“Daddy? Once I was mad, I ripped my doll’s head off.”
“Really?”
“Yes, I put it back though. Daddy, you don’t really control the weather do you.” She said this, as if she’d been indulging me all along, like she was the parent and I the child.
Rider Rendered Blue
When the oyibo men from Portugal arrived for a short visit the council wore their gleeful expressions openly and proudly. These visitors had come to the palace court as emissaries of the King of Portugal. They had heard elaborate tales of the Benin kingdom and its Empire. How it stretched beyond the whole of Idu land, into the lands of the Mahin, Ilaje, Dahomey and further still. It was Benin’s imperial might and trade routes that interested them. The palace welcomed them with a warm reception and they in return wanted to give a Portuguese education to the Benin royal household. They intrigued people, with their pale skin and strange language. And they were slighter than Benin men, whose broad, sturdy shoulders were built for the demands of the land. People joked that the Portuguese would not cope in the harsh, glaring heat, but they surprised people. Even telling the council that sometimes they struggled with hot weather where they were from. They were told the Oba was too sick to personally receive visitors.
If these men noticed anything strange they kept it to themselves. After all, how could they distinguish what was the custom and what wasn’t? They were in a fascinating, foreign world, everything appeared odd and interesting to them. They wanted to see it all, and the council showed them, flourishing as impressive hosts. The palace staff found themselves working constantly. Cooking and cleaning, repeatedly preening for show but they were happy to have a distraction from all that had been happening. The soldiers from the Oba’s army had been instructed to cease looking for Filo. After all, she was a wife Oba Odion had never wanted and she was long gone.
In the evenings the court would entertain the visitors with music, and dancing while the councilmen drummed their fingers and nodded their heads along. They revelled in their supposedly mutually beneficial new alliance. Slapped backs and forced laughter drove conversations. But something escaped the council members: these Portuguese men were not just eyeing in admiration the Benin palace, its art, the Oba’s collection, treasures and armoury. They were watching with a clever, concealed furtive hunger and disbelief, already stripping away what they could with the naked eye. They were given a ceremonious send off. For their final evening, a fat calf was cooked and the men ate till their bellies were full and they could barely move.
There was a vulnerability emanating off the palace that even the glow of that evening couldn’t mask, as though if you drew a big enough breath and blew at it, it would split into large chunky fragments made up of red clay, betrayals and longings, revealing flawed walls intended to protect the inhabitants from everything. The councilmen had boasted to their foreign guests of the tribute system collected on behalf of the Oba. The reality was the opposite; they had been struggling to gather tributes from the surrounding areas for the last two seasons. People were having a terrible time feeding their families, farmers in particular because the harvest period had been and gone, yielding very little. The council couldn’t have told their visitors this. Or that pile of rotten cocoa yams were more useful than their Oba who still sat locked away mumbling in solitude.
Instead, a careful picture of Benin had been presented, dressed up in tales of conquests, happy traditional songs and an outwardly thriving palace. On this front the council succeeded because the Portuguese, uncertain of what to expect had been flummoxed. Why the Benin were a civilised bunch! Such a sprawling palace, what impressive, sophisticated artefacts and cultured people and of course this was true. If you caught the chuckles darting over the holes, the high-pitched voices talking over one another in excitement and the clapping, you may have thought all was well in Benin. In the palace, they forgot about their deception and began to believe in the sweetness of the image. The Portuguese left and the council congratulated themselves for days, what a coup. But they had made a fatal mistake; they had unlocked the stranger’s gate and in doing so, extended a hand to unforeseen dangers. Because more European men would come, setting in motion an unstoppable, tragically disastrous, chain of events.
Adesua, stunned by Filo’s departure, continued to feel surprised for days after she found out Filo was really gone. How had she not seen it coming? Had Filo planned it? Fooling them all with that air of fragility. Filo who slipped her bracelets over the pain she had worn so openly, it had hurt to look at her sometimes. Five days after their Portuguese guests left, things were gradually returning to their normal state. Adesua sitting on the hard floor of her chamber, was thinking of the last time she had seen Filo with her sad, sombre smile that swum in her face. She never really looked at you but through you, not because you were of no interest but out of a bad habit she seemed incapable of breaking. Although Adesua admitted to herself that she felt betrayed, she knew she had no right to feel that way. But somehow a bond had formed between them that joined them together, in anticipation of a life of duty, disappointment and routine. Somehow, finding the strength nobody knew she possessed Filo had smashed it.
Adesua surprised by the anger brimming inside her stood and paced the wall on her left. There, she lifted the brass head from a dark wooden stand, thinking again of Filo’s fixation with the thing. The air in the chamber seemed loaded with possibilities yet somehow she knew this was a bad sign. Terrible incidents seemed to find the palace fertile ground. Sully walked into her head, she pictured him so clearly, tales dangling from the corner of his lips, holding an audience in the palm of his hand. A rush of fear attacked her body so suddenly; she wanted to cough it out. She wondered where Filo was and if she would finally find peace. She envied Filo’s newly discovered freedom. The crickets started to talk, as if alerting each other to some discovery. Adesua began to vigorously polish the brass head with her hand, as presently that action alone seemed the answer to everything.
At the opposite end of the palace, Sully was also fighting the feeling of unease. He sat several steps away from his quarters, occasionally looking up to name a glimmering star. With each attempt he hoped to trick himself into believing all was well. But the apprehension stuck and as a result he had insisted on not seeing Adesua for a few days. He was a man who paid attention to the voice within and it was telling him to leave. Benin was cursed and he knew he should go before it mercilessly stripped him too. But not yet, it wasn’t enough that he was witnessing its slow destruction from the perfect position. Or that he had watched Oba Odion oversee the beginning of the palace’s collapse. He just had to be patient he told himself.
Oba Odion’s decline, the blood leaking through the roof, Omotole’s disfigured baby; these were more signs. The palace was revealing its secrets and one day he would stumble on what he had been waiting for. He let these thoughts drift from him like smoke while near his feet a tiny glow of colour pulled his gaze down. A small ladybird crawled around aimlessly. He realised he was so deep in thought he nearly crushed it. It appeared to be in some distress. It rolled onto its back and began to twitch its tiny, curled black legs. He watched, gripped by its short, jerky movements, which became increasingly pronounced, as if it was trying to reveal something. Then it stopped, perhaps fed up with the futile attempt of sharing whatever burden it carried. It rocked back over on its front, perhaps the call of other bugs and crawly creatures luring it over. Sully watched it make its way till it disappeared out of sight. He closed his eyes tightly, wishing there were things he didn’t know because knowing changed you. And once you acknowledged this you could never go back. It seemed, even the tiny creatures of the land knew this truth.