by Ben Okri
The crowd had moved away.
‘It’s very good. And a bloody good commentary on our society!’
Keme was a journalist with the Everyday Times. He was a good friend. Slim, good-looking, intelligent, he was about the same height as Omovo. He had a small face, twinkling eyes and a large nose. He had a way of smiling which radiantly transformed the whole of his face. He was a self-conscious physical weakling, with a sense of inferiority that made him eager to prove himself. He was also something of a loner.
‘What have you been doing with your life? Someone told me you had shaved your head. I didn’t believe it. God, you look strange.’
Omovo emerged gradually from his wretchedness. The emotion that had gripped him receded. The gallery was still packed full of people. A group of women near him were dressed in matching wrappers and lace blouses. The murmurs rose and fell like a giant’s snoring. In the centre of the crowd the child had stopped screaming. He saw the gallery manager, his dark glasses on, as he swayed and laughed with a couple of women. The bleached receptionist tried to sell some black booklets to a group of young men.
‘Keme, I saw your coverage of the old man who was thrown out of his house by the authorities. It was very good. I understand you received many letters of support condemning the action.’
‘Yes. It was hard but worth it. The man is still sleeping outside. They haven’t given him back his room.’
‘Just because he didn’t pay a month’s rent?’
‘Yes. People even sent in cheques covering the amount. It’s nice to know that some people have a sense of justice.’
‘Yeah. It must have been good for your ego.’
‘It was good for my heart.’
They said nothing for a while. Both of them stared at the strange animal of the crowd. Drinks were passed. A voice mentioned T. S. Eliot very loudly. Another voice went on and on about terracotta. A woman’s shrill and authoritative voice took over and declaimed about Mbari.
Omovo said: ‘Words words words. Voices. A damn zoo.’
Keme smiled. ‘Hey, Omovo, what is that painting really?’
‘Keme, a scumpool. What do you think?’
‘It is disturbing. It’s a commentary on our damned society, isn’t it? We are all on a drift, a scummy drift, isn’t that what you are suggesting?’
‘Keme, you can read what you like into it... Have you seen Dr Okocha?’
‘Yeah. That way,’ he said pointing. ‘Two people have bought the paintings he exhibited. He’s happy and talking a lot.’
‘I liked the paintings when I saw them in the workshed. Here they look somehow out of place.’
‘Omovo, why did you paint that scumpool with those disorientated eyes?’
‘You know, I’d done a lot of drawings of that scumpool near our house. One evening our compound men were having an argument about that issue of dismissed corrupt officials...’
‘...When that ex-commissioner said: “Everybody is corrupt... it is all a massive bag of worms...” Man, it was a friend who did that report…’
‘Yes. Yes. So anyway, while they argued and then suddenly went in for a drink, something struck me. I had a sudden sense of... you know... something coming together... You won’t believe this, but I hate that painting now. Anyone who buys it is a bloody fool.’
Keme laughed. Sensing how unreal he must sound, Omovo laughed as well. Beside them a woman loudly expounded her ideas on contemporary African art to a cowed and sweating man who passionately smoked a cigarette. Omovo recognised her as the woman who had mocked him when he broke down a moment before. He vaguely knew that she was a feature writer for a newspaper. She was not attractive. She had on too much red lipstick and beads weighed down her hair. Her voice was hoarse. She was saying:
‘...we have no Van Goghs, no Picassos, no Monets, no Goyas, no Salvador Dalis, no Sisleys. Our real lives and confusions have not been painted enough. You cannot describe a place, or setting, or character, by any reference to an African painter – because there are truly none! We have no visual references. You cannot say that a palm-wine bar is straight out of a painting by... dash, dash, dash, you cannot say a traditional meeting reminds one of a painting by... dash and dash. There are no quintessentials. It’s all arid. Why?’
There was a white woman with them. She wore a black suit and also sweated. She looked anguished and kept saying: ‘But no, but no, but Negritude...’
Soon afterwards Dr Okocha came over. He wore a tight-fitting nylon-mixture French suit. He too sweated and he talked fast. He was excited. His cheeks hollowed into the shape of scallops whenever he smiled. Laughing loudly and semi-drunkenly, he moved on to talk with some students who were interested in his work.
Then Omovo began to notice a dangerous silence in the area of his painting. A man in plain clothes, obviously a soldier, obviously powerful, stood glaring. His gestures were imperious. He was surrounded by his aides. Suddenly, something happened in a blur. A flurry. Silence spread in ripples of dying murmurs. ‘Belshazzar’s Feast’ ranted absurdly. The gallery manager pushed to the centre of the hall and, encompassed by ‘Belshazzar’s Feast’, announced:
‘Will Mr Omovo please come over this way immediately! Will Mr Omovo come this way immediately!’
The music went dead. Keme started to protest. For a long moment Omovo was transfixed. Disconnected thoughts skeltered through his mind. Then came sadness. Then a sense of terror. The terror of individual reality. A vast shadow. He and Keme went towards the manager, who led them to a corner. There was a blanket silence, snuffing all sound. Faces stared at them. People nudged one another. The plain-clothes man said something about mocking national progress, about corrupting national integrity. A photographer’s camera flashed twice.
‘You can wait behind,’ a very black man said to Keme.
‘I am a journalist with the Everyday Times,’ Keme said, producing his press card.
‘So what? Wait behind!’
Omovo said: ‘It’s okay. Take care of your end.’
There were a few black-painted chairs in the room. Omovo was made to stand with his back against the wall. The manager was nowhere around. Only unfamiliar faces.
‘Why did you do that painting?’
‘I just did it.’
‘You are a reactionary.’
‘I painted what I had to paint.’
‘You want to ridicule us, eh?’
‘I read a newspaper report. I heard an argument. I had an idea. I had to do it, so I did it.’
‘You are a reactionary.’
‘It is you who are reading hidden meanings into it.’
‘You mock our independence.’
‘I am not a reactionary. I am an ordinary man, a human being, I struggle to catch a bus, I get shoved, I go to work, I cross the filthy creek at Ajegunle every day.’
‘You mock our great progress.’
‘My mother died. My brothers were thrown out of the house, I am not happy. Nothing is what it could be.’
‘We are a great nation.’
‘I am a human being.’
‘You are not allowed to mock us.’
‘I had to paint, so I did.’
‘You are a rebel. Why did you shave your head?’
‘I had this impulse. So I shaved it. That’s freedom, isn’t it? Does it offend the national progress?’
‘Your name? What’s your name?’
‘Omovo.’
‘Your full name?’
‘Om... ovo...’
‘We are going to seize this painting.’
‘Why?’
‘This is a dynamic country.’
‘Why is my work being seized?’
‘We are not in some stupid drift, in a bad artist’s imagination, you hear?’
‘It is not illegal to paint, is it?’
‘The work will be returned to you at the appropriate time. If at all. You can go, but be warned. Worse can happen to you.’
‘Is it illegal to paint? I want to know.’
> ‘For your own good ask no more questions.’
‘Is it illegal?’
‘NOW YOU MAY GO!’
Omovo walked slowly out of the room. There was a curious half smile on his face. Dr Okocha and Keme rushed to meet him. Before they could say anything Omovo raised his hands.
‘They just tried to frighten me with accusing questions. I had nothing to be afraid of. I can’t help it if people see things.’
The painting had been photographed before it was taken down from the showing. The arts editor of a newspaper whom Omovo had been listening to, later wrote a clever article about the state of modern Nigerian psyche. She used the fate and her interpretation of the painting as a peg. Omovo’s name was not mentioned. The next day a two-column report appeared in the Everyday Times. The report was badly printed. Omovo’s name was mis-spelt, and the photograph of the painting was dark and indistinct.
Omovo left the gallery immediately after the sinister event. He walked down the dark road. The branches of the palm trees swished and swayed. Women chanted their wares. Cars did dangerous turns. His thoughts stretched darkly before him. Keme came up behind him, pushing his Yamaha motorcycle. After a long moment’s walking in silence, Keme said:
‘Take it easy, Omovo. If anything the whole ugly business vindicates you. Come on, let’s go to Ikoyi Hotel and then later you can go and meditate at the Ikoyi park if you want.’
Omovo climbed on the back seat. Keme kick-started the bike, and sped off into the bowels of the disturbed evening.
6
The evening turned out worse than they could have imagined.
At Ikoyi Hotel, Keme met a former classmate, the son of a wealthy businessman. At school he used to hire fellow students to wash his clothes and run errands for him. He failed his school certificate and afterwards it was heard that he was a ‘big man’ in his father’s company. Keme waved at him. The classmate nodded, and looked away. Keme thought that he had not been properly remembered. Omovo saw Keme walk over and traced the words that formed on his mouth. Then the former classmate shouted:
‘So what! I have no money or jobs for anybody, you hear?’
Keme stormed out of the hotel foyer. Omovo followed him. Outside, Keme’s face was swollen with indignation. He was from a poor family and there was not a day that passed in which he was allowed to forget it. The difficulty of surviving the miasma of Lagos life made him especially sensitive to financial insults and social humiliations. As if to dent the treadmill of his life, he jumped on his motorbike and started it furiously. The bike jerked forward. He grabbed the brakes. Omovo stood and watched his friend’s anger define itself against the machine. Keme sat still and took a deep breath.
‘Let’s go to the park.’
Keme’s face was still heavily scored with anger. ‘I don’t know who he bloody well thinks he is! Me beg him for money? Me go and ask him for a job, eh? What does he fucking think he is?’
‘Keme, let me ride the bike.’
Neither of them uttered a word as they rode to the park. The wind was cold. Omovo felt his face flushed. The air became something immensely tangible. The city lights gleamed. Cars hooted and shot past them. Motorcyclists sped challengingly, their shirts flapping behind them as if thrashed by an insane spirit. The rush of air to the face and head, the sheer physical speed, the sensation of things racing past and receding, filled Omovo with euphoria. The machine purred under his grip. With his head and shoulders pressed forward he had the appearance of one going through a defiant ritual. Swaying the motorcycle from side to side, rising and dipping rhythmically, he snaked across the wide road. Then a car, speeding towards them, flashed its lights in the distance. Keme gripped him. Omovo gripped the brake and slowed down. The moment passed. He felt very alive. His being sang. His universe contracted into a vision of frictionless motion through strange places. Keme shivered with fear behind him. He was not sure if Omovo could handle the motorcycle at that epiphanic level.
People were leaving the park when they arrived. The evening had darkened over. The sky above the trees had a sombre ash-grey light. The clouds, dimly illuminated from within, cast a ghostly silvery sheen on the treetops.
They walked between the trees and talked about life. Keme talked about his poor mother who had worked hard and believed in him, and about his kid sister who had been missing for three years. They had given up the girl for dead. Thoughts of her haunted Keme. He felt responsible for her loss. That fateful day he had sent her on an errand to buy bread and had told her not to come back without any. He had meant it jokingly. There was a serious bread shortage at the time. She went, and never returned. Adverts were placed in the papers. They got the police to investigate her disappearance. They hired native doctors. They searched endlessly. No avail. She was never found.
As they walked down the path twigs cracked and broke underfoot. Leaves crunched. Empty cans, accidently kicked, rattled in the night. Keme climbed a tree and swung from a branch. Omovo sat on the ground near a snake-thin stream of water. There were narrow wooden bridges not far from where he sat. He watched the play of light and darkness on the glinting metallic surface of the streamlet. As he watched he noticed the distorted shapes of trees, clouds, birds and people. He pondered the surrealism of distorted reflections, and how unique the perceived world became if familiar images were reordered into freshly juxtaposed fragments by a disinterested vision.
As he sat there, touched by serenity, the pain of losing his second painting receded. It had all happened somewhere in time, in space. A fine breath of vitality coursed through his nerves. He breathed deeply and concentrated on the top of his head. He tried to create mental images of himself painting, living and overcoming. The joy momentarily actualised itself in his being.
Keme said they should go to the beach on the other side of the park. They went. The grass was dark. The muscular roots of trees were exposed above the ground like brown snakes. Branches weaved everywhere. Leaves descended, gyrating. Omovo heard an owl hoot. The trees were dignified, like guardians of terrible mysteries. The whole place had the haze, and the silence, of things experienced in forgotten dreams.
The murmurs of the ocean beckoned them. The sands gleamed. The foreshore was white under the moon. There were still a few people around. Keme sat on the shore and tried to catch crabs. Omovo lay down and watched the waves tumble, gather themselves, and then rage forward like an immense fluid piston, an interminable passion. Then the waves smashed the shore, and shards of water were flung everywhere. When the motion was complete, the waves rolled back on themselves and Omovo felt the vibrations travel through the earth and up his stomach. The extended hiss of the sea took on a primeval quality.
The night seemed to Omovo a calm mistress, suffering the passions of the ocean. Keme sat there, slept and dreamt. Omovo felt cleansed. His whole universe rolled itself into a single crystalline moment. Time vanished. Sea, night, sky hazed over and became one.
Then the heightened moments were intruded upon. Mosquitoes came in malicious squads. The cold became bone-chilling. The murmurs of the ocean became monotonous. The haze of the sky dulled the mind. Sounds became sharp and extended. The quality of the night imperceptibly changed. Keme rose and ran up and down the beach.
‘Hey, Omovo, let’s get going. It looks like we are the only ones around.’
His voice was shrill and it merged into the whispers of the night. Omovo got up, dusted the wet sand off his trousers, and tried a few kung-fu kicks.
‘I didn’t know you did karate?’
‘I used to. My legs are damn stiff. It’s a long time since I practised.’
‘Let’s be going.’
Omovo could not see Keme’s face. ‘God! It’s dark already!’
‘Didn’t you realise?’
‘No. I’ve been wandering inside myself.’
They walked, trying to trace their way back to the entrance. The night was suddenly much darker. The realisation fell alarmingly.
‘Omovo! We are lost.’
&n
bsp; Keme’s voice, strangled in the night, sounded like a joke. They went back to the shore and tried to find the way they originally got there. It was hopeless. Somewhere in the darkness an owl hooted, three times. Jangling bells rang in the distance. The sound of breakers deepened their fear.
‘We can’t be lost. There is an exit somewhere.’
Omovo didn’t recognise his own voice. But he recognised the terror in its dry timbre. The night, a protoplasmic mass, engulfed everything. The darkness was alive. Visibility was reduced. Omovo’s mind, unable to leap, made out a figure standing near them. It seemed to move. The darkness conferred on it a sinister presence.
‘Keme, there is someone here!’
‘Who?’
‘How would I know?’
They were still. They waited. Time stretched out their nerves. Keme breathed heavily, as if quickened by a mounting fear.
‘It’s not a person.’
‘How do you know?’
‘It’s a stick or a tree.’
‘Go and touch it then.’
‘I’m not going.’
‘Coward!’
‘Eh, I’m a coward.’
They went round trees, crossed bridges, and came to an open area of grass and flowers. Perfume scented the air.
‘What are we going to do, eh?’
‘Why don’t we shout?’
‘No. That won’t help.’
An owl hooted repeatedly over them. They fell still. The disembodied sound floated on the air like an omen. Keme cried out. Omovo felt his entrails go cold. The chill ran through him. Omovo thought desperately: ‘This is a silent drama. It will soon be over.’
Keme gripped him. ‘There is a light near those houses.’
‘It is a false light.’
‘How do you know? It is a hope.’
They went towards the light. They stumbled. They kicked things. They stepped into little streams and got their shoes wet. They clambered over wooden bridges, and were frightened by the reverberations of their footsteps. It turned out to be a dead end. The light was from an uncompleted building. It was separated from the parkland by water and barbed wire.
