Dangerous Love (2 page)

‘It is good to see you arting again. Honestly. That's a strange piece, honestly. Reminds me of the war.' He paused. ‘Good work,' he continued and then added, ‘but be careful about the girls. Especially the married ones.'

He smiled and his hairy nostrils flared. As Omovo watched Tuwo's nostrils, a flicker in one of the windows caught his eye. He guessed it was his father's wife. Tuwo shifted his gaze to the parted curtains and his face imperceptibly brightened. Without seeming aware of it, he stuck a hand deep into his pocket, and scratched discreetly. Then he went outside to the front of the compound to chat with some of the young girls who had come to buy water. As he went, the curtains dropped and the folds resumed their old stillness.

Omovo stood before the drawing. He drew back step by step, slowly, to view it from a changing distance. Then he stumbled over a stool. When he regained his balance he squinted at the figures he had painstakingly worked on. It was a drawing of children playing around a tree. The tree was thick-bodied, permanent. Its branches had been unnaturally amputated close to the trunk. The children were naked, curved, and had protuberant stomachs. Their legs were wiry. The sky above the tree and rooftops was defined by clouds of charcoal shadings that resembled a bundle of dead bodies. The drawing was stark and basic. It had in it something quaveringly, inherently, cruel.

He thought to himself: ‘Yes. Yes. Strange.'

He reached up and touched his head, feeling again the surprising clamminess of his palm. He spoke quietly to the drawing: ‘I have never seen you before. But it is wonderful that you are here.'

And then he became aware of the argument his work had been generating.

‘Omovo, what's that you draw?' asked one of the compound boys.

‘It's a tree,' said another.

‘It's not a tree.'

‘Then what is it?'

‘It's like a big mushroom.'

‘It's not like a big mushroom.'

When Omovo looked around at the many, sweaty, intent faces, a certain panic rose inside him. ‘Look,' he said loudly. ‘Why don't you people just go away and leave me alone!'

There was a hush, but no response. The faces still hung around. Then an unfamiliar voice in the crowd asked Omovo whether he wanted to sell the drawing. The boy said he knew some ‘Europeans' who would pay as much as twenty Naira for some works if they were properly framed. Omovo studied the boy's ravaged face. It was lean and prematurely wrinkled. The eyes glittered like freshly minted coins. He had seen those eyes around a lot, but these seemed just fresh on the path to independence.

‘Say sometin' now,' the boy said irritably. He was taller than Omovo, dark, slim and cocky. He had on faded jeans and a white crew-neck shirt with a Yamaha sign printed in red.

Omovo shook his head. ‘There's nothing to say.'

There was a slight tension as the boy glared at Omovo with such bleary ferocity that a fight seemed imminent. But then he grinned absurdly, shrugged, and said: ‘I'm jus playing.'

The next moment he turned round, made his way through the crowd, and disappeared. Omovo picked up a pencil. He signed his name at the bottom of the drawing and then he wrote: ‘Related losses.'

He drew back. He felt wonderfully clear inside. He knew it would not last. He went into the apartment, taking the drawing with him. He barely noticed his father, who sat expectantly at the dining table.

His room oppressed him. There was a phantom presence on the bed and a shadow hung over the table as if it were writing a secret poem in a hurry. His two brothers. The shadow made a fluttering gesture and the phantom raised its head.

‘Hi brothers.'

He put on the light. There was a slight depression on the bed and an open notebook on the table. Everything was just as he had left it. His mind had been filling out the spaces. The room had once been too small for all three of them, and now that they had gone it was still occasionally overcrowded.

He carefully, almost reverently, placed the drawing board amid the clutter on the table. And then he made the board stand against the wall. He stood thinking to himself: ‘I can't stay in this room now. There are too many things here.'

The dark spaces and half substances re-defined themselves when he put out the lights. He left the room. His father was now eating yam and stew at the table. Blackie, who sat opposite, watched him and made intimate comments and laughed at his replies. The sight of them in such apparent rapport deepened Omovo's detachment. He walked through the sitting room as fast as he could.

He sat on the wall in front of their apartment and watched the men arguing. The sight fascinated him. The assistant chief bachelor of the compound said something about a massive bag of worms. Tuwo in his affected accent said something about corruption being the new morality. And one of the men Omovo could not see shouted: ‘They are pissing on our heads. We are like gutters.'

They teased and chaffed one another and made theatrical gestures. They were comic and at the same time they were serious. Then they dispersed, bit by bit, till one of the men suggested that the rest all come to his room and get drunk. There was applause and they crowded into the man's room, being comic and serious as they went.

As the men crowded away Omovo experienced a feeling of impermanence. In the backyard the children played and ran errands. The women plaited one another's hair, or washed clothes near the well. At the compound front little girls made imitation soup in empty tomato cans, over mock fires. Two men went past balancing buckets of water on their heads. Omovo's feeling of impermanence passed into an awareness that familiar things were becoming new images within him.

The joy which he had felt was now dissipated. He jumped down from the wall and went to the compound front and set out on another of his walks.

The walk would subtly change his life.

Dusk fell. It was evening, but the sun beat down on his shaven head. He could feel it simmer. He made for the Badagry Express road. Slum dwellings stretched out all around him. He was irritated by the airless heat. Sweat dribbled down his skin like little maggots and the smells around merged in his nostrils. From behind him there came the noise of a car horn. It was a battered Volkswagen and it bleated like a goat. He jumped aside, and crashed into a corpulent woman, and was sent staggering across the street. She was barely shaken. In an irritated voice she said: ‘Foolish egg-head boy! Can't you look where you're going?'

Omovo picked himself up. ‘Madam, you look like a lorry!' he shouted back at her. She ignored him and shuffled past the shops that lined the sides of the road. Women with lean faces sat beside their stalls. They sold provisions blanched by the sun. Omovo avoided a puddle and fled when a motorcyclist rode past with both legs lifted and spattered mud about the street.

Omovo turned a corner. His eyes passed over a mechanic's workshop. Fanciful designs of clothes had been painted on the walls of the tailor's shed. He passed shops and kiosks and his eyes grew tired. When he got to Dr Okocha's workshed he was confronted by a life-size painting propped up against an electric pole. Something happened to the tiredness of his eyes. It was a painting of a well-known Nigerian wrestler. The painting was in black and white. The ability of the artist was apparent in the immense physical presence and the defiance that were conveyed.

The artist's workshed stood on a corner of the street. The large wooden door was open. Omovo went into the shed, wondering if the old painter was around. He hadn't seen Dr Okocha for some time. The shed was stuffy, oppressive and untidy. The place smelt of turpentine, kerosene, oil paints and freshly cut wood. An earthy mustiness hung densely in the air. Unfinished carvings and hand-made boards were scattered all over the unkempt bed. Signboards of different shapes and sizes leant on the walls, and some were on the floor. There were a lot of paintings on the table. Beneath the table there were stacks of old books and a collection of dust-covered correspondence courses on art. They looked as if they had not been read for a long time – like things bought cheaply in a frantic self-education campaign.

Omovo became aware of the low roof with its long dark rafters. There was a large bulb swinging in the centre of the room which gave off a curious dry heat. The dull light barely illuminated the thick shield of cobwebs high up amongst the rafters. When Omovo turned round, with the intention of leaving, the light changed in the shed. A man stood in the doorway.

‘Yes? What do you want, eh?' the voice was deep and the Igbo accent was thick.

‘Dr Okocha, I saw your painting outside.'

‘Ah, Omovo. It's you. It's been a long time. Where did you go, or have you been avoiding me?'

‘No. It was the rainy season. All the roads were flooded. I take the other side to the office now.'

‘Sit down. Find somewhere to sit. Throw some carvings to one corner, yes, good. So how are you, eh?'

‘I'm fine.'

Dr Okocha, as he was called, was thickset, like a wrestler. His face was strong and sweaty, and his forehead was massive. His small nose repeated the curves of his rather large, friendly lips. He had piercing eyes and thick bushy eyebrows. His hair was thinning. A brown agbada covered his thickset frame and made him seem shorter than he really was.

‘You know, I did not recognise you at first.'

‘Yes. My head.'

‘Hope nothing happened. Nothing bad?'

‘No,' Omovo said, without conviction.

There was a fine strand of silence. Dr Okocha made a movement with his feet.

‘Ah yes, let me give you some palm wine, eh?'

‘No, don't worry. I won't drink anything.'

‘Not even a Coke?'

‘No. But thank you.'

The cobwebs high on the rafters reappeared each time the bulb did a complete swing. The musty smell deepened the general clutter. Shadows leapt about the walls. Two flies did a waltz across the room and a lizard scurried from under the table and ran behind the signboards.

‘How is work going?'

‘Fine, my friend, fine. Did you see the painting outside?'

‘Yes. It's good. It's just like him standing there. Has he seen it yet?'

‘Yes. I took it to him and he said he will buy it for fifty Naira. It took me one month to finish. You like it, eh?'

‘Yes. It's very good.'

Dr Okocha became radiant. His finely wrinkled face took on a paternal shine. His eyes narrowed with pleasure. Rolling back the sleeve of his agbada, he pointed at some paintings.

‘I am working on those two for the exhibition coming up.'

He got up and then, without finishing the motion, he sat down again. His excitement bubbled. Omovo nodded and stared at them. He hadn't seen them when he came in. For some reason he didn't like them. They seemed forced, lacked passion, were like bad photographs, and had obviously been done without models. But they were sincere.

One was a painting of an old man. He had a vacant expression in his eyes. His chest was bared and bony, and his cracked face was an image of grey-brown desolation. In his thin arms, he cradled something indefinably alive.

‘The old man is holding a baby, Omovo. They are both babies.'

The other painting was larger. It was a group of sharply depicted young men. They looked fierce, determined, and ruthless in their denim shorts. The fierceness was more in the cast of their faces. Their eyes were quite blank.

Dr Okocha softly sang an Igbo song. He watched Omovo.

‘They are good. They are good. I like them.'

‘You know, you are the first person to see them. It's a good sign.'

The shadows suddenly moved on the walls. The waltzing flies had chased one another to a corner of the room and buzzed beneath the cobwebs. The bulb went on swinging.

‘Did you pass the tailor's shed when you were coming?'

‘Yes.'

‘I did the designs on the wall.'

‘Ah. Good. So do you have many signwriting jobs now?'

‘Yes, they are pouring in. I've got more than I can handle at the moment.'

Another silence.

‘Did you hear about the exhibition?' the old painter asked.

‘I remember reading something about a private showing but for some reason I didn't take it seriously.'

‘Ah, they are having a big exhibition at the Ebony galleries in the first week of October. Many people are coming: critics, rich people, students and even a big man from the army. I don't know if all the tickets have been given out and without the tickets you can't exhibit your work. But it's a good thing I saw you now because I am going to town during the coming week and I could find out about tickets for you. So how is your work coming on?'

Omovo smiled. ‘Fine. I have just finished a drawing. I called it “Related Losses” – I don't know why I called it that. I was happy.' He paused and then went on: ‘I have been going round and round that pool of green scum near our house.'

‘Why?'

Omovo turned to the old painter. ‘I don't know. To look at it, I suppose. I look at it a lot.'

There was silence. The flies had stopped buzzing. The cobwebs have become sinister, and the shadows jumped about the walls. The musty smell, rising from the earth, pervaded the shed. Omovo looked up and saw, on the awning near the door, a dangling white sack. It was a juju. Omovo had not seen it there before. Suddenly he wanted to leave. The shadows had become real.

‘Dr Okocha, thanks for the information about the private showing. I've got to be going now. I hope you don't mind?'

‘No. I understand. The call of duty, yes?'

Omovo smiled and nodded.

‘Anyway, try and see me in the week. Or I might just come and see you. With any luck I could get you a ticket.'

‘Thank you. I didn't know when I was coming that I would run into this.'

‘It's okay. Just get on with the work. And I hope your hair grows fast. You look strange.'