The Famished Road Read online

  Dad smiled sheepishly. Then Mum rounded on him, asking him to be more polite to his guests, and she got so worked up in her inexplicable rage that she too stormed out, leaving the crowd somewhat confused. No one was sent out after her. Embarrassed by the silence, Dad invited everyone to pour themselves more drinks and he proposed a toast to his wife. But the drinks had run out, and Dad had no money left, and we all sat staring at our empty bottles. In the brief silence Mum returned, bringing relatives we hadn’t seen for a long time, and the gathering cheered her return; and Dad, inspired by the cheering, hurried out of the room (ignoring Mum’s protestations that we should celebrate within our means), went to the shop across the street, and came back with cartons of beer.

  The feast got rowdier. The men kept calling for more drinks. The old man, quite drunk, began a stream of contradictory proverbs. A man with a thick beard complained about how the smell of the food was making him lean. Amidst all the voices, the anticipations which had topped themselves, the long patient waiting which in the end satisfies its own hunger, the food was served. Plates of rice and bushmeat passed before gluttonous faces but, because the crowd was so big, and the numbers vastly outstripped Mum’s calculations, everyone had much less food than suggested by the size of the boar. People had talked themselves into such a hunger that the food barely went round. Like the miracle of multiplying fishes in reverse, the food diminished before it got to the guests. The rice was swiftly consumed, the boar disappeared into the capacious stomachs of the ravenous gathering, the stew dried out in the pots, and people stared at their plates in drunken puzzlement. The bearded man grumbled that the meat he had eaten was so small that it had made him hungrier. Discontentment spread; the smell of the food, sumptuous and throat-tickling, lingered in the air, reminding us of the betrayed promise of an abundant feast. Amid the discontentment, Dad tried hard to please everyone. He made jokes, told riddles, fell into impersonations. He danced, and made music with his bottle. Meanwhile people ate, spat their bones on the floor, spilt their drinks, and wiped their hands on our curtains. Dad plied the gathering with drinks, borrowing heavily, sweating in bizarre exultation. The bearded man, substituting drunkenness for hunger, drank so much that when he attempted to dramatise his first encounter with a white woman he staggered and fell on his chair, breaking its back. Another man ran outside, threw up in the passage, and came back looking like a lizard. Dad, who was more than pleasantly drunk, held forth about the violence he would have unleashed if he had gone to the police officer’s place to get me. Mum found the perfect moment for revenge.

  ‘Why didn’t you go, eh?’ she said cuttingly, ‘Because you were too drunk!’

  There was another embarrassed silence. Dad, slightly cross-eyed with drunkenness, looked round at everyone. Then he displayed his arm in the sling. And then, for no apparent reason, almost as if he were snatching riddles out of the air, he said:

  ‘When I die, no one will see my body.’

  The silence became profound. Mum burst into tears and rushed out of the room. Two women went after her. Dad, entering a grim mood, drank intensely, and then suddenly began to sing beautifully. For the first time I heard deep notes of sadness in his powerful voice. Still singing he bent over, lifted me up, and held me to him. His eyes were a little bloodshot. He gave me his glass to drink from and after two gulps I became quite drunk myself. Dad put me down on the chair, went outside, and returned with Mum in his arms. Mum’s eyes were wet. Dad held her and they danced together and the gathering, touched by the reconciliation, sang for them.

  While the room quivered with jagged drumming on the table, syncopated rhythms of voices, the bottle-music, and general revelry, the photographer from across the road turned up, wearing a white hat. His name was Jeremiah. He had a wiry beard, and everyone seemed to know him. He became the instant butt of jokes. Some mocked his bad timing at missing the tastiest boar that ever ran amok in the forests. Others urged him to take off his white hat and get drunk as swiftly as possible. And the women wanted to know why he hadn’t brought his camera. He went back out and soon returned with his camera and everyone abandoned the dancing and organised themselves for a group photograph. The men fought for the most visible positions. The old man, claiming right of seniority, posed in front of everyone. The women went out to brighten themselves and came back to disrupt the photographer’s arrangement. Mum picked me up and posed with Dad next to the old man. The photographer gave many instructions as he set up his camera. He went back and forth, making us contort our heads. He made Dad twist his legs, made Mum hold her neck at an awkward angle, and made me fix a quite insane smile on my face. After much fussing, the photographer proceeded to embark on his own set of dramatic poses. He crouched, stood on tiptoes, knelt, climbed on a chair, and even seemed to imitate an eagle in flight. He drank generously from a bottle of beer. Swaying, leaning backwards, his eyes shining, he made us say:

  ‘Sheeze.’

  While we played around with the word, fishing humour out of its strangeness, he took the first picture. When the camera flashed, followed by an odd explosion, ghosts emerged from the light and melted, stunned, at his feet. I screamed. The crowd laughed. The photographer took five pictures in all and the ghosts kept falling at his feet, dazed by the flash. When he went to his studio to drop off his camera, the ghosts followed him. When he came back they weren’t with him. He joined the boisterous merriment and got wonderfully drunk.

  Not long afterwards the landlord turned up. The crowd cheered him. Mum had to rustle up some food. Dad had to buy more drinks on credit. I was fussed over and thrown up in the air till my ribs ached and I was prayed for all over again. The photographer had to go back and get his camera.

  After much prancing and mystery-making, as if he were a magician, the photographer lifted up his camera. He was surrounded by little ghosts and spirits. They had climbed on one another to take a closer look at the instrument. They were so fascinated by the camera that they climbed on him and hung on his arms and stood on his head. He was very drunk and he cheerfully took three pictures of the landlord with his flywhisk. When he had finished he couldn’t be bothered to go all the way back to his studio so he hung the camera on a nail. The spirits and the children gathered round it, pointing and talking in amazed voices.

  The men who were drunk began a furious argument. Some of the women took their children to bed. The men were in the full flow of their loud voices when the curtain parted, a hush descended, and the madame from the bar stepped in. The landlord, on seeing her, made a frightened sound. Everyone stared at her in drunken silence. The spirits left the camera and surrounded the woman. They stayed at a distance. The woman smiled and waved a benevolent greeting to all of us. Dad got up, welcomed her warmly, found her a seat, and proceeded to tell everyone about the fantastic beginnings of her myth. Everyone knew the story already and they stared at her as at an august, if unpredictable, guest. Mum rustled up some food for her. Dad sent off for more drinks on credit, but it wasn’t necessary for she had brought five gourds of palm-wine to help celebrate my homecoming. When the ogogoro Dad sent for arrived she took the bottle, stood up abruptly, sending waves of silence everywhere by the sheer force of her legend and her bulk. She held my hand and said:

  ‘Is this the boy we are celebrating?’

  ‘Yes,’ the crowd said.

  ‘Is this the boy who was lost and found?’

  ‘Yes!’

  Then she turned. With her big eyes gazing at me steadily, she said:

  ‘The road will never swallow you. The river of your destiny will always overcome evil. May you understand your fate. Suffering will never destroy you, but will make you stronger. Success will never confuse you or scatter your spirit, but will make you fly higher into the good sunlight. Your life will always surprise you.’

  Her prayer was so wonderful that everyone was silent afterwards. They stared at her in amazement. Then Dad, recovering from the shock of the words, said:

  ‘AMEN!’

  The gatheri
ng repeated it. The woman, still standing, made a libation, a short communal prayer, then she drank half the bottle of ogogoro in a single, sustained gulp, her great breasts quivering in the hot room. When she had finished she sat down, her fleshy face coming out in sweat. The spirits encompassed her, talking about her in astonished voices.

  She didn’t stay very long. And when, too soon for everyone’s liking (for they wanted to decode her mystery), she got up and said she had to return to her bar, we all tried to persuade her to stay. But she was beyond persuading. Dad thanked her for coming. Mum thanked her for the prayers and the wine. As she went to the door, swaying like a great ship, she stopped, looked hard at me, and said:

  ‘You have a strange son. I like him.’ Then to me she added: ‘Come and visit me one of these days, eh?’

  ‘I will,’ I said.

  When she left the room the spirits went with her. That night we found out her name. She was known as Madame Koto.

  12

  AFTER ALL THE revelry, the feast ended with men asleep on their chairs, children sprawled on the floor, bottles everywhere and bones on the window-sill. The photographer snored with his nose close to Dad’s rescued boots, and the landlord drooled with flies around his ears. I was sitting against a wall, weaving in and out of sleep, surrounded by the confusion of human bodies, when I heard those sweet voices singing again. My spirit companions, their voices seductive beyond endurance, sang to me, asking me to honour my pact, to not be deceived by the forgetful celebrations of men, and to return to the land where feasting knows no end. They urged me on with their angelic voices and I found myself floating over the bodies of drunken men, and out into the night. I walked on the wings of beautiful songs, down the street, without the faintest notion of where the voices were leading me. I floated down the bushpaths and came to a well that was covered with a broad plank. On the plank, there was a big stone. I tried to move the stone, but couldn’t. I floated round and round our area. My feet ached. I stopped and saw my toes bleeding. I did not panic. I felt no pain. Soon I was at the edge of the great forest whose darkness is a god. I was about to enter the darkness when I saw the black cat, its eyes glowing like luminous stones. Then footsteps converged on me. I turned, and ran into the massive figure of Madame Koto.

  She caught me, lifted me up to her heavy breasts, and took me back home in silence. Mum had been looking for me everywhere. When she saw us she rushed over, carried me across the men asleep in their chairs, the children dozing against the walls, and laid me on the bed. Madame Koto lit a stick of incense, shut the window, and went outside with Mum.

  I heard Madame Koto telling her how she had found me. I listened to the men snoring. I heard Mum thanking Madame Koto. My spirit companions were weeping. I slept and woke up when I heard a noise at the door. Someone came in with a lamp. I saw the lamp, and its illumination, but I didn’t see who was bearing it across the room. There was darkness behind the lamp. Darkness put the lamp on the table. The curtain fluttered. I lay still and waited. Nothing happened for a while. When I woke up, the lamp was gone. In its place there was a candle on a saucer. I saw Dad moving from one sleeping figure to another, waking them up, urging them to go home. The men were so drunk that they didn’t want to move. The children had to be carried out in their sleeping positions. When Dad came round to the photographer and touched him on the shoulder the poor man jumped up and said:

  ‘Where’s the riot? Where’s my camera?’

  Dad laughed. The photographer shook his head, groped for his camera among Dad’s shoes, couldn’t find it, and cried out. He eventually found the camera in the empty pot of stew, amongst the bones of the boar. He snatched it out, cleaned it with his shirt, and staggered off to his studio.

  When the landlord was woken up he jerked his head, looked around suspiciously, and said:

  ‘Where’s my rent?’

  Then he climbed into bed and put his arm round me, as if I were a woman. Dad dragged him out into the passage and left him to his devices. In the room the bearded man woke up and wondered if the feast had begun yet and asked why he hadn’t been served any boar’s meat. One of the children started crying. When Dad came back into the room the bearded man asked for some beer. Dad drove him out. It was only after they had gone that we saw the debris of the feast. Our clothes were scattered everywhere. Two chairs were broken. Glasses had been shattered on the floor and it was a wonder that no one had cut themselves. Someone had vomited half out of the window and half in. The place stank of the children who had wet themselves in their sleep.

  Mosquitoes whined. Dad lit a coil. Mum swept the floor, arranged the clothes, cleared out the plates, cutlery, and bones. Then she disinfected the room. Dad sat on his chair, drinking and smoking quietly. Mum spread out the mat. Then she blew out the candle and went to sleep.

  Dad sat alone in the dark. Every now and again he said:

  ‘We have kept our promise.’

  The only points of light were the mosquito coil, its smoke spiralling to the ceiling, and his cigarette. In a way I came to think of Dad as a cigarette smoked alone in the dark.

  I watched him that night as if he were a fabled being. Sometimes he got up and paced the room, perfectly avoiding Mum’s sleeping form, his cigarette vanishing and reappearing. I watched him go back and forth. As I watched him, the darkness expanded. I saw Dad’s cigarette at one end of the room and heard him pacing at the other end. It seemed he had become separate from his action. Then I saw multiples of him smoking at different corners of the room. I shut my eyes. When I opened them it was morning and Dad was in his chair, asleep. I turned over. I heard him creaking his joints. When I turned round again, Mum was up, the mat was gone, the room was clean, the mosquito coil was just an aluminium stand and a spiral of ash on the centre table, and Dad was no longer asleep in his chair.

  13

  I LEARNT THAT Dad had gone out early to look for a job. Mum was exhausted from the search, the feast, all the walking, the worrying and the cooking. That morning she brought out her little table of provisions to the housefront. She sat on a stool, with me beside her, and dispiritedly crooned out her wares. The dust blew into our eyes. The sun was merciless on our flesh. We didn’t sell a single item.

  In the afternoon, the people that Dad had borrowed from to buy drinks came to collect their money. They threatened to seize Mum’s goods. They hung around till evening. Mum begged them to wait for Dad to get back, but they wouldn’t listen. What annoyed Mum the most was the fact that the creditors were people from our compound, who were at the feast, who had gotten drunk on our wine and had thrown up on our window-sill. The loudest amongst them was actually responsible for breaking the back of the chair and destroying two glasses. Another of our creditors, as we learned later, was Madame Koto. She was the only one who did not come to drag for her money. But the others hung around Mum’s stall and spoiled her prospects of business.

  By the evening Mum had begun to cough. Her eyes were inflamed from all the dust and whenever she stood up she staggered. When she went to the backyard she weaved about a little as if her failure to attract customers and shake off the creditors had made her drunk. Then I noticed, when she returned, that her eyes had gone strange. Every once in a while, after crooning despairingly to the indifferent potential customers of the world, her eyes would roll round in their sockets. As the evening wore on, when the winds changed, and a chill insinuated itself into the passing of the sun, Mum began to quiver on her stool, her teeth chattering. She went on stubbornly trying to sell her provisions, quivering under the bad wind, her face taut, her nose sweating, her eyes a little distracted. The other compound women who noticed the change told her to rest, but she didn’t move. We sat there, with our wares on the table, in the dark, covered in dust.

  When Mum finally packed up her table, the evening had deepened, and the wind had begun to whistle in the tall trees. Trembling, determined, and silent, she washed all our clothes in the backyard. She cleaned the room, made a fresh pot of stew, and pounded yam fo
r Dad’s dinner. And then, battered by exhaustion, she went to sleep. But the creditors allowed her no rest. In a renewed effort, they kept turning up outside our room, whispering about the money we owed them, exaggerating the amounts to each new gossip-monger, and knocking on our door. When Mum reached the limit of her tolerance she shouted at them. They vowed loudly never to sell anything on credit again. They went on demanding their money till night fell.

  We began to worry about Dad. It got darker and darker, the night birds began their songs, and still he hadn’t returned. When we had exhausted ourselves with worry, when Mum was asleep on the bed, and I was dozing on the floor, Dad stamped into the room, bringing angry shadows with him. His bad temper stank from his alcoholic breath. He lit a candle, saw Mum asleep on the bed, and burst into rage.

  ‘I have been everywhere in the world, looking for a job to feed us, and you are asleep? Wicked woman that you are!’

  Dad fumed and shouted for thirty minutes, without listening, without using his eyes. Mum got out of bed, trembling violently, and went to the kitchen.

  ‘Mum is not well,’ I said.

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with her, she’s just wicked, that’s all.’

  ‘She’s not well,’ I said again.

  He didn’t hear me. Mum came in with his tray of food. The plates clattered because of her trembling, which she tried to control. Dad, in his fury, didn’t look up at her. He ate noisily and with a mighty appetite. He didn’t even give me pieces of fish or invite me to join him as he often did. After he had finished eating every single morsel on the plates, his mood calmed, and he told us about how he had walked the entire city, under the blistering heat-waves, looking for a job, and had found none. During the silence which followed, Mum told him about the creditors, and Dad found fresh reasons to be angry. He threatened that he was going to beat them up for harassing Mum. He said he would scatter their teeth all over the forest. He said he would beat them so thoroughly that they would become old men overnight.