Butterfly Fish (26 page)

“That's interesting,” she said, spreading them on the table like a stack of trump cards.

“What?” I navigated myself round for an even closer view.

“Well… the lens on her. See the light in which she's been captured? It's beautiful, personal. Look at the way she's interacting with the camera. See the look in her eyes? It's quite intimate. It's like a lover's gaze.”

I peered closer and she was right. In the photograph my mother wore a thinly-strapped white top teamed with a red velvet mini-skirt that exposed her long, lean legs. One strap had slipped down teasingly against her arm. Her feet were encased in fire engine red, traffic-stopping heels. A purple Hermes scarf was tied jauntily
around her neck and she leaned back against a beat up, blue Ford. Of course, I recognised the scarf. It was the one Mervyn kept beneath his pillow. She was laughing in some of the shots, head thrown back, light falling gently on her neck. In others, smiling coyly, a hand splayed invitingly on her chest, sweat beading on the rise of plump breasts. And others still, mouth twitching knowingly, staring at the camera head on. She penetrated it with a subtle defiance, communicating to the glass eye in a language imprinting itself on the roll of film. I animated her with the flicks of my finger.

Mrs Harris picked up the bottle of green ginger wine, unscrewed the cap. I moved to grab another glass but she motioned with her hand. “Don't worry; I'll use yours, no point sullying another glass. And you don't have anything I can catch?” she said in jest, filling the glass and moving to stand by the window. “Did you know any of your mother's boyfriends?”

“Not really, she was discreet about that sort of thing. An unmarried African woman with boyfriends having no intention of getting married would have been frowned upon back home.” I ignored the ticking in my temple.

Mrs Harris rubbed her face, eyed the glass. “It's just a thought but maybe her last lover knew something, people tell each other all kinds of things in bed.”

A sick feeling crept inside me. I watched her raise the glass to her lips, thought maybe I'd pushed glass rims towards her unwittingly all evening. We caught the arrival of car headlights engraving yellow travel journeys on the road. For a moment, watching her knock her drink back, it was as if her head had split in two, drowning her silhouette yet harbouring daylight in her eyes.

The Shape Of Traps

Rumours of a curse in the palace began to take on funny shapes. A servant fixing the hole on the roof could have sworn he saw a woman drumming her fingers on her jaw inside it. She looked lost and forlorn, but before he could reach out a hand to help her, he slipped and fell to his death. In the roughened, scab-ridden feet of the chief courtier that had ceased leaving footprints, making him marvel as to how he could both be and not be in a place all at once. In the ever-burgeoning belly of Omotole whose greedy baby was sapping all her strength. She found herself pausing to check he hadn't stolen her heartbeat too, placing her clammy fingers on her chest and at her wrists, anxious for the faint throb of her existence. And where was Oba Odion? Locked away in his chamber worshipping the darkness of his shadow, and the murky, distorted shapes that flittered from his lids and darted across the warm floor.

The council were now running the kingdom but their quiet triumph fell flat on its face, gashing its thin skin under the altered glow of a waning Benin. The people did not know why things were happening as they were, but it continued. One of the Oba's tailors became stuck in a moment of coming in and out of his door with a small pail of water. He kept repeating this action again and again, until he was dragged out of it, flailing his arms in resistance. The palace appeared unsettled, there was a hushed fear rubbing the walls
and the teeth of the gates had a sinister gleam when the light caught. People wondered why their lives began to droop right in front of their eyes. Their sympathy shrank. Where was the king to rule over his kingdom? Where was he to stroke their questions with reassuring answers? A thick resentment began to build, passing between them like morning greetings, lagging at the entrance of the palace waiting for any opening. And when blood started leaking through the roof, nobody dared go up there to see why. Instead they scrambled to their knees, at once mopping the jewel-like droplets with a snatched cloth and the loosened shock from their jaws.

It was that time of day when Benin was caught between late afternoon and early evening. When the daylight dimmed to a duskier yellowy orange, and you could swear that someone was shrouding the sun. The smell of cocoa yams doused in flavours of wild peppers, onion and meat stock wandered from the main palace like a drifter requesting entry at the nostrils of irritable inhabitants. When the day stopped deceiving itself and it finally became evening, it was the perfect time for two lovers to meet because everybody was distracted. The palace servants had gathered wood for their small celebration of nothing and would soon form a ring of mouths around a ravenous fire. Most of the councilmen were in their various apartments, doing anything to stop their stomachs from somersaulting over the future prospects of Benin. The Oba's wives, disconnected pieces of a game, loitered in their compound. They were braiding their hair into submission, attempting to wash the stubborn odours of the palace from their clothes or tracking their restless children.

So two lovers met, on the wrong side of a stretching, split dirt road, on the right side of betrayal and all it entailed because it was with them now, a third, palpable thing, that was not just rearing its head, but its arms and legs too. It carried them and they in return stoked it, fanned it. On that dirt road Sully lifted Adesua onto his back, her legs wrapped around his middle, thighs rubbing against his bare skin. She was laughing, transformed by giggles, and then nipping at his neck with the certainty of a young woman in bloom.
She rested her face into the crook of his neck, mumbling into it. It didn't matter that he didn't know what she was saying right then, because something beyond his control lit inside him. He could have wept, just stood in that moment and wept; instead, as she slid down, he hefted her further up his back. Rushing into the waiting night, rushing into a cruel trick of life, the way the unfortunate ones do. The heavens watched Adesua and Sully in the distance; it was a matter of time before somebody spotted them. Benin's decline was imminent and they were a part of it.

The roof continued to leak blood. This baffled the palace. When a few servants began to see reflections of themselves swimming in that blood, they abandoned cleaning it, stilled by the fear dancing on their spines. Small puddles of blood formed on the floors within the main palace, as if the heavens had a wound that kept opening up to drip down upon them. It had an ancient, rotten stench that the servants cleaned but could never get rid of entirely. They took to opening the doors for long periods of time, and the air wrestled the smell out only for it to find its way back in again.

The council ordered a new roof be built but in their hearts they knew something serious was at work. Something that no amount of intricately entwined palm leaves woven into the skull of the palace could stop. So they did what they knew to be their only plan to combat their worries. They continued to rule and to live. While they rallied what was left of their army of men in preparation for an overthrow, the servants continued to maintain their beautiful palace, and the farmers fed and ploughed the land. Then worry began to strip some people of their sleep, hiding it under their mats or the folds of their lids. So they would not know the irony of it being close by. Tense bodies slick with moonlight glow you wanted to lose yourself in traipsed around the grounds. It was a funny sight from above, to watch the cornered. To see how they stayed and how sad it was when all you know is all you think there is. These people were holding onto their beloved kingdom, keeping it alive with their breaths. But what would you have them do? If only the people in the palace
knew what they were doing, baiting their own traps with the very things that could release them from it. And Sully, the stranger in their midst became increasingly comfortable, touching the cracks in the kingdom with dusty, pale hands.

When Omotole finally got to see her husband, Oba Odion was dipping into the shallow end of his pain. He sat on the shabby, wheat coloured mat on his floor, legs splayed. There were dried crusts of food on his chin and his eyes were red-rimmed and distant. He was dishevelled, his hair noticeably fuller than it had been, his clothes were so wrinkled and dirty they annoyed you to look at them. He was plumper than he had been, refusing visitors but clearly not refusing food. In the stale, trapped air, Omotole lowered herself beside him slowly, her protruding belly a visual reminder of the future. It was something to jar him out of the state he was in but he only continued to stare blankly ahead. She wrapped her hand around his wrist, yanking his arm towards her, then splaying his fingers on her stomach. “Oba, your son is coming.” The smile he cracked was wobbly, unsteady on his face.

“What is the meaning of this Odion? Terrible things are happening, what have you done?” She turned to him, the urgency in her voice almost a third person in the room. “No, no, no!” Oba Odion answered, “It is what he has done. Can you not see he will not leave me in peace!” Omotole glanced around the room quickly to indulge him. “What are you saying Odion? Who will not leave you alone?”

“Anuje.” The name was soaked in spit as bits of saliva slipped from the corners of his mouth.

“Anuje is dead Odion.”

“No.” Oba Odion shook his head so hard that it wouldn't have been a surprise had it begun to spin clean off his neck

“Yes!” She grabbed his shoulders digging her nails into him, “You killed him. Stop this nonsense and look after your kingdom. You think the council should be running it? This is an insult.”

Oba Odion shoved her away with such force she slammed her head against the wall before sliding down to the floor. He could
only mumble to himself as her whimpers rose towards him before dropping down again.

Occasionally, Councilman Ewe wandered over to the servant quarters to ask for one errand or another to be done. On this night, it was to put in a request for kola nuts for the next day's council meeting. In between bits of bitter, crunchy kola nuts, the men would lament over events in Benin; it was clear that something had to be done. After a slightly annoyed male servant stretched his sluggish frame through Ewe's instructions, Ewe began to head back. He was thinking of the odd occurrences that had been happening and whether they would get through it. Really Oba Odion's inability to oversee his kingdom was a gift as far as Ewe was concerned. Without a qualm he'd relinquished control to the council who were all too willing to take over.

As Ewe contemplated the fortunes of Benin he spotted Sully's quarters further down the trail of the worker's area. Later, he would not be able to say what exactly it was that drew him to it. Whether it was the way it had appeared in his vision suddenly. Or if it was the resurfacing of his annoyance at how quickly the Oba had taken to Sully, allowing him freedoms no white stranger should ever have been afforded.

Before he could change his mind, he found himself moving towards the terracotta hut Sully had taken as his home. It was a short walk and as he neared it was surprised that Sully, the man who always appeared so alert had not come out to greet him. At the door he was torn about announcing himself, but his voice tickling his throat made the decision for him. As he stepped round the back he jerked quickly from what he saw before him. Sully sitting on the ground with the Oba's youngest wife Adesua between his legs, her face resting sideways against his chest, eyes closed, both barely clothed and what clothes there were, arranged in complete disarray. Councilman Ewe took pains to leave as silently as he was able to, armed all the way back to the palace with the hard, disgruntled image of the two lovers embedded into his head.

Light Shade