Speak Gigantular Read online

  Praise for Speak Gigantular

  “The stories in Speak Gigantular spring from an original and highly unpredictable imagination. In a single sentence, Irenosen Okojie can whip the rug from under your feet. She’s that rare and admirable thing-a writer who is also a risk-taker. Prepare to be startled.” Rupert Thomson, author of The Insult

  “Okojie has a sharp eye for the twisting stories of the city, and a turn of phrase that switches from elegance to brutality in a single line. Lovely stuff.” Stella Duffy, author of Calendar Girl and The Room of Lost Things

  Praise for Irenosen Okojie

  “A wonderful, richly drawn novel, cleverly juxtaposing scenes from everyday London with African folklore and mysticism.” Joanne Harris

  “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

  “A bittersweet story uniting different traditions of narrative to create a whole new geography of the imagination.” Michele Roberts, Betty Trask Award judge

  “Vital, vivid, witty, truthful…” Maggie Gee, The Observer

  “Split between contemporary London and 19th-century West Africa, Butterfly Fish is a debut novel with an epic scope… The novel’s strength is its ability to make the abstract concrete.” Oliver Zarandi, East End Review

  “One of the most original and innovative writers to emerge in many a year.” Alex Wheatle, MBE

  “Butterfly Fish is a novel of epic proportions… From sentence to sentence, Okojie conjures up acutely observed, beautifully-worded metaphors that resonate and delight… I fully expect to see Butterfly Fish on many an award nomination list. It is a fascinating read, and one I highly recommend.” Yvvette Edwards (author of A Cupboard Full of Coats, longlisted for the Man Booker Prize)

  “Her West African heritage is richly spun into her novel Butterfly Fish… The tale is peppered with moments of magical surrealism: a glass bottle shattering on a South London street to release two tiny scurrying figures into the night; a butterfly fish bursts into a local pool and belches a portentous brass key… The lyrical prose brings poignancy to the familiar London landscape.” Samuel Fishwick, Evening Standard

  “This is a very accomplished and colourful debut novel by a Nigerian-born English writer… Okojie tells not only a superbly well-written complex story of intertwining lives but uses a wonderfully colourful language and brings in Nigerian story-telling, myths and strange creatures, all of which make her English-based story more otherworldly. Okojie is clearly going to be an author to watch.” John Alvey, The Modern Blog

  “Butterfly Fish is a powerful novel of love, hope and loss written in Irenosen’s unique and compelling style.” Greenacre Writers

  “Seriously unique and imaginative.” Diana Evans, author of 26a and winner of the Orange Prize

  “A very able writer who has the gift of being able to paint the very picture that she is speaking of. Her writing has energy and her descriptions are full of flavour.” Ashley Rose Scantlebury, True Africa

  “Enchanting readers with the eloquence of a griot, Irenosen Okojie’s début novel Butterfly Fish brings to life the magic of storytelling. In a spellbinding saga of love, deceit, guilt and atonement, it tells of the scourge of the sins of the ancestors upon the coming generation… The author’s voice relates the ensuing drama with a gracious absence, bestowing to her characters’ independence and authenticity. With a daring and distinctive tone, Irenosen is without a doubt a fresh addition to contemporary African fiction. Butterfly Fish is a dark and mesmerizing adventure packed with bittersweet delights. This is one of my personal favourites this summer. I highly recommend it.” Afrikult.com

  Speak Gigantular

  by

  Irenosen Okojie

  To Mum, Dad, Amen, Ota and Iredia, much love always.

  To all the misfits who dare to tilt worlds.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Gunk

  Animal Parts

  Outtakes

  Fractures

  Walk With Sleep

  Why is Pepe Canary Yellow?

  Footer

  Nadine

  Poko, Poko

  Please Feed Motion

  Anonymous Jones

  The Thumbnail Interruptions

  The Arrangement of Skin

  Snapper

  Jody

  Following

  Mammoth

  Vegas

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Gunk

  Gunk is a term in mereology for any whole whose parts all have further proper parts.

  Get up. Try to hold your world. You can’t. You let it slip. I know your world; car horns, aspiration, language, screaming traffic lights, spies. I see you. Your thick hair is overgrown, run an afro comb through it. Your wiry frame is still poised to move in sleep, to change shape at the edges of iodine stained misfortunes. I showed you how to plant, how to sow seeds in concrete, yet your seeds don’t grow. I demonstrated ways to sheathe knives in skin, yet you only injure yourself. Boy, you don’t fly. You don’t appreciate flight. You just want to prove what a waste of space you are.

  Stop trembling in the fucking corner. Don’t pick up that medicine. They numb you, sedate you, curtail your potential. Don’t follow the script. You weren’t designed for this.

  It’s a set up. The system is fucking rigged. Your enemies plotted against you, danced on platforms in the sky, taunted you with disguises, reached into the chests of people you used to know. You rage because this city has broken you. This world has sucked your resolve through a pit. You rage because everything is a lie. Choice is an illusion. Its sibling conformity met you at the airport. Boy, you stepped into his fucking embrace proving what a waste of space you are. His smile made you forget your mother tongue while she battled the elements on your behalf, changing gears on any given day.

  Remember Corrine? You told her coffee skin your secrets. She laughed, curved her wide mouth down to catch. You buried your face in her afro, travelled through it. You destroyed each other then came up for air. You watched her fly down the street engulfed in blue flames. A small universe spilled from her bag; notebook, pen, Vaseline, keys, items to trace on the scratched table when fear arrived with some creature’s hind legs.

  Your pity stinks. Stop cowering in the corner. Stop crawling naked on top of that wardrobe. You can’t reinvent yourself from contained heights.

  Darkness motivates men, mobilises armies. Use it. You are a warrior. Show me your roar. People are scared of your power, frightened of what you can do with it.

  Once you wanted to be an engineer. Instead, those dreams drowned in the Thames. Instead, you walked off construction sites breathing sawdust. Instead, you avoided eye contact more so than usual. Instead, you resisted the urge to carry your internally bleeding head on public transport.

  Follow my lead. Use those memories as lamps to see through your rooms. Nobody cares here. Footsteps on the stairs outside don’t pause at this door. The carnival whistle hanging on the dented hallway wall waits for a cry that left you at birth to fill it. Your mobile phone stopped ringing. It’s just you and me. You don’t have any tricks. You just keep showing what a waste of space you are. You want to pick up that old taekwondo trophy and smash me to pieces. You can’t. I gave you DNA.

  These extras we programme ourselves to think are necessary—family, friends, jobs, love, companionship—these sentiments weakening us only serve as cushions to soften the inevitable blow. You’ll die one day. Look around you, this is really it. Scraping pennies together so often it’s become a past ti
me, rummaging for money inside the sofa. Cracks in the ceiling, the floor that’s turned to quicksand. No cash to charge the electricity, your fridge door opening to reveal half a yoghurt, one-day-old kebab. This unending humiliation of you to yourself facilitates nothing.

  The couple next door were once in love. Now, you hear plates smashing, arguments fuelled by alcohol, the ripping of each other’s carcasses, their misguided notions of loyalty. You watch their ugly Bombay cat skulking outside trying to trace where it pissed over the remedy for doomed lovers rising through cold soil.

  You sit by this window looking out, hoping for answers. Boy, I gave you answers. If you weren’t so busy showing what a waste of space you are, you’d remember. Your enemies are everywhere. They want to destroy you with fear. Don’t let them do it. Don’t be a puppet. I taught you better. I showed you better. I schooled you better. Don’t be a victim. This is what a victim looks like. This is what you look like. Don’t look like that. Didn’t I teach you how they operate? Didn’t I tell you how you’re conditioned? Don’t swallow what they’re shoving down your throat. It costs them nothing. Didn’t I teach you about currencies that can’t be seen with the naked eye? Yet there you go proving what a waste of space you are.

  Are you a small country? Are you a fucking island? Don’t let your enemies conquer you. Don’t let them limit you. Don’t let them gag you. Don’t let them buy your cooperation with their sleight of hand. Didn’t I give you ammunition? Didn’t we sharpen our tools? Didn’t we aim for our bullseye from every possible angle, every feasible position? Yet there you lay trying to show what a waste of space you are.

  Don’t make me transform. Don’t make me reconfigure.

  I carried you.

  I bled for you.

  I suffered for you.

  Stay close to me, listen. Every word I say to you is true.

  Fuck governments.

  Fuck systems.

  Fuck everything that tells you if you’re good you’ll be valued.

  Somebody always has to pay.

  Make people pay.

  We’ve paid enough.

  Open your eyes. Get up from that bottom.

  Son, this is the skin I’m leaving you with.

  This is how to wear it comfortably.

  This is how to camouflage when you need to.

  This is how to start a war.

  Remember: It’s your world now.

  Animal Parts

  Henri Thomsen lived in the Danish town of Frederiksberg near Copenhagen. At ten-years-old he possessed one distinguishing feature; a long furry grey tail. The tail sprouted above his buttocks and through the hole that his mother Ann had been forced to make in the seat of all his trousers. Otherwise he looked like an average boy, with a shaggy mop of light brown hair that hung down over his forehead, inquisitive blue eyes and deep dimples in his cheeks into which his mother Ann sank adoring kisses.

  As Henri grew older it became increasingly apparent that Ann was not going to be able to keep his tail a secret from the townsfolk. As uninhibited and unashamed as any child should be, Henri ran with oblivious abandon, not aware that words were forming against him, even at his tender young age. That minds were closing firmly, decidedly, and that he was not destined to enjoy his worry-free existence much beyond his early childhood years.

  Strange things happened in the town now and again. Like the winter all the statues heads had gone missing, only to appear on the rooftops weeks later, one side of their faces collapsed while a splintered blue light flickered in their sockets. In the beginning, people thought Henri and his furry grey tail was some sort of joke. “Have you seen that Thomsen boy?” The town gossips ignorant spite-filled words went from door to door carried by the wind. “Wish he’d take that stupid costume off.” The more they voiced their ugly opinions, the harder their stance on Henri became.

  Across town Jorgen had spent the day finishing the tree house he’d invested hours into, outside of his job checking tickets on the ferries. When he heard the wind rustle and the words made their way to his ears.

  “A freak,” they said, “an abomination that needed to be locked away for the safety of everyone.” When the voices of the two postmen gossiping about the boy with the tail caught his attention, Jorgen almost smashed a hammer through the left corner of the small picture frame he was hanging. “Who knew what diseases he was carrying? Why should they be put at risk?”

  Jorgen listened, intrigued. His lazy left eye began to turn like green die spinning in static. Knowing how it felt to be slightly different from people, a shot of anger spread through his blood. He listened until their voices petered off.

  That evening, Jorgen undressed to find a small, blue ball of light darting around under his skin. Absentmindedly, he picked up from his bedside dresser the small hammer he had been using earlier that day, repeatedly smacking it into his body, trying unsuccessfully to pin the blue ball frenetically travelling over his limbs. During the night the town’s residents slept fitfully, the sky above their beds black like the tea that darkened their tongues.

  As a baby, Henri’s tail was a pearly stub, barely visible under his pale, white skin. Once he started growing so did the tail. At aged three, it shot out thick and strong. Ann, spellbound, watched him from her bedroom, in the bathroom, the hallway, everywhere; horrified, fascinated, trying to identify the smell of her own corrosive fear. It was a feeling she associated with the town and its inhabitants, even though she had been born there and had grown up among the very same people and strange occurrences.

  Shortly after his birth, Ann took Henri to see the doctor for his well-baby check up. As she changed Henri, the last thing she worried about was her appearance. Rolling up the sleeves of her checked shirt, she tied her hair into a haphazard golden knot and scooped him up from his bed, hurriedly heading out the door. Ann was a pretty woman but the strain of worrying about Henri had slowly taken its toll, giving her a slightly harassed look. There was no man around to reassure her or hold her hands down when in utter frustration she clawed out fine clumps of hair from her head.

  They’d trudged up to the local doctor, a dark navy blanket wrapped around Henri to cover his tail.

  Later, she parted company with the doctor more confused. He couldn’t tell her why her son had a tail; he assumed it must be some form of mutation. The boy was perfectly healthy otherwise and not in any danger. He recommended going to the hospital in Copenhagen for further tests. No. Ann had been adamant, she didn’t want Henri being prodded and experimented on. Deep down, she knew all of that would have come to nothing.

  At home she grabbed a nondescript grey file of newspaper clippings from under the bed; stories of unusual people from around the world; A baby born in India with multiple sets of lower limbs who the locals believed was the reincarnation of one of their most revered Gods. A woman whose spine had overgrown and protruded through her skin like the dorsal vertebra of an ancient mythic creature. Her hand stilled over the file. Soon, she would start sharing these tales with Henri. She felt reassured somehow that these strangers had begun to talk to her from the shadowy space beneath her bed.

  As time passed, Henri became the one constant in her life. He kept her company while from home she ran a tiny cottage business, making jams that she sold to the townsfolk and local shops. She was almost as famous for her jams as she was for her son. Aware of the provincial tastes of the townspeople, Ann would fold in exotic flavours into her sweet fruit as it cooked. The most popular ones were chocolate and banana, almond and orange, and apricot with vanilla. She attended to them in the small cosy kitchen of her home, adding a variety of spices, a dash of nutmeg and cinnamon and sometimes even sea salt. Henri would proudly hold the jars while she filled them with the cooled fruit, his tail gently wagging. She would label them carefully using brightly coloured paper she allowed him to stick on the jars.

  They made deliveries in her old turquoise Fiat 500 which sputtered loudly along the town’s quaint roads, so that people always heard them coming. They wer
e reliable Ann and Henri, team jam procurers extraordinaire. They mostly delivered on time. On the doorsteps, rifling through the variety of jeweled toned, sweet-smelling jars in Ann’s basket people would often ask Henri if he knew his mother’s secret ingredient, staring at the jars as though sinister things lurked behind the sweetness. These times were their main interactions with the community and a social lifeline for Henri. Ann rarely had visitors to her home. Occasionally in winter when he made his rounds, Hans the mill operator would drop wood by the house, face ruddy, full red beard unkempt, smiling at Ann as if he was the bearer of known truths. Other than him, no-one came.

  At night Ann listened to her mother’s old radio with the faulty knob that came off if you gripped it too enthusiastically. Now and again, she swore she could hear her mother’s crisp, flat voice dispatching parental advice between frequencies. During these moments, sharp pains hit her chest. Curling up into a ball, she could barely breathe. What had she done? What would become of her son? The loneliness and desire for a child before him had been all-consuming. Were anything ever to happen to her, she did not trust the town to take care of her son, but the world out there beyond it was even more frightening.

  Eleven years prior to Henri’s birth, a stranger had turned up at Ann’s door. When Ann had heard the knock at the door she first thought it was one of her neighbours and she had found herself silently wishing it was the one she liked, as opposed to the obnoxious hellion who lived directly across from her. Upon opening the door, Ann saw no-one she recognised. Standing before her as if she had intentionally arrived at the address, although Ann had no knowledge of her, was a woman with a sharp black bob and an accent Ann couldn’t place. Feline looking, she had perfectly symmetrical features and a seductive air about her. Her full red mouth blew misty air into Ann’s face. Her long, slender fingers curled. Dark, almond shaped eyes glinted. She wore black jeans paired with a white polo neck.