by Ben Okri
Darkness had grown over the forest. The noises of insects and birds had diminished. The wind, scented with leaves, had become cooler. Gradually the trees, the clearing, the open spaces, became obscure. Ordinary things became riddles. In the obscurity of things I saw what was different about the clearing. Something was standing there. A tree had grown there. It had grown in the spot where I had buried Madame Koto’s fetish. It was an odd tree and in the dark it seemed like an animal asleep on its feet. It was shaped exactly like a bull without horns. It was a stout muscular tree, without leaves. It seemed comfortable to sit on, to play on, and I wanted to see the darkening world from the height of its back. I tried to climb on, but couldn’t take the mask with me; so I wore the mask and tied it round my head with climbers. With the mask on my face, with the darkness all around, and spirits everywhere in the darkness, I got on the back of the tree. All the moon-white birds seemed to be in the branches of my hair.
From the back of the tree I saw a completely different world to what I had been seeing. I saw a different reality. For a moment I expected to see birds twittering in my eyes, spirits dancing around me, luminous and dazzling. But when I looked out the spirits vanished, the white birds had somehow flown away, the village was not there. Instead I heard the earth trembling at the fearsome approach of a demonic being. A white wind circled my head. I was confused by the new world. The earth shuddered. The tree moved beneath me. And when I looked out through the mask, I saw before me in that new spirit world a creature ugly and magnificent like a prehistoric dragon, with the body of an elephant, and the face of a warthog. It towered before me. It was more graceful and less heavy than an elephant, but its tread was more resounding. Its face was incredibly ugly. A devourer of humans, of lost souls, of spirits, of all things wonderful, this creature opened its dreadful mouth and roared. Beneath me the tree began to change. Suddenly it seemed the tree was no longer a thing of wood. It became a thing of quivering flesh. The wood rippled slowly into flesh, transforming beneath me.
The monstrous creature drew closer and its foul breath knocked my consciousness around. I couldn’t bear to look at it any more and I desperately wanted to take the mask off so I wouldn’t have to see anything. I tore off the vegetable string, but the mask stayed on, stuck to my face. I tried to tear it off again, but it was like stripping the skin off my own face. And then the transformation of the wood into flesh became complete and I was suddenly blasted by the earth-shaking bellow of a wild animal beneath me. I was overpowered with the odour of its animal virility. Tossing and shivering, shaking its head, and bellowing again as if the sound in some way made its transformation more permanent, I realised that I had made a terrible mistake, and that I was riding on the back of a wild animal, awoken from a fetishistic sleep.
The monstrous creature swiped at me. In that confused moment, without caring, I ripped the mask off my face, obliterating its existence from my eyes. My face felt somewhat raw. I no longer saw the prehistoric monster, but the beast beneath me obviously did. It turned this way and that, wrenching each foot from the earth as if it were uprooting itself, and when all its feet were free it was still for a moment, drawing a deep breath. Its body expanded, bristling. I tried to get down. The beast backed off, giving a vicious snort as if it had burst open a channel through centuries of bad dreams. Then it began with an awkward canter, picked up speed and jumped about the place, tossing its head, attacking the invisible monster. Its hooves crushed the mask into pieces. It charged towards a thick cluster of bushes at such speed that I was thrown off and it was lucky I landed on grass and vegetation or I would certainly have broken my neck. I heard the wild beast returning, snorting, pounding the earth. I jumped to my feet, as if from a feverish torrent of nightmares. Completely forgetting my hurting ankles, I ran out of the forest, and fled like a child being whipped to Madame Koto’s bar.
11
I DIDN’T GO in right away, but wandered in the forecourt of the bar watching the night spread its power over the sky. I stayed outside for a while, planting my secrets in the silence of my beginnings. Night was falling and, all over, the shadows were short and blurred. Lamps came on in the houses. I could make them out through the leaves and bushes. A gust of wind, like the sighing of a great animal, blew over from the forest. The wind brought the night closer. It also seemed to sweep the last lights of the day to the farthest reaches of the earth. One section of the sky was grey and deep blue, the other was sad and red. The pain returned to my ankle. I sat outside a long time, waiting for the world to quieten around me. My spirit took a long time to settle. I breathed in the wind from the moon.
The bar was silent. Then I heard someone chuckling. And then the person began to talk. I listened. It became clear that the person was alone, talking to themself. The pain left my ankle for a moment and I went, limping, into the bar. Parting the curtains, I stood in darkness. The bar was empty. There was a single lamp shining behind the counter. I made out the form of a head bent over, of a person rapt in a secret ritual. I went over noiselessly, limping, the pain returning and receding in waves. The clientele had gone and the silence of the bar was unnatural at that hour. I tiptoed to the counter and saw Madame Koto counting money. She was so engrossed in the counting that she didn’t notice my entry. Her face shone and sweat ran down from her hairline, down her cheeks and ears, down her neck, into her great yellow blouse. She would count a bundle of notes and then laugh.
It was a strange kind of laughter. It sounded like vengeance. I didn’t want to speak suddenly and frighten her and yet I found her concentration fascinating and could not take my eyes off her. She counted her money over and over again as if she had just woken from the nightmare of poverty. She counted her fingers, the sums were clearly giving her problems. Then the wind blew hard outside, fluttering the curtain, and flickering the illumination of her lamp. She looked up, saw me, her eyes widening. Suddenly, she screamed. She jumped and threw her hands up and her money went flying everywhere, the coins clattering on the floor. I said:
‘It’s me, Azaro.’
She stopped and for a long moment peered at me. Then her face darkened and she sped round the counter and grabbed me by the neck and slapped me on the head.
‘Why did you stand there like a thief?’
‘I am not a thief.’
‘So why did you stand there?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Why did you stand there eyeing my money?’
‘I wasn’t eyeing your money.’
‘Where have you been?’
‘In the bush.’
‘Doing what?’
‘Playing.’
‘With whom?’
‘Myself.’
‘With thieves?’
‘I don’t know any thieves.’
She let me go. She hurried round the counter and picked up all her money and tied it in a bundle at one end of her wrapper.
‘The next time you do that I will have a cutlass.’
I said nothing. She found her theme.
‘Things are going to start to change, you hear? You think this bar will stay like this for ever? You think I am going to be doing everything alone? No! Soon I am going to get some young girls to serve for me. I am going to get one or two men to carry heavy things and run messages. You are too much trouble. You don’t respect the customers. You create trouble for me. What do you do here anyway, eh? You just come in here and sleep and drink all my peppersoup for nothing. You are useless, you hear?’
I stayed silent, but I got up and went and sat at a bench near the front door. It was the farthest I could go from her while still being in the bar. I sat in the darkness, she stayed in the light. And because the lamp was on a stool below the counter her face, bright in patches, looked big and ugly. For the first time I began to dislike her. From where she stood her eyes seemed oddly deranged, somewhat crossed. It was only a trick of the light, but that didn’t stop it from feeding my growing distrust of her. She had changed completely from the person I used to know. Her b
ig frame which had seemed to me full of warmth now seemed to me full of wickedness. I didn’t know why she had changed.
She sat down. Her eyes were bright with a hungry new ferocity. She stared at me in the darkness and I knew she couldn’t see me clearly.
‘You think because I sit here all day long, because I cook peppersoup and wash plates and clean the tables and smile to my customers, you think because I do all these things that I don’t have plans of my own, eh? You think I don’t want to build a house, to drive a car, you think I don’t want servants, you think I don’t want money and power, eh? I want respect. I am not going to run a bar for ever. As you see me – now I am here, tomorrow I am gone. You think I want to live in this dirty area with no electricity, no toilets, no drinking water? If you think so you are mad! You are a small boy and you don’t know anything. Your people are not serious. You can sit in a corner like a chicken and look at me, but when the time comes you will remember what I am saying.’
I didn’t understand a word of what she said. I understood the expression on her face. When she had finished her speech her mouth was curled in contempt, as if she had profoundly demeaned herself by talking to me at all. She made a noise of derision. She got up, took the lantern with her, and went out to the backyard. The darkness in the bar became complete. I heard something moving near the earthenware pot. I heard something scurrying up the walls. The wind rustled the curtain and blew through the bar and flapped the edges of the almanacs. The night, descending with the wind, brought the smells of stale palm-wine, dead flies, cobwebs, wood, kerosine, and old food. And above all these was the smell of the night itself, like the aroma of the earth just before a storm.
In the darkness things merged into one another. The tables were like crouching animals. Benches were like human beings sleeping on air. A solid wind blew the curtains. A more concrete darkness came into the bar. It was a man. He had a cigarette. Before I smelt its smoke, I smelt dried mud, the sweat of exhaustion, and frustration, and heard the creaks distributed over his body as he moved.
‘Father!’ I said.
He lit a match. His eyes were not bright and his face was tired.
‘What are you doing there, sitting in the darkness?’
‘Nothing.’
The match went out and he fumbled along the benches and sat next to me. He smelt of overwork, sadness, and ash. He put an arm round me and the smell of his armpit overwhelmed me.
‘What are you doing here?’ he whispered.
‘Nothing,’ I whispered back.
We continued in low tones.
‘Where is Madame Koto?’
‘In the backyard.’
‘What is she doing?’
‘I don’t know. But she was counting her money.’
‘Counting her money?’
‘Yes.’
‘How much?’
‘I don’t know. A lot. Bundles.’
‘Bundles of money?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did she give you any?’
‘No.’
‘You think if I try to borrow from her she will give me?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘She has become wicked.’
‘How come?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘So why are you sitting here?’
‘She’s getting some girls and men to become servants.’
‘Is that so?’
‘Yes.’
Outside, the wind sighed. Dad scratched his bristles. Madame Koto came in through the backyard door.
‘Who is there?’ she asked gruffly.
‘Me,’ I said.
‘I know. But who else is there?’
Dad was silent.
‘Don’t you have a voice?’
‘It’s me,’ Dad said.
‘Who is “me”?’ came Madame Koto, in a louder voice.
‘Azaro’s father.’
There was another silence.
‘Oh, Azaro’s father,’ Madame Koto said eventually, in an unenthusiastic tone. ‘So how are you, eh? Let me go and get a lamp. You want some palm-wine? I will get you some.’
She didn’t move. We were silent. And then suddenly I could see her. I saw her clearly framed in a dull yellow light. The light billowed gently around her as if her skin were on fire. And then I saw her become two. The yellow light remained. But her heavier form went out of the bar. I heard her outside; but the light, billowing slowly, changing colour, sometimes gently and sometimes violently, remained where she had been standing.
‘Can you see it, Dad?’
‘See what?’
‘That light.’
‘What light?’
‘The yellow light.’
‘Where?’
Madame Koto came back into the bar bearing a lantern in front of her. The light of the lantern dispersed the yellow billowing light. Madame Koto came over to us. She put the lantern on the table and stared at us as if we were complete strangers.
‘So how is business?’ Dad asked politely.
‘We are managing,’ she replied. ‘Your son will tell you.’
She stared at me suspiciously. Then she put the gourd of wine on the table. The bump formed by the bundle of money in her wrapper was gone. She went out again and returned with two yellow plastic cups. The cups were new to me.
‘Thank you, Madame,’ Dad said somewhat energetically. ‘May God enable you to prosper and give you health and happiness.’
The theatricality of his prayer took us aback.
‘Amen,’ Madame Koto intoned, eyeing us suspiciously.
She went and sat behind her counter, a formidable figure, a solid mass of vigilance.
Dad poured palm-wine for us both. He lit a cigarette and smoked. I drank and Dad fidgeted. I became aware that Dad couldn’t quite bring himself to ask Madame Koto for money. He sat beside me, wracked by dignity. Humiliation showed on his face. He drank the palm-wine as if it were a kind of necessary poison.
We stayed like that till noises sounded from the street. The noises approached: men singing, beating rhythms on glass, chanting drunkenly. Madame Koto’s face brightened. With eager eyes, she got up and hurried out and put lanterns on the tables. Then a man with a scar on his forehead burst into the bar and, arms wide apart, cried:
‘We are here!’
The rest of them came in, noisily chanting Madame Koto’s name. One of them had a walking stick. Madame Koto came to welcome them and showed them their benches and wiped the long table and generally fussed over them. They sat, singing and chanting, till they saw us in the corner. Then they became silent.
Madame Koto, coming in with drinks and bowls, noticed their silence. She tried to cheer them up and kept looking at us as though wanting us to leave. The men drank silently. Then the man with the scar on his forehead called Madame Koto over and they talked in whispers. He kept looking over at us during the pauses. It became clear that they were silent because of our presence. Madame Koto, after the whispering between them was over, nodded, started to come over to us, changed her mind, and went and stood by the counter. I suddenly felt I was in the midst of a secret society. Madame Koto, in a gentler voice, said:
‘Azaro, it’s time for you to go and sleep.’
‘Yes, what is a small boy doing up at this time anyway?’ asked one of the men.
‘That’s how children are spoilt,’ said another.
‘Then they become thieves and steal from their fathers.’
Dad was steadily getting drunk. I could feel him clenching and unclenching his fists. He worked his jaws, creaked, fidgeted and, after the last of the men had spoken, rising late to the challenge, he said:
‘He’s my son! And he is not a thief!’
There was a long silence. Madame Koto went and sat behind her counter and hid her face in the shadows. One of the men laughed. It was a high-pitched laughter that would have sounded more appropriate if it had come from a horse. His laughter was cut short when the man with the scar said:
‘We don’t want any trouble.’
‘Then why abuse my son?’
‘All we want is to hold a meeting here and we don’t want the boy around.’
‘The boy goes when I go.’
Madame Koto came round the counter.
‘I want no trouble in my bar,’ she announced.
She began putting the benches face-down on the empty tables. When she had finished she went outside.
‘If you don’t want trouble then both of you should go.’
‘No!’ Dad shouted, downing a cup of palm-wine and slamming it on the table.
The men were silent.
‘Which party do you support?’ one of them asked, in a reasonable tone of voice.
‘None of your business.’
‘It is our business.’
‘Well, I don’t support your party.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because it is a party of thieves.’
One of the men immediately shouted for Madame Koto. She came in, hands on her hips.
‘What?’
‘Tell this man and his son to go.’
‘I want no trouble.’
‘Well you have to choose between them and us. If you don’t tell him to go we will take our custom somewhere else.’
‘I don’t want trouble. If you want to hold your meeting, hold it. They will go. Everything can be done peacefully.’
‘We want to hold our meeting now.’
Madame Koto looked at them and then at us.
‘Because you people have money you think you can prevent a poor man from drinking, eh?’ Dad said, spluttering.
‘Yes, we can.’
‘Okay, come and do it. Let me see you.’
‘Are you challenging us?’
‘Yes.’
Three of the men stood up at once. They were huge. Each of them was a colossus. They came round and towered over our table. I held Dad’s arm.