The Famished Road (45 page)

‘Yes?’

Her serious face, with long scarifications, frightened me. I asked for the measure. She took my bottle and went back into the room, leaving me in the wet passage. I could hear the family talking within. After a while the woman came out, her face still grim.

She had a dollop of eba in one hand. In the room behind her I could see her five children and her husband, seated in a circle on the floor, eating from the same bowls.

She gave me the bottle and my change. I left the compound, which stank of dried fish and urine, and went to the front. I was thinking about the photographer when I saw a man go behind the burnt van. I thought it was Dad. When I got there I encountered a perfect stranger urinating on the door of the van. His urine steamed.

‘What are you looking at?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Get away from here, you badly trained child.’

‘I am not badly trained.’

‘Shut up,’

‘No.’

‘What?’ he shouted. Then he cursed.

‘You made me piss on myself.’ I laughed and backed away.

‘Who is your father, eh?’ he asked angrily.

I turned and started to leave when I heard him curse again. When I looked I saw that he was coming after me, urinating. I broke into a run.

‘God punish you, useless child!’ he cried.

‘God punish you too,’ I said.

He pursued me. I ran. The ogogoro spilled. I went and hid in a bush and crawled round till I got to the backyard of a house. I could still hear the man shouting abuses at the new generation of children. His drunken voice faded into the darkness, occasionally emerging louder.

‘Stupid children,’ he said. ‘Looking at my prick. As if his father doesn’t have one.’

When his voice had gone far enough I crept out of my hiding-place. The wind rose again and whistled in my ears. A cat shrieked and leapt out from the darkness near me. I jumped in fright. Blood pounded in the side of my face. Then I heard gentle voices calling me in the dark. I went towards the street. The voices moved. They began calling me from the bushes nearest the front window of a bungalow. When I heard the voices I was afraid. The wind dropped. When I answered the voices they changed and began singing my name in twisted melodies. I challenged the voices to come out, to show their faces. I was of the opinion that they were not spirits but children mocking me in the darkness. I got angry and threw bits of wood and balls of wet paper at them. But to my surprise they threw stones at me. One of them got meon the shoulder. So I put down the ogogoro bottle and threw stones back at them, swearing and cursing. I got so involved with throwing stones, angry at not hitting them, at not hearing them cry out, that I didn’t notice when the voices stopped. The next thing I heard was the breaking of glass. I had shattered a window. A light came on in the room. I heard a key turn in a lock. The curtain parted and the blind old man, holding a lantern, face pressed against the broken window, looked out at me with malignant concentration. His eyes became flames. He shouted for help. It was only when I realised that it was the house where the blind old man lived that I picked up the bottle and ran home.

‘Where have you been?’ Mum asked, when I came in.

‘Nowhere.’

‘You have sand on you. Sand and mud. You have poured ogogoro on yourself. You stink of it. What have you been doing?’

‘Nothing.’

She got up and came over to me, menacingly. Her face changed.

‘You have been drinking the ogogoro, eh?’

‘No, no,’ I said, helplessly.

She reached out, swifter than the wind, and caught me. She hit me on the head. She lifted up her foot, took off a slipper, and lashed me on the back.

‘You are still a child and yet you are drinking ogogoro, eh?’

‘No.’

‘Stealing ogogoro, eh?’

‘No!’

‘Hiding in the bush and drinking, eh?’ she shouted.

Each statement was accompanied by the cracking of the slipper on my back. I tore away and ran to the door, opened it, and saw Dad standing there, like a stranger. He didn’t move. Mum put down the slipper and sat on the bed. Dad came in, shut the door, and said:

‘An evil wind is blowing in my head.’

He didn’t sit on his chair, but stood at the window. Then he said:

‘How longwill a man have to struggle?’

There was a moment’s silence. My back was singing with the lashes. I wanted to cry out, but Dad’s mood made it impossible.

‘There is some ogogoro on the table,’ said Mum.

With vacant eyes, like someone who had woken up from a deep sleep into a strange land, Dad picked up the bottle and went to the door. Mum covered her head with a headtie. Dad made profuse libations, using up half the drink. He prayed to his ancestors to save us from poverty, from hunger, from trouble. He asked for guidance and signs of what to do. Then he poured ogogoro for us all and downed his in one. He shut his eyes.

‘Something strange is going to happen,’ he said wearily, ‘and I don’t know what it is.’

Dad stayed still, his eyes shut. Now and again he tossed his head backwards.

‘An evil wind keeps a man poor,’ he said.

Me and Mum watched him intently. He stayed silent for a very long time. Mum began clearing the room. The place stank of ogogoro and rain. I prepared my mat, and lay down, when crude knocks sounded on the door. I thought of the photographer. I opened the door and saw a man, a woman, and the blind old man.

‘That’s him!’ one of them said.

Instantly I tried to shut the door, but the man wedged it with a big foot, and pushed his way in.

‘Who is it?’ asked Dad.

‘I don’t know,’ I said, running to hide behind him.

The three apparitions came into the room. A terrified look appeared on Mum’s face. The old man—blind, chewing his mouth—waved his cane in the air. The other man held on to the old man’s arm. The woman stood in the middle of the room, hands aggressively on hips. The blind old man, cocking his head, moved his face in one direction and then another. Green liquid leaked out of his eyes. He waved the cane again and knocked the candle over. Mum picked it up and stuck it back on the saucer on the table. The blind old man’s cane hit her on the bottom and Mum straightened and the cane fell from the blind man’s hand. The woman picked it up and put it back in his grasping fingers. Then she said, in an angry voice:

‘Your son broke our window.’

‘I didn’t,’ I said.

‘Shut up,’ said Dad.

‘He broke the old man’s window with stones.’ ‘You should discipline your son,’

the man said. ‘Flog him,’ added the woman.

Then the blind man, moving forward, stumbling, arms stretched, confused by the unfamiliar room, working his mouth, said:

‘Where is the boy? Bring him here.’ I went and hid beneath the bed.

‘We want you to pay for the window,’ the woman said.

‘Glass is expensive.’

‘Bring him here, let me hold him,’ came the blind old man in a cracked, unnatural voice.

‘How do you know it was my son who broke the window?’ asked Dad.

‘The old man saw him,’ said the woman, changing her stance. There was silence.

‘The blind old man?’ asked Dad, a little incredulously.

‘Yes.’

Another silence.

‘How did he see?’

‘He saw your son stoning the window.’

‘How?’

‘What kind of question is dat?’ ‘I said how?’

‘The old man can see when he wants to.’

I looked out furtively from behind the bed. The blind old man was now completely still, his hands frozen in the air, his head cocked, his eyes moving strangely. Then, to my utmost horror, the old man pointed his cane in my direction. Everyone turned towards me. The blind old man, caught in a sinister fever, began stammering. Weird noises issued from his mouth. Then, suddenly, he broke free from the man who was acting as his eyes. He came forward, pushed past Mum’s knees, and tripped against the table, felling the candle, plunging the room into darkness. He crashed on the bed and fought his way up. Dad lit a match. The old man, arms flailing, a terrible, guttural, ancient howl pouring from him, charged towards Dad like a mad animal. For some reason Dad was scared, and he fell off the chair. With uncanny resolution, the old man moved towards me, eyes wide open, green tears streaming down his face. Then he stopped. Dad lit the candle. With another howl, the old man pounced at me. I ducked.

He fell behind the bed. The woman and the man rushed to pick him up. When he was standing again, he made another demented cry, threw their arms off him, like an enraged beast, and stalked me again. Mum screamed. The blind old man tracked me round the room. I kept running in circles, round the centre table. I was completely horrified at the thought of being clutched by the old man. Then suddenly he was silent. He became very still. He was like someone serenely fighting to get out of a dream. The room changed. The lights became tinged with red. Then to my amazement I saw that the old man had two heads. One had good eyes and a gruesome smile of power. The other remained normal.

‘Come here, you abiku child, you stubborn spirit-child. You think you are powerful, eh? I am more powerful than you,’ the old man said, in a resonant, young man’s voice.

‘Leave my son alone,’ Mum said before letting out a deafening high-pitched shriek.

The old man stopped in his tracks.

‘We will pay for the window,’ Dad said, in a voice of conciliation. The two heads of the old man became one. Then, as if released from a spell, the woman said:

‘Of course you will pay.’

The other man came forward and held the old man. The woman gave him back his cane. The old man slumped curiously, his shoulders dropped, his back hunched, his head cocked. He became passive and frail. His bones rattled. He stumbled and muttered. A macabre agedness came over him, as if his uncanny exertions had dried up his life. Without another word all three of them left the room.

Holding our breaths, we watched them leave. When they had gone Mum got up and locked the door. Then she turned on me.

‘Why did you break their window, eh? Do you want to kill us? Don’t you see how poor we are, eh? Have you no pity on your father? Do you know how much glass costs, eh?’

‘I didn’t break it.’

‘Who did?’

‘The spirits.’

‘What spirits?’

‘How can spirits break a window?’ Dad wondered.

‘I don’t know.’

‘You use these spirits as an excuse every time you do something bad, eh?’

‘No.’

‘You’re lying.’ ‘I’m not,’ I screamed. I began to cry. ‘You’re lying.’

‘I’m not. It was the spirits. They stoned me and so I stoned them back.’

‘Why did they stone you?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘So you went and broke the window because the spirits stoned you, eh?’

I was silent.

‘Do you see what a dangerous son you are? You will kill us, you know. You will kill us with your troubles. Look at what you’ve done. You let that blind old man come into our room. Do you know what powers he has? Did you see the way he behaved? If he had caught you, only God knows what would have happened.’

Mum got so worked up in her fear that she came over and grabbed my ears. She held them tight between her fingers and thumbs. She twisted them till I thought she was going to wrench my ears from my head. I howled. My cry seemed to enrage her further, for she pulled and twisted my ears harder and pinched them and then she swiped me across the head. She hit me so hard I went flying across the room. I collapsed against the wall and slid down to the floor. I sat still, eyeing Mum with a vengeful solemnity.

‘Don’t look at your mother like that!’ Dad said.

I lowered my eyes and cried silently, tears dripping on to my thighs. I stayed like that even when Mum put out the candle. I stayed sitting against the wall when they went to sleep. I didn’t move from my position even when they snored and turned on the bed. It did not matter whether they saw my protest or not. I was determined tostay like that to the end of time.

And then it was morning. I found myself stretched out on the mat, a cloth covering me. Tear-tracks were stiff on my face. I woke up happy. It was only after Mum gave me some bread and set out hawking that I remembered I was supposed to be angry with everyone.

IT WAS IN the evening, after Dad came back with the carpenter and a pane of glass, that I got the full force of his anger. I was in the room when he returned from work. He came in, put down the glass, changed his clothes, and went out. He didn’t say a word. I followed him at a distance. He went with the carpenter to the old man’s house. It was the same carpenter who had built Madame Koto’s counter.

The blind old man sat outside on the verandah, with a cat in his lap, and a pipe in his mouth. He wore the same hat I had seen him in. Dad said nothing to him. He showed the carpenter the window. With a hammer the carpenter broke the jagged edges of the glass left standing in the window frame. The noise startled the cat, which jumped away from the old man’s lap. When the glass fell into the room it brought protestations from the woman. She complained and insisted that the carpenter sweep the room. The carpenter said he wouldn’t, and dropped his tools. The other man came out. Other people from the compound came out as well. The man began to push the carpenter around. Dad stepped in. The man pushed Dad around as well. I could see Dad struggling to contain his anger. The shouting and arguing attracted a crowd. Soon even Madame Koto came to see what was happening and when she saw Dad she tried to calm everything down but only succeeded in drawing a spate of abuse from him.

She slunk away, cursingDad and men in general.

The argument about sweeping the room raged for a while. Then the old man shouted that they should allow the carpenter to continue with his work.

‘Do you people want mosquitoes to kill me in my old age!’ he said. The quarrels were instantly resolved. The woman allowed the carpenter to continue on the condition that he made the glass fall outside. The carpenter, however, only resumed work after Dad had appeased his anger with bottles of beer and some kola-nuts. The old man nodded as the carpenter put the glass back into the wooden frame. Then, as if to complete the pleasure he derived from listening to the carpenter work, the old man called for his accordion. While the carpenter fixed the glass and dextrously hammered away at the little nails to keep the pane in place, the blind old man played the ugliest music I have ever heard. The music made the carpenter miss a nail and hammer his thumb. The music made me slightly nauseous. Dad obviously hated it. He kept frowning at the blind old man, who played happily, his pipe in his mouth. Dad retreated to the far end of the housefront. The carpenter, anxious to flee from the noxious sound of the music, worked swiftly. The old man soon got tired of the accordion. Not long afterwards the carpenter finished, the pane sat in the window. The woman complained that the glass wobbled in its frame, but the carpenter ignored her and packed his tools. Dad swept the glass into a dustpan and threw the rubbish to the back of the van. As he and the carpenter left, the old man said: