Dangerous Love (46 page)

He found himself taking the path into the forest. When he recognised where he was he gave a start. He was near the broken bridge, not far from where the woman had discarded the baby. He turned round and went back. The lane was empty. He came to the gate of the strange organisation. The blank signboard at the gate had gone. The signboard with Okocha's bizarre painting of a black messiah surrounded by hieroglyphics and birds with human faces was left standing. It stood alone, without reference. It stood alone in a vacant lot. The building that was behind it, where he had the odd encounter, had completely vanished, as if he had only dreamt it.

He rushed back to Doctor Okocha's workshop. All around the shop, in all sorts of piles, were the signboards the ghetto. At the back of the workshop a bundle of them smouldered away in the remnants of a fire. The door was open. It was dark inside. Doctor Okocha wasn't around. Omovo tried the lights. The electricity had been returned. Overwhelmed by a sudden rage, his mind a mixture of sadness, wonder, and bewilderment, Omovo dug out a blank canvas, set it up, prepared a palette of paints, and waited.

He was hungry. He had been hungry all day. He drank some water. The water made his hunger more intense. He stood in front of the canvas, staring at a spot on its blankness. The spot began to move and then it grew bigger. Mists clouded his eyes. He shut them. Then something opened within him, illuminated by his expectant anxiety.

He began to paint. He painted a slightly unreal parkland. It was idyllic but tinged with menace. A night sky, faintly lit by an absent moon. Strips of water with moonbeams. Through the screen of trees he painted the Atlantic Ocean, its mighty waves rolling. Landing on the beach were strange green ships enclosed in mist. Around the ships were the forms of invaders. Predatory birds in ominous shapes emerged from the sky.

In the foreground of the painting was a tree withered like the biblical fig. Near the tree was the most central figure, the corpse of the girl. He made her skin tone luminous, phosphorescent, as if her body were blazing. She was like a hallucination, a dreamed being, in a naturalistic landscape. A beautiful, bloodied, intensely coloured being. Her dress is torn. There is blood on her breast, on her clothes. The area of her upper thighs is a stylised mess of mutilation. He painted a glimmering cross around her neck. Omovo worked intensely, hurriedly, not wanting to lose the flow of intimations. Then he stopped. He had trouble with the girl's face. He had entirely forgotten what the girl's face looked like. So, keeping Ifeyiwa's face in mind, he painted and re-painted the face. He kept changing the features. First he gave her a tortured smile. Then a madonna's grimace. He gave her a peasant girl's face. A scarified face. A stylised face. None of them worked. He wanted to scream. His inability to give the girl a face seemed to be driving him out of his mind. Then, after a while, he wiped out her features and turned his attention elsewhere. He was about to add some touches of colour to her bright check dress when darkness swam before his eyes. He gave a shout, dropping the brush. Then he screamed, fearing his brain had snapped, that his mind had unloosened and now floated in some terrain of madness. After a moment he realised the lights had gone again. He lit a candle. When he looked at the painting something twisted inside him. He realised, instantly, that the work could only ever remain unfinished, beyond completion, and that the girl would have to exist without a face.

He lit two more candles, because he had become a little afraid of the darkness and of what he was painting. He gave the work a title: ‘The Beautiful Ones' … He was about to complete the sentence but changed his mind. He wanted to use his own words. After a few seconds he wrote, ‘Related Losses'.

But seven years later, after he had completed his seven Ifeyiwa paintings, when he had seen more, suffered more, learnt more, and thought he knew more, he made certain changes to ‘Related Losses', vainly trying to complete what he knew was beyond completion, trying to realise a fuller painting on a foundation whose frame was set forever. Succumbing to the dangerous process of looking back, making himself suffer a long penance for a past artistic shame at a work unrealised by youthful craft, and under the pretext of wanting to re-educate himself in the form, he quite radically altered the painting. He got rid of the ships, the invaders, the turbulent Atlantic. He erased the predatory birds in the sky. He blotted out the unnecessary symbols that were not part of the original experience. He made the trees denser, and allowed the girl's body more dominance. He made a phantom figure brood above her, the figure of an ancestor or of the unborn. Then he painted for the girl a bright yellow dress. He made her mutilation obscenely beautiful, as if she were giving birth to a monstrous mythic force; a messy, almost messianic birth from a flowering wound. Then he made her feet bare, small. He gave her cuts, bruises, spikes. But her feet were bright, as if ochred, as if she might have walked on magical roads. Then, finally, he created for her a sweet pair of eyes, a beautiful little nose, the nose of a gifted princess, and thick proud lips, sensual, silent, beyond speech, self-communicative.

But that night his hunger was virulent. His hunger ached like an acid in his stomach. He had no appetite. When he had finished, full of sorrow for the faceless girl, he sat down on a chair in utter exhaustion.

Later he went to Keme's place. Keme's mother was not surprised to see him. She embraced him, took him in, made him bathe, coaxed him into eating, and laid him down on the best bed in their poor household.

Weeks passed before he could see his father. He was allowed only a short space of time. He was wearing Ifeyiwa's ring. There had been rumours that his father had refused to speak, hadn't spoken all the time he had been held in prison. It had caused problems. The police had become a little testy and had beaten him a few times to open his lips. The lawyer had found the whole business frustrating, to say the least. Omovo hadn't come to get his father to talk. He had come to talk to his father. The short time they had was running out. Now and again, with no particular relationship to what was being said, his father nodded. He kept staring at the window behind Omovo. His eyes were deep and red-veined. His cheeks were mottled and he had a growth of beard which gave him a haunted expression. His fingers trembled.

Omovo could not bear his father's twitchiness and so he began to talk about whatever came into his head. He told his father about harmless, unrelated events in the compound and the ghetto. The assistant deputy bachelor had got married and had lost his fabulous name. A pregnant woman in the compound gave birth to triplets. A lorry, reversing in front of the house, had accidentally destroyed the water tank. The nightsoil men had been on strike for three days. Omovo told his father about the vanished signboards and the subsequent outrage of the shop-owners. They had set up vigilantes to catch the thieves. The story had been humorously reported by the newspapers. Omovo told about the barber's apprentice who had shaved his head. Apparently he had gone and done the same thing to someone else, someone who turned out to be a widely feared thug. The thug had beaten the apprentice in full public view and then had proceeded to give him a taste of his bad craft by shaving his head with a blunt razor. Then his boss fired him. The poor apprentice now roamed about the streets, provoking laugher wherever he appeared.

His father's expression didn't change. A policeman came in and went out. There was silence. Wanting to fill that silence, Omovo said Umeh had written him. A trapped look entered his father's eyes. Omovo then told him Umeh had written to say he was being deported home. His father remained silent, a picture of solicitude.

‘Our time is up, Dad.'

His father looked old. The police guard came in and hovered. Omovo leant across and kissed his father on the cheek. He felt the bristles and smelt his sweat.

‘I'll come and see you often. Everything will be fine.'

His father nodded. He went on staring at the window. Omovo turned and saw the window. It was cracked and stained, but behind it could be seen a dusty guava tree in bloom, and beyond that was a framed view of the turbulent city.

‘Dad...' he began.

But he could not find the words. So many things clamoured within him. He wanted to say, in the clearest possible words, how much he loved his father. But he shook his head. Then he felt the policeman's hand on his shoulder and said:

‘It was my birthday yesterday.'

He got up. Suddenly, his father caught his hand and held it between the tough hide of his palms. Omovo didn't move, caught between the policeman and his father's grip. He sat down again. His father squeezed something into his hand.

‘Your mother gave it to me. It's supposed to bring good luck. I never wore it.'

It was a chain with the bronzed representation of a heart. Within the heart was another one, upside down. Omovo stood up again, flooded with confusion. As Omovo left he thought he saw on his father's face the faintest outline of a misted smile, momentarily freed. Nothing else mattered. He went out of the stuffy police station into the heat, the noises, and the smells of the city. The traffic jams sill clogged the roads and hawkers filled the air with their numerous voices.

Keme, with his inseparable motorcycle, was waiting for him up the road. He was finishing off a bottle of Fanta. They walked for a long time in silence. They went to a bar and got drunk and were silent. As they made their way home, Keme pushing his bike, Omovo said:

‘It's a hell of a life.'

‘How is he?' Keme finally, and tentatively, asked.

‘It's a hell of a life.'

‘How did it go?'

‘Painfully. He didn't say a word. Till the end. He kept nodding. Then the policeman came. I wanted to say millions of things and I didn't. But as I was leaving he looked at me and I understood something for the first time. But I'm not sure what. The lawyer says he stands a good chance.
Crime passionel
and all that. A useful lie.'

Keme changed the subject. They talked instead of their friends. Keme told Omovo that Okoro was in hospital.

‘What happened?'

‘He was standing by the roadside when a military vehicle trying to escape the traffic jam sped past and knocked him over. It didn't even stop.'

‘Was he badly hurt?'

‘Yes. His leg. He's in a bad way.'

‘Oh God!'

‘Yeah.'

‘We'll have to go and see him.'

‘I have. The first thing he said was that his girlfriend had deserted him. Left him for some other guy. A guy with big teeth, a disc jockey. Poor Okoro had spent all his money on the wretched girl.'

‘I met her. I thought things were fine between them.'

‘So did I.'

They were silent.

‘It's odd,' Keme then said, ‘but he just kept on talking. He went on about Dele having gone to the USA. He said Dele had let him down, that they had planned to leave together. Then he kept on talking about the war. He said he had fought for a year, hadn't been wounded, and now when there was supposed to be peace a military lorry comes and knocks him over just like that. He said strange things.'

‘Like what?'

‘He said all the doctors in the hospital were spies, ex-soldiers, dead soldiers. He said they were conspiring to cut off his leg.'

‘Is it true?'

‘No. He's in a plaster cast. He said he dreamt he was an old beggar, dragging himself along the crowded streets, his only leg contorted round his neck. I've never seen him so frightened. He wouldn't let me go when I was leaving. They had to sedate him. He kept jerking and twisting. I couldn't bear it. I fled and wept and haven't been back.'

After a short, poisoned silence, Keme continued: ‘Dele sent Okoro a letter.'

‘A letter?'

‘A short one.'

‘What did it say?'

‘Guess.'

‘That he'd robbed a bank?'

‘No. It said: “States is fun. Had my first white woman today.”'

‘Oh!'

‘Quite. And his father has disowned him.'

‘Why?'

‘For disobeying him, I suppose.' Another silence. ‘Do you still think of that dead girl we saw?'

‘Yes. I did a painting of her. My first real painting. Did anything develop?'

‘No. I couldn't discover anything more. I wish things happen like they do in films. You know, where a journalist digs around, finds a clue, then is on to the killers, and then brings them to justice.'

‘So do I.'

‘But it's old news now. My editor yawns whenever I bring up the story. Every day we have news about scandals of corruption in government circles, massive embezzlements, our docks crammed with tons of uncleared cement, government housing projects where the houses haven't been built, a journalist murdered by the secret police, students rioting, union leaders gone missing and turning up dead, secret executions of coup-plotters and of innocent protesters. What can a man do?'

‘I don't know.'

‘But I still dream of her. This country's in a bad way. Something is hanging over us. We can't have all this chaos without something terrible happening. It's impossible to investigate anything. Things are getting worse at an incredible rate. The problems got bigger than all of us before we knew about them. No one listens. Our history is turning into our worst nightmare and we aren't doing much about it. The whole thing drives me mad.'

Short silence.

‘And then there was Ifeyiwa.'

‘Who is she?'

‘Didn't I ever tell you about her?'

‘No.'

‘I can't go into it. It's too terrible. Too close. Can't.'

‘Fine.'

‘She suffered. Maybe I also loved her because she suffered. A dangerous reason to love.'

‘Does love need reasons?'

‘I don't know. But maybe love is dangerous.'

‘I'm not sure. We carry too many fantasies inside us.'