Butterfly Fish (9 page)

Vicarious through Fuchsia

I threw on clothes and hopped on a few trains to Harlesden, to Williams and Co. Solicitors. The scent of curry goat and hot rotis wafting from the Caribbean takeaway meant I didn't have to glance at the clock to know it was nearly lunchtime. Inside the building, Pauline the gatekeeper was typing swiftly on her PC and barking orders into a telephone handset. She winked before waving me through with a wiggle of her multi-tasking fingers. Mervyn was at the fax machine yanking documents out and scrunching them into paper missiles before flinging them into a wastebasket.

“Hey,” I mumbled in greeting.

He turned to face me. “Go inside nuh.”

On his desk, a mug of steaming coffee rested dangerously near the edge. An atlas sat right next to a new photograph of Mervyn and his two sons in a boat in Jamaica. They were holding large crabs that looked as though they'd crawl over their heads and eat their expressions. Big smiles were plastered on their faces. Behind them the water was like a big, rippling blue sky.

I studied his extensive library;
Fly Fishing for Beginners
and
How Not to Kill Your Wife on Holiday
held my attention among the heavy bound volumes of Law. He walked in whistling, more papers tucked under his left arm and clutching a bag of sweets in his right hand. He dumped them unceremoniously on the desk.

“So wha'appen, answering machine brok' up again?” He pointed to the bag and I popped a chewy cola bottle in my mouth.

“Naw, I hardly check it.”

“You've come for the diary,” he said.

“How did you know that?”

“Because I know you.” He stroked a finger over his lip and took a quick sip of coffee.

“You haven't read it have you?” I leaned forward in the chair watching for any deceptive body language.

“Nope, I'll admit I'm curious though.”

“I don't know why my mother didn't give it to me years ago.”

“Me neither but about three months before she died she came to see me.”

“So?”

“Well she was behaving odd like, agitated.”

“Did she say why?”

“Nah man, I told her to chill out, she was still young with plenty of time but she was insistent about the will, so I obliged.”

He jangled some keys in his trousers before using it to unlock the bottom drawer. Took out the worn, black leather bound book and handed it over.

“Thanks.” It felt warm against my hand and I bent to rest my ear on the cover as if it would speak. I plunged my finger in, flicked to a random page.

I said, “I wonder what a handwriting expert could tell me about him from this?”

“Somehow I don't think you'll need that,” he replied, stuffing three cola bottles in his mouth.

Throughout most of the train journey back I clutched the journal tightly. It looked remarkably ordinary and was light to carry with a slightly stale smell. Besides some thumb indentations it was still in good condition. At some point I noticed the name Peter Lowon scrawled haphazardly inside the cover and the date beside the name read 1950. A black and white photograph slipped out. In it three
black men wearing army uniforms sat around a tiny wooden table filled with beer bottles. A curvy woman sat in the lap of one man who appeared to be laughing at something the man opposite him was doing. It was the third gentleman who caught my attention. He was sat slightly apart from the others. There was a handkerchief tucked in his breast pocket. He watched the other two with an expression that can only be described as disdainful. I flipped the photograph over and printed on the back was Ijoma's bar, Lagos. I thought about starting to read the journal on the District line from Mile End but when an arguing couple stepped inside my carriage, it was a reminder to save my reading for another time. I played with the idea of who these men were. How they were linked to my mother, if at all. When I got to my final stop, I let out a sigh of relief and felt deflated as if my body was a deployed airbag.

Chewing Sticks

A near-sated Benin now gorged on fat sunrays producing warm belches of air-spun dust that tethered to the tips of body hairs and coated the fingernails of its inhabitants. Adesua stood on the brink of being a little pleased. A sweeter alternative place to the misery she had experienced, not full happiness but a small portion she could be persuaded to dive into. This was because the Oba had handed over a peace offering that chipped somewhat at her newly erected barricade of a hard heart.

Adesua had never seen anything like the brass head. It was so beautiful and so well polished that had it been possible to see her reflection in it, she would have found that an interference and attempted to wipe her image away just to continue admiring it. The proud expression captured on its face was disturbingly life-like and inspired the viewer to want to stand to attention. Adesua felt the sculpted face was the face of a true king, but of course did not say this to the Oba. Instead, she genuflected gracefully and thanked him for his consideration.

Oba Odion in return forgetting his motivation for disposing of the object preened at her obvious pleasure. She was certain if he could have patted himself on the back he would have. He made a show of slapping his chest and announcing to her, let nobody say the Oba neglected his wives. He was so loud she was sure even the
servants who kept their ears hovering near the ground at all times had already heard and digested the news and by the next day, would have repeated it to each other amidst their morning tasks while swapping complaints and gnawing on chewing sticks. Adesua did not complain when the Oba insisted he had court matters to see to, she caught the look of relief on his face, although, even that did not detract from the new prize in her possession.

Oba Odion had eight wives. Eight wives who lined their chambers every morning like the curious bottles of perfume a Portuguese ally had brought for him several seasons ago. Eight lives he attempted to delicately shelter depending on his mood. His platoon of women were there to bear his children and prop up his pride even when their hands were bruised and left wanting. Of course the Oba did not love all of his wives. This was a task he was convinced most men would fail at even if they tried, so he did not pretend to try. Sometimes he imagined himself cut into eight slices served on a different platter for each wife to swallow. They were an unlikely bunch, each one different to the next, like colourful seashells thrown into a sandpit of the palace rather than coughed up freely on the banks of the sea.

Omotole was his third and favourite wife and the smartest of all, with dark beady eyes that pulled you into their depths. His fourth wife Ekere was always sickly and each season the palace fretted whether she would see the beginning of the next. She had an angular jutting face and looked like thin brown skin poured over walking bones. At night she clutched her youngest child to her side as if she would draw strength from his soft smooth fleshed youth. Filo the fifth wife wore her sadness on her wrists like haphazard bracelets that wounded her skin. Her womb had apologetically born three dead babies, and on days when the air was thick with disdain for all who resided in the royal enclave, she could be found wandering the grounds harassing whoever she encountered to return her children. When the Oba had important guests visiting, she was kept hidden as if she were dirt sullying the Oba's name.

The sixth wife Remitan was known to stretch the truth as though it was a large ball of string. Most people in the palace believed every other word she uttered was a lie. Her hair was the envy of many. Full and long, it was the colour of a raven's wing; it spiralled down her back in a tumbling curly mass. Sometimes she would be spotted leaning against the palace walls and joked that it was the weight of carrying so much good hair that caused her to pause for breath. The seventh wife Ono was feisty and held the moral heart of the group. The first two wives Kemi and Ore were busy bodies. They were opposite in every way except for their love of rumours and gossiping with each other.

Then there was Adesua.

The Oba's marital life ran as well as it could, most of the time. But now that a new bride had arrived a sense of unease among the women crept in and widened the holes that were already becoming apparent. The Oba had added further insult by giving the brass head to Adesua, a bush village girl who did not appear to recognise her luck. Wonders would never cease! The other wives knew the palace was privately laughing at them, sneering as their stupid loyalty had only turned around to hold a dagger to their backs. Tempers and resentment bloomed like water lilies stuck in the slopy underside of their breasts.

It was the seventh wife Ono who first openly voiced her disapproval of the Oba's actions with Adesua to Omotole. They two banded together, not out of genuine friendship and loyalty, but rather a tarnished, copper-tinged ‘safety in numbers.' They watched each other through heavy-lidded pretend collusion, putting on their masks of camaraderie and mutual interests, only to rip them off as soon as the other walked away. That day Ono and Omotole strolled together through one of the palace hallways, a lengthy teak-hued seemingly never-ending stretch, with decadent rooms curving off into lofty spaces. As they talked their breaths were laced with sour spirits and jealousy.

“Oba is making us look foolish, giving Adesua such a gift! A brass head! Does she even know what it is?” And when was the last time any of us received such a thing? Nonsense,” Ono whined, refusing to leave anger behind. Omotole scratched the stems of connecting green veins that rose to the surface of her skin as if Ono's voice had irked them into motion. The scratch reassured them and they flattened down slowly.

“Be calm Ono, remember she is fresh to the palace and the Oba is only doing his duty by welcoming her. Still, I was not given such a welcome.”

“You see!” Ono screeched smacking her thigh for effect. “Even you, and we all know the Oba thinks highly of you.” A smattering of light gathered at their feet before breaking up to plunder more interesting things.

“All I'm saying is she has to learn her place, not cheat and jump to the front of the line. She is a lot cleverer than we gave her credit for. Before you know it Oba will be giving her even more consideration than the rest of us.” A pair of panicked wings fluttered. Omotole stroked the tender lobe of her ear and the snakeskin amulet just beneath.

If the truth was told, and the palace crier told it with slight reservations to his wife, all was not well in the palace. On appearances, things ran well but underneath, tiny cracks were beginning to appear. Oba Odion had debts, owed to white men from foreign lands and they did not loiter when it came to collecting what was due to them. Hearsay circulated that the Oba may have to sell some of his land or indeed some of his people. Even if they were just prisoners whose captured lives had been reduced to the worth of animals, the rumours both terrified and soothed the courtiers. Councilmen were seen coming out of meetings with the Oba wearing worried expressions. Palace officials hung around their superiors subtly to catch coded sentences. And the cooks were ordered to watch rations carefully, though all meals for the Oba were still to be of the highest standard.

In the north of Benin there was spreading unrest; increasingly dissatisfied with the Oba's rule, people were claiming that the palace got richer while some of the Oba's people starved, yet fees for inhabiting land were still being collected. Oba Odion was robbing broken people. These people wanted to put their cases forward, take their legs, hollow with disappointment, all the way to the palace gates to complain. But they knew what awaited them was a punishment more severe than they already suffered. Some of the Oba's army were dispatched on palace grounds poised to attack at the first sign of trouble. They were strong and lean and wore hammered shields that hugged their upper bodies so closely the men appeared to be made of metal. They carried long, well-sculpted wooden staffs with angular tips. Their eyes roamed not just about the palace and its flock of odd people but over it, as though they were waiting for something way beyond the palace and its high gates.