Ben Okri - The Famished Road

‘Look at that toad,’ he said about me. ‘Look at that fat woman with a beard,’ he said about Madame Koto.

Then he rushed outside, came back, and asked for a gourd of palm-wine. When he wasservedhedrankquietly,occasionally perkingup toabuseeverything.Heabused the lizards, flies, the bench, and the ceiling. Then he fell quiet again and drank peacefully.

Another customer came in who was so totally cross-eyed that I began to feel cross-eyed myself fromstaringat him.

‘What areyou lookingat?’ hedemanded angrily.

‘Your eyes,’ I said.

‘Why? Haven’t you got eyes of your own?’

‘Yes, but I can’t see them.’

He came over and knocked me on the head. I kicked him on the shin-bone. He knocked me again, harder, and I rushed out and grabbed Madame Koto’s broom and came back in and hit him on the head with it. He cried out. He backed off. I hit him again. The drunken man began to curse. He abused cross-eyed people, abused brooms, swore at children, and became quiet. Madame Koto came in and seized the broom from me. I sat down.

‘Serve me palm-wine,’ the cross-eyed man said. ‘And warn that boy of yours. He has been insultingmy eyes.’

‘What’swrongwithyoureyes?’MadameKotoasked,staringintensely athim.

He didn’t reply and he sat down into a moody silence. After he had been served, he drank a great quantity in one go, looked at me, found me staring at him, and then he turned away, tryingto hidehis eyes fromme.

‘Serve me peppersoup!’ he shouted.

Madame Koto served him and he devoured the meat and drank the soup very fast.

‘Tell that boy not to stare at me,’ he said.

‘Why?’

He drank some more palm-wine and peered over his shoulder at me. His eyes interested me. Oneof themwas green. Lookingat thegreen eyehad astrangeeffect on me.

‘I will give you money if you look somewhere else,’ he said.

‘How much?’

Trying to hide his face, he came over and emptied all his spare change on the table. I pocketed it and watched him go back to his seat. He kept checking up on me. I had taken my eyes off him but it was hard to look anywhere else after the experience of seeing him. His eyes, in their strangeness, were magnetic. I kept my eyes off him and looked around the bar and noticed green patches on the floor. I couldn’t understand where they came from. I drank some more palm-wine. The alarming realisation that thegreen patches werethestains of themadman’spisswasbeginningtodawnonme when the lights changed in the bar and the drunken man cursed and from the floor there rose a host of green spirits. They rose up and they grew till their heads touched the ceiling and then they shrank till they were no taller than the average chicken. They were all cross-eyed. They milled around the areas of the madman’s piss and they stamped and made swarming noises. Everywhere I looked I saw cross-eyed spirits. I cried out and the drunken man abused the moon and Madame Koto came and took me outside and gave me some water and alligator pepper to chew on.

‘You should go home now,’ she said.

I was silent.

‘Have some fresh air. Then go.’

I stayed outside a while. The moon was out in the sky. It was big, clear, and white. It was white, then it became silver, and I saw things moving on its face and I couldn’t stop staring because it was so beautiful and so low in the dark blue sky. I watched it for a long time and sweet voices stirred in my ears and Madame Koto came out and said:

‘What are you doing?’

She looked up, saw the moon, and said:

‘Why areyoulookingatthemoon?Haven’tyouseenamoonbefore?’

‘Not like this one.’

‘Comein, takeyour things, and go home. It’s gettinglate.’

I pulled myself away from the moon and went back into the bar with her. The bar was full of the oddest people. There was a man in the corner who said loudly that he had just come back from Hitler’s war. No one believed him.

‘Hitler died years ago,’ someone said.

‘I killed him,’ said the loud man.

‘How?’

‘I used a special juju. I blew pepper into his eyes and his moustache stood up and I killed him with this knife.’

He whisked out a knife, brandished it, and no one seemed concerned. In another corner a man kept tossing his head. Another man snorted. There was a younger man next to the drunk. He had a bright scar down his face. The drunk cursed and stopped and cursed again. The green cross-eyed spirits mingled with the clientele and one of the spirits climbed the wall like a new kind of lizard and studied Madame Koto’s fetish.

It was a very odd night. The bar saw its most unusual congregation of the weird, the drunk, the mad, the wounded, and the wonderful. Madame Koto weaved her way through them all with the greatest serenity. She seemed fully protected and entirely fearless. I think she made a lot of money that night because as I was leaving she did something rare. She smiled at me. She was happy and graceful amidst all the bustle. She gave me a piece of uncooked yam and I took the expanding paths back home to Mum.

OUR ROOM WAS crowded. Mum was back early. She looked sun-eaten and tired. Sitting disdainfully on Dad’s chair, with his feet on the table, was the landlord. Sitting on the bed, standing round the room, were the creditors and their relations. They looked angry and helpless. Everyone was silent when I came in. I went over to Mum. She put her arms round me and said:

‘You all have to be patient.’

‘How can we be patient?’ said one of the creditors. The others nodded vigorously.

‘Patience will kill us. We have to eat and trade.’

‘True.’‘But we have paid most of the money,’ Mum said. ‘But not all.’‘And not in one week,’ added the landlord.‘Patience doesn’t kill.’‘Nonsense,’ said a creditor. ‘Patience is killing my son. You think I will pay the native doctor patience?’

The landlord laughed and brought out a kola-nut from his voluminous robe. He ate it alone. I watched his lips turn reddish. Mum was silent and as the landlord munched away on his kola-nut the rats started chewing.

I looked round at the creditors as if their presence had robbed me of food. I said nothing.

‘Look at his big stomach,’ the landlord said of me, chuckling.

‘Leave my son alone.’

‘Allwewant is our money,’ oneof thecreditors said, staringat me.

‘I don’t have your money,’ I said. ‘This boy is worse than his father.’ Mum stood up suddenly.

‘If you have come to insult us leave our room,’ she said. She shut the door and the window. It became dark in the room and Mum refused to light the candle. Every now and again the landlord lit a match and looked at everyone. The rats atelouder and Mumlaunched into asongof lamentation. Thecreditors didn’t move. The landlord went on chewing.

When Mum stopped singing the silence became deeper. We remained in the silence and the gloom till there was a knock on the door.

“Who is it?’

‘The photographer.’

‘What do you want?’

‘The photographs are ready.’

‘So what?’

‘Don’t you want to see them?’

Thelandlordgot up andopenedthedoor.Hestayedinthedoorway,lookingatthe pictures with the help of the photographer’s torch. Then he came into the room. The photographer trailed behind him, a camera on his shoulder.

‘They aregood,’thelandlordsaid,passingthetorchandthepicturesround.

The creditors became animated and talked about images of the celebration, how so-and-so looked drunk, how that person’s eyes were shut like a rogue’s. Then the landlord said, as the photographs came back to him:

‘Why is Madame Koto’s face like that?’

Madame Koto’s face was smudged. She looked like a washed-out monster, a cross between a misbegotten animal and a wood carving.