The Famished Road (18 page)

‘Dongoyaro,’ Mum said, insisting that I drink it all down in one gulp.

‘If you don’t, I flog you,’ Dad threatened.

I drank it all down in one and was shaken to the foundations of my stomach with its infernal bitterness. Bile rushed to my mouth; it was so bitter that I shook in disgust.

Mum gave me a cube of sugar, which didn’t sweeten my mouth one bit. And all through my sleep, all the way to the next morning, my mouth was still bitter.

‘The bitterness drives away the malaria,’ Mum said, tuckingme into bed.

‘Bitterness is what the boy needs,’ Dad said, his voice heavy.

He was still angry with me for keeping them up all night, for making them suffer so much worry; and now he could not forgive me because I was ill and had cheated him of a target for his annoyance. Protected from his rage by my fever, I slept that night wracked with bad dreams and road-spirits.

Saturday morning, three days later, I was still ill. My mouth and eyes were dry and I kept hearing birds twittering in my ears. Mum was clattering among the basins and cleaning up the room. Dad wasn’t in; Mum said he had gone to work at the garage.

Towards noon Jeremiah came round with photographs of the party. Mum told him he’d have to come back. He grumbled about how expensive it was taking pictures of poor people, but he left without creating a scene.

It became very hot in the room. The air coming in from the window brought flies aid gnats, but it didn’t cool anything. I sweated profusely on the bed till I was lying on a pool of dampness. My body hurt all over and the soles of my feet itched and a headache expanded my brain. I watched Mum cleaning the room in a haze of dust and dryness. She looked the picture of forebearance. She said:

‘You must listen to your father and be careful how you walk on the road.’

‘Yes, Mum.’

‘The road swallows people and sometimes at night you can hear them calling for help, begging to be freed from inside its stomach.’

‘Yes, Mum.’

She cleaned out the cupboard and prepared my food. I ate little. She made me get out of bed and bathe. With the daylight hurting my eyes, with the noises of the compound jangling my nerves, and the stares of the other tenants increasingmy sense of multiplication, I went to the backyard. Mum had prepared warm herbal water.

‘Bathe of it properly,’ she said, ‘or I will do it for you.’

It was cold when I took off my clothes. But the water was hot and the soap smelt good. I was led back to the room feeling new. Mum rubbed me over with herbal oil.

‘Time for your dongoyaro,’ she said.

I could have fainted at the anticipation of its bitterness.

‘If you don’t drink it all down I won’t allow you go out today.’

I drank it all down. Later I marvelled that my urine was the deep yellow colour of its bitterness.

The afternoon brought the bustling noises of the compound people scrubbing their roomfronts. I heard them chattering, either going out on Saturday outings or being visited by friends or relations. Mum got me to dress up in my fine clothes which I wore only at Christmas. She parted my hair and touched my face with powder, which I sweated off. And then Madame Koto came to see us.

She looked very dignified in her white magic beads and her elaborate wrappers and her massive blouse. She was dressed as if she were going to see wealthy relations.

‘Azaro, what happened to you?’

‘I was lost.’

‘You just disappeared.’

‘We should tie up his feet,’ Mum said. ‘He walks too much.’

Madame Koto laughed and brought out a bowl steaming with goat-meat peppersoup.

‘Are there demons in it?’ I asked.

She gave me a severe stare, smiled at Mum, and said:

‘It’s full of meat and fish.’

It tasted better than the soup she served her customers. I drank it all down and ate all the meat and fish and my stomach bulged.

‘You didn’t finish the one I made you,’ Mum said.

‘I did.’

Madame Koto packed the bowl back into her bag.

‘Get strong quick, and come and sit in the bar, eh,’ she said, heading for the door.

Mum escorted her out. I could hear them talking. They left the roomfront and I couldn’t hear them any more.

Mum was gone for a long time. The soles of my feet began to itch. Then as I lay there, moving in and out of sleep, in and out of dreams, loud new voices crackled from the street. The voices were so magnified that I wondered what sort of human beings produced them. I couldn’t hear what they said. I felt I was imagining them, that they were another manifestation of the spirits. The compound children ran up and down the passage, talking excitedly. I heard the men and women talking in animated tones as if some fantastic new spectacle had appeared in our street, a bazaar, a public masquerade, a troupe of magicians, with contortionists and fire-eaters. The crackling voices drew closer and sounded from the rooftops of all the houses. The compound appeared empty, everyone had gone out to see what was going on, and I could hear a baby crying in its temporary abandonment.

Overcome with curiosity, I got out of bed. The crack of an iron ruler shot through my head and ended between my eyes. The room swayed. The crackling voice outside spoke from an elevated stationary position. Darkness formed round my eyes and then cleared. I made for the door. The passage was empty. All the compound people were gathered at the housefront. All the housefronts of the street were crowded with people. And everyone was staring at the spectacle of an open-backed van with a megaphone. A man in resplendent white agbada was talking with great gestures. It was the first time I had heard such amplification of voice.

The inhabitants of the street crowded round the van, hunger on their faces. Their children were in tattered clothes, had big stomachs, and were barefoot.

‘What is it?’ someone asked.

‘Politicians.’

‘They want votes.’

‘They want our money.’

‘They have come to tax us.’

‘I saw them when I went hawking. They keep giving reasons why we should vote for them.’

‘They only remember us when they want our votes.’ The man in the van spoke for himself.

‘VOTE FOR US. WE ARE THE PARTY OF THE RICH, FRIENDS OF THE POOR...’

‘The poor have no friends,’ someone in the crowd said.

‘Only rats.’

‘IF YOU VOTE FOR US...’

‘...we are finished,’ someone added.

‘...WEWILL FEED YOUR CHILDREN...’

‘. . . lies.’

‘...AND WEWILL BRING YOU GOOD ROADS...’

‘. . . which the rain will turn into gutters!’

‘...AND WEWILL BRING ELECTRICITY...’

‘. . . so you can see better how to rob us!’

‘...AND WEWILL BUILD SCHOOLS...’

to teach illiteracy!’

‘... AND HOSPITALS. WEWILLMAKE YOU RICH LIKE US. THERE IS PLENTY FOR EVERYBODY. PLENTY OF FOOD. PLENTY OF POWER. VOTE FOR UNITY AND POWER!’

By this time the mocking voices were silent.

‘AND TO PROVE TO YOU THAT WE ARE NOT EMPTY WORDS BRING YOUR CHILDREN TO US. WE ARE GIVING AWAY FREEMILK! YES, FREEMILK FROM US, COURTESY OF OUR GREAT PARTY!’

On and on they went, crackling abundant promises on the air, launching future visions of extravagant prosperity, till they broke down the walls of our scepticism. The compound people abandoned their doubts and poured over to the van. Feeling the road sway, with the magnified voice quivering in my ears, I went with them. I was surprised to see our landlord on the back of the van. His face glistened with the smile of the powerful and he had on a lace agbada. There were stacks of powdered milk on the back of the van and men with bristling muscles, bare-chested, ripped open the sacks and dished out the milk with yellow bowls to the women who had rushed over with containers. The landlord, like a magician in a triumphant moment, handed out bowls of milk to the great surging mass of people. All around me the throng had become rowdy; the crowd converged round the van, arms outstretched, and the rush for free milk broke into a frenetic cacophony. The crowd shook the van, voices clashed in the air, children cried out under the crush, hands clawed at the sacks, and the frenzy became so alarming that the man at the megaphone began shouting:

‘DON’T RUSH. WE HAVE ENOUGH FREE MILK FOR THE WHOLE COUNTRY...’

His pleading only made things worse; people surged round with basins, had them filled, rushed to their homes, and returned with greater vigour. Soon the whole street, in a frightening tide of buckets and basins, of clanging pots, and rancorous voices, rocked the van. The landlord looked sick with fright. Sweat broke out on his face and he struggled to take off his agbada, but it got caught in the outstretched clawing hands of all the struggling hungry people. The more he tried to get it off, the more entangled it became in all the hands. It was as though his clothes too had become an extension of his party’s promises, a free gift to everyone. On the other side of the van I saw Madame Koto engaged in negotiations with the man at the megaphone, pointing vigorously in the direction of her bar. All around her the crowd hustled. The women’s kerchiefs were torn off, shirts were ripped apart, milk spilt everywhere and powdered the faces of the women and children. With their sweating, milk-powdered faces they looked like starving spirits. The crowd surged, voices swelling, and the driver started the van’s engine. The hunger of the crowd wreaked itself on the van; the handers-out of milk began to shout; the driver got worried; the landlord’s agbada had been torn off him by the crowd. He battled to get it back, clinging on to its edges in desperation, pleading. But the crowd, with confused clawing motions, raking the milk sacks from under the feet of thugs, dragged the landlord’s agbada with them. He clung on stubbornly and they dragged him along with his garment, out of the van, till only his feet were left showing, kicking vainly at the air. One of the thugs stopped dishing out the milk and held on to the landlord’s feet, to keep him in, but lost the battle against the confused fury of motions, and the landlord disappeared into the great welter of bodies. His agbada was passed from hand to hand, above the crowd; and soon so many hands grasped at the lace garment that it tore into several pieces in the air and patches of its blue cloth flew this way and that like the feathers of a plucked parrot.

When the landlord next emerged his hair was covered in mud and someone spilt milk on him and he looked like a travesty of an Egungun and when he tried to get back on the van his fellow party men wouldn’t let him because they didn’t recognise him. He shouted his indignation and the thugs, abandoning their activity, set on him, bundled him off, and threw him to the ground, a good distance from the van. The intrepid photographer appeared with his camera and took pictures of the miserable landlord and the surging crowd. The landlord got up in a great fury, shook his fists, swore at the party and, covered in mud and dried milk, his clothes in tatters, his pants all twisted, he stormed away down the street, a solitary figure of wretched defiance.

The photographer went on taking pictures. The men on the van posed in between doling out milk, smiling in weird fixity at the camera, while the crowd jostled. I saw three tough-looking men suddenly snatch sacks of milk from the van; I saw them run off down the street, pursued by the party thugs. Children were squashed by the jostling. A man fainted. Women cried out. A girl was prodded in the eye. Someone else, elbowed in the mouth, spat blood into the air. The photographer flashed his camera at a woman with a swollen eye, a basin of milk on her head. I saw a man running out from the crowd’s vanguard, with deep scratches bleeding down his face.

The windows of the van were smashed in the mêlée. Blood mixed with milk on the earth. I heard Mum screaming. I fought my way in the direction of her cry. I saw Madame Koto leaving the scene of confusion with utmost dignity, her beads gleaming in the sun. I searched for Mum in the crowding, in the heated sweat and hungry violence of the swelling multitude. Elbows crashed on my head and someone’s fist cracked my nose, drawing blood. I fought my way back out, stumbling over feet of solid bone and rough legs. The van suddenly started moving. It knocked over a man and dragged with it a hundred surging bodies. The crowd poured after the van as if in a holy crusade. The thugs on the back of the van, resorting to a diversionary tactic, tore open a hidden sack and began throwing pennies and silver pieces in the air. The coins landed on our heads, we caught them with our faces, were sometimes blinded by their force as we surged, and we scrambled for them, forgetting the milk, while the van drove away, crackling its announcements, its party promises, and the venue of the party’s next great public spectacle. The children ran after the van, while the rest of the crowd, caught in the spiral of its own fever, scrambled for coins.

The photographer chased the van, endlessly taking pictures of the thugs flexing their muscles, while party leaflets sailed in the air above us, words we would never read.

And when the van had disappeared from our street, when the amplified voice faded into the depths of the area, we recovered slowly from our fever. The road was full of spilt milk and party leaflets. Children searched the dust for hidden coins. Mum emerged from a group of women, her face bruised, powdered milk on her hair, her blouse torn.

‘I won’t vote for them,’ said the woman with the swollen eye.

Mum saw me and came after me, transferring her annoyance, and shouted:

‘Go back to bed!’

I hurried across the street. Everything swayed. A party leaflet stuck to my foot.

Powdered milk tickled my nostrils. The heat grew in my ears. A headache hammered away between my eyes. I lingered at the compound-front, listening to voices comparing their experience, arguing about politics. And when I saw Mum crossing the road, I hurried off into the room. Mum brought in her basin of free milk, with a look of exhausted triumph on her face. She placed the basin on the cupboard, as if the effort she had put into acquiring it had somehow made it quite special. Then she went to have a bath. The compound people converged in the passage and got into heated discussions about which of the two main parties was the best, which had more money, which was the friend of the poor, which had the better promises, and they went on like that, tirelessly, till the night fell slowly over the spectacle of the day.