Butterfly Fish

by Irenosen Okojie

  Mervyn lived a walking distance away from his practice. On his road in full Technicolor, men sported versions of green, gold and white string vests, standing in groups outside gates catching blaring music beats. I was amazed; here were neighbours in London who spoke to each other. Mervyn’s house had cobblestone-like walls. Stunted sprigs of grass with no ambition grew in the small, concrete jungle of his front yard and the oval black gate creaked. He answered on the third knock.

  “Hey princess! I’m glad you made it man.” I was swallowed into his hug and immediately picked up the smell of grilled meats.

  “Can’t miss a good barbecue.”

  I handed over a bottle of white wine that had been sweating in my cupboard for weeks. In the hallway, I stepped over children with missing teeth and mouths full of sweets. Armed with crayons, they huddled over drawing books. A Lover’s Rock tune was playing on the stereo. “Wha gwaan sis?” A man with a long beard dressed in an African print shirt said. He was holding a plate of curry goat and rice as if it was his last supper. I was impressed that he managed to peel his eyes off it to say hello.

  “Leon, Joy,” Mervyn said by way of introduction. In the living room, more bodies were gathered on Mervyn’s cream leather sofa. People were leaning on walls chatting between bites of crisp salad and patty. There were some elders sitting at a table talking about cricket and sipping rum. I nodded respectfully as Mervyn went to the kitchen to get me a drink, rum and coke for starters. You could smell the barbecue in the garden from the living room. I knew I only had to walk out through the kitchen door and into the neat, well-kept back garden to find succulent pieces of chicken browning on the barbecue flavoured with spices. Mervyn loved his food.

  I sipped the drink Mervyn gave me casually but underneath, thoughts of Peter Lowon were cooking in my brain, sizzling and spitting. I couldn’t quite get my head around the fact that my grandfather had participated in a murder, drunk or not. Maybe my family were cursed and it was just a matter of time before I got dragged down with everybody else.

  Mervyn had a brand new fitted kitchen that didn’t so much wow as comfort. A warm, homely space kitted out in wooden cupboards and grey marble-like countertops. There were trays of food spread out like elaborate Japanese fans. I grabbed a plate. Jerk chicken with barbecue sauce beckoned, ackee and salt fish in a big glass bowl, steamed fish and vegetables, plain white rice, salad, rice and peas and fried plantain. I served a good portion on my plate and tucked in. It was a nice day for a gathering; Mervyn was the sort of man who never lacked company. If I stopped by at two am I could guarantee there would be strays wandering in and out of the house. I parked myself on a stool at the counter; more rum and coke was needed.

  In the garden, Mervyn stood at the barbecue comfortably flipping chicken sausages and lamb burgers, affably passing his laughter around as if it were napkins. I happened upon him from the back, my shadow following his baldhead.

  “You alright princess?” he turned to face me, still poking a sausage.

  “Yeah, this is a nice do, great food, thanks for inviting me.” A few people bit into their hot dogs wholeheartedly.

  “Hmm, but that’s not why you came is it?” he smiled astutely. I made a show of feigning ignorance, wrinkling my nose and attempting the blank eyed look. “What? No.”

  “Yes, I know you, can’t get you down these ends on most days.”

  “About my mother.”

  “Ahah! I knew it.” He stepped away from the barbecue to give me his full attention. Now the Staple Singers were playing, waiting to do it again.

  “Did she talk about her father much?” Internally I smoothed his puzzled expression as pieces slotted into place.

  “Not really. You been reading that diary?” he said.

  “I think I might need your help.”

  “Oh yeah? What for?”

  “I don’t know yet, I’m just warning you in advance.”

  “So you need my help but you don’t know what for? You’re a strange girl you know that.”

  “What does “not really” mean? Just now when I asked about her and my grandfather that was your answer.”

  He pinned me to the spot with a calm look, “Not really means not really.” I didn’t believe him.

  After that, I got a condensed education on the merits of chess from a bunch of black nerds. Somebody caught me on the video camera and I pulled a face Freddie Krueger would have been proud of. Then, I slunk away to relieve myself.

  Mervyn’s house had three floors and I went straight to the top. You would think that his house would be full of facsimiles of him and all the people he entertained, plastered everywhere, but especially as I climbed up to the top floor toilet the walls grew emptier and the house took on the feel of somewhere much more functional and far less inviting than it had appeared down below. The walls were bare, painted a dull greyish white and the carpeted stairs held not so much as a stray hair, as if no-one really spent any time up here. In the bathroom I found myself wondering about Mervyn and his family and what made them tick.

  I emerged from the toilet to the faint scent of perfume in the air. It was lightly exotic and sweet smelling. With each step I took, the smell grew stronger. It seemed to get stronger further along the hallway. I followed it to Mervyn’s bedroom. The hairs on my arms stood up. The smell felt overwhelmingly familiar. The bedroom door was firmly shut. I opened it.

  He’d had it redecorated after his wife died. It was a masculine room with dark oak panels and huge wooden bed made with a blue duvet. An un-emptied ashtray spilled old cigarette butts onto the dark nightstand while some big shoes frowned at their temporary neglect. I could have blinked and missed it. Peeking out from beneath the soft breast of Mervyn’s pillow was a strip of light purple material. There was a searing, short sharp pain in my chest. I picked up the material. It was silky and light. It weighed nothing but felt heavy in my chest. I held it to my nose, inhaling the scent deeply. Now the smell was inescapable. White spots on the material polluted my memory. I recognised it instantly, my mother’s Hermes scarf. She used to tie it into a bow at her throat. I pulled it out gently, touching it. It had the faded smell of Yves Saint Laurent Opium, her perfume. I was a low, grainy resolution of myself in that instant.

  The thick, maroon carpeted stairs must have cushioned his footsteps because I didn’t hear Mervyn come up. I only heard him at the door, shuffling from one leg to the other, his stance slumped and awkward, the expression of deep sadness on his face. He opened his mouth several times but no words came out. He looked smaller in the doorway. I asked myself how that could be possible. Fresh tears sprang in my eyes. We stood there just looking at each other. I took my time, putting my mother’s scarf back under the pillow, as if he wasn’t standing there watching me. By the time I left the party, Gregory Isaacs was crying for his night nurse.

  Outside, the night had the illuminated intensity of an owl’s gaze. I took off my Converse shoes and walked barefoot, carrying them gingerly. A white van tore down the street, its exhaust pipe panting magic smoke waiting to catch my sleepy eyes. Later, I knew I’d get home and think of my mother’s scarf still faintly smelling of Opium, a red flag under a white pillow.

  Peter Lowon Journal entry March 20th 1956

  I met my Felicia. I only met her two days ago but one day I will marry her. It was inside a small, thriving shop several miles from the barracks in Onisha. She was sitting behind the till, sipping from a Supermalt bottle. I have never envied an inanimate object before! She looks like a Fulani girl, with delicate features and her hair braided in an elegant style. She is beautiful. About five of us stopped off to buy some refreshments, maybe bread and tins of sardines to eat on the ride back. She barely glanced our way as we descended on a wave of noise.

  I listened to one soldier call her “pretty girl” and wink at her after asking where the beer was kept. I had been pretending to check out maize flour while watching her discreetly. Her voice was calm. “Soldier man, is under the sign that says beer. You dey lose sig
ht for army?” We laughed and she dismissed us, turning to concentrate on the magazine open in front of her on the till counter. She looked no older than twenty to me but her voice had an assurance to it. I watched her bend down in her little shoebox of space, head disappearing under the counter only to come up again with a cigarette stuck between her lips. The slim cigarette glowed. I found myself starring at the white strap of her top on her shoulder. I picked up more than I needed, bottles of beer, Fanta, pounded yam flour, Bournvita, bread, a packet of Tom Tom sweets. The others were teasing each other at the back, grabbing products, putting them down again.

  At the counter I laid everything out carefully. Smoke curled from her mouth. Stupidly, I told her smoking was for fast women! I don’t know what made me say that, especially considering I smoke myself! She rang up the goods laughing, telling me if I wanted to ask her out that was not the comment to make! Throughout our brief conversation, she managed to watch what the boys were doing at the back. After she asked if my friends were in the shop to play. I whistled at the boys.

  Inside the rusty, white Volkswagon on the way back to the barracks I couldn’t stop thinking about her. Up close, she was slim and not too tall. Say 5ft 5in and had the kind of shifting face that looked subtly different each time you saw it. Felicia seemed capable of being a little cruel. For some reason, this made me more curious about her, intrigued. The boys teased me. “British gentleman nah wah oh! See how he just become smooth in front of woman!” They slapped me on the back as if they were proud. “She fine well well but she dey make yanga.” I didn’t care about their words. I knew they were jealous. I kept playing my conversation with her over and over again in my head, thinking about army life. I can no longer say whether I like it or not, the sound of soldiers boots is constantly in the background. But I like what the army can do for me. It is why I am still here, waiting to take opportunities when they come.

  Obi, Emmanuel and I have not talked about the thing we did that night, but there is a coiled string attaching all three of us. These days, when we talk, our sentences have double meanings. I can see the truth, white words written in chalk on their foreheads. Obi is jovial as ever, you would think he has won the lottery. I wonder how long it will last, but the money is good, nawah! Emmanuel is surprisingly calmer than I’ve seen him in the past. For now this situation has been the making of him. These boys are confident nothing will happen. The General has paid us well, made good on his sugarcoated promises but we will see. I thought of sending the brass head home to my father, a gesture and gift he would love. This would amuse me, the irony of it. But yet I want to keep it to myself, it is mine after all. It is safely tucked away amongst my possessions. Whispers of a military coup taking over the current government have begun slipping in and out through keyholes. Who knows if this will manifest, but if it does, the death must not be for nothing. Also the General will think of me for the bigger plan, if not I will remind him. I have not told Obi or Emmanuel about the brass head, it is better that way. At unexpected moments I catch myself wondering what I have become now that my heartbeat is no longer my own.

  Felicia. Unflappable Felicia was still on my mind the day after. But Caretaker man, the white-headed seer, a ruffled man in his rumpled uniform, still drifted around looking for clues and making strange proclamations. The mystery of Caretaker man’s identity is something the soldiers like to get their teeth into during moments of boredom.

  “He must be related to somebody high up, why else would they let a mere caretaker roam around in full military uniform? Ah ah, it is like something out of a comedy.” Soldiers often say or, “Oya, something is not right with that man in the upstairs compartment. You know what I’m saying. How old is he?” This is another mystery to us. You cannot tell his age, his face is smooth and unlined, but his completely white hair tells a different story.

  At times I imagine he must have received some terrible news in the past, that this news was too much to bear and the days which followed saw the changing of his hair, like a change of seasons, greying and whitening itself from the roots up. Unrealistic I know, though this has stuck in my brain. Other times, I imagine him rising and brushing cobwebs from his head. There is no mention of a wife, children, or family. Nobody knows. One evening, a few of us took it upon ourselves to spy on him. We crouched low under the window of his quarters, listening to high life music coming from his cheap radio. The light from several candles was flickering. He sat on his bed in his white vest and shorts staring into a distance. One soldier imitated a cock crowing and we ran, most of the group chuckling. I felt uncomfortable having seen him in that state. We had intruded on a private moment and whatever he was seeing had rendered him completely still. I remember his uniform hung neatly on a hanger on a nail. I liked him just a little bit more for that.

  Earlier that same evening, Caretaker man was sniffing around looking for answers. Mustapha, the soldier who tore his letters to shreds, ran through the barracks naked, screaming at the top of his lungs. He interrupted groups huddled around playing cards, polishing their boots or arm wrestling. He spoke in a strangled, voice and ran frantically to people, shouting that there were demons in uniforms that made promises with smiling faces. That the dead soldier’s crime was knowing too much and he was silenced. I did not witness this scene; this is what I was told.

  Shortly after this display, three superior officers came out, one holding a syringe in a gloved hand. They held Mustapha down, right there on the common room floor in the presence of all those soldiers. He wriggled his body still screaming for all it was worth, as if something had possessed him. One officer punched him in the face. Blood spurted from his nose and dribbled into his mouth. Then he was smiling blood. The soldiers’ voices filled the room, beseeching the officers to take it easy man sir! Feet shifted nervously around the suddenly hot floor. The silver needle, a slim spear in the big room, pierced the stuffy air before it did him. He was sedated, and then they carried him away like it was nothing. I am glad I did not see this; it would have ruined my day.

  This weekend I will go back to the shop in Onisha where the beautiful girl Felicia sits on her shop counter throne as if she is in the wrong picture. The lines of her body will be as I remember. She will come to life when she sees me. I will buy gari, cola, and peanuts. The portable fan will blow air over her shifting face; other customers will shop themselves into the background. My hands will be steady. I will make useful and useless conversation with her. She will tell me more about herself. She will give me my change and in the process, something else will be exchanged.

  Two-Legged Race, Three Legged Stool

  One type of destruction has a way of serenading its victim. It led Oba Odion through the next few weeks with a sure steady lyrical hand. The Oba had a problem; it was not that he was forgetting things, but that he couldn’t forget. He would rise late in the day craving the taste of days-old palm wine, sinking himself into the drinking of it till people could smell him long before he entered a room. He stumbled through the palace halls, arms outstretched, balancing himself with fingers splayed on the walls. In council meetings his mind abandoned his head, thoughts balking at the voices. He found himself mumbling agreement to the suggestions of the council members, while distracted by the most irrelevant details. Like how crooked Councilman Ewe’s teeth were, and why it had only recently begun to bother him. With every other breath the room grew smaller, as if it were shrinking.

  Seated at their table of crumbling self-importance, Oba Odion had also lost his ferocious appetite for the wiles of his wives. In the mornings, his flaccid penis would greet him, the small slit at the crown frustrated by its wasted pleadings, lost in the snarling thatch of curly hair that extended down the softening expanse of his brown thighs. He avoided the questioning eyes of the palace and took to using the long twisted parched path that led away from the gates. That way he could compose himself and talk down the speedy jolts slamming against his temples. He realised on a murky, tangled day that something you thought you wanted ba
dly may turn out to be your undoing. And on that day, he began wearing an expression of deep sadness he knew he would never be able to take off. He would have to cry through it, talk through it and laugh through it, because something was happening. Inside him something was spreading from the pit of his stomach. It was unstoppable, but he tried to slow it down and dilute it with drink. It hit him then, this was what it must feel like if somebody took a heated bar of iron and scraped it along your bones.

  Adesua and Sully found themselves staining patches of ground at night as their scents of coconut and a pleasing manly odour that permeated the air mingled and curled the branches of trees. They wallowed in each other whenever possible. Stole glances amidst busy throngs of people filtering in and out around the yards. Glances that burgeoned into the soft pad of a finger against parted lips and later into surrendered bodies. There was a delicious pleasure to it. Adesua struggled to keep this happiness from bubbling to the surface. She had to bite her lip to stop it spilling out. Their betrayal didn’t thin their blood; it left only a slightly sour taste, which was washed away by the abandon of two people who couldn’t help themselves. They were careful treading cracked lines across the palace with a rhythm of light steps. The possibility of being caught loomed before them, large and steadily arranging itself into caution. Bright-eyed, they attended to their duties with a muffled vigour.

  Sully guarded the Oba with an expression of dutiful concern, but the veiled glee in his eyes told another story. By now Adesua had developed a healthy disdain for Oba Odion, insult upon insult! Had he no shame? Trembling and falling all over the place like a useless drunkard. What had gotten into him? But really, what had gotten into all of them? Under the punishing heat in the palace, people were falling apart. Only the day before, in the palace kitchen between piling the ingredients of cocoa yam, goat meat, cassava, wild mushrooms, bitter leaves, baby tomatoes and the bustling servants, the head chef Ahere had ground to a halt and screamed. He stood there screaming while his eyes bulged out of his head and piss trickled down his leg. Nobody knew what he had seen but he was inconsolable for the rest of the day, sent to lie down while the other servants squashed their alarm with tightly-spun snickers.