BELLE

BELLE
Maybe I wanted him from the very time he said ‘ Tu es belle’ you are beautiful. It was the first thing he ever said to me, and till this day, there are no words he ever spoke that I remember more than ‘ Tu es belle’ and I remember every word he ever said to me, to my husband, to anybody, as long as I was there.
His voice. His voice. There was nothing special about his face, or the way he looked at first, but his voice, it undid me from the very first time, every single time. The first time he spoke to me, it upset me. I wasn’t as nice to him as I would have been to any other guest, but I doubt he noticed, my husband didn’t, but I knew I could have been much nicer, if his smile didn’t make me tremble, if his voice didn’t make me want to close my eyes and breathe slowly.
He was an old friend of my husband, back when my husband schooled in Paris. He was a writer and liked to travel to the location of his book settings before he started.. This time, he was in Nigeria, in my living room- brown eyes, dark skin, tall, blue shirt and the smile of a movies star. We would share the same air, eat on the same table, and speak to each other. A part of me already knew that I would grow to want him, more than anything in the world.
Maybe it only struck me at dinner the day he arrived, when I served him and mistakenly brushed my hands on his. His touch set me ablaze and it felt like I had never been touched before until then. I was afraid of the way my body would react if he touched me again, so I stayed as far away as possible. I had to try not to fall for his skin, his eyes that looked at everything like he was about to worship it, his voice that always sounded like what heaven would sound like if it were a sound. I had to try.
For days I avoided him. Our conversations were never more than a hello, good morning, or directions of places he wanted to visit. I kept them as shallow as possible.
I wasn’t prepared when my husband asked me to drop him off at the museum since it was on my way to work. How was I to act like I was unaware of him, when the distance between us was such that I was forced to smell him, his hair, his perfume for almost an hour.
He kept his gaze on me, while I focused on the road harder than I ever have, on the steering wheel. Was he staring at me because he knew I was trying not to look at him. Did he see through me then? Despite trying to avoid him, I could still see what kind of man he was. Laid back, yet alert, everything he did he calculated, his words were premeditated. He could see through people as easily as you’d see through water. What drew me to him was neither of these, but the way he could listen to anybody speak about anything with all of his attention, and make sense of it, no matter how senseless they would appear.
why did I always say sorry, he had asked the second time I drove him. I did always say sorry. Sorry I stepped on you, when someone mistakenly hits me I still say sorry, when I’m caught staring. I was afraid of ever getting in people’s bad books, even strangers. I shrugged.
‘It’s almost like you’re apologizing for existing. For breathing’
‘It is?’ I stopped to think about what he was saying and I realized that if I could apologize for existing I would. How could he just casually tell me something about myself, something I’ve never been able to admit to myself. How could he be so casual about everything, about the way he called me ‘belle’, kissed my hands before parting, stared at me when he thought I wasn’t looking and even when he knew that I knew. Such a casual man.
It was on the third drive that he asked me to accompany him to the art gallery. Asked me if I would. ‘if’ I would. I wanted to tell him that I would do anything if he asked that I would begin and end anything, and all he had to do was ask, for I was his. I was his. I was his every time he looked at me.
‘yes’.
I could have convinced myself that I was deluded, sinful or just plain stupid. That I wasn’t completely in love with his laughter or that i didn’t tremble at the sound of his voice. That I didn’t wake up every day since I saw him with only the desire of seeing him again. I could even have believed that I wasn’t pretending to be interested in art literature, and French music, so he would think we had those things in common. I could have, but there I was that early afternoon on one of his last days in the country, standing in his room, naked, my robe pooling around my feet. The soft wind trailing through my bare breast as he stared at me. I wanted him to never stop looking at me. I stood for what seemed like forever holding his gaze, afraid that if I blinked, I would realize what I was doing, realization was the last thing I needed. I needed him to look at me, to touch me but still hold my gaze. I needed to feel the roughness of his palm on my skin.
He reached for me, and then my robe, but he never stopped looking at me. He could read my mind. I loved it when he did. He covered my body with my robe, I could feel the warmth of his breath on my face when he whispered, ‘belle’.
The rest of our days before he went back to Paris were somewhat similar. I was either leaving work to come home to him, or leaving work to go somewhere with him. We would do all the things you’d mostly find teenagers doing, in dark places, corners, at the back of the movie theatre. We would make love at home, and sometimes I would just listen to him speak. It was the happiest I had ever been and when I look back and want to feel ashamed of myself, I always end up smiling. It was on one of these last days, as we lay on bed that he asked me to come with him to Paris. It meant to leave my family, and my life in Nigeria, to be disowned by my family, to leave with a man to a strange country with strange people. I said yes! All he needed to ever do was ask. I would follow a week after him once I sort my Visa.
The day he left, I spent fantasizing about when we would be together. It was during my fantasizing that I received a call from my husband.
‘I lost my friend Jacque. His plane crashed’
My husband, he had no idea what news he had just delivered. He didn’t lose his friend Jacque. Not a clue that I was the one who lost the love of my life Jacque, lost myself, lost everything that would have ever mattered. I felt- I think I’ve never felt that way before, I can’t describe it exactly. I felt everything in me bitterly contracting, if death was a feeling, I died. I can still feel my heart tearing to pieces, and it always hurts. I shut my eyes, say the word belle, and he appears sometimes, brown eyes, dark skin, blue shirt and he’s calling out to me. ‘Belle. Belle. Belle”.

How to frame your family for murder….

How do I begin this story?, from my murder, my ungrateful family that I loathe yet help anyway, or my cheating mistress? God, I hate them all. It may sound sick to you, but if you’ve lived my life, you would try to make sense of my feeling. It feels like a black hole in my heart and it just goes on and on. Volumes and volumes of emptiness, surrounded by teeth gritting, mouth clenching pain, pulling all the light around me and turning it to darkness. It always hurts. These people, they are the black hole in my heart and they have not a clue. These people.
I married a woman I didn’t know, and I told myself that we would get to know each other someday, but it’s been thirty years and I still have no clue who the hell Hauwa is. Her lovers though, I know every single one of them, from where they grew up, to their dreams and ambitions. There have been three of them, always light skinned, always younger, and always dumber. She’s always perfect, never a hair out of place, never not smiling, not a single wrinkle on her face, and her clothes, always crisp ironed. She makes everyone around her smile and people say she’s a delightful conversationalist. I wonder what they would say if they knew she murdered the last lover who blackmailed her. She would stab herself if it was ever revealed, that part of her, I know very well.
My twenty nine year old son Abdul who makes a living off of thinking he’s extorting me, still lives with me, is a drug addict and spends every night making love to my mistress who is supposed to be my nurse, Stella. Stella satisfies me, gives me my medications, rubs my head and tell me to go to bed early for the sake of my health and then goes to meet my son waiting for her in her room, then they make love, over and over again every night. The rest of my family, my brothers, and my aunt are more of the reasons why I’m about to go bankrupt, and I loathe them equally.
I hate myself too. An old sixty five year old man, with money that I do not care for, crippled miserable and depressed. Every day I sit in my library and plan a thousand ways to kill myself, and then I strike them out and repeat. None ever really gives me the feeling I want, but on the 7th of January 2020 I figured it out and I knew because I felt something I hadn’t felt inside in a really long time. People would usually call them butterflies. On the surface, it was a simple, yet classy plan, to kill myself and frame my family for my murder. If you look deeper, you’ll find that they were so many pieces I needed to put together to make it all make sense, but I have spent years of my life planning my death. It will be a grand exit.
Everything grand begins with a feast. It will begin with me inviting my family and soon to be murder suspects for a lavish new year’s Dinner. Over the years I’ve learnt that my family enjoy things like dinners, weddings, and social gatherings, it’s strange because all they do is judge each other and fight. Everyone gets to do what they are good at. My wife would enjoy being charming, my son enjoys the thrill of doing dangerous and risky things in family gatherings, and so does Stella. My brothers would find the opportunity to complain about their businesses failing, and my Aunt would try to guilt trip me into sending her children abroad to study, bailing her junkie son from prison, or paying for her nonexistent weekly therapy sessions. This dinner will be the final one and it will be much much different.
I’ll let them eat and drink, ask them about their lives and occasionally fake a smile, maybe I’ll even smile for real. After which I’ll propose a toast to long life and happiness, before telling them that I’ve decided to donate more than half of my fortune to charity in my will. I’ll give a speech about wanting them to appreciate the value of life by working hard for everything they want; it would be a load of bullshit. I’ll watch those fools fight and shout over lost fortune, all but my wife. She’ll be as calm as ever, Abdul on the other hand will definitely break glasses and perhaps something valuable in the house, then storm off and try to take off in his car, but it won’t start, no car in the house will. My brothers and aunt will engage in a screaming match, until one of them gets tired and lands a punch. Hauwa would then try to talk some sense to me in private and I’ll suggest the library because it’ s the closest to the living room, and if she raises her voice, they’ll hear her. She will raise her voice when I tell her I know about her affairs, and about my affairs with Stella. I hope she does, and if she doesn’t I still have a secret weapon. It’s my journal, cliché, an old wealthy man with a journal.
My journal will reveal all the darkest secrets and will be found in the most convenient places to find. I’ve written about my wife’s affairs, confronting her with it, my affair with Stella, my sons affair with Stella, confronting him with it. It’s a perfect web. I’ll also suspect Stella of mixing up my doses, and I’ve attached to my journal receipts and proof of every dime every member of my family have stolen from my company and I in the past year. The journal is the piece that ties it all.

After the dramatic dinner, I’ll wait until everyone goes to bed, just after midnight on the 13th of January. I’ve always planned for it to be on an odd date. I’ll be wearing my favourite pajamas, not that it matters anyway and I’ll disable all the cameras in the house. It will begin in my library. I’ll send a text message to my friend the commissioner of police, ‘they are going to kill me. Find my journal’ then I’ll make a cut on my arm, dripping little amounts of blood on the milk carpet, then I’d go through the window, leaving my Aunts favourite scarf hanging from the window. I’ll go through the back yard, into the woods, dripping blood on the floor, and making blooded hand prints on some of the trees, dropping my brother’s ring along the way. I’ll go straight to the lake. I know what you’re thinking, but no I’m not dying by drowning, it’s way too stressful a way to die, it will take too long. I’ll tie myself with a rope attaching Hauwa’s loubotin heel to it, and then inject myself with an over dose of heroine, who knew having a son with a drug addiction would be a pro someday . I stole an injection from my Stella, and heroine from Abdul ; and then jump into the water. I’ll be dead in a matter of minutes, dead, and I feel nothing even as I write this. It will feel the same.
The goal is not to frame a single person more than the other; it will all depend on how smart they play the game after my death. My will would be read in a press conference, after a year of court trials. It will be too hard to prove, so I know trial will be ongoing. My beloved family and mistress, they’ll get nothing from my will, but their freedom. I hope they treasure it more than they would have the money, but frankly I’d be dead, I wouldn’t care.