The Famished Road

by Ben Okri

  ‘I have been carrying the world on my head today.’

  Soon afterwards he fell asleep. He slept like a giant.

  14

  DAD WAS PRAYING over Mum’s body. There was a herbalist in the room. He looked very fierce and wise and stank of old leaves. He chewed on a root and his teeth were brown. He sprinkled the room with liquid from a half-calabash. There were candles on both sides of Mum’s body. She lay on the mat, breathing gently. Her eyelids shone with antimony. The corpse of a bat lay by her face. Razor incisions had been made on her shoulders and I watched the blood turn black as the herbalist smeared the cut with ash. The herbalist made her sit up and drink from a bowl of bitter liquid. Mum contorted her face. The herbalist began whipping the air, driving out unwanted spirits with his charmed flywhisk. The air crackled with their cries. When he had sealed our spaces with gnomic spells, he made Mum sit up again. Under our intense gaze, he bit Mum’s shoulder and pulled out a long needle and three cowries from her flesh. He went outside and buried them in the earth.

  When he had finished with his treatment Mum fell asleep, looking more peaceful than before. The herbalist and Dad haggled about money. Dad’s voice was strained and he kept pleading for the charges to be a little lower. The herbalist wouldn’t budge. Dad said it was all he had. The herbalist wouldn’t relent. Dad sighed, paid, and they sat talking. I hated the herbalist for taking so much money off Dad, and I cursed him. They talked as if they were friends and I hated him even more for pretending to be our friend. When he got up to leave he seemed to notice me for the first time. He stared hard at me and gave me a pound, which I gave to Dad. I took back my curse, and he left. I sat on Dad’s legs and we watched Mum sleeping soundly on the bed.

  Late in the afternoon Dad said he was thirsty. We went to the bar. Madame Koto’s establishment was empty except for the flies. I heard her singing in the backyard. Dad called her but she didn’t hear. We both called her, banging on the table, and still she couldn’t hear us. We were banging away at the table, calling her name, when the front door swung open and a black wind came in and circled us and disappeared into an earthenware pot of water.

  ‘Did you see that, Dad?’ I asked.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The black wind.’

  ‘No.’

  Madame Koto came in, her hair a mess, her hands covered in animal gore.

  ‘So it’s you two. I’m coming.’

  She went back out and minutes later was back, her hands clean, her hair in place.

  ‘What do you want to drink?’

  Dad ordered the usual palm-wine and bushmeat peppersoup. When the wine was served the flies thickened around us. A wall-gecko watched us as we drank.

  ‘Look at that wall-gecko, Dad.’

  ‘Don’t mind it,’ he said without looking. ‘It’s our friend, watching over us.’

  The peppersoup was hotter than usual and I kept blowing to cool its fire.

  ‘Drink some water,’ Madame Koto said.

  ‘No, I don’t want water.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘The black wind went into it.’

  ‘What wind?’

  ‘Don’t mind him,’ Dad said.

  She eyed me suspiciously.

  ‘You have a strange son,’ she said, and sat across from us at the table.

  ‘And a good wife,’ Dad added. ‘I heard what you did. Thank you.’

  She ignored Dad’s gratitude. With her big eyes fixed on me, she said:

  ‘About this money you’re owing me …’

  ‘Me?’ I said.

  ‘Not you. Your father.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I’m not like the other people.’

  ‘What other people?’

  ‘The people you owe and who …’

  She stopped, looked at Dad, and then at me.

  ‘I will forget the money if you let your son come and sit in my bar now and again.’

  Dad looked at me.

  ‘Why?’ he asked.

  ‘Because he has good luck.’

  ‘What good luck? He has given us nothing but trouble.’

  ‘That’s because he is your son.’

  ‘I can’t agree. He is going to school.’

  ‘I don’t want to go to school,’ I said.

  ‘Shut up.’

  Madame Koto stared at Dad, her eyes brighter.

  ‘I will pay for him to go to school.’

  ‘I can pay for my own son,’ Dad replied proudly.

  ‘All right. I will forget the money. Just let him come and sit here for ten minutes every three days or so. That’s all.’

  ‘Do you want to turn him into a drunkard?’

  ‘His father is not a drunkard.’

  Dad looked at me. He looked at me with new eyes. The wall-gecko hadn’t moved. It watched us the whole time.

  ‘I will discuss it with his mother.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘But these people I owe money, what about them?’

  ‘What about them?’

  ‘You were going to tell me something.’

  ‘Didn’t your son tell you?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That they threw stones at your wife?’

  ‘Who? Who threw stones?’

  Madame Koto got up and fetched some more palm-wine.

  ‘I can’t tell you.’

  Dad turned to me, and he looked so fierce that before he asked me anything I told him who the people were and what had happened. He downed half a glass of palm-wine in one gulp, rubbed the spillings all over his sweating face, and stormed out of the bar without paying.

  By the time we got to our compound Dad had managed to whip himself up into a fantastic rage. We ran into one of the creditors who was just coming out of the toilet. Dad went straight up to him and without saying a single word he feinted with a right jab at the fellow’s face and punched him in the stomach. The creditor bent over, grunting, and Dad grabbed him round the waist and threw him, back first, on the ground. When Dad straightened, dusting his hands, he saw another creditor, whose son had stoned Mum on the head. The second creditor had witnessed the efficiency of Dad’s fury and had started to run. Dad chased after him, caught him, tripped him, helped him up, lifted the poor fellow on his shoulders, showed him to the sky, and tossed him on to a patch of mud.

  The first creditor, who had quickly recovered from his fall, came running towards us swinging high a burning firewood. Dad was delighted. He ducked the arc of the firewood, smashed the fellow in the stomach again and confused him with repeated left jabs to his face. Then with a cry that amazed everyone he floored the creditor with a right cross.

  The second creditor, covered in mud, came at Dad, swearing in three languages. Dad practised his right jabs on his nose till he began to bleed and then polished him off with a left hook. People had gathered. The second creditor was a motionless heap on the floor and the wives and relations of the fallen man crowded Dad. He kept hitting at the men, lashing out with both hands in wild swings, intent on entirely separating their heads from their bodies. The men were scared and in their fear they walked into Dad’s swinging punches. He knocked out three of them with his bad arm alone. The crowd was mesmerised by his prowess.

  ‘Boxer! Boxer!’ they chanted.

  The wives of the creditors pounced on Dad and scratched his face and went for his crotch and I heard him cry out. He managed to push them away. Then he ran. The women and children pursued Dad, who fled both from their rage and from his own fear of hurting them. When they couldn’t catch Dad they turned their anger on me and I fled screaming to Madame Koto’s place and hid behind the earthenware pot. The women and relatives shouted outside. They were too afraid of Madame Koto’s reputation to come in and disrupt her establishment. She heard their noises from the backyard and I saw her securing her wrapper tightly round her waist, in complete readiness for battle, as she strode towards them, shouting:

  ‘Yes, what do you people want? WINE OR WAR?’

  The pack of the
m scattered at Madame Koto’s terrifying advance. When they had retreated completely, I came out from behind the earthenware pot. Madame Koto smiled at me. Then she poured me a tumbler of palm-wine. I drank with the flies and, later, Dad, dodging among the shadows of the bushes, came and joined me on the bench. We drank till it was evening. When I got to my third tumbler of wine I noticed that the wall-gecko was still staring at us. It had a red stripe on its head. It never nodded and its eyes were like tiny beads of sapphire. When anyone else looked at the wall-gecko, it ran on.

  ‘What are you looking at?’ Dad asked.

  ‘Nothing,’ I said.

  When it got dark Dad sent me to the compound to see if Mum was still asleep. I was reluctant to go. He gave me a good piece of bushmeat and filled my little tumbler with wine and I drank it all down and he said:

  ‘Be the true son of your father.’

  I smiled drunkenly and went out of the bar. The bushpaths were quiet. Then I heard a cock crowing and the lively insects and the night birds clearing their voices for their chorus of nightsongs. I swayed and the world turned and everything became silent again. I passed a tree with a blue cloth dangling from a branch and I was about to take the cloth when a dog barked at me. I wasn’t scared. I felt, for some reason, that I knew the dog from somewhere. When the dog saw that I wasn’t afraid it backed away and trotted off into the forest and I followed its stiffened tail. Then I remembered Mum and continued with my journey to the compound. It was a perfectly straightforward path from Madame Koto’s bar to our house but the dog had confused me and all the paths had fractured. I followed one path and it led me into the forest. I followed it back and I arrived at a place I had never seen in my life before. All the houses were gigantic, the trees were small, the sky low, the air golden.

  I tried to get out of this place, but I didn’t know how. I took the path back to the forest but it led me deeper into that land. I stopped and it was quiet and I didn’t even hear the flies buzzing or the insects thrilling or birds twittering. The heat was different. Then I noticed that nothing in that strange place cast a shadow. The light of the red sun went right through everything. There was no wind. The air was still and cool. When I began walking again I didn’t hear my own footsteps. After a while I wasn’t afraid. In a way everything became familiar to me and I went on along the fractured paths. I walked for a long time. Then I saw a man coming towards me. He had white stripes on his face. His eyes were green. But when I looked at him properly something about him changed and I saw that his legs were unnaturally hairy and that his face was upside down on his neck. The features of his face were all scrambled up. His eyes were on his cheeks, his mouth was on his forehead, his chin was full of hair and his head was bald except for his beard, and I couldn’t make out his ears. I had to bend my head and twist my thinking to make sense of his features. I couldn’t understand how I had perceived him as normal the first time I saw him. He went past me without saying a word. The eyes at the back of his head watched me cautiously.

  I took another path to avoid him, but further down I saw him approaching. I went on trying to get away from him. It seemed we were caught in an invisible labyrinth. Each time I encountered him he seemed more intent on me. When I came to a grove of blue trees, I hid behind one of them. Inside the tree I heard loud and passionate voices as if from an important meeting. I took a path and to my shock I saw myself approaching. I stopped and the other person who was me said:

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What about you?’

  ‘What about me?’

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘Because I want to know.’

  ‘I am on a message.’

  ‘What message?’

  ‘To you.’

  ‘To me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What is the message?’

  ‘I was sent to tell you to go home.’

  ‘That’s what I am trying to do.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes, of course. Anyway, who sent you?’

  ‘Who do you think?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Our king.’

  ‘What king?’

  ‘The great king.’

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘What sort of question is that?’

  There was a pause. I looked hard at the riddle who stood before me. He stared hard at me too.

  ‘You look like me,’ I said.

  ‘It’s you who looks like me,’ he replied.

  Then as a suspicion of who he was began to dawn on me, he said:

  ‘Take that path there and you will be all right.’

  I looked where he was pointing and I saw the dog I had followed earlier. When I looked back at the other person who was me, he had gone. I followed the dog. We went down the path for some time. There were blue strips of cloth on the trees. The path narrowed, became tiny, and I felt I was walking on a wall. I had been keeping my eyes on the path, making sure I didn’t deviate from it, and I didn’t notice when we broke out of the forest. When I looked up I saw Madame Koto, resplendent in yellow, dressed as if for a party.

  ‘Where have you been?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said.

  She shook her head in mild exasperation and carried on to her destination. When she left I couldn’t find the dog anywhere, and I went on home.

  It had grown very dark. I got to our compound, hurried to our room, and found no one in. Mum wasn’t on the bed. The room was neat. The corners smelt of disinfectant. I left the room and wandered down the passages. No one seemed to be around. Then in the last room I heard all the concentrated noises of the compound, crowded into a single place. There was a lot of shouting. Dad’s voice kept rising above the din. When I looked into the room through a crack in the door, I saw the whole compound there, gathered in a boisterous meeting. There were no drinks on the table. On one side of the room there were the creditors and their relations. The two that Dad had beaten up were shouting at the back. One of them had a machete, the other a club. Between them and the centre table were the men and women of the compound. On the other side of the room were Mum and Dad and lots of children and the photographer, who was busy taking pictures. The landlord was the arbitrator. Every time the flash went the landlord stiffened into a pose. Dad was quiet and Mum looked well. One of the creditors said:

  ‘If you’re so strong why not become a boxer!’

  ‘I will,’ Dad replied.

  The other creditor said:

  ‘Why don’t you join the army, use your muscles, and get killed. It’s only here that you are strong.’

  The landlord held up his hand to command silence. The flash went. He stiffened. The creditors shouted about their money and their wounds. They sounded like children. Dad smiled. The landlord, amid flashes, gave his verdict. He fined Dad ten pounds, a hefty fine indeed. The creditors were jubilant. The landlord said Dad should pay his debts and the fine in one week or move out of the compound. Then, with the jubilant voices claiming the air, he went on to additionally fine Dad a bottle of ogogoro for the purposes of communal reconciliation. Dad said he had no money and that he would have to buy it on credit. The women of the compound laughed. The camera flashed. The landlord, in a moment of unusual magnanimity, offered to buy the ogogoro of reconciliation. The compound people cheered his wisdom. I sneaked away from the door, went to the housefront, and played with the other children on the sand.

  Not long afterwards I heard the compound voices emerge into the passage. I went to the backyard, washed my face and feet, and went to the room. Mum was bustling around as if she hadn’t been ill. Her face was a little flushed and her eyes were bright. Recovery had charged her spirit and regenerated her face. Dad sat on a chair, smoking. He looked happy. Food was spread out on the table. The wound on Dad’s head had healed, his bad hand no longer dangled.

  ‘Where have you been?’ he asked.


  Mum rushed to me and held me to her and I breathed in her body smells. It felt as if I had been away for days, as if I had wandered off into a phase of forgetfulness.

  ‘My son!’ Mum cried, her eyes unusually brilliant.

  Dad put out his cigarette and said:

  ‘You missed the compound meeting. They fined me. I got tired of waiting for you, so I came home. Your mother is well now. The gods have answered our prayers.’

  I held on to Mum. Dad continued:

  ‘Sit down and eat. From tomorrow, up till the time you begin school, you will go to Madame Koto’s bar. You will stay there a few minutes every day, eh.’

  I nodded. I washed my hands. We ate together and Dad kept plying me with choice bits of crayfish and chicken, while Mum carefully took out the bones from the spiky freshfish and fed me juicy morsels. The room was bright with their radiance. I felt strange. I had missed the important moment which had transformed the lights in our world.

  We finished eating and I took the plates to the backyard and washed them. On my way back I passed one of the creditors that Dad had beaten up. His face was bruised, ferocious, and cowardly. When he went past he gave me a secretive knock on the head. When I got to our room my eyes were watering. Mum and Dad were sitting together on the bed. Mum looked at me and said:

  ‘Look, our son is crying with happiness.’

  I smiled and the pain eased. I cleared the centre table, spread the mat, and stretched out. Dad went to his chair. The candle burned low and Mum lit another one. I watched the mystery of the flame. Mum arranged her provisions in a basin.

  ‘I’m going to start trading again,’ she said.

  Dad smiled.

  ‘My wife is a serious businesswoman,’ he said.

  Then he looked at me.

  ‘People think I will make a good boxer. A man across the street saw me when I beat up the creditors. He said he would introduce me to some trainers and managers. A good trainer. Free of charge.’

  He laughed. He punched the air and rocked backwards.

  ‘I will be a great boxer. People say there is money in boxing.’

  He hit out at the air again. He began to punch the candle flame, putting it out with each perfect execution, and relighting it.