The Famished Road

  I was pleased at the news. Mum fondled my hair.

  ‘Now, go to school and afterwards stay at Madame Koto’s place till I come for you, eh?’

  ‘Yes, Mother.’

  ‘I will be locking the door and taking the key so that no one will be able to do anything strange to us when we are away.’

  I nodded. But as we prepared to leave the room there was a knock on our door. Mum opened it and found the landlord standing outside.

  ‘Tell your husband’, he said, without the slightest formality, ‘that if he repeats what he did last night I will throw him out. I don’t care if he is called Black Cricket. I myself am a lion. If necessary I will send my boys to beat him up. If he gives me any more trouble, if he borrows money from anybody in this compound again, if he threatens to burn down my house, he better go and find himself another landlord, you hear?’

  Mum didn’t say anything. Her face was stony. The landlord went down the passage and we saw him go into the room of the second creditor. He emerged shortly afterwards with two of the creditors. The landlord, surrounded by the women and children of the compound, relieved himself of a lengthy speech about the difficulty of building houses, about tenants more terrible than Dad that he had destroyed, and about how powerful he was.

  ‘If anybody gives me any trouble,’ he said, waving a fetish around, ‘I will show them that trouble is my secret name. Tyger or no Tyger, this is my compound. I did not steal the money to build it!’

  And then he bustled out of the compound, with the women and children trailing behind him.

  Mum waited in the room for some time before she hurried out, with her tray of provisions on her head. I went out with her. She locked the door and without waiting to escort me to the junction, she shot off in the opposite direction to the one the landlord had taken. She did not call out her wares and I watched her as she disappeared from view.

  Without any pocket money, or any slice of bread, I lingered. I did not feel like going to school. I was late already and knew I would be publicly punished, whipped in front of everyone, and made to kneel out in the sun. I went to the housefront instead. The compound women came out with chairs and plaited their hair and gossiped. It was from them that I first heard the rumours about Madame Koto. The women talked quite crisply about our association with her. They talked and kept eyeing me maliciously. They said of Madame Koto that she had buried three husbands and seven children and that she was a witch who ate her babies when they were still in her womb. They said she was the real reason why the children in the area didn’t grow, why they were always ill, why the men never got promotions, and why the women in the area suffered miscarriages. They said she was a bewitcher of husbands and a seducer of young boys and a poisoner of children. They said she had a charmed beard and that she plucked one hair out every day and dropped it into the palm-wine she sold and into the peppersoup she made so that the men would spend all their money in her bar and not care about their starving families. They said she made men go insane at night and that she belonged to a secret society that flies about in the air when the moon is out. I got tired of hearing what they had to say and I decided that being punished at school was infinitely better.

  4

  WHEN I GOT to Madame Koto’s bar early that evening the place was shut. I knocked but no one opened. I waited for a while. A man with one leg and a pair of crutches made from flowering branches came up to me.

  ‘Is it shut? Has she closed down?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Shame,’ he replied.

  He had sand on his hair. His face was twisted as though he had witnessed great evil. The stump of his amputated leg was covered with a filthy cloth. He looked up at the signboard, spat, and hobbled away. I went to the backyard. There was a fire blazing. Madame Koto’s cauldron of peppersoup bubbled away. Its steam looked like tormented genies. Further on, hidden by the bushes, was Madame Koto’s massive form. At first I thought she was doing something quite private, so I looked away. But when I looked again she had straightened and was inspecting the white beads which she dug into the ground at night and unearthed in the day. She emerged from the bushes with a cutlass in one hand, the white beads in the other.

  ‘What are you staring at?’ she asked gruffly, hiding the beads.

  ‘Nothing.’

  She hurried away to her room.

  When I saw her next she was wearing the white beads round her neck. She came to the fire and threw some ingredients into the cauldron. The soup made a curious hiss, almost of protestation. It bubbled turbulently within the cauldron. Then it foamed and spilled over, nearly putting out the fire. Madame Koto said to the soup:

  ‘Be quiet!’

  The fire blazed. And to my astonishment the soup became calm, as if it had never been boiling.

  ‘The bar is shut,’ I said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What happened?’

  She didn’t say anything. The soup was turbulent again. It swelled into green foam, its bubbles a little monstrous and glutinous, and when they burst a powerful fragrance came over the air.

  ‘What did you put in the soup?’

  ‘Demons,’ she said, glancing at me.

  ‘To attract customers?’

  She glanced at me again, her eyes bright with curiosity.

  ‘What gave you that idea?’

  ‘No one.’

  ‘So why did you ask?’

  ‘I just asked.’

  ‘Don’t ask too many questions, you hear?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Are you hungry?’

  I was, but I said:

  ‘No.’

  She smiled in a manner that didn’t make her less fearsome and said:

  ‘Look after the soup. I’m coming.’

  But she went. She shuffled towards her room and as soon as she had gone the cauldron hissed and the soup over-flowed.

  ‘Be quiet,’ I said.

  The soup gathered into a tremendous wave of foam and rushed over the sides. Before I could do anything it completely put out the fire, poured over the wood, and became little green rivulets on the sand.

  ‘Madame Koto! The fire has gone out!’ I called.

  She came over, looked at the fire, saw the soup streaking the sand like batik dyeing, and said:

  ‘What did you do to it?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  She bent over and got the fire going again, blowing at the embers. I stared at the soft folds of flesh on her neck. She stood up.

  ‘Don’t touch it,’ she said, and was about to return to her room when we heard commotion from the barfront.

  Two men, one fat, with a bandaged neck, the other stout, leaning on a blue walking stick, were banging away at the bar door.

  ‘Madame, aren’t you open? We want some palm-wine and your famous peppersoup.’

  ‘Not yet open,’ she said. ‘Come back later.’

  They looked disappointed and they grumbled about how some people were not serious about business. But they left.

  ‘Troublemakers,’ she said, and went off to have her usual bath before the evening customers began to arrive.

  I watched over the soup. I got very hot from the heat of the fire and the infernal sun. I got bored with the soup. It boiled away quite unremarkably. It no longer bubbled and seemed to have given up its demons. Occasionally an impatient customer turned up and rattled the door and I had to go and tell them that the bar hadn’t opened yet. They all seemed parched and their tongues hung out as they regarded me. After a while, when I felt sure the soup could take care of itself, I wandered down the paths to ease my own restlessness.

  Steadily, over days and months, the paths had been widening. Bushes were being burnt, tall grasses cleared, tree stumps uprooted. The area was changing. Places that were thick with bush and low trees were now becoming open spaces of soft river-sand. In the distance I could hear the sounds of dredging, of engines, of road builders, forest clearers, and workmen chanting as they strained their muscles. Ea
ch day the area seemed different. Houses appeared where parts of the forest had been. Places where children used to play and hide were now full of sandpiles and rutted with house foundations. There were signboards on trees. The world was changing and I went on wandering as if everything would always be the same.

  It took longer to get far into the forest. It seemed that the trees, feeling that they were losing the argument with human beings, had simply walked deeper into the forest. The deeper in I went, the more I noticed the difference. The grounds were covered in white sand. Piles of brick and cement were everywhere. Further on, by the paths, there were patches of dried excrement. The smell compounded the dryness of the air. I stood under a withering bamboo tree and a cat appeared in front of me. It looked up, and went into the forest. I followed it till we got to a clearing covered in leaves and rubber seeds. It was very cool and it smelt like the body of a great mother. Insects sizzled and birds piped all around. An antelope ran past with her little ones. I lay down and slept. I hadn’t been sleeping long when I heard my name ringing through the trees. I remembered Madame Koto and ran back to the bar. When I got to the backyard the fire was smouldering, the cauldron had been removed from the grate and was on the floor. Madame Koto came out of her room and I said:

  ‘I thought you were bathing.’

  ‘Bathing? How can I? Where have you been?’

  ‘Playing.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Along the paths. I thought you were …’

  ‘… bathing. Come!’

  I followed her. She opened the back door of the bar. The light flooded in. Lizards scattered from the tables. A slick gecko inched up the wall. The bar was a mess. It was almost unrecognisable. There was vomit on the floor; benches were scattered and upturned; tables were in unusual positions; fish and chicken bones were all over the floor; spilt palm-wine stank, covered in flies; and columns of ants had formed along the walls. The place looked wrecked. It had the air of a ransacked and deserted marketplace.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Troublesome customers,’ was all she said.

  We set to work clearing the place. I swept the floor and brushed out all the ants. We moved the tables. She poured sand on the vomit and swept it out to the front. We rearranged the benches. I sprinkled water on the floor and swept again. The areas of the madman’s piss were still greenish. The cross-eyed spirits had gone. As we moved the tables Madame Koto farted. I was startled by the sudden voluminous noise. Her face showed no sign that I had noticed. She sprinkled disinfectant over the vomit-stains and then she opened the front door for air to come through. Then she went to have her bath.

  The wind didn’t really come through the bar. It was stuffy and smelt of Madame Koto’s fart. I went outside for a while and when I came back in the smell had cleared. I sat in my corner while Madame Koto struggled with the gourds and calabashes outside. Some of her women friends came to see her on their way back from hawking.

  ‘My daughter’s husband!’ they said to me as they passed through the bar, with basins on their heads.

  In the backyard they talked about politics, about the thugs of politicians and how businessmen and chiefs sprayed money at parties and celebrations. Madame Koto fed them and they prayed for her prosperity and they left, their voices low and sweet as they chatted away down the street.

  As the evening wore on the bar stayed empty. No one came; I slept; and I was woken up by a lizard that had dropped from the wall. I got up and saw a man sitting at a table. He had a swollen eye and his lower lip was unnaturally thick. He spoke in a heavy, slow voice, as if he found words too bulky to roll over his big lip.

  ‘Is that how you treat customers?’ he asked.

  I called for Madame Koto. She came in and the man said:

  ‘Have my friends come yet?’

  ‘What friends?’

  ‘My friends.’

  ‘No one has come yet. You want some palm-wine?’

  ‘I will only drink when my friends arrive. They have all the money.’

  ‘I will serve you,’ said Madame Koto, ‘and when they come you can pay me.’

  ‘I will wait,’ insisted the man.

  Madame Koto went out. The man sat perfectly still. Then he shut his good eye. His bloated eye stayed open. Soon he was asleep and began to snore. I had been looking at him intently for a while when I became aware that the bar was filling up. I looked round and saw no one except the man. But the bar was full of drunken and argumentative voices, laughter, vitriolic abuses, and the unrestrained merriment of hard-drinking men. I went and told Madame Koto about it.

  ‘Rubbish!’ she said, following me.

  When we got into the bar the voices had materialised and the place was quite full.

  ‘Plenty of people,’ she said, eyeing me.

  I was surprised; but when I sat down my surprise turned to bewilderment. The people in the bar were stranger than any I had seen before. The group that sat round the man with the bloated eye looked alike. Their eyes were all swollen and their lips were big and bruised. At first I thought they were all boxers. Then I noticed that two of them had only one hand each and the original man had only three fingers. He wore rings on all the fingers. They talked loudly but their voices were disproportionately more powerful than the movements of their mouths.

  Across from them sat two men, dressed identically in agbada of fish-printed material. They both wore skullcaps and very dark glasses. I was convinced that they were both blind; but they talked and gesticulated as though they had perfect sight. On another table there was a man who sat alone. He had no thumbs and his head, amazingly contorted like certain tubers of yam, was altogether bald. He wore a wristwatch that ticked loudly and when he yawned I saw that he had no teeth at all, in spite of looking quite young.

  There was a woman next to him, whose skin was more indigo than dark-brown. She kept adjusting her shoulders and did not smile or speak.

  Madame Koto came round to serve them.

  ‘These are my friends,’ the original man with the bloated eye said.

  ‘Where do you all come from?’ Madame Koto asked.

  ‘Here. This country, this city. Here we live, here we die.’

  Just as he finished speaking, two albino men came in. They were freckled, their eyes were green, and they were quite beautiful. Their eyes kept shutting and opening, wobbling from side to side, as if they couldn’t stand the light. The rest of the company cheered them as they came in. They smiled and took their seats opposite the toothless young man.

  ‘What do you want to drink?’

  ‘Palm-wine, naturally, and your famous peppersoup,’ said the original man.

  Madame Koto went out to serve them. While she was out a very tall man and woman came in. Their legs were very long. The rest of their bodies were quite short. They had small heads and eyes that were so tiny that it was only when they came near me that I could perceive their pin-point brightness. They came over, stood perfectly straight for a moment, and then, like bizarre actors, they leant over to me, keeping their legs and top halves straight, and said, in voices that could only have come from children:

  ‘We want some peppersoup, please.’

  I ran out and told Madame Koto.

  ‘Leave me alone, I’m coming!’ she said.

  I went back in. The tall couple had seated themselves at my table. They sat straight and their knees were awkward underneath the table and I noticed that they had the longest necks I had yet seen on any human being.

  ‘Are you politicians?’ I asked.

  ‘What?’ asked the man, in his child’s voice.

  ‘Politicians.’

  ‘What is that?’

  ‘You’re not politicians,’ I said, closing the conversation.

  They kept glancing at me and I found their faces very disconcerting. I tried to sit there without noticing them when the woman brought out a feather from her wrapper and offered it to me.

  ‘No, thank you,’ I said.

  She smiled and put it
back. Madame Koto came in with the gourds of palm-wine and voices erupted in weird jubilation. I fetched glasses and cups and distributed them round. When I gave the cups to the men with dark glasses they grabbed my hand and said:

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘We like you. We want to take you with us.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Wherever.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Yes.’

  I tried to wrench my hand free but their grips were very strong and their bony fingers bit into my flesh.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Yes.’

  I pulled again but my flesh bruised and began to bleed. I screamed, but the voices in the room were so loud they cut off my screaming. I kicked, missed, and hurt my toes on the foot of the table. Then I scratched one of them in the face, and snatched off his glasses. Both of his eyes were totally white. They could have been made of milk. They were white and blank and unmoving, as if they had been stuck there, malformed, in the empty sockets.

  I opened my mouth to shout, but the man laughed so powerfully and his mouth was so black that I froze in my attempt. I couldn’t move. I felt transfixed, as if I were suffering a living rigor mortis. Then a searing pain went up my spine, ended in my brain, and I woke up to find myself in my usual corner, with the tall, small-eyed couple staring at me. Everyone else was drinking. Steaming bowls of peppersoup were in front of all the customers. They drank steadily and talked in curious voices.

  The two albino men kept twisting and jerking as if their bodies were uncomfortable. They were silent. The toothless man was also silent. They all kept looking at me. More customers came into the bar. There was a man with a head like that of a camel, a woman with a terrible hip deformation, another man with white hair, and a midget. The woman had a large sack on her back, which she gave to the albinos. The albinos unfurled the sack, shook it out, sending dust clouds into the air. They glanced at me furtively, and hid the sack under the table.

  The four people who had come in looked for places to sit and then crowded my table. I had to get up for them. I fetched a little stool and sat near the earthenware pot and watched the bar become overcrowded.