Butterfly Fish

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Butterfly Fish Page 21

by Irenosen Okojie


  In the evenings the court would entertain the visitors with music, and dancing while the councilmen drummed their fingers and nodded their heads along. They revelled in their supposedly mutually beneficial new alliance. Slapped backs and forced laughter drove conversations. But something escaped the council members: these Portuguese men were not just eyeing in admiration the Benin palace, its art, the Oba’s collection, treasures and armoury. They were watching with a clever, concealed furtive hunger and disbelief, already stripping away what they could with the naked eye. They were given a ceremonious send off. For their final evening, a fat calf was cooked and the men ate till their bellies were full and they could barely move.

  There was a vulnerability emanating off the palace that even the glow of that evening couldn’t mask, as though if you drew a big enough breath and blew at it, it would split into large chunky fragments made up of red clay, betrayals and longings, revealing flawed walls intended to protect the inhabitants from everything. The councilmen had boasted to their foreign guests of the tribute system collected on behalf of the Oba. The reality was the opposite; they had been struggling to gather tributes from the surrounding areas for the last two seasons. People were having a terrible time feeding their families, farmers in particular because the harvest period had been and gone, yielding very little. The council couldn’t have told their visitors this. Or that pile of rotten cocoa yams were more useful than their Oba who still sat locked away mumbling in solitude.

  Instead, a careful picture of Benin had been presented, dressed up in tales of conquests, happy traditional songs and an outwardly thriving palace. On this front the council succeeded because the Portuguese, uncertain of what to expect had been flummoxed. Why the Benin were a civilised bunch! Such a sprawling palace, what impressive, sophisticated artefacts and cultured people and of course this was true. If you caught the chuckles darting over the holes, the high-pitched voices talking over one another in excitement and the clapping, you may have thought all was well in Benin. In the palace, they forgot about their deception and began to believe in the sweetness of the image. The Portuguese left and the council congratulated themselves for days, what a coup. But they had made a fatal mistake; they had unlocked the stranger’s gate and in doing so, extended a hand to unforeseen dangers. Because more European men would come, setting in motion an unstoppable, tragically disastrous, chain of events.

  Adesua, stunned by Filo’s departure, continued to feel surprised for days after she found out Filo was really gone. How had she not seen it coming? Had Filo planned it? Fooling them all with that air of fragility. Filo who slipped her bracelets over the pain she had worn so openly, it had hurt to look at her sometimes. Five days after their Portuguese guests left, things were gradually returning to their normal state. Adesua sitting on the hard floor of her chamber, was thinking of the last time she had seen Filo with her sad, sombre smile that swum in her face. She never really looked at you but through you, not because you were of no interest but out of a bad habit she seemed incapable of breaking. Although Adesua admitted to herself that she felt betrayed, she knew she had no right to feel that way. But somehow a bond had formed between them that joined them together, in anticipation of a life of duty, disappointment and routine. Somehow, finding the strength nobody knew she possessed Filo had smashed it.

  Adesua surprised by the anger brimming inside her stood and paced the wall on her left. There, she lifted the brass head from a dark wooden stand, thinking again of Filo’s fixation with the thing. The air in the chamber seemed loaded with possibilities yet somehow she knew this was a bad sign. Terrible incidents seemed to find the palace fertile ground. Sully walked into her head, she pictured him so clearly, tales dangling from the corner of his lips, holding an audience in the palm of his hand. A rush of fear attacked her body so suddenly; she wanted to cough it out. She wondered where Filo was and if she would finally find peace. She envied Filo’s newly discovered freedom. The crickets started to talk, as if alerting each other to some discovery. Adesua began to vigorously polish the brass head with her hand, as presently that action alone seemed the answer to everything.

  At the opposite end of the palace, Sully was also fighting the feeling of unease. He sat several steps away from his quarters, occasionally looking up to name a glimmering star. With each attempt he hoped to trick himself into believing all was well. But the apprehension stuck and as a result he had insisted on not seeing Adesua for a few days. He was a man who paid attention to the voice within and it was telling him to leave. Benin was cursed and he knew he should go before it mercilessly stripped him too. But not yet, it wasn’t enough that he was witnessing its slow destruction from the perfect position. Or that he had watched Oba Odion oversee the beginning of the palace’s collapse. He just had to be patient he told himself.

  Oba Odion’s decline, the blood leaking through the roof, Omotole’s disfigured baby; these were more signs. The palace was revealing its secrets and one day he would stumble on what he had been waiting for. He let these thoughts drift from him like smoke while near his feet a tiny glow of colour pulled his gaze down. A small ladybird crawled around aimlessly. He realised he was so deep in thought he nearly crushed it. It appeared to be in some distress. It rolled onto its back and began to twitch its tiny, curled black legs. He watched, gripped by its short, jerky movements, which became increasingly pronounced, as if it was trying to reveal something. Then it stopped, perhaps fed up with the futile attempt of sharing whatever burden it carried. It rocked back over on its front, perhaps the call of other bugs and crawly creatures luring it over. Sully watched it make its way till it disappeared out of sight. He closed his eyes tightly, wishing there were things he didn’t know because knowing changed you. And once you acknowledged this you could never go back. It seemed, even the tiny creatures of the land knew this truth.

  When your worst fear comes to life, a twisted, sweaty anticipation follows and hollowed out from the persistent rapping of the heart, it festers within. This Adesua and Sully discovered when they were yanked out from their reveries and thrown into a trial after the council had been informed of their affair. All they could do was stand to attention, watching as the repercussions of their actions lay within the creased folds of the council men’s native wear. Waiting. The palace was agog with the news and it had spread like a disease. At the trial the councilmen were sombre, their appropriately grim expressions could have been hand drawn. There was an air of inevitability about the whole proceeding. Adesua pleaded with them, looking them in the eye when scrambling to answer some questions, then defiantly refusing to answer others and shaking fitfully as any hope she harboured dissolved in the space of breaths. She thought of Mama and Papa, how they would hang their heads in shame and what would become of them afterwards. But looming over all that was Sully, the way he stayed so still. As though he was a spectator in the whole thing, his chin poised unflinching, for all the blows. He refused to apologise, and a thin, cracked veil of shock came down as Sully, the man who could talk himself into and out of any situation, said nothing.

  On that last day, there wasn’t anything a soul could do to change the upside down face of their destiny. They were watched all night by a pack of sober guards in a rank, shabby out-building reserved for prisoners. When morning arrived, their hands were tied with thick, cutting rope that rubbed their skin raw as they were dragged on the journey they couldn’t come back from, flanked on either side by six soldiers from Oba Odion’s army. Adesua tried to not let her whimpers slip, attempting to catch them with her shocked, and flagging tongue. On their way, death wasn’t in the broken, gnarled branches scattered about, or the rough, prickly frowning bush plants nipping at her legs. Or even the ground; coughing pleas disguised in red dust as the stamp of feet moved on. No, death was in the sweet, sugarcane kisses she had shared with her lover. Sully baffled the soldiers; he was laughing to the heavens yet he would never hold a daughter in his arms, never travel with his family, to freely experience new lands the way his wand
ering feet loved. Never again would he watch Adesua fall asleep in his arms.

  Working for the British as a scout, sent to assess the lay of the land and the conditions of the palace he had failed. He had absconded, keeping the money and in the end had fallen in love with the king’s beautiful new wife. Ironically had he stuck to his end of the treacherous bargain, he may have been left a rich, free man. They paused when they reached a clearing deep in the dense bush, the promise of Sully and Adesua’s lives not yet realised shrank back from outlines mired in sin. One soldier untied Sully’s hands and handed him a long metal instrument, it’s curved, menacing head shaped as in a fit of surprise. They instructed him to dig a grave big enough for two. He stooped down, arching his back, sticking the metal thing into the ground, watching as it spat piles of earth, seeing Adesua trembling without even looking at her.

  At that very moment, Oba Odion finally left his chamber. He was being chased by the boy he used to be, through the palace grounds and all the charred enclaves beyond it, while the spirit of Oba Anuje looked on and the ghost of his lost son Ogiso settled into the brass head, rattling it against the floor of Adesua’s quarters.

  Sully kept digging, while his back ached, he couldn’t feel his arms and his legs were folding. He wanted to tell Adesua he was happy they had destroyed each other together with their love, to tell her that when she laughed, he wanted to keep seeing more of her playful side. He wanted to tell her it was a beautiful day to die. You could see small clusters of clouds slowly, steadily floating down, as though the sky was shedding bits of itself. And the air was sweet and full of promise. And right there. There. In the far corner of himself, a headless hyena was pawing at the blood tears running down the stump of its neck, circling in on its body and him. The soldiers buried the two of them together alive, and just then, the sun God stepped out, stuffing bits of shredded, stolen moonbeam where he could. His golden rays searing through the thickened air and cutting it into slices he opened his mouth wide to swallow their cries.

  Part 3

  Modern London

  &

  Lagos 1950s

  Scene

  A baby with a white tongue sat in the middle of traffic. Naked, it crawled after an orange balloon fashioned into a dog. I watched the dog bounce, carried by a steady breeze, running my tongue over my dry mouth. The baby continued to edge forward as the traffic swirled. And the sky was so big and bright I had to somehow adjust my settings. I stood at the flickering traffic lights feeling jittery, anxiously waiting for somebody to scoop up the baby who so far hadn’t cried. I waited for the artificial dog to bark. It didn’t. A rising panic grew inside me. My left hand lay slack against my slick with sweat thigh. My right hand trembled. Everybody around seemed oblivious. A man in a Hawaiian shirt nibbled on a Mars bar, a ginger-haired woman pushing shopping bags in a pram that had seen better days laughed into her mobile phone, a lollipop lady sat crying on a bench beside the DLR station. The faulty traffic light only flashed wait. People crossed over regardless, drawing expletives from drivers who popped extra large heads out of dust covered windows before leaning back in to awkward embraces with their steering wheels.

  A milk float with no driver appeared off the roundabout. It paused beside the station, empty bottles of milk jostling. The lollipop lady jumped in still crying as she drove away. The baby was closer now. I caught a glimpse of its wide smiling face as it moved determinedly towards an empty packet of Skittles lingering on the curb. A sharp pain exploded in my chest. Sweat popped on my forehead. A feeling of familiarity crept in. I opened my mouth to call out but only growly guttural barks emerged. Distressed, I scanned the scene for the orange dog. I leapt at the curb to grab the baby but it was drooling into the Skittles packet at the back of the milk float, snaking through the bottles.

  On the way home, I looked up at the same big sky wondering where I’d seen the baby before. Wondering if it would change its mode of travel and attach itself to the white vapour trail of the plane overhead, taking comfort in the distance of its heavy noise. The taut pain continued to spread through my body. My hand felt sticky and a stinging sensation registered. I pulled it out of my pocket watching the blood trickle. Unwittingly, I’d cut it on the gnarly cover of a sardine can left inside it. At the front door, I fished out a stone the size of a one pence coin and swallowed it. Seventy-two hours of insomnia and counting, a no-man’s land where the gutted earth harboured versions of me growing, injured. Wild eyed.

  Glass Feet Stoned

  It was just after 8pm when I arrived at Mervyn’s office. He was just leaving. He pulled the door closed, wine-coloured briefcase in hand, and then rotated his head to the right as I approached, as if he’d picked up a warning in the air I’d be coming. Black suit, red tie, polished black shoes, looking smart, a man you could trust. He smiled a genuine smile but I could see worry behind it.

  “Princess, still don’t know how to return people’s phone calls.”

  “You haven’t been honest with me Mervyn.”

  He stood still for a moment, gathering himself. As he blew air through his lips his chest rose and fell like a balloon beginning to deflate.

  “Okay, let’s go to mine where we can talk.”

  “No.”

  “Come on it’s me; you telling me you can’t come to my house now?”

  We walked to a Caribbean restaurant a couple of streets down. All the way I said nothing, waiting. He brought out his chequered handkerchief to pat his forehead.

  Other than a couple at the bar area the restaurant was virtually empty and smelled of spices. It had wooden floors, dim lights and colourful paintings. Reggae music played low and soft like a lover’s stroke. You could see out onto the street from where we sat. Mervyn’s gaze loitered a little too long on the outside scene. He may have sensed what was coming, maybe not the exact nature of it, but he knew I meant business. Neither of us wanted to eat. He ordered vodka, I ordered water.

  Tell me what happened.

  He supressed an agitated sigh.

  You know what your mother was like Joy.

  No, tell me.

  She was vicious that evening, she said things, accused me.

  Of what?

  Of seeing another woman.

  Were you?

  No, I’m a man who flirts a lot; I can’t help it I’m wired that way. Why did you keep it from me?

  Your mother thought it best you didn’t know about us.

  And this had been going on for?

  Years.

  Even while your wife was alive?

  Yes.

  I stayed absolutely still for a minute because I needed to.

  So?

  I went out, took a walk around to cool off man, I came back the basement door was open and there she was. It was so strange to see her dead, I swear I never touched her; I loved her. You saw the medical examiner’s report.

  You left her there.

  I don’t know where my head was at. I panicked. To find her like that, it was a shock, too much.

  He looked me dead in the eye then. I wanted to tell you.

  No, no, no, no, no. I stopped him. All at once I felt faint and sick. He was showing who he really was to me. The way he’d always been there, in the background and his boys, always there too. How could I not have seen it? I realised the night I found my mother dead I never called the ambulance. Mervyn had. After the screaming dial tone and the voice that replaced it zapped down the line and his trembling fingers hung up the receiver, he hit the ground, running away from us, my mother reduced to a dirty dead secret. I’ll never ask by how much time I missed him.

  I left him there at the cliff edge, to untangle the knot stretching back many years.

  Then there she was, wearing the purple scarf from Mervyn’s. Why in death was my mother Queen becoming real again? My glass feet broke repeatedly on the pavement. Heartbeats were gunshots fired in my chest. She was high up above, a fevered angel sleepwalking on the wings of planes.

  Peter Lowon Journal Entry, July 1
964

  Now that it is two years since General Akhatar has been pronounced the new minister of defence under military rule, and I am a General in my own right, my marriage has become a shell. I wanted it all, but it is never as you expect it to be. Still, I cannot bring myself to tell Felicia the one thing she wants to know. Instead, I have picked seedless fights over the years. If she cooks I tell her the eba is too hard, that her soup tastes flat. I shout her down over the dining room table on days she attempts to sit with me the way a good wife does. And wish aloud she’d cease breathing instead of asking me endless questions while she watches in horror. One night she came home late smelling of beer after running around with some of these Lagos women. I called her a prostitute and threw her out, while Queenie slept soundly. After her staying with a friend for three days, I demanded she come home, accused her of abandoning her duties as a wife and mother and of attempting to embarrass me. I have become another type of man in my own home and I don’t know how to stop being him.

  Felicia and I sleep in separate bedrooms. I have never experienced a lonelier feeling than the sound of her footsteps heading towards her bedroom, where the only comfort that awaits her is an empty bed. I am punishing both of us; I wonder why she stays. I kept my promise and she has a clothing boutique in Lagos where through my connections some high profile clients flock. She spends her days there, running it with her cousin’s help. Felicia and I will not have any more children; I have resigned myself to it, despite always wanting more. Queenie deserves a brother and sister; she has asked me about it many times. I always give her the same answer, ‘When the time is right.’ Knowing that time will never come.

  His name is Ben Okafor. He is a journalist with The Nigerian Trumpet, a parasite whose big shot father owns the paper amongst other ventures. I first received a call from him some weeks ago. He told me he wanted to do a lifestyle profile on generals in the military, a series that would run over a few weeks.

 

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