Ben Okri - The Famished Road

The second creditor, covered in mud, came at Dad, swearing in three languages. Dad practised his right jabs on his nose till he began to bleed and then polished him off with a left hook. People had gathered. The second creditor was a motionless heap on the floor and the wives and relations of the fallen man crowded Dad. He kept hitting at the men, lashing out with both hands in wild swings, intent on entirely separating their heads from their bodies. The men were scared and in their fear they walked into Dad’s swinging punches. He knocked out three of them with his bad arm alone. The crowd was mesmerised by his prowess.

‘Boxer! Boxer!’ they chanted.

The wives of the creditors pounced on Dad and scratched his face and went for his crotch and I heard him cry out. He managed to push them away. Then he ran. The women and children pursued Dad, who fled both from their rage and from his own fear of hurting them. When they couldn’t catch Dad they turned their anger on me and I fled screaming to Madame Koto’s place and hid behind the earthenware pot. The women and relatives shouted outside. They were too afraid of Madame Koto’s reputation to come in and disrupt her establishment. She heard their noises from the backyard and I saw her securing her wrapper tightly round her waist, in complete readiness for battle, as she strode towards them, shouting:

‘Yes, what do you people want? WINE OR WAR?’

The pack of them scattered at Madame Koto’s terrifying advance. When they had retreated completely, I came out from behind the earthenware pot. Madame Koto smiled at me. Then she poured me a tumbler of palm-wine. I drank with the flies and, later, Dad, dodging among the shadows of the bushes, came and joined me on the bench.

We drank till it was evening. When I got to my third tumbler of wine I noticed that the wall-gecko was still staring at us. It had a red stripe on its head. It never nodded and its eyes were like tiny beads of sapphire. When anyone else looked at the wall-gecko, it ran on.

‘What areyou lookingat?’ Dad asked.

‘Nothing,’ I said.

When it got dark Dad sent me to the compound to see if Mum was still asleep. I was reluctant to go. He gave me a good piece of bushmeat and filled my little tumbler with wine and I drank it all down and he said:

‘Be the true son of your father.’

I smiled drunkenly and went out of the bar. The bushpaths were quiet. Then I heard a cock crowing and the lively insects and the night birds clearing their voices for their chorus of nightsongs. I swayed and the world turned and everything became silent again. I passed atreewith ablueclothdanglingfromabranchandIwasabouttotake the cloth when a dog barked at me. I wasn’t scared. I felt, for some reason, that I knew the dog from somewhere. When the dog saw that I wasn’t afraid it backed away and trotted off into the forest and I followed its stiffened tail. Then I remembered Mum and continued with my journey to the compound. It was a perfectly straightforward path from Madame Koto’s bar to our house but the dog had confused me and all the paths had fractured. I followed one path and it led me into the forest. I followed it back and I arrived at a place I had never seen in my life before. All the houses were gigantic, the trees were small, the sky low, the air golden.

I tried to get out of this place, but I didn’t know how. I took the path back to the forest but it led me deeper into that land. I stopped and it was quiet and I didn’t even hear the flies buzzing or the insects thrilling or birds twittering. The heat was different. Then I noticed that nothing in that strange place cast a shadow. The light of the red sun went right through everything. There was no wind. The air was still and cool. When I began walking again I didn’t hear my own footsteps. After a while I wasn’t afraid. In a way everything became familiar to me and I went on along the fractured paths. I walked for a long time. Then I saw a man coming towards me. He had white stripes on his face. His eyes were green. But when I looked at him properly something about him changed and I saw that his legs were unnaturally hairy and that his face was upside down on his neck. The features of his face were all scrambled up. His eyes were on his cheeks, his mouth was on his forehead, his chin was full of hair and his head was bald except for his beard, and I couldn’t make out his ears. I had to bend my head and twist my thinking to make sense of his features. I couldn’t understand how I had perceived him as normal the first time I saw him. He went past me without saying a word. The eyes at the back of his head watched me cautiously.

I took another path to avoid him, but further down I saw him approaching. I went on trying to get away from him. It seemed we were caught in an invisible labyrinth. Each time I encountered him he seemed more intent on me. When I came to a grove of blue trees, I hid behind one of them. Inside the tree I heard loud and passionate voices as if from an important meeting. I took a path and to my shock I saw myself approaching. I stopped and the other person who was me said:

‘What areyou doinghere?’

‘Me?’

‘Yes.’

‘What about you?’

‘What about me?’

‘Whatareyoudoinghere?’‘Why doyouask?’

‘Because I want to know.’ ‘I am on a message.’

‘What message?’

‘To you.’ ‘To me?’ ‘Yes.’‘What is the message?’‘I was sent to tellyou to go home.’ ‘That’s what I amtryingto do.’‘Are you sure?’‘Yes, of course. Anyway, who sent you?’‘Who do you think?’‘I don’t know.’ ‘Our king.’‘What king?’‘The great king.’ ‘Where is he?’‘What sort of question is that?’There was a pause. I looked hard at the riddle who stood before me. He stared hard at me too. ‘You look like me,’ I said. ‘It’s you who looks like me,’ he replied. Then as a suspicion of who he was began to dawn on me, he said: ‘Take that path there and you will be all right.’ I looked where he was pointing and I saw the dog I had followed earlier. When I looked back at the other person who was me, he had gone. I followed the dog. We went down the path for some time. There were blue strips of cloth on the trees. The path narrowed, becametiny,andIfeltIwaswalkingonawall.Ihadbeenkeepingmy eyes on the path, making sure I didn’t deviate from it, and I didn’t notice when we broke out of the forest. When I looked up I saw Madame Koto, resplendent in yellow, dressed as if for a party.

‘Where have you been?’‘I don’t know,’ I said.She shook her head in mild exasperation and carried on to her destination. When she left I couldn’t find thedoganywhere, and I went on home. It had grown very dark. I got to our compound, hurried to our room, and found no one in. Mum wasn’t on the bed. The room was neat. The corners smelt of disinfectant. I left the room and wandered down the passages. No one seemed to be around. Then in the last room I heard all the concentrated noises of the compound, crowded into a single place. Therewas alotofshouting.Dad’svoicekeptrisingabovethedin.When I looked into the room through a crack in the door, I saw the whole compound there, gathered in a boisterous meeting. There were no drinks on the table. On one side of the room there were the creditors and their relations. The two that Dad had beaten up were shouting at the back. One of them had a machete, the other a club. Between them and the centre table were the men and women of the compound. On the other side of the room were Mum and Dad and lots of children and the photographer, who was busy taking pictures. The landlord was the arbitrator. Every time the flash went the landlord stiffened into a pose. Dad was quiet and Mum looked well. One of the creditors said:

‘Ifyou’resostrongwhy notbecomeaboxer!’