The Portrait Of Nirvana

There is nothing the eye sees
that will make it shed tears of blood.
- African proverb

This night is a very cold night. I could see that it had snowed not too long ago. And now I wonder why I had to come in winter. I should have waited till spring. I should have come at a time when the sun shines mildly and the flowers blossom; a time when it is neither too cold nor too hot.

Now I find myself running. No, am sprinting because I discover that my feet can no longer rest completely on the ground; I have lost the balance of human standing. This is bitter, but this is little compared with what I have lost. I have lost greater things. I have lost total physical connection with my family, but this was not much. I lost my only unborn child. Even this was not much. I lost Butler and left with the essence of Nirvana. This too was a little thing. Then I lost the inner man and was left with the shell of life , or rather, I became the shell of life, a mere shell, bodiless, invisible, extraordinary… a spirit. This was fatal.

I run for a long time, sprinting through the miles of dark empty road lined with the windy trees that rustled with foreboding. At last I see the little cottage I visited last year. It is well hidden in between the Christmas trees. I remember that this is his house, this is where he lives. Around the frontage, I could spot the roses now fading. Why did he let them die? Has he forgotten these roses? Has he forgotten the reality of Nirvana? Has he forgotten me… I stop. The wind blows violently now and I become like melting chocolate, running towards a pond, the pond of memory. When I meet it, I go back into the past, back in that day; two springs ago.

That day, two springs ago, I was whole and strong. It was evening in Amano and I was weeding at the little maize farm behind our compound. The compound was alive like every other evening. Papa was drinking the white wine with two of his friends, Ekebike and Ngbaruko. Mama and my sister Ogechi were pounding yams with mortar and pestle outside the cooking hut. I was bent low and was lost in the sober tune I was humming when suddenly I heard an unusual voice so close behind me. It was a man's voice. I raised my head and what I saw amazed me. Before me was a man, an unusual man. He was one of those kind of men they said had come from beyond the sea; a White man. I was so startled at his voice that I fell sprawling on the soil against a thin maize plant that crashed under my weight. He smiled and came forward to me and tried to raise me. But I screamed so loudly that all of the people in my compound came out at once to see what had happened to me. I was terrified by the suddenness of this encounter.

Papa and his friends ran to the farm once they heard me scream. When I saw papa, I rose up and ran to him. At once, he ordered me to go back into the compound. From behind the palm frond walls of our compound, I watched my father and his friends talk with the white man. It was a peaceful talk. When they turned towards the compound - and the white man turned towards his way also - they were laughing.

Papa was an unusual man. He said nothing to me. I couldn't ask him what he said to the white man, but I longed to know. I thought to myself that there was more to that brief meeting between Papa and the white man. Two days afterwards, I could barely sleep; so many questions began to flog me. Who was he? What had he wanted? Will he come back again? Will I see him again? There were even more questions.

Then one morning, on an eke market day when Papa usually went to trade at the big market at Amude, he stayed back with his friend in his obi drinking and talking aloud. I could hear the noise the men made from my hut where I was sitting and I wondered what was going on. When it was evening and the sun had journeyed to Amano in the east, I was falling asleep when I suddenly noticed a unique voice among the voices at the obi. I sprang up and pulled a wooden stool close to the wall. My hut shared the same wall with the obi. Towards the roof of the hut was a hole where a stone had fallen out, so I stood close to the wall atop a wooden stool to listen and to watch unseen.

'You are welcome my dear friend.' Papa said smiling. 'You may sit down and share kola with us.'

Captain Butler smiled and said something through his interpreter whose native name had been changed from Ngbaruko to Jude. 'The white man does not eat kola but he is delighted at this reception.'

Papa nodded and muttered that he was aware that it was not in the white man's culture to do so. He broke the kola among his two friends after the ancient custom of receiving visitors or guests in Igbo land.

'Our sages say that if a man goes to the forest and comes back with a big tree branch, which he places at the door of his house, then he is not afraid when he wakes up every morning and sees the branch lying there. He is not afraid because he knows how it came there' He drew in air with his mouth, deep breath through his nostrils, and made noises with his throat. That was the way he punctuated his sentences. 'But when a man wakes up and sees such wood lying at the door of his house and doesn't know its origin, he becomes afraid and has to ask questions to ensure his own safety.'

He watched his friends nod in agreement as he waited for Jude to interpret what he had just said. Encouraged, he went on. 'I am such a man as I have just talked about. Three days ago, I was in my compound when I heard my daughter scream. When I ran to see what was wrong with her, I met the white man here with her. I asked him what he did to her or why he was in my territory. We have heard of how the white man treats our people. But he could not give me an answer. I could not understand him. However, I saw that he was calm and meant no harm so I asked him to come back today with an interpreter.'

Captain Butler nodded. He knew little Igbo but could not speak it well. This was his fourth year in the Igbo-speaking part of Eastern Niger of colonial British West Africa. He had been assigned to Bende District, the region Amano belonged to. When he began to speak that afternoon through Jude his extended tongue, his words were like tiny supernatural arrows that shot into one's flesh and turned into a crawling blue insect in it. They all came and crawled inside me. No word was lost. They all came to me; the whole story like a thousand of these supernatural arrows that bred a thousand blue insects.

Fourteen years before that day, as an artist, the then younger Butler drew a portrait which he added to his stock of artworks. After drawing this portrait, he felt unusually drawn to it that he set it aside. It was the portrait of a Negro woman wearing a loose-fitted cloth and sitting on a small log of wood. The portrait was so artistically created that it looked almost perfect to him. He named it Nirvana. It bred incredible belief in his mind that the portrait was an exact portrait of a living person. Hence, he began to see her as a real person who was in existence or had existed in the past somewhere in the world. He had wished that if she was in existence, she should cross his path someday. Each time he looked at the portrait, this incredible conviction intensified. It was fed fat by emotion and was nurtured by dreams. He told them now one of such dreams which he had on the night of August 17, 1906, the night he first came to Africa.

In that dream, he had found himself walking towards a rural village path in Amano. The sun was setting in the sky and the shadows had formed a shade for him. In the village, he was walking towards the last end where a woman stood on a platform, in the midst of the people, backing him. It was an unusual scene. It was as though an inner voice was urging him towards the figure. The skin of her back was glazed with pale yellow colour, as though a candle was burning within her skin. He walked on hastily, his heart throbbing with violent curiosity to unravel the mystery that was set before him. When he reached out and the figure turned; what he saw before him was a woman who was the perfect image of his portrait of the Negro lass. Just then, at that point, he woke up.

After he told the story, he brought out a piece of brown paper and spread it on the earthen floor. There was an immediate wave of shock that was spread around the men like arrows. Even Butler 's own initial shock about the drawing was renewed. Papa examined the portrait silently for a while. He was too shocked to speak. Next I heard Papa calling my name and summoning me to the obi.

The first thing that greeted my eyes was the piece of paper Papa was holding. At once I reached for it. It was unbelievable. It was me. I examined myself again to be sure I was still whole, that I had not reduced to a piece of paper. But I was whole.

Once was enough for him to sweep me off my feet. He became my lover, the strange man who did not speak Igbo whom I had been told in the dream many years ago would marry me. Afterwards, Papa and his friends consulted the diviner at Oturu about the portrait and what significance it would have on me. They were told that it was a picture that had been given to the white man by his gods about who he was to marry. They all knew the white man's God. They knew He was strong. I myself was convinced that there would not be any other man in the world that would like me more than the man the gods themselves had allowed to make a second creation of me. To me, he was a second god.

He came by almost everyday. Unlike the native men who were afraid or were not allowed by the tradition of the land to visit their lovers until after marriage, he visited our compound many times. During all his visits,  I was always summoned to greet him when he was about to leave. I longed to be alone with him. One day, as I was returning from the stream in the village, he met me. He had become used to coming to our village and people were no longer afraid of him as they were of other white men. I was overjoyed. I dragged him into the bush with Jude coming behind us. His skin was the colour of ripe banana. There he told me about the roses, about his country, about the portrait. Then he dipped his tongue in my mouth. It was an unknown pleasure, but I liked it.

We met again and again.

Then, one unforgettable day, while alone in the cleared path of the forest and sitting on a log, he told me about the roses that never fade, which were planted in front of his cottage in England.

‘How is your home, is it like our village?' I asked him. He laughed.

‘No. It is a big country far beyond the ocean.'

‘Is it your kind who lives there?'

‘Yes, the English people of England  live there.'

‘Do you have brothers and sisters?'  I asked next. He didn't answer; he simply moved closer and tasted my tongue and let me have a fill of his spittle.

I kept silent afterwards. He became silent too. The sun then came to me, like a sort of flavour that however burnt my skin. I pointed to the shade under the tree and he carried me there. When he dropped me, I noticed the change in his countenance. His eyes had turned pale the way they looked when he wanted to place his tongue in mine.  

His tongue this time was sweetest. The sun had faded away by the time I closed my eyes. I could not withstand it all. I lost my tongue in his mouth. He spread the fabric that was wrapped from my chest down to my knees on the tiny grasses. I held him tight throughout the moment and even long after it. I loved him and he loved me too.

One month after that day, I told him I was pregnant. He was glad. His Igbo had become almost perfect. That evening, we went back to that same part of the forest and sat on the same log of wood. He held me.

'I will marry you.' He said. 'I am already tired of this place. I came to Africa to find you and now that I have you, I want to return back to my home: to my beautiful cottage in Gloustershire where the beautiful roses. There we must go.'

He came to our house the following day and told his intentions to papa. That was the happiest day of my life. I danced all day in my hut until tears ran down my face. But this joy did not survive for long. It was the following day that the birds of evil flew into our house. They crouched in every part of the house, hanging on the roof of our obi, of my hut, over the cooking hut and even leaked into my dream. I smelt them in the cool harmattan breeze that came through every opening in the house in the mornings. It was an ill smell; the smell of blood and of uncertainty. And I did not know what it was.

The day after Butler visited Papa, Isiguzo and his son Ogbonna visited our house. I heard their voices as they argued and quarreled with Papa. I had told them again and again that I did not love Ogbonna. He was betrothed to me when I barely knew my left from my right. I grew up to loathe him more than anyone in Amano. And anytime I heard him mention my name or boast that he was going to be my husband, I felt like dying. I had told Papa that the cocks that were given to my Papa's father as dowry and the marriage rite that was conducted when I was four were not proper. It was a vain, barbaric, senseless tradition. I would never marry Ogbonna.

This kind of argument had happened several times in the past but that day it was different. I heard it all. I heard Ogbonna swear by Nkudele, the deity of the Amano forest that I would marry another man over his dead body. Afterwards I heard the door of the obi slam so hard that I feared it broke- and really it broke. I feared. And all that night I couldn't sleep. I kept dreaming of Butler, of his tongue, of the cottage and of beautiful roses: until long into the night.

That morning, I refused to go to the stream. Butler would go to the forest to wait for me. I felt it where I was, in the dark eyes of the invisible evil birds. Jude had come with him but was not in same part of the forest. He was waiting for me on the road to the stream. He was there when he heard Butler scream. He ran into the forest and saw him lying facedown, in a pool of his own blood. Blood was dripping out of the hole in his chest where the arrow had pierced. He was dying.

The news spread like wildfire. It was said that Ogbonna, after what he did, had exiled from Amano. Throughout that day, I was in awe of myself. I constantly drizzled out of consciousness. It was as though the world had ended around me. Everyone in Amano knew the arrow with which Butler was shot must have been poisoned and no man could survive it. There was silence in my world, in my head and in all positions within and around me. This silence was fatal.

Throughout that week, news flew from end to end. I rolled from one end of the floor to the other, all day. Even when night came I could not sleep. I heard the birds singing in the night but I did not understand what they were singing about. When it was morning, I heard a knock on my door, then a bang. Papa's voice rang like thunder.

'Zimuzor, come out. The evil sun has set in Amano. We hear that the white men from Iberi are coming to avenge their brother. They are coming to burn Amano as they did to the clans and villages who defied them. Amano is doomed. We must all leave the land before they get here or we will all meet-'

He was interrupted by my opening the door. As I ran out, I knocked him down. I ran as fast as I could. As I ran, I saw the unfolding pandemonium in Amano. People were loading their properties on their heads and running away; all because of me; because of my love for a man. I saw many of the people stop, bemused that I was going towards the path to the stream where the British convoy was approaching. I heard Papa's calling me and running after me. He had bruised his leg after I knocked him down. I heard him begging, pleading but my legs could not stop. Why would this harm come to my people all because of me?

It was at the edge of the road to the Eme Bridge that trucks came in sight . For a long distance, I faced them. Then suddenly, the first truck stopped and a white man stepped down from it. From the distance I could see him gazing at me, his palm put over his eyes. Then suddenly, I saw him put his hand in his pocket and point a dark-coloured object towards me. I did not know what it was but I just kept coming. I would not let any harm be done to this people just because of me.

It was the sound of it that first hit me like thunder before I felt the sharp passage of fire in my chest. I crashed to the ground and a cloud of dust rose in my stead.

This winter visit, to England ; is my second visit since that dark day two years ago. I had found out that Butler did not die. Jude had found an uku leaf in the bush with which he stopped the bleeding and had run afterwards to Amude, where he was able to get the church to bring Butler back by the Priest's car. He was then taken to the Royal British hospital at Uzuakoli where he revived after thirteen days in coma . I met him many times sitting in the plains between life and death. I called to him many times but he could not answer. He was lost to himself. I had lost him too.

Last spring when I came knocking, I met him fully recovered. I found him sitting on the verandah of his cottage. Before him were the long rows of roses. They were as red as blood. I stood between two rows and called him again and again. I wanted him to come to me, to hold me close to him and to lay me in his cottage, but he merely stared blankly at me.

It was winter again, and I was wary of his appearance. The cottage was dark at just 7 p.m. I couldn't understand. Was he sleeping, at this time? No. It couldn't be. I walked and suddenly I saw the reason why - the roses were faded this time. They have been uprooted and placed on a small grave. The street light was bright and illuminated the grave so that I could read the inscriptions on the headstone. At my windy approach some of the flowers that covered part of the writings were blown away so that I saw the engravings clearly.

Butler James Merrysburg
(1888-1912)

Captain of the Royal Army
of the British Green Jackets

Rest in Peace.

Next I saw the other side of the headstone; it was framed with a glass covering. Inside it were two pictures of Butler and a portrait on brown paper. I looked at the portrait just once.

~

words: Chigozie John Obioma, Nigeria
image: Steve Wing, Florida (about & more)