Ben Okri - The Famished Road

‘He’s working for our food,’ she said.

It was night. Children played in the passage. Inside, we had no light because we couldn’t affordacandle.Mummovedaboutinthedarknessinuncomplainingsilence. She kicked something and cursed and sat down and I lit a match and saw blood pouring out of the big toe of her right foot.

‘The right foot is supposed to be lucky,’ she said.The blood dripped to the floor and I said:‘Shall I boil water?’She said nothing. The match burnt down to my fingers. Her blood became the colour of the darkness. I couldn’t hear her breath, couldn’t see her. And before I could light another match she got up and limped to the backyard. When she came back she had washed the cut and I asked her what she had put on it.

‘Poverty,’ she said.I lit another match and studied the toe.‘Don’t waste the matches,’ she said sharply.The cut still bled through the black stuff she had covered it with.‘Ash,’ she said.The light went out. We didn’t move. The rats began to chew and the cockchafers began to stir in the cupboard. ‘Time for you to sleep,’ she said. I didn’t move. I wanted to stay awake till Dad returned. It grew late and dark. After a while I heard Mum say: ‘I’m going to warm the food.’ Wehadn’t eatensincethemorning.Wehadbeengoingtosleeponemptystomachs for days. ‘I’mcomingwith you.’ ‘Go to sleep or a ghost will grab you.’ ‘Let it try.’ She moved in the dark and I heard her at the door. Light came in and Mum went out. I sat in the darkness, listening. I tried to get up but something held me down. I tried to move but the darkness had become a resistant force. I lowered myself to the floor and crawled around on my hands and knees. Something crawled up my arm. I made to get up, frightened, and hit my head against the sharp edge of the centre table and I stayed like that till the darkness stopped dancing. Then I searched for Dad’s chair and sat down. I could see the outline of things. I stayed there till Mum came back in.

‘You’re still up?’

‘Yes.’

‘Go to sleep.’

‘I’m hungry.’

She was silent. Then after a while she said:

‘Wait for your father. We will all share his food.’

I thanked her. She found me in the darkness and held my head to her and I heard hercryinggently andthenshesaid,inalightervoice:

‘Let me tell you the story about the stomach.’

‘Tell me a story,’ I said, expectantly.

She went back to the bed. I couldn’t see her. The rats ate and the cockchafers fretted. She began.

‘Powerful people eat very little,’ she said.

‘Why?’

‘Because they are powerful. There was once a great medicine man in my village who would fly to the moon at night and then would walk across the mighty ocean to visit spirits in the country of white people..

‘Why?’

‘Because he went to attend an important meetingconcerningthefutureof thewhole world. And to be able to attend the meeting he must do something great. So he flew to the moon and to many planets. After he had done that he went to the country of white people and before they allowed him in they asked him one question.’

‘What?’

‘They said: “Mr Medicine Man from the village of Otu, what did you eat before you went to the moon?”’

‘And what did he say?’

‘A cricket.’

‘Only a cricket?’

‘Yes, a small roasted cricket.’

Weweresilentforawhile.Iponderedthestory withmy feetnottouchingthefloor.

‘Is that the story of the stomach?’

‘No,’ Mum said in the darkness.

We were silent again. Then Mum began, saying:

‘Once upon a time..

I sat back in Dad’s chair and folded up my feet. there was a man without a stomach. Every year he used to worship at a great shrine. One day he met a stomach without a body. The stomach said: “I have been looking for you. What are you doing without me?” And then the stomach jumped on the man and became part of him. The man carried on with his journey to the shrine. But before he got there he became very hungry. The stomach said: “Feed me.” “I will not,” said the man. “When I didn’t have you I travelled far, was never hungry, was always happy and contented, and I was strong. You can either leave me now or be quiet.”..’

Somewhere around that point in the story I fell through the back of the chair and I flew on the back of a cricket and I was the man without a stomach, heading for a feast on the moon.

And then I found my eyes open and there was a candle lit on the table. Dad was standingaboveme, swaying. Helooked both crushed and stunned.

‘My brain has been pressed down, my son,’ he said.

I quickly got down from his chair. He paced up and down the room, holding his head. And then he sat down heavily and was still.

‘I found the candle at the market,’ he said, and fell asleep.

Mum laid out his food and woke him up. He blinked.

‘Ihavebeencarryingthemostterribleloadsinmy dreams,’hegroaned.

‘You should eat,’ Mum said.

We had gathered round the table. Dad didn’t move. His face was lit by the candle. All the tendons on his neck showed up thick and tense. His face glistened, and veins throbbed on his temples. He surprised us by suddenly speaking:

‘They have begun to spoil everything with politics,’ he said in a ghostly and exhausted voice. ‘Now they want to know who you will vote for before they let you carry their load.’

He paused. His eyes were bloodshot.

‘If you want to vote for the party that supports the poor, they give you the heaviest load. I am not much better than a donkey.’

‘Eat, you’re tired,’ Mum said.

Dad shut his eyes and began mumbling something which I took to be a prayer. He didn’t open his eyes for a long time. And it was only when he began to snore that we knew he had fallen asleep again. Mum didn’t want to disturb him a second time so we ate half the food and saved the rest for him to eat in the morning. We ate more quietly than the rats did.

Before I woke up in the morning Dad had gone and all I had of him were the smells of his boots, of mud, of cigarettes, the mosquito coil, and his sweat. The mood of the room was infected with his exhaustion.

Wehadcut downourfood.Thatmorningwehadpapandbread.Mumwentoffto the market, went hawking her boxes of matches, sweets, cigarettes and odds and ends down the roads on a quite empty stomach. She looked much leaner and her blouse hung from her and the straps fell over her shoulders as if she had shrunk in her clothes.

As I walked behind her to the junction where we parted I felt very unhappy about the thinness of her voice amongst the noises of the ghetto. As she went off on her arduous journeys she seemed so frail that the slightest wind threatened to blow her away into the molten sky. Before she went she gave me a piece of bread, and told me to behave myself at school. I followed her a short way. She was barefoot. It pained me to see her stumble on the rubbish and stones of the paths. It seemed very harsh not to be able to go hawking with her, not to be able to protect her feet, and help her sell off all her provisions. I followed her and then she turned, saw me, and waved me on to school. I slowed down, turned back, and watched her disappear into the expanding ghetto.

WHEN I WENT TO Madame Koto’s bar after school, the place was empty. I was hungry. Sittingneartheearthenwarepot,IkepttellingmyselfthatIdidn’thave a stomach. I slept and woke up. Flies had come into the bar. I went to Madame Koto’s room to ask for food and was about to knock when I heard her chanting. I heard the ringing of a bell. I was about to go back to the bar when two women of the compound saw me and said:

‘What are you doing?’

I said nothing. They held me and I shouted. Madame Koto came out. She had antimony on one side of her face, kaoline on the other, and her mouth was full of the juice of ground tobacco. The women looked at her, then at one another, and hurried on.