Dangerous Love by Ben Okri

needed. He was a huge, vociferous man. Omovo’s father, unable to stand up to him, took the table home, weighed down with his pretended dignity.
    The walls were originally a marine blue. Now they had fingerprints and smudges stamped beyond arms’ reach. Omovo could not figure out how those stains had got there. Suddenly he was assaulted with a vision of stains and filth. He couldn’t breathe. And it was only when he imagined himself painting the walls a fresh colour and cleaning out the house that there was a miraculous change in ambience. But then a lizard scurried across the wall, shattered his fantasy, and wrenched him back to a world of disconnected sounds. His eyes fell on the linoleum. It was the most obvious symbol of the state of the house. It was faded. The red-painted floor showed through its holes.
    There was a stale smell in the dining room. It was the odour of a kitchen badly in need of a thorough cleaning.
    Omovo thought about his father, whom he loved in his silent kind of way. But Omovo also felt sorry, and at the same time not at all sorry, for the man. He saw his father as a failure. But he admired him a little for making a bold show of maintaining whatever dignity he could: to fail was not a crime. Omovo thought about his father’s impulsive acts. Then he tried not to think of them. The various thoughts mingled, fed on one another, and shuffled out of his mind. Then his sense of loss came back to him in the form of a light, stomach-seizing nausea. Then it left. And he realised that every day he had to do something with his ability: and that if he didn’t he would be doomed to the same destructive impulses that preyed on his family.
    He gave his mind over to thoughts of the painting: and he confronted another kind of emptiness. There was nothing within but bare images, phantoms, shadows. At that moment he also realised that he would have to make something out of the dream. He thought: ‘It’s going to be difficult. A kind of pilgrim’s progress through the mind.’
    He sighed, shook his head, washed his hands in the kitchen sink, and went to his room.
    Omovo began some tentative sketches. The efforts were irritating. He needed to define the outlines in his mind before he embarked on the painting. His method of creation was usually spontaneous. But this work was different. It had to be coaxed, attuned to, grasped, released. Before he could paint it he had to live it, and be possessed by it, he had to expand the cracks within, to deepen, to go through terrains of dark soul-suffering, to include all that was miserable and sweet, and to grow inwardly. But the sketches looked foolish. In a burst of anger he ripped up the paper. He was in this state when a banging on the door assaulted him. His voice rang out full of anger:
    â€˜Who is bangin’ on my door like that?’
    â€˜Omovo! Omovo!... won’t you come and clear the place where you ate? Who is your slave dat you left the plate for, eh? I don’t want trouble-o!’ Blackie’s voice rang back. It was loud and calculated to attract attention.
    â€˜What plate, what plate?’
    â€˜You ask me what plate? You chop food that I cook and now you ask me what plate, eh?’
    â€˜What food? The soup that tasted like gutter water, or the meat that was hard like rubber?’
    â€˜Omovo, I have said my own-o! I have said my own-o!’
    Omovo’s mood lightened: he sensed a provocation that needed only the slightest excuse for an open confrontation. Blackie was an expert at confrontation. Omovo had seen her verbally tear down some of the compound women. He had also witnessed her destroy a man who had come to Omovo’s father about a long-standing debt. He fled before she was finished with him. And he never returned for his money.
    â€˜Okay, it’s all right. It’s all right,’ Omovo purred as he came out of his room. He recognised the signs in her amber-black face. She was small,