Butterfly Fish (11 page)

During the next few days I began a project for Void magazine on street style. The premise was simple, trudging around London I'd shoot people whose striking style caught my eye and ask where they drew inspiration from. Fashion as an extension of creative expression; that kind of angle. I walked around the streets of Dalston with newly migrated hipsters. I liked the art venues showcasing unknown artists whose work was sometimes terrifying, and sometimes made me gasp and I loved the big old art deco façade of the Rio cinema. I shot dandies in skintight trousers, brightly patterned shirts and fedora hats. In Camden, I captured punk chicks wearing ripped denim, orange hair, studded leather jackets and chokers. The goths came out to play, dressed in faux misery and doom. Goth girls boasted slashes of black lipstick and shredded, rebellious expressions.

Brick Lane was full of the annoyingly, arty, cool young crowd. Too many students with overly contrived senses of style ran the gauntlet of the curry houses, where exotic looking men badgered and smouldered, begging you to eat at whichever outlet they happened to represent that day. I snapped pretty, thin girls in vintage dresses, girls in men's blazers, quirky t-shirts and penny loafer shoes sporting wispy hair styles; girls who teamed boyfriend jeans with loud, 80s tops. I shot tattoo addicts brandishing intricate designs that shimmered and became multi-limbed black creatures on pavements. I took a picture of a handsome red-headed guy who carried his guitar like a lover and a broad faced gypsy woman with flat features. She had a multi-coloured shawl draped over her shoulders, sold tiny, dead flowers and didn't seem to care. She shoved them in your face as if they were good interruptions.

Over two days I developed the photos and noticed a strange infiltration. The young woman I'd chased in Harlesden appeared in the background of some shots. I recognised the flurry of her long limbs, her rich dark skin and angular face. She was flicking a coin up behind a picture of a bald woman with a stud in her tongue like a small, silver nipple. Next to the dread-headed African man who sat by his stall in Dalston wearing an orange Fela Kuti shirt, she
was naked but adorned in heavy, pink traditional jewellery. There were white markings on her face, a blackboard on which past and present were rewritten. Behind the blank-faced gypsy woman selling dead flowers in Brick Lane, she held the flowers and they were alive, becoming purple flames in her grasp. She looked directly at the camera, at me, as somebody on the fringes getting closer.

On Friday night I broke my sometime habit of watching film noir while slowly sipping Irish cream absorbed in the moody world of dark vices, intrigue and tortured loves. In one of my favourites Bogart and Bacall's razor-sharp dialogue exchange and electric chemistry entirely transported me. I missed my days as a student, smoking weed, sitting cross-legged writing song lyrics and strumming my guitar, singing folk songs and stealing looks at inanimate objects as if they'd give feedback.

I'd checked TV listings earlier and Spike Lee's
She's Gotta Have It
would be coming on Channel 4 at 1am. It annoyed me that channels usually showed black interest films late into the night when nobody could watch them. I fought sleep, entering the hazy space between sleep and wakefulness. I spotted a stray feather from my pillow, grabbed it. I heard the hum of traffic from outside and cars running over conversations that limped into the night. By this time of night the foxes would be rummaging, the glow from their eyes rivalling the street lamps while they sent ahead prowls to cover more ground. I saw the woman walking through the photos, swapping backgrounds and settings as if it were a game, armed with the wits she'd honed in travel and the wet second tongue she used to pick locks and change the lines of things. I saw her reduced to a small, jagged entity in the corners of pictures, and the early arrival of wear and tear lines creating a white silence over her mouth.

At 1am I was still up and headed to my room. The “blue den” I called it. My crappy, old Alba TV had no antenna so I fashioned one using a hanger. It still produced semi-decent pictures. I'd left the window open earlier and the scent of smoke teased my nostrils. I went to close it and looked into my garden and those of some
neighbours. In her garden, Mrs Harris stood over a short mountain of fire, a cigarette wedged in the corner of her mouth. Some of her hair was upright in white tufts. She was having a clear out, burning what looked like documents. Smoke twisted into the sky. I retreated back to avoid being spotted. For a few minutes, I watched flames lick and curl piles of paper in illicit, final kisses.

Cunning Man Die, Cunning Man Bury Am

Half a season passed. The Festival of Yam came and the Oba was bombarded with the best the farmers of Benin had produced that year. The unusual seeds they had planted in the palace garden bloomed into flowers with blue stained petals that covered the ground. The wives continued to bicker amongst themselves. And whenever Oba Odion came to visit Adesua in her chamber he remained uncomfortable, shooting ill-at-ease glances at the brass head as if it would attack like an enemy. The brass head however had seen the slow blossoming of Adesua. It had noticed her desires seeping through her skin, her need for adventure, her longing to hunt. Sometimes in the evening when the hum of Benin settled to a gentle murmur Adesua liked to wander, beginning at the forest, behind the blue garden and onto the weathered pathway that led to the Queens' palace.

Then a worrying thing began to happen; Adesua would wake in the mornings to find the brass head rattling on the mantle. The first time it occurred she dismissed it, walked to its place and steadied it. But it continued like that over a few mornings as though shaking with anger. She reported it to the Oba who in turn told her she had an overactive imagination and wasn't it time she adjusted properly?
Instead of creating tales about a gift he was kind enough to give her, he warned her to learn from the other wives or she would lose his favour. It was not long before the Oba began to avoid coming to her quarters. She would see him walking out of Esezele's door, rushing to Omotole or Ono's chambers. Adesua struggled to know how to feel about the Oba's rejection of her but there was small comfort in one thing. Filo was ignored too, and Adesua did not believe it was only because Filo had been unlucky during childbirth. There was a strange quality to Filo, pain so strong a pungent aroma emanated off her skin. You looked into her eyes and saw the shadow of things you couldn't put a name to as she flitted about the kingdom injured but still breathing. In a way, this made Adesua warm to her.

It was a funny thing when a powerful man had more than one wife because the posturing never stopped. It increased even more when an opportunity for one to outshine the other arrived. Such a chance presented itself when the Oba suddenly became sick. His body burned with fever and he couldn't hold food or water down. His stomach shrunk and his eyes sunk deeper into his head. He became bed-ridden and his medicine man was called upon to provide a concoction of healing herbs. The wives pounced, fussing over the Oba as if the illness was chronic. His fourth wife Ekere refused to leave his bedside for the first two nights till his sixth wife Remitan came and pushed her out, saying that the last thing a sick king needed was to be cared for by a wife struggling for good health who would only infect him with her feeble disposition. Ekere said that the last thing the Oba needed was a lying wife who would reassure him he would survive even if he were drawing his last breath. They bustled in and out, and continued to swap turns keeping vigils by his side. Remitan left and was replaced by Yewande who was shoved aside by Esezele, the oldest and first wife.

Omotole did not hurry to him immediately. She waited for him to improve, letting news of his progress filter through to her from the others before she deemed it safe enough to see him. After all, what use was a sick husband to her? And even the Oba noticed this
despite his sorry state. Weak and scared he reached out a hand to her in relief as she had finally arrived to his aid, wiping his mouth and posturing the movements of a dutiful wife.

“What is the meaning of you only coming to see me now?” he asked.

“Oba, you know I'm not the first wife, so I have to give her respect as the eldest and wait till she saw you before coming. How would it look if I had openly ignored her position? I know you care about appearances.” She grabbed his hand and he said, “Omotole you are right, you are always right my dear.” She stayed there mopping his brow and cooing over his feverish body while confirming in her mind she was still at the forefront of his heart and desires.

Gifts

Gifts began to appear in my flat. I found a broken, pink beaded bracelet under my pillow. I kept it in my bedroom top drawer. On the kitchen counter an overly ripe plantain lay blackening, an audience of flies buzzing erratically about it. The bedroom mirror showed long, tapered handprints I didn't recognise. A green fluffy towel in my bathroom was wet from having been handled. In the toilet, tiny drops of blood ran down the white bowl. I felt uneasy seeing these things, anxious. I ran to the bedroom to check my belongings and there was blood inside my trainers, in the heel area. I inspected my feet for cuts and bites I may have missed but there was nothing.

I padded back to the bathroom, flushed the blood down the toilet, and brushed my teeth. I glared at my reflection in the mirror in case she may have seen something but she only looked back at me wearing a perplexed expression. I pressed play on my answering machine and listened to messages reel off. There was one from Mervyn asking me to call back to check in. His deep voice filled the room, even from a machine. Another message came from Robinson Way debt collectors about an HSBC loan I'd been dodging paying back for years. A feeling of sickness crept up my throat.

In the kitchen I stuck my face under the tap, ran cold water to cool down. On the fridge a couple of holiday snaps from a trip to Greece tucked between stuck bottle tops blinked at me. I noticed that I
was missing from some of my pictures: the shot of me in a seafood restaurant next to large tanks of lobsters that threatened to smash through the glass and perch on tables. Another in the city square surrounded by brightly coloured sugar cube shaped houses with a large, grey fountain and birds swooping down to feed on light. On the boat after a day of island hopping, being helped off by a man holding a bottle of water, one by the old town wall where I'd popped my head through an opening. Only my head had disappeared and the opening was filled with a blurred, bright light.

I hadn't been sleeping very well for a while, staying up late and I didn't even know why. My nerves were frayed and my body clock had washed down the bath plughole; upright with its eyes open. My Doctor prescribed anti-depressants and anti-anxiety medication but I wasn't sure they were doing much. I always swallowed the white tablets with trepidation. Looking like pit stops on my tongue, I sometimes saw tiny versions of myself resting on them to catch their breath. When I couldn't sleep I watched films late into the night, surfed the net or cut out pictures from magazines to create odd random images on my collage board. A man entering a shark's mouth, a baby's head growing on a cactus, a dirty angel flying out of a fan.

The notion of an uninvited guest lingered. In my mind's eye I saw her at the flower stall, in the photographs I'd taken. She appeared to be doing her long-limbed dance from a distance but each time she and the dance drew closer.