by Ben Okri
Women were wailing. Musicians produced plangent notes from ivory trumpets, seven-string harp lutes, and raft zithers. They beat out fearful syncopations from gigantic talking drums. Every now and then they broke into soulful threnodies.
The highest paid mourners in the land had been assembled. They took over the blind old man’s weeping. They wept and wailed and threw themselves dramatically on the ground at crucial moments. When they had wailed for a while, hurled themselves about for a bit, and rolled on the ground, they got up, dusted down their clothes and went to help themselves to large quantities of fried guinea fowl, stewed rice, baked plantain and beer. They ate and drank voraciously.
Madame Koto’s followers had fled but her earliest women, many of them prostitutes, returned. They had all gone on to become prominent figures in society. Some had married judges, politicians and army generals. Many of them were entirely successful in their own right.
All the originals, who had been at the most discernible beginnings of her myth had come back, like returning daughters. They had left their husbands and children for the duration of the funeral. They had left their thriving concerns, famous restaurants and high-class salons where traders from Beirut, jewellers from Antwerp, Indian tycoons and beautiful women congregated, had scandalous parties and did excellent business. These original women of Madame Koto’s bar had left their estates, their farms, their cloth-dyeing concerns, their shops and kiosks, to come and participate in the obsequies for the great woman who had opened their roads for them. They had all prospered. And they all had the shadow of secret lives and fetishes beneath their impeccable make-up.
All the original women were there. The innocent virgins who had fled from tyrannical fathers, from dreadful backwaters where people were thrown into brackish creeks to see if they were witches. Young women who had fled the rapes committed on them by uncles, or fathers’ friends. The girls who had escaped the stifling provinciality, the immemorial superstitions, the crushing negativity of isolated villages. Others who had fled from convents and were quickly trained in the art of seduction. All those who had fled from crude religions, from a life of drudgery to a life of city dreams. The faithful ones of the earliest times. They had all returned. And they prepared the feast, cleaned Madame Koto’s rooms, organized the orderly dismantling of her realm, and determined for her an honourable funeral, because they knew that great old trees are impossible to replace.
EIGHTEEN
The beautification
THE WOMEN DEDICATED themselves to the beautification of Madame Koto. Her body was wrapped in a red cloth from the neck down. Painstakingly they made up her face. They deepened the blackness of her eyebrows, applied rouge to her damp cheeks, powdered her forehead, painted her lips with rose-red lipstick, wove her hair into long braids, and wove the braids into the shape of a pyramid. They made her look so beautiful that it was as if they were preparing her for the great wedding she had planned for after her party’s victory at the elections.
NINETEEN
The procession
AFTER THE COFFIN had been treated with potions and libations, the funeral procession began, to the accompaniment of music and songs. The coffin was placed on top of the Volkswagen, but was so heavy that the car could barely move. The more the driver tried, the deeper the car sank into the rain-softened earth. In the end ten strong men, most of them strangers, bore the bier on their heads and led the solemn procession down our street.
On both sides of the bier, paid mourners wailed in alarming voices. Musicians played their threnodic accompaniments. The women wept. The blind old man, led by a young girl of startling beauty, kept contorting himself in grief.
The procession, with its eerie magnetism, drew a great number of people who had never been in a procession before. Mum at first didn’t want to go along. Dad stayed at home, sitting on his legendary chair, deaf to all the noises, absorbed in the voices and sweet lamentations he heard from other spheres. Mum finally joined the tail end of the crowd of mourners, the curious, the ragged, seekers after spectacle.
The procession went to one of Madame Koto’s secret palaces. We all gathered at the backyard, while the musicians performed their myth-making music. We gathered under the darkening sky as night fell. Lamps and bamboo torches were lit all over the area.
A dense veil hung on bamboo poles. Behind it the ground had been prepared. Paid mourners outdid themselves in piety. But what was being done behind the veil, where the coffin lay like a little house, was obscured from us all. The women bustled. Cows and rams, goats and sheep, were tethered to trees and poles. Peacocks made vain noises. Chickens squawked. Children ran about naked. Hurricane lamps were lit in niches. Huge party banners fluttered in the night-wind.
I couldn’t go behind the veil. Stout men with red wrappers, machetes in their hands, ritual scarifications on their chests, stood sentry to make sure the uninitiated didn’t witness the last rites.
TWENTY
Behind the veil
BUT I SAW it all. I, the spirit-child, who knows something of the bright heavens, of shallow and mythic glories, I saw it all. I, who can travel in the corridors of minds, play in the interspaces, dance to the seductive whispering of spirits, slip through the eye of a sacrificial needle, and who finds great cities in the narrow space of palm kernels, I saw the ministrants as they loaded Madame Koto’s possessions, her tortoises, her rich garments, her jewellery and her gold, her rare beads, her flywhisk and her chief’s fan, her trinkets and brocaded lace, and buried them with her in the coffin.
Her remaining peacocks were slaughtered, her tortoises crushed, her parrots beheaded, her monkeys killed, and their blood was poured into Madame Koto’s sacrificial earth. Their bodies were her companions to the other world, keeping her company in the great illuminated darkness of the grave. Musical instruments were placed in the coffin as well. Xylophones and trumpets. A talking drum and an iron bell. The blind old man’s accordion was also placed in the coffin, so that she could be entertained in the antechambers of eternity.
They didn’t forget to bury with her a beautiful new lamp, a gramophone, a telephone (so that she could be reached in the other world), her favourite cooking utensils, a new broom, yams and fruits, alligator pepper seeds, a smooth-browed calabash, cassava plants, cola-nuts to give to the ancestors, dolls and toys for the spirit-children she would meet on the other side, presents for her predecessors, gifts to the elder spirits, pens for the spirit-scribes, bangles and clippings of children’s hair for the great mothers of the spirit realms, kaolin and loincloths for the silent fathers, portions of mingled earth from all over the country for the gods and goddesses of new-born nations, a red pair of sunglasses for the bright new sunlight of the first mountain beyond, seeds of rare plants for the numinous beings who must be bribed before her spirit could cross the shady interrealms, bones for the dogs of the earth, spells and fetishes and potions and magic words written backwards on papyrus leaves to charm or battle with the wayward spirits of the unknown boundaries, books to read, newspapers to tell the ancestors some of the things that had been happening here and to show what little improvement had been made since they departed, photographs and maps, state documents and love letters, all the paraphernalia of her cultic powers, and a gourd of scented palm-wine, to remind her of one of her lives on earth.
Also placed in the coffin were a bronze stool, the gift of a king; gold bracelets, gifts of the marketwomen; bales of cloth, with illustrations of her life-story, gifts of all the original women of the earliest days. As night grew darker, and as the ululating noises of the cultists sounded from the trees, the earth, the remote distances, the near and far houses, as the ululation grew more complex, more chilling, the ministrants placed the jackal-headed masquerade with all its cinderous features into the coffin with her, along with shimmering fragments of the black rock of her myth.
But before the coffin was covered and sealed and locked with seven padlocks, and after the contents of the coffin had been neatly arranged so that it looked lik
e a dreaded treasure chest that was being buried for future generations and solidly locked so that only the rightful inheritors could gain access to the buried riches and nightmares – before all this was done the original women and the close associates and the inner circle were summoned. They danced behind the veil, and paid their last respects. The musicians beat their drums, their copper bells rattled our ears. The paid mourners cried themselves hoarse.
The women and the cultists, whose eyes were red and inflamed from too much weeping, their faces bony from the heat and the anxieties, shuffled behind the veil and beheld Madame Koto, sitting on a golden stool, draped in red, wearing red sunglasses. Her face was ghoulish with all the rouge, the red lipstick and leaking embalming fluid. She sat with a ghostly and magisterial tranquillity, as if ready to listen to their last entreaties, their declarations of everlasting loyalty and love, their regrets and confessions, their hopes and dreams; and having listened to the deepest things in their spirits, to absolve them of all worry and fear.
TWENTY-ONE
An omen
THE MOON CAME out and conquered the darkness with its sepulchral radiance. The dancing stopped. Under the instructions of the blind old man, the corpse was wrapped in brocaded lace and in a specially-treated red-dyed mat. It was conveyed by chosen women to the edge of the grave. The women, weeping, placed their numerous gifts beside the corpse. Another ritual ensued. I saw two corpses, and didn’t know which one was real.
The blind old man ordered that the coffin be brought to the graveside; and ordered that Madame Koto’s body be gently placed on the prepared mattress in the coffin, lying face upwards, with her red spectacles on, as if she were eternally contemplating the ineluctable mystery of heavenly constellations, surrounded by earthly comforts and companions. The coffin was then shut. But as they began their attempts to lower it into the earth, something snapped and everyone fled, screaming.
It was discovered that two of the seven padlocks had sprung open. The ministrants tried to hurry the last obsequies, for this peculiar occurrence was interpreted as a ghastly omen.
But the blind old man read the omen differently: that she was not yet ready to go, that there were more rituals demanded, and that she still had more things to accomplish. He commanded that Madame Koto be removed from the coffin, and seated on a regal chair, that she might perform her last great functions as one of the mothers of the earth.
TWENTY-TWO
Half a ton of concrete
THEN BEGAN THE round of entreaties. Addressing the regally seated Madame Koto, the women and the cultists prayed to her to pass messages on to their ancestors, and to intercede for them in the world of spirits. Childless women prayed to be made pregnant. Men whose businesses weren’t doing well asked for success. Kneeling in fervent pleas, the supplicants implored their ancestors to grant them prosperity and health, longevity and happiness. They asked that evil never enter their lives. They prayed that their feet would never go astray on life’s road. They asked for protection from seen and unforeseen eventualities. And they begged that their lives be rich with blessings. They addressed all their claims and their problems, their hopes and their fears, to Madame Koto, whom they saw as their best advocate in the powerful realm of the dead.
Madame Koto listened to their supplications with the solemn air of her impassive greatness. She absorbed all their concerns into her death. The greatness of her myth gave certainty to the supplicants that she would deliver all their messages and intercede on their behalf to the mighty divinity. They poured on to her all their longings, all their cravings, all their disputes, all their complications, all their illnesses, and all the curses that had secretly dogged them ever since the day they had innocently entered the fate-laden stage of the world.
Their demands to ancestors and remote gods went on for so long that many of the rituals had to be delayed. The wailings and inconsolable weeping and the endless entreaties dragged on so much that the blind old man, impatient and exasperated, commanded that the burial commence. The rituals were speeded up. The women increased their wailing; in a harsh voice, the blind old man ordered them to be removed. The women had to be dragged away from the edge of the deep grave.
Madame Koto was then carried to her gigantic coffin and laid finally in her position of rest. A giant ammonite was placed in her hand. The coffin was shut, the seven padlocks applied and tested, and then the lowering began amidst prayers, rites, and dances. Powerful herbalists, in deep shadow, operated on the vibrations of the air. Mysterious forms of witches and wizards flew restlessly everywhere, infecting the atmosphere with a mood of terror, hallucinations and awe.
The men lowered the great coffin into the earth and it went a long way down, as into a deep well, before we heard the ropes snap. Then the slightly delayed crash of metal on the hard floor of the grave. Again people fled. They feared that the omen was becoming reality, and imagined that Madame Koto, inextinguishable even in death, was fighting to get out of her coffin.
They buried her deep in the earth and filled the grave with half a ton of concrete and planted potent spells around the seven corners of her grave. They had learnt from the case of the dead carpenter that certain people can be more terrifying dead than alive, that they can escape from the grave into the air, that they can enter into myth and enjoy a second and more unfettered life. A life of terrifying vitality, hurling their dreams of death upon us who dwell in the shadow realm of reality.
TWENTY-THREE
Gun salutes
AFTER HER GRAVE had been sealed a huge soapstone statue was placed over it. The statue towered over the other images and cenotaphs in the courtyard, and rivalled the height of the orange tree. Madame Koto stood in a bold gesture, one arm raised, the pose of a warrior.
We were there all night. The night was lengthened by an unknown goddess. It was a long vigil. We suffered heat stupors. Red ants crawled about everywhere, released from their homes in the earth. Mosquitoes were intense in the still air. Fireflies and midges and mean little flying insects tormented us. We suffocated under the peculiar heat of the moon.
Some of the women fainted from exhaustion, dehydration and weeping. We were marginally revived with music. We bought food from the clustered food-sellers around, not daring to eat from the feast. We ate fried mudfish, yams, skewered lamb, Jollof rice, and drank soft drinks. Tapers blazed all around in the softening darkness.
Then, as we were beginning to revive in the still air, we were overwhelmed with the thunderous booms of the seven-gun salute to the great dead woman. The salute was answered in seven distant places. The whole area woke up. Dogs barked. Children cried. The salute lasted only one minute but it woke us up for the rest of the night and far into the early hours of the morning.
TWENTY-FOUR
We did not weep
THE FACES OF our neighbours were hard throughout the ceremonies. They remained hard during the most moving moments. The women’s faces were stony. The men still looked partly deaf and dumb. Even when Madame Koto’s original followers wept, even when people who didn’t know much about Madame Koto fell into wailing for the sheer infectious solemnity of the rituals, our neighbours’ faces remained stony and their expressions remained dislocated.
None of us shed a tear. Our eyes were dry as the hearts of impervious stones. Nothing contorted our faces.
The paid mourners went into fresh paroxysms of grief. The lone white man stood apart from it all, fanning himself. It came as a shock to us all suddenly to see him crying. He was led into the house, consoled by weeping women.
But most puzzling of all was the erratic behaviour of the man with three fingers who was dressed like a hunter. He maintained an almost haughty dignity through the proceedings. But as soon as preparations were being made to transfer us all to the bar, where the proper feasting would take place, he broke down and contorted himself on the sand and threw himself about and wept uncontrollably. I suspected, at that moment, that he might have been her husband. I remembered him from a photograph in Madame Kot
o’s room. I remembered the two fingers preserved in alcohol. The women rushed to him as he wept. They covered him with a red cloth and led him into the house. He wailed like a frightened child all the way. We never saw him again.
None of this shifted the solid stone of our resentment. We did not weep and our faces were so hard that we began to look inhuman, mask-like, under the bitter heat of that night. We were so hard-faced that none of the grieving touched us and my eyes hurt from seeing the stony faces of our neighbours who had been so traumatized by Madame Koto’s relentless domination, by her almost mythic tyranny, by the way she had disturbed our sleep with her infernal powers, the way she had sucked energy from us, and poisoned our days and filled our nights with inscrutable terror.
From the severity of our neighbours’ eyes, from the bitterness of their gaze, it seemed as if they had come to the funeral to ascertain for themselves that Madame Koto was indeed finally dead.
They stayed to witness the sealing of her grave. They stared at her statue with mortally offended eyes.
TWENTY-FIVE
Celebrations for a legend
AFTER THE BURIAL and the gun salutes, the procession returned to our street to witness the feast meant to celebrate the continuity of life, and the persistence of her myth.
We did not join in the funeral feast. We watched as seven cows and twelve goats, intended to celebrate her party’s victory in advance, celebrated her death.
