‘This is Gavin Meckler, the man I have been telling you about,’ said Nkoyo.
‘The man from the dark times,’ said the African woman whose name I knew to be Nantale. Nkoyo nodded. The woman looked at me with what felt to me to be unadulterated hatred, her nostrils flared, she stared down at me as if I was a threatening dog, a mixture of fear and disgust. I smiled.
‘How do you do?’ I said in English. There was no change in her demeanour.
‘He is not as we imagined,’ said Nkoyo. ‘And you know Olumide wishes to meet with him.’
The woman seemed to relax a little and showed us into a small courtyard, it was shaded from direct sunlight although open to the sky. In the centre was a deep pool surrounded by a wonderfully decorated canopy. A curtain was drawn across the centre of the pool, Nkoyo nodded toward one side.
‘You must bathe yourself carefully,’ she said and pointed to one side of the pool. ‘You will find oils in the bottles over there, use those to cleanse your skin.’
I went to one side of the pool where I was shielded from the rest of the courtyard. I removed my Kanzu, picked up one of the bottles of oil and stepped into the beautifully cool water of the pool. There were gentle steps leading to the centre, I plunged in gratefully and stayed under water for a moment allowing myself to cool down. It was then I made a little mistake for although the curtain separated the two sides of the pool above the surface, there was nothing to separate them under water. I saw Nkoyo’s naked body through the aqua-haze, an image that would haunt me for the rest of my life. Just the most beautiful, long-limbed black woman’s body I have ever seen, lit with flecks of sunlight refracting through the green water. Damn, if only I hadn’t looked.
I emerged as quietly as I could and stood on one of the steps. I wiped the water from my face and tried to forget the image still fresh in my mind. I didn’t want Nkoyo to know I’d seen her.
I used the contents of the bottle to wash myself with, what ever it was it foamed up luxuriously and I washed myself vigorously for a while, rinsing off by plunging back into the deeper water only this time keeping my eyes firmly shut. I stood on the side of the pool for a few seconds and felt the water dry off me. I dressed myself again, this time in a fresh robe that was neatly folded beside the one I’d discarded. I didn’t remember seeing it when I’d arrived and still have no idea where it came from. I then joined Nkoyo and Nantale by the entrance to the courtyard.
‘This way,’ said Nantale in English. Nkoyo and I walked barefoot along a corridor and into what seemed to be a tented courtyard further into the complex of buildings. Three women were standing in the centre, one was of Chinese origin although much taller than I would have expected, the other two were African. Seated on a low chair before them was the small, white-haired figure of a very old African man. I had never seen such an elderly-looking human being, even in Gardenia. This ancient fellow looked a little like the dried-up mummy that once rested in a glass case in the British Museum. He looked like he’d been dried in the sun. The top of his head was shiny black, thin wisps of white hair hung around his huge old ears and a long, straggly beard hung down from his chin.
This was old man Olumide Smith and his gaze took my breath away.
‘Welcome Gavin Meckler, come, sit beside me,’ he said in perfect English. ‘It is wonderful to meet the man who fell from the sky.’
21
Olumide Smith
I sat with Olumide for most of that day, we were either side of what I can only describe as a day bed, a very large and comfortable padded structure shielded from the harsh sun by a billowing dark awning strung up above our heads. A cool breeze occasionally wafted over us, it felt natural but it was rather rhythmic so could have been artificial; whatever was causing the movement of air it always came as a huge relief.
I don’t know how long I was there, many hours, but in Olumide’s presence I became unaware of time. I was to learn that his take on the previous two hundred years was somewhat at odds with the rather clinical version I’d seen in the London Museum of Human History.
‘Gavin, they tell me you are an even older man than me!’ said Olumide, his toothless mouth formed into a big, gummy grin. He had what I would recognise as a strong sub-Saharan African accent but his grasp of English was impeccable, his voice was deep, soft and utterly enchanting.
‘In some ways, yes, I suppose my memory goes back in history even further than yours, Sir.’ I replied. I have no idea why I addressed him as sir. I knew this was common in North America but somehow, when someone was obviously as old as Olumide, a respectful term seemed appropriate.
‘Would you like me to tell you a story?’ he asked. I nodded. ‘Are you comfortable, not too hot?’
‘I feel very comfortable,’ I said, another strong breeze wafted past us, cooling the sheen of sweat that I knew covered my entire body. Olumide leaned back against the cushions behind him, closed his eyes and started speaking.
‘Let me tell you, Gavin Meckler, what happened to the men. When I was born in the year 2070, it was a very pivotal year, before 2070 this world was a very different place.’
If what he said about his birth date was true, I quickly calculated that he was one hundred and forty-one years old. I didn’t have any reason to doubt it, after all why would he lie? And surely if he was lying then the women surrounding us would know. I was also aware that they would know I was possibly doubting what Olumide claimed so I tried to stop, but a hundred and forty-one years old! It was preposterous.
‘I don’t use that term lightly, it is a year most historians now agree as being pivotal. In 2070 things really started to change and my whole life has been spent reflecting on those changes and teaching others to be aware of those changes. What is important beyond all else is that I just happened to be born then. I am not, as some have suggested over the years, a second coming, a divine presence or most amusingly the son of a God. Are you understanding me so far?’
‘Yes Sir,’ I said without hesitation.
‘Due to the changes taking place in the world and due to the women I knew I grew to understand myself from a very early age. A man, Gavin Meckler, who understands himself is very different from one who does not. But I am not speaking about just one man, one man who could see the error of the past, the strictures of the God grip, the restrictive Judaeo-Christian mind-set or the Islamic yoke that crushed the lives of millions and stopped the world from changing. That had all started to fade long before I was born. It was only kept alive in places where men were still insane with anger; men who didn’t know what to do with their anger. The question facing men was very simple. What do we do if we no longer fight or rape. Have you ever asked yourself that?’
This caught me off guard, it almost made me jump. I was momentarily confused, I couldn’t tell if he was accusing me of killing and raping, or if his question was meant to make me think about such things and realise there was an underlying passion for such activity. I decided there wasn’t.
‘No sir. Quite the opposite, I never fought anyone and I never raped anyone so the question never arose.’
‘That is very commendable, although I wasn’t asking if you, the man I see before me, you had fought and raped, but many men had done one or both. It was a driving force for so many men and what would they do to replace that activity? Team sports maybe?’
He sat looking at me as he said this. ‘I know that in your day team sports were seen as the perfect distraction. If men support a team, their city team or their country team, it was seen as a way to dissipate their desire to fight and rape. However, it didn’t remove that desire, it never tried to understand that desire and grow beyond it. Merely replaced it with something else, and of course if the men who controlled things in the dark times deemed it necessary, that desire could easily be channelled into war and rape again. The desire was ready and waiting, the anger was kept alive by the sport. But as fewer men w
ere born and fewer men fought and raped, the desire also waned. Slowly, slowly we have changed. We have changed from what you are into what I am. This is why I wanted to meet you. You are the beginning, I am the end and now we meet. I would never have dreamed this is possible. Many years I have waited.’
He held his hand up with far greater speed than I would have expected of a man of his vintage, he stared at me with incredible intensity and corrected himself. ‘I don’t mean I was waiting for you Gavin, I was not waiting for the man I see before me. I do not believe that you are divine or that you are a man God. I’m not sure what you believe, that is for your conscience alone and not my business. I do not judge. But I can sense that you and I are so distant and yet so alike. So we meet, the beginning and the end, it is like a snake, you know that notion? A snake with its tail in its mouth.’
I nodded my recognition. ‘Ouroboros, the circle, the beginning and the end,’ I said softly.
Olumide looked around at his companions, pointing at me with his long bony finger. ‘He is a clever one, this man who fell from the clouds, a clever one.’
I don’t ever remember feeling calmer than I did when sitting under the awning in the sweltering heat, a light sense of incredible serenity; the women gathered around us seemed somehow to be above our talking. I didn’t feel they were listening to what was said and they were certainly not intervening, they merely sat calmly and stared into the distance in silence.
‘When I was born, Gavin Meckler, things were very different. Oh yes, there were many angry men in the world and things were not pleasant. In Africa there was fighting, in Asia there was fighting, in the Middle East there was fighting. Everywhere men were fighting and killing and raping. In Africa from the coast of the Mediterranean to the tip of the Cape, from the violent waters of the Atlantic to the serenity of the Arabian Sea, men were fighting, always fighting each other. But here was the question no one asked. Over what were they fighting?’
‘I don’t know, probably not much.’
This caused Olumide to burst out laughing, nodding and resting his wizened old hand on my arm.
‘Probably not much,’ he said, coughing rather violently, he did a passable impression of a posh white chap with a plum in his mouth.
‘Probably not much is right, he is a clever one this one,’ said Olumide to the women around him, again they barely acknowledged his observation. ‘The men were fighting over probably not much, they said it was because one man did not respect the God of the other man, or one man believed he owned the land or the woman of the other man and blamed the God of the other man. They said they were fighting over a God they could not see, could not measure, could not record or verify. That’s what their men leaders told them and they believed this idea. They thought they were fighting for their God, their father, the father within them but really they were fighting over their mothers.’
This observation caught me off guard again and Olumide, through his almost opaque dark eyes didn’t miss it.
‘You did not know that, did you Gavin Meckler? I am not surprised, I hope you don’t mind me saying that I am not surprised. No man from the dark times understood that, they kept themselves busy fighting while all around them the women were growing the food, teaching the children and taking care of things. Against all the odds, against terrible hardship and suffering the world started to improve. Yes Gavin, when I was a little boy, Lagos was just a town like London, all squashed up and busy, cars and trucks and buses and noise and smell. I can remember. A big, smelly old city it was.’
For some reason this also made Olumide laugh, I nodded but I didn’t quite know why.
‘And I talked to the men, they were angry, always angry, always wanting to fight, but angry about what, eh Gavin Meckler, why were they so angry?’
I stared at my hands for a moment, I didn’t really know why they were angry, I felt a bit guilty about it because I was white and white people had done terrible things to black people in Africa for hundreds of years. You didn’t need to be a history graduate to know that. Okay, so it was a long time ago and it wasn’t me personally doing the bad things, but I have always believed you have to accept your heritage, good and bad.
‘I’ll tell you why they were angry. It was because of their mothers and their sisters. It’s the same all over the world, the mothers, the sisters, they suffered but they got on, they suffered but they persevered. They suffered but they became stronger, they supported each other, they became these strong women.’
He gestured to the women sitting around us, I glanced at Nkoyo who didn’t return my gaze, but it was true, she looked beyond strong, she looked nothing other than regal. I cannot describe her in any other way. Regal and incredibly beautiful, unattainably beautiful and I felt the weight in my chest. A longing, I don’t know, some emotion that was strong and needy and didn’t help me relax.
‘Oh yes, Gavin Meckler, women are so strong, any man who does not understand that will suffer in his own pain. These women made the world better which of course only made the angry men even more angry!’ Again the old man laughed. ‘They were always angry, they were angry at their children, angry at their wives, angry at each other so they fought each other more. They were not able to understand that the anger they felt, they didn’t understand its source. The source of this pain was the mother. It was not because their mothers were bad to them, quite the opposite; you cannot lay blame at the foot of your real mother, the woman who nurtured you. No, they were angry because all men lived under the phallus.’
Olumide stared at me, waiting for a reaction to what he’d just said.
‘The phallus,’ I eventually repeated.
‘You know what it is?’
‘What, the phallus? Yes, I know what it is. The penis, you’re telling me the men were living under the penis?’
My question caused a gale of laughter and coughing from the ancient man. He waved the incredibly pale palm of his hand at me as he tried to regain his composure.
‘Not the penis, Gavin Meckler, the phallus.’ He pointed to the thin white hair on his head. ‘The phallus in here, the phallus of the man’s soul.’
Now he nodded like a proper old sage, his eyes closed, his absurdly ancient face serene and fascinating. ‘When the man is trapped by the sexual phallus, he is trapped by the woman, he is in awe of the women, he worships and hates the woman at the same time. Do you know this feeling Gavin Meckler? When you love and hate a woman at the same time?’
I shrugged, I wasn’t sure I knew that feeling but after a moments contemplation I started to understand that part of my problem not understanding women was that I didn’t want to. I saw that in many cases I was scared of them and kept them at a distance. I would describe it as being attracted to them and annoyed by them at the same time, the same basic notion as love and hate but with a bit less passion.
I nodded slowly. ‘I think maybe I do.’
Olumide smiled very gently, he stared at me and I didn’t feel threatened or patronised by him, I felt understood by him. He closed his eyes for a while and then said, ‘So finally, after five thousand years of this pain, men began to accept that they were trapped by the sexual phallus and could only be freed from this burden by the spiritual phallus.’ Another pause, Olumide moved his head a little and stared at me. ‘When I say a spiritual phallus I do not mean a God, Gavin Meckler, not something they could never see, never touch. This was solid, hard, familiar, personal and physical but also of the soul. They began to understand that all men had the same burden. It didn’t matter about the God they had fought and killed for, and thus the Gods disappeared like a mist in the morning. Gone, forever, leaving only the man with himself, alone in the universe, responsible for his own actions. The man finally accepting himself for who he really is. The man who comes from woman, the acceptance of that simple fact set men free. The mother is first, the son only follows.’
I thought
about that for a moment, it made sense but I couldn’t see how this would stop men fighting. Could it really be that simple?
‘You have questions,’ said Olumide. It was true, I had questions but it was mildly annoying that he knew before I realised I had them.
‘I don’t understand about the whole spiritual phallus thing, have I got one?’ I asked. I was beginning to doubt the old man’s sanity. How could a phallus be spiritual, it all sounded bonkers, it sounded like something my hippy Uncle Nigel would have said when I was a kid. He was really annoying and we always dreaded his occasional visits.
Olumide stared at me as a gentle smile emerged from the dark folds of ancient skin.
‘Listen to what I tell you, Gavin Meckler, and then listen to the truth inside you. A man like you, a man living only in his own sexuality, the use of his body, his phallus, the physical agency of his masculinity is by definition dominated by the mother.’ He emphasised the word ‘definition’ in a slightly annoying way. I knew he was just emphasising the word but I also knew it was an annoying thing to do.
‘Since everything connected to the body including the phallus is her instrument, yes, the phallus is her instrument,’ he said, staring at me, willing me to understand. ‘The sexual phallus is servitude to the mother, the darkness, the dark times. The spiritual phallus is freedom from the feminine, it is light, like here, the light is clear, the man’s spirit is free from anger.’
I think my eyes widened at this point.
‘For thousands of years, this state of mind kept men in the constant distress they always experienced, the need to fight, compete with each other, feel stronger and better than each other, start wars and dominate the earth, struggle to dominate the mother. That way failure and pain lies, that way we are trapped in eternal damnation. Now we don’t need to do that, we men can find our spiritual fulfilment without the need to struggle against the mother. We don’t need the mother. You know what I refer to when I say the mother.’
News from the Squares Page 22
