27 June
Today we went to Botley cemetery to visit Evie’s mother’s grave. She has never been before. Her mother was from Oxford, she told me this morning when she announced the trip. I invited myself along. To protect you from your sentimental excesses, I said. She told me I was rude but she said it like it was a compliment. The chapel was one of these buildings that look like a toy-sized building built to human scale. It was squared off by cherry trees. After we had found the gravestone I left Evie crouching by it and wandered the grounds. As I did I felt as though I were looking for something, but wasn’t quite sure what until I came across the grave of a woman named Virginie, born in the same year as me. I realized then that I was looking for some sign of myself. Damaris X. Born 1950–Died 5 Minutes Ago. All this time I was breathing in the ashes of the dead, since the crematorium next door was in use. Those great ostrich plumes of smoke seemed extravagantly Art Nouveau and gave me an idea. I ran back to where Evie was kneeling, tugging up weeds, dandelions which looked rather pretty, I thought. So now a flowerbed, as well as a deathbed (and to the French, Piss-in-Bed). Oh Evie, you are a sentimental old boot, I said, pulling her up to her feet, just how she was pulling up the weeds, How can you cry for a mother you never knew! I never knew my parents. Do you see me weep for them? No. They should weep for the loss of me. Besides, it’s too hot for manual labour today. I know somewhere lovely and cool.
And that is how we came to visit the Pitt Rivers museum. To be wandering in that dusty Victorian half-gloom on a hot summer’s day — what a treat! We walked around together until I got impatient cos she lingered too long by each case. Me, I was keen to see as much as I could, moving on quickly from whatever didn’t interest me. Stayed until the guard announced the museum was closing and we were reunited outside. On the walk back to the boarding house, through the long slants of light and the lengthening shadows, I counted off all the things I had seen. Let me try to remember:
A cabinet of benevolent charms entitled, Sympathetic Magic.
A cabinet of objects occurring in nature which had been collected because they look like something else in nature (a seed pod which looked like a snake; a rock which looked like a monkey’s head, etc.).
A cabinet called Treatment of Dead Enemies, which included a skull that looked like it had sharpened pencils sticking out of its nose.
A huge, swishy-looking Hawaiian ceremonial cape in a striking black, yellow and red pattern that looked as though it were made of fur, but when you looked closer you realized it was made up of feathers, thousands and thousands of hummingbirds’ feathers.
A charm with a label written in tiny, tiny writing which stated matter-of-factly how/where it should be displayed (I forget) its particular powers (I forget), and its ingredients, some of which I remember. They included:
Earth from the grave of a man who has killed a tiger.
Earth from the grave of a woman who has died in childbirth (except I misread the label and saw, at first, Earth from the grave of a man who has killed a tiger that has died in childbirth).
A letter in some ancient Eastern pictographic language on a very long strip of palm leaf that looked like silvery skin which had been rolled into a tight neat coil.
A display on the West African communication system based on the exchange of those tiny cowrie shells that look like Sugar Puffs. A single shell sent to someone conveyed the message: I consider you less than nothing and have no wish to ever see you.
A foetus in a jar. It must have been about four months old. Its little ears had been pierced and it was wearing a necklace.
An odd-looking fifteen-year-old girl with thick glasses shouting, ‘Paula! I’ve found the shrunken heads!’
The shrunken heads. Like withered apples.
And you, Evie? What did you see? Just the Benin Bronzes. But that’s where I left you! What’s so interesting about them? I asked her, annoyed. Just a load of bronze masks. Look, I said as we passed a couple of beautiful young guys with perfectly symmetrical golden features, See their faces in the sun! They make more beautiful bronzed masks. E shakes her arm out of mine and tells me I don’t understand, more sad than angry.
28 June
E didn’t turn up to meet me after rehearsals today. After waiting fifteen minutes, I went back to the boarding house, but she was not there. I waited there until it was time to leave for the show but she didn’t turn up. After the show I waited backstage for her. She didn’t come. When I got back to the boarding house she was there in her bed, asleep. I got into my bed, and turned my back to her. I left the room in the morning and when I got back after rehearsals she was still there, in bed. I asked if she was ill and she said no. She hasn’t said a word more all afternoon. I’m in bed now, writing this. I’m due to leave for the theatre in twenty minutes and she’s still here. I don’t know where she was yesterday, or what she did. A moment ago I put my face close to hers, to see if she really was sleeping. I saw a small tear, like a bead, lodged in the corner of her eye.
29 June
Evie has spent the last two days, Alice-like, swimming in circles in her own tears. What can I do? I kept saying. As though I were at fault for not being able to dispel this, this I want to say blizzard, or fog, or downpour. Why is it we reach for meteorological metaphors to talk about our moods? Our many weathers. If anything, it is like the sandstorm in Nigeria that Evie has told me about, the kind that blinds and chokes. Is it your mother? I ask. Is it the Benin Bronzes? She shakes her head and laughs at me, a laugh which causes her some pain.
30 June
I wonder about those Bronzes. I wonder if they carry some curse. I wonder if E has been cursed by them. Objects are not mute. That cape from the museum. My guess is that you couldn’t fail to sense a thousand heartbeats, the thrum of a thousand tiny pairs of wings, if you swished about in it, knowing what it is made of. And perhaps that bestows some power on the wearer. To be able to stand in a cape like that you’d quell compassion, conscience. And that would make you more ruthless, more powerful.
Today Evie, exhausted with crying, was able to sit up in bed and eat a little soup, after refusing food these past days. She told me she periodically experiences such episodes. Calls such attacks the Faulty. Believes the Faulty was passed on to her by a woman she knew as a child, some blonde who smoked a lot and believed in Voodoo! When I ask her what causes them, she says, The din of myself, and laughs.
1 July
I’ve not slept all night. Last night, Evie began to talk, after four days of silence. It came out in a flood. She told me all about her bedroom in Lagos, about all the sounds she could hear from it. She told me stories about her mother and father, stories from her childhood. Stories her father told her when she was a child. And in the womb?!? One nasty little story about a medieval mapmaker who arranged the mass abduction of women from Nubia then basically raped them. She told me that story in raptures, not hearing what she was saying. And the opposite happened with me. I could not speak as she told me those stories, such stories. A story about a kind of spirit-child called Sagoe. Stories about the people she’d known in Lagos. Most of it lies. No doubt as a child she believed this stuff really did happen. But when she tells me now, is she relating what she believed as a child, or what she believes now? If she believes it now, that would make her mad.