The Famished Road (43 page)

The wind started. The man strode to the centre of the bar and made a great show of taking off his voluminous garment. He was taking it off for a long time. It got stuck round his neck, entangled with the beads and amulets. Another woman screamed. Dad poured himself another glass of palm-wine, downed it, got up and went round our table. He helped the man to remove his voluminous garment. The wind started and seemed strong enough to blow the bar away. I felt the floor tremble. When the man had taken off his great garment he fumed and cursed and then started taking off his shirt. It took a while. Dad went out to urinate. When he got back the man was barechested, except for the amulets round his neck. Scar-marks, like weird brandings, ran down his chest and converged at his navel. His followers had by this time surrounded Dad. It was frightening to see how collected and calm Dad was. I began to cry.

‘We don’t know you,’ one of the women said, amid shrieks. ‘We don’t know you and you come here with your ugly son and spoil our business and cause trouble.’

Her face was quite wild, her eyes twisted, her fingernails like red claws.

Dad ignored her.

‘So what do you want to do?’ the man asked, fingering his amulet. ‘Do you know this thing I have here, eh? If you touch me you will fall down seven times and then. .’

Suddenly—it seemed like a flash of lightning was lost in the bar—Dad had hit him in the face. It happened very fast. The next moment the bar door was wide open and the man had disappeared. We heard him groaning outside in the dark. The lightning vanished back into Dad’s fist. Then the woman with the red fingernails pounced on him from behind. She howled like a deranged cat, scratched Dad’s neck, and tried to claw out his eyes. Dad knocked her away and she fell on a table. The man she was with rushed over and jumped on Dad and they rolled outside. I heard them struggling to get up. The woman who had been knocked over saw me, came over, and gave me a resounding slap. The spirit reappeared in the bar. I ran outside. The woman followed. I ran into one of the men. He pushed me away and I fell on Madame Koto’s signboard that was on the soggy ground. It was still drizzling. I could see that the two men were fighting Dad. One of them held him from behind, and the other hit him from the front. Dad jerked forward and downwards and tossed the man behind him over his shoulder. Then he flattened the one in front with a crackling punch to the nose. Both stretched out in a messy heap on the mud. Dad, satisfied, smiled at me.

The woman jumped on him and pulled his hair and clung to him with her nails. Dad found it difficult to shake her off. And by the time he had managed to do so the other men inside had come out.

‘Let’s run,’ I said.

The men surrounded Dad. The two that had fallen began to stir. I tried to beat them down with a stick, but it did no good. The men, five in all, tightened the circle round Dad. Shrieking in unnatural voices, the women urged them on, urged them to kill Dad, to rub his face in the mud, force him to eat dirt. One man attempted to punch Dad in the face, missed, and tripped. Another one lunged at Dad and brought him down. Soon the whole lot of them fell on the two bodies on the floor and formed a writhing heap. The fight became confused. Everyone seemed to be hitting everyone else. Then, out of the wriggling mud-covered mass of bodies, emerged the yellow head of the spirit. It looked fairly confused. Then the spirit disentangled itself altogether from the fray and wobbled towards me and stuck its yellow head close to my face, so that I couldn’t escape its flaming red eyes. The voice in my head, again, said:

‘Shut your eyes.’

I did and could still see. The spirit blinked rapidly and the brightness of its eyes hurt me. The men had rolled off the heap. Dad lashed at them wildly, swinging granite punches. Then he ran to the backyard and returned soon afterwards with a terrifying piece of wood. I opened my eyes. The piece of wood had several long nails sticking through it. I shouted. The spirit, ten eyes widened, leant its central head closer to me, and said:

‘They told me to bring you with me.’ ‘Who?’

‘Your friends.’

‘What friends?’

‘In the spirit world. Your companions.’ Dad lashed out with the piece of wood.

‘You had a pact with them. Before you were born. Remember?’ The men scattered as Dad wielded his ugly weapon.

‘Hold him!’ one of the men cried.

‘You hold him,’ said another.

Dad pursued them. They fled. He pursued the woman. She ran, screaming, towards the forest.

‘They said I must bring you,’ the spirit said again.

‘I won’t come.’

The other women in the bar were now outside. One of the men picked up a long branch. Dad tore after him with a murderous expression on his face. The man dropped the branch and ran.

‘Cowards!’ Dad shouted, triumphantly.

He kept tearing after the men and they kept fleeing. Then he went into the bar. The women scattered as he approached. He re-emerged with a calabash of palm-wine belonging to his adversaries. He drank steadily while keeping an eye on the men.

‘So you won’t come?’ the spirit asked me.

‘No.’

‘What about your promises?’

‘What promises?’

‘They will be angry.’

‘So what?’

‘Don’t say I didn’t warn you,’ the spirit said.

‘About what?’

‘Remember that I have only three heads. After I have failed, your companions will send the spirit with four heads.’

One of the women jumped on Dad while he was gulping down the last of the palmwine.

Then they all jumped on him and they called the men to come and finish him off. Dad struggled. The calabash broke. A woman cried out. The men approached cautiously.

‘And after that they will send the spirit with five heads.’

Dad shook off the women. They fell from him. One of them managed to snatch away his feared weapon of nails and ran off with it.

‘And when it gets to the turn of the seven-headed spirit nothingwill be able to save you.’

The men approached Dad more confidently. The women began to throw stones at him.

‘And if you somehow escape from the seven-headed spirit your companions will come themselves.’

They stoned Dad and caught him on the head. He stoned them back. But the men joined in and soon stones flew at him from many places in the darkness.

‘Prostitutes! Yam-breasted women of hell!’ Dad bellowed. They began to stone me too. Dad picked up Madame Koto’s fallen signboard and used it as a shield. We edged backwards into the bar. When we were inside we locked the front door. The spirit came in through the shut door and pestered me to follow him. Dad piled up benches to keep the door securely shut. The spirit followed me everywhere, reminded me of promises that were not his business, pleading, threatening, with a head in front of me all the time, and another head talking always into my ear. The thugs stoned the door. I heard them run round to the back. Dad blew out all the lights. The men didn’t have the courage to come into the darkness. The spirit, luminous, its eyes blazing, wandered around in the darkness as if it had lost its sense of direction. Dad cursed. He said he was bleeding. The mosquitoes fed on us. We tried to remain still. I had no idea what would happen next. The spirit, slightly crazy, wandered about the bar, and went outside through one of the walls. Thunder boomed above. The spirit came rushing back in. Lightning cracked. The spirit, confused, staggered and turned in all directions. The rain began falling again. We heard someone creeping in through the back door. Dad threw something. A man screamed and ran out. There was a long silence. Then we heard the loud voice of Madame Koto at the front. She banged on the door. The thugs bolted to the backyard. The prostitutes rushed into the bar and lit the lamps and hurriedly ordered the place and took the benches away from behind the front door. The spirit came and sat next to me. The prostitutes opened the door and made excuses for it being shut, saying something about the ferocity of the rain, and Madame Koto, drenched, her face thunderous with rage, stepped into the bar. She shook herself like a great feathered bird and sent sprays of water everywhere. Dad sat still, blood dripping from his forehead on to the table. The spirit’s blue head watched the blood with radiant fascination. Madame Koto stared at us. She said nothing. It was clear she was making up her mind about us in some way. She went slowly up the bar.

The spirit got up and followed her. The prostitutes cowered against the walls, faces pressed into the shadows. Dad stood up and said:

‘Madame Koto!’

She stopped walking. Water dripped from the bottom of her wrapper. The spirit went right through her. She shivered.

‘Madame Koto, your friends nearly killed me two days ago. I saw them here today.

They fought me and stoned me. Your women stoned me as well. What are you going to do about it?’

She said nothing. She went on towards the counter. She walked through the spirit.

‘You are a wicked woman, a witch,’ Dad said in an even tone of voice. ‘And, because you don’t care about human beings terrible things will happen to you. Me and my son will never set foot here again.’

Madame Koto turned to look at Dad. She seemed surprised, but not curious, at the verbal attack. She looked at me. Her eyes could have turned me to wood. I think she became our enemy from that moment. She carried on walking. She disappeared into the backyard. Dad finished his drink, took me by the hand, and led me outside.

The thugs were gone. The rain poured on us and we didn’t notice. The forest was one watery darkness. The street had become a pond. The gutters overflowed. As we went the solid earth turned to mud and we waded through the slush that reached up to my knees. Dad said nothing. The steady falling of the rain silenced all human voices.

The sky was very dark. As we neared home Dad said, chuckling:

‘We showed them pepper, didn’t we?’

‘Yes.’

‘That’s how to be a man.’

‘How?’

‘When people fight you, toughen up, study them, wait for the right time, and then fight them back. Fight them like a madman, like a wizard. Then they will respect you.’

I was shivering now. My teeth chattered. Dad strode on ahead of me. The rain ran down my back.

When we got home there was a candle lit, there was the smell of a new pot of soup, the room had been cleaned, it was warm, the door was open, but Mum wasn’t in. Dad changed into his towel and went and had a bath. When he came back I went and had one. By the time I got back Mum was sitting on the bed. On the table was a great bowl of steaming peppersoup. Mum looked fresh but lean. She had powder on her face and her eyes were bright. When I came in, my little towel wrapped round my waist, Mum smiled.

‘So you and your father have been fighting everybody, eh?’ I went over and sat on her lap.

‘Did they stone you too?’

‘Yes, but I dodged.’

Dad laughed. Mum rubbed oil over me. I combed my hair, and dressed. I fell asleep in Mum’s arms. Then I woke up suddenly. The light was different. There was a mosquito coil burning.

‘Have some peppersoup,’ Mum said.

I was now on the bed. I got up and finished what was left of the soup. It was hot and it made my mouth and head come alive. My eyes burned. Dad was on his threelegged chair.

‘I saw a spirit today,’ I said.

They both sat up. ‘What spirit?’

‘With three heads.’

‘Where?’

‘In Madame Koto’s bar.’

‘When?’

‘When we were fighting.’

Dad looked at me dubiously. Then slowly he sat back.

‘What was it like?’

‘It had three heads.’

‘What did it say?’

‘That I should follow it.’

‘Where?’

‘Where I came from.’

They both fell silent. Dad shut his eyes, rocked skilfully on the chair, and then he opened one eye and regarded me.

‘It’s time for you to sleep.’ I said nothing.

‘So they would have killed me and all you would have told people is that you saw a spirit, eh?’

‘No,’ I said.

‘Go to sleep.’

I began to spread my mat.

‘Sleep on the bed.’

I climbed on to the bed. Mum cleared the table and spread the mat.

‘If a spirit calls you,’ Mum said, ‘don’t go, you hear? Think of us. Think of your father who suffers every day to feed us. And think of me who carried you in my womb for more than nine months and who walks all the streets because of you.’

‘Yes, think of us,’ Dad added. I nodded.

‘And’, Dad said, sternly, ‘from now on Madame Koto is our enemy. Azaro, if I see you go there again, I will flog you and put pepper in your eyes, you hear?’

‘Yes, Dad.’

‘She is a witch, a wicked woman. That’s why she has no children.’

‘But she is pregnant,’ I said.

‘How do you know?’

‘Someone said so.’

‘Shut up. And don’t listen to what people say. Is she pregnant for you?’

‘No.’

‘Then shut up and don’t answer me back when I’m talking to you.’

‘Yes, Dad.’

I turned away from him and faced the wall so as not to see his frightening expression. Besides I feared that if I looked at him it might make him angry and he might pounce on me. He muttered and cursed for a while. He abused the thugs, the party, his job, the colonialists, the landlord, and the rain. His temper, feeding on itself, grew worse. He abused Madame Koto and wondered aloud whether he should burn down her bar. At that point Mum put out the candle. I heard her shifting on the mat.

Dad went on cursing in the dark.

One MOMENT I was in the room and the next moment I found myself wandering the night roads. I had no idea howl had gotten outside. I walked on the dissolving streets and among the terrestrial bushes. The air was full of riddles. I walked through books and months and forgotten histories. I was following a beautiful woman with a blue head. She moved in cadenzas of golden light. She floated on the wind of a royal serenity. Superimposed on distant plangency of Mum praying in the dark, the woman turned and beckoned me. I followed her smile and listened to the fugal birds. She drew my spirit on to fountains of light and lilac music and abiku variations. The air was faintly scented with resinous smoke and incense, flavoured with the fruit of guavas and cherries and crushed pineapples. I walked behind the woman for a long time, walking to the tunes of alto voices beneath cypress trees. I heard someone call my name from a heavier world, but I went on walking. Beyond the hair of the beautiful woman there was a landscape with luminous flying-machines, gardens brilliant with passion-flowers and cana-lilies.