by Ben Okri
Further on they passed a wooden Aladura church with the poor still praying and singing fervently, while their minister preached over a crackling loudspeaker. The music struck up in the church and the worshippers, all in white smocks, began to dance and sing their alleluyas. The music was heavy with drums and the worshippers danced themselves into trances.
Ifeyiwa led him down an incline in the land. It was quiet except for the sound of a child howling in the distance. They climbed up again. Omovo felt lost in the silence. He could make out the blue shadows of bushes. He saw a wooden bridge which led over a marsh. The bridge seemed to lead to, and end in, darkness. The silhouettes of the palm trees and the iroko trees against the sky made him feel lost and stretched out.
‘Omovo, do you believe in God?’
Her voice startled him. It was only a few moments later that he understood what she had said.
‘I’m not sure. I believe in something. Does one have a choice?’
‘Maybe not.’
‘Do you?’
‘Sometimes. I suppose so.’
They walked on through another stretch of silence. Then Omovo said suddenly: ‘It’s impossible to express how happy I am sometimes.’
‘Me too.’
‘But sometimes life is very hard.’
‘Yes.’
‘Sometimes I feel it so much it’s as if my soul would crack.’
‘I feel,’ she said, ‘as if everything is pressing me down, trying to make me disappear.’
‘You will never disappear,’ said Omovo passionately.
She held his hand. Then she let go of it. Omovo, sensing the way she held herself tightly, knew instantly that something had happened to her. He wanted to speak but she got there first.
‘You said your brothers wrote to you. What did they say? Are they well?’
‘No,’ he said.
He told her about the letter and the poem. He said: ‘You know, we are on different journeys.’
She nodded.
‘I fear for my brothers,’ he continued. ‘When they left I had the feeling I would never see them again.’
‘When I was leaving my village I felt I would not see my mother again.’
‘Don’t say things like that.’
‘Okay, I promise.’
They were silent. Ifeyiwa, smiling brightly, tugged his arm and said: ‘Go on. Tell me about your brothers.’
Omovo stayed silent for a while before he said: ‘Sometimes I try to remember them and I can’t. They keep receding. I have almost totally forgotten the details of their faces.’
Ifeyiwa held him tighter. They passed a palm tree. The road narrowed and became a bushpath. Mosquitoes whined in their ears. They went down a path and emerged in another street.
Ifeyiwa kicked an empty Bournvita tin and it rattled. Then she told Omovo that her husband had been asking questions about him that day.
Omovo stopped. ‘Why? What happened?’
She told him about Tuwo’s visit.
‘Afterwards he started to beat me, but I ran out of the room. He hasn’t stopped threatening me since.’
Omovo started to say something, but she interrupted him.
‘I can stand anything,’ she said, ‘so long as I can be with you.’
‘We are playing with fire, you know.’
‘Yes.’
They walked in silence. Ifeyiwa caught Omovo’s hand. They linked their fingers. Omovo looked at her and noticed that she had loosened her hair. A doomed smile played on her lips.
‘Let’s go to the beach one day.’
Omovo said nothing.
‘I dreamt that we did.’
‘Don’t dream like that, please. Dreams can betray life. It’s hard.’
‘It’s all right. I’m scared of water anyway.’
‘Can’t you swim?’
‘I can, but I’m afraid of the sea.’
For a moment silence fell with the wind. Omovo stopped and turned to her. She looked childlike in the half-darkness. The lights from a nearby house touched her face. He noticed, for the first time that she was wearing eye-shadow and mascara and that she had on the gentlest trace of lipstick. She moved on, beyond the lights, and he followed. He touched her and she stopped, her face a mystery, hidden in a soft darkness.
He stood before her, tense and restrained. A man wearing a wrapper came down the street towards them. Omovo had a sudden vision of Ifeyiwa’s husband. As the man drew closer Omovo saw that he held a machete in his hand. But as Omovo turned and started to walk away Ifeyiwa caught his hands and pulled him to her. Omovo stayed still, watching the man over Ifeyiwa’s head. The man slowed down and stared at them as he passed. When he disappeared into the darkness Omovo sighed. Ifeyiwa threw her arms around his neck and kissed him full on the mouth. Her lips were very warm. With great sensual deliberation, Omovo enclosed her in his arms. He felt her warm body and the softness of her breasts against him. The wind blew round them. Omovo held her tightly to him, his lips lost in the language of her desire. Then suddenly Ifeyiwa pulled away from him and came back and rested her head on his shoulder, sobbing gently. Omovo stared at the trees silhouetted against the night sky and he felt a curious kind of happiness rise in him. Then the wind blew on them. Omovo felt cold. Ifeyiwa shuddered.
‘Someone has just walked over my grave,’ she said.
‘It’s just the wind.’
Ifeyiwa pulled him by the arm. They moved on. Ifeyiwa walked jauntily; her face was bright with a hard kind of joy. She threw her arms in the air.
‘I have never been so happy before,’ she said.
‘I am happy too.’
‘I can feel sadness coming.’
‘I am afraid.’
Ifeyiwa laughed. Her laughter transformed the night. She was a yellow radiance and every step he took behind her was slowed down by incomprehension. He felt as if he were walking into a golden childhood, into a past which never existed. He felt as if he had walked into a dream. The darkness glowed. He heard snatches of curious melodies within him. He heard sweet voices on the air. When he looked around he realised that they were near the stagnant stream. The wind blew hard and seemed to make the darkness wavy. Then suddenly, as if it were meant to be underlined forever as a witnessed moment, Omovo saw two birds on the bank of the stream. He heard the water flowing, as if the wind had dislodged the obstacles of rubbish. The two birds, startled by his presence, flew over the stream, bathed in the susurrations of the wind on water. When the birds disappeared, Omovo felt calm. Everything was wonderfully clear in his mind. He could see beyond the bungalows, the haze of candlelight in isolated huts, and the dark silent trees. The sky was like a wash of dark-blue ink. Two stars pulsed. Ifeyiwa spoke suddenly, as if the words were forcing themselves to be uttered.
‘I dreamt that I cut my husband’s throat with a sharp knife.’
Her voice sounded miserable. The desolation, the misery, of her voice seemed to come from so deep in her that it frightened him.
‘The strange thing was that he didn’t bleed.’
Omovo held her close.
‘I am afraid of the things I might do,’ she said, relaxing into Omovo’s embrace.
He caressed her face with his palms. Her body heaved. He kissed her forehead. Then she began to sing softly to herself. He smiled. Her eyes stared beyond him. He couldn’t understand her, couldn’t grasp her. To please her he began to dance. When she smiled, he stopped. Then he said:
‘You were right.’
‘Why?’
‘None of us belong here,’ Omovo said. ‘Firstly this is Lagos. We are victims here, we are strangers, refugees from the poverty of the interior. And even if we were in our villages we would still be strangers. It is odd that even in our own country we don’t have a home. Maybe that’s why my brothers left.’
Further on along the street they saw the stall of a woman who sold Akara, fried fish, and fried plantain. They smelt the oil smoke on the air. The stall, with the woman’s large frying pan over the grill of
blazing firewood, was the only point of illumination in the street. Beyond, in the darkness, they heard the strains of traditional music. They came to the stall. The woman sat behind a table on which was her tray of fried food. Her daughter was at the fire, dropping dollops of ground beans into the sizzling oil. The girl’s face poured with sweat. Her clothes were greasy and in tatters. Ifeyiwa asked Omovo if he wanted something to eat. He nodded. They bought some food. Ifeyiwa insisted on paying. They ate from the same wrapping. When they finished eating they went into a shop and bought soft drinks and had to finish them there because the shop-owner didn’t allow bottles to be taken away.
They went on. The road sloped downwards. Ifeyiwa ran down, her yellow dress fluttering stiffly. Omovo ran after her. When they got to the bottom they were both panting. They climbed up the road. Ifeyiwa’s eyes shone. Her breasts heaved. They were silent and kept looking at each other. Traditional music sounded all around them.
They turned a corner and found to their amazement that the entire street had been taken up by an open-air party. In the middle of the street there were wooden folding chairs round tables. And behind the chairs, poles had been stuck in the ground. Red light bulbs and blue fluorescent tubes were attached to the poles. There was a standby generator. The party was crowded. Tables were loaded with basins of beans, jollof rice, basins of fried chicken, moin moin, fried fish and countless bottles of drink. The guests were lavishly dressed, with families in clothes of identical pattern and colour. There was a live band on the wooden platform. They performed a popular Apala tune which sang the praises of the celebrants. People dressed in bright agbadas danced around the tables.
‘Let’s go and join them,’ Ifeyiwa said.
‘Okay.’
Holding hands, they wandered into the midst of the party. The musicians played another song. The loudspeakers kept squeaking. Near the stand an argument broke out. Two men in voluminous and expensive agbadas began shouting. Suddenly they became entangled in a fight. Their hands blurred. Voices were raised. They fell on one another, and it became impossible to distinguish them. They seemed to have become woven out of the same cloth. The fight widened. The musicians sang of peace and unlimited wealth. The fight quietened, and vigorous dancing took the place of its passion.
Omovo and Ifeyiwa found vacant seats. Everywhere Omovo looked he saw people dancing traditionally. The crowd grew, passers-by joined in, and soon Omovo felt overpowered by the smells of Arabian perfume and sweat.
‘We are not properly dressed,’ Omovo said.
Ifeyiwa laughed and said: ‘Let’s dance.’
As Omovo got up, the wind blew hard into the party and overturned paper plates with food on them. Omovo watched as a whirlwind raised the litter in the street. The whirlwind approached the party.
‘What are you looking at?’ Ifeyiwa said, tugging him.
‘The wind.’
They pushed into the centre of the party. Omovo felt awkward. Ifeyiwa began dancing, her face brightened with the yellow of her dress and the light from the blue fluorescent tubes. She danced sinuously to the Yoruba music. Omovo was struck by how well she danced, how fluently she shaped her body to the music, and how at home she was in the air of ghetto celebration. He, however, felt less at home with the music.
‘Where did you learn to dance to this music?’
‘By watching,’ she said, and danced round him.
Staring at her, dancing stiffly, he was struck by how odd it was that he felt more familiar with disco music than with traditional movements. Ifeyiwa seemed at home with both. She dazzled with vitality. She danced so beautifully, with such ease and grace, that she began to attract the attention of the men around. They danced around her. One of the men richly attired in lace and beads, a fan of blue feathers in one hand, came forward and pasted a twenty Naira note on her forehead. The crowd cheered. Ifeyiwa was obliged to dance with more vigour, to surpass herself. She did, and more men came forward, and danced suggestively around her, pasted Naira notes on her sweating face. Omovo watched her with a mixture of amazement and uneasiness. She had begun to attract too much attention. The musicians on the stand sang to her, describing her curves, her movements and the fantasy of her body. The wind rose. Omovo drew closer to her and said:
‘Let’s go.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know.’
She giggled joyfully. She held his arms and twirled and he caught her. He held her in his arms and felt the heat and the palpitations of her heart. They stayed still. People danced round them. Omovo looked up and said: ‘Let’s get something to drink.’
‘Okay.’
But as they turned towards their table, Omovo caught sight of a familiar face in the crowd near the stand.
‘Oh no!’
‘What?’
‘I think Tuwo’s here. Let’s go.’
At that moment Tuwo looked in their direction. He wore a red agbada and a blue hat. Omovo, not sure if Tuwo had seen them, ducked. They crouched low, mingled with the crowd, and left the party. As they went they kept to the shadows. A cat with glowing eyes followed them.
They walked for a long while without speaking. They passed a bungalow with all the lights off and from one of the rooms they heard a woman scream ecstatically. They came to a huge tree. Birds rustled in the branches. They stopped under the shadows. Omovo turned and caught Ifeyiwa’s neck and pulled her to him. They kissed passionately as if, at any moment, the world was going to tear them apart. Omovo tasted her lipstick and the sweetness of her mouth. When they stopped, Ifeyiwa uttered a curious sound and said, almost wretchedly: ‘I have never been in love before.’
Omovo buried his face in her hair. Ifeyiwa pushed him away gently. He misunderstood the gesture. He went a short way up, came back, and leant on the tree. He breathed in the scent of bark and leaves. Ifeyiwa struggled with her pocket and brought out a ring. She gave it to Omovo. He received it in his palm, went into the light, and looked at the silver-painted ring. He came back to her with his palm still open.
‘It’s for you,’ she said.
Omovo was silent. He stared into the distance. Nothing was clear anymore.
‘My mother gave it to me when I was leaving home.’
He felt mists rise to his eyes. He tried to be hard. ‘I don’t want it,’ he said.
‘Why not?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘It’s a good-luck ring and I’m giving it to you.’
He looked into the distance again. All he could see was the sky over the ghetto, oppressive and beautiful. He felt a lump in his throat.
‘Thank you, Ifi, but I lose things.’
Ifeyiwa made her curious sound. It wrung his heart. He took the ring from his palm. He tried it on a finger. It fitted. He removed it, put it in his side pocket, then took it out again. When he put on the ring she said:
‘How is your painting coming on?’
‘It’s not coming on at all,’ he said.
Then he told her about his dream of the girl. With barely controlled passion, waving his hands despairingly into the air, he told Ifeyiwa that he knew he had no choice but to do the painting. He said he had no idea what it should be like, he had no visual images. All he had was the mood, the spirit of the painting floating about inside him on waves that wouldn’t go away.
‘But what will it be about?’ she asked.
‘I’ll have to tell you a story first. Do you remember the last painting I showed you?’
‘Yes. It frightened me.’
‘Well, the government seized it.’
‘What?’
‘The government seized it. They said I was mocking our country.’
Ifeyiwa was silent for a while. Then coming closer to him, till he was almost leaning against the rough bark of the tree, she said: ‘They, too, were frightened.’
Then Omovo told her about how he and Keme went to the park afterwards and how they stumbled on the mutilated body of the girl.
‘Something happened inside me,’ he said.
‘It was something beyond fear. I don’t know what it was.’
Ifeyiwa drew back from him.
‘Then afterwards I dreamt about this dead girl. In my dream she didn’t have a face. She only had eyes.’
Ifeyiwa let out a sharp breath. The wind rose and blew and rustled the leaves of the tree. Omovo shivered. For a moment he felt as if he had been talking in his sleep. Ifeyiwa drew further away from him. She walked a short way up. He heard her coming back. Only her yellow dress was visible in the darkness. The yellow dress and her eyes.
‘But why would anyone want to kill a girl?’ she said. ‘Why?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘But why? Why did they mutilate her?’
‘I don’t know. For sacrifice, maybe?’ Then after a short silence, he said: ‘When I think about it, even in broad daylight, the whole thing scares me.’
‘But why?’ she kept saying, almost as if Omovo should know, as if he were in some way responsible.
They fell silent. Ifeyiwa moved towards him. She stopped. She threw her arms in the air. Then she made that strange noise of hers. Then, in a low voice, almost as if she didn’t want the wind to hear it, she said: ‘This world is so wicked.’
She said it with great bitterness. Omovo searched for her face in the darkness and found it had taken on the hardness of rock. She was strangely immobile. The wind blew, rustling the stiffness of her dress. The leaves on the tree were in a frenzy. Omovo looked up. Then he looked around. In the distance from the forest round the marsh, he heard cries and cultic chants. He heard the irregular beating of drums. He heard animal cries that could have been human. It was very dark. He heard the wind in the leaves and he heard the tree breathing near them. He breathed in the darkness and the ghetto smells. He seemed to be seeing his surroundings for the first time. As he turned to Ifeyiwa a yellow light flashed in his eyes. He caught a glimpse of Ifeyiwa, half enclosed in darkness. For a moment he saw the dead girl’s face in Ifeyiwa’s features. The wind made him shiver. He shook his head.
