Irenosen Okojie - Butterfly Fish

So two lovers met, on the wrong side of a stretching, split dirt road, on the right side of betrayal and all it entailed because it was with them now, a third, palpable thing, that was not just rearing its head, but its arms and legs too. It carried them and they in return stoked it, fanned it. On that dirt road Sully lifted Adesua onto his back, her legs wrapped around his middle, thighs rubbing against his bare skin. She was laughing, transformed by giggles, and then nipping at his neck with the certainty of a young woman in bloom. She rested her face into the crook of his neck, mumbling into it. It didn’t matter that he didn’t know what she was saying right then, because something beyond his control lit inside him. He could have wept, just stood in that moment and wept; instead, as she slid down, he hefted her further up his back. Rushing into the waiting night, rushing into a cruel trick of life, the way the unfortunate ones do. The heavens watched Adesua and Sully in the distance; it was a matter of time before somebody spotted them. Benin’s decline was imminent and they were a part of it.

The roof continued to leak blood. This baffled the palace. When a few servants began to see reflections of themselves swimming in that blood, they abandoned cleaning it, stilled by the fear dancing on their spines. Small puddles of blood formed on the floors within the main palace, as if the heavens had a wound that kept opening up to drip down upon them. It had an ancient, rotten stench that the servants cleaned but could never get rid of entirely. They took to opening the doors for long periods of time, and the air wrestled the smell out only for it to find its way back in again.

The council ordered a new roof be built but in their hearts they knew something serious was at work. Something that no amount of intricately entwined palm leaves woven into the skull of the palace could stop. So they did what they knew to be their only plan to combat their worries. They continued to rule and to live. While they rallied what was left of their army of men in preparation for an overthrow, the servants continued to maintain their beautiful palace, and the farmers fed and ploughed the land. Then worry began to strip some people of their sleep, hiding it under their mats or the folds of their lids. So they would not know the irony of it being close by. Tense bodies slick with moonlight glow you wanted to lose yourself in traipsed around the grounds. It was a funny sight from above, to watch the cornered. To see how they stayed and how sad it was when all you know is all you think there is. These people were holding onto their beloved kingdom, keeping it alive with their breaths. But what would you have them do? If only the people in the palace knew what they were doing, baiting their own traps with the very things that could release them from it. And Sully, the stranger in their midst became increasingly comfortable, touching the cracks in the kingdom with dusty, pale hands.

When Omotole finally got to see her husband, Oba Odion was dipping into the shallow end of his pain. He sat on the shabby, wheat coloured mat on his floor, legs splayed. There were dried crusts of food on his chin and his eyes were red-rimmed and distant. He was dishevelled, his hair noticeably fuller than it had been, his clothes were so wrinkled and dirty they annoyed you to look at them. He was plumper than he had been, refusing visitors but clearly not refusing food. In the stale, trapped air, Omotole lowered herself beside him slowly, her protruding belly a visual reminder of the future. It was something to jar him out of the state he was in but he only continued to stare blankly ahead. She wrapped her hand around his wrist, yanking his arm towards her, then splaying his fingers on her stomach. “Oba, your son is coming.” The smile he cracked was wobbly, unsteady on his face.

“What is the meaning of this Odion? Terrible things are happening, what have you done?” She turned to him, the urgency in her voice almost a third person in the room. “No, no, no!” Oba Odion answered, “It is what he has done. Can you not see he will not leave me in peace!” Omotole glanced around the room quickly to indulge him. “What are you saying Odion? Who will not leave you alone?”

“Anuje.” The name was soaked in spit as bits of saliva slipped from the corners of his mouth.

“Anuje is dead Odion.”

“No.” Oba Odion shook his head so hard that it wouldn’t have been a surprise had it begun to spin clean off his neck

“Yes!” She grabbed his shoulders digging her nails into him, “You killed him. Stop this nonsense and look after your kingdom. You think the council should be running it? This is an insult.”

Oba Odion shoved her away with such force she slammed her head against the wall before sliding down to the floor. He could only mumble to himself as her whimpers rose towards him before dropping down again.

Occasionally, Councilman Ewe wandered over to the servant quarters to ask for one errand or another to be done. On this night, it was to put in a request for kola nuts for the next day’s council meeting. In between bits of bitter, crunchy kola nuts, the men would lament over events in Benin; it was clear that something had to be done. After a slightly annoyed male servant stretched his sluggish frame through Ewe’s instructions, Ewe began to head back. He was thinking of the odd occurrences that had been happening and whether they would get through it. Really Oba Odion’s inability to oversee his kingdom was a gift as far as Ewe was concerned. Without a qualm he’d relinquished control to the council who were all too willing to take over.

As Ewe contemplated the fortunes of Benin he spotted Sully’s quarters further down the trail of the worker’s area. Later, he would not be able to say what exactly it was that drew him to it. Whether it was the way it had appeared in his vision suddenly. Or if it was the resurfacing of his annoyance at how quickly the Oba had taken to Sully, allowing him freedoms no white stranger should ever have been afforded.

Before he could change his mind, he found himself moving towards the terracotta hut Sully had taken as his home. It was a short walk and as he neared it was surprised that Sully, the man who always appeared so alert had not come out to greet him. At the door he was torn about announcing himself, but his voice tickling his throat made the decision for him. As he stepped round the back he jerked quickly from what he saw before him. Sully sitting on the ground with the Oba’s youngest wife Adesua between his legs, her face resting sideways against his chest, eyes closed, both barely clothed and what clothes there were, arranged in complete disarray. Councilman Ewe took pains to leave as silently as he was able to, armed all the way back to the palace with the hard, disgruntled image of the two lovers embedded into his head.

There is a moment that trespasses sporadically inside my head. I don’t know if this is an actual memory or something my brain cooked up, but in it I’m no older than five or six. My mother and I are inside a café; the sign outside it reads Denny’s. At the counter, there is a portly white woman with brown hair and a foreign accent. She is wearing a blue apron with white stripes and indiscreetly biting her fingernails. I am wearing a white dress with a yellow sunflower pattern on the skirt. My mother has on a blue T-shirt and faded denim dungarees; there are lighter spots where the material is thinning. We are sitting by the window with a man who looks older than my mother. His hair is lightly peppered with grey but his brown face is smooth. The table hasn’t been wiped down properly, there are crumbs on it and the plastic ketchup bottle has sauce running down its white mini cone lid. Underneath the table, the man is tapping his feet on the floor. I take a sip from the steaming hot chocolate before me and burn my tongue. Here’s the weird thing, they open their mouths to speak but I can’t hear a word. There is no sound coming from them but they are definitely talking. Though I can hear other things, the cash being rung up on the register, the door swinging open to allow hungry customers to make rushed orders of the lunch time special soup, chairs scraping back against the floor, Roy Orbison driving all night on the radio and the jingle of cutlery coming from the back kitchen. It is like a semi-silent movie where you can hear everything, but the main actors. Then my mother’s facial expression turns, she looks furious and is pointing at the man with short, sharp movements. Her mouth is moving, doing that thing she did when angry; curling down, like it will drop to her chin. The man shakes his head, he looks beaten, and his twitching left leg has taken on a life of its own. He stretches his arms out to us pleadingly. My mother stands up jarring me, more words are exchanged and yet… more silence. She grabs my hand, pulling me away; the man cuts a lonely figure. It seems he is wearing a Sunday best grey suit on a bleak midweek day. I turn to wave at him; it feels as though my fingers are skimming something bigger than me. He waves back. A smile cracks his face. Outside, the door chimes shut behind my mother and me. Her chest is heaving. Each time this scene comes to me, I am desperate to hear what was said.