Dangerous Love (42 page)

Time accelerated. His yearning turned to bitterness. The years became deserts. Maggots ate at him. Flies clung to his honeyed brows. Crows followed him patiently. And then on the day he discovered that he had become an old man he found the corridor. As he went along, it multiplied. The floor shone like a blue mirror. His eyes had grown tired. His feet erupted with blisters and boils. Confused, infirm, increasingly blind, it occurred to him that he was now a spirit, that he was joining the dead. He had begun to be overcome by a nauseating panic when, in the distance, he saw the door. A strange dawn shone through its golden crack. The flies had left his honeyed brows. The crows had gone. He felt both too heavy and too light. The door started coming towards him. He heard the music of unbearable bliss. The illumination from the door's opening got intolerably phosphorescent the closer it came. He woke up before the door opened its terrible splendours to him. He woke up scared. The sun burnt on his face. Outside the birds twittered. He lay on the bed disturbed. All through that day and for many years afterwards the disturbance remained. He had been asleep for eighteen hours.

The chief called by the room that afternoon. He looked two hundred years old. He had the face of ancient masks, wrinkled, ravaged with age, stamped with power. He had beads round his neck, he wore a faded duck-tail shirt over a baggy pair of trousers, and had on rubber shoes. He bore a large fan of eagle feathers in one hand and a walking stick in the other. He came with two of his servants. The chief didn't sit down and didn't stay long. Omovo knew he was dying. Omovo listened intently to his heavily accented Yoruba. And as he listened he felt things stirring within him.

In the evening one of the chief's sons came to show Omovo the bathroom and where he could get the things he might need. He informed Omovo that feeding was included in the rent. The chief's son attended the local secondary school. He had sensual lips, fine marks on his forehead, and his eyes were full of mirth and brightness. He wore khaki shorts and a blue check shirt. He said:

‘My name is Ayo. My father told me you would be staying here for some time. I will be bringing your food. You are a painter? They teach us art at school, but we have a bad teacher. I am in Class Four now. I like physics and maths. Have you finished secondary school?'

Omovo liked him immediately.

Night fell. Alone in the room, Omovo listened to the sounds of the town. The sounds were of a kind he had almost forgotten. He listened to them with a hungry rapture and felt the secret awakening of countless sensations. He listened to the wind and sea, to human voices that seemed to have minimal undertones of tension, to the children playing hide and seek, to the elders playing ayo and telling stories, to mothers settling quarrels. He listened to girls whispering with secret lovers. They made the darkness alive with their tiny peals of mischief. He listened to the dogs, the goats, and the birds. He watched the moon, bold in the sky, with clouds sailing across its face. The sounds drew him back to a period of magic twilights. He was happy that night, but he didn't sleep well.

Ayo took him to his favourite parts of the beach. Omovo watched the lights on the sea, watched the shimmering waters, the lights turning delicately into intimations of rainbow through the spray. He was overwhelmed with the freshness of the air, overcome with clarity. The sea glittered in the dying lights of the evening. He watched the floating clumps of seaweed and listened to the distant songs of fishermen returning from their day's work. The sky turned grey, the sea turned brown. The lights of the town converged above it like a collective halo of red and grey. Sensing that Omovo wanted to be alone, Ayo slipped away and left him enraptured in his contemplation.

The days came, were heightened, went, and were lost. Omovo, drenched in sunlight, roamed the beaches. He roamed the bushpaths. He paced up and down his room. He was restless. He felt vaguely aware that different things in him were coming together in images of clarity and terror. He felt strange energies ready to burst in him. But the coming together of things within eluded him. He watched, listened, waited. The days crept away, leaving his life-wish unrealised.

On the third day there was a blackout. In the darkness, fighting off the mosquitoes, he suddenly remembered a moment from his childhood. During the civil war, federal soldiers had been stamping through the town hunting out the Igbo people. They went to shops and kiosks owned by Igbos, broke their way in, dragged them out, and took them away. Sometimes particular townspeople, who had grudges against particular Igbos, gave away their hiding places. Often the townspeople took it upon themselves to do the job of the federal soldiers for them. It was a sick time. That day the soldiers had stormed into the beer parlour next door. Everyone in the street knew an Igbo undergraduate had been hiding there under the protection of a prostitute. When the soldiers went in the undergraduate ran out. The women screamed. The young man ran into the street shouting: ‘Chineke! Chineke!'

One of the soldiers shot him in the back and the undergraduate buckled, staggered, his arms flailing. The soldier shot him again and the young man cried:

‘Hey God!'

Then he fell on his back and stayed there twitching and died with his eyes wide open, his fingers clamped between his teeth.

The soldier who had shot him went over, stared down at him, spat, his gun ready. Then for some reason, maybe to make sure the young man was dead, the soldier tried to pull the dead man's fingers from between his teeth. He pulled the arm. Kept pulling it. But he couldn't get the desired result. Instead of the fingers being freed, the dead man's upper body kept rising and flopping as if he were in the grip of obscene spasms. His death grin, his burst chest, his shirt swollen with gore, and his wide-open eyes, made him look horrifyingly inhuman. The soldier, having failed in his intention, frustrated, annoyed, dragged the body to the roadside and kicked it into the gutter. The rest of the soldiers joined him. They lit a cigarette, shared it, and discussed their next destination in rough voices. When they'd finished the cigarette they pushed on down the street, waving their guns in the air like conquering heroes, and carried on with their task of Igbo hunting.

The street was silent. The townspeople had watched the event from the protection of their windows. No one moved. Then not long after the soldiers had gone a wailing noise, more piercing than the sirens, came from the beer parlour. The prostitute rushed out, cursing and screaming, her hair in disarray, her clothes torn. She wept and threw herself down on the street inconsolably. Then she stopped and lay there. She lay still as if dead. Then she got up and with a strange calm, tears running down her face, emptied her purse onto the body of her dead lover. She emptied all her coins, all her pound notes, on the body. Then she disappeared down the street, staggering, pulling at her hair.

That night the people of the street saw her return. She dragged her lover's body from the gutter, dragged it down the street, and rumour had it that, without stopping, she carried the body three miles to the graveyard and buried it. She was never seen again.

By morning word had gone round and gangs of boys from all over town came to scavenge in the gutter for the prostitute's money.

Omovo saw it all from the sitting room window. He hadn't slept all night. Fear had kept him awake. He saw the boys his own age struggling amongst themselves, kicking around in the gutter, trying to retrieve the coins and pound notes. He saw it all, but he didn't understand what he had seen.

He understood now. Sitting in the darkness of a strange town, fighting off the mosquitoes, the memory brought a bitter understanding. His mind was calm as he thought:
‘That is my generation. Scavenging for blood money. Corruption money. Scavenging for the money of the dead. The money of corruption. Curse money. Scavenging our futures, our history. A generation of guilt, and blindness, and infernal responsibility.'

Hours later the light returned. He heard the children of the town cheering the return of the lights. He heard activity, music, noises of hope. But for Omovo the lights merely provided an escape from memories of cruelty.

Later that morning Ayo brought his food. After he had eaten they both went to a sea inlet. Omovo sat on the ground staring at the sky. Ayo tried to catch fishes with his bare hands. The wind blew criss-cross ridges on the water's surface. Ayo gave up on catching fish and suggested a swim. Omovo didn't want to. Ayo pointed to something in the water. Omovo got up and looked. He saw a coral of lovely colours entangled in seaweed. As Omovo marvelled at this vision he slipped and fell into the water. Ayo laughed and jumped in after him. They splashed around. Ayo dived down and when he came up he was holding the coral. It was such a beautiful sight. The coral, marvellously streaked, had been strangely eaten away at the centre, like an imperfect heart. When Omovo took it in his hands, turned it round, studied it, holding his breath, something went through him. He shivered, twisting, and cried:

‘I've got it! I understand!'

Ayo said: ‘What?'

Omovo was silent. The illumination dwindled on his face. He sank to the ground. With his face on his palms, he said in a disappointed voice: ‘It was nothing. It's gone.'

Soon afterwards, both dripping sea-water, they headed home.

On the way back they were silent. Omovo kept looking at the lovely coral as if it were the undeciphered emblem of a mystic understanding. In a voice both calm and desperate, Omovo said: ‘Ayo, your name means “life”, right?'

‘Yes. But it's short for Ayodele, which means “life has come into the house”.'

‘I know.' Omovo continued: ‘Well, I want to tell you a story.'

Then Omovo told of the strange dream he had about the door and the room. When he had finished Ayo said:

‘And what happened? Did you get to the room?'

‘No, the room was coming to me.'

‘Did it?'

‘I'm not sure.'

‘But did it?'

‘No. I don't think so.'

Ayo was silent. His youthful face took on a disturbing aspect of wisdom. He said, eventually: ‘I'm happy it didn't.'

‘Why?'

‘My father has been having dreams like that. Different, but similar.'

‘So?'

‘If it came to you, it means you will die soon,' Ayo said.

Omovo said nothing. After a moment, Ayo asked: ‘When did this story happen to you?'

‘It happened on the first day I arrived in this town.'

Ayo said: ‘It's sad.'

They parted company. As Omovo went to his room he experienced a curious sweetness as he pondered the dream. It wasn't long before the indefinable sadness of a premonition swept over him.

That night he had a shower for a second time and went to bed. He kept tossing and scratching himself in places where the bedbugs bit him. He shut his eyes tight, as if the darkness were a blight he did not want to face. He heard the noises of the town. The sounds were not as enchanting as when he first heard them. The mustiness, and the smell of death, in the room, scared him. The constant power cuts filled him with impotent rage. The bedsprings creaked with his every movement. Areas of colours danced before his eyes. The colours became menacing forms. When he opened his eyes he thought he saw ghosts in the room. He thought he heard the rattling of chains, the wailing of gagged slave voices. He turned over and covered his face. The menacing shapes returned and oppressed him. He tried to will them away. But doing this only kept him awake. He felt his muscles palpitate. His shoulders were tense. He felt himself arching his back, felt throbbing in his neck. The moving colours became voids that opened inwards into deep, unfathomed interiors. Things were coming together within him even as he slept.

He woke up suddenly. He heard a sound. A movement. The syllable of a repressed scream. The wind outside rattled the corrugated zinc roof. He heard an explosion somewhere in the darkness. He sat up. Afraid. He waited. He watched. He wondered. And his wonder infested his silence with motion. In the semi-darkness he could see the coral. It was on the table. It seemed to float on waves of darkness. As he stared at it something happened inside him. He got up, put on his shirt and trousers, took the coral and left the room.

At first the town seemed quiet. It seemed quiet in its ancient ravagement. The wind was fresh on his face. The dawn was crisp. Skeins of mist hung in the air. The wind roused the leaves and made the branches of the palm trees weave. He passed the silent houses. He crossed fields. He listened to the cock-crows, the bleating goats, the limpid cries of birds. He wondered if it were possible to create music using only the different sounds of animals. Crossing fields and farmlands he smelt the grass and noticed the different shades of their greenness. He wandered the bushpaths. He was barefoot and the feel of the earth, the wetness of dew, the assenting sound of every footstep, were sensations etched out in moments of shimmering clarity. As he wandered in the limpidity of slowed-down time he began to see the town as it might have been – a place ravaged by history, a place for the transit of slaves, a place of old feuds, dead kingdoms, of strife and internecine wars.

The sky lit up. The sea, changing colour, took on a subdued lucency. Then the air became full of birds, eagles, dawn-birds, birds of strange songs. Something wonderful happened everywhere around him. The fishermen sang in the distance as they launched out to sea in their dug-out canoes. Then an illumination settled in him. He breathed deeply the dewy air and shut his eyes and saw a face bleeding a curiously quivering – blinding – light. As he breathed in, energy was drawn inwards and he felt oddly faint, felt himself falling into a vortex of primordial, volatile being. Then as he let out his breath he felt as if he had hit upon a discovery, a secret that had been apparent all along.

He shouted triumphantly: ‘THE MOMENT!'

And he gave himself over to the wonder that had awoken in him.