Ben Okri - The Famished Road

People came to believe that Madame Koto had exceeded herself in witchcraft. People glared at her hatefully when she went past. They said she wore the hair of animals and human beings on her head. The rumours got so wild that it was hinted that her cult made sacrifices of human beings and that she ate children. They said she had been drinking human blood to lengthen her life and that she was more than a hundred years old. They said the teeth in her mouth were not hers, that her eyes belonged to a jackal, and that her foot was getting rotten because it belonged to someone who was trying to dance in their grave. She became, in the collective eyes of the people, a fabulous and monstrous creation. It did not matter that some people insisted that it was her political enemies who put out all these stories. The stories distorted our perception of her reality for ever. Slowly, they took her life over, made themselves real, and made her opaque in our eyes.

In spite of what people said, however, she prospered, while the rest of us suffered. She opened another bar in another section of the city. She divided her time between both. She opened a mighty stall in the big market where she sold garri, lace materials, and jewellery. She had many servants. Conflicting stories, however, did reach us about her wealth. Some said she wasn’t very rich, that she had too many people to support. Others maintained that she had so much money she could feed the entire ghetto for five years. I heard that she spent endless days counting her profits, that when she went to the bank she needed an armed truck. Then we began to hear of how mean she was, that one of her servants needed money for treating a liver condition and she wouldn’t give him so much as a farthing. On the other hand, we heard that she had given a lot of money to a woman she didn’t even know, whose child would have died from food poisoning if it hadn’t been for Madame Koto’s timely intervention. It began to seem as if there were many Madame Kotos in existence.

Andthenoneday asIwasplayingwithAdewesawseveralpeoplegatheredoutside her barfront. They all stood in the mud. They all wore white smocks and had ostentatious Bibles. Their leader had the biggest Bible of them all. It looked like an instrument of vengeance. He had wild hair and the rough, scraggy beard of a self-anointed prophet. He was barefoot. If it hadn’t been for the authority with which he held the wooden crozier, he could well have been mistaken for a complete madman. A large cross dangled from his neck. The whole group of them, whipped up to paroxysms of denunciation by their leader, constituted the representatives of one of the most influential new churches springing up in the city. The group consisted of prophets of varying ranks and they danced with righteous fervour and prayed with fearful certainty in front of the bar. They evoked visions of fire and brimstone, sulphurandtorment anddamnations.Theyprayedasiftheywerepurgingthelandof a monstrous and incarnate evil. They sprinkled holy water over the ground and threw holy grainsofsandtowardsthebar.Theystayedforalongtime,singingwithbrioand might,inlusty voices,inperfect rousingharmony,chantingandstampinginthemud. Their presence stopped people going to the bar. The women in the bar would occasionally peep out between curtain strips and the leader of the group, the chief prophet, foaming at the mouth, would point a crooked finger at the women and the singing would reach new proportions of intensity. They carried on till nightfall and completely succeeded in imprisoning Madame Koto and her women within the bar, souringtheir business for theday.

The following evening they returned, bringing a larger congregation. We saw them chanting and beating their church drums along the street. It seemed they had an entire orchestra with them. Brass sections pierced the air with their clash and roll, the trumpets blasted thewind,andthedeep voicesoftheprophetsleadingtheway tothe battle against evil woke the street from its mid-season slumber. As the procession approached Madame Koto’s bar the world joined them. They became a great flood of human beings, a surging mass of spectators, like an army of divine vengeance. They sang different songs all at once. They arrived at Madame Koto’s bar and found it shuttered. They sang, played their music, chanted, and stomped. They bellowed and belted out their holy tunes till they were hoarse. Those who had expected something to happen were disappointed. The only thing that happened was that the frustration made factions of the crowd begin to quarrel. Fighting broke out between musical sections, between prophets of differing denominations, between contending visionaries. The head priest was leading a song of exorcism, his staff and Bible high in the air, when the fighting encircled him. He found himself torn between quelling his unruly flock and launching his bitter attack against the scourge of Madame Koto’s electricity. He managed to deliver, in the midst of all the chaos, a tremendous philippic on the apocalypse of science. The shouting grew wilder amongst his congregation. A man was hurled to the mud. Another man was being strangled with thefolds of his smock. Soon everyoneseemed to befightingeveryoneelse.

‘The DEVIL has come into our midst!’ the head priest cried.

No one listened.

‘Let us stand as one to drive out this ABOMINATION!’

No one heard.

‘THEY WILL START WITH ELECTRICITY AND THEN THEY WILL BURN UP THE EARTH!’ he thundered.

No one cared. And then the most extraordinary thing happened. The sky was rent asunder. The air lit up as if an unbearably radiant being was going to descend from the heavens. The light in the sky, flickering brightly, stayed for a long moment. Everyone fell silent and froze in the presence of the unknown annunciation. A terrible enchantment hung over us like a single flashing sword. The wind flowed in silence.

‘GOD HAS ANSWERED OUR CRY!’ said the head priest.

The sky darkened and lowered. The air became full of presence. The wind was still. I smelt, in that moment, all the known and unknown herbal essences of the forest. The world swam in aromas.

‘HALLELU… HALLELUYA!’ cried the head priest.

His congregation picked up the cry, lifted it up to the heavens, and fell silent, waiting.

Then in thedeepestreachesofthesky somethingcracked.Itbrokeloosealtogether. Then it rolled down the unnumbered vaults of the heavens, gathering momentum and great wondrous volumes of sound as it neared us. Then it exploded over our heads and before we could recover from the incredible drama of the universe the sky opened and yielded a river of rain upon us.

The congregation scattered everywhere. The commotion was farcical and wild. People screamed, children howled, mothers yelled. Only the head priest stood firm. Soon the entire crowd, the valiant brass sections and the rousing wind ensemble, fled their many ways, lashed by the torrential rain. I watched them fleeing as if from a burning house. The head priest called to them, denounced them, urged them to have courage and to be steadfast in crisis. He waved his staff and Bible in the air, and thunder cracked above him. But he did not move. He did not give ground. He went on praying with great fervour. He cursed the abomination that was Madame Koto and referred to her as the GREAT WHORE OF THE APOCALYPSE, and he danced and sang alone, while the rain mercilessly drenched him.

He soon became a ridiculous sight. He resembled a monstrous drenched chicken. He shivered as he prayed. His smock clungobscenely to his buttocks. As his passion waned, gradually extinguished by the indifferent rain, he trembled more. Everyone watched him from the cover of rooftops and eaves. Trapped in his solitary defiance, his Bible dripping a second flood, his beard a sad sunken ship upon the waters, his voice disappearing in the din of cosmic events, he had no choice but to continue with his absurd posture. He chanted, shaking at the knees. And as he chanted, railing against prostitutes, science, theories of evolution, the enshrinement of reason against God, and evil women of Babylon, a procession of cars drove down the street. They parked around him. The car doors opened. Men and women in fine attire spilled out. They all had umbrellas. Madame Koto was among them. She wore a massive and dazzling black silk dress, with white shoes and a white scarf, her arms and neck glittering with jewellery. The splendid guests passed the head priest and if they heard his ravings they betrayed no signs of it. The bar door was opened, and they all went in. Only Madame Koto came back to give the head priest her umbrella. Shamelessly, hetook it. Shelimpedbacktoherbar,walkingstickinonehand,whiletheheadpriest resumed his imprecations and denunciations of her. It was at this point that people began to jeer him. When theeveningfell,andthedarknessspread,theheadpriestwas a wreck of a soaked man. Under the cover of darkness, shivering, his voice hoarse, he left Madame Koto’s barfront and made his miserable way down the street. Much later we learned that he had led his congregation against Madame Koto mainly at the instigation of the party supported by the poor. There was also talk of possible charitable contributions to church funds. We were disappointed by their methods.