Also by Odafe Atogun
Taduno’s Song
WAKEMEWHENI’MGONE
ODAFE ATOGUN
Published in Great Britain in 2017 by Canongate Books Ltd,
14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE
This digital edition first published in 2017 by Canongate Books
Copyright © Odafe Atogun, 2017
The moral right of the author has been asserted
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 78211 842 8
eISBN 978 1 78211 843 5
Typeset in Goudy Old Style by Palimpsest Book Production Ltd,
Falkirk, Stirlingshire
For Victoria
CONTENTS
ONE
It was in the painting that I first saw myself as countless suitors had often described me. Before then, I would frown at my face in a hand-held mirror, wondering what they saw that made me so beautiful in their eyes. In the painting I am tall and slim; my dark hair is brushed back into a neat bun; a slightly bemused expression spreads across my face, teasing my lips with a soft smile. It is however difficult to tell whether I am light, brown, or light-brown; the artist’s pencil had caught me in many colours.
This was a long time ago, when we had not seen much of civilisation, and our daily existence was guided by ancient rules and traditions. At that time, no one knew that it would be that painting that would change the destiny of so many, or that the face of a son who would be gifted to us smiled faintly in its background. We saw it merely as a beautiful painting. And then it was stolen from our village on a dark, rainy night. Only then did we come to realise its true importance – after the High Priest gave a chilling prophecy, warning us of a curse that would beset our village for many years.
*
I should start my story appropriately . . .
My name is Ese, pronounced essay. I come from a small village of about four hundred people, a thousand cattle and one white horse. A dirt road connected us to the world, and it was this that brought merchants from distant lands to our commercial centre known as Main Street.
Market-days were rowdy; thick dust rose in the air, and everyone drove a hard bargain. Because business was good, the merchants came often, and so the road became the key to the prosperity of our village, bringing new faces and things, and the promise of more to come.
*
At the height of the village’s fortune, I took a stall on Main Street, where I sold vegetables. My husband Tanto had encouraged me. He was a big-time vegetable farmer, and he ensured that I got enough supplies to meet the merchants’ demands. As time passed and I received more and more orders, I began to nurse the ambition of acquiring a second stall. For a while, I was consumed by this prospect, but, shortly after my twenty-fourth birthday, a few months before the seventh birthday of our only child Noah, my husband passed away.
It was on a market-day, a Friday. Gloom swept across Main Street as the news filtered in from the farms, from mouth to ear and mouth to ear. Somehow, I was the last to receive it, though it buzzed in sad whispers all around me. When it finally reached me, I collapsed in a heap, at first, too afraid to cry. And then the tears came in unstoppable waves of the blackest grief.
Main Street shut down business for the day. And the merchants returned to their lands with bowed heads. For many market-days they did not return, knowing that the village would be immersed in mourning and that business would be slow.
My son and I wept inconsolably. On many days Noah refused to eat or drink. Seeing his pitiful state, I managed to pull myself together and, for him, found a reason to live again.
*
Slowly, a bit of normality returned to our lives, but I was too devastated to go back to business. I sold my stall for a paltry sum and set the money aside, and I took to basic farming on a smallholding that I had always maintained in our backyard.
Even though I thought about it, I could not muster the strength to go to my husband’s farm to harvest the endless expanse of vegetables. He had died there, struck by the branch of an iroko tree. The neighbour who found him fled to spread the news. Afterwards, none of the villagers would go near the farm because they believed it to be cursed, so all the vegetables rotted away.
I pushed the farm out of my mind as best I could, yet the memory kept coming back to me, leaving me so lost and alone. I struggled on for Noah’s sake, wishing I would wake up from my nightmare. In the privacy of my bedroom, I heard Tanto’s voice, gentle as ever, professing his undying love for me, and my eyes would pour out my heart. I’d tell him how much I missed him, beg him to make everything right again.
At other times, fond memories of him lessened my grief. In those moments, I could almost smell him nearby and feel his essence, and I tried to trap it all in my heart so I could live the moment with him again and again.
*
Not long after Tanto’s death, some of the young men who had wooed me before