Dangerous Love (7 page)

‘Is it illegal?'

‘NOW YOU MAY GO!'

Omovo walked slowly out of the room. There was a curious half smile on his face. Dr Okocha and Keme rushed to meet him. Before they could say anything Omovo raised his hands.

‘They just tried to frighten me with accusing questions. I had nothing to be afraid of. I can't help it if people see things.'

The painting had been photographed before it was taken down from the showing. The arts editor of a newspaper whom Omovo had been listening to, later wrote a clever article about the state of modern Nigerian psyche. She used the fate and her interpretation of the painting as a peg. Omovo's name was not mentioned. The next day a two-column report appeared in the
Everyday Times.
The report was badly printed. Omovo's name was mis-spelt, and the photograph of the painting was dark and indistinct.

Omovo left the gallery immediately after the sinister event. He walked down the dark road. The branches of the palm trees swished and swayed. Women chanted their wares. Cars did dangerous turns. His thoughts stretched darkly before him. Keme came up behind him, pushing his Yamaha motorcycle. After a long moment's walking in silence, Keme said:

‘Take it easy, Omovo. If anything the whole ugly business vindicates you. Come on, let's go to Ikoyi Hotel and then later you can go and meditate at the Ikoyi park if you want.'

Omovo climbed on the back seat. Keme kick-started the bike, and sped off into the bowels of the disturbed evening.

The evening turned out worse than they could have imagined.

At Ikoyi Hotel, Keme met a former classmate, the son of a wealthy businessman. At school he used to hire fellow students to wash his clothes and run errands for him. He failed his school certificate and afterwards it was heard that he was a ‘big man' in his father's company. Keme waved at him. The classmate nodded, and looked away. Keme thought that he had not been properly remembered. Omovo saw Keme walk over and traced the words that formed on his mouth. Then the former classmate shouted:

‘So what! I have no money or jobs for anybody, you hear?'

Keme stormed out of the hotel foyer. Omovo followed him. Outside, Keme's face was swollen with indignation. He was from a poor family and there was not a day that passed in which he was allowed to forget it. The difficulty of surviving the miasma of Lagos life made him especially sensitive to financial insults and social humiliations. As if to dent the treadmill of his life, he jumped on his motorbike and started it furiously. The bike jerked forward. He grabbed the brakes. Omovo stood and watched his friend's anger define itself against the machine. Keme sat still and took a deep breath.

‘Let's go to the park.'

Keme's face was still heavily scored with anger. ‘I don't know who he bloody well thinks he is! Me beg him for money? Me go and ask him for a job, eh? What does he fucking think he is?'

‘Keme, let me ride the bike.'

Neither of them uttered a word as they rode to the park. The wind was cold. Omovo felt his face flushed. The air became something immensely tangible. The city lights gleamed. Cars hooted and shot past them. Motorcyclists sped challengingly, their shirts flapping behind them as if thrashed by an insane spirit. The rush of air to the face and head, the sheer physical speed, the sensation of things racing past and receding, filled Omovo with euphoria. The machine purred under his grip. With his head and shoulders pressed forward he had the appearance of one going through a defiant ritual. Swaying the motorcycle from side to side, rising and dipping rhythmically, he snaked across the wide road. Then a car, speeding towards them, flashed its lights in the distance. Keme gripped him. Omovo gripped the brake and slowed down. The moment passed. He felt very alive. His being sang. His universe contracted into a vision of frictionless motion through strange places. Keme shivered with fear behind him. He was not sure if Omovo could handle the motorcycle at that epiphanic level.

People were leaving the park when they arrived. The evening had darkened over. The sky above the trees had a sombre ash-grey light. The clouds, dimly illuminated from within, cast a ghostly silvery sheen on the treetops.

They walked between the trees and talked about life. Keme talked about his poor mother who had worked hard and believed in him, and about his kid sister who had been missing for three years. They had given up the girl for dead. Thoughts of her haunted Keme. He felt responsible for her loss. That fateful day he had sent her on an errand to buy bread and had told her not to come back without any. He had meant it jokingly. There was a serious bread shortage at the time. She went, and never returned. Adverts were placed in the papers. They got the police to investigate her disappearance. They hired native doctors. They searched endlessly. No avail. She was never found.

As they walked down the path twigs cracked and broke underfoot. Leaves crunched. Empty cans, accidently kicked, rattled in the night. Keme climbed a tree and swung from a branch. Omovo sat on the ground near a snake-thin stream of water. There were narrow wooden bridges not far from where he sat. He watched the play of light and darkness on the glinting metallic surface of the streamlet. As he watched he noticed the distorted shapes of trees, clouds, birds and people. He pondered the surrealism of distorted reflections, and how unique the perceived world became if familiar images were reordered into freshly juxtaposed fragments by a disinterested vision.

As he sat there, touched by serenity, the pain of losing his second painting receded. It had all happened somewhere in time, in space. A fine breath of vitality coursed through his nerves. He breathed deeply and concentrated on the top of his head. He tried to create mental images of himself painting, living and overcoming. The joy momentarily actualised itself in his being.

Keme said they should go to the beach on the other side of the park. They went. The grass was dark. The muscular roots of trees were exposed above the ground like brown snakes. Branches weaved everywhere. Leaves descended, gyrating. Omovo heard an owl hoot. The trees were dignified, like guardians of terrible mysteries. The whole place had the haze, and the silence, of things experienced in forgotten dreams.

The murmurs of the ocean beckoned them. The sands gleamed. The foreshore was white under the moon. There were still a few people around. Keme sat on the shore and tried to catch crabs. Omovo lay down and watched the waves tumble, gather themselves, and then rage forward like an immense fluid piston, an interminable passion. Then the waves smashed the shore, and shards of water were flung everywhere. When the motion was complete, the waves rolled back on themselves and Omovo felt the vibrations travel through the earth and up his stomach. The extended hiss of the sea took on a primeval quality.

The night seemed to Omovo a calm mistress, suffering the passions of the ocean. Keme sat there, slept and dreamt. Omovo felt cleansed. His whole universe rolled itself into a single crystalline moment. Time vanished. Sea, night, sky hazed over and became one.

Then the heightened moments were intruded upon. Mosquitoes came in malicious squads. The cold became bone-chilling. The murmurs of the ocean became monotonous. The haze of the sky dulled the mind. Sounds became sharp and extended. The quality of the night imperceptibly changed. Keme rose and ran up and down the beach.

‘Hey, Omovo, let's get going. It looks like we are the only ones around.'

His voice was shrill and it merged into the whispers of the night. Omovo got up, dusted the wet sand off his trousers, and tried a few kung-fu kicks.

‘I didn't know you did karate?'

‘I used to. My legs are damn stiff. It's a long time since I practised.'

‘Let's be going.'

Omovo could not see Keme's face. ‘God! It's dark already!'

‘Didn't you realise?'

‘No. I've been wandering inside myself.'

They walked, trying to trace their way back to the entrance. The night was suddenly much darker. The realisation fell alarmingly.

‘Omovo! We are lost.'

Keme's voice, strangled in the night, sounded like a joke. They went back to the shore and tried to find the way they originally got there. It was hopeless. Somewhere in the darkness an owl hooted, three times. Jangling bells rang in the distance. The sound of breakers deepened their fear.

‘We can't be lost. There is an exit somewhere.'

Omovo didn't recognise his own voice. But he recognised the terror in its dry timbre. The night, a protoplasmic mass, engulfed everything. The darkness was alive. Visibility was reduced. Omovo's mind, unable to leap, made out a figure standing near them. It seemed to move. The darkness conferred on it a sinister presence.

‘Keme, there is someone here!'

‘Who?'

‘How would I know?'

They were still. They waited. Time stretched out their nerves. Keme breathed heavily, as if quickened by a mounting fear.

‘It's not a person.'

‘How do you know?'

‘It's a stick or a tree.'

‘Go and touch it then.'

‘I'm not going.'

‘Coward!'

‘Eh, I'm a coward.'

They went round trees, crossed bridges, and came to an open area of grass and flowers. Perfume scented the air.

‘What are we going to do, eh?'

‘Why don't we shout?'

‘No. That won't help.'

An owl hooted repeatedly over them. They fell still. The disembodied sound floated on the air like an omen. Keme cried out. Omovo felt his entrails go cold. The chill ran through him. Omovo thought desperately: ‘This is a silent drama. It will soon be over.'

Keme gripped him. ‘There is a light near those houses.'

‘It is a false light.'

‘How do you know? It is a hope.'

They went towards the light. They stumbled. They kicked things. They stepped into little streams and got their shoes wet. They clambered over wooden bridges, and were frightened by the reverberations of their footsteps. It turned out to be a dead end. The light was from an uncompleted building. It was separated from the parkland by water and barbed wire.

‘Let's wade through.'

‘Yes, and get your tail bitten off by a guard dog, eh?'

They turned back and picked their way aimlessly through the obstacles in the dark.

‘This is a bloody anti-climax.'

‘No, man, the night is balancing itself, claiming what it gives.'

‘Then the night is bloody selfish.'

Omovo thought: ‘God, the silent drama is becoming dangerous.' The night had assumed the aspect of a ritual: a thing enacted by the dark-cast trees.

‘God, Omovo, this is not a joke anymore. My mother is waiting at home. This is how my sister...'

‘Shut up, Keme! You are making it worse.'

‘Omovo, you are pretending! You are as afraid as I am.'

‘Even more.'

The trees were brooding, watchful figures. The shrubbery took on different shapes. The wind howled like a thing possessed and the raging surf orchestrated the separate terrors. Then, mercifully, the moon unfolded its soft radiance. But when the anaemic fingers of moonlight passed under a massive cloud, the park darkened again.

‘God is playing games with us.'

‘We are in a zoo.'

Leaves crunched. Twigs cracked and broke underfoot. Empty cans twanged. Footsteps thudded away from them. Keme kicked something and stumbled heavily. Omovo growled: ‘You damn oaf. Get up and let's get out of here while the moon amuses herself.'

His voice was forced. Then Keme shrieked. It was a lone sound. Omovo's heart missed a thousand beats and the chill held his vitals in a relentless grip. Keme screamed again. And this time Omovo knew that the nightmare had materialised.

‘Omovo, Omovo, come and see...'

Omovo dashed behind the scrub. He friend was kneeling beside a body.

‘Omovo...'

‘Stop calling my name!'

‘Sorry. I think... it's...'

‘Dead?'

‘Yes...'

‘Have you a match?'

They lit a match and covered the flame with two cupped hands. It was the body of a girl. Her head had been roughly shaved. The eyes were half open. Her mouth was abnormally pouted. Her teeth gleamed. There was a bronze cross round her neck. It dangled towards the earth. Her flowered cotton dress had been torn and was bloodstained. A white foul-smelling cloth had been used to cover her lower parts. She was barefoot. She couldn't have been more than ten years old. And she was pretty. There was a blank, pale expression on her face. Omovo gave a low, helpless cry. Then the matchlight flickered. Shadows leapt and the light died out. The night was silent.

The shock exploded in their minds. Omovo was seized with a strange bitter feeling. And then he experienced a sensation of ‘déjà vu'.

‘It's a ritual murder.'

For Keme the night had tipped over the electrified edge of nightmare. It brought sharply back to him the horror of losing both his father and sister. A blurred aspect of evil conjured itself before him.

‘We've got to do something.'

‘Yes. We have.'

Omovo looked at Keme. The emergent moonlight touched his face with sheen. Something had happened to Keme's face. It had transformed itself into a rock-hard abstraction. Omovo felt a coldness on his skull, as if an invisible pair of icy hands had been placed on his head. He shivered. Then the implications of the fear and the terror became lucid.

‘We can't take her out or report directly.'

‘No. We would be the first suspects. God, this is meaningless...'

‘Senseless...'

‘God, I'm going to follow this up to the end. It's stupid...'

‘Let's go to Dele's place and ring the police. Anonymously.'

‘Yes. First problem is how to get out.'

‘I wonder if your bike is still safe.'

‘We will cross that bridge later. It's all...'