Shortly after this display, three superior officers came out, one holding a syringe in a gloved hand. They held Mustapha down, right there on the common room floor in the presence of all those soldiers. He wriggled his body still screaming for all it was worth, as if something had possessed him. One officer punched him in the face. Blood spurted from his nose and dribbled into his mouth. Then he was smiling blood. The soldiers’ voices filled the room, beseeching the officers to take it easy man sir! Feet shifted nervously around the suddenly hot floor. The silver needle, a slim spear in the big room, pierced the stuffy air before it did him. He was sedated, and then they carried him away like it was nothing. I am glad I did not see this; it would have ruined my day.
This weekend I will go back to the shop in Onisha where the beautiful girl Felicia sits on her shop counter throne as if she is in the wrong picture. The lines of her body will be as I remember. She will come to life when she sees me. I will buy gari, cola, and peanuts. The portable fan will blow air over her shifting face; other customers will shop themselves into the background. My hands will be steady. I will make useful and useless conversation with her. She will tell me more about herself. She will give me my change and in the process, something else will be exchanged.
Two-Legged Race, Three Legged Stool
One type of destruction has a way of serenading its victim. It led Oba Odion through the next few weeks with a sure steady lyrical hand. The Oba had a problem; it was not that he was forgetting things, but that he couldn’t forget. He would rise late in the day craving the taste of days-old palm wine, sinking himself into the drinking of it till people could smell him long before he entered a room. He stumbled through the palace halls, arms outstretched, balancing himself with fingers splayed on the walls. In council meetings his mind abandoned his head, thoughts balking at the voices. He found himself mumbling agreement to the suggestions of the council members, while distracted by the most irrelevant details. Like how crooked Councilman Ewe’s teeth were, and why it had only recently begun to bother him. With every other breath the room grew smaller, as if it were shrinking.
Seated at their table of crumbling self-importance, Oba Odion had also lost his ferocious appetite for the wiles of his wives. In the mornings, his flaccid penis would greet him, the small slit at the crown frustrated by its wasted pleadings, lost in the snarling thatch of curly hair that extended down the softening expanse of his brown thighs. He avoided the questioning eyes of the palace and took to using the long twisted parched path that led away from the gates. That way he could compose himself and talk down the speedy jolts slamming against his temples. He realised on a murky, tangled day that something you thought you wanted badly may turn out to be your undoing. And on that day, he began wearing an expression of deep sadness he knew he would never be able to take off. He would have to cry through it, talk through it and laugh through it, because something was happening. Inside him something was spreading from the pit of his stomach. It was unstoppable, but he tried to slow it down and dilute it with drink. It hit him then, this was what it must feel like if somebody took a heated bar of iron and scraped it along your bones.
Adesua and Sully found themselves staining patches of ground at night as their scents of coconut and a pleasing manly odour that permeated the air mingled and curled the branches of trees. They wallowed in each other whenever possible. Stole glances amidst busy throngs of people filtering in and out around the yards. Glances that burgeoned into the soft pad of a finger against parted lips and later into surrendered bodies. There was a delicious pleasure to it. Adesua struggled to keep this happiness from bubbling to the surface. She had to bite her lip to stop it spilling out. Their betrayal didn’t thin their blood; it left only a slightly sour taste, which was washed away by the abandon of two people who couldn’t help themselves. They were careful treading cracked lines across the palace with a rhythm of light steps. The possibility of being caught loomed before them, large and steadily arranging itself into caution. Bright-eyed, they attended to their duties with a muffled vigour.
Sully guarded the Oba with an expression of dutiful concern, but the veiled glee in his eyes told another story. By now Adesua had developed a healthy disdain for Oba Odion, insult upon insult! Had he no shame? Trembling and falling all over the place like a useless drunkard. What had gotten into him? But really, what had gotten into all of them? Under the punishing heat in the palace, people were falling apart. Only the day before, in the palace kitchen between piling the ingredients of cocoa yam, goat meat, cassava, wild mushrooms, bitter leaves, baby tomatoes and the bustling servants, the head chef Ahere had ground to a halt and screamed. He stood there screaming while his eyes bulged out of his head and piss trickled down his leg. Nobody knew what he had seen but he was inconsolable for the rest of the day, sent to lie down while the other servants squashed their alarm with tightly-spun snickers.
On the nights Adesua did not see Sully she would lay on her mat turning restlessly, wondering if his feet itched the way hers did, thinking how she never meant to start this unspeakable thing that belonged to them. But it would go on, because she felt alive while the spicy, addictive flavours of dissent swelled her taste buds.
Omotole’s burgeoning stomach by now stretched out full and rounded and preceded her wherever she went. She waddled about the palace pleased with herself, a puffed up hen crowing above the others. She was beginning to tire even more easily, but she told herself that was what happened when you carried the Oba’s heir, as she began the long, arduous walk to the river, on a dirty, loping path littered with stones and shrivelled leaves worn by the sun. It was not too far but far enough from prying eyes. She spat and gulped her irritation at seeing the blue, bubbling spittle on the ground. The petals were still appearing inside the wet fold under her tongue, and every morning she had to rinse her mouth out several times so it wouldn’t stain her teeth. She knew she had to talk to the Oba and soon. The fool was spoiling everything, and did not seem the least bit concerned about becoming the laughing stock of his own kingdom.
As she neared the river, she could hear the chattering of birds and close by smoke from crackling firewood wandered up into the endless expanse of darkening sky. She thought she spotted the ears of a hare behind a clenched bush, foraging for what remnants of food it could find. At the edge of the rippling river she steadied her body for a moment to listen to the water gently caressing the banks. This was where she came, clutching at her throat on days when she felt possessed and was fleeing from discovery, to howl out the fire within her. There was nobody around and that was how she preferred it. She took off her wrapper and naked, she waded gingerly into the river. Her swollen breasts sank into the cool water and her dark brown nipples tingling a little hardened to nubs in relief. One day soon she thought, Benin’s new heir would be born, suckling all the strength he would need at his mother’s breast. His tiny fist curling and uncurling, she saw this vision so precisely, she almost sighed out loud in pleasure. She submerged her head under the clear water, as thin blue veined streams escaped from her nostrils merging with the ripples.