Ben Okri - The Famished Road

When the three women came into our room I knew something very serious was happening. I stayed silently in a corner, hidden by clothes. They didn’t seem to mind my presence. I stayed silently in the corner and watched them calling Dad’s spirit back from the Land of the Fighting Ghosts. All through the night they called Dad’s public and secret names in the strangest voices. All through the night they performed their numinous rituals, singing the saddest songs, weaving threnodies from his names, chanting incantations that altered the spaces in the room, that increased the sepia-tinted shadows, that made the cobwebs writhe and flow as if they had become black ancient liquids. The forms of night-birds took shape amongst us, fluttering swiftly over the candle-light; the room filled up with nameless presences, passingthrough the air of burning sacrificial herbs. The black sea-waves lashed on the dark shores of the ceiling as the women conjured a hundred forms to fight the things that prevented them reaching Dad’s spirit in the remotest regions of the human hinterland. The herbalist who had been a witch sweated and performed, conjured and contorted, she changed her guises under the cover of shadows, she fought heroic battles with the spirits we couldn’t see, and she fought them with her frail form, her face crushed and wrinkled like the skin of the aged tortoise which she put on the bed to help her travel faster through those realms where speed is an eternal paradox. Over the door she hung the dried heads of an antelope and a tiger, the skull of a boar and the bristling paws of a lion long dead in its prime. She sacrificed two white cocks. Their blood, mixed with strong smelling potions, was smeared on our walls. The feathers of a parrot and an eagle were burned on our floor and nearly burned down the house. The herbalist made razor incisions on Dad’s shoulders and pressed ground herbs into the bleeding cuts. Dad didn’t move. I watched his blood trickle down his shoulder, black with the herbs. Then deep in the night the women began to dance round the bed, shrieking. A crowd gathered outside our room. Dad began to stir. The wind seemed intent on blowing our houses away. The door was thrown open, all the candles were extinguished, and in the darkness I saw the huge white form of a swollen spirit suspended in the room. I screamed and the form weaved in the air and came falling down at great speed. It fell down on Dad. When the door was shut, and the candles lit, Dad jerked up suddenly, gasping for breath, heaving, his eyes wide as if he had woken from a dream of terrors. The women rushed to him and Dad, not knowing who they were, or whether he had indeed woken up, pushed them aside, sent the herbalist collapsing on the bed, and shoved Madame Koto, who came crashing down on me. Like someone trying to escapefromanightmarehefledout oftheroomandwasseentearingdowntheroad towards the forest.

The three women, Mum, and me, went after him. It was fearfully dark. The three women, faces veiled with shadows, kept changing shapes in the darkness. Madame Koto seemed to have recovered the full use of her bandaged foot. The third woman had a presence so featureless that no one noticed her even when she ran. She was like the air or like a shadow or a reflection. Her presence was important in ways I couldn’t fathom.Thesmallest ofthemwastheherbalistandassheranIkeptnoticingthather hands flapped in her black smock. It came as a surprise, a shock from which I didn’t recover for a long time, to see her lift up into the dark air, as if the wind were her ally. Then the darkness increased round her, became concentrated, like a black smock of cloud, and when the cloud cleared I saw only two women in black running, Mum besidethem.Theherbalist haddisappeared.ThenIheardtheclappingofgreatwings in the air above me and I saw a great eagle, black, with red eyes, take off towards the forest, into the night of mysteries. When we got deep into the forest we found Dad asleep, his back restingon thetrunk ofabaobabtree,withtheherbaliststandingover his haunted form.

‘We must take him back now. Before the spirits of the forest start to smell him,’ she said.

We were worried about how we were going to carry Dad back. But the third woman, who seemed to have no features, and who never spoke, took his arm and pulled him up. To our amazement Dad stood up like a child, his eyes open and vacant. Mum held his other arm; they both supported him. And like a man who is neither asleep nor awake, neither dead nor alive, we led him down the forest paths. When we got home the crowd had gone. We lay Dad on the bed. He refused to sleep. He kept jerkingup, saying:

‘If I sleep I won’t wake.’

The herbalist gave him something to drink. It seemed a very bitter drug and Dad’s eyes widened as he swallowed the herbal draught. Then he got up and sat on his three-legged chair. With his eyes bulging, his mouth big, slurring his words, Dad began to speak. The three women in black sat on the floor. Mum sat on the bed. I sat in a corner and could see Dad’s face, gaunt in the candle-light, his eyes like those of a man who has stared into the deepest pits of existence. At first it was difficult to hear what he was saying, but we got used to it.

‘I have been having the most terrible experiences,’ said Dad, staring straight ahead, as if heweretalkingto someoneintheroomthatwecouldn’tsee.‘Iwassleepingand then I wasn’t sleepingany more. Suddenly I found myself fightingseven spirits. They saidthey hadbeensentby GreenLeopard’smother.Andthey wantedtokillmeinmy sleep so that I wouldn’t wake up. I fought them for a long time. All the time you thought I was sleeping I was battling with them. They fought me viciously and kept trying to come out of my dreams to fight my wife. Eventually I defeated them. Then I tried to rest. And then a seven-headed spirit..

‘No!’ cried the third woman.

‘Yes,’ said Dad. ‘A seven-headed spirit armed with seven golden swords came to me and said because I killed his comrades he wants my son’s life in return.’

Thewomen screamed. Mumrushed over and held me, smotheringme.

‘I said NO!’

The women wailed in low monotone. Mum held me tighter. I feared she might break my neck without knowing it.

‘Then the seven-headed spirit attacked me. I fought him for nine nights. I only managed to cut off one of his heads. The spirit was much too powerful for me and there was nothing I could do but run. I ran into the forest. The spirit caught me and tiedmeup withsilverropesandbegantodragmetotheLandoftheFightingGhosts. They are ghosts who spend all their time fighting. The spirit dragged me and I never stoppedresisting,buttheonly thingthatsavedmewas…’

Dadpaused. Thewomen madesad noises, heads craned forward.

‘…was my own father, Priest of the Shrine of Roads. He said the spirit couldn’t pass any road that he has blocked. The spirit fought him. They battled it out for a long time. I didn’t know my father was so powerful. He cut off two of the heads of the spirit. They both became tired. They agreed to make a truce. My father said if the spirit let me go, he would take my place. I didn’t understand what he meant.’

Mum began to wail.

‘Shut up, woman!’ Dad said.

Mum fell silent. I heard her swallow down her tears.

‘And then both of them vanished. I freed myself from the ropes. All of my energy had drained from me. An eagle perched on my head and then it turned into a woman. And then four women, three of them dressed in black, just like you,’ Dad said, pointingat thethreewomen, ‘cameand led mefromtheforest. And then I wokeup.’

We all stared at him in silence.

‘Pour me something strong to drink!’ he demanded.

Mum poured him some ogogoro. Dad finished it in a gulp. The herbalist made Dad drink some more of her herbal draught. Then she got him to bathe in specially treated water. When Dad got back she had prepared another potion for him. He drank it in one and surprised us all by the tenderness of his ravings. He sat on his chair and began to talk about how sweet the black rocks of the moon tasted, and how he drank of the golden elixir of the sun, and of the innumerable geniuses of the future that black peoplewould produce, and of how hesaw Mumdancingnaked in theforest, her hair suspended by the brilliant cobwebs that the gods had spun, and how he saw me walkingbackwards into ayellow river, and of abeautifulyoungwoman hesaw who called him deep into the place where dead bodies grew red flowers from their mouths. And then just as suddenly as he began, he fell silent. His mouth stayed open. His eyes were shut.