The Famished Road

by Ben Okri

  ‘You want to fight in here and scatter the madame’s bar?’ Dad asked coolly.

  He was actually sweating and his voice quivered slightly.

  ‘Come outside then,’ one of the colossi said.

  ‘First I have to finish my palm-wine. I don’t fight till I am drunk.’

  ‘You are a drunkard!’

  Dad drank slowly, deliberately. His arm trembled and I could feel the bench vibrating beneath me. The men hung over us, waiting patiently. Madame Koto did not speak, did not move. The other men went on drinking at their table. Dad poured out the last drop of palm-wine into the yellow plastic cup.

  ‘Dregs,’ he said. ‘You are dregs! Now I am ready.’

  He stood up and cracked his knuckles. The men were unimpressed. They went outside.

  ‘Go home!’ Dad commanded me. ‘I will deal with these goats alone.’

  His eyes were bold and bloodshot. He went to the door and stood between the curtain strips. He spat outside.

  ‘Come on!’

  I stood up. Dad went out without a backward glance. I followed. I couldn’t see the three men. As soon as we were outside the door was shut quickly and bolted. Dad looked for the men and couldn’t find them. I helped him look. The bushes moved in the wind. An owl hooted deep in the forest. I went to the backyard and found the back door also bolted.

  ‘They are cowards,’ Dad said.

  We heard them inside the bar, laughing and shouting. Their revelry increased and, because they spoke in alien tongues, I couldn’t make out what they were saying. Dad stood around, undecided. Then they fell silent in the bar. They talked in whispers.

  ‘Let’s go home,’ Dad said, leading the way.

  I trailed behind him, my ankle hurting again. He strode down the street. I hobbled. He didn’t look back once.

  12

  WHEN WE GOT home Mum was still discovering more dead rats. The room stank of their deaths. Mum had swept them into a corner and was ransacking the place. Some of them had died baring their teeth.

  ‘That photographer’s poison has killed more than fifty-two rats,’ Mum said as we came in, ‘and I can smell more.’

  Dad sat in his three-legged chair and with unusual solemnity lit a cigarette. His hands were still trembling.

  ‘I nearly fought some giants,’ he said.

  ‘We should move away from this area,’ Mum replied somewhat absent-mindedly.

  ‘I would have killed them.’

  ‘Let’s go. An evil thing will happen to us if we don’t move away.’

  ‘Nothing evil will happen to us. I won’t let them drive us away.’

  ‘How are we going to pay the new rent?’

  ‘We will manage.’

  ‘I smell an evil thing.’

  ‘It’s the rats.’

  ‘I dreamt I saw you by the roadside.’

  ‘Doing what?’

  ‘Lying down. You didn’t move. There was blood on your head. I talked to you, my husband, and you wouldn’t answer. I tried to carry you, but you were heavy as a lorry. I went to get help and when I came back you had vanished.’

  Dad was silent. I could hear him trying to find a way into the dream. Then he noticed me.

  ‘Go to sleep, Azaro. You shouldn’t listen when grownups are talking.’

  I got the mat, cleared the centre table out of the way, spread the mat, and lay down. Dad smoked with greater intensity. Mum said:

  ‘We will have to cut down the food if we are going to afford the rent.’

  ‘Don’t cut down the food.’

  ‘We will have to sleep on empty stomachs. Starting from tonight.’

  ‘Nonsense!’ Dad said, trying to control his temper. ‘Serve our food. Now!’

  I shut my eyes. The mention of food made me very hungry. Mum was silent. Then I heard her among the plates. I heard the plates on the table and smelt the good cooking, the stew and the fried plantain. I opened my eyes. There was a big bowl of eba and a bowl of watery soup, with a modest quantity of meat. We ate silently, avoiding one another’s eyes. After eating Dad lit another cigarette. Mum went out to wash the plates and bring in the clothes that had dried on the lines. I lay down. Mum returned and we stayed up in silence, not looking at one another, for a long time. Then Mum sighed and stretched out on the bed and faced the wall. Soon she was asleep. The candle burned low. Dad sat unmoving, his eyes hard. The candle went out.

  ‘Tell me a story, Dad,’ I said.

  He stayed quiet and I thought he had vanished. Then he too sighed. He moved. The chair creaked. Outside, a dog barked. An owl hooted. A bird cawed like a hyena. The wind stirred and faintly rattled the broken window.

  ‘Once upon a time,’ Dad began suddenly, ‘there was a giant whom they called the King of the Road. His legs were longer than the tallest tree and his head was mightier than great rocks. He could see an ant. When he drank, a stream would empty. When he pissed, a bad well would appear. He used to be one of the terrible monsters of the Forest and there were many like him, competing for strange things to eat. When the Forest started to get smaller because of Man, when the giant couldn’t find enough animals to eat, he changed from the forest to the roads that men travel.’

  Dad paused. Then he continued.

  ‘The King of the Road had a huge stomach and nothing he ate satisfied him. So he was always hungry. Anyone who wanted to travel on the road had to leave him a sacrifice or he would not allow them to pass. Sometimes he would even eat them up. He had the power to be in a hundred places at the same time. He never slept because of his hunger. When anyone set out in the morning he was always there, waiting for his sacrifice. Anyone who forgot the monster’s existence sooner or later got eaten up.

  ‘For a long time people gave him sacrifices and he allowed them to travel on the roads. The people did not grumble because they found him there when they came into the world. No one knew if he had a wife or not. No one even knew whether he was a man or a woman. He had no children. People believed that he had lived for thousands of years and that nothing could kill him and that he could never die. And so human beings, because they were afraid of him, fed him for a long time. And because of him, and partly because of other things, a famine started in the world. There was no water. The streams dried up. The wells became poisonous. The crops wouldn’t grow. Animals became lean. And people began to die of hunger. And because they were dying of hunger they stopped giving sacrifices to the King of the Road. He became angry and attacked people’s houses and caused a lot of people to perish while travelling and he ate the living as well as the corpses of those who had died of hunger.

  ‘It got to a point where all the people in the world couldn’t bear it any more and they gathered together to decide what they should do to the King of the Road. Some people said they should find a way to kill him. But others said that they should first go and reason with him. Those who wanted to reason won the vote. So they sent out a delegation of people.

  ‘They set out early one morning. They had a great mound of sacrifices which they carried in several bags and carts, bush animals, corn, yams, cassava, rice, kola-nuts, enough food in fact to feed a whole village. It was a great sacrifice. They travelled for a long time. They kept expecting the King of the Road to appear, but he didn’t. They waited for many more days. And when he didn’t appear they thought that he had somehow vanished or died and they began to celebrate and after their celebration they hurried back to the gathering with the great sacrifice. When they had forgotten about him, on their way back, while they were telling stories, the King of the Road appeared to them. He was very lean. He could barely talk. He was dying of hunger. He caught them and asked if they had any sacrifice for him. His voice was weak and he was thirsty because he had not drunk enough water for a long time. The people showed him what they had brought. He ate it all in one mouthful. He asked for more. He groaned and rolled and complained that what they had brought was so small it had made his hunger worse. The people said that was all they had. So the King of the Road ate t
he delegation.’

  Dad paused.

  ‘Get me some water,’ he said after a while. ‘This story is making me thirsty.’

  Dad had been performing the story in the dark. I quickly fetched him some water. He drank. He breathed a sigh of pleasure. He continued.

  ‘The rest of the world waited for the return of the people they had sent. They waited for seven years. Then they sent another delegation. The same thing happened. Then they decided to kill the King of the Road.’

  Dad paused again and lit another cigarette.

  ‘All the chiefs and princes and kings and queens in the world sent out messages to their people asking them to gather all the poison they could find. They gathered all the poisons and piled them up and transported them to where the great meeting was held. While the different people travelled with the poison some of it spilled over and that is why some plants can kill and why there are places in the forest where nothing ever grows.

  ‘They gathered all the poisons from all the four corners of the earth and made a mighty dish with them. In the dish there were hundreds of fishes, roasted bush meat, yams, and cassava. The cooks made sure that the dish was tasty. The food was so much that it took more than one hundred people to carry all of it. They travelled for a long time till the King of the Road, who was by now sick with hunger, caught them. He asked what they had brought for him as sacrifice and complained bitterly about how the first two delegations were happy when they thought he was dead and about what he did to them. The leader of the delegation showed him the wonderful food they had brought him and said that they wished him long life. But the King of the Road was so angry with human beings for starving him that he ate half the number of people who went on that journey. Then he sat down and devoured the great dish.

  ‘He ate all of it and his eyes began to swell because it made him even hungrier than he was before. The more he ate, the hungrier he became. So he ate the rest of the delegation. Only one person escaped. And that person was our great-great-great-grandfather. He knew the secret of making himself invisible. He was the one who came back and told the world what had happened after the King of the Road had eaten up the entire delegation.

  ‘What happened was that, after his unsatisfactory meal, the King of the Road lay down to rest. And then suddenly his stomach started to hurt him and he became so terribly hungry that he ate everything in sight. He ate the trees, the bushes, the rocks, the sand, and he even tried to eat the earth. Then the strangest thing happened. He began to eat himself. He ate his legs, and his hands, and his shoulders, and his back, and his neck, and he ate his head. He ate himself till only his stomach remained. That night a terrible rain fell and the rain melted the stomach of the King of the Road. Our great-great-great-grandfather said that it rained for seven days and when it stopped raining the stomach had disappeared, but he could hear the King of the Road growling from under the ground. What had happened was that the King of the Road had become part of all the roads in this world. He is still hungry, and he will always be hungry. That is why there are so many accidents in the world.

  ‘And to this day some people still put a small amount of food on the road before they travel, so that the King of the Road will eat their sacrifice and let them travel safely. But some of our wise people say that there are other reasons. Some say people make sacrifices to the road to remember that the monster is still there and that he can rise at any time and start to eat up human beings again. Others say that it is a form of prayer that his type should never come back again to terrify our lives. That is why a small boy like you must be very careful how you wander about in this world.’

  When he finished the story Dad stayed silent for a long time. I didn’t move. Then suddenly he got up and went to bed. I couldn’t sleep. I kept seeing vivid colours, kept seeing intimations of the King of the Road, lying in state, eternally hungry, beneath the streets and beaten tracks and highways of the world. I stayed tossing, my mind very active and awake, till I noticed for the first time the silence of the room, the absence of the rats. Dad must have noticed the same thing for he said:

  ‘Go and throw out some dead rats for the road to eat.’

  I was scared, but I swept out under the cupboard and found two more corpses of rats. I brushed them into a dust pan, hurried out, and threw them into the mouth of the darkness. As I hurried back in I fancied that I saw the King of the Road eating the dead rats and enjoying them. When I got back in Dad was already snoring.

  I was floating in the dark, on a wind perfumed with incense. I was staring into the simple eyes of the boy-king who had the smile of a god. I heard the wind tapping on our door. It tapped a code which I understood. I lit a candle. It was the photographer. He was dressed in a brilliant blue agbada. He wasn’t crouching. He seemed to have lost his fear. He was not as buoyant as the last time I saw him, but he looked healthier. He came in and took off his agbada top and I saw he had a silver-plated cross round his neck. He sat on the mat, cross-legged.

  ‘I am leaving tomorrow morning,’ he said.

  ‘Where are you going to go?’

  ‘I am going to travel all the roads of the world.’

  ‘And do what?’

  ‘Take photographs of the interesting things I see.’

  ‘Be careful of the King.’

  ‘The King will die.’

  ‘The King never dies.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Dad said so.’

  ‘I am not afraid of the King.’

  ‘The King is worse than thugs, you know. He is always hungry.’

  ‘What King?’

  ‘The King of the Road.’

  He looked puzzled.

  ‘Okay,’ he said finally, ‘I will be careful.’

  There was a moment’s silence.

  ‘Where have you been?’

  ‘Hiding.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘In my camera.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Travelling on the back of the silver light.’

  ‘Doing what?’

  ‘Visiting other continents. Flying round the universe. Seeing what men and women do. Taking photographs.’

  ‘What will happen to your glass thing?’

  ‘I will leave it.’

  ‘So you won’t display your pictures any more?’

  ‘Not here in this street. But I will display them to the whole world.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘By magic.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘You ask too many questions.’

  I fell silent.

  ‘Your poison killed all the rats,’ I said.

  ‘I told you it was good.’

  ‘Will you give me some?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘In case the rats come back to wage war on us.’

  He thought about it.

  ‘I will leave some for your mother.’

  We were silent again. Then he asked if there was any food. I soaked some garri for him, which he ate with dried fish. Then I noticed a bowl of fried plantain and stew which Mum had put aside and I gave it to him. After he had eaten he opened the case of his camera and brought out a bundle of fine-smelling pictures. He looked through them and gave them to me. There were pictures of a fishing festival, of people on the Day of Masquerades. The Egunguns were bizarre, fantastic, and big; some were very ugly; others were beautiful like those maidens of the sea who wear an eternal smile of riddles; in some of the pictures the men had whips and were lashing at one another. There were images of a great riot. Students and wild men and angry women were throwing stones at vans. There were others of market women running, of white people sitting on an expanse of luxurious beaches, under big umbrellas, with black men serving them drinks; pictures of a child on a crying mother’s back; of a house burning; of a funeral; of a party, with people dancing, women’s skirts lifted, baring lovely thighs. And then I came upon the strangest photograph of them all, which the photographer said he had got from another planet. It was of a man hanging by hi
s neck from a tree. I couldn’t see the rope that he hung from. A white bird was settling on his head and was in a blurred attitude of landing when the photograph was taken. The man’s face was strange, almost familiar. His eyes were bursting open, they were wide open, as if he had seen too much; his mouth was twisted, his legs were crossed and crooked.

  ‘What happened to him?’

  ‘They hanged him.’

  ‘Is he dead?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘They hanged him.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Across the seas.’

  ‘The seas hanged him?’

  ‘No. Another continent.’

  ‘A continent hanged him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘They.’

  ‘Who?’

  He paused. I was confused.

  ‘Some white people.’

  I didn’t understand. He took the picture from me and put it back amongst the others.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You’re too young to hear all this.’

  I became more interested.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why what?’

  ‘Why did they hang him?’

  He was silent. I thought for a moment.

  ‘Is it because of the white bird?’

  ‘What white bird? Oh, that one. No.’

  ‘Why?’

  He was silent again. Then he said:

  ‘Because they don’t like piano music.’

  I could see he wanted to change the subject. He put the pictures back in the case. His eyes were different. His voice had changed when he said:

  ‘Eight of the people I took pictures of are now dead. When I look at the pictures of dead people something sings in my head. Like mad birds. I shouldn’t be talking to you like this. You are a small boy.’

  He stretched out on the mat. That was when I noticed that he smelt of a sweet perfume, a curious incense. I asked him about it.

  ‘For protection,’ he said. ‘Protection from my enemies.’

  ‘I smelt it before you knocked on the door,’ I said.

  He smiled. He seemed pleased with his charm’s efficacy. He lay very quiet and after a while I thought he was asleep. I wanted to hear him talk.