The Famished Road Read online

  When I woke up I found myself in a coffin. My parents had given me up for dead. They had commenced the burial proceedings when they heard my fierce weeping. Because of my miraculous recovery they named me a second time and threw a party which they couldn’t afford. They named me Lazaro. But as I became the subject of much jest, and as many were uneasy with the connection between Lazaro and Lazarus, Mum shortened my name to Azaro.

  I learnt afterwards that I had lingered between not dying and not living for two weeks. I learnt that I exhausted the energy and finances of my parents. I also learnt that a herbalist had been summoned. He confessed to not being able to do anything about my condition, but after casting his cowries, and deciphering their signs, he said:

  ‘This is a child who didn’t want to be born, but who will fight with death.’

  He added that, if I recovered, my parents should immediately perform a ceremony that would sever my connections with the spirit world. He was the first to call me by that name which spreads horror amongst mothers. He told them that I had hidden my special tokens of spirit identity on this earth and till they were found I would go on falling ill and that it was almost certain that I would die before the age of twenty-one.

  When I recovered, however, my parents had already spent too much money on me. They were in debt. And my father, who was rather fed up with all the trouble I brought, had grown somewhat sceptical of the pronouncements and certitudes of herbalists. If you listen to everything they say, he told Mum, you will have to perform absurd sacrifices every time you step outside your door. He was also suspicious of their penchant for advocating costly ceremonies, the way quack doctors keep multiplying the ramifications of ailments in order to make you spend fortunes on their medicines.

  Neither Mum nor Dad could afford another ceremony. And anyway they did not really want to believe that I was a spirit-child. And so time passed and the ceremony was never performed. I was happy. I didn’t want it performed. I didn’t want to entirely lose contact with that other world of light and rainbows and possibilities. I had buried my secrets early. I buried them in moonlight, the air alive with white moths. I buried my magic stones, my mirror, my special promises, my golden threads, objects of identity that connected me to the world of spirits. I buried them all in a secret place, which I promptly forgot.

  In the early years Mum was quite proud of me.

  ‘You are a child of miracles,’ she would say. ‘Many powers are on your side.’

  For as long as my cord to other worlds remained intact, for as long as my objects were not found, this might continue to be true.

  As a child I could read people’s minds. I could foretell their futures. Accidents happened in places I had just left. One night I was standing in the street with Mum when a voice said:

  ‘Cross over.’

  I tugged Mum across the street and a few moments later an articulated lorry plunged into the house we had been standing in front of and killed an entire family.

  On another night I was asleep when the great king stared down at me. I woke up, ran out of the room, and up the road. My parents came after me. They were dragging me back when we discovered that the compound was burning. On that night our lives changed.

  The road woke up. Men and women, all in wrappers, sleep-marks on their faces, blackened lamps in their hands, crowded outside. There was no electricity in our area. The lamps, held above the heads, illuminated the strange-eyed moths, casting such a spectral glow over the disembodied faces that I felt I was again among spirits. One world contains glimpses of others.

  It was a night of fires. An owl flew low over the burning compound. The air was full of cries. The tenants rushed back and forth with buckets of water from the nearest well. Gradually, the flames died down. Whole families stayed out in the night, huddled amongst the ragged ends of their clothes and mattresses. There was much wailing for lost property. No one had died.

  When it was so dark that one couldn’t see the far corners of the sky and the forest lacked all definition, the landlord turned up and immediately started ranting. He threw himself on the ground. Rolling and thrashing, he unleashed a violent torrent of curses on us. He screamed that we had deliberately set his compound on fire to avoid paying the recently increased rent.

  ‘How am I going to get the money to rebuild the house?’ he wailed, working himself into a deaf fury.

  ‘All of you must pay for the damages!’ he screeched.

  No one paid him any attention. Our main priority was to find new accommodations. We gathered our possessions and made preparations to move.

  ‘Everyone must stay here!’ the landlord said, screaming in the dark.

  He hurried away and returned an hour later with three policemen. They fell on us and flogged us with whips and cracked our skulls with batons. We fought them back. We beat them with sticks and ropes. We tore their colonial uniforms and sent them packing. They came back with reinforcements. Dad lured two of them down a side street and gave them a severe thrashing. More came at him. He was such a dervish of fury that it took six policemen to subdue him and bundle him off to the police station.

  The reinforcements meanwhile lashed out at everything in sight, unleashing mayhem in a drunken fever. When they had finished fifteen men, three children, four women, two goats and a dog lay wounded along the battleground of our area. That was how the riot started.

  Deep in the night it started to rain and it poured down steadily while the ghetto-dwellers raged. The rain didn’t last long but it turned the tracks into mud. It watered our fury. Chanting ancient war-songs, brandishing pikes and machetes, gangs materialised in the darkness. They stamped through the mud. At the main road, they fell on cars and buses. They attacked police vehicles. They looted shops. Then everyone began looting, burning, and overturning things. Mum, carrying me, was driven on by the frantic crowd. Along the main road she put me down in order to tighten her wrapper, in full preparation for the worst, when a caterwauling mass of people came pounding towards us. They ran right between us. They separated me from my mother.

  I wandered through the violent terrain, listening to the laughter of mischievous spirits. There was a crescent moon in the sky, darkness over the houses, broken bottles and splintered wood on the road. I wandered barefoot. Fires sprouted over rubbish heaps, men were dragged out of cars, thick smoke billowed from houses. Stumbling along, looking for Mum, I found myself in a dark street. There was a solitary candle burning on a stand near an abandoned house. I heard a deep chanting that made the street tremble. Shadows stormed past, giving off a stench of sweat and rage. Drums vibrated in the air. A cat cried out as if it had been thrown on to a fire. Then a gigantic Masquerade burst out of the road, with plumes of smoke billowing from its head. I gave a frightened cry and hid behind a stall. The Masquerade was terrifying and fiery, its funeral roar filled the street with an ancient silence. I watched it in horror. I watched it by its shadow of a great tree burning, as it danced in the empty street.

  Then the darkness filled with its attendants. They were stout men with glistening faces. They held on to the luminous ropes attached to the towering figure. Dancing wildly, it dragged them towards the rioting. When it strode past, sundering the air, I crept out of my hiding place. Swirling with hallucinations, I started back towards the main road. Then suddenly several women, smelling of bitter herbs, appeared out of the darkness. They bore down on me, and swooped me up into the bristling night.

  3

  THE WOMEN BOUNDED down the streets. One had a black sack, another wore glasses, a third wore boots. No one touched them or even seemed to notice them. They ran through the disturbance as if they were shadows or visitors from another realm. I didn’t utter a sound.

  It was only when they stopped at a crossroad and placed shining white eggs on the ground, that I noticed they all wore white smocks. Their faces were veiled. The veils had holes through which I could barely see their eyes. After they had made their offering at the crossroad they bounded on through the streets, past scene
s of rioting, and into the forest. They ran through pitch darkness, through silence and mists, and into another reality in which the gigantic Masquerade was riding a white horse. The horse had jagged teeth and its eyes were diamond bright. There was a piercing cry in the air. When the Masquerade and the white horse vanished, I noticed that the forest swarmed with unearthly beings. It was like an overcrowded marketplace. Many of them had red lights in their eyes, wisps of saffron smoke came out of their ears, and gentle green fires burned on their heads. Some were tall, others were short; some were wide, others were thin. They moved slowly. They were so numerous that they interpenetrated one another. The women ran through these beings without any fear.

  We passed gangs of men who were carrying home their loot. We passed a woman who sat at the foot of a tree, bleeding from the side of her head. The women took her with them. I listened to her groans of agony till we stopped at the edge of a river, where there was a canoe waiting. Before I could do anything the women bundled me in, clambered on, and rowed us across to an island that wasn’t far away. They rowed in complete serenity as I tried to resist. When I began to rock the canoe, they pressed me down with their rough feet and smothered me with their capacious smocks.

  We arrived at the island and the woman with glasses lifted me out of the canoe, and led me to a hut. It was really a bathroom. She made me wash. When she had dried me with a coarse towel, she smeared me all over with oils. She led me to the shrinehouse and spread me out on a mat. I tried not to sleep that night and tried not to move either, for even in the darkness all the statues seemed to be alive. The images seemed to breathe, to be watching my every movement, to be listening to my thoughts.

  In the morning I found myself in an empty room. I got up and before I could get to the door, the women came in. They had powerful eyes. They were completely silent and they stared at me imploringly, as if it were in my power to save their lives.

  With a gentleness that surprised me, they led me to a lovely house and laid out many choice dishes before me. They gathered round and watched as I ate. When I had finished they dressed me in a spotless robe of material so soft and white that I felt I had been wrapped in a cloud. They touched me tenderly and left the room. I went out of the house and wandered round the island in a white enchantment.

  The wind blew spells over the sea. The soft white sand teemed with riddles. I went past the shrinehouse and gazed out over the waves. On my way back I came upon the goddess of the island. She was an image with a beautiful face and eyes of marble that glittered in the sun. All around her feet were metal gongs, kola nuts, kaoline, feathers of eagles and peacocks, bones of animals and bones too big to belong to animals. In a complete circle round her were white eggs on black saucers. Her mighty and wondrous pregnancy faced the sea.

  At night the eyes of the goddess shone like moonstones. The sea-wind, streaming through her raffia hair, produced a haunting melody. At night I heard her piercing, ecstatic cries. I slipped out. Her magnificent pregnancy was so startling against the immense sea that she could have been giving birth to a god or to a new world.

  I was asleep in the shrinehouse, among the sentient figures, when the noise of gongs woke me up. I looked out of the door and saw the women, all in white, doing an enchanted dance round their goddess. I was watching them, in the dark, when something moved behind me. Silently, from amongst the images, a cat came towards me. It sat at my feet, gazing at me with jewelled eyes. I stroked its fur. A voice said:

  ‘Are you a fool?’

  I spun round. Apart from the watchful statues, I saw no one. I stroked the cat again. The voice said:

  ‘Why hasn’t the goddess given birth yet?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I replied, without moving.

  ‘Because she hasn’t found a child to give birth to. If you’re not careful you will be born a second time tonight.’

  When it occurred to me that sometimes I could understand the language of animals, I woke from my enchantment, into the full awareness of my danger. Then I heard low groans. In another corner of the room, hidden in the darkness, her foot twitching in dreams of flight, I discovered the woman who had been wounded during the riots. I shook her awake. She opened her dazed eyes at me.

  ‘My son,’ she said.

  ‘They are going to do something to me,’ I said.

  She stared at me impassively.

  ‘My mother will not like it,’ I added.

  She began weeping. She wouldn’t stop. She too had lost a son during the rioting.

  ‘Let’s escape,’ I suggested.

  She stopped weeping. She got up slowly. We crept out of the shrinehouse, towards the canoe. We were rowing across the water when a strangled cry rose from the shrinehouse and gathered volume all over the island. The wind whipped the cries round the raffia hair of the goddess. Waves lashed the canoe. We rowed with great desperation over the turbulent waters. We were half-way across when the women abandoned their ritual and came after us.

  Her face bruised, her eyes droopy in the moonlight, the wounded woman rowed like a hero. But the effort was too much for her and as our canoe was driven ashore, she collapsed altogether. I tried to revive her with salt water, but she only groaned in profound resignation.

  ‘My son, my son,’ was all she said.

  There was nothing I could do. The canoes furiously approached the shore. I muttered a prayer for her and ran and didn’t stop till I had completely escaped from that cult of silent women.

  4

  THAT NIGHT I slept under a lorry. In the morning I wandered up and down the streets of the city. Houses were big, vehicles thundered everywhere, and people stared at me. I became aware of my hunger when I came to a marketplace and saw the bean cakes, ripe fruits and dried fishes, and smelt the fried plantain. I went from stall to stall, staring at the traders. Many of them drove me away. But at a provision stall a man with a severe face regarded me and said:

  ‘Are you hungry?’

  I nodded. He gave me a loaf of bread. He had only four fingers, with a thumb missing. I thanked him and roamed the market till I found a barrel on which I sat down and ate.

  I watched crowds of people pour into the marketplace. I watched the chaotic movements and the wild exchanges and the load-carriers staggering under sacks. It seemed as if the whole world was there. I saw people of all shapes and sizes, mountainous women with faces of iroko, midgets with faces of stone, reedy women with twins strapped to their backs, thick-set men with bulging shoulder muscles. After a while I felt a sort of vertigo just looking at anything that moved. Stray dogs, chickens flapping in cages, goats with listless eyes, hurt me to look at them. I shut my eyes and when I opened them again I saw people who walked backwards, a dwarf who got about on two fingers, men upside-down with baskets of fish on their feet, women who had breasts on their backs, babies strapped to their chests, and beautiful children with three arms. I saw a girl amongst them who had eyes at the side of her face, bangles of blue copper round her neck, and who was more lovely than forest flowers. I was so afraid that I got down from the barrel and started to move away when the girl pointed and cried:

  ‘That boy can see us!’

  They turned in my direction. I looked away immediately and hurried away from the swelling marketplace, towards the street. They followed me. One of the men had red wings on his feet and a girl had fish-gills round her neck. I could hear their nasal whisperings. They stayed close to me to find out if I really could see them. And when I refused to see them, when I concentrated on the piles of red peppers wrinkled by the sun, they crowded me and blocked my way. I went right through them as if they weren’t there. I stared hard at the crabs clawing the edges of flower-patterned basins. After a while they left me alone. That was the first time I realised it wasn’t just humans who came to the marketplaces of the world. Spirits and other beings come there too. They buy and sell, browse and investigate. They wander amongst the fruits of the earth and sea.

  I wound my way to another part of the market. I didn’t stare at t
he people who floated above the ground or those with the burden of bulbous heads and blond hair, but I became curious about where they had come from. I took to following those that were departing from the market and were heading home because they had done all their buying or selling, or had gotten tired of observing the interesting man-made artefacts of the world. I followed them across streets, narrow paths, and isolated tracks. All the time I pretended not to see them.

  When they got to a wide clearing in the forest they said their bizarre farewells and went their different ways. Many of them were quite fearful to look at. Many were quite cute. A good number of them were somewhat ugly, but after a while even their ugliness became normal. I chose to follow a baby spirit with the face of a squirrel, who dragged a great sack. Its companions conversed amongst themselves, laughing in throatless undertones as they went along. One had yellow webbed feet, another the tail of a tiny crocodile, and the most interesting had the eyes of a dolphin.

  The clearing was the beginning of an expressway. Building companies had levelled the trees. In places the earth was red. We passed a tree that had been felled. Red liquid dripped from its stump as if the tree had been a murdered giant whose blood wouldn’t stop flowing. The baby spirits went to the edge of the clearing where there was a gash in the earth. As I stared into the gash I heard a sharp noise, as of something sundering, and I shut my eyes in horror, and when I opened them I found myself somewhere else. The spirits had disappeared. I began shouting. My voice reverberated in the murky air. After a while I noticed a giant turtle beside me. It lifted up a lazy head, stared at me as if I had disturbed its sleep, and said:

  ‘Why are you shouting?’