The Famished Road

by Ben Okri

  I backed away.

  ‘My mother is looking for you.’

  ‘Go away!’ she shouted.

  I retreated. I hung around the fire-grate. I hid behind the earthenware pot that had been brought outside. I watched her. She remained still. Behind me the celebrations raged, the music shook the vegetation, loud voices cavorted in the night air. Then she came out of the bushes. She came towards me. She stretched her hands upwards in a dramatic plea, and then she sighed. I caught the green glint of the duiker’s eyes. The green glint stirred something in my brain. I scurried from behind the pot and hid near the duiker. Madame Koto turned to where I had been, but she saw nothing. She was still again. The moonlight touched her eyes. The duiker pawed me and drew me into itself and the wind blew a curious darkness from my consciousness and water flooded my ears and I found myself in the eyes of the magic animal, looking out for a brief moment into the reality that it saw. There were forms everywhere, the humped shapes of writhing animals, eyes floating on the wind, organic houses that behaved like carnivorous plants, flowers with worms in them, worms with flowers in them, silver cords lighting up the air. And I saw that Madame Koto was pregnant with three strange children. Two of them sat upright and the third was upside down in her womb. One of them had a little beard, the second had fully formed teeth, and the third had wicked eyes. They were all mischievous, they kicked and tugged at their cords, they were the worst type of spirit-children, and they had no intention of being born. I heard a terrible scream. Something knocked the curious darkness back into my consciousness. Madame Koto was bent over. I backed away from the duiker. Madame Koto straightened, came over to me, and said:

  ‘Why were you staring at my stomach like that with your bad-luck eyes?’

  ‘I wasn’t staring,’ I said.

  She hit me again. It didn’t hurt. Then she put on her moonstones, cursing and muttering about the pain in her stomach. She went to her room and soon re-emerged with a fan of peacock feathers. She walked with great dignity back into the celebrations.

  The politicians pasted money on her forehead when she performed an impromptu dance; the praise-singers sang of her accomplishments; women clustered round, showering her with compliments. Mum went over and they talked and pointed at the food. Madame Koto seemed to be telling Mum who the important personalities at the event were. Mum looked lean and famished besides Madame Koto. Her wig was in a sorry state, as if it was something she had rescued from the roadside. Her blue sunglasses made her look slightly mad. And her copper bangles had turned greenish from rust and all the water that dripped in from our roof.

  While they were talking the blind old man started shouting in his chair. At first no one thought anything of it. He kicked and struggled drunkenly and then he got up and staggered to the middle of the dance floor. He turned one way, then another. Then he fell on his knees and crawled around on the ground and he kept shouting:

  ‘Thieves! Thieves!’

  Madame Koto, ever the attentive host, was the first to take note of his inexplicable agitation. Waving the fan across her face, hobbling through the weaving crowd of dancers, she went to the blind old man.

  ‘I see food floating under the table,’ he said in a cracked voice.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Everywhere. Since when did fried goat fly?’

  Madame Koto, humouring him, tried to get him to stand up. He refused.

  ‘You have rats under your table. I saw a big rat. It has only one eye.’

  The blind old man stood up, adjusted his yellow glasses, and started to jump up and down, squealing like a demented sorcerer. Then he brought out his harmonica and played during the silence between two records. Some of the people dancing poured scorn on him.

  ‘Take your dirty music somewhere else,’ someone said.

  Madame Koto was leaving when she saw a flash behind the blind old man. A bowl of peppersoup was floating above the table. She leapt in that direction suddenly, on an impulse, and hurt her foot, and fell to the ground. Her bodyguards rushed to her and helped her up. When she was standing again, she pointed, shouting:

  ‘Get those thieves! Flog them! Bring them here! Let me teach them a lesson!’

  The place erupted with her fury. She shouted, she threw plates and food on the ground. The music stopped. She weaved about the place, waving her arms, lashing her minions with her walking stick. The thugs rushed outside. Amid the general confusion Madame Koto saw the beautiful beggar girl sitting mutely under the table and ordered her to be caught. The thugs soon came back in, dragging some of the beggars into the tent. They had incriminating bowls of food in their hands. Madame Koto made them carry the bowls on their heads. The celebrants laughed. With the full vengeance of her stomach throbbing with the abiku children, with the agony of her swollen foot and twisted neck, she ordered the bodyguards to thrash the beggars. There was silence. No one moved. The strange duiker looked on with impassive eyes. The bodyguards, one by one, said they wouldn’t whip the beggars. Madame Koto burst into such a rage, hobbling around with her lion-headed walking stick, lashing her bodyguards on the back, screaming at them to thrash the beggars as a public lesson. The beggars gazed at her without emotion. They were silent. Legless, one-armed, one-eyed, soft-limbed, they gazed at her with big and placid eyes. Madame Koto, still hobbling, transforming her agony into rage, began to push her employees out of the premises, out of the tent, shouting for them to leave her service, to return to the festering gutters from which she had plucked them. Then one of the prostitutes cut herself a cane in the bushes and, crying as she did so, proceeded to whip the beggars. She whipped them hard, on their backs and on their wounds, on their faces and on their bad limbs. The bodyguards changed their minds. That night a new order of manifestations appeared in our lives. As the thugs thrashed the beggars a curious dust rose from their backs, rose into the air, and when the dust touched the lights midges multiplied everywhere. The dust turned into flying insects; the insects grew in size and soon the tent and the fluorescent lights bristled with a host of green moths.

  When Dad became aware of the beatings he ran over to the thugs and snatched the whips from them. They jumped on him and held him down. Madame Koto, still in agony, ordered that the beggar girl also be flogged. The prostitute whipped the girl. Helen bore the whipping and did not move or cry. She stared at Madame Koto with gentle eyes as they whipped her. The gentleness in her eyes made Madame Koto madder. Mum went to her and said:

  ‘Tell them to stop. You don’t know who that girl is.’

  ‘She is a thief.’

  ‘She is not a thief.’

  Madame Koto bellowed something at Mum. She insulted Mum loudly, saying that Mum too was a beggar. She gave vent to such a torrent of anger and bitterness that Mum was stunned. Then Mum did something quite odd. She tore the wig off her head and threw it on the floor. She took the blue sunglasses off her face. Then she stormed out of the disrupted party uttering the direst curses. The wind blew again when the whipping of the beggar girl was resumed. It was a strident wind. Slowly the beggar girl sank to the ground under the brutality of the whipping. Dad strained furiously against the people holding him down. The duiker let out a low snarl. The beggar girl began to bleed from the mouth. Blood dripped down her lips and fell in drops on the ground. I began to weep. Someone hit me. It was the blind old man. He started playing on his harmonica to the sound of the thrashing.

  ‘A good whipping, eh,’ he said every now and again.

  The wind lifted the edges of the tent. The beggar girl crouched on the floor in a foetal position. I went round the gathered resplendent celebrants. They were fanning themselves. Their faces were animated by the new spectacle. As I pushed through them I again noticed their hoofs, their goat-legs, their spidery legs, and their bristly skins. I crept towards the duiker and untied it from the pole and released it from its sacrificial captivity. A mighty wail erupted from Dad. He stood up in a great burst of manic energy and sent the men flying. The duiker bounded from the backyard into the te
nt. And as the wind made the tent sway, as the lights began going on and off, a frightening cry rose from the bewildered crowd. The duiker bounded amongst the dazzling array of celebrants, scattering the bird cages, overturning the tables, stamping on the food, upsetting basins of fried meat, mashing the fruits, crashing into the cage of large parrots, shattering the tables with beer on them, and sowing pandemonium. The parrot beat its wings against the limitations of the tent, the monkey escaped and fled off with its hand full of fruits, the loudspeakers fell with a crash, people trampled on one another, howling and confused, the thugs chased the duiker, trying to recapture it, Dad hurled himself at the woman whipping the beggar girl and pushed her away, Madame Koto knocked Dad on the head with the metallic end of her walking stick, the blind old man squealed in his weird sorcerer’s delight, the duiker leapt out through the tent opening and the wind burst in and tilted the tent to one side, and Madame Koto ordered everyone to be calm. The parrot flew out through a gaping hole in the tent. The thugs turned on Dad, and were about to descend on him and beat him to a mash when a voice amongst the celebrants, profound with an unearthly authority, said:

  ‘Stop!’

  Everyone froze as if in an enchantment. Then slowly they turned to see who had spoken with such power. The wind calmed down. The voices had stopped. Most of the motions in the tent ceased. And then the tall man in a white suit who had been waiting for Dad stepped out from the expectant crowd.

  8

  ‘LEAVE HIM TO me,’ he said in his thin ghostly voice. ‘I will thrash this Black Tyger without even staining my white suit.’

  The blind old man played a strain on his instrument.

  ‘Ah, lovely, a fight!’ he said.

  And before we could register what exactly was happening the man in white struck Dad in the face and sent him reeling. Dad fell on to a table. He didn’t move for fifteen seconds. No one saw the jab that did the damage. The celebrants, awoken from their enchantment, clapped. The old man played a tune. The beggars shuffled and crawled out of the tent. The beggar girl stayed crouched on the ground. Someone poured water on Dad. He jumped up quickly, looked around, and kept blinking.

  ‘Where am I?’ he wondered out loud.

  The celebrants burst out laughing. Dad staggered around. Then he fell. He got up again and reached for a cup of palm-wine and drank it down. I went over to him.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ he asked severely.

  ‘The man in white hit you.’

  ‘A white man?’

  ‘No. Him.’ I pointed.

  Dad went all over the place, drinking all the cups of wine he could find. Then he shook his head to clear away the thick cobwebs, howled a war cry, and rushed over to the man in white. Before Dad could do anything the man unleashed a whiplash of a punch. Dad crumpled into a heap. He writhed and twisted on the ground like a lacerated worm. I rushed over to him again.

  ‘Let’s go home,’ I said.

  ‘Why?’ he yelled.

  ‘The man is beating you.’

  ‘What man?’

  I was taken aback. Dad seemed to be in an unreal land, a mythical land. He didn’t seem to know what was happening to him. His face had broken out in two monstrous purple bruises as if under the chastisement of an invisible sorcerer. I couldn’t see his right eye. I never knew that a jab could inflict such punishment, such disfigurement, or such disorientation. Dad’s eyes were dazed, slightly crossed, and his lips kept moving. I leant over to hear what he was saying.

  ‘This is an excellent party,’ he said weakly, slurring his words.

  ‘Let’s go.’

  ‘I’m enjoying this dance,’ he said.

  ‘You’re not dancing.’

  ‘What am I doing then?’

  ‘Losing a fight.’

  ‘Fight? Black Tyger? Lose a fight? Never!’

  He got up, weaved, staggered, and fell on the beggar girl. He stayed down for a while. The music started. The man in white dusted his hands. Madame Koto took an immediate interest in him and sent intermediaries to make enquiries about him. Party chiefs, power merchants and warlords, always seeking new additions to their ranks of warriors and hired protectors, sent their men to ask who he worked for and if he would enter their services. Thugs surrounded him, asking who he was, where he came from, offering a special place in their organisation. The prostitutes and the low-life courtesans also took a great interest in him. The praise-singers invented names and fabulous deeds for him. The beggar girl, bleeding from her mouth and nose, got out from under Dad. As she got up I noticed that her bad eye was open. It was yellowish and tinged with blue. She shook Dad. The celebrants jeered. Dad sat up, holding his head. When he saw the beggar girl he smiled leeringly, grabbed her, and began to embrace her. The beggar girl freed herself from his punch-drunk embrace. Dad’s face had taken on the softness of an abandoned lover and any moment it seemed he would burst into a grotesque and sentimental love song.

  ‘My wife, where are you going?’ he asked of the beggar girl.

  The girl got up and brushed the sand from her hair. Her back was a mess of flesh and torn cloth. Her hair fell from her head as if it were a wig dissolving back to its original constituents.

  ‘A magician!’ the blind old man said, and played his harmonica.

  Dad stood up. The girl backed away. Dad followed her.

  ‘Let’s go!’ I cried.

  ‘After I’m married,’ he said, wobbling.

  Then he stopped, looked around, and noticed everyone staring at him with amused smiles on their faces. He noticed the man in white and looked at him as if for the first time. He looked at the green moths and the midges and the multi-coloured lights and the chaos of overturned tables and trampled food and at the dimensions of the tent. Then he said:

  ‘I thought I was dreaming.’

  ‘You’re not,’ I said.

  ‘I thought I was in the Land of the Fighting Ghosts.’

  ‘He is a Fighting Ghost.’

  ‘You mean I wasn’t dreaming?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘You’re losing a fight.’

  ‘You’re drunk,’ said the blind old man.

  ‘Punch-drunk,’ said one of the thugs.

  Dad touched his face. He winced.

  ‘So they were real blows?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘Who did it?’

  ‘The man in white.’

  Suddenly, with his curious ability to reach into deep places in his spirit, a ferocious energy swirled around Dad.

  ‘Hurry, go and call Sami, the betting-man,’ Dad said, awakening. ‘We will make money from this and build the beggars a school.’

  I rushed out and, with Ade, went to fetch Sami. When I got back Dad had taken off his shirt, and was shadow-boxing, working up a sweat. He seemed wide awake now. Methodically, he shook his head, did some press-ups, and practised the most amazing exercises. He creaked his joints, limbered up, stretched his muscles, did his special movements, breathed deeply, swelled up, and let out howls of energy. He was very impressive. The crowd watched him disdainfully. Only the inhabitants of the area, who had now ventured into the tent in the wake of the commotion, called out his fighting name and cheered him on. The blind old man was seated on his wheelchair, his harmonica in one hand, a fried piece of antelope meat in the other. Occasionally he kicked his feet in the air and like an over-excited child would say:

  ‘A prize fight! Very good. Where is the betting-man?’

  The man in white, tall, lean, with an air of extraordinary detachment, a small head and pinpoint eyes, stood on one leg. He was very still. His eyes were positively reptilian. He was very disturbing to look at. No one looked at him for very long.

  Sami arrived with his bucket and his small army of protectors. He went round taking bets. The odds were against Dad. One of the politicians brought out a great wad of pound notes and said:

  ‘I have heard too much about that Black Tyger. He is a buffoon. From today I re-name him the Black Rat.’

  There were
bursts of laughter and guffaws all around. Celebrants laughed themselves into contortions. The politician made the odds very low against Dad. Everyone was excited about the outcome. Sami, sweating, went from group to group, from person to person, jotting down their names and their odds and collecting their money in the bucket. Soon another bucket was needed. All the women, the prostitutes, the low-life courtesans, the casual onlookers, brought out their money. Sami sent for more protection. His entire compound turned up, armed with clubs and dane guns. When he had finished, he was drenched in sweat. He was drenched in the horror of his utter financial ruin, instant and complete liquidation, total poverty and homelessness. He went over to Dad. Pleading reverently, mopping his brow, he said:

  ‘If you win this one you can build a university.’

  ‘A school for beggars,’ Dad said, correcting him.

  ‘Whatever you like. Just win, you hear? Or I will be a poor man. My children will starve. My wife will go mad. All my money, all the money I could borrow, all the money I don’t even have, is on this, eh. Win!’

  Dad pushed him away. The fight began. Dad circled the man in white. Dad rushed him, but the man wasn’t there. The blind old man, chuckling, waving a chicken bone, said:

  ‘That is what we call magical boxing, eh.’

  I loathed him. Dad went on rushing the man, throwing wide swings, wild flurries of punches which only dazed the green moths and confused the midges, but he couldn’t touch the man.

  ‘Don’t you want to fight?’ he asked in frustration.

  The man cracked Dad with a punch so fast that it was only when the women hurled Dad back into the arena that we registered its effect. The man went on striking Dad with electric punches, his fists were so fast that it seemed he was completely still the whole time, while Dad’s head kept snapping backwards, as if the air, or an invisible hand, were responsible. His nose became swollen, the bridge broke, blood spurted out. Dad tried hard not to breathe in his own blood. When he breathed it was in excruciation and fatigue. Suddenly, he seemed terrified of pain. The man would move his shoulder slightly and Dad’s head would jerk backwards. The man jabbed Dad at will, with cold menacing indifference. I couldn’t bear it. The man went on pounding Dad’s nose, extending the territories of his bruises, discolouring and generally realigning Dad’s face, altering his physiognomy, disintegrating his philosophy, dissolving his reality, dislodging his teeth, and sapping the will from his sturdy legs. Every time Dad took a punch a searing light from another planet shot through my skull. Blinded by the beating Dad was taking I went out, found Ade, and asked him to give me the lizard spell his father had made.