by Ben Okri
Omovo later found out that his father had acquired it second-hand from a carpenter near the Alba market. The surface had now acquired multiple scratches, burns and stains; the brunt of indifferent usage. One of the legs was now shorter than the others. It was broken during one of his father’s parties when a drunken visitor stumbled upon it. But the carpenter, rather crooked in his measurements, fitted a shorter leg and requested more money if the right size was needed. He was a huge, vociferous man. Omovo’s father, unable to stand up to him, took the table home, weighed down with his pretended dignity.
The walls were originally a marine blue. Now they had fingerprints and smudges stamped beyond arms’ reach. Omovo could not figure out how those stains had got there. Suddenly he was assaulted with a vision of stains and filth. He couldn’t breathe. And it was only when he imagined himself painting the walls a fresh colour and cleaning out the house that there was a miraculous change in ambience. But then a lizard scurried across the wall, shattered his fantasy, and wrenched him back to a world of disconnected sounds. His eyes fell on the linoleum. It was the most obvious symbol of the state of the house. It was faded. The red-painted floor showed through its holes.
There was a stale smell in the dining room. It was the odour of a kitchen badly in need of a thorough cleaning.
Omovo thought about his father, whom he loved in his silent kind of way. But Omovo also felt sorry, and at the same time not at all sorry, for the man. He saw his father as a failure. But he admired him a little for making a bold show of maintaining whatever dignity he could: to fail was not a crime. Omovo thought about his father’s impulsive acts. Then he tried not to think of them. The various thoughts mingled, fed on one another, and shuffled out of his mind. Then his sense of loss came back to him in the form of a light, stomach-seizing nausea. Then it left. And he realised that every day he had to do something with his ability: and that if he didn’t he would be doomed to the same destructive impulses that preyed on his family.
He gave his mind over to thoughts of the painting: and he confronted another kind of emptiness. There was nothing within but bare images, phantoms, shadows. At that moment he also realised that he would have to make something out of the dream. He thought: ‘It’s going to be difficult. A kind of pilgrim’s progress through the mind.’
He sighed, shook his head, washed his hands in the kitchen sink, and went to his room.
Omovo began some tentative sketches. The efforts were irritating. He needed to define the outlines in his mind before he embarked on the painting. His method of creation was usually spontaneous. But this work was different. It had to be coaxed, attuned to, grasped, released. Before he could paint it he had to live it, and be possessed by it, he had to expand the cracks within, to deepen, to go through terrains of dark soul-suffering, to include all that was miserable and sweet, and to grow inwardly. But the sketches looked foolish. In a burst of anger he ripped up the paper. He was in this state when a banging on the door assaulted him. His voice rang out full of anger:
‘Who is bangin’ on my door like that?’
‘Omovo! Omovo!... won’t you come and clear the place where you ate? Who is your slave dat you left the plate for, eh? I don’t want trouble-o!’ Blackie’s voice rang back. It was loud and calculated to attract attention.
‘What plate, what plate?’
‘You ask me what plate? You chop food that I cook and now you ask me what plate, eh?’
‘What food? The soup that tasted like gutter water, or the meat that was hard like rubber?’
‘Omovo, I have said my own-o! I have said my own-o!’
Omovo’s mood lightened: he sensed a provocation that needed only the slightest excuse for an open confrontation. Blackie was an expert at confrontation. Omovo had seen her verbally tear down some of the compound women. He had also witnessed her destroy a man who had come to Omovo’s father about a long-standing debt. He fled before she was finished with him. And he never returned for his money.
‘Okay, it’s all right. It’s all right,’ Omovo purred as he came out of his room. He recognised the signs in her amber-black face. She was small, waspish and cunning. She had clean white teeth, small marks on her cheeks, a well-shaped body, ample hips and a cantankerous disposition. She would flare up for seemingly trivial reasons: an allusion to her childlessness could dangerously turn the tone of conversation; and anyone who used her bucket to fetch water and didn’t put it back in the right place, could be lacerated by the sharpness of her tongue. She was an irrepressible gossip and often let out ‘home secrets’ to other women – which were just as often used against her in subsequent quarrels.
When she first came to the house, she was warm, understanding and self-sacrificing. Omovo’s brothers treated her with mild condescension. She tried hard to please them and sometimes made a fool of herself in the process. Then gradually she revealed herself. She was good at dissembling. She listened at keyholes to significant conversations. And when the two elder sons left she saw a whole vacant terrain before her. With Omovo’s detachment from the course of events in the house, she wormed her way into his father’s heart. The man came to depend upon her for those little necessary comforts. And they even did business deals together that Omovo knew nothing about. His father saw in her something that wasn’t in Omovo’s mother: a readiness to submit and agree with everything he said, a desire to worship him silently. Not very long after she entered the house, she became pregnant.
But then she lost the baby: she miscarried. She nearly died of humiliation. She fell ill and dried up. She developed a cruel streak. She took part in clandestine activities, made strange trips, was seen in strange dark places. Omovo’s father confronted her, and she confessed that she had been going to see a herbalist to find out what made her lose the baby. Relationships in the house became lop-sided: she was loyal to Omovo’s father, made him the choicest dishes, but was indifferent to Omovo. They once had a ferocious argument about food and afterwards Omovo, fearing that she might take to poisoning him, started eating outside. Bits of these hanging tensions came together now and then – and ignited into a quarrel. Omovo sensed that this was one of those occasions.
‘Blackie, it’s all right,’ he said again loudly, rising to her level. ‘You have told me already, so why go on shouting? Why make noise over such a small thing?’
Omovo’s voice was deliberately gentle. There was a mocking gleam in his eyes. He looked down at her. She was serious. His forehead gleamed and his shaven head was like the ridge of some longish squat yam. He knew he looked comic. Normally she would have laughed, like the day he shaved his head. But her face, in inverse proportion, was serious. She seemed intent on dragging him into a quarrel. She didn’t look at him but at the floor, tense and ready.
When she looked up Omovo was shocked. He saw hatred in her eyes. This wasn’t the first time he had seen it. He remembered seeing her look at him with such venom the first time they met. Her marriage to Omovo’s father was done traditionally. It was only on the morning of the event that the man told Omovo and his brothers what was happening. It was barely a year since their mother had died and it came as a shock.
None of the sons attended the ceremony. Okur and Umeh stayed in friends’ places getting stoned and drunk. Two weeks passed before they returned home. Omovo stayed away only for the ceremony. When he came in late at night he confronted the solitary sight of his father and Blackie in the sitting room. There had been a power failure, the light had been seized and the flickering candle on the over-large centre table played havoc with their faces and their shadows. The man looked up at his son. And Omovo saw years and years of suffering, hiding and defeat in those eyes. This was supposed to be a new life, his first real victory for some time, and none of his sons had been there to share it with him. After a long harrowing silence he asked Blackie to kneel down and greet Omovo traditionally. A long moment passed before she finally knelt. And there was that venomous look in her eyes when she greeted him and stood up hurriedly. He smiled at her
: she glanced at him fiercely. Afterwards Omovo went outside and walked around the whole of the ghetto trying to defuse the emotions that threatened to choke him. From that day Omovo sensed that the house would not contain them both.
Her voice brought him back to the present. She said something and proceeded to tie her wrapper with exaggerated gestures, in a manner that always suggested trouble.
‘Eh, you say I am making noise? You are abusing me not so? Am I your age? It’s your mother who is making nonsense noise wherever she is!’
Omovo’s anger rose. Any reference to his mother that was in the slightest way abusive enraged him. The statement was calculated to achieve exactly this: and he knew it. His fists clenched involuntarily.
‘Who are you setting your fists for? You can’t do anything, you hear me, you can’t do nothing. You want to fight me not so; you want to fight me, eh?’
She worked herself up and then she reached out and grabbed him by his shirt front. Her bare teeth flashed and her breath angrily fanned his cheek.
‘I think you want to fight me. Beat me now! Beat me, let me see you! Beat me-o-o-o!’
She made a movement with her hands, as if making for his eyes. He was not sure. But pushing her away was all he could do to save himself. His hands quite unintentionally squashed her breasts. He felt confused; and suddenly the memory of his father making love to her came back to him. He felt strange, as if he was a spectator to his own actions. He must have pushed her with more force than he intended for she staggered backwards, fell, and screamed piercingly:
‘Omovo wants to kill me-O-O-O!... Omovo want to break my back-O-O!’
The noise brought Omovo’s father rushing from his room. His wrapper hung loosely on his thin waist and his upper body was bare. The lines on his face, deeply drawn, showed he had been woken up from sleep. Age, drink and hardship had taken their toll on his face. He was unshaven and his mouth reeked of beer and an overnight staleness. He was alarmed by Blackie’s scream.
‘Blackie, what’s happening...? Omovo...!’
His alarm turned to genuine concern when he saw her on the floor. She rolled her eyes in a peculiar fashion and gasped and moaned.
‘Your son beat me up. Omovo beat me and punched me on the breast!’
‘That’s not true, Dad. She’s acting. All I did was…’
‘Omovo, shut up!’ his father shouted, his reddish eyes flashing. Then he went on to ask her: ‘Why did he do that?’
For a moment she cried tearlessly, then said: ‘Just because I told him to clear the table where he ate. Am I his slave that I should do that?’
Omovo’s father looked up and saw the plate still on the table. ‘Why didn’t you just clear the table when you ate? Why? Why can’t you let a man sleep, eh, after doing a whole day’s work so that all of you can eat eba, why can’t I just rest when I come home? What is all this? Omovo, don’t let me get angry with you, you hear?’
Omovo said nothing. He just stood there watching his father with an even and composed gleam in his eyes, as if he were beyond the reach of his father’s passions.
‘Omovo, there are things that I am not going to tolerate from you, you hear? Now get out, get out of my sight, useless boy like you…’
Omovo looked at his father. Through the corner of his eye he thought he saw a triumphant smile hover on Blackie’s face.
‘Yes, Dad. I remember you said that before. That’s why they went. I am not fighting for you with her...’
‘Omovo, shut up. Are you mad talking to me like that? Something is wrong in your head...’ His father rose to his full height.
‘It’s enough, dear, it’s enough.’ Blackie put in quite gracefully.
Omovo walked out of the house. As he slammed the door behind him, he heard his father abusing him and saying something about behaving like his elder brothers.
It was warm outside. But momentarily something turned cold within him.
2
When his brothers were thrown out of the house, Omovo had felt the same hardening within. His brothers had become alienated from their father. The alienation had existed as gestures, unspoken words, looks. They always took their mother’s side when she was being beaten and badly treated by their father. Their detachment grew into something secretly frightening to Omovo. He often heard them say that they would get together and beat their father. They never did.
Their bitterness grew when their father refused to sponsor them through university. They were both bright and had both done well in their A-levels. They got admissions to a university, but their father said he couldn’t afford their education. Scholarships were rare and largely based on an informal system of corruption and nepotism. Whenever the subject of their education came up their father was always ready with pep-talks like: ‘Fight for yourselves. That’s what I did. If you can’t go to university, become an apprentice. Do you think I would have become the person I am today if I kept waiting for someone to fight for me? No! I did not even go to university myself.’
As they couldn’t take up their places at the university, because the fees couldn’t be paid, and as they couldn’t get a job either, because jobs were simply not available, they became restless and embittered. The gulf between father and sons widened in the house. They hardened. They withdrew into themselves. They became their own weird way of punishing their father.
When their mother died the mood of the house intensified. For hours, for days, stamping up and down, they accused their father of being responsible for their mother’s death. They left home and did not show up till the day of the funeral. Afterwards their rebellion became bolder. They wore their hair rough. They smoked marijuana. They brought strange, wild friends to the house. They drank a lot. They fought. And they stayed out late. They hung around in the sitting room and became an unbearable presence of menace. They seldom spoke to their father, and when they did it was with an unmistakable air of insolence. Then they came up with a new passion. They wanted to go to America, where they hoped to work and attend university at the same time. It was every young person’s passion, fed by Hollywood films and album covers of popular disco musicians. But for Omovo’s brothers it was, really, an escape. They schemed about it defiantly. They talked about the money they would make, the people they would meet, and the new life they would begin. Omovo knew that their fantasies were a reaction to the shock of their mother’s death.
Things took a turn for the worse when their father announced that he was taking a new wife. The next day she was led into the house. Omovo and his brothers learnt that her dowry had been quite expensive. They learnt also that their father held a lavish marriage party in her parents’ house. After she arrived they felt shut out of their father’s life. They felt like strangers. The house became too small for everyone. Tempers were taut. Omovo’s brothers would brush past their father, almost shouldering him, and not a word would pass between them. It became almost impossible to breathe in the house.
Strangely, Omovo was able to reach his father in this welter of raw emotions. Any act of his which was less angry than his brothers’ defined itself as something positive. The truth is that Omovo could not take sides: he knew his father’s difficulties and understood the anger of his brothers. And although he knew how bad the relationships in the house were, he was not prepared for the exposure of raw nerves, the definitive parting of ways, which happened that Saturday morning.
Omovo was woken up by the noises of a quarrel. He went to the sitting room and saw his father standing near the outside door. He held a blood-stained belt in his hand. He trembled with barely controllable rage. Umeh stood by the bookshelf, his head lowered. He had a thick welt on his neck. Okur was at the other end of the room, near the dining table. He stood tall, and there was something strategic in his bearing. He sweated. At the kitchen door Blackie pretended to be winnowing husks from rice on a tray. She watched the events with sideways glances.
Umeh lifted his head. Tears streamed down his face. Omovo knew that he was not crying. The tears wer
e involuntary. In front of him the centre table lay on its side. One leg had been wrenched out of shape. On the floor, beside him, there was a stuffed travelling bag. Then it struck Omovo, for the first time, that Umeh was leaving home.
The compound people gathered to watch the events through the window and through the open door. There were children and strangers amongst them. They stared gravely, impassively. Omovo could imagine them whispering the public history of the family. He felt sad. He was part of it all, and there seemed to be nothing he could do.
Then his father began shouting. His anger was directed at Umeh, but what he said seemed more general.
‘I want you out of my house now. Get out of the house! This place can no longer contain the two of us. You are a man, go out into the world and fend for yourself as I have done. And let’s see if you can do any better. So, okay, I have not been a good father, eh? Go out and find yourself another one... Go on...’
Omovo had never seen his father so angry before. Not even during the terrifying quarrels with his mother. He seemed to have inflated. His neck, trembling, was held straight. His anger shook the place.
‘I cannot tolerate you in my house anymore. The time has come for you to go your own way and for me to go mine. You say I have been a bad father, eh, that I have not done anything for you, that I refused to sponsor you to university, that I have failed you as a father... and you have the guts to wake me up to tell me all of this. You have no shame, you do not respect me. I am your father and yet you do not fight my battles with me. If I died today you would not care, you would not even know the hardships I have been suffering, the debts I have been trying to clear. You do not know my difficulties. You do not know my enemies. In spite of all the suffering I endured to provide for you when you were a child, all the money I spent educating you, your only gratitude is in accusing me. You are a man now and yet you are still living with me. Your comrades are all married. They have settled down, they have children and they are progressing. But you roam about, smoking marijuana, fighting and coming home whenever you want. You are here doing nothing. Useless, that’s what you are. Useless... Get out of my house and go where you like, do what you like, I don’t care. What business is it of yours if I marry a new wife? What’s your business with it, eh?’
