Dirty Feet - Edem Awumey [2]
“I enjoy portraits of black people,” she said. “They have a way of capturing and holding the light.”
“My father has no connection with the celebrities on your wall. Could you show me the pictures you took of him? Wasn’t that the reason you asked me to drop by?”
In front of the sofa, to the left of the front door, the TV and CD player sat on a large chiffonier. On the wall above the TV there was another photograph, which he found quite beautiful. It was the interior of a nightclub: a bar, high stools, two women and a man, all holding cigarettes between their fingers, their heads wreathed in smoke. The little group was standing around some musicians. He identified the elegantly dressed man at the piano as Duke Ellington, and leaning on the piano, cradling his trumpet, was Louis Armstrong. Askia had a mental image of his hostess attending the nightly concert given by Louis and the Duke. At the exact moment when the concert began, she would no doubt sit down on the sofa facing the picture to take in and savour the sounds emanating from the glossy paper on the wall. But his father, Sidi Ben Sylla, would not have moved in such circles. His music, Askia’s mother would have said, was not jazz but exile.
Olia must have read his thoughts.
“You know,” she said, “I sit down in front of that picture and conjure up the concert, the notes. I imagine them soft and translucent and as slow as the water in a stream, at times lapping against the bank when the high notes soar into the air . . . Can we be less formal and call each other by our first names?”
“Musical notes — they can be sad too, miss. Now, about those pictures. Could you please show them to me?”
More photos lined the white walls, including the space in the far corner next to the TV, where some stairs led to a mezzanine and what Askia guessed was the bedroom. These other pictures showed Jesse Owens and the king, Carl Lewis, racing at full tilt, propelled by the gods of Olympus, and a very emotional Ella Fitzgerald at the microphone, with the beams of fame shining on her forehead. This girl Olia was peculiar. She evidently lived in a strange world filled with images and legendary figures. Askia thought she must be fond of legendary faces. She liked Owen and King Lewis, and Ella. But Sidi, the ghost he pursued through the dark Paris nights, was not a legend.
He plumped down on the sofa. She bustled about in the kitchenette, to the left of the shelves. She made some tea, set the cups, sugar, and teapot on the low table in front of her guest, and sat down on the floor in the lotus position. After the pictures of the Himalayas, here was a second image of the East for him to contemplate that evening: Olia sitting cross-legged as if to prepare for meditation, as if he were an altar or the statue of a saint or an icon meant for prayers.
“You really do look like the man in the turban I photographed a few years ago,” she said, laughing with her eyes and dimpling the corners of her mouth in a way that heightened her charm. Then she admitted that, following their encounter in his taxi, she had searched through her photo albums for the man with the turban. The portraits must have gotten misplaced in one of her many boxes. It would just take a little time, but she would find them.
Askia had the impression that among all those images on the wall, the only thing in the room that was real was the shape of Olia’s face, her hair tied in a bun at the nape of her neck. She was neither too short nor too tall. But thin. Her face had the originality of a painting. Her body was ordinary. He thought she should always wear black. Black — the depths of night and mystery where her face had been drawn. He discerned two small pears under her sweater. Mother Nature could have been more