Ben Okri - The Famished Road

Mum cleared the plates. I cleared the table and spread out my mat. Dad lit another cigarette and a mosquito coil and sat still. He went on smoking and it was only when I was falling asleep that I noticed one of the chair’s feet was broken. Dad slept on the three-legged chair and I watched his jaw lower and his face relax. He was awoken by his sudden fall. I showed no sign of having noticed. He got up, grumbling. He blew out the candle and climbed into bed beside Mum.

The next morning no one spoke to us in the compound. Dad went off to work early and suffered nothing of the whisperings that followed us everywhere or the silence that greeted us when we went to the backyard. Mum bore it all very well. She said her greetings to people when she passed them and her face remained impassive when they didn’t reply. She bore it all as if she were used to that treatment all her life. It was harder on me though. The children stared at me with sour faces and made it clear they didn’t want my company. The compound people became united in their dislike of us.

Wewereeatingsomepap andbreadintheroomwhenMumsaid:

‘From today I will start at the market. One woman allowed me to rent her stall. I will not go hawking very much any more.’

I was pleased at the news. Mum fondled my hair.

‘Now, go to school and afterwards stay at Madame Koto’s place till I come for you, eh?’

‘Yes, Mother.’

‘I will be locking the door and taking the key so that no one will be able to do anythingstrangeto us when weareaway.’

I nodded. But as we prepared to leave the room there was a knock on our door. Mumopened it and found thelandlord standingoutside.

‘Tell your husband’, he said, without the slightest formality, ‘that if he repeats what he did last night I will throw him out. I don’t care if he is called Black Cricket. I myself am a lion. If necessary I will send my boys to beat him up. If he gives me any more trouble, if he borrows money from anybody in this compound again, if he threatens to burn down my house, he better go and find himself another landlord, you hear?’

Mum didn’t say anything. Her face was stony. The landlord went down the passage and we saw him go into the room of the second creditor. He emerged shortly afterwards with two of the creditors. The landlord, surrounded by the women and children of the compound, relieved himself of a lengthy speech about the difficulty of building houses, about tenants more terrible than Dad that he had destroyed, and about how powerful he was.

‘If anybody gives me any trouble,’ he said, waving a fetish around, ‘I will show them that trouble is my secret name. Tyger or no Tyger, this is my compound. I did not steal the money to build it!’

And then he bustled out of the compound, with the women and children trailing behind him.

Mum waited in the room for some time before she hurried out, with her tray of provisions on her head. I went out with her. She locked the door and without waiting to escort me to the junction, she shot off in the opposite direction to the one the landlord had taken. She did not call out her wares and I watched her as she disappeared from view.

Without any pocket money, or any slice of bread, I lingered. I did not feel like going to school. I was late already and knew I would be publicly punished, whipped in front of everyone, and made to kneel out in the sun. I went to the housefront instead. The compound women came out with chairs and plaited their hair and gossiped. It was from them that I first heard the rumours about Madame Koto. The women talked quite crisply aboutourassociationwithher.They talkedandkepteyeingmemaliciously. They said of Madame Koto that she had buried three husbands and seven children and that she was a witch who ate her babies when they were still in her womb. They said she was the real reason why the children in the area didn’t grow, why they were always ill, why the men never got promotions, and why the women in the area suffered miscarriages. They said she was a bewitcher of husbands and a seducer of youngboysandapoisonerofchildren.They saidshehadacharmedbeardandthat she plucked one hair out every day and dropped it into the palm-wine she sold and into the peppersoup she made so that the men would spend all their money in her bar and not care about their starving families. They said she made men go insane at night and that she belonged to a secret society that flies about in the air when the moon is out. I got tired of hearingwhat they had to say and I decided that beingpunished at school was infinitely better.

WHENIGOTtoMadameKoto’sbarearly thateveningtheplacewasshut. Iknockedbut nooneopened.Iwaitedforawhile.Amanwithonelegandapairof crutches made from flowering branches came up to me.

‘Is it shut? Has she closed down?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Shame,’ he replied.

He had sand on his hair. His face was twisted as though he had witnessed great evil. The stump of his amputated leg was covered with a filthy cloth. He looked up at the signboard, spat, and hobbled away. I went to the backyard. There was a fire blazing. Madame Koto’s cauldron of peppersoup bubbled away. Its steam looked like tormented genies. Further on, hidden by the bushes, was Madame Koto’s massive form.At first Ithought shewasdoingsomethingquiteprivate,soIlookedaway.But when I looked again she had straightened and was inspecting the white beads which she dug into the ground at night and unearthed in the day. She emerged from the bushes with a cutlass in one hand, the white beads in the other.

‘What areyou staringat?’ sheasked gruffly, hidingthebeads.

‘Nothing.’

She hurried away to her room.

When I saw her next she was wearing the white beads round her neck. She came to the fire and threw some ingredients into the cauldron. The soup made a curious hiss, almost of protestation. It bubbled turbulently within the cauldron. Then it foamed and spilledover,nearly puttingoutthefire.MadameKotosaidtothesoup:

‘Be quiet!’

The fire blazed. And to my astonishment the soup became calm, as if it had never been boiling.

‘The bar is shut,’ I said. ‘Yes.’

‘What happened?’

She didn’t say anything. The soup was turbulent again. It swelled into green foam, its bubbles a little monstrous and glutinous, and when they burst a powerful fragrance came over the air.

‘What did you put in the soup?’

‘Demons,’ she said, glancing at me.

‘To attract customers?’

She glanced at me again, her eyes bright with curiosity.

‘What gave you that idea?’

‘No one.’

‘So why did you ask?’‘I just asked.’‘Don’t ask too many questions, you hear?’ I nodded.‘Are you hungry?’ I was, but I said:‘No.’She smiled in a manner that didn’t make her less fearsome and said:‘Look after the soup. I’m coming.’But she went. She shuffled towards her room and as soon as she had gone the cauldron hissed and the soup overflowed. ‘Be quiet,’ I said. The soup gathered into a tremendous wave of foam and rushed over the sides.

BeforeIcoulddoanythingitcompletely putoutthefire,pouredoverthewood,and became little green rivulets on the sand. ‘Madame Koto! The fire has gone out!’ I called. Shecameover,lookedatthefire,sawthesoup streakingthesandlikebatikdyeing, and said: ‘What did you do to it?’ ‘Nothing.’ She bent over and got the fire going again, blowing at the embers. I stared at the soft folds of flesh on her neck. She stood up. ‘Don’t touch it,’ she said, and was about to return to her room when we heard commotion from the barfront. Two men, one fat, with a bandaged neck, the other stout, leaning on a blue walking stick, were banging away at the bar door. ‘Madame, aren’t you open? We want some palm-wine and your famous peppersoup.’ ‘Not yet open,’ she said. ‘Come back later.’ They looked disappointed and they grumbled about how some people were not serious about business. But they left. ‘Troublemakers,’ she said, and went off to have her usual bath before the evening customers began to arrive.