Ben Okri - The Famished Road

At intervals I passed people who were sitting behind trees. When I looked back they were no longer there. Nude women appeared and vanished before my gaze. The smell of earth, leaves, sun, and the merest hint of dried excrement overpowered my senses. I wandered deeper into the world of trees, amongst the solitude of acacias and needlepines, andsawpeopleclearingthebushes,uprootingtreestumps,rakinggreatclusters of climbers and dried mistletoes into heaps. I saw old bicycles restingon trees. I saw men and women burning the bushes, the clusters of climbers and vines, and there must havebeenecstaticherbsamongstwhatwasbeingburntforthesmokeyieldedup voluminous aromas of sage and rosemary, dried leaves and densities of green and yellow fumes and all manner of secret potencies and powerful crackling smells into the air.

And the smoke and the smells were dense everywhere and it was impossible not to breathe them in and the mysteries of burning plants in the deep forest charged my head and I went around stumbling into trees, tripping over roots, walking up against the ochre palaces that were anthills, or wandering round in circles, or watching bicycles riding around among the trees without riders, or noticing women pedalling the air without anything beneath them. Anthills which I had passed followed me. I became certain that the whole forest was moving.

The trees were running away from human habitation. My eyes became charged too and I saw people with serene bronze masks emerging from trees. I saw a bird with a man’s hairy legs flying clumsily over the branches of the rain-tree. An antelope with the face of a chaste woman stopped and stared at me and when I moved it disappeared among the luxuriant bushes. An old man emerged from the anthill that had been following me. He had a white beard and green bejewelled eyes and a face that was both a hundred years old and childlike. His hands were up in the air, his neck slightly bent, as if he were carrying the heaviest riddle in the world. He seemed to follow me wherever I went. He had a staff which was the flowering branch of an orange tree and he hobbled slowly and came after me with inscrutable persistence. When I became aware of how intent he was I ran, but no matter how fast I fled he remained the same distance from me. I became confused and afraid. I tripped over a skull and hurt my ankle and couldn’t move. I waited. I heard no footsteps, but the old man kept on at me, neither catching up with me, nor retreating. He remained at the same distance, bearing the great weight of an invisible enigma on his head.

The forest was full of mirages from which I could not escape. I dragged myself along on the ground. The man kept on coming. I grew so scared that after a while I turned and dragged myself towards the old man to find out what he wanted. I became frustrated at the slowness of my pace. When I got to the skull, I picked it up, and threw it at him. He vanished and a wind blew hard through the trees and the voluminous air was full of leaves whirling and fruits and seeds failing. I dragged myself on till I came to a palm tree. There was a tapper’s gourd at its root and I was thirsty and drank of the new wine. It added to my intoxication. A black wind circled my head. A strange sound came from the centre of the tapper’s gourd. Trying to escape it, I hobbled towards the houses on the rim of the forest. But they too were a mirage.

Then I came to a place in the trees where it was raining. I couldn’t understand it. There was sun and wind everywhere else, but at this spot it rained and water ran down the leaves of the cicadas and banana plants. I was afraid of the rain. Beyond the curious downpour I could see a man, lights flashing at his feet, in front of a well near the houses. It was the old man. He seemed to be staring at me. For the first time I noticed that he had hooves for feet. Golden hooves. I turned in the opposite direction and hobbled away painfully. Then I got tired and didn’t care what happened to me any more.

I rested against a tree and shut my eyes. After a while I heard a low continuous song. I opened my eyes and saw a tortoise moving past me. I watched it for a long time and it moved so slowly that I fell asleep. When I woke up I felt better, but my feet still hurt. I pushed on and found myself at the same place where the bushes were being burnt, where the potent fumes made the forest itself fall into dreaming. There was no one around. In the bright white smoke I saw spirits turninginto air, spirits of plants and herbs and things I didn’t yet know about; I saw their brightness of blues and yellows, shapes of sad faces, legs brilliant with oil becoming soot, golden eyes melting into vibrant space. I did not linger; I went on and when I recognised the place ahead, dimly at first, something fell on me and the black wind descended on my soul. It was the sunbirds that awakened me.

What had fallen on me? I looked around. Beams of sunlight converged on my face. There were branches and leaves and burst fruits on the floor. Strange stones warmed my soles. Not far from me, like a skull sliced in half and blacked with tar, was a mask that looked frightening from the side, but which was contorted in an ecstatic laughter at the front. It had eyes both daunting and mischievous. Its mouth was big. Its nose was small and delicate. It was the face of one of those paradoxical spirits that move amongst men and trees, carved by an artist who has the gift to see such things and the wisdom to survive them. When I picked up the mask a white bird flew out of the bushes, startlingmewiththewildclappingofitswingsanditspiercingcry.Idropped the mask. Then I picked it up and wore it over my face and looked out from its eyes and something blurred the sun and the forest became as night.

When I looked out through the mask I saw a different world. There were beings everywhere in the darkness and the spirits were each of them a sun. They radiated a brilliant copper illumination hard to the eyes. I saw a tiger with silver wings and the teeth of a bull. I saw dogs with tails of snakes and bronze paws. I saw cats with the legs of women, midgets with bright red bumps on their heads. The trees were houses. There was music everywhere, and dancing and celebration rose from the earth. And then birds with bright yellow and blue feathers, eyes that were like diamonds, and withugly scavengingfaces,flewat meandkeptpeckingatthemask.Itookitoffand the world turned and the trees seemed to be falling on me and it took a while before things came back to normal. I held on to the mask and went on hobbling, looking for a way out of the forest.

And as I went I saw the golden hooves of the old man again. I hid behind a tree. The weight he was carrying seemed to be getting unbearably heavier. He stopped as he walked, but he showed no pain. If he saw me, he pretended he hadn’t. When he went past I wore the mask and looked at him. He was completely invisible. He was not there.Icouldnotseehimatallthroughtheeyesofthemask.But,sittingintheair above his invisible space, floating on the wind, serene in the midst of a great emerald light covering that other world, was a beautiful young boy whose slender body somehow suggested the passionate weight of a lion. The boy stared at me with simple eyes that conferred on me an unspoken benediction. I took off the mask and saw the old man re-entering the anthill. I put it on again and was amazed to see not an anthill but a grand palace with beryl colonnades and jade green verandahs, parapets of gold, mistletoe clinging to the fierce yellow walls, with sculptures in dazzling marble all around. Into this palace of turquoise mirrors the boy-king of purest innocence disappeared, with a smile like that of a god. And then darkness fell over everything again.

The wind sounded strange. My wonder turned to bewilderment. When I took off the mask the darkness was the same. Patches of light came over the wind. I had begun to lose my sense of reality, confused by the mask. I sped on, my feet in agony. I went on for a long time, turning round and round, my sense of direction askew. After a while, when some light filtered through the leaves, when confusion was really beginning to twist my brain, I suddenly broke out into the clearing. It was the clearing where I used to play and where I had buried Madame Koto’s fetish. The curious thing was that there was something different about the clearing. It was both exactly as I remembered it and different. For some reason the place felt shaded even when there were no trees around. I stared about the clearing, trying to isolate what was different about it. I couldn’t. So I wore the mask and looked and saw that what was a clearing was in fact a village of spirits. In the middle of the village was a great iroko tree, golden and brown, with phosphorescent leaves and moon-white birds in the branches, twittering out the sweetest essences of music. There were rose-bushes in the radiant square. I saw skyscrapers and flying machines and fountains, ruins covered in snails and flowering climbers, grave-stelae, orchards, and the monument of a black sphinxat the gate of the village. Luminous pilgrims, celebrants in yellow cassocks, made processions in honour of the mysteries of strange gods. I took off the mask, my head turning, the world spinning, my eyes flaming. I sat down on the ground and rested.