Butterfly Fish (18 page)

Somebody else is awake; I can hear their feet shuffling downstairs, the creak of a window sliding open. By the time that sound ceases, it has become a different window from the past. My mother is leaning out, reliable shoulders hunched up, bits of springy hair sticking to her sweaty forehead, screaming for me to come in from the streets. Usually, I would be loitering on a corner somewhere when I heard it, swapping marbles with boys who bore neighbourhood war wounds of freshly scraped knees and healed cuts. Or I'd be testing catapults from a safe enough distance on strangers who crossed my eagle-eyed view.

Whoever was moving downstairs must be trying to get back to sleep. I am admiring the round buttons on my tunic. They are spotless and a coppery colour, I polished them yesterday. They could be coins, like the ones my father used to give me to buy white Tom Tom American candy from the sweet seller that were so sweet your teeth hurt and gave your mouth a zingy coolness. Inside the copper buttons another memory is moulding itself to them. This time I am twelve or thirteen, my head is buried in a book as my father points out the inconsistencies in my arithmetic, teaching me the way good missionaries do. This lesson would then be followed by English. Then later on, sitting in a church pew wriggling my bottom in anticipation of the ending, of the clapping and singing out of tune. Obi has now turned onto his front, dishevelled, doing a very good impression of a tortoise. He sleeps too deeply; this is a weakness for an officer. I will make a good officer; I am controlled and swift to react in most situations.
There is no way I could have failed the recruitment process. Tests, endurance exercises but more importantly, who is open to bribes.

I watch people because human beings are fascinating. A person's body language can tell you what you need to know, even shows when they are weaker than you. Look at an unsteady arm and you will see a lie reflected there, a sweaty upper lip in a tight situation and sooner or later that person will crack from fried nerves. My most useful skill is my ability to adapt, something I learned early having been the child of Christian missionaries, a child with no real interest in faith whatsoever. Since it was clear that you couldn't escape God because he was either watching you, having plans for you, or making a way (God will always make a way!), I decided to have a talk with him. When I was nine, I took him aside right by the guava tree that dipped its branches into our small compound. I warned him, don't give me any wahala and you and me will be okay. Of course, I did not tell my father this. I believed he would have had a heart attack, his thin-rimmed, round spectacles steaming up, his body keeling over right there on our black and white squared linoleum floor.

I have made friends with Obi and Emmanuel, not because they are my sort of people but because you have to have team spirit in the army. You cannot be seen to be a loner or an outsider looking in. In fact I am not a team player, never have been and never will be.

Recently, I have taken to smoking cigarettes. I think too much as some form of a release. I like taking long, slow puffs of sin. I see myself at the army barracks in Epoma. The wide grounds with dark, unevenly, shaped buildings popping out of it like teeth. The identical hard beds set in rows and dressed in flat green sheets with thinly stuffed pillowcases. The thud of feet pounding in unison on the concrete during training exercises. The officers with bags containing stuffed, squashed versions of their lives spilling onto their beds and the floors. The black truncheons flashing in warning, tucked under the stiff arms of officers who look as if they've been swabbed in liquid discipline. The high wire fence surrounding the building that surely had the scrutiny of superior officers welded into it, and the taut, shrill, piercing sound of whistles that sent your socks rolling down
your legs. The green and white Nigerian flag raised on a high, white pole flailing like a ship's mast as if the grounds could set sail at any moment.

I am going back to all of that in a few days, to this new life I find hard to switch off from. But even within the confines of the barracks, there are signs of something wrong. The caretaker whose name nobody knows, his hair is grey with secrets. Every day he marches around the grounds dressed in full regalia making sure the buildings are as they should be. Yet he appears to be searching for something, bending to study the dirty bottoms of walls where there is nothing to see, sliding his hands under filthy, corroding pipes and boring his eyes into the front of the building. And when I greet him, “Mr Caretaker man, what are you looking for?” he responds in kind, “Just making sure everything is in order sir.”

There is the officer three rooms away from mine, who writes letters to himself every week before ripping them to shreds. People have been known to walk in on him attempting to stick those torn shreds of paper together with shaky hands. Besides, I am convinced worms are trying to take over the barracks. It began with seeing one some weeks ago crawling in a leisurely fashion on a windowpane, its pink body wriggling a slimy path. Since then I have seen more, crawling up the table leg in our eating area, slipping between the laces of an officer's heavy black boot, curling and uncurling itself near a small puddle on the training base.

There is a small prayer room tucked away in the gut of the main barracks. It is sparsely decorated with thin, pristine white curtains and worn Bibles gathering dust on the wooden table. The few greying chairs croak when we sit down and the walls are a muted cream colour. Next to a high, square, stand, three fat white candles sit in silver holders. At the front of the chapel a robed, blue-eyed Jesus, arms outstretched, counts your guilty steps as you walk on. The officers, crass, loud, young men unaware of their ignorance, go in there, kiss the crosses dangling from their chains and feverishly voice their longings.

So far every officer I have met has a story to tell. This is to be expected; we are young, keen and hungry. There is something about putting young men in an enclosed, restricted environment that produces unexpected results. Not only the predictable strutting and competitiveness; it's also
how territorial some people have already become. Even over small, insignificant things like who misplaced so and so's razor and who borrowed someone's pen and forgot to return it. As if ownership of things keeps them sane.

It is nearly 3 am and I should really try to sleep. The ticking has stopped in my temples and the sounds of Lagos have dwindled to virtually nothing now.

Another thing; I have never set foot in England, but my fellow officers laugh, and tell me I have funny ways. And they call me the British gentleman despite my being a black African man.

Able Bodied Thirsts

Beyond the Benin palace gates, was a long, dusty, sweaty stretch of road that led to a vast clearing. One night, Adesua dreamt she was in the clearing trapped inside a twisted vine growing there. And at first, her voice was bold and loud. It shook the vine and its scraggly branches. But each day as the vine grew bigger her voice became smaller. She called out to passersby but they continued on their journeys towards the palace as though they could not hear her. The palm wine maker? Merely gave a shrug of his slack shoulders, relaxed from consuming too much of his own product. The court jester? Let go an audible cough midway through her cry as if to cover her voice with his. The tailor? Only paused to bite a chunk out of juicy, ripe pear, the aroma reaching her like a sweet, cruel taunt. She continued to cry, her voice like the murmur of a shrivelled thirsty leaf, inside the vine. But it only soaked up her tears. “Look what you have done!” she accused.

“No,” the vine replied “it is what you have done, have you forgotten? Each day you remember less and less.”

“Tell me why I am here,” she pleaded. The vine stayed silent, then said, “If you can remember why you are here you will be free.” So Adesua tried and tried… She prodded her thoughts till they formed a line, one behind the other, each peeping curiously over the shoulder of the thought in front. But the thoughts were all immediate,
there must be another way to escape and her tongue felt irritatingly heavy. She was certain the vine was somehow tricking her. Then the vine said, “Since you have come, I no longer feel lonely.”

“Aha! I knew it,” she croaked, knocking her thoughts into a messy chaos just above the roots of the vine, and they clung to wherever the landed, jarred and frightened of being sucked under. “You caused this to happen. Don't you know I am the bride of Oba Odion? I will have you pulled out and destroyed.” The vine laughed and rocked her sideways. She felt tiny and insignificant. Inside, the vine felt moist and warm. She stood and began attempting to tear bits off. “You can go when you accept what you have done; attacking me will not help you.”

When Adesua woke up she rushed around her chamber feeling her walls. There were cuts on her toes and she found herself craving the taste of sweet pears.

It is in the nature of beings to sometimes wield brutality with a gentle hand. A vicious blow can come from the most placid of characters, or a damaging whisper from the mouth of dear friend. Some motions once set loose outside of ourselves cannot be undone. It was with this thought in mind that Oba Odion made the decision to allow Sully to not only remain in the palace but appointed him his personal guard. The council fumed while the Oba appeared increasingly erratic, rebelling against their advice and making questionable decisions at which even a monkey would scratch its head.

A plan of action was required; the council members circled the palace grounds in fragmented groups, listening to everything that was said and endorsing it with silent approval. They scratched each other's backs with ways to foil any more ridiculous decisions from the Oba. The plan was, they agreed, to present any decisions as though they were the Oba's in the first instance. Wasn't that what every good king sought from his council? They agreed to keep a watchful eye on Sully. It was no coincidence surely, they thought,
that this stranger should find himself in the Benin palace. No, they could smell something was amiss, a subtle, sickly scent that wrinkled their noses and furrowed their brows. Meanwhile, the strange seeds the Oba discovered in his bedchamber continued to flourish in the place garden. They were above knee length now, and still shedding their leaves, their round, bulbous bluish heads still rotating watchfully over the palace. Their long green stems were a little bent, as though they leaned into each other to exchange conversations. But the plants were still bleeding; the soil beneath them tinged bluish green. They were moaning, low-pained groans that you could only hear if you bent your ear to the ground. But the Oba did not notice any of this. Nobody had.

Adesua waited till evening, when shadows fell across the sky. She wandered the palace grounds as she often did, just as the fireflies became restless, decorating the air with dots of green light that guided her to a sturdy, mango tree weighed down with fruit. In the palace garden, she sat at the base of the tree and listened to the sharp, shrill chirp of grasshoppers as they called to each other, jumping across the grass as though the waning heat still scorched their long hind legs. She followed their sound, crawling towards the bed of strange looking plants hemmed in by the sparse trees and high earth-coloured walls. On her knees, with her nose to the ground the waft of something rotten filtered through. As though the offending patch of earth had released a smelly belch and all it needed was the rain to come down to wash it away.

Omotole knew about the wish that had impregnated her, the desire for a son had danced its way into her womb. The Oba had done his share of work too but it was the sweet desire she'd kindled on their nights together that finally came to fruition. A son would firmly seal her position in the Oba's life and the palace. Omotole had no real proof the child she was carrying was a boy, except that innate feeling in her bones, a deep tingling that began way down inside her stomach and spread right through her body. She could have consulted an oracle but there was no need. The stewing scowls
she caught on some of the other wives faces before they vanished confirmed this. Only Adesua truly seemed unaffected either way and had congratulated her with an empty hug and a distracted smile. That one was an odd young woman, Omotole thought, recalling the way she bounded about the palace grounds, hiking her wrapper up to her knees. At times muttering to herself, a slip of uncontained energy.

Oba Odion was happy on hearing the news of her expectancy but these days he was not himself. Omotole like everyone else discovered he was regularly in disagreements with his council and becoming slimmer around his waist as if something was eating it away. Some nights he spent in her company would see him tossing and turning, at the mercy of some invisible hand flipping him from side to side, breath infused with the scent of worry. She asked him what was troubling him and unusually, he did not tell her. Instead, he lamented on how useless the palace cooks had become, that the spoils were making people lazy. A tiny gap opened between them, the Oba was now keeping secrets and Omotole's mouth formed a grim, suspicious line at the thought. But she did not push; a man would reveal his secrets in his own time. Instead she would knead the worry out of his shoulders and use his back to plan her next steps. And she did not tell the Oba that on discovering she was carrying a child, small oval shaped blue petals had began to appear inside the moist pocket under her tongue.