Ben Okri - The Famished Road

‘Why did you bringthem?’‘Who?’ I cried.‘Your friends.’‘Which friends?’‘The beggars, the spirit.’‘They are not my friends.’

‘They are your father’s friends.’‘No.’‘He is their representative, not so?’‘I don’t know.’‘He has gone mad with politics.’‘I don’t know anything.’‘What did the spirit say to you?’‘I didn’t hear.’She let go of me.‘You want some peppersoup?’‘Yes,’ I said.She went out and left me in the strange darkness of her bar. I wondered about what had happened to the electricity. I began to smell the corpse of the lizard, as if it had accelerated in its decomposition. The front door opened. The curtains parted. I smelt boots, restless energy, and saw a form at the doorway, the odour of mosquito coils precedinghim.

‘Dad!’ I said. He lit a match. His face was long, his eyes bright and deep-set, a cigarette in his mouth. The match went out. He sat. I listened to him thinking. Then he laughed airily and said: ‘A man can wander round the planet and still not move an inch. A man can have so much light in his mind and still not see what’s right in front of him. My son, why are you sitting like that?’ I didn’t know what to say. He chuckled in the dark. ‘A man can carry the world and still not be able to bear the load of his own head.’ ‘What load?’ I asked. ‘Ideas,dreams,my son,’hesaid,alittlewearily.‘SincefightingtheGreenLeopard the world has changed. The inside of my head is growing bigger.’ After a while, he said: ‘Maybemy thoughtsarebeginningtosmell.’

‘There’s a dead lizard on the table.’

‘Who killed it?’

‘Me.’

‘Why?’

‘It’s a spirit.’

‘How do you know?’

‘The spirit spoke to me and then changed.’

‘Don’t kill lizards.’

‘Why not?’

‘They are messengers. Sometimes they are spies. My father once sent a lizard to warn me.’

‘Of what?’

Dad was silent. Then he said:

‘Someofourenemiesweregoingtopoisonme.Thiswasinthevillage.They put poison in my soup. I was about to drink when I saw this lizard shakingits head at me.’ ‘That’s what lizards do.’ ‘You are a goat, my son.’ ‘So what happened?’ ‘I ignored the lizard and was about to drink the soup when the lizard ran up the wall. I watched it, fascinated. Then it fell into the soup and died.’ I thought about what Dad had said. Outside I heard loud drunken voices from the forest. ‘Where is the lizard?’ ‘On the table.’ Dad lit a match. ‘There’s nothing here.’ The match went out. ‘Maybe it went back to the land of the spirits.’

‘Don’t talk about spirits.’The voices outside grew louder.‘Someone gave the beggars wine to drink. I’ve never seen beggars so drunk. They are all members of my party.’

I could hear them laughing, cursing, fighting amongst themselves.

‘They see me as their leader,’ Dad said. ‘And I have no money to feed them. But I will build them a school. You will be one of the teachers. Is there any palm-wine? Where is Madame Koto?’

‘In the backyard.’

‘Go and call her.’

I went out through the back door. It was very dark and I saw the prostitutes on stools or standing around, smoking in the night. When they saw me they kissed their teeth. The thugs and other clientele had gone. I went and knocked on Madame Koto’s door. After a while she opened. She had a lamp in one hand, a wig in the other. Her stomach was very big and wide, her face was swollen, as if someone had been hitting her. Weariness weighed on her eyes.

‘You bad-luck boy, what do you want?’

‘My father..’

‘What father? Leave me alone. My business was doing well, then you went and brought all those beggars and drove away all my customers.’

‘I didn’t bring them.’

She stared at me a long time. She looked quite frightening. She gave me the lamp to hold and then put on her wig. She shut her door and went to the backyard and asked theprostitutestogoforthenight.They grumbledaboutnotbeingpaid.

‘I will pay you tomorrow, when this bad-luck boy is not here.’

One by one the prostitutes got up. Grumbling, cursing, they went out into the darkness of the housefront. Madame Koto sat on a stool. There was a large green pot on the fire-grate. Frogs croaked in the bushes. From the forest a bird piped three times and stopped. The crickets trilled. Mosquitoes bit us. After some time one of the prostitutes came back.

‘What’s wrong?’ Madame Koto asked.

‘Those beggars are drunk.’

‘On my wine.’

‘If we don’t get rid of them our business will fail.’

‘Don’t talk nonsense. Go home. Come tomorrow.’

She went. We listened as the beggars called out to her. She cursed them. The beggars laughed raucously. ‘Those friends of yours broke all my glasses,’ Madame Koto said. ‘And my plates.

Abused my customers. Broke two chairs. Who will pay, eh?’

‘My father wants to talk politics with you.’

‘Who?’

‘You.’

Madame Koto reached for a stick and began to hit me. I didn’t move. She stopped.

‘You and your father are mad.’

‘We are not mad.’

‘I’m not well,’ she said, in a different voice.

‘What is wrong?’

‘Money. Politics. Customers. People.’

I was silent.

‘What does your father want?’

‘Palm-wine.’

She gave a short laugh.

‘I gave all the palm-wine to the beggars.’

‘Why?’

‘They werecausingtroublesoIgavethempalm-wineandthey left.Itoldthemto go far away, but they went to my frontyard.’

‘They want to vote for my father,’ I said. Madame Koto stared at me.

‘Your father?’

‘Yes.’

She laughed again.

‘Only chickens and frogs will vote for him.’

‘What about mosquitoes?’

‘Them too. And snails.’

‘He said I should call you.’

‘Where is he?’

‘In the bar.’

‘So he has come back to my bar after calling me a witch, eh?’

‘He wants politics.’

‘Go and tell him I’m coming.’

When I went back into the bar Dad was asleep. He slept with his head held high, as if he were in a trance. I drew close to him and listened to him grinding his teeth. Fireflies lit up the darkness. A yellow butterfly circled Dad’s head. I watched the butterfly. When it landed on Dad’s head I could suddenly see him clearly in the dark. A yellow light surrounded him. The light was the exact shape of Dad and it rose in the air and came down and began to wander about the bar. I watched the light. It kept changing colour. It turned red. Then golden-red. Then it moved up and down, lifting up in the air, and bouncing on the floor. It went round Dad as if looking for a way to get back in. Then the golden-red light came and sat next to me. I started to sweat. I cried out. The light changed colour. It became yellow again, then a sort of diamond-blue. When I touched Dad the butterfly lifted from his head and disappeared through the ceiling. Dad opened his eyes, saw me, and gave out a strange cry. Then he looked around as if he didn’t know where he was.

‘You’re in Madame Koto’s bar,’ I said.

He stared at me, lit a match, and when he recognised me he blew it out. He drew me close to him. I could smell his frustrated energies, his mosquito-coil fragrances. He lit a cigarette and smoked quietly for a moment.

‘A man can wander the whole planet and not move an inch,’ he said. ‘My son, I dreamt that I had set out to discover a new continent.’

‘What is it called?’

‘TheContinent of theHangingMan.’

‘What happened?’

‘When I landed with my boat I saw mountains, rivers, a desert. I wrote my name on arock. I went into thecontinent. I was alone. A strangethinghappened.’