terracotta buildings situated in sprawling grounds surrounded by tall black gates. The gates were flanked by guards in traditional clothing, their eye-catching material of a golden leafed design and the leaves curled up as if they intended to crackle into life. I heard a faint murmur of chatter between the guards. Angular pieces of stained glass window fell from my mouth onto a path of coloured glass. I walked tentatively on the glass path, even though I had a feeling that if I ran it wouldn’t have broken.
The guards held wooden spears with sharp, brass tips. As I drew closer, one signalled to the others. They’d been sucking on oranges, sharing anecdotes and swatting fat, hungry flies. Another guard spat orange pips into his hand. I stared, expecting an orange tree to bloom from his palm. My throat constricted, a nervous habit. I stopped myself from chanting aloud, just. For one, I didn’t want to appear crazy and two; it wasn’t a good idea to jar men holding weapons. I drew my shoulders up, prepared to spin a lie from the small bank of wool that resided in the scars on my wrists. Wearing respectful expressions, the guards opened the gates.
“Good evening,” they each said in turn.
I nodded, walked through. My pulse hummed, I stayed quiet. I didn’t want to talk and give myself away. But these men seemed to have mistaken me for someone else. One foot stepped in front of the other, guided by an invisible hand. Voices filtered from the surrounding smaller apartments. Noise slipped out as if the rooftops were lids that weren’t closed properly. I wandered into a square courtyard where footsteps were still visible. Vines crawled up tall pillars and whispered to the drawings of battles won, etched in a golden undulating ceiling. I wanted to go down and talk to the footsteps, to see if they’d move. For some reason, I felt I knew who they belonged to, that the lines were telling me. I grabbed a handful of earth and it ran through my fingers, warm and real. Sweat coated my body. I knew this place. I sensed the new and familiar all at once.
I knew that the short copper-toned flight of steps outside the main building led to a room I’d visited before. Brass artefacts were mounted on walls near the stairwell; they shifted under the sly night light. I’d been thrown into something incongruous, like a piece of time landing in a glass bowl. I walked up the steps to the first floor. A guard sat snoozing outside a room tucked behind a golden arched doorway. One eye flew open as my gentle steps approached. He stood groggily to attention. Tightened the knot of the green cloth he wore at the waist and wiped some crusted drool off his chin.
“When I last checked, he was still awake.” He edged the door open slowly.
I entered the large bedroom, closed the door. A dishevelled, raised wooden bed dominated the room. Two brown mats lay on either side. Carved wooden masks hung on the walls, watching with the expressions of Gods. In the thick of the heat I gathered my breaths and smelled palm wine in the air. On a dark stool with a low gaze, a kerosene lamp rested. Its flame flickered, bending in a glass bubble. I heard a rapping noise, a fist knocking inside my head. A small river in my left foot threatened to leak out. The tingly sensation of pins and needles pricked my skin.
In the corner, a man’s shadow rose above him while he hunched low. He washed his hands in a metallic bowl, feverishly muttering to himself. This continued for a few moments as he muttered “Iz not clean, never clean again.”
I walked into his shadow, touched his shoulder gently, driven by instinct and adrenalin. He uncurled slowly, his native wear covered in sweat marks. His protruding gut revealed a man with a very healthy appetite, wild eyes blinked at me.
My voice seemed to come from somewhere else. “What happened?” I asked
The whites of his eyes grew bigger. A red ant clung to a hair on my arm. An army of ants scurried into cracks on the floor and in our speech. He curled his hands into fists, knuckles straining.
“Nothing can be done.” He held up his palms, red from vigorous washing. “My enemies are no longer of this world. Are you one of them?” He pointed a finger accusingly. There was madness in his eyes.
“Nnnno, of course not!” I stammered.
“Why are you dressed in those clothes? Are you trying to mock me?” His voice bellowed.
“I found them in my room; I don’t know where they came from.” I managed a sincere expression, tugged at my baggy boyfriend jeans and loose Ren and Stimpy t-shirt.
“I will have whoever is responsible for this flogged! They may lose three fingers.”
“No need, it’s just a bad joke done in poor taste; I put them on out of curiosity.” I placed both hands on his rising shoulders to steady them. The sound of something dripping caught my attention. He drew me closer, wrapped one trembling arm around me and pointed to the ceiling. A ring of red appeared in the centre. The ceiling talked in a language of blood. It dripped onto our heads. Fat drops fell into my right eye as I looked up. I rubbed urgently, alarmed by the sight.
“What have you done?” I asked.
He threw his back and laughed dementedly, crawled into the unmade bed and assumed the foetal position.
I left the palace with my vision partially blurred. The guards lay slumped back into sleep. At the palace gates I remembered the key in my pocket, an invisible hand guided me again. Relief surged in my chest as I inserted it into the lock and turned. It opened. I thanked the dead fish that brought it to me and shrouded it in luck. Now the road felt cooler on my bare feet. The singing crickets had half whistles inside them; their sound grazed the night. An even paler moon morphed into a broken plate and its red dust disappeared back into the ground. Hovering in the air behind me was the sprawling red palace, somehow uprooted by my visit. Beside me the riverbanks arched, water rippled.
In the distance the sound of static beckoned me. I walked till my feet ached and the sound became a wall close enough to touch, twitching like the insta
nces we change our minds. I couldn’t tell when I was swallowed into the other side.
In the morning, I rolled off the sofa and landed with a thump on the floor. Red ants crawled out of my pockets and made a trail. Anon sat opposite me laughing, more ants spilled from her mouth. I traced the cut on the side of my head, a morning alarm. I stood still for minutes, covered in a cold blanket, rubbing an optical illusion that had landed in my hands. Turn it one way and you had a lady with a cut on her head that would change location. Turn it the opposite way and a woman with blood becoming a small, red country in her eye appeared.
Part 2
Modern London,
Lagos 1950s
&
19th Century Benin
Tales of Kin
Tandem
Three months after I picked up the diary from Mervyn, I woke up one morning needing to know more. I fished the leather bound journal from my handbag. Inside the front cover the name Peter Lowon was scrawled on the page. The diary was teeming with paragraphs. A grey margin line became a needle sowing a stitch into my side. I saw ink arrows morphing into real arrows, hurling themselves at words, the wounded words would escape with letters lost from injuries, limping off the papers, leaving a trail of blue black ink to drip onto my palms. I could hear the chants of kids playing easing through my letterbox and the screech of impatient car tires. My phone began to ring, but I licked my finger and turned the first page of the journal into another life. I glimpsed a sketch on the back cover. It was a drawing of the brass head with words orbiting around it. I didn’t run my finger over it, in case it came to life.
Crying Fins
Adesua did not report Filo to the Oba. Instead the wall of anger she’d erected against her, crumbled on seeing the lost, vulnerable woman clinging to the brass head as though it held the answer to her problems. Adesua grabbed her arms and gently shook her. “Filo, ah ah, what has happened? Tell me, has somebody done something?” She’d pried Filo’s fingers off the warm brass.
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