Ben Okri - The Famished Road

At the backyard Madame Koto was still on the stool, looking like a rhinoceros whose horn has been cut off. She held her head and uttered a low wailing sound. I went into the bar through the front door. The disguised spirits were now completely uproarious. They had overrun the place in an orgy of merriment, jumping up and down, dancing to non-existent melodies, fighting, singing unfamiliar songs in harsh languages. The man with the bulbous eye was playing with his other detachable one. A man who had removed his arm from its socket was hitting the toothless woman on the head with it. The spirits were drunk with their borrowed humanity and frolicked in their grotesque merriment.

I climbed on a bench and prodded the fetish with the stick. I had lifted it off the nail and wasbringingitdownwhenoneofthespiritssawmefromtheotherendofthebar and gave a piercing cry. I got down hastily. The fetish fell from the stick. There was a terrible silence in the bar. And then the disguised spirit who had shouted, pointed at me, and in a voice of command, cried:

‘SEIZE THAT BOY!’

I snatched thefetish fromthefloor,feelingitspotenciesburningintomy palm,and fought madly past the borrowed legs of the spirits, and gained the doorway. I stumbled and fell at the barfront. For a moment I couldn’t find the fetish. I searched around furiously while the commotion in the bar spilled outside. I eventually found the fetish under the bushes, where it seemed to have crawled, like a crab. I caught it just as Madame Koto responded to the clamour. She saw me and shouted:

‘Azaro, areyou mad?Bringthat thingback!’

In her heavy milk-contorted gait, she bounded after me. She wasn’t the only one. The spirits were after me as well, and one of them held his detached arm in the air like a misbegotten club. I fled down the paths. Their heavy footsteps sounded behind me and they shouted my name:

‘Azaro! Azaro!’

The whole area rang with my name. So fearfully did the spirits call it out that the lights changed and yellow clouds materialised beside me. It seemed I had entered another realm. Like animals who have discovered speech, they screamed my name, each in a different voice. I ran behind huts, hid behind sandheaps, but they were able to smell me out. The dogs barked my name, odd-looking goats blocked my path, and chickens flew out of the bushes in front of me. The trees rebounded the vowels of my name and I felt everything was in conspiracy with the spirits to betray my hiding-places. Nothing seemed safe for me; not the rutted foundations of houses, where I was set upon by strange insects, nor the circular well, in which I considered hiding, but from which my name echoed, nor the anthill, behind which red soldier ants deployed their malignant forces. So I made for the forest; I passed Madame Koto’s sacrifice to the road; the plate was intact, but the food and ritual objects had gone. I went and lay down behind the great fallen tree, where I had seen the two-legged dog. But I feared I might roll over into the pit and, unable to get out, become part of the new road. So I ran deeper into the forest.

The spirits were all over the place. They gave every tree a voice. I saw a rusted machete on the ground and picked it up. The man with the bloated eye pounced on me and I smashed his arm with the machete and he did not utter a sound, nor did he bleed. I dug the fetish into his bad eye and he let me go, blinded by Madame Koto’s powers. I ran on till I was lost. I was not sure any more why I was running. I stopped. I wandered amongst the silent, listening trees. I no longer heard the footsteps of the spirits. But from afar I could still hear them calling my name. Their voices were feeble on the wind.

It was rapidly getting dark. The wind blew hard through the trees. Trees groaned, branches cracked, and the wind among the leaves sounded like a distant waterfall. Pods exploded from on high and one of them fell on my head, like a mighty knock, and I dropped to the ground. In the silence and darkness that came over me I found myself riding the invisible horse of the night. I rode through the trees. All around me were silent figures in great masks. All around me were ancestral statues. Wherever I rode I saw immemorial monoliths with solemn faces and beaded lapis lazuli eyes. The monoliths were of gold, self-luminating in the darkness. One of the statues moved and turned into MadameKoto.Hergoldenwrapperflutteringabouther,sheclimbedonto a caparisoned horse of the night and commanded the other statues and monoliths to follow her. The figures in great masks moved. The statues moved. They climbed their horses, and rode after me.

I rode furiously and arrived at a place where all the winds of the world converged. The winds blew the army of statues one by one off their horses and they broke into golden fragments. Only Madame Koto, an implacable warrior, stayed on her horse and thudded after me. Just before she fell on me, it began to rain. The water, pouring down, gradually effaced her, beginning with her raised arm and her grim sword. Her arm dissolved into an indigo liquid and poured down her face; and her face dissolved slowly, as if the rain were an acid that ate away flesh and steel. Then her hair fell off and her head became reduced; and then her head rolled off into a ball of red waters and her shoulders melted and eventually her great massive bulk disappeared and all that remained were her two big fierce eyes which throbbed on the ground and stared at me. And then the horse neighed and lifted its front hooves in the air and turned and galloped away, burstingher two eyes with its hind feet. Then it too disappeared, amid infernal sounds, into the effulgent winds.

I found myself wandering under the downpour. The fetish was still in my hand. I wandered in the relentless rain, till I found the clearing. I was weary. The fetish seemed to have grown heavier and its leaden weight frightened me. I threw the fetish into the middle of the clearing, away from any trees. Then I decided to bury it, just in casethespiritsorMadameKotoaccidentally foundit.Idugaholewithastick.Water filled the hole. I didn’t mind. I stuck the fetish into the hole and covered it over with wet earth and then I stuck branches and sticks around the hole to remind me where I had buried the fetish. Then I made my way back to the edge of the forest and stayed under the eaves of a hut till the rain softened.

I was cold. My teeth rattled. The hand with which I had held the fetish was dyed indigo. The skin of the palm peeled away in wet flakes as though the fetish had eaten my flesh. The rain softened, drizzling, and I made my way home cautiously. Dogs howled in the dark. The wind blew strongly and lifted off the roof of a bungalow and knocked it over to the adjoining compound. The tenants wailed in the horrible voices of those who have been judged and damned, as if God had ripped off the cover of their lives and exposed them to a merciless infinity. They screamed in terrible desolation like Adam and Eve being sent out of the Garden of Eden for ever. It was a sad night, with the children crying and the rain pouringover their possessions. There was nothing I could do to help and I went on home, listening to thunder rumbling from its distant homestead, and lightning crackling its multiple candent fingers over the great trees.

Everything held menace for me. The barking of dogs was like the gnashing of vengeful spirits. Branches cracking sounded as if they were about to spring on me. And even theclothes and garments flappingonwashinglinesseemedsolikeMadame Koto, dissolved from the world of flesh, threatening to wreak eternal havoc on me for the loss of her fetish. I went a long and complicated route to avoid going past her barfront. And when I got home Dad was on his three-legged chair, smoking a cigarette; the mosquito coil was on the table; the broken window had been mended; and fresh sweet cooking warmed the room with its aroma. Mum came in with a tray of food and said: