The Famished Road (30 page)

‘Why did you throw away my juju?’

‘Nothing.’

Mum laughed. Madame Koto let me go. She sat on the bed, beside Mum. She was as fat as ever, plump as a mighty fruit, but her face had become a little bit more frightening than I remembered. She did not have her white beads round her neck. Her face was darker; her eyes, shaded with eye-pencil, made her look mysterious. The quantity of wrappers round her increased her volume. The two women talked in low tones. I drew closer to listen. Madame Koto gave Mum a packet whose contents I never discovered. Then she turned to me and said:

‘I want you to come back. Your mother agrees. Since you stopped coming the bar has been empty.’

‘I will discuss it with your father,’ Mum added.

They went on talking. I went and played at the housefront. When Madame Koto was leaving she called me.

‘I am going now,’ she said, ‘but tomorrow I want you to come and attract customers to the bar, you hear?’

I nodded.

‘I will prepare you special peppersoup with plenty of meat.’ Then she waddled off into the darkness.

Dad returned exhausted that night. Mum did not discuss anything with him. The photographer did not turn up. The rats went on eating.

MADAME KOTO’S BAR had changed. She had put up a new signboard.

The signboard had a painting of a large-breasted mermaid serving drinks and steaming peppersoup. There were multicoloured plastic trailings at the doorway.

Swishing aside the curtain strips, I went in. The door was now blue. It was dark and cool inside. The benches were shorter. The tables had plastic coverings. As if she anticipated more trouble and more customers she had begun to install a counter at the far end of the bar, across from the backyard door. The walls were cobalt. It felt more peaceful in the bar. I went to the backyard and saw a little girl washing plates and spoons. She stared at me suspiciously.

‘Where is Madame Koto?’

She didn’t reply.

‘Can’t you talk?’

Still the girl didn’t say anything. I went to Madame Koto’s room and knocked. She didn’t seem to be in. So I went back into the bar and sat near the earthenware pot.

Flies buzzed in the serenity of the place. The little girl came in and remained at the threshold of the door, the curtain strips covering her face. She watched me. She had a long sad face and big eyes. She had little scarifications on her cheeks. She was too sad and too passive to be beautiful. She went on staring at me and I got irritated.

‘Why are you looking at me, eh?’

She stayed mute. Then she went to the backyard and carried on with her washing of plates and cutlery.

Throughout the afternoon no one came to drink and I did not see Madame Koto. I slept on the bench and woke up suddenly. It was quiet. There was a kerosine lamp on the table. I felt I had materialised in some underwater kingdom. I searched for the girl and could not find her. When I got back Madame Koto was in the bar with a carpenter.

‘Where have you been?’ she asked, shouting above the carpenter’s hammering.

‘I went to look for the girl.’

‘Which girl?’

‘The girl who was washing the plates.’

She stared at me as if I had turned into a fish, or as if I had gone mad.

‘What plates?’

‘The plates in the backyard.’

She went out and looked and came back shouting.

‘Something is wrongwith you,’ she said.

I went to the backyard and saw the plates and cutlery piled in a heap. They were all unwashed. A cauldron of peppersoup bubbled away on the firegrate near the heap.

‘Go and wash the plates,’ she bellowed, ‘before I get angry with you.’

I was reluctant, but I went. I fetched water from the well, sat on the stool, and washed the plates and cutlery. The fire, heatingmy face and dryingmy eyes, made me dizzy with its curiously fragrant woodsmoke. I listened to the carpenter hammering and the firewood crackling. I got very dizzy from breathing in the smoke and from the blast of the heat so that I started to sway and the evening began to turn. The peppersoup spilled over in green bubbles and poured over the firewood and the little girl came and lifted off the hot lid of the cauldron with her bare hands. Then she stirred the soup with a longwooden ladle which had the shape of a human palm at the serving end.

‘Get away from here!’ I cried.

When she brought out the ladle the serving end was missing. The wooden hand had become part of the soup.

‘Look what you’ve done!’ I shouted.

She threw away what was left of the ladle and went off in a sulk. Soon she returned with a long and large bone. She stirred the soup with it and the bone dissolved.

‘If you don’t go away I will beat you,’ I threatened.

She lifted the lid back on the cauldron and crouched near the grate and stared into the fire. She put out her hands, as if to warm them, and then she threw two white cowries into the flames. The firewood cried out, popping and crackling, and a thick indigo smoke filled the air and engulfed the girl and when the smoke cleared I saw her melting. First her outstretched hands melted into the air and then her shoulders and then her body. Her head remained on the ground and her big sad eyes went on staring at me impassively till she dissolved altogether.

I screamed and everything went white. I fell towards the fire. When I came round I was on the floor, my back on the ground. My shirt was soaked. Madame Koto stood above me.

‘What’s wrongwith you, eh?’

‘I saw the girl again.’

‘What girl?’

‘The one who was washing the plates.’

‘Get up!’

I got up. I felt very strange, as if I too were dissolving. I sat on the stool. There was only the froth of soup which had spilled over where the girl’s head had been.

‘Where did you see her?’

‘There,’ I said, pointing to the froth.

‘There’s nothing there.’

‘She was here!’ I insisted.

‘Go inside. Don’t bother to wash the plates. Go and drink some water.’

I went in and drank some water and sat on a bench. The carpenter’s hammering gave me a terrible headache. Each time he lifted the hammer in the air I felt it was coming down on my head. I went to the barfront and sat on the sand. I watched people go past. No one came into the bar. No one even looked at it. Darkness drifted slowly over the forest. The air became cooler. Birds circled the trees. Insects thronged the evening. No one noticed the bar because it was more noticeable. I felt on the edge of reality. Madame Koto’s bar seemed like a strange fairyland in the real world, a fairyland that no one could see.

I began to throw stones at her signboard. And then I threw stones at the blue door and the multicoloured plastic strips of curtain. Madame Koto came out and said:

‘Who is throwing stones?’

‘It’s the girl,’ I replied.

‘Where is she?’

‘She ran away.’

Madame Koto gave me a wicked stare, fingered her white beads, and went back to her washing. I stayed at the front and watched the darkness flow from the forest and gradually engulf the rest of the world. In the distance an owl hooted. A bird piped continuously. The darkness awakened the sounds of the forest. As I sat at the barfront, the sand hot beneath me, I saw a man going past with a little girl. The man saw me, looked at the signboard, and came towards the bar. With him was the same little girl who had melted away. I ran into the bar and hid behind the earthenware pot. The carpenter had almost finished his day’s work and was hammering the last few nails into the wood of the counter.

‘What’s wrong with you?’ he asked, flashing an irritated glare at me. ‘They are coming.’

‘Who?’

The man parted the plastic curtain strips and crossed the threshold. ‘Any palmwine?’

he asked.

‘Sit down. The madame is coming,’ said the carpenter.

The man sat. The girl was beside him. I hadn’t noticed her come in. ‘This place is dark,’ said the man. ‘Bring a lantern.’

‘Take them a lantern,’ ordered the carpenter.

I took the lantern from another table and put it on theirs. The girl blew it out. The place went dark. Fireflies punctuated the gloom.

‘What’s wrongwith your head?’ asked the man.

‘It’s that foolish girl,’ I cried. ‘She did it.’

‘What girl?’

‘The one next to you.’

The carpenter, raising his voice, said:

‘I will knock your head with this hammer! Can’t you see I am doing something?

Go and bringmatches!’

I fumbled my way out of the bar. Madame Koto was lifting the cauldron off the grate. She had tablecloths protecting her hands.

‘That girl is here again with a man. He wants palm-wine and matches.’

She gave me a box of matches and said she would be bringing in the palm-wine. I went inside and lit the lantern and the girl blew it out again. Her eyes shone in the dark. They glittered like the green eyes of a cat.

‘You are wicked,’ I said to her.

‘Me?’ said the man. ‘I come here to drink and a small goat like you abuses me?

Who is your father?’

‘Not you,’ I said. ‘It’s that girl. Your child. She’s wicked.’

I lit the match again and the man knocked me on the head. I dropped the match. It burnt on the table. The man hit me again and the girl smiled, her eyes sad, her mouth curiously tight. The match burnt out. I backed away into the dark.

‘Come and light this thing!’ the man said.

I heard the carpenter stumbling his way over wood and metal tools. He brought the smell of glue with him as he came towards us. He kicked a bench in the darkness and cursed.

‘When I catch you,’ he said, without being able to see me, ‘I will crack your head!’

I ran outside and stayed near the path that had become a street. The carpenter appeared, saw me, bent down, took off his slippers, and sprinted after me. I fled towards the forest. He gave up and went back, cursing me. I stayed out till I saw the man leaving with the little girl. They went down the street in the direction of our compound.

The carpenter had finished his day’s work. He sat at a bench, near the earthenware pot, and drank palm-wine. There were lanterns on every table.

‘You are lucky you’re not my son,’ he said, sullenly.

I stayed at the door, watching him.

‘You have just driven away the only customer that has come here today. Madame Koto is angry with you. The man refused to drink in the dark and left, you wicked child.’

I watched him.

‘Either you come in or stay out. But don’t look at me as if you are a lizard.’

I stayed out. There were stars in the sky. The moon was fading. Some of the stars moved as I watched them and I was so engrossed I didn’t hear the carpenter creep up to me. He caught my neck and dragged me into the bar. Madame Koto came in with two bowls of peppersoup.

‘Leave that wicked boy alone!’ she told the carpenter. Then to me she said: ‘I was going to give you plenty of meat but you will only get half because you drove away my customer.’

‘Let me flog him,’ the carpenter offered.

‘Go and flog your own children,’ Madame Koto replied.

The carpenter let me go. I made an ugly face at him. He went on drinking. Madame Koto gave us our respective bowls of peppersoup. I retired to a corner and sat on the floor with my back to the wall and drank the soup from a position where I could keep an eye on the carpenter. But the spoon Madame Koto had given me was too big for my mouth and I went out to get a smaller one. When I got back I found that most of my meat had gone. The carpenter was licking his fingers with great childlike relish.

‘Who stole my meat?’ I asked.

‘The little girl,’ replied the carpenter, with mischief and wickedness glinting in his eyes.

‘What girl?’

‘The girl.’

I stared at him a long time, trying to decide what to do. Then I went out and complained about the theft and Madame Koto gave me some more meat. I ate without takingmy eyes off the carpenter. He kept winking at me. When I finished I went and washed my bowl and spoon. And when I came back in I saw a man sitting at a table near the door. He turned his head towards me. At that moment I recognised him.

‘Dad!’ I cried, and ran over.

He put his arm round my shoulder I embraced him. Then I ran out to tellMadame Koto that my father was around. She brought in some palm-wine and peppersoup.

‘This son of yours’, she said, putting them down, ‘drove away my only customer.’

‘He’s a bad boy,’ Dad replied, with something like fondness. He was about to pay for the drink, but Madame Koto said:

‘Keep your money. This is to welcome you.’

‘I see you are improving the place.’

‘I’m doingmy best.’

‘Plenty of customers, eh?’

‘They will come.’

Madame Koto fetched herself some peppersoup and wine and sat near the counter.

Everyone drank and ate in silence. Then the carpenter, swaying on the bench, waving away flies, turned to Dad and said:

‘So which party do you support?’

We all looked up at him. Dad made his reply.

‘The Party of the Poor.’

‘They are as corrupt as everyone else,’ said the carpenter, banging his hand on the table.

‘Still, I support them. At least they don’t spit on us.’

‘They are all corrupt. In my home-town they killed a man because he wouldn’t support them. They too are trying to rig the elections. They have thugs who beat up people in the markets. They take bribes and they help only themselves.’

‘But still I support them,’ Dad said, stubbornly.

‘Why?What have they done for you?’

‘Nothing.’

‘So why?’

‘Because at least they think of the ordinary hard-workingman.’

‘They think of them, that’s all they do.’