by Ben Okri
‘And when it gets to the turn of the seven-headed spirit nothing will be able to save you.’
The men approached Dad more confidently. The women began to throw stones at him.
‘And if you somehow escape from the seven-headed spirit your companions will come themselves.’
They stoned Dad and caught him on the head. He stoned them back. But the men joined in and soon stones flew at him from many places in the darkness.
‘Prostitutes! Yam-breasted women of hell!’ Dad bellowed.
They began to stone me too. Dad picked up Madame Koto’s fallen signboard and used it as a shield. We edged backwards into the bar. When we were inside we locked the front door. The spirit came in through the shut door and pestered me to follow him. Dad piled up benches to keep the door securely shut. The spirit followed me everywhere, reminded me of promises that were not his business, pleading, threatening, with a head in front of me all the time, and another head talking always into my ear. The thugs stoned the door. I heard them run round to the back. Dad blew out all the lights. The men didn’t have the courage to come into the darkness. The spirit, luminous, its eyes blazing, wandered around in the darkness as if it had lost its sense of direction. Dad cursed. He said he was bleeding. The mosquitoes fed on us. We tried to remain still. I had no idea what would happen next. The spirit, slightly crazy, wandered about the bar, and went outside through one of the walls. Thunder boomed above. The spirit came rushing back in. Lightning cracked. The spirit, confused, staggered and turned in all directions. The rain began falling again. We heard someone creeping in through the back door. Dad threw something. A man screamed and ran out. There was a long silence. Then we heard the loud voice of Madame Koto at the front. She banged on the door. The thugs bolted to the backyard. The prostitutes rushed into the bar and lit the lamps and hurriedly ordered the place and took the benches away from behind the front door. The spirit came and sat next to me. The prostitutes opened the door and made excuses for it being shut, saying something about the ferocity of the rain, and Madame Koto, drenched, her face thunderous with rage, stepped into the bar. She shook herself like a great feathered bird and sent sprays of water everywhere. Dad sat still, blood dripping from his forehead on to the table. The spirit’s blue head watched the blood with radiant fascination. Madame Koto stared at us. She said nothing. It was clear she was making up her mind about us in some way. She went slowly up the bar. The spirit got up and followed her. The prostitutes cowered against the walls, faces pressed into the shadows. Dad stood up and said:
‘Madame Koto!’
She stopped walking. Water dripped from the bottom of her wrapper. The spirit went right through her. She shivered.
‘Madame Koto, your friends nearly killed me two days ago. I saw them here today. They fought me and stoned me. Your women stoned me as well. What are you going to do about it?’
She said nothing. She went on towards the counter. She walked through the spirit.
‘You are a wicked woman, a witch,’ Dad said in an even tone of voice. ‘And, because you don’t care about human beings terrible things will happen to you. Me and my son will never set foot here again.’
Madame Koto turned to look at Dad. She seemed surprised, but not curious, at the verbal attack. She looked at me. Her eyes could have turned me to wood. I think she became our enemy from that moment. She carried on walking. She disappeared into the backyard. Dad finished his drink, took me by the hand, and led me outside.
The thugs were gone. The rain poured on us and we didn’t notice. The forest was one watery darkness. The street had become a pond. The gutters overflowed. As we went the solid earth turned to mud and we waded through the slush that reached up to my knees. Dad said nothing. The steady falling of the rain silenced all human voices. The sky was very dark. As we neared home Dad said, chuckling:
‘We showed them pepper, didn’t we?’
‘Yes.’
‘That’s how to be a man.’
‘How?’
‘When people fight you, toughen up, study them, wait for the right time, and then fight them back. Fight them like a madman, like a wizard. Then they will respect you.’
I was shivering now. My teeth chattered. Dad strode on ahead of me. The rain ran down my back.
When we got home there was a candle lit, there was the smell of a new pot of soup, the room had been cleaned, it was warm, the door was open, but Mum wasn’t in. Dad changed into his towel and went and had a bath. When he came back I went and had one. By the time I got back Mum was sitting on the bed. On the table was a great bowl of steaming peppersoup. Mum looked fresh but lean. She had powder on her face and her eyes were bright. When I came in, my little towel wrapped round my waist, Mum smiled.
‘So you and your father have been fighting everybody, eh?’
I went over and sat on her lap.
‘Did they stone you too?’
‘Yes, but I dodged.’
Dad laughed. Mum rubbed oil over me. I combed my hair, and dressed. I fell asleep in Mum’s arms. Then I woke up suddenly. The light was different. There was a mosquito coil burning.
‘Have some peppersoup,’ Mum said.
I was now on the bed. I got up and finished what was left of the soup. It was hot and it made my mouth and head come alive. My eyes burned. Dad was on his three-legged chair.
‘I saw a spirit today,’ I said.
They both sat up.
‘What spirit?’
‘With three heads.’
‘Where?’
‘In Madame Koto’s bar.’
‘When?’
‘When we were fighting.’
Dad looked at me dubiously. Then slowly he sat back.
‘What was it like?’
‘It had three heads.’
‘What did it say?’
‘That I should follow it.’
‘Where?’
‘Where I came from.’
They both fell silent. Dad shut his eyes, rocked skilfully on the chair, and then he opened one eye and regarded me.
‘It’s time for you to sleep.’
I said nothing.
‘So they would have killed me and all you would have told people is that you saw a spirit, eh?’
‘No,’ I said.
‘Go to sleep.’
I began to spread my mat.
‘Sleep on the bed.’
I climbed on to the bed. Mum cleared the table and spread the mat.
‘If a spirit calls you,’ Mum said, ‘don’t go, you hear? Think of us. Think of your father who suffers every day to feed us. And think of me who carried you in my womb for more than nine months and who walks all the streets because of you.’
‘Yes, think of us,’ Dad added.
I nodded.
‘And’, Dad said, sternly, ‘from now on Madame Koto is our enemy. Azaro, if I see you go there again, I will flog you and put pepper in your eyes, you hear?’
‘Yes, Dad.’
‘She is a witch, a wicked woman. That’s why she has no children.’
‘But she is pregnant,’ I said.
‘How do you know?’
‘Someone said so.’
‘Shut up. And don’t listen to what people say. Is she pregnant for you?’
‘No.’
‘Then shut up and don’t answer me back when I’m talking to you.’
‘Yes, Dad.’
I turned away from him and faced the wall so as not to see his frightening expression. Besides I feared that if I looked at him it might make him angry and he might pounce on me. He muttered and cursed for a while. He abused the thugs, the party, his job, the colonialists, the landlord, and the rain. His temper, feeding on itself, grew worse. He abused Madame Koto and wondered aloud whether he should burn down her bar. At that point Mum put out the candle. I heard her shifting on the mat. Dad went on cursing in the dark.
8
ONE MOMENT I was in the room and the next moment I found myself wandering the night roads. I had no ide
a how I had gotten outside. I walked on the dissolving streets and among the terrestrial bushes. The air was full of riddles. I walked through books and months and forgotten histories. I was following a beautiful woman with a blue head. She moved in cadenzas of golden light. She floated on the wind of a royal serenity. Superimposed on distant plangency of Mum praying in the dark, the woman turned and beckoned me. I followed her smile and listened to the fugal birds. She drew my spirit on to fountains of light and lilac music and abiku variations. The air was faintly scented with resinous smoke and incense, flavoured with the fruit of guavas and cherries and crushed pineapples. I walked behind the woman for a long time, walking to the tunes of alto voices beneath cypress trees. I heard someone call my name from a heavier world, but I went on walking. Beyond the hair of the beautiful woman there was a landscape with luminous flying-machines, gardens brilliant with passionflowers and cana-lilies.
My name sounded heavier. The woman urged me on. Her face, gentle in the light of a dreaming nebula, promised the ecstasies of a secret homeland, a world of holidays. A rough, familiar hand touched me on the shoulder.
‘Where are you going, Azaro?’
It was Mum.
‘That woman told me to follow her.’
‘What woman?’
I pointed at the woman whose smile was forever in bloom, whose hair was blue, and who was disappearing amongst the pomegranate trees and the chorale of roses. Her head became a solitary cloud.
‘There is no one there,’ Mum said.
‘Yes there is.’
‘I’m taking you home.’
I said nothing. She lifted me on to her shoulder. I could still see the head of the woman. I could still hear the voices in passionate gardens, could still hear their sunflower cantatas. I saw delicious girls dancing tarantellas in fields of comets. The woman’s head turned to give me a last smile before she vanished altogether in a Milky Way of music. The air became void of riddles. I heard the last notes of a flute adagio floating across a lake of green mirrors. Mum took me home over the mud and wreckage of the street, over the mild deluge, under an arpeggio of watery stars. She was silent. I smelt the gutters and the rude plaster of the corroded houses. Then all I was left with was a world drowning in poverty, a mother-of-pearl moon, and the long darkness before dawn.
BOOK FIVE
1
THE RAIN GOD was merciless for two weeks. It rained so much that the sky seemed to have become as inexhaustible with water as the seas. At night water leaked through our ceiling, which we soon discovered was full of holes. Mum had to sacrifice her basins and pots used for cooking to catch the water that dripped down. In our room there were so many containers that it became almost impossible to move about. Some of them were near the bed, some in the middle of the room, some on the cupboard. We had to move the clothes-line and Dad’s boots. One night as I slept the rain dripped on my head: it seemed the rain was corrosive and ate through new places in the zinc roof. I had to move my mat. Sometimes it rained so much that the containers filled up and overflowed, and the floor covered in water. The first time that happened I woke up thinking I had wet the mat. My amazement bordered on horror when I thought I had pissed so much in my sleep. I got up and quietly tried to clean the urine. Mum woke up. I felt ashamed. Then, I realised the trick the rain god was playing on me.
The rain swept down so badly that I could no longer sleep on the floor and had to share the single bed with my parents. When more holes opened above us we had to keep moving the bed round the room. It got so awful that we couldn’t find a place that wasn’t leaking. We ended up settling for having the water drip on our feet. Dad complained to the landlord, but he merely threatened to increase the rent further if he fixed the roof. We couldn’t afford the rent as it stood so we had no choice but to settle for being soaked through at night.
Sometimes in the morning we would wake up and find slugs, worms, and millipedes crawling about the room. Little snails appeared on our walls. In the containers we found tiny fishes. Dad was convinced that an enemy was trying to poison us. He became suspicious of the whole compound and warned me not to take anyone’s food or play with their children. We became quite lonely.
The rains made the days short. I was ill a lot of the time. At first Mum went hawking with polythene over her basin of provisions. But as the weather got worse she stayed at home and she made very little money. Dad returned in the evenings covered in mud, his clothes stinking, his eyes mad. He developed livid cuts and boils all over his body. His feet became raw and twisted. It was a rough time for load-carriers.
Our street turned into one big stream. Water flooded into our rooms from the gutters. Sometimes it rained so much the compound began to stink because of the water that flowed past the pail latrine. During that time children fell ill, and many people caught strange diseases and had to be rushed home to their villages for special herbal treatments. Those who could afford it built little cement dams in front of their rooms to stop the bad waters going in. The rest of us sat helpless in our rooms and watched the water rise. I was cold most of the time. When Mum got back from her restricted hawking she would bathe and change clothes and sit on the bed, huddled up, her teeth chattering. With the steady drone of rain around us, there was little to say. The noise of the falling rain penetrated our bones, our silences, and our dreams. Dad’s face took on a watery quality. Sometimes when Mum came back from hawking, with earthworms clinging to her ankles, and rain pouring down her face, I couldn’t be sure whether she was weeping or not.
I continued to attend school in the mornings. My exercise books got soaked, the ink ran, and I was flogged all the time. Our improvised school-building, of mud and cement, roofless and low-walled, crumbled in the rain. Plants grew wild in our classrooms. Snakes slithered in to our hygiene lessons. And when the rain got too much we held our classes under the eaves of nearby buildings.
On my way back from school one day it was raining heavily. I passed Madame Koto’s bar. A lot of cars were parked outside. Through the curtains I made out women with red lips and painted faces, men in bright clothes. I didn’t see Madame Koto. As I passed the bar there was a flash in the sky. It broke over me, and I ran. I fled towards the forest, but the wind was strong. It lifted me up and flung me to the ground. I got up, stunned. At that moment I heard a terrible groan. Then a tree fell in slow motion, as if in a dream, and collapsed on several other trees. Branches and leaves blocked off the road behind me. I ran towards the lightning flash. I ran on water. Stones chafed the soles of my feet. The rain whipped my face. Feeling that I couldn’t go much further, my lungs bursting, I ran under the eaves of a house near us. It was only when I was there, shivering, temporarily free from the violence of the weather, that I realised I had run right into the territory of the old man who had been blinded by a passing angel.
He too was on the verandah, sitting in a chair, his face turned towards me, his eyes green and half-dissolved. He was smoking a pipe. He wore a hat. When I saw him I was scared. I was about to run out and brave the lightning, when he said:
‘Don’t go, boy.’
His voice was both gentle and frightening in the rain.
‘Why not?’ I asked, trembling.
He knocked his pipe against the chair, and gave me a sinister smile. His eyes moved oddly.
‘Because’, he said, ‘if you don’t listen to me, and if you go, you will drown in a pit. Snakes will crawl into your mouth.’
The wind sprayed my face.
‘Come here,’ he said.
‘Why?’
‘I want to see with your eyes.’
I wanted to run.
‘Don’t move!’ he commanded.
I froze. My limbs were numb. I was rooted. I couldn’t move. The old man laughed. His teeth were more or less brown and his mouth was like a wound.
‘COME HERE!’ he commanded again.
I stayed still. The wind rose again and hurled a fine spray of rain at us. After a while, I felt myself moving. Something in me moved. I
resisted. But the wind was stronger. The blind old man laughed as I struggled. I discovered that the wind had divided me, had separated me from myself. I felt an inner self floating towards the blind old man. Or was it that the blind old man was floating into me, invading my consciousness? I wasn’t sure.
The wind stopped. The rain fell in silence. Everything went dark. I tried to blink, but couldn’t. As if I had woken into a nightmare, thick green substances passed over my eyes. They settled. Gradually, my eyes cleared. When I looked out at the world again, what I saw made me scream. Everything was upside-down. The world was small. Trees were like slow-moving giants. The rain was a perpetual nightfall, and night a perpetual rain. The earth was full of craters. It kept moving as if it were a monster fretting in sleep. The spaces between things were populated with the most horrifying spirits I have ever seen. They had wounds all over them which dripped pus. When they talked green spit poured from their mouths. I screamed. My eyes caught fire. Then the smile of the boy-king appeared to me and vanished, cooling my sight. I heard shrieking witches confessing their evils. The monster that was the earth opened its gaping mouth and out sprang a big yellow animal with blazing ruby eyes and long claws. It leapt into my eyes, and I fell back. A savage wind blew in my head. My eyes heated up again, and I thought they would combust. Then blackness came over me.
When I opened my eyes I found myself still standing. The rain poured on my face. Behind me the blind old man had fallen off his chair. He clawed the air with his crooked fingers. His pipe was on the ground. His hat was in the rain. And in the hat, brilliant against the brown felt, was a big white cat. It was a beautiful cat with gnomic eyes. When I moved the cat leapt. In an instant, it disappeared. The blind old man called for help. A door opened. Two women came out. They saw the old man twisting on the wet ground, his mouth open, choking. They saw me standing there. They made strange connections between us. They shouted. I fled out into the malevolent weather. They did not follow.
The rain hurt my skin, but I ran without stopping. As I ran, I saw a future history in advance, compacted into a moment. I saw an unfinished house crumble under the force of the rain. And then all that was left were metal rods sticking out of the watery earth. It happened so fast I was convinced I was still seeing the world through the blind old man’s eyes.
