The Famished Road (67 page)

‘Ah ha, so it’s you, the flyingwizard!’ he shouted triumphantly.

Ade screamed. I clubbed the old man. His helpers rained knocks on me. I threw bones and sticks at them. Then the old man, tightening his grip on Ade’s arm said, in a screeching ugly voice:

‘Let me see with your eyes!’

The strangest thing happened. Ade began to twist, to jerk, contorting in spasms. His eyes swam around their sockets till only the whites were visible. He opened his mouth, his tongue hung out, and he gasped, and made choking noises. People tried to free Ade from the old man’s grip. I jumped on his back and he shouted.

‘Get off my back!’

‘Leave my friend alone,’ I said.

‘You’re too heavy, you spirit-child!’ he cried.

I bounced on his back, his bones digging into me. I hooked my arms round his neck and tried to strangle him, but he kept tossing. I attempted to scratch his eyes, but he bit me and threw me off with the strength of five men and I heard his neck creak and was sent flying and when I landed amongst broken tables and the mess of fruits and bean-cakes, everything had cleared. The old man stood, swaying. Ade jerked in a weird epileptic fit. The crowd had mostly gone. Madame Koto was nowhere around.

The loudspeakers had been packed away. The prostitutes sat on folding chairs, glaring at us. The old man picked up his yellow glasses and played on his harmonica. His helpers led him away. I got up. The beggars, Sami and his protectors, people from the area, and Helen lifted Dad up on their shoulders as if he were a king fallen in battle and carried him out into the night. I helped Ade up. He stood, twitching, his mouth feverish. His fit had receded and he walked as if his legs were made of rubber. As we left the devastated tent the prostitutes abused us. I heard the blind old man’s dissonant harmonica in front of us in the dark. We were at the rear of the procession that bore Dad on their shoulders. He faced the stars. And, as we went the sound of the flapping tent made me look back.

The wind had risen. I realised that the party had blocked the road. The cars were leaving. The trees creaked their limbs. The anti-music of the harmonica faded into the wind, blowing eerie harmonies over the bushes. The wind’s counterpoints whistled along the electric cables. The bright yellow and blue bulbs kept going on and off.

Then they stayed on. Ade said, in the voice of a cat:

‘Something is happening.’

The wind stopped. It swelled again. Then I saw the tent tilt sideways, and lift up in the air. It rose, it turned on its side, and the wind hurled it over the houses, its voluminous cloth flapping, its form billowing, and it blew over, turning on rooftops, and the sky cracked, two lights flashed, and rain swept down. The rain poured down, the earth swam in mud, dogs barked, the smell of burning rubber filled the air, and we heard a brief rending cry from Madame Koto’s place. Then all the lights went out.

THE DARKNESS WAS full of voices. The beggars and Sami carried Dad to the house. When we got to our room Mum was in a frenzy. They laid Dad out on the bed and covered him with a white cloth. The people were gone, but I could hear them singing low heroic melodies down the street. Dad’s mouth was twisted. There was a white scar down the side of his face. His eyes had disappeared beneath his bruises. His lips were like swollen flowers. He was in a far worse condition than in all of his fights put together. He didn’t move. He didn’t even seem to breathe. Mum kept wailing. The beggar girl lit three more candles. Sami sat on Dad’s chair. The beggars sat on the floor. I made Ade lie down on my mat. Apart from Mum, everyone was silent.

Mum rushed out, boiled water, came back, and applied warm compresses to Dad’s face. It never occurred to her that his bruises needed something cold. The beggar girl stroked his feet. No one else moved. After a while Mum rested. She looked round at all of us.

‘Get up from my husband’s chair!’ she shouted at Sami.

He jumped up as if a snake had bitten him. He stood near the window. Then he came to me and whispered:

‘When he has recovered, call me. I have all the money. I will get him the best herbalist.’

Then, as if he had been caught stealing, he crept out of the room.

‘And all of you, go!’ Mum screamed, at everyone else.

The beggars shuffled. The beggar girl got up, touched me on the head, making my flesh bristle, and led the others out of the room. They left silently. Ade lay down on the mat, his eyes swimming. Occasionally he twitched. He had a wan smile on his lips. I leant over him.

‘I am going to die soon,’ he said.

‘Why do you say that?’

‘My time has come. My friends are callingme.’ ‘What friends?’

‘In the other world,’ he said. We were silent.

‘And what are you two whispering about, eh?’ Mum asked.

‘Nothing.’

‘What happened to him?’

‘He’s not well.’

‘What about his father?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘God save me,’ Mum cried.

The candles went out. Mum shut the door and searched for the matches.

‘This life! No rest. None. A woman suffers, a woman sweats, with no rest, no happiness. My husband, in three fights. God knows what all this is doing to his brain.

This life is too much for me. I am going to hangmyself one of these days,’ Mum said.

‘Don’t do that, Mum,’ I said.

‘Shut up,’ she said.

I was silent. Deep in me old songs began to stir. Old voices from the world of spirits. Songs of seductive purity, with music perfect like light and diamonds. Ade twitched. The floor began to shake. I could hear his bones rattling. Mum lit a candle.

She sat on Dad’s chair, rocking back and forth, her eyes fixed, her face unforgiving. I felt sad. Ade smiled strangely again, sinking deeper into his weird epileptic ecstasy. I leant over him.

‘Trouble is always coming. Maybe it’s just as well,’ he said. ‘Your story has just begun. Mine is ending. I want to go to my other home. Your mother is right; there is too much unnecessary suffering on this earth.’

His voice had taken on the timbre of an old man. Soon I recognised it. A snake went up my spine and I couldn’t stop shivering. He went on, speaking in the cracked sepulchral voice of the blind old man.

‘My time is coming. I have worn out my mother’s womb and now she can’t have any more children. Coming and going, I have seen the world, I have seen the future.

The Koran says nothing is ever finished.’

‘What will happen?’ I asked him.

Quivering, biting his lips till he drew blood, he said:

‘There will be the rebirth of a father. A man with seven heads will take you away.

You will come back. You will stay. Before that the spirits and our ancestors will hold a great meeting to discuss the future of the world. It will be one of the most important meetings ever held. Suffering is coming. There will be wars and famine. Terrible things will happen. New diseases, hunger, the rich eating up the earth, people poisoning the sky and the waters, people goingmad in the name of history, the clouds will breathe fire, the spirit of things will dry up, laughter will become strange.’

He stopped. There was a long pause. Then he continued, frighteningme.

‘There will be changes. Coups. Soldiers everywhere. Ugliness. Blindness. And then when people least expect it a great transformation is going to take place in the world.

Suffering people will know justice and beauty. A wonderful change is coming from far away and people will realise the great meaning of struggle and hope. There will be peace. Then people will forget. Then it will all start again, getting worse, getting better. Don’t fear. You will always have something to struggle for, even if it is beauty or joy.’

He stopped again. And then his fever changed gear, his voice quivered, his eyes were calm.

‘Our country is an abiku country. Like the spirit-child, it keeps coming and going.

One day it will decide to remain. It will become strong. I won’t see it.’

His voice changed, became more natural, almost gentle.

‘I see the image of two thousand years. I drank in its words. It took many centuries to grow in me. I see a great musician in a land across the seas. Nine hundred years ago. The musician was me. I see a priest, I see a ruler of gentle people. The priest was me, the ruler was me. I see a wicked warrior who killed many innocent people and who delighted in bloodshed. I was him. There was once a soldier stoned to death and fed to the crocodiles in Egypt. I was that soldier.’

‘You’re talking nonsense,’ I said.

He laughed, coughed, and went on talking. His voice got lower and lower. His mouth moved, but I couldn’t hear him any more. His limbs went into spasms. I smelt burning wood. Smoke gathered round his hair. For a moment I thought his fit was burning him up. I touched him. His forehead was cold. His eyes were open, but he didn’t see me. I looked up and saw that Mum had fallen asleep on Dad’s chair. I lay down, shut my eyes, and sleep came to me in the form of green moths. I followed them into Mum’s dreams. It came as a shock to me to find myself in her dreams. She was a young woman, fresh and beautiful, with a white bird on her shoulder. She had antimony on her face, magic charms round her neck, and a pearl on a string round her left ankle.

She was wandering through a sepia-tinted village, looking for Dad. She saw him up a tree. She climbed the tree, but Dad jumped down and ran to the river. Mum came down from the tree and sang a song from her childhood, serenadingDad’s spirit. She sang to Dad, asking him not to go away, begging him to return, in the name of love.

The river turned a brilliant green colour and the maiden of the water, green, with sad eyes and lovely breasts, with the face of Helen the beggar girl, embraced Dad and took him down to the bottom of the river where there was an emerald palace. Eagles drank wine from silver goblets. Swans told stories beneath the great silk cotton tree. A black tiger with a prince’s crown and the eyes of my grandfather roamed the city precincts, reciting verses from ancient epics, sacred texts that could alter the nature of things. The maiden took Dad to her palace and washed his feet. In the great hail the frozen figures of warriors followed Dad with their fearless eyes. Antelopes with flowers round their necks came and sat at Dad’s feet. The maiden changed Dad’s clothes and dressed him in rich aquamarine robes. Then a mighty lion roared from the secret chambers. All the statues in the hall began to move. The warriors woke from their enchantment and marched into the secret chambers. The statues were beautiful.

Their masks were beautiful. The statues had strange human faces, some had large pricks, some had wonderfully rounded breasts with proud nipples, and many of them had the paws of the Sphinx. Masquerades danced into the hall and presented Dad with gifts. Then Dad was led outside where a car was waiting for him. Dad got into the car.

Mum stood at the river-bank, preparing to jump in when I touched her. She was angry and said:

‘Get out of my dream. I’m trying to draw back your father’s spirit.’

I didn’t know how to leave. The sun burned down on us and the white bird on Mum’s shoulder flew into the water and Mum disappeared and it grew so hot that my hair became singed, the trees burst into flame, giving off a bright yellow smoke. Butterflies multiplied everywhere, they came from the sun, and they flew round my face, fillingme with vertigo and as I coughed they flew into my mouth and I sat up and saw that our room was filled with smoke and when I shouted and choked Ade smiled oddly in his jerking sleep and Mum jumped up and said:

‘Azaro, get up! The candle is burning our table!’

I recovered quickly and fetched water from our bucket and poured it on the table.

Ade sat up and smiled at me.

‘I’m well now,’ he said.

Mum whipped the table with a wet rag, as if it had annoyed her. When the flame had been put out she came and sat on the bed and held my face between her hot palms and said:

‘My son, what were you doing in my dream?’

I said nothing.

‘Answer me,’ she said.

‘It wasn’t your dream. It was Dad’s dream.’

Mum sat up. I couldn’t see her face in the darkness. Her sadness made the night quiver.

‘Your father got into the car and went to the village. Your grandfather treated his wounds and soothed his spirit. Then he travelled to Ughelli to buy the perfume that would get rid of the bad smell of poverty. Then he went to the moon. Then he travelled to the land of spirits far away. Many lands. I heard his voice crying out in the sky. They refused him entry to heaven. They sent him past hell, past spirit lands where our ancestors ask one another impenetrable riddles all day long. He came to a country full of palaces, a country of dreams, where the people are invisible, where wisdom and joy are in the air. He went to the law courts of the spirit worlds. I heard him crying for answers. Then he came back and a war broke out and they shot him on the road that he had built.’

I didn’t know what to say.

‘So lie down and sleep. This is a strong night. I must protect your father’s spirit or it will go away.’

I lay down.

‘Your father is playing a flute,’ Ade said in his own voice. ‘It is sweet music. I didn’t know he could play so well.’

Then the room was silent. Sleep stole over me and I resisted it. Mum ground her teeth on the bed, strugglingwith Dad. Ade began to quiver again.

‘I’m going slowly,’ he said.

‘Shut up,’ I said.

Mum was still. I heard her snoring. Sleep came to me in the form of white birds and I saw Mum fightingDad in his dreams, trying to get him to gatecrash his body. Ade lay next to me, twitching through the night in his fits. And his spirit, swirling and turbulent with blinding energies, began to affect mine. We swirled in the sweet savage torrent of his epilepsy and travelled the red roads of the spirits and arrived at the Village of Night, where birds were laying out electric cables, where Masquerades were alchemists, where the sunbird was priest, where the moonprince was a foundling, and where the tortoise was a wandering griot who warned me at the roadside that no story could ever be finished. As dawn approached the Village disappeared and I heard the songs of my spirit companions. In flames, the great king of the spirit world flashed past my eyes. The mountain heaved. I saw a black cat at my feet and I fed it bean-cakes. Ade lay quiet beside me. His past lives had begun to conquer him. I saw that he had not told me the whole truth. I saw his other images. I saw a murderer in Rome, a poetess in Spain, a falconer among the Aztecs, a whore in Sudan, a priestess in old Kenya, a one-eyed white ship captain who believed in God and wrote beautiful hymns and who made his fortune capturing slaves in the Gold Coast. I even saw a famed samurai warrior in ancient Japan, and a mother of ten in Greece.