Butterfly Fish (15 page)

He told her about his love of magic, he carried an ace of spades playing card in his pocket wherever he went for good luck. He performed the trick of pulling a perfectly tied red ribbon from behind her ear.

As the night progressed Queenie became drunk. She decided then she'd tell him at least some of her story. She didn't know why. Maybe it was the loneliness, or the intimate setting, cigarette smoke curling through the room like mist gathering and ash from the embers of stories dying quick deaths in body temperature ashtrays.

Maybe it was the howl of the woman's piercing voice. Something came undone, floated inside her. She saw her own tongue on stage, wagging underneath the blue spotlight.

“What's your favourite magic trick?” she asked

Mervyn drained the last bit of cream liqueur in his glass, looked her dead in the eye. “That's easy, the disappearing act. Vanishing without a trace, it's the greatest trick of all.”

Fist Of Drum

It was the cool north breeze that swept Sully Morier to the palace gates on the night that was to change his life. They found him, the guards, at the foot of the gates, beaten and bruised with his face buried in a puddle of dirt and rain. They patted his roughened, battered body down gently. He responded by cracking open a blackened eye, mumbling something unintelligible, and then slumping his slightly raised head back to the ground. His long body was strong and firm and as the guards lifted him they
humphed
under their breath as he began to kick at them in short bursts that were surprisingly well landed. He seemed to be trapped in another moment that refused to let him go. “Hold him!” one guard said.

“I'm trying,” the other guard paused his hand hovering over Sully's one dropped ankle as though it were a slippery fish he was attempting to outwit. Then a decision was made for him as Sully landed a sly kick that caught the bridge of the guard's nose. “Fool, the sooner we take this white man inside the sooner we can visit the servant women's quarters,” guard number one hissed, while the other guard clutched his injured nose, tilted his head back and drew some night air into his nostrils slowly to ease the spreading pain. Then, Sully's body relaxed, punctuated by a deep grunt. The guard rubbed the knuckles on the hand he had used to quieten Sully, albeit temporarily.

As the guards carried him through to the holding section, lazy moonlight spilled over his body revealing brown khaki trousers and a torn loose cream shirt. There was a thin grape-coloured leather strap wrapped around his waist with two small shallow pockets that had been emptied by roving hands. A bag fashioned out of what looked like an old sack was strapped to his back. His chest bore nicks and cuts crusted with blood. Once in the holding pen, a plain room with shabby straw mats, Sully was left to rest. Half-starved and weak, he spluttered and coughed through the following days that ran into each other, only roused awake by the shuffle of footsteps to look through the blurry recurring crimson mist that clouded his vision when food was brought to him. He ate and found himself clutching his stomach at night despite food like roasted yams and hot vegetable soup sating his hunger. But just as night was showing its hand, a hot spurt of fire would run burning through his stomach. He tried to comfort himself by rocking his body back and forth, ignoring the sting of salty sweat that trickled into his eyes, dousing his lips with a feverish tongue.

News of the handsome foreign stranger spread through the palace like a whirlwind. Did he have any identifying tribal marks? No, but his arms were solid, his face rugged and his eyes greener than the densest forests in Benin. Had he said anything about where he came from? No, only incoherent mutterings that fell flat on the ears of the uninterested guards. Was he recovering well? Yes, but slowly, and there were shadows lingering in the corner of his eyes. Overgrown black hair grazed his neck, days old beard covered his jaw and a tear shaped birthmark nestled high up his inner left muscled thigh. To catch a glimpse of him female servants armed with wet cloths and herbal brews offered the excuse of nursing him while their eyes struggled to absorb every small detail of the new stranger who now languished in the dark. Surely the arrival of this pale stranger meant something? Nobody knew. Unaware of the hum and flutter he'd caused in the palace, Sully was waging his own battle, a battle that rushed through his veins and boiled his blood. He shook fervently
and violently. He wrestled as the naked taunts of the old whispers choked his throat, twisted his heart with long, brutal fingers and echoed his cries off the hollow, bruised walls.

Oba Odion was still celebrating the news of Omotole's pregnancy when a councilman came to him brimming with excitement at the news of a stranger in the palace. He thought his tongue would leap out and of it's own accord tell Oba Odion about this new development. Instead, it resigned itself to darting out sporadically, pink and shining.

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.