Okojie Butterfly Fish

1. Auflage 2015
ISBN: 978-1-909762-14-5
Verlag: Jacaranda Books
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 352 Seiten

Betty Trask Award winner 2016. A stunning debut from the author of Speak Gigantular. A fragile outsider living in London, Joy struggles to pull the threads of her life back together after her mother's sudden death. Emptiness consumes her and, needing to fill the gaps of her loss, she finds she is drawn to a unique artefact inherited from her mother - a warrior's head cast in brass that belonged to a king in eighteenth century Benin, Nigeria. Joy is haunted by a beautiful young woman who appears in her photographs, familiar yet beguilingly distinct, the woman trails her wherever she goes. Joy begins to dream of a different time, a different place. She feels an inexplicable pull towards this mysterious female, and a past revealing itself through clues is scattered in her path. As family secrets come to light, she unearths the ties between her mother, grandfather, the wife of the king, a fearsome warrior, and the brass head's pivotal connection to them all. Haunting and compelling, Butterfly Fish is a richly told story of love and hope; of family secrets, power, political upheaval, loss and coming undone. 'a novel of epic proportions... I fully expect to see Butterfly Fish on many an award nomination list.' Yvvette Edwards 'A stunningly well-written book, juggling different timescales with great skill. Benin itself is vividly imagined in a historical narrative that runs in parallel with the contemporary London one. It is a wonderful novel.' Simon Brett OBE 'A wonderful, richly drawn novel, cleverly juxtaposing scenes from everyday London with African folklore and mysticism.' Joanne Harris

Irenosen Okojie is a Nigerian British author whose work pushes the boundaries of form, language and ideas. Her novel, Butterfly Fish, and short story collections, Speak Gigantular and Nudibranch, have won and been nominated for multiple awards. Her journalism has been featured in The New York Times, the Observer, the Guardian and the Huffington Post. She is a Contributing Editor for The White Review as well as And Other Stories. She co-presented the BBC's Turn Up for The Books podcast, alongside Simon Savidge and Bastille frontman Dan Smith. Her work has been optioned for the screen. She has also judged various literary prizes including the Dylan Thomas Prize, the Gordon Burn Prize, the BBC National Short Story Award and the Dublin Literary Award. She was a judge for the 2023 Women's Prize for Fiction. Formerly the Vice Chair of the Royal Society of Literature, she was awarded an MBE For Services to Literature in 2021. She is the director and founder of Black to theFuture festival. Her new novel Curandera is published by Dialogue Books.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Okojie, Irenosen

Leseproben

In The Beginning

The first time I met Mrs Harris, she’d told me she was certain that Buddy, her garden statue Buddha, had been eating her roses. Although, she’d added, there may have been a slim chance the fat, sepia-coloured cat of a neighbour was the one skulking around fighting her roses, who in turn offered only their blooms in scented, decorative peace offerings. Mrs Harris was my new next-door neighbour. A slight woman who chatted enthusiastically about all kinds of subjects, she lived alone and dressed like a hippy. Snow white hair hung past her shoulders in an unruly mess, shrouding her heavily lined face. A chicken pox mark on her left cheek looked like a teardrop. Her green eyes rippled with laughter and mischief.

That morning, she stood at my doorstep, hair slightly damp, clutching a small dark blue container with the word “tea” peeling off at the corners. She smelled of an odd combination of cigarettes and baked bread. “It’s Buddy,” she said. “He’s gone missing.” The sky swirled a moody grey. Along the street, the sound of doors shutting heralded the morning rush hour.

“Again?” I asked.

Her eyes narrowed into slits. “Can I come in?

I nodded reluctantly, stepping aside to allow entry. We moved down the wood floor hallway, the smell of damp clothes heavy in the air, past my messy sitting room with the previous evening’s Chinese takeaway containers stacked on the floor, a large black and white picture of Jimi Hendrix blowing smoke into the lens commanding one wall. My mother’s bright throw was slung deliberately over the blue sofa smothering past indiscretions. We entered the kitchen.

“Isn’t this the fifth time?” I asked. I wasn’t in the mood for visitors.

I watched her make herself comfortable at the worn wooden table an old traveller man with blackened teeth had sold me. I felt sluggish and depressed but I took the blue container from her and added bags of tea before handing it back. Three knives drying in the sink gleamed invitingly, old watermarks arched on their silver blades. Buddy had gone missing for days on several occasions. Each time, he was returned safely to a different spot in Mrs Harris’s garden.

I wasn’t certain if Buddy really did go off wandering -maybe it was a cruel trick played by bored kids on the street- or if Mrs Harris, a lonely, eccentric elderly woman engineered the whole thing just for some attention. There was genuine anger in her voice as she remarked, “I’m fed up of this happening! If I catch the little worm responsible God help them.”

“Hey, you didn’t see anything did you?”

I was slow to respond, putting the shiny kettle on and setting aside two cups with teabags, strings dangling down the side. “Can’t say I’ve been following Buddy’s movements.” I answered in an effort to make light of the situation.

She laughed then, full bodied and warm. “I suppose I sound a little crazy to you. But you know, from where he was Buddy could see clear across several gardens. He was probably exposed to things he shouldn’t have been seeing.” This was said with such sincerity, my gaze lingered on her face but it was met with what appeared to be genuine candour. The pipes began to interrupt. Thwack. Thwack. Thwack., as though someone was throwing stones against them.

“Oh God! You too! “Mrs Harris announced, groaning. “My pipes have been noisy all morning and now Buddy’s vanished. Not a good start to the day!”

Sudden concern clouded her features. “Are you okay?” Your energy seems a little off.” The kettle blew warm breaths at the ceiling. It hissed and the red light at the bottom flicked off. I filled both cups, handed one over. “Oh you know, okay. Getting on with things, actually you caught me in the middle of something. I was running a bath.” The sweet scent of blackcurrant filled the air. Both teas were a rich plum hue that darkened our tongues as if with our individual anxieties.

“You should have said dear, I don’t want to impose. I’ll finish my tea and be off, just thought you might have seen something, kids climbing the fence maybe.” She took another gulp, closed her eyes. “Oh that’s good, tea’s nice dear.”

“Yes it is.” I answered. “Maybe Buddy’s gone off on a tea tasting tour of all the exotic flavours he can get his hands on.”

“Maybe,” she said wryly.

“Lucky Buddy.” I took a sip, felt a strong undercurrent of something dark that made my limbs become heavy. I longed to be left on my own. The knives and sink had blended into one silvery entity, dripping small figures with expressions of distress and bladed mouths. Each drop reverberated in my head. I imagined Buddy in the garden commanded by something unknown, leading other garden statues astray up the highway, wearing a blushing pink azalea as an eye patch.

Mrs Harris gulped some more tea, interrupting my reverie. “You don’t like to spend much time in your garden?” she asked.

“Never really gave it much thought.” My dressing gown knot began to uncurl. I tied it back tightly.

“Ahh, I thought so. I can tell by the state it’s in. Gardening’s good for the soul.” She motioned at her head. “It’s a great stress reliever connecting with the soil like that. I can teach you sometime if you like? It’s simple enough.” She offered with an easy smile.

“Thank you, that’s kind.”

“I’ll tell you a secret.” She leaned in conspiratorially, “sometimes, I play classical music to my fruit and vegetable plants in the garden. It helps them grow you see!”

I smiled at the notion, the element of surprise, saw her apples ripening, patches of red spreading around the sweetness of fruit skin to the swelling strains of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s violins and Chopin’s piano.

“That’s genius,” I remarked appreciatively. “I’ll remember that.”

She tossed back the remnants of her tea and stood. “I’ll leave you to it. Oh! Before I forget, I brought these for you.” From her pocket she dug out a small bag of nuts, tied at the neck with a red ribbon. “They’re Brazilian,” she continued. “Lovely robust spicy flavour; let me know what you think!”

“Will do.” I waved her goodbye at the door as she breezed out.

After she left I began washing up and as I opened the cupboard, slowly stacking the clean cups there it was, my mother’s favourite mug, its handle jutting out, a hand-painted mint leaf curved across its white body. I hadn’t been able to bring myself to get rid of it. Seeing it brought back images of mum swept in by the wind, a winter chill behind her, reaching for that mug, filling it with tea and regaling me with stories of her day. It’s funny how the very things that once irritated you about a person were the things you missed most when they were gone. Like phone calls held together by an invisible current, or rummaging through markets because we were two creased people who needed steam ironing. Lately I tried to fill the silences with… anything.

Abruptly, a wave of fatigue swept over me. The thought of facing the day stripped any strength I had left. The stack of unopened letters I’d let build up on top of the DVD cabinet, upstairs the pile of dirty clothes overflowing from the laundry basket, the new battery I still needed to buy for the car, the call to the electricity company to stop them cutting me off. All the mundane dots we connect to keep going.

When I stood it was in slow motion. I was weightless; I didn’t feel my feet touch the first step or know when I had made it to the top. I remember opening the bathroom cabinet and inside seeing the razor that had called me by my name.

I ran myself a bath longing for the peace the water held out for me. Lying there I watched an insect circle the light bulb on the ceiling and envied its frenetic flight. For years I’d been fed on incongruous things; smudges on windows washed away by rain, static from the TV, white lines just before traffic lights, wilting in shaky, packed train carriages. On the need to hold my loneliness, watch it change shape yet essentially stay the same. I felt woozy, faint. In the tepid water my grip on things slipped. The small, silvery, distressed figures I’d seen earlier in the kitchen offered their limbs to the dropped, bloody razor as the frantic black eyes of the dice spun.

At the hospital, I drifted in and out of consciousness a lot. One time, I caught sight of my blood eating into the bandages tightly wrapped around my wrists. When awake, I felt drowsy and dazed, unhinged. I saw myself at the end of a distant tunnel, vaguely aware of the things floating inside it. Of the glare of sunlight filtering through oppressively small windows, the blandness of the ward’s cream walls, the chattering between patients and visitors, terrible food distributed on wooden trays and the squeaky wheeled contraptions delivering them crying against a resigned floor.

Other things lost their definition. I barely recalled swallowing tablets for the white, fabricated river lining my stomach. Nurses blended into one in those first few days. Strangely, I fixated on the staff with...