Ben Okri - The Famished Road

The mutant customers made the bar feel entirely different. They conferred on everything a dull yellow light. The bar itself gave the impression that it had been transported from its familiar environs of our area to somewhere under the road, under the sea, to a dimly remembered and unwanted landscape. Their laughter made the lights lurid. Their merged voices made me twitch. And the toothless woman, breaking suddenly intoahigh-pitchedsquealofpleasure,unleashedonmeasurprisingrushof fear. I managed to make my way to my position near the earthenware pot. All the seats were taken, and two midgets shared a stool, drinking serenely. I did not recognise either of them, but they both smiled at me. The toothless woman turned towards me, staring hard, and then, very slowly, pulled out something from beneath the table. I watched, fascinated by her magician’s gesture. When she had pulled it out completely, I saw that it was a sack. I screamed and tried to get out of the door, but every availablespacewaspacked.Thecrowdjostledme,blockingmyway,asthough they were deliberately trying to prevent my escape, while not seeming to do so. I shouted and a deep-throated laughter drowned my voice. I pushed and the harder I tried the more completely I was surrounded.

Then I realised that more people were pouring in from the doorway, materialising, it seemed, from the night air. The clientele kept multiplying, filling out the spaces. They stood over me, giant figures with hair that fell off in clumps on my face. Their multiplication frightened me. The woman with no teeth became two. The midgets became four. The two men with dark glasses and white hair became three. The man with a bulbous eye acquired a double, and the double had a bulbous eye on the other side of his face. I calmed down. I had no weapon against their multiplication. The noise lowered. Everything quivered. I moved slowly, as if under water, towards the edge of a bench. I sat down. The people who surrounded me kept glancing in my direction every now and again, as if discreetly trying to make sure I was still in the bar. I became aware of being watched by everyone, even when they were not looking at me. I became convinced that they all had hidden and invisible eyes at the sides and the backs of their heads. And it was only when I looked up at one of the men who was so tall his head seemed to almost touch the cobweb-infested rafters that I knew the purity of fear.

The man had a wide mouth, prominent nostrils that flared unnaturally when he breathed, and two big disproportionate ears. And to my horror he had no eyes. I screamed very loud and I kicked the man’s shin and he leant over to me and opened his mouth wide as if he were going to swallow me. Then he stayed like that, in apparent contemplation. I found myself staring into the horror of his mouth. It was very dark and ugly and at the back of his mouth there was a single luminous disc, like a flattened moonstone, and I was horrified to see the disc blinking. Then I realised I was staring at an eye. I drew back in my shock and the eye elongated towards me and then moved around like a bright marble stuck in his throat. I spat at the eye and struggled away from him, kicking and raving. The man made a cawing sound and leant over again, his mouth open, and he looked for me, but I had made it across the room.

I felt a moment’s relief; but when I saw the people surrounding me I struggled to escape again. Some of them were tall eyeless women. And next to me sat the three men in dark glasses. All three of them turned their heads in my direction. One of them took off his glasses and instead of the blank white eyes I had expected he had normal ones.

‘What’s wrongwith you?’ heasked.

‘Nothing.’

‘Why did you spit into that man’s mouth?’

‘The boy is insane,’ said another of the three.

‘Unbalanced,’ said the first.

‘Drunk,’ said the second.

‘Hold him!’ said the third.

‘Yes, grab him before he spits at us.’

I edged away, keeping an eye on them. As I watched them, they began to transform, breaking out of their moulds. Their shoulders seemed momentarily hunchbacked. Their eyes blazed through their glasses and their teeth resembled fangs. I edged away, slowly, and found another corner, and stared intently at everyone. The clientele kept changing, becoming something other. What they were underneath kept emerging under the fleeting transparency of their skins. After a while I thought my eyes wereplayingelaboratetricks onme,orthatmy feverwasinvadingmeinstrange ways, and I shut my eyes. When I opened them the tall women with no eyes had disappeared.Iranoutofthebarandtookthelongway roundtothebackyard.

Madame Koto was sitting on a stool, holding her head. Occasionally she made a vomiting sound, and groaned. She didn’t have her white beads. She looked like a compressed rhinoceros on the stool. I touched her and she started.

‘Oh, it’s you!’ she said.

Her face was sunken. She looked quite ill.

‘What happened to you?’

Shegavemeasour look, madeadesperatevomitingmotion,heldherstomach,and said:

‘It was the milk.’

‘You drank it?’

‘Of course,’ she barked.

‘We didn’t.’

She said nothing. She fell into another futile spasm of vomiting. She looked dreadful.

‘What about the people in the bar?’

‘What about them?’

‘They were the ones who carried me away.’

‘When?’

‘The last time I was here.’

‘Nonsense!’

‘True!’

‘Where did they carry you to?’

‘To the river.’

‘Which river?’

‘I don’t know. But they are witches and wizards.’

‘How do you know? Are you one yourself?’

‘Look at them.’

‘They arejusttroublemakers.They havefinishedallmy pepper-soup.AndIamnot well enough to deal with them.’

‘What shall I do?’

‘I don’t know. Do what you like, but leave me alone, or I will vomit on you.’ She sounded so malicious in her bad temper that I believed she would do it. I went back to the bar and stayed at the door. I listened to the loud sinuous voices, I watched them as they laughed and banged the tables, and then I made an instant discovery. I realised for the first time that many of the customers were not human beings. Their deformations were too staggering and they seemed unaffected by their blindness and their eyelessness, their hunched backs and toothless mouths. Their expressions and movements were at odds with their bodies. They seemed a confused assortment of different human parts. It occurred to me that they were spirits who had borrowed bits of human beings to partake of human reality. They say spirits do that sometimes. They do it because they get tired of being just spirits. They want to taste human things, pain, drunkenness, laughter, and sex. Sometimes they do it to spread mischief and sometimes to seduce grown-ups or abduct children into their realm. The moment I saw them as spirits, drinking palm-wine without getting drunk, confused about the natural configuration of the human body, everything made sense. And then I became certain that Madame Koto’s fetish had somehow been attracting them. I was confirmed in this notion by the fact that they seemed to cluster most thickly beneath the fetish. I knew what I had to do. I went outside and said to Madame Koto:

‘Your bar is full of spirits.’

‘LEAVE ME ALONE!’ she shouted.

I left her alone and went round to the front and searched for a branch that was forked at the end. I went down the widening paths and found sticks, but they were either not long enough or strong enough. I got to the edge of the forest and heard trees groaning as they crashed down on their neighbours. I listened to trees being felled deep in the forest and heard the steady rhythms of axes on hard, living wood. The silence magnified the rhythms. I found a branch which seemed perfect. I broke off the long wood of the forked ends, lacerated myself on the splinters and bled. I took the stick back with me to the bar.