Dangerous Love by Ben Okri Page A

waspish and cunning. She had clean white teeth, small marks on her cheeks, a well-shaped body, ample hips and a cantankerous disposition. She would flare up for seemingly trivial reasons: an allusion to her childlessness could dangerously turn the tone of conversation; and anyone who used her bucket to fetch water and didn’t put it back in the right place, could be lacerated by the sharpness of her tongue. She was an irrepressible gossip and often let out ‘home secrets’ to other women – which were just as often used against her in subsequent quarrels.
    When she first came to the house, she was warm, understanding and self-sacrificing. Omovo’s brothers treated her with mild condescension. She tried hard to please them and sometimes made a fool of herself in the process. Then gradually she revealed herself. She was good at dissembling. She listened at keyholes to significant conversations. And when the two elder sons left she saw a whole vacant terrain before her. With Omovo’s detachment from the course of events in the house, she wormed her way into his father’s heart. The man came to depend upon her for those little necessary comforts. And they even did business deals together that Omovo knew nothing about. His father saw in her something that wasn’t in Omovo’s mother: a readiness to submit and agree with everything he said, a desire to worship him silently. Not very long after she entered the house, she became pregnant.
    But then she lost the baby: she miscarried. She nearly died of humiliation. She fell ill and dried up. She developed a cruel streak. She took part in clandestine activities, made strange trips, was seen in strange dark places. Omovo’s father confronted her, and she confessed that she had been going to see a herbalist to find out what made her lose the baby. Relationships in the house became lop-sided: she was loyal to Omovo’s father, made him the choicest dishes, but was indifferent to Omovo. They once had a ferocious argument about food and afterwards Omovo, fearing that she might take to poisoning him, started eating outside. Bits of these hanging tensions came together now and then – and ignited into a quarrel. Omovo sensed that this was one of those occasions.
    â€˜Blackie, it’s all right,’ he said again loudly, rising to her level. ‘You have told me already, so why go on shouting? Why make noise over such a small thing?’
    Omovo’s voice was deliberately gentle. There was a mocking gleam in his eyes. He looked down at her. She was serious. His forehead gleamed and his shaven head was like the ridge of some longish squat yam. He knew he looked comic. Normally she would have laughed, like the day he shaved his head. But her face, in inverse proportion, was serious. She seemed intent on dragging him into a quarrel. She didn’t look at him but at the floor, tense and ready.
    When she looked up Omovo was shocked. He saw hatred in her eyes. This wasn’t the first time he had seen it. He remembered seeing her look at him with such venom the first time they met. Her marriage to Omovo’s father was done traditionally. It was only on the morning of the event that the man told Omovo and his brothers what was happening. It was barely a year since their mother had died and it came as a shock.
    None of the sons attended the ceremony. Okur and Umeh stayed in friends’ places getting stoned and drunk. Two weeks passed before they returned home. Omovo stayed away only for the ceremony. When he came in late at night he confronted the solitary sight of his father and Blackie in the sitting room. There had been a power failure, the light had been seized and the flickering candle on the over-large centre table played havoc with their faces and their shadows. The man looked up at his son. And Omovo saw years and years of suffering, hiding and defeat in those eyes. This was supposed to be a new life, his first real victory for