The Famished Road Read online

  ‘That’s enough,’ Madame Koto said from the crowd, without much conviction.

  The thugs ignored her. They went on beating up the man to their satisfaction. Then they dragged him up. He was weeping and trembling, his nose ran, his mouth quivered, he bled from one eye, his face was all bruised, he had cuts in six places, and the crowd merely looked on. Then someone began to plead for him. The woman spoke of mercy, kindness, God’s love, Allah’s compassion. The two thugs, switching methods to suit the mood of the crowd, said that the man was a vicious creature who had beaten his wife unconscious and abandoned his three children. They were starving and his wife had been in hospital for seven days. His wife, they said, was their sister. The crowd was enraged by the man’s wickedness. And as the thugs dragged him away the women all knocked him on the head and rained curses on him for his cowardice and brutality.

  The thugs led the man towards the forest. His clothes were torn. His head hung low. He walked with the submissiveness of a man who is soon going to die.

  When the thugs and the man disappeared, the crowd dispersed, but the compound people remained. In their poor clothes, with their hunger, their pain, their faces stark with the facts of their lives, they stood outside the bar and stared at the forest as though it were about to release an ominous sign, or sound, or yield its awesome secrets.

  They did not move, even when they heard the innocent cries of the man echoing through the trees.

  It was Madame Koto who broke the stillness. She went to her stack of firewood and began to prepare her fire, as if acknowledging the fact that there are few things that happen which can make it impossible for life to continue.

  The women looked at her as she started the fire. I looked at all of them. Madame Koto, in her activity, seemed apart from them, different, separate from their fevers. A formation of birds, densely clustered, and consisting of a fast-changing set of geometric patterns, circled the sky, spreading their shadows on the burning earth. The compound people melted back to their rooms, to their disparate occupations.

  I went inside the bar and lay on a bench. I shut my eyes. I heard Madame Koto come in. She said:

  ‘If you misbehave the same thing will happen to you.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The forest will swallow you.’

  ‘Then I will become a tree,’ I said.

  ‘Then they will cut you down because of a road.’

  ‘Then I will turn into the road.’

  ‘Cars will ride on you, cows will shit on you, people will perform sacrifices on your face.’

  ‘And I will cry at night. And then people will remember the forest.’

  She was silent. I didn’t open my eyes. I heard her lifting the earthenware pot, heard her pouring water out of it, heard her leaving.

  The heat changed the colours in my eyes. Lying on the bench, within the shade of the bar, with birds calling outside, an immense space of peace opened inside me. It spread deep. It lowered the heat on my skin.

  Soft voices sang from the bushes. I listened to the muezzin. I listened to myself faintly snoring. A strange shape, like the body of a mythical animal grown rotten on the path, burst into my mind. I sat up. My feet didn’t touch the ground. I looked about me and saw a lizard staring at me as if I were about to break into song. Outside, birds piped their indecipherable melodies.

  I lay down again, listening to the voices of school-children, shrill with the joy of play and encounter. I listened to the many voices in me. The bench bit into my back. I shut my eyes and, within, everything was black. A deeper shade of black unfurled within the blackness. I was drawn into a vortex. I reached out; the blackness was light, like air. And as I floated, transfixed, captive, a face – luminous with emerald brilliance, its eyes a deep diamond blue, its smile that of an unhappy man who had died at the right moment – opened on to my gaze. Was he an incarnation of the great king of the spirit world? He stared at me and as I tried to look deeper into the mysteries of his face I felt myself falling into light. My eyes opened of too much brightness.

  I shut them again. I heard a sudden sound. A curious terror, like arms grabbing you from out of a trusted darkness, swept over me. I didn’t move. I felt no fear. Then I saw the elongated faces of spirits, with blood pouring out of their eyes. My mouth opened into a scream, and the faces changed. Then a bald head turned round and round under my gaze. On all of its sides were sorrowful eyes. It leant towards me, then bowed, disembodied; and on its scalp opened a mouth which spread into an ecstatic, elastic, smile. I woke up suddenly. I saw glimpses of wise spirits in a flash before I saw Madame Koto’s rugged face. She caught my flailing hands, and said:

  ‘Get up. Customers are here!’

  And when I sat up and looked around I knew we were in the divide between past and future. A new cycle had begun, an old one was being brought to a pitch, prosperity and tragedy rang out from what I saw, and I knew that the bar would never be the same again.

  It was evening. Outside, through the curtain strips, I could see birds whirling round and round in the air, as though marking, with the centre of their circle, the spot where a comrade had just fallen. The sun was an intense orange, a molten object strangely unconnected with the cooling breeze of the forest. Madame Koto’s face had broken into the smile she reserved for the customers who spent the most.

  There were a lot of people outside. They were elegantly dressed in bright kaftans and agbadas and safari suits. They laughed and talked in animated tones. There were many women amongst them. The strong scent of their perfumes was heavy and inescapable on the evening air.

  The two thugs who had earlier led the man away stepped into the bar. They surveyed the place as if to ascertain whether it was big enough for the celebration they planned. They did not look like thugs. In spite of the bandage and the animal expression in their eyes, they looked like modern businessmen, contractors, exporters, politicians. Dressed in lace kaftans, with matching hats, they were wonderfully high-spirited. They went out, came in again and, walking towards Madame Koto with the dignity of honourable crooks, said:

  ‘It will do. We want to celebrate here. You are our friend and supporter. Since you have been good to us, we will bring business to you.’

  The man with the bandage round his forehead went out and I heard him say:

  ‘Come in, my people. Come in.’

  He led the way, walking with a lilt. The small-eyed man stood in the middle of the bar, making expansive gestures. Neither of them looked like the people they had been. I was fascinated by their transformation.

  ‘My favourite customers, welcome!’ Madame Koto said, in a voice of such extreme unctuousness that I turned to her, surprised.

  Her face glistened. She rubbed her palms together. The two men sat. The people outside came in, bringing their thick perfume smells, their crackling lace, their clinking bangles and trinkets and strange jewellery, and the smell of new money.

  ‘More light!’ cried one of the men.

  ‘And plenty of your best palm-wine!’ said another.

  Madame Koto, who seemed to me afraid of nothing under the heavens, moved with such alacrity it appeared she was afraid of incurring their displeasure. She rushed out and got a clean cloth and wiped the benches before the women and the men sat on them. She wiped the tabletops till they shone and she opened the curtains wider by hanging the lower parts of the plastic strips on a nail. She rushed out and came back in and gave me a terrible stare and for the first time she shouted at me as if I were her servant.

  ‘Get up, you ugly child. Get up and fetch water for my customers!’

  I was too stunned to move. She grabbed me by the scruff of the neck, and tossed me out of the bar. Furious and confused, I picked up a length of firewood. I stayed out a long time. Madame Koto came out looking for me. I held the firewood high, ready to use it.

  ‘What about the water?’ she asked.

  I said nothing. I held the wood harder. I withstood the metal in her eyes. She approached. I backed away into the bushe
s. She smiled, her breasts heaving. She got close, arms outstretched, and I lashed out, and missed, and the firewood flew out of my hands, and splinters caught in my palm. She stopped. A new expression appeared on her face. Then she said:

  ‘Okay, okay.’

  She fetched the basins of water herself. I stayed near the bushes and watched her run up and down, trying frantically to please her customers. She came out with a heavy face and re-entered with a big false smile. I went to the front and watched as more of the thugs and their friends poured into the bar. They laughed roughly and talked about money. They talked about politics and contracts and women and the elections. I peeped in and saw Madame Koto sitting behind her counter, sweating. She listened with wide-eyed attentiveness to what was being said and jumped up with an elastic smile whenever they wanted something. She seemed like a total stranger.

  ‘Madame,’ one of the men said, ‘why don’t you turn this place into a hotel? You will make plenty of money.’

  ‘And why don’t you get women to serve us instead of that strange child, eh?’

  Madame Koto made a reply which raised laughter, but which I didn’t hear. They went on drinking endless bowls of soup, endless gourds of palm-wine. I stayed out till the evening began to distribute itself across the sky. Madame Koto came looking for me and when I saw her I ran.

  ‘Why are you running?’ she asked in a gentler voice.

  Then she pleaded with me to go back in and said that they were her special customers and I should behave properly towards them. She promised me some money and a generous portion of soup. Cautiously, I went back into the bar. But by then the men were quite drunk and had begun to shout and to boast. Two of the men were so drunk that they danced without music, staggering, sweating peppersoup. One of them climbed on a table and danced to the tune of his party’s song. The table wobbled. He sang and stamped. The other man tried to climb a bench, but couldn’t. The two thugs kept trying to get them to come down. The bandaged man went round his table and tried to grab the dancer, but he jumped from one table to another and eventually jumped so hard that he crashed right through the wood and remained entangled. No one moved to help him.

  ‘Don’t worry, Madame,’ said the small-eyed thug, ‘we will pay for your table.’

  Madame Koto remained still behind the counter. Her lower face vibrated. I could sense her tremendous rage. But she managed a smile of incredible sincerity, and said:

  ‘Thank you, my favourite customers.’

  Two women from the group got up and helped the man out of the table. He was bleeding from the thighs and round the area of his crotch but he didn’t seem to notice. He lay down on a bench next to me and fell asleep. His shoes stank. His horrible perfume mingled with peppersoup sweat. I moved two benches away from him. The others resumed their drinking and their rowdy merriment. Madame Koto watched them with a fixed smile on her huge face. She watched passively, not doing anything, even when fresh customers turned up and were driven away, shouted away, by the bandaged man and his friends.

  ‘Go and find somewhere else to drink. This is our bar tonight,’ they would say, laughing.

  They went on turning people away, preventing them from so much as coming in, and all Madame Koto did was smile.

  ‘This madame is going to be my wife!’ announced the bandaged thug.

  He got up, swaying, and dragged her from behind the counter and danced with her.

  ‘That madame,’ said one of the men, ‘will swallow you completely.’

  The others laughed. Madame Koto stopped dancing, went out, and returned with her broom.

  ‘Run! Run-o!’ came a drunken chorus.

  The man who had provoked her was already outside by the time she reached him.

  ‘Sweep away my sorrows,’ crooned the bandaged man, holding her from behind.

  She shook him off. He said, with eyes both feverish and earnest:

  ‘Madame, if you marry me you will sleep on a bed of money!’

  And as if to prove it he brought out a crisp packet of pound notes and proceeded to plaster note after note on her sweating forehead. She responded with amazing dexterity and, as if she were some sort of desperate magician, made the money disappear into her brassière. She danced all the while. He seemed very amused by her greed. He swayed, his eyes opening and shutting, behaving as if he hadn’t noticed anything. And then quite suddenly he put away his packet of money, and danced away from Madame Koto, his face glistening with the ecstasy of power.

  The darkness outside spread indoors. The flies were intense. It became quite dark. Madame Koto brought in the lanterns, lit them, and distributed them round the tables.

  ‘Madame,’ slurred the small-eyed thug, ‘we will give you electricity and you will play music for us one of these days and we will all dance.’

  At that moment the curtain parted and the carpenter, eyes wide, clothes dirty from another job, came into the bar.

  ‘Go and drink somewhere else!’ said one of the men.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because I built this bar.’

  ‘So what?’

  ‘No one can tell me to get out of here.’

  ‘Is that so?’

  ‘Yes.’

  The bandaged man, who had clearly been spoiling for some confrontation all evening, made a great show of tearing off his agbada. Then he unceremoniously jumped on the carpenter. They both fell on a bench. A lantern rocked on the table. They wrestled, rolling, on the floor. One of the lanterns fell and broke and set the table on fire. The women screamed, grabbed their handbags, and fled outside. Madame Koto got her inevitable broom and whipped the fire. Her broom began to burn. The two men went on fighting. The carpenter ripped off the thug’s bandage. The thug attempted to strangle the carpenter. The companions of the bandaged man began hitting the carpenter, booting him, smashing his head with their shoes, punching his ribs. But each time they hit the carpenter, it was the bandaged man who cried out. Then, in a flurry, benches and tables came tumbling over, glasses and plates broke, calabashes were cracked open, spilled palm-wine burst into flames, and smoke filled the air. I didn’t move. I heard one of the thugs screaming. His agbada had caught fire. He ran out, his garment flaming all around him, into the blue night. The curtain strips caught fire as well. Soon it seemed everything was burning. Madame Koto rushed in with the compound people, bearing buckets of water, which they poured everywhere, on the tables and walls, on the men fighting over flames and broken calabashes, over the man who lay asleep and drunk and who had earlier jumped into a table, over the curtains. Soon the fires were extinguished and the men had stopped wrestling on the floor. They were thoroughly drenched. They both got up, bits of glass and wood sticking to them, and they leant forward, groaning.

  Madame Koto fetched a new broom and waded into the crowd of bodies and began lashing out, thrashing everyone with such viciousness that the commotion in the bar became incredible. She whipped the thugs and their guests, pursued them to the door, she turned and flogged the carpenter and chased him round the bar, then she attacked the compound people who had come to help, and who fled screaming that she had gone mad, she lashed me on the back and neck and I ran outside. She went on hitting out and whipping the air with her broom even when there was no one left to hit.

  She emerged suddenly at the front door and her presence sent the women screaming, the men yelling. She bounded after the thugs and their friends, soundly beating the women on the back, the men round the ankles, pursuing them up the road towards the forest. For a while, we didn’t see her. Then, breathing heavily, she materialised amongst us, and pounced on our astonishment, quick on her feet for one so heavy. She tore after us, managing the curious feat of being in several places at the same time, and whipping those of us who had run either north or south, west or east, crackling the air with the electric fury of her new broom, cursing everything, raising the dust and kicking up stones, whirling and swearing, chasing us into the bushes, into the backyard and down the passages
. People fled everywhere. I ran into the stinking bathroom and remained there for a long time and only came out when I heard other voices tentatively emerging from their hiding-places. I crept up to the bar.

  Madame Koto sat at a table. There was only one functioning lantern in the room. The place was a mess. Tables were broken and burnt, there were broken glasses and bones of chickens and crushed bowls and twisted spoons and shattered calabashes and torn clothes and spilt wine and soup everywhere. There was vomit on one table, the Coca-Cola calendar was on the floor, with peppersoup stains all over the breasts of the white woman. Benches were upside down. There were burnt pound notes on tables and patches of blood on the walls. Madame Koto sat in the soft darkness. Her breasts heaved slightly. Her face was a mask. She sat alone in her bar, surrounded by confusion and night-flies. Her hands trembled.

  With her sad, hard eyes she stared straight ahead of her, not surveying her domain. She bit her lower lip. Then to my greatest amazement she began to tremble worse than ever, sitting bolt upright, her face bold, her eyes defeated. She wept, quivering, and her tears ran down her massive cheeks and dripped on the table. Then she stopped, swallowed, wiped her face with her wrapper, and began to lock up the bar for the day. She too had crossed the divide between past and future. She must have known that a new cycle had begun. She turned suddenly, saw me, became stiff, her eyes widening with the horror of being discovered in a secret moment, and then she said, somewhat harshly:

  ‘What are you looking at?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Haven’t you seen a grown woman cry before?’

  I was silent.

  ‘Go home!’ she commanded.

  I didn’t move. Neither Madame Koto, nor her bar, would ever be the same again.

  ‘Go home!’ she ordered.

  I went.

  7

  MUM WAS ALONE in the room, praying to our ancestors and to God in three different languages. She knelt by the door, her kerchief partly covering her face, rubbing her palms together fervently.