Ben Okri - The Famished Road

‘Serve him!’

Madame Koto went out and fetched a great broom and she chased the chicken round the bar, lashing its head. Dad laughed. The chicken laughed. Madame Koto tripped, fell, and got up. She whacked the chicken on the head, and missed. The chicken ran out of the bar, destroying the door frame, and laughed deep into the forest. I looked round and saw Dad asleep on the chair, his head bent forward, snoring. I woke him up and he leapt with a start and fell off the chair. When he got up he said a leopard with glass teeth had been pursuing him in his dreams. He lay down beside me on the mat. With his smell in my nostrils, he made me worried and unhappy. Hewas restless besidemeandhisboneskeptcreaking.Hekeptsighingand muttering words to his ancestors and I found myself again in Madame Koto’s bar deep in the forest. Dad wasn’t there. The customers this time were all invisible and I saw the air drinking palm-wine. Madame Koto sat on a chair made of chicken feathers. Dad began to snore. He snored so hard that the long wooden broom in the corner began to sweep the bar, spreading white dust everywhere. Madame Koto commanded the broom to he still but Dad went on snoring and the broom took on a will of its own and attacked the cobwebs and swept the tables and when it attempted to sweep Madame Koto out of her own establishment she lost her temper. Then I saw her fighting with the long broom. The broom hit her on the head. I laughed. Dad stopped snoring. She grabbed the broom, threw it over her shoulder, and smashed it on the floor, breaking its neck. The handle of the broom began to bleed. With blood on her face, MadameKoto turned to me, who was dreamingher, and said:

‘You laughed at me? You’re next!’

She started towards me with a demonic expression, and I cried out. Dad put his arm round me and said:

‘Gotosleep,my son.Nothingwillharmyou.’

After a long silence, as if answering an important question which the night and his parents and his hopes had put to him, he said:

‘Ihavebeencarryingtheworldonmy headtoday.’

Soon afterwards he fell asleep. He slept like a giant.

DAD WAS PRAYING over Mum’s body. There was a herbalist in the room. He looked very fierce and wise and stank of old leaves. He chewed on a root and his teeth were brown. He sprinkled the room with liquid from a half -calabash. There were candles on both sides of Mum’s body. She lay on the mat, breathing gently. Her eyelids shone with antimony. The corpse of a bat lay by her face. Razor incisions had been made on her shoulders and I watched the blood turn black as the herbalist smeared the cut with ash. The herbalist made her sit up and drink from a bowl of bitter liquid. Mum contorted her face. The herbalist began whipping the air, driving out unwanted spirits with his charmed flywhisk. The air crackled with their cries. When he had sealed our spaces with gnomic spells, he made Mum sit up again. Underourintensegaze,hebit Mum’sshoulderandpulledoutalongneedleandthree cowries from her flesh. He went outside and buried them in the earth.

When he had finished with his treatment Mum fell asleep, looking more peaceful than before. The herbalist and Dad haggled about money. Dad’s voice was strained andhekept pleadingforthechargestobealittlelower.Theherbalistwouldn’tbudge. Dad said it was all he had. The herbalist wouldn’t relent. Dad sighed, paid, and they sat talking. I hated the herbalist for taking so much money off Dad, and I cursed him. They talkedasiftheywerefriendsandIhatedhimevenmoreforpretendingtobeour friend. When he got up to leave he seemed to notice me for the first time. He stared hard at me and gave me a pound, which I gave to Dad. I took back my curse, and he left.IsatonDad’slegsandwewatchedMumsleepingsoundly onthebed.

Late in the afternoon Dad said he was thirsty. We went to the bar. Madame Koto’s establishmentwasempty exceptfortheflies.Iheardhersinginginthebackyard.Dad called her but she didn’t hear. We both called her, banging on the table, and still she couldn’t hear us. We were banging away at the table, calling her name, when the front door swungopen and ablack wind camein and circled us and disappeared into an earthenware pot of water.

‘Did you see that, Dad?’ I asked.‘What?’‘The black wind.’‘No.’Madame Koto came in, her hair a mess, her hands covered in animal gore.‘So it’s you two. I’m coming.’She went back out and minutes later was back, her hands clean, her hair in place.‘What do you want to drink?’Dad ordered the usual palm-wine and bushmeat peppersoup. When the wine was served the flies thickened around us. A wall-gecko watched us as we drank. ‘Look at that wall-gecko, Dad.’ ‘Don’t mind it,’ he said without looking. ‘It’s our friend, watching over us.’ Thepeppersoup washotterthanusualandIkeptblowingtocoolitsfire.

‘Drink some water,’ Madame Koto said.‘No, I don’t want water.’ ‘Why not?’‘The black wind went into it.’ ‘What wind?’‘Don’t mind him,’ Dad said. She eyed me suspiciously.‘You have a strange son,’ she said, and sat across from us at the table.‘And a good wife,’ Dad added. ‘I heard what you did. Thank you.’ She ignored

Dad’s gratitude. With her bigeyes fixed on me, shesaid: ‘Aboutthismoney you’reowingme… ‘Me?’ I said. ‘Not you. Your father.’ ‘Yes?’ ‘I’m not like the other people.’ ‘What other people?’ ‘The people you owe and who..” Shestopped, looked axDad, and then at me. ‘I will forget the money if you let your son come and sit in my bar now and again.’ Dad looked at me. ‘Why?’ he asked. ‘Because he has good luck.’ ‘What good luck? He has given us nothing but trouble.’ ‘That’s because he is your son.’ ‘I can’t agree. He is going to school.’ ‘I don’t want to go to school,’ I said. ‘Shut up.’ Madame Koto stared at Dad, her eyes brighter. ‘I will pay for him to go to school.’ ‘I can pay for my own son,’ Dad replied proudly. ‘All right. I will forget the money. Just let him come and sit here for ten minutes every three days or so. That’s all.’

‘Do you want to turn him into a drunkard?’‘His father is not a drunkard.’Dad looked at me. He looked at me with new eyes. The wall-gecko hadn’t moved.

It watched us the whole time.

‘I will discuss it with his mother.’

‘Good.’

‘But these people I owe money, what about them?’

‘What about them?’

‘You were going to tell me something.’

‘Didn’t your son tell you?’

‘What?’

‘That they threw stones at your wife?’

‘Who? Who threw stones?’

Madame Koto got up and fetched some more palm-wine.

‘I can’t tell you.’

Dad turned to me, and he looked so fierce that before he asked me anythingI told him who the people were and what had happened. He downed half a glass of palm-wine in one gulp, rubbed the spillings all over his sweating face, and stormed out of the bar without paying.

By the time we got to our compound Dad had managed to whip himself up into a fantastic rage. We ran into one of the creditors who was just coming out of the toilet. Dad went straight up to him and without saying a single word he feinted with a right jab at the fellow’s face and punched him in the stomach. The creditor bent over, grunting, and Dad, grabbed him round the waist and threw him, back first, on the ground. When Dad straightened, dusting his hands, he saw another creditor, whose son had stoned Mum on the head. The second creditor had witnessed the efficiency of Dad’s fury and had started to run. Dad chased after him, caught him, tripped him, helped him up, lifted the poor fellow on his shoulders, showed him to the sky, and tossed him on to a patch of mud.

The first creditor, who had quickly recovered from his fall, came running towards us swinging high a burning firewood. Dad was delighted. He ducked the arc of the firewood, smashed the fellow in the stomach again and confused him with repeated left jabs to his face. Then with a cry that amazed everyone he floored the creditor with a right cross.