The Famished Road (60 page)

The rain poured on the driver, who had now passed out, on the herbalists, who didn’t seem to know what to do, and on my friend, who had now become serene within his own pain. It was not the tragedy of the night that dispersed everyone. It was the rain.

The thugs fought themselves right through different stratas of time. The soldiers left as a group, drunk on beer and the smell of cordite. The tramps, who had come because of the rumours of a feast, the people who had turned up to hail their new hero, the wretched and the curious, were all washed away by the gentle flood. Ade’s father left with his wives, carrying my friend away on his back. The chair-hire man stormed up and down the street, cursing Dad for the destruction of his chairs. The witches and wizards simply disappeared. I didn’t see them go. And the herbalists carried Madame Koto’s driver away for proper treatment. As the rain became heavier, the only people left at the housefront were Dad, who was distracted and drunk; Madame Koto, whose wig gyrated in a swirling puddle and who sat on the ground covered in mud; and Mum, who stood beside the car, blood and rain-water flowing round her feet. The blind old man was led home. His mangled accordion dangled at his side, as if it were an instrument that had been destroyed by its own bad music.

Immobile and obscene, the car stayed smashed against the cement wall. Nothing could be done about it for the night.

The chair-hire man pounced on Dad. And Dad had to knock him down twice.

He rushed off and came back with a machete and he had to be held. Dad swore that he would pay for the chairs or repair them himself. Disconsolate and drunk with rage, the chair-hire man had to be led home by four men. Madame Koto’s prostitutes came and took her away, holding her by both arms, as if she might do something dangerous. In the distance she could be heard wailing, not about the driver, but about her car.

When everyone had finally gone, Mum went silently into the room. Dad had a long bath. I stayed at the housefront while the rain went on falling, staring at the flotsam of broken chairs, shattered glass, tatters of clothes and feathers, broken bottles, and chicken bones on the road. I think most of our real troubles began that night. They began not with the devastation of voices and chairs and the car, but with the blood mingling with rain and flowing right into the mouth of the road. I heard the slaking of the road’s unquenchable thirst. And blood was a new kind of libation. The road was young but its hunger was old. And its hunger had been reopened. The roads were not even flooded that night although the rain didn’t cease. For a long time I couldn’t see the sky. As I stood there the firm hands of the wind came from behind and lifted me up.

‘Come in,’ Mum said. ‘This is not a night for a child to see.’

Dad was asleep on the bed. I could hear his snores over the rain and the thunder.

Mum lit a candle on the table. After we ate we stayed up. Mum said nothing. Both of us stared at the candle, feeling the wind and the thunder banging on our broken window.

THERE ARE MANY riddles of the dead that only the living can answer.

After the catastrophe of the party, Dad’s philosophy began to expand in strange ways.

The spirit encroachment on my life increased. In many respects, and without knowing it, Dad kept the spirits at bay with his battles in different realms. But along our road, there wasn’t much anyone could do. Fighting broke out all the time. In the morning after the disastrous party, Madame Koto organised six thugs to come and push her car to the mechanic’s workshop. We woke to the noise of confrontations. As the thugs pushed the car along a group of opposition thugs ambushed Madame Koto and her protectors and attacked them in retaliation for knocking over Ade.

I returned from school to hear that people were going around armed with clubs.

Dad had returned early and was having an argument with the chair-hire man about the number of chairs that were destroyed. Mum also returned early because everywhere she went there were clashes between the warlords of both of the main parties. When the chair-hire man left, with some money, and a little mollified, Dad asked me to read.

I read to him from Homer, while Mum vented her anger about the horrors of the celebration. The food that evening was quite tasteless. Dad didn’t notice. He ate with his usual large appetite.

His face had begun to return to normal. A new fierceness had entered his eyes.

After I had read to him again from Homer’s
Odyssey,
Dad wondered aloud about how he was going to be able to do any good in the world if he didn’t learn more about politics, and didn’t infiltrate the existing organisations. It was around this time that Dad conceived the idea of using the ever-approaching rally as the platform to preach his ideas and gather voters. Then he remembered his notion of usingme as a spy.

‘My son is not a spy,’ Mum said.

‘One way or another we are all spies,’ Dad asserted.

‘Don’t put my son in trouble.’

‘But he will make a good spy.’

‘Why?’

‘You won’t understand.’

‘That’s what you men say when you don’t want to tell the truth.’ Dad kept quiet.

Mum complained about how Dad was using me for his mad schemes, about all the money wasted on the tragic party. But Dad didn’t listen. He called me and said he wanted me to resume visiting Madame Koto’s bar. He said he would join me later. I didn’t think he was serious. But later in the evening, as I sat outside watching the world revolve slowly with the movement of clouds, he came and reminded me of my mission. He told me that new things were happening in the world and in our area. Was I not curious? I wandered off to Madame Koto’s bar.

Our road was changing. Nothing was what it seemed any more. Some of the beggars that came to Dad’s unfortunate party had set up at the roadside. One of them lay on a mat in front of the blind old man’s house. With his beads between his fingers, the beggar asked me for money as I went past. His eyes were hollow, his mouth was like a curse. I hurried on. The bushes along the roadside were gettingwilder. A young tree had fallen between the blind old man’s house and Madame Koto’s bar. The wind rose suddenly and when it lessened I could smell the small things rotting in the forest.

As I neared the bar, with its bright new signboard, I heard loud voices and music from within. I stayed at the barfront. I wasn’t sure how I would be received. The car wasn’t there. A man came out of the bar, stared at me, spat generously on the bushes, and went back in. Shortly afterwards one of the prostitutes emerged.

‘What do you want?’

‘Madame Koto.’

‘Who sent you?’

‘My father.’

‘Who is that?’

‘Black Tyger.’

She gave me a long stare. She went in. For a while nothing happened. The voices became louder. A fight started. Chairs tumbled over. Glasses broke. Women’s voices intervened. The fight died down with subsiding abuses. Someone put a record on the phonograph and a deep octave voice, lifted by brass instruments, sang out into the evening. The wind blew. Trees bowed. A procession of beggars came down the road.

They were not beggars I recognised. They stopped in front of Madame Koto’s bar.

Then they came towards me. There were about seven of them. Two of them had malformed legs and dragged themselves on the ground like hybrid serpents, with the cushioning aid of elbow pads. The rest of them had twisted arms, elongated necks.

One of them had only one arm, another had two fingers, and another, to my horror, seemed to have three eyes. I tried to run, but I was curiously rooted. Salaaming, bringingwith them all the smells of the gutters, street-corners, dustbins, rotting flesh, and damp nights, they pressed on me. Their leader was a man of indescribable age, with a face of wrenched metal, deep eyes, and a crumpled mouth. He came to me, begging for generosity, in a language which seemed to belong to another universe. He crowded me, and the others did as well, till I couldn’t breathe for their smells. The youngest of the beggars laughed and it seemed that a mashed insect fell out of his mouth. I shouted. The oldest beggar grabbed me, with his two fingers, and his grip was like that of an infernal machine. Pressing his face close to mine, so that I was suspended in a moment of fainting, he said:

‘Follow us.’

I kicked out and pushed the beggars away and ran into the bar. The floor was crowded with dancers. The room was full of smoke. I knocked over a bench, and collided with a dancing couple. A woman shrieked. The music stopped. And everyone, frozen in their particular motion, as if I had brought an alien enchantment, stared at me.

‘What’s wrongwith you?’ one of the prostitutes asked.

‘Nothing.’

‘Get out of here!’ one of the men shouted.

I recognised him as just another thug. He had big shoulders and a thick neck.

‘Get out!’

‘No!’

‘Are you mad?’

‘No.’

One of the women slapped my head and I jumped on her and a hand grabbed my neck from behind and lifted me away.

‘If you don’t go I will throw you out,’ a mighty voice said.

‘I will go.’

He put me down. I waited. Then I pointed at the door. They all looked. The strips of curtain were parted. And the old beggar, salaaming, his face weirder in the red lights, came in. Behind him was the train of beggars. They brought with them all the foul, unwanted smells of the world. I went to a corner of the bar, and sat down on a bench.

There was a long silence. The old beggar, looking round at everyone with fearless eyes, came towards me, bringing his entourage with him.

‘I want that boy,’ he said loudly, pointing at me with a crooked finger.

As he moved into the bar the darkness came with him. The darkness was a wind that blew from their crowding of the doorway. When one of the prostitutes saw the collective deformities of the beggars, she let out an anguished cry. Suddenly, with no one activating it, the music started. The bravest of the thugs yelled. The beggars brought a ferocious unbending force into the bar. They imbued everything with their smells. One of the younger beggars, who had no legs and moved on low crutches of uneven lengths, climbed up on the table where most of the clientele were gathered.

For the first time I noticed that the thugs and warriors of grass-roots politics were afraid. The prostitutes retreated, holding their noses.

‘They sent me to bring that boy,’ the old one said, moving steadily towards me.

‘Who sent you?’ I asked.

All the faces in the bar turned to me. One of the beggars laughed. Another one picked up a calabash of palm-wine and drank it all. As if on cue the rest of them suddenly noticed the drinks and the plates of peppersoup on the tables and, discarding their crutches, fell on all the available food. The ones without legs propelled themselves up on powerful hands. The ones without hands leapt up and, with the expert grip of their teeth, seized the peppersoup bowls and drank. Soup ran down the sides of their mouths and on to their filthy clothes. The old beggar, standing still, his eyes burning on me, remained apart from the mêlée, his battered frame twitching, a strange smile on his lips. He stood still, and so did everyone else. The music stopped. Plates had been turned over; the beggars drank soup and ate the meat and bones from the table tops. The thugs and other clientele were transfixed. A beggar boy began to choke.

Another one laughed. The old one rushed at me. When I fled amongst the prostitutes gathered at the door, it seemed I released the spell hanging over the place. Suddenly the thugs lashed out at the beggars, kicked them, threw plates at them. The beggars ate and drank as though untouched. When the wine had been emptied from the cups, the soup all consumed, the bones cracked, the marrow sucked out of them, the beggars—amazing in the virtuosity of their incomplete limbs—jumped on the thugs. The prostitutes fled outside. The thugs also panicked and ran. The old one sat down beside me. I did not move. He surveyed the chaos of bones being thrown, tables overturned, glasses breaking, and then he said:

‘How many eyes do you have?’

‘Three,’ I replied. He stared at me.

‘How many ears?’

‘One.’

‘Why?’

‘I hear things.’ I continued. ‘Voices. Words. Trees. Flowers.’

He laughed.

‘They sent me to bring you.’

‘Who?’

‘Your friends.’

‘Who are you?’

He looked around and waved his hand over the bar. The darkness cleared. He hit me on the head and I heard the cry of a cat. A dog’s eyes stared into mine. Water poured over me. I did not flinch. An eagle flew in from the door and landed on the old one’s head. He touched the eagle with his good hand and a black light shot into my eyes. When I opened them I saw that I was in a field. Around me snaked a green river.

I looked up and saw a blue mountain. Voices called my name from the river. A cat jumped right through me. I moved. The beggar laughed. I turned, looked at him, and screamed. He had four heads. One of them was the head of a great turtle. I tried to move but he held me. Spirits, shrouded in sunflower flames, rose from the ground about me. The field shook. The river hurled its waters on the coral shores, the water turned into spray, and in the spray I saw my spirit companions, all of them holding blue mirrors over their heads. My friend, Ade, was among them. I did not get a chance to recognise the others because in a flash, in which all the lights converged in the mirrors, the spray dissolved. A loud voice disturbed the mountain. I fell, and woke to find myself lying on a bench. I sat up. It was dark. Fishes swam in the black lights of the bar. I stayed still. When I surveyed the place I noticed that there was another person in the bar. Someone brought a lantern through the door. The yellow light obliterated their form. I waited. The form put the lantern in front of me and said:

‘You were lucky today.’