That night, the tear fell then evaporated into the air. The next day, the children of the kingdom began to change. Filled with an overwhelming sadness, they ran to the rivers’ edges crying quietly into the waters. They gathered around trees holding long, dark cloths, circling the trunks and communicating in a silent language only they understood. They clustered at the palace windows grabbing and squeezing their throats violently, feet jerking uncontrollably while they tried to be still. For four nights, the children did not sleep. They wandered the kingdom with bloodshot eyes cloaked in a heavy, melancholy silence. At night they sat in the king’s garden, crying into the soil. When their mothers found them, they removed tiny brass tears from the corners of their eyes. They held their children’s brass tears over fires, watching them melt into the lines of their palms.
For the next stage, Ere proceeded to heat, then melt Ogiso’s model, pouring it into a mould. Later, after the clay hardened, he began to chip and cast the image. When the brass head was finished, the children became themselves again, though there was no ceremony to honour the completion, no celebration of the return of the children’s laughter, no music that ignited the switch of hips no thunderous applause. Instead it was presented on an evening when a hushed silence fell on Benin. And the clouds coughed raindrops that dampened not just the land but the spirit of people.
Once the rain passed Benin looked like a kingdom that had risen from under water and was drying itself off. Craftsman Ere had worked long hours to ensure the head was finished on time. He had joked with his wife that you could fill a large metal bowl with the amount of sweat he had produced over this task. Ere was convinced he had been watched. There was no proof of this except there was occasionally a whoosh of air that threw dust in the doorway of his workroom followed by the sound of rapid steps in the distance. When he had relayed these fears to his wife, she promptly squashed them with a lashing from her mouth, and warned him not to embarrass their family with tales based on hot air.
When Oba Odion finally first saw the brass head, he studied it hard for so long without a word that Craftsman Ere was forced to ask, “Oba is it to your satisfaction?” The Oba touched it tentatively, as if afraid his hand would be snapped off.
“It is too much like Ogiso, as if he is standing here before me!”
Craftsman Ere shifted his weight from one leg to the other along with his patience. “But Oba, that is what you asked me to do. I did as you instructed.”
“I did as you instructed,” Oba mimicked him. “Don’t you have a mind of your own? ‘In his likeness’ does not mean I want it in his exact image.”
Craftsman Ere gritted his teeth; a braver man would have slapped the Oba. He saw himself doing so in his head, a slap for every day he had spent producing this artefact now met with scorn. Instead he said, “Oba what would you have me do? Surely you cannot expect me to make another one?”
“No, you will not have to make another head,” Oba Odion said, but it sounded hollow, as if the words were coming from far away and not him.
“Besides,” he added, “I am now sick of the sight of you Ere.”
“I only did my best Oba, after all, this was what you asked for,” Craftsman Ere grumbled, feeling deeply insulted that the Oba had not complimented his skill and hard work. Stupid king! Just then a fly swept in encouraged by the heat and noise. It buzzed around perusing the Oba’s chamber as if deciding if it was good enough to languish in. It finally settled on a tiny crack in the wall that looked like it was a scar healing.
“Will it be displayed with the other pieces Oba?” He watched as Oba Odion tried to kill the fly and failed. It laughed at him before rising to the ceiling for a celebratory jig.
“I have not decided where it will go yet, when I have Ere you will know.”
“Thank you Oba.”
“You can go.”
“Yes Oba,” he said, bowing again on his way out.
Oba Odion thought long and hard about what to do with the brass head. He admitted the truth to himself only, which was that Craftsman Ere had been right, the brass head had an unsettling power about it. It was a little disturbing to see it finished, as if it would come to life the minute he turned his back. At night, he began to sweat thinking of the head. His heart rate increased whenever he passed it, a feeling of suffocation overtook his body. He couldn’t breathe looking at it. Oba Odion gave the brass head to Adesua and lied to her that it was in honour of their marriage, although this had never been the case by an Oba. She accepted it gratefully and when he handed it to her, it was the first time he had seen her smile in days, as if it had slipped from someone’s face and fallen onto hers. Word spread around the palace that the Oba was showing favour to his new young bride and upon hearing this the other wives seethed like boiling pots.
Deep in a forest another body dangled from a tired tree. Dead for months, it too had sweltered in the heat. Oozing a rotten stench that stirred sated barks and crinkled the faces of leaves, stinging bush wilted and poisonous nettle shuddered, as the toes of the hanging frame trembled one last time, Ogiso left his body at last to find a new home.
Vicarious through Fuchsia
I threw on clothes and hopped on a few trains to Harlesden, to Williams and Co. Solicitors. The scent of curry goat and hot rotis wafting from the Caribbean takeaway meant I didn’t have to glance at the clock to know it was nearly lunchtime. Inside the building, Pauline the gatekeeper was typing swiftly on her PC and barking orders into a telephone handset. She winked before waving me through with a wiggle of her multi-tasking fingers. Mervyn was at the fax machine yanking documents out and scrunching them into paper missiles before flinging them into a wastebasket.
“Hey,” I mumbled in greeting.
He turned to face me. “Go inside nuh.”
On his desk, a mug of steaming coffee rested dangerously near the edge. An atlas sat right next to a new photograph of Mervyn and his two sons in a boat in Jamaica. They were holding large crabs that looked as though they’d crawl over their heads and eat their expressions. Big smiles were plastered on their faces. Behind them the water was like a big, rippling blue sky.
I studied his extensive library; Fly Fishing for Beginners and How Not to Kill Your Wife on Holiday held my attention among the heavy bound volumes of Law. He walked in whistling, more papers tucked under his left arm and clutching a bag of sweets in his right hand. He dumped them unceremoniously on the desk.
“So wha’appen, answering machine brok’ up again?” He pointed to the bag and I popped a chewy cola bottle in my mouth.
“Naw, I hardly check it.”
“You’ve come for the diary,” he said.
“How did you know that?”
“Because I know you.” He stroked a finger over his lip and took a quick sip of coffee.
“You haven’t read it have you?” I leaned forward in the chair watching for any deceptive body language.
“Nope, I’ll admit I’m curious though.”
“I don’t know why my mother didn’t give it to me years ago.”
“Me neither but about three months before she died she came to see me.”
“So?”
“Well she was behaving odd like, agitated.”