Ben Okri - The Famished Road

The roads seemed to me then to have a cruel and infinite imagination. All the roads multiplied, reproducing themselves, subdividing themselves, turning in on themselves, like snakes, tails in their mouths, twistingthemselves into labyrinths. The road was the worst hallucination of them all, leading towards home and then away from it, without end, with too many signs, and no directions. The road became my torment, my aimless pilgrimage, and I found myself merely walking to discover where all the roads lead to, where they end.

And then I came to a place where I thought the roads terminated. An iroko tree had been felled across it. The tree was mighty, its trunk gnarled and rough like the faces of ancient warriors. It looked like a great soul dead at the road’s end. Beyond, the road sheeredintoadeep pit.Across,ontheotherside,weresand-carryinglorries.Strange sounds lisped in the tree trunk, voices echoed in its hollows. I sat on a branch of the tree to ease my feet. And then, while the road-spirits raged in me, I saw a two-legged dog emerge fromtheforest. It stopped and regarded me, whimperingfrequently. I was so amazed to see the dog standing on only two legs that I forgot my hunger and pain. It had a left forefoot and a right hindfoot and it stood, wobbling, as though on invisible crutches. The dog stared at me. And with a heavy, inconsolable sadness it turned and limped away. In my astonishment at seeing it walk I followed it as it limped on curiously.

The two-legged dog led me through the forest. It was a lean dog, with intense eyes and a sensitive tail and flea-ridden ears. I wanted to get rid of the fleas but I restrained myself and followed it at a distance, till I came to a clearing. I recognised the clearing at once. The dog limped on deeper into the forest. I watched it go and it stopped only once to look at me. I waved, but the dog did not understand my gesture. It went on limping,asolitary andheroicdog,survivingwithonly twolegsandasadface.

I carried on home. At the edge of the forest I saw Madame Koto with a plate of chicken and yam in her hands. The white beads weren’t round her neck. She stopped at the roadside, looked in all directions to make sure no one was about, and proceeded with her passionate supplications. I watched her secret fervour. When she had finished with her praying and chanting, she lit a candle and put it on the plate. She placed a finger of kaoline and some cowries beside the candle. Then she straightened, undid her kerchief, looked in all directions, and hurried away. I passed her road offering. I scurried past her barfront. I ran home.

DAD WAS SITTING on his three-legged chair, smoking a cigarette. There were plates of uneaten food on the table. Mum was in the bed. The window was open and the light that came in increased the unhappiness in the room. Mum rushed at me and threw her arms round me, as if to protect me from punishment. She made me sit on the bed and began weeping. Dad didn’t move.

‘Where have you been?’ he asked, in a dangerous voice.

It was clear that neither of them had slept that night. There were circles of sleeplessness round Dad’s eyes. Mum looked as though she had lost weight overnight.

‘Where have you been?’ ‘I was lost.’

‘How did you get lost?’

‘I played and got lost.’ ‘How?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘What about Madame Koto?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Shecamelookingfor you last night.’ I said nothing.

‘You didn’t tell her where you were going.’

‘I can’t remember.’

‘Have you eaten?’ Mum asked.

‘Don’t ask him such questions,’ Dad said, loudly. ‘First he must tell me where he has been.’

‘Let him sleep.’

‘That’s how you women spoil your children.’

‘Let him rest, then he will talk.’

‘If he doesn’t talk he won’t rest. He has prevented my going to work. I want to know what he has been doing.’

‘Azaro, tell your father where you’ve been.’

‘I got lost.’

‘Where?’ Dad’s voice rose.

He sat up straight. His chair wobbled.

‘I don’t know.’

‘You are a wicked child,’ he said, reaching for the cane he had beside him, which I hadn’t noticed.

He came at me; Mum stood between us; Dad shoved her away and grabbed my neck with his powerful hand and bent me over and flogged me. I didn’t cry out. He whipped me and I kicked him and escaped from his grip and he followed me and whipped my legs and my back and my neck. I ran round the room, knocking things over in my flight, and Dad went on caning me. Mum tried to hold him, to restrain his fury, but Dad went on whipping me and he flogged her too and Mum screamed. I hadn’t uttered a sound and Dad was so enraged that he went on thrashing me harder and harder till I ran out of the room, into the compound. He bounded after me but I fled out to the housefront and up the street and I stopped only when I was a good distanceaway.Dadgaveup chasingme,but hestoodthreateningmewiththecane.I stayed where I was. He called me. I didn’t move.

‘Come here now, you vicious child!’

I still didn’t move. Dad got very angry because he couldn’t get his big hands on me.

‘Come here now, or you won’t eat!’

I didn’t care about food or sleep or anything. He suddenly made a sprint for me and I ran towards Madame Koto’s place and he caught me just before I got there. He grabbed me by the back of my shorts and lifted me up and whipped me and dragged me home. He was so frightening in his fury that I screamed as if he were a spirit that was abducting me to some unknown destination. When he dragged me into the room he tossed me on the bed and thrashed me till sweat poured down his chest. When he was satisfied that he had whipped the wanderlust out of me he threw down the pulped cane and went to have a bath.

I came out all over in heavy welts. I groaned on the bed, swearing a terrible spirit-child’s vengeance. Mum sat beside me. When Dad returned from the bathroom he was still angry.

‘You are a problem to me,’ he said. ‘A problem child. When I think of all the things I could have done – if it wasn’t for you.’

He started towards me again, but Mum interposed firmly and said:

‘Haven’t you flogged him enough?’

‘No. I want to thrash him so thoroughly that next time he will think of us before he gets lost again.’

‘He’s had enough. His feet are bleeding.’

‘So what? If I were a severe father I would put pepper on his wounds to teach him an everlasting lesson.’

Dad sounded more furious than ever; but Mum stood firm, determined that no more beating should be visited on me. Grumbling, complaining about his lot, about how I held him back, how much of a better child he had been to his parents, Dad put on his drab khaki work-clothes. Mum tried to get me to eat. I didn’t want to eat while Dad wasaround.Ihadbeencryinginasteady monotone.

‘If you don’t shut up now,’ he thundered, reaching for a boot, ‘I will thrash you with this!’

‘Yes, and kill him,’ Mum said.

I went on with my steady monotonous weeping. Further punishment couldn’t make me feel worse than I already did. He dressed in a bad temper. When he was finished he picked up the cane and came over to me and said:

‘If you move from this room today or tomorrow you might as well stay lost, because when I finish with you..

He deliberately didn’t complete his sentence, for greater effect. Then he brought the cane down lightly on my head, and stormed out of the room. I was relieved to see him go.

Mum was silent. She waited a while before she said:

‘Do you see the trouble you’ve caused, eh?’

Ithought shewasgoingtoberatemeaswell.Ibracedmyselfforheronslaught.But she got up and went out and I fell asleep. She woke me up. She had brought in a basin of warm herbal water. She made me soak my feet. Then with a candle-heated needle she expertly plucked out the roadworms that had eaten into the soles of my feet. But before that she made them wriggle with hot palm-oil. Then she disinfected my cuts. She pressed herbal juices on my welts. With strips of cloth she tore from one of her wrappers, she bandaged mashed leaves against the soles of my feet. The leaves stung me for a long time. She went and got rid of the needle and the water in the basin. I climbed into bed. She made me get out again to eat. I ate ravenously and she watched me with tears gathering in her eyes. When I had eaten I climbed back into bed. She gathered her provisions and as my eyes shut, she said: