Ben Okri - The Famished Road

‘Master boxer!’

‘Destroy the Tyger!’

‘Eat up his fame!’

The music started again from the loudspeaker. The blind old man squeezed additional discord from his accordion. I found a hardened lump of eba on the floor and threw it and this time I didn’t miss. I caught him flush on the mouth. He looked blindly around.Hestoppedplayinghisinstrument.ThenIheardhimsay:

‘Takemeaway fromhere.Thespiritshavestartedattackingmeinbroaddaylight.’

The woman who had brought him wheeled him off. When he had gone the mood of the fight swung into a new hemisphere. The Green Leopard lunged in, wading, arms swinging in a curious half-hearted attack on Dad. He was half-hearted, it seemed, because Dad looked finished anyway, he looked wobbly on his feet, a defeated man whom a few ordinary punches would destroy. And that’s why we were all so surprised. Suddenly, from seeming so weak, Dad became rock-like, and charged. He let out a manic scream. Energy, concentrated, glowed from him in an instant. His fists, released from their immobility, shot out in a series of fast, short punches, raining down from a hundred different angles. The punches were blistering, mud from Dad’s fists flew everywhere, and the entire action lasted a short time but the speed of the attack seemed to elongate the moment. It was mesmerising. Dad didn’t rush into an attack. He didn’t move forward. He punched from the spot where he stood, as if he were in an invisible, invulnerable circle of power. A short burst of this close-range fighting ended with an upper cut that travelled from Dad’s solidly planted feet and all the mud of his rage. It connected with Green Leopard’s jaw, drawing a great sigh from the crowd. The day darkened. A cloud passed over the face of the sun. Birds wheeled overhead. The music from the loudspeaker was full of victory and celebration. Green Leopard stood, arms out, as if he had gone deaf, or as if he had been shot from behind. His eyes were blank, his mouth open. A cloud of dust flew up as the great boxer collapsed slowly to the floor. It was like a dream. Dad was on one knee, within his invisible circle. The crowd was silent, stunned by its unbelief.

I let out a cry of joy. Green Leopard’s followers rushed to pick up their man. But he was out cold and didn’t so much as twitch. His mouth flopped open and his body was limp as if he had totally given up on reality. The crowd, profoundly disappointed, spat abuses at Green Leopard and his followers. They showered curses on his reputation. They damned his fame and booed his reputation and they began to leave in utter disgust at the money they had lost betting on a man who was much weaker than his legend had suggested. Green Leopard’s followers lifted up the prostrate form of their chief protector, master boxer, terroriser of ghettos, the orchestrator of their myths of invincibility. They looked overcome with shame. The music died Out and a funereal silence reigned. They carried the horizontal form of their legend, they lifted him high as if he were dead, as if he were a corpse, and they took him to the van. Hurriedly, they bundled him in. Hurriedly, they drove away. Green Leopard did not honour his bet. They left with their philosophy in disgrace. The pamphlets they had distributed, which were scattered about the street, flew all about as the van sped off over them.

No one rushed to congratulate Dad except me and Ade. The crowd were curiously unforgiving of his surprising victory. We jumped around Dad and he lifted us up and carried us in the air and our thin voices rang out his name and sang out his achievement so that the earth and the wind and the sky would bear witness to it even when thespectators didn’t. Thecrowdscatteredinshameathavingbackedthewrong man, in shame for having judged things by appearances, and in bad temper because they didn’t know how to achieve the swift turnaround in appreciation. We were not bothered. Dad’s victory was all the world we needed. And beaten, mashed up, his face broken, he carried us, cheering, towards the room. Then Ade remembered our bets.

‘Sami has run away with our money!’ I cried.

Dad immediately put us down and stormed to the betting-shop. We strode, proudly, behind him.

When we arrived, Sami was counting the money he had collected in his bucket. His hefty brothers sat around him in the shop, their faces glowing with money and the light from the kerosine lamp. Sami sat on a stool, his face covered with sweat, his eyes glittering. When he looked up and saw us his face darkened. Then he broke into a smile.

‘Black Tyger,’ he said, ‘you surprised everybody. Sit down. Have a drink. We were just counting the money. Then we were coming to give you your share. So, what will you drink? This fight of yours has made me more money in one day than I have made in months.’

‘So I see,’ Dad said, refusing to sit.

Westood on either sideof him, his minutebodyguards. Therewas alongsilence.

‘Are you going to give me my money or not?’ Dad asked finally. ‘Or do I have to fight everybody here as well?’

Sami smiled. There was silence. The flame crackled. Then Sami got up, went to the back room, and eventually came back with a thick bundle of notes. He gave them to Dad, who gave them to me. I counted the money. Dad nodded his satisfaction. As we turned to leave, Sami said:

‘Send one of your boys the next time you are fighting.’

‘Why?’

‘We could make more money together.’

Dad said nothing. We left. On the way Ade said he had to go home. Dad gave him a pound noteand Adewent on home, dancingdown thestreet, singingof our triumph.

It was only when we got home that a monstrous exhaustion seized hold of Dad. As weopened thedoor Mumwassittingonastool,withacandleonthetableinfrontof her. She was in an attitude of prayer. She looked up, saw Dad, and rose. Her mouth opened wide when she saw the devastation of Dad’s features. She rushed to Dad and embraced him. She began weeping. Then Dad collapsed on her. It took us an hour to carry him to the bed. He did not stir.

DAD SLEPT, WITHOUT waking, for two days. He was like a giant on the bed. It was a shock to see his bruised feet, the cuts on his soles, corns on his toes. His swollen face grew bigger as he slept. His mouth puffed out, red and frightening. His forehead became almost twice its normal size and the cut on his nose widened. While Dad slept, his face swelling, his eyeballs expanding, blood occasionally spurtingfrom his numerous wounds and lacerations, Mum applied warm compresses to his bruises and treated him with herbal fluids. Mum nursed him, washed him, combed his hair, as if she were nursing a corpse she didn’t want to bury. On the second day we worried about him and tried to wake him up. He turned in our direction, opened his swollen eyes, and threw a feeble punch, clobbering Mum. She went around that day with a swollen jaw and had to hide her face with a headtie. We gave up on waking him and took to watching over him, as if to ascertain that he was still alive. We would sit in the room in the evenings, three candles on the table, our faces long with anxiety. His sleeping form spread a ghostly silence in the room and made the shadows ominous. Occasionally, Dad would mutter something. We would wait and listen. But he would be gone again.

On the third day, in the evening, when the wind started to rattle our rooftops, Dad began to howl in his sleep. Then he kicked and struggled on the bed, and fell down. He jumped up, his eyes big and mad, ran around the room, kicking things over, sowing havoc with his gigantic shadow, wounding himself on sharp objects, and then hecollapsed atthedoorwhilehewastryingtogetout.Ittookusanotherhourtodrag him back to the bed. Mum lit three sticks of incense and stuck them in strategic corners of the room, to ward off evil spirits. Then that evening, as I sat in the room alone, watching Dad heave on the bed as if breath were deserting him for ever, Mum brought three women into the house. One of them was Madame Koto. They were all dressed in black. One of them, I learned later, was a powerful herbalist who had once been a witch and who had confessed in public, and who was stoned. She reappeared a year after her confession, transformed into astrongherbalistwhohadpromisedtodo some good to the community. Everyone feared her and few trusted her.