Ben Okri - The Famished Road

‘Why didn’tyouknock?’sheasked,hermouthdrippingwiththetobacco.

‘You were busy.’

‘Go to the bar.’

‘I’m hungry.’

‘How can you be hungry with that small stomach?’

Then she went back to her room. The bells started up. I went to the bar and the flies played around my nose. It got very humid and I couldn’t breathe and my hunger got unbearable.Iwent out ofthebarandwanderedalongthepaths.Itwasexcruciatingly hot. Trees shimmered in the sun. The shadows were dense. Insects sizzled among the bushes. A lizard half crossed my way and then it stopped, turned towards me, and nodded. A bell rang. Its jangling noise scared me and I jumped out of the path, into the bushes, and a huge man with a wide mouth rode past on a little bicycle. He gave an insane laugh as he shot past. I stayed in the bushes and only came running out when I felt my legs burning with stings. I had trodden on an army of ants. I got them off me and was about to return to the bar when I noticed that the poor lizard was dead in the middle of the path. The bicycle had ridden over it and it had died with its head caught in an exaggerated nod. The ants marched towards it and I picked up the lizard by the tail and took it with me towards the bar, intent on giving it a good burial.

Outsidethebartherewasamanstandingbarefootintheheat.Hehadononly apair of sad-looking underpants. His hair was rough and covered in a red liquid and bits of rubbish. He had a big sore on his back and a small one on his ear. Flies swarmed around him and he kept twitching. Every now and then he broke into a titter. I tried to goroundhimbuthekeptcuttingoffmy path.

‘Madame Koto!’ I called.

The man came towards me. He had one eye higher than the other. His mouth looked like a festering wound. He twitched, stamped, laughed, and suddenly ran into the bar. I went after him, carrying the dead lizard as if it were a protective fetish. I found him crouched behind the earthenware pot. He snarled at me.

‘Madame Koto!’ I called again.

The madman tittered, baring his red teeth, and then he rushed at me. I threw the dead lizard in his face. He laughed, screamed, and fell on the benches, tittering in demented delight. He got up, walked in every direction, oblivious of objects, knocking over the long wooden tables and the benches. He came after me. I ran in circles. He scuttled round the floor like a monstrous quickened crab. With the exhilarated animation of a child, he discovered the dead lizard and began playingwith it. He sat on an upturned table, his eyes making contradictory journeys round their sockets. Then he began to eat the lizard.

‘MADAME KOTO!’ I screamed, with the full volume of my horror.

She came rushing in, holding a new broom. She saw the confusion in her bar, saw the madman eating the lizard, twitching and tittering, and she pounced on him, hitting him with the head of the long broom, as if he were a cow or a goat. The madman didn’t move. He ate with a weird serenity. Madame Koto knocked the lizard from his hands. Then, tyingher wrapper tighter round her waist, shewent for his neck with her bighands.

He turned his head towards me, his eyes bulging. White foam frothed from the sides of his mouth. Then, with a sudden burst of energy, and a cry uttered at white heat, he tossed Madame Koto off him, stood up straight like an awakened beast, and charged at everything. Hefought and clawed theair, utteringhis weird cry.

Then he changed. He brought out his gigantic prick, and pissed in every direction. Madame Koto hit his prick with her broom. He pissed on her. She rushed out and came back with a burning firewood. She burned his feet and he did a galloping dance and jumped around and toreout of thebar and ran titteringtowards theforest.

Madame Koto looked around her wrecked bar. She looked at the burning firewood in her hand and then she stared at me.

‘What sort of child are you?’ she asked.

I began to pick up the benches.

‘Maybe you bring only bad luck,’ she said. ‘Since you have been coming my old customers have gone and there are no new ones.’

‘I’m hungry,’ I said.

‘Attract customers, draw them here, and then you will have food,’ she said, going to the backyard.

Later she took the benches and tables outside and scrubbed them with a special soap. She swept the bar and washed the place with a concentrated disinfectant. She brought the tables and benches back in when the sun had dried them and then went to have the bath she always had before the evening’s customers arrived.

Whenshefinishedbathingshecametothebarwithabowlofpeppersoup andyam. She slammed it down and said:

‘Since you’re so hungry you better finish it.’

I thanked her and she went back out. I washed a spoon and settled down to eat. The soup was very hot and I drank a lot of water. The yam was soft and sweet. There were pieces of meat and offal in the soup and I had almost eaten them all before I realised that one of the pieces was actually a chicken’s head. The pepper burned in my brain and I was convinced that the chicken’s head was eyeing me. Madame Koto came in carrying a fetish glistening with palm oil. She dragged a bench under the front door, climbed on it, and hung the fetish on a nail above the door. I noticed for the first time that she had a little beard.

‘I don’t like chicken’s head,’ I told her.

‘Eat it. It’s good for your brain. It makes you clever, and if you eat the eyes you will be able to see in the dark.’

I didn’t eat it. She came down, dragged the bench back to its position, and stood in front of me.

‘Eat it!’ she said.

‘I’m not hungry any more.’

Madame Koto regarded me. She had rubbed pungent oils on her skin. She looked radiant and powerful. The oils smelt badly and I think they were one of the reasons why the spirits were interested in her.

‘So you won’t eat it?’

I knew she would become angry and would never give me food in future if I didn’t eat it; so, reluctantly, and hating every moment of it, I did. I cracked the chicken’s head with my teeth. I broke its beak. I swallowed down its red comb. I scraped off the thin layer of flesh on its crown.

‘What about the eyes?’

I sucked out the eyes and chewed them and spat them out on the floor.

‘Pick them up!’

I picked up the eyes, cleared the table, and went to wash the plates. When I got back she had set down a glass of her best palm-wine for me. I sat in a corner, near the earthenware pot, and drank peacefully.

‘That’s how to be a man,’ she said.

Thepalm-winegottomefairly quickly andIdozedsittingupright.Iwokeup when some rowdy customers came in. They smelt of raw meat and animal blood.

‘Palm-wine!’ one of them shouted.

Flies congregated round the new customers. Madame Koto brought them a great gourd of wine. They drank the lot very quickly and the evening’s heat increased their smells. They got rowdier. They argued furiously amongst themselves about politics. Madame Koto tried to calm them down but they ignored her altogether. They argued with passionate ferocity in an incomprehensible language and the fiercer they got the more they stank. One of them whipped out a knife, The other two fell on him. In the confusion they scattered the table and benches, broke the gourd and glasses, and managed to disarm the man. When they had put the knife away one of them cried:

‘More palm-wine!’

Madame Koto went out and fetched her broom. They saw the violence on her face.

‘No more palm-wine!’ she said. ‘And pay for what you’ve broken.’ They paid without any complaints and went out arguingas vigorously as they had been doing.

I went back to my corner and finished my glass of palm-wine. Madame Koto poured me some more. The aroma of her rich-scented peppersoup floated in from the backyard. Theeveningworeon and customers drifted in. Odd customers. A man cameinwhowassolidly drunkalready.Hekeptcursingandswearing.