The Famished Road (48 page)

And then he was silent.

I wanted him to carry on speaking. His words offered me water and food and new breathing. But he stayed silent and his quiet breath did not stir the slightest wind on the face of the great mirror.

And then, to my utter astonishment, Dad knelt by the bed. He rested his head on the pillow and the smell of alcohol floated on his quiet breathing. When he moved his head, turning the moon in his eyes away from me, as if he were ashamed of revealing something that would free him, the figure by the canoe turned towards us and lifted off its black hood. Standing there, crowned in black light, was a naked youngwoman, with an old woman’s face. Her eyes were harder, and glinted brighter, than diamonds.

‘Where is the ferryman?’ asked the spirit imperiously.

The spirit’s voice reverberated, becoming sharper each time, over the horizon of mirrors. The woman did not reply. She took a step towards us and for the first time I noticed that she had the feet of a lioness. Her eyes were those of a tiger. The spirit went forward, attempted to brush her aside, to reach the canoe. Lightning flashed from their contact. The light was so dazzling that for a while all I saw were two small moons revolving in a glass of clear alcohol. Dad was saying:

‘I see us dancing on lovely beaches. The water-maiden sings for us. I see the days of our misery turn over and become bright. My son, my only son, your mother has never ceased being a young woman rich with hopes, and me a young man. We are poor. We have little to give you, but our love. You came out of our deepest joy. We prayed for you. We wanted you. And when you were born you had a mysterious smile on your face. The years passed and we watched the smile grow smaller, but its mystery remains. Don’t you feel for us? Every moment that my head is burstingwith loads at the garage, my soul is brimming with good dreams for you. In this life you have seen how sweet even sorrow can be. Our life appears to be a sad music. So how can you come and then leave us? Do you know our misery? Do you know how you make even that bearable? They say you are an abiku child, that you care nothing for your parents, that you are cold, and that you have eyes only for that special spirit who is a beautiful young girl with golden bangles and copper anklets. But I do not believe them. You have wept for us and watered the tree of love. We have suffered for you.

Suffering is our home. We did not make this strange bed that we have to sleep on. But this world is real. I have bled in it. So have you. Your mother has bled in it even more than we have. There are beautiful young girls here with soft tender voices and eyes that God made with moonlight. Must I sing to you all night, for seven days, and sacrifice two white hens, and two dizzying bottles of ogogoro, before you hear me?

And even now your mother is wandering about in the night, crying to the wind and the road and the hidden angels, looking for a way to reach you. Does this life not move you? When you play in the streets and see the children die, and hear the mothers weep, and hear the old ones sing of each miraculous birth, is your heart untouched? We have sorrow here. But we also have celebration. We know the special joys. We have sorrow, but it is the sister of love, and the mother of music. I have seen you dance, my son. And if you will not listen to my song, I will not sing any more.’

Again he fell silent.

I tried to move, to indicate to him that I had been listening, that tears flowed in my soul, but he made a sudden movement which alarmed me. I heard a loud noise in advance. I looked for his eyes. I saw only the spirit crouching, swaying violently, a weapon in its hands, attacking the woman. They fought one another through all their reflections. The spirit struck the woman and a great din, steel on steel, crashed all around me. The spirit went on striking her till golden blood flowed from her wounds.

She made no attempt to defend herself. The golden blood flowed down her and resolved itself into a dazzling protective shield. Then she drew a weapon from her body, and waved it in the air. Suddenly I saw both of them mirrored to eternity. They were everywhere and each reflection was real. And then, as if behind a glass window illuminated at night, I slowly made out Dad’s face. He watched me with calm eyes, while the spirit fought the woman. They fought on the river of glass, fought on the canoe, fought in the sky. And Dad spoke gently in my ears, as if I were a flower.

‘We are the miracles that God made to taste the bitter fruits of time. We are precious, and one day our sufferingwill turn into wonders of the earth. The sky is not our enemy. There are things that burn me now which turn golden when I am happy.

Do you not see the mystery of our pain? That we bear poverty, are able to sing and dream sweet things, and that we never curse the air when it is warm, or the fruit when it tastes so good, or the lights that bounce gently on the waters. We bless things even in our pain. We bless them in silence. That is why our music is sweet. It makes the air remember. There are secret miracles at work, my son, that only time will bring forth. I too have heard the dead singing. They tell me that this life is good. They tell me to live it gently, with fire, and always with hope, my son. There is wonder here and there is surprise in everything that you cannot see. The ocean is full of songs. The sky is not our enemy. Destiny is our friend.’

Kneeling by the bed, he sang wonderful tunes into my ears. He told me stories in songs about our ancestors who had left their original land and made a strange place their home; about grandfather who fought a great spirit of the forest for seven days and was made the Priest of the Shrine of Roads; about gods who divided the universe between the land of spirits, the land of humans, and the infinite regions of heavenly beings, and who gave in all realms a special homeland for the brave.

Then abruptly he stopped speaking. The lights changed. Time contorted. Weapons created great sparks over my face. Dad held a knife over me. I heard the cry of a white bird. The old woman, waving her weapon, golden in the brightness of mirrors, swung at the spirit, and severed one of its heads. The spirit let out a horrifying cry, utterly human. The woman slashed off its second head. Feathers fell in frenzy over me. The blood of the spirit spattered my face and momentarily blinded me. And when I looked again I saw Dad tower over me, a white hen in one hand, a knife of menacing sharpness in the other. Mum stood with her back to the window, surrounded by nine blue candles, and a configuration of cowries. Dad held the white hen firmly, wings and feet and head. Blood dripped down his arms. There was another figure in the room, whose shadow expanded the spaces, filled it with the aroma of wild village shrines, and the solemnity of rock-faced priests. He danced about the room with a mighty fan of eagle feathers that threatened to set the room into flight. His dancing, fervent and insane, with red amulets and cowries cackling round his neck, became the whirling torment of the twice-beheaded spirit.

The weapon of the old woman with the feet of a lioness had become golden-red.

One of the heads of the spirit had rolled on to the river of mirrors and its eyes stared at the eternity of reflections in a bad-tempered astonishment. The spirit, turning round and round, howling, spinning, confused, made for the dug-out canoe. He suddenly jumped in, pushed the canoe out on the mirror, and began to row on the lights. The old woman went towards him, striding on silver, weapon raised. Dad’s knife, full of reflections, was lifted above me, as if I were to be the sacrificial victim of my own birth. I screamed. The knife in Dad’s hand descended swiftly, slashed the air twice.

The herbalist released a piercing cry. The old woman struck the spirit at the same moment, with a mighty swipe of her weapon. Dad slashed the chicken’s throat. The old woman severed the spirit’s last head. The spirit fought vainly in the canoe as the chicken twitched. Its blood dripped on my forehead. The herbalist fell silent. The spirit’s head, landing on silver, looked around, saw itself separated from its body, and let out its final scream of horror, cracking the surface of the river. The mirrors shattered. It became dark. Splinters and reflections caught in my eyes.

MUM WAS SITTING beside me, stroking my eyelids. Dad sat on his chair, his forehead creased, stubbles of beard on his chin. There was a full bottle of whisky on the table. There was the smell of superb cooking in the air. I opened my eyes wide and said:

‘Where is the road?’

Dad immediately rushed at me and kept my eyes open with his fingers. Mum poured a black liquid into my eyes. The liquid hurt when I shut my eyes. But when they were wide open they did not hurt. I stared wide-eyed at everything. The herbalist was gone. His shadow and the flight of his eagle feathers remained. Mum made me drink bitter herbs. Dad made razor incisions on my chest and shoulders and forehead and pressed stinging potions on the cuts. I cried out for food. They paid no attention. I tried returning to my journey but couldn’t shut my eyes. Mum fed me water, and pap, and orange juice. Dad, lingering in the shadow of the herbalist, looked as if he hadn’t slept all his life. Mum was so gaunt, and bony, and beautiful in her sorrow, so radiant at seeing me alive, that I wept for them both. Dad burst into song. Mum stroked my temples. I hadn’t eaten for two weeks. The doctors had pronounced me dead. But I had never really left the world of the living.

I WAS FED gradually; from pap, they moved me on to heavier food. Mum spent much love creating for me the most ravishing dishes. I wondered where they got the money for delicious soups of goat-meat and stockfish, the peppersoup full of new yams, the vegetable dishes, the stews with aromatic peppers and bright-red lobsters. I had become very lean and insubstantial, too weak to move. Walkingwas painful, my soles hurt, my eyes developed odd irritations. Each night the liquid they poured into my eyes made my sleep shallow. I slept the way rabbits do, with eyes open, to fool antagonists. Dad stayed up most nights, alternating with Mum, watching over me.

Candles burned into the dawns.

The herbalist came again on another visit. He performed rituals and treated me with the deepest suspicion. He told Dad and Mum to be kinder to me, to not shout, not beat, not restrict me, to not quarrel amongst themselves, and he hinted at the prospect of performing the ceremonies that would cut off my access to the world of spirits. He said something about the importance of retrieving my spirit tokens which he believed I had hidden in secret places. He spoke to them at night, while they thought I was asleep. I immediately thought of him as an enemy. He collected his exorbitant fee and when he left he took his sentient shadows away.

And so for a long time they spoke to me gently, and treated me kindly, as if I were a newborn child. When I ate the choice dishes Mum prepared both sat opposite and watched me, smiling. Mum’s eyes became bright with joy and, curiously, with pride.

Dad watched me as if I were a strange and surprising animal. They kept pleadingwith me to eat more than I wanted. They bought me soft drinks and Dad shared his whisky with me. If they had enormous difficulties earning money, if Dad had suffered untold humiliations, unspeakable torments borrowing the money or carrying loads, if Mum walked the entire city selling her provisions, crying out in dust-dried streets, her voice hoarse, they did not show it. Somehow my return had assumed great importance. I felt bad that I may have increased their suffering. I tried to please them, to run errands, wash plates, stay in, attend school. But they seemed more anxious to please me and they took offence if I tried to do anything. During that time Dad swept the room, fetched water from the well, came back from work always with a cheerful spirit, was delicate and kind to Mum, and would hug her often, and would sit on his chair, smoking and singing bright ancestral songs.

It seemed that our lives would know a new dawn, take on new colours of sweetness, and that in the warm spirit our miseries would be transformed into something miraculous and tangible like the birds of heaven. The world was new to me, everything was fresh. It was the earliest days of creation. I marvelled at cobwebs and cockroaches. I couldn’t stop staring at people’s faces and their eyes. The fact that human beings talked, laughed, wept, sweated, sang, without some visible thingwhich made all the animation possible, the fact that they were alive in their bodies, contained this thing called life in their flesh, seemed incredible to me. I watched babies with open-mouthed wonder. I couldn’t get over the fact that we can look out of our eyes, out of our inner worlds at people, but that people, looking at us couldn’t see into our eyes, our thoughts, our inner worlds. How transparent one feels, but how opaque: it mystified me. Even the act of motion, human beings walking on two legs, balancing on them, surprised me. With eyes wide open from a new fear of sleep, I looked at the world, I tried to see all that was in it, I embraced all things into my life. I hugged the alarmingmystery of reality, and grew stronger.

Everything felt strange to me. Everything felt as if it were both floating away and being reborn for ever. Even our neighbours who had grudges against us came one evening to pay us a visit. They brought gifts of sweets, drinks, and lengths of new cloth. They brought their children to play with me. They drank and talked merrily with Mum and Dad, as if there had never been great animosities between us. Their faces were all vaguely familiar. I felt I had been away a long time. During that period names were a mystery to me and I pronounced their different nicknames or public names over and over again as if for the first time. I played, it seemed to me, in slow motion, with the children, touching them tenderly.

Our neighbours spoke warmly to me. As they spoke I watched their faces. My heart heaved for them all. Like a stranger, I saw the suffering on their faces, the years of misery and suspicion, their extreme sensitivity to slights, the vigour of their reactions, the energy of their appetites, their boundless enthusiasm and hope. Their faces, solid and thickly masked with time, seemed fragile to me. Everywhere terror looked out at them. Years of frustration had turned their eyes into instruments which looked out at the world with a peculiar, unforgiving, sharpness; often, even, with meanness. And yet, there they were, with privation before them, hunger behind them, paying us a visit to welcome me back from being dead.