by Ben Okri
On those nights Dad had the best sparring partners. He fought the wind, the midges, and the mosquitoes that rose from their millions of larvae all over the swamp of the road. I would wake at night and be aware immediately that he wasn’t in the room. It was the absence of his restless energy. I would rise, tiptoe out of the room, and go to the housefront. Like a hero of the night, alone, invincible, and always battling, Dad boxed all over the grounds. He always fought several imaginary foes, as if the whole world were against him. He fought these foes unceasingly and he always knocked them out. When they had hit the floor he would throw up his arms triumphantly. For me, then, he was the king of the ghetto nights. I would watch him for a long time. The night became safer for me. And while he trained I would wander our road. When he was around the night turned everything familiar into another country, another world. What a new place the night made the ghetto! The houses were still. There were no lights anywhere. The forest was a mass of darkness, a deep blue darkness, deeper than the surrounding night. The houses, the trees, the bushes, made of our road a curious mountain range. The houses were humped like sleeping monsters in the dark. Isolated trees were a cluster of giants with wild hair, sleeping on their feet. And the road was no longer a road but the original river. Majestically it unfolded itself in the darkness, one step at a time. It was when I wandered the road at night that I first became aware that sometimes I disappeared. At first it frightened me. I would be walking along, never able to see far, and then I would pass into the darkness. I would begin to look for myself. I became a dark ghost. The wind passed through me. But when I kicked a stone, or tripped, or when a light shone on me, I would become miraculously reconstituted. I would hurry back to our housefront, where Dad was still training, unaware of my presence.
He seemed so solid on those nights. The darkness became his cloak and friend. His eyes burned bright. He talked to the wind and his voice was powerful; it had weight, it was the voice of a new man. When he had finished his training he would skip and shuffle about in fascinating footworks, calling himself Black Tyger. The name began to fit. I never saw him so radiant and so strong as when he practised at night. And it was through his night training that his name began to spread. When he shadow-boxed he began to attract strange kinds of attention. I was watching him one night, with mosquitoes swarming all over me, when I saw a single light come down the road and stop not far from him. The light was by itself. It was smaller than a matchlight, but it stayed there and watched Dad box with the darkness. As time passed the number of lights that watched him increased. One day I counted three of them.
‘Dad, there are three lights watching you,’ I said.
‘What?’
He was startled to hear my voice. I guess it was the first time he realised that I was there.
‘What lights?’
I showed them to him, but he couldn’t see them.
‘It’s your eyes,’ he said, and went on with his boxing.
The lights watched him till he finished. They didn’t move. The wind had no effect on them whatsoever. When we went in I looked back. They were still there.
On another night Dad was training with a peculiar ferocity when I saw a bright yellow pair of eyes come from over the swamp. It stopped not far from Dad and watched his moves. Dad ducked, shuffled sideways, switched from an anchor punch to a right cross, from an upper cut to a hook punch and ended with a jab. I saw the eyes following him. The eyes studied him as he changed from orthodox to southpaw stances. I went over to the yellow pair of eyes and found nothing there. I went back to where I had been sitting and the eyes reappeared. They stayed watching Dad till he finished for the night. We left, I stole back, and the eyes were gone.
An unusual thing happened the next night that I stayed up watching Dad. The lights turned up, one by one, as if they had a meeting, as if they were forming an earthly constellation. Then the yellow eyes came over from the swamp. And when Dad was taking a short break after the night’s first session, a huge man stepped out of the darkness. He was too big for me not to have heard his footsteps. It seemed he had stepped out of nowhere, out of a different space. I couldn’t see his eyes.
‘Who are you?’ he asked Dad.
Dad sized him up.
‘My name is Black Tyger,’ Dad said, fearlessly.
‘Good.’
‘And who are you?’ Dad asked in return.
The man chuckled.
‘They used to call me Yellow Jaguar,’ the man replied.
‘Good.’
‘So you will fight me?’
‘Yes,’ Dad said.
The man chuckled again.
‘Your fame is beginning to travel. But I will put an end to it.’
‘Don’t talk too much,’ Dad said, taking up a southpaw stance.
It worried me that I couldn’t see the man’s eyes. The two men circled one another. Dad lashed out at him and the man grunted. Dad hit him again on the face and this time Dad cried out.
‘You’re like wood!’ Dad said.
‘Now you’re talking,’ the man said, and struck Dad in the face.
Dad fell, rolled over, and landed in a puddle. The man waited for him. I still couldn’t see his face. Dad got up slowly, his head hanging. Suddenly he rushed the man. The three lights dispersed at the assault. Then I noticed that many other lights of different colours had appeared. The two men fell in another puddle. They picked themselves up. Dad hit the man with all his might. The man grunted again and Dad cried out.
‘You’re like a tree!’
The man launched a barrage of punches at Dad. And I saw Dad ducking, parrying, shuffling, blocking with his elbows, bobbing and weaving, but he didn’t give way, or give ground. Then Dad, planting his feet solidly, let out a continuous animal cry, a wounded cry, and unleashed an onslaught of wild blows. He rained them down on the man. He released a veritable hurricane of combinations, of swinging punches, wild hooks, vicious crosses, crackling upper cuts. I saw the man rush backwards, I saw his head lower, his arms helpless. Dad didn’t stop his cry till he had beaten the man into the swamp. My spirits lifted with pride. And then the darkness, seeming to rise thicker from the swamp, covered them both. There was silence. I waited. I heard nothing. I saw nothing. Then after a while I heard feet tramping through mud. Dad emerged and slouched towards me.
‘Where is the man?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know,’ Dad said, his voice heavy with exhaustion. ‘He disappeared in the swamp.’
And then I heard someone kicking in the mud. Then a mighty voice, speaking with the power of the darkness, rose and said:
‘I have just started!’
And the man, all thunder and density, came rushing back into the fight. As he pounded towards Dad, emerging from the darkness, two things struck me about him: he was covered completely in mud, and his eyes burned yellow. He descended on Dad like a whirlwind, a mistral, a tornado. He shattered Dad’s defences. He anticipated Dad’s every movement. And he knocked Dad about the place, cutting him down with swift punches and combinations, merciless blows, blinding and accurate counter-punches. Dad fell under the savage assault like a puppet. The man had become a ferocious energy, an unnatural force of nature, a storm. Like the five fingers of lightning over the forest, he appeared everywhere at the same time.
‘Your eyes are too bright!’ cried Dad.
And then I realised that the yellow pair of eyes had joined on to the man.
‘I am a mad Jaguar!’ the man boasted, and poured a frightening torrent of blows on Dad.
The man went on beating Dad, pulverising him, crushing him with an avalanche of ceaseless punches. I could see Dad falling around in exhaustion and bewilderment. There was a terrified and cowardly look in his eyes. Blood poured down the sides of his nose and the corners of his eyes. Dad was taking a cruel beating but he didn’t turn around and run. He took the blows. He absorbed them. He withstood them. He soaked them into his body and spirit. I heard the wrenching of his neck. I heard the rattle of his teeth when
ever the man’s knuckles connected with them. I heard the grinding crunch of fists on bone. Dad cried out and groaned. And then he cowered. With his fists barely held up, Dad bent low, as if he were grovelling. The man towered over him, his yellow eyes steaming in the darkness. And then Dad crouched. He made the movements of a trapped wild animal. Then, slowly, he moved this way and that, swaying, hands in front of him like a praying mantis. Then I saw how Dad was transforming. He was going back to simple things. He was going back to water, to the earth, to the road, to soft things. He shuffled. He became fluid. He moved like a large cat. Sliding backwards, he entered into the midst of the gathered arabesque of lights. I felt a great strange energy rising from him. He was drawing it from the night, and the air, the road, his friends. The man closed in on him and Dad went on dancing backwards, shuffling, floating on his agonies, into the darkness. The lights followed him. And when his back hit the body of the burnt, rusting van, Dad stopped. He had nowhere else to go. Then suddenly, and I don’t know why, and it may be one of those riddles of the Living that only the Living understand, suddenly, I cried out. My voice, sounding a moment after I had uttered the words, floated on the wind. My voice sounded too thin and frail for what it helped unleash.
‘Black Tyger, USE YOUR POWER!’ I cried.
And Dad, dead on cue, utterly surprised the man with the unrestrained and desperate fury of his own counter-attack. Dad rose miraculously in stature. And with all the concentrated rage and insanity of those who have a single moment in which to choose between living and dying, Dad broke the chains of his exhaustion and thundered such blows on the man as would annihilate an entire race of giants. I don’t know if it was the sheer monstrous accumulation of all the blows and punches, the howitzer combinations, or if it was just one that connected with the right place, but suddenly, amidst the blur of Dad’s madness, the man let out a terrified howl. He staggered backwards. Dad followed him, baffled, arms raised. Then the man stood straight and still, his bright yellow eyes askew. The wind sighed above his head. The yellow eyes dimmed. Then they shut. When his eyes closed it became darker all around, as if a mysterious lamp had been blown out. Then like a tree that had waited a long time after its death to fall, the man keeled over slowly. And when he hit the earth with an unnatural thud, the strangest thing happened. The man disappeared. Into the earth. Into the darkness. I have no way of telling. Steam, tinged with yellow, like low-burning sulphur, rose from the wet earth. The gathered lights had all gone. The night was silent. And then a hyena laughed in the forest. We looked for the man in the dark, but couldn’t find him. Dad was mystified, crushed with exhaustion.
‘What happened?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know,’ he whispered.
We waited. The wind moaned over the sleeping ghetto. Branches creaked. We felt around on the earth and then I came upon a hole. Dad went in and fetched a match. It wasn’t a hole, but the full imprint of a grown man on the ground, as if he had fallen a long way. Dad was covered in mud and blood. His mouth had been beaten out of shape and his lips had grown monstrous in a short space of time. His nose was all cut up and the swellings on his forehead frightened me. Blood drooled from the cut near his eyes and from the corner of his mouth.
I began to feel cold.
‘What was his name again?’ Dad asked, blowing out the match.
‘Yellow Jaguar,’ I said.
Dad gripped me in a sudden horrifying realisation.
‘Yellow Jaguar used to be a famous boxer in this area,’ he said, lowering his voice fearfully.
‘What happened to him?’
‘He died three years ago.’
A shiver ran through my bones. I heard the wind draw a breath. Dad had beaten a boxer from the spirit world. He trembled. Then he held on to me, as if for support. I could feel him quaking.
‘It’s cold,’ I said.
‘Let’s go in,’ he said, hurriedly.
Then he lifted me up, ran back into the compound, and into our room. He locked the door. He sat on his chair. In the darkness we listened to Mum sleeping on the bed. Dad lit a cigarette. He smoked, his eyes blazing. I could smell the mud, the sweat, the fight, the excitement, the terror, and the blood on him. I could smell the fists of Yellow Jaguar on his spirit. I could smell Dad’s rebirth in advance. Sulphur stank on his breath. It was a mystery. When he finished his cigarette he went and had a wash. He came back and swiftly got into bed. I heard him tossing, turning, and creaking his body all night. He couldn’t sleep for thinking about the dead boxer. And neither could I.
3
DAD STAYED AT home for six days after the fight. His bruises got very big, his eyes swelled to extraordinarily bulbous proportions, and his lower lip grew larger than a misshapen mango. He wasn’t ill, but he wasn’t well either. He lingered in a curious state of shock, between agony and amnesia. He was silent the whole time and his eyes were vacant. Occasionally he would give me a concussive smile, an idiotic wink. We had to feed him pap, as if he were the biggest newborn baby in the world. He slept for long hours, day and night. He slept like a baby. He grinned like one every now and then. He howled like one. And he sometimes even betrayed the curious state of genius that only babies and certain madmen have. For a time he lost control of his limbs and he jerked constantly on the bed. He drooled and farted indiscriminately. He made funny faces and twiddled his great big fingers like a horrible buffoon. I expected his wounds and bruises to reveal the full extent of the beating he had taken. But the bruises proved short-lived, the swellings were not alarming, the growth of his bulbous eyes ceased, and his wounds didn’t bleed after a while. The true extent of the beating was not visible and that is what worried me. I watched him kicking on the bed like a beetle or an upturned cockroach, as if he had found a new freedom to be an insect, to enter into other states of being not permitted to adults. He would be morose for hours and then suddenly delirious and idiotic. Our poor relations came to see us. They had heard what transformations had come over him, but no one could find an explanation for his condition, nor understand what had happened. All they could offer were the usual litany of stories about the hundreds of strange cases they had picked up over the years of consoling themselves on the miseries of others. We kept the business of Dad’s having fought a dead man to ourselves. During those three days the house was crowded with visitors and well-wishers. Dad’s cart-pulling, load-carrying colleagues came and they brought gifts and sat around, drinking in silence. Even the landlord came to see us briefly. He hoped, he said, that Dad had learned his lesson, and that when he recovered he would give up destroying his walls. He brought no gifts and didn’t even notice Dad’s condition, or the mood of the house. Everyone else felt it. Visitors were silenced by Dad’s deliriums and baby-talks, his flatulence, and vacancy, his inability to recognise people, his fits of playfulness. He seemed very tragic in his grotesque condition of an adult trapped in the consciousness of a child. The mood in the room was sad. It was as if an elephant was dying. No one wanted to see how monstrously comical Dad was in his condition. If I had said that a fully grown man, bearded and big-chested, married and with a son, was being born as certain huge animals are born, I would probably have been chastised by all the grownups around.
On the day that Dad’s bruises began to take on strange colours, Madame Koto paid us a visit. She too had heard of Dad’s condition. When she entered the room everyone fell silent. This also included those who didn’t even know who she was. She sat on Dad’s three-legged chair. She looked at everyone and everyone avoided looking at her. She had changed. Her face had become big and a little ugly. Her foot had swollen and was wrapped in filthy bandages. There was a patch of rough darkened skin on her face which made her expressions sinister. She had become more severe, more remote, more powerful. Her perfume filled the room and her expensive clothes illuminated everyone’s poverty. Her stomach was bigger. Her eyes were fierce and disdainful. Outside the room there were two men who had come with her. They looked like thugs, paid protectors. Mum invited them in a
nd they stood in the doorway, blocking most of the light. One of them held a bundle under his arm.
For a long moment Madame Koto did not speak. Then, jabbing Dad on the shoulder with her stubby fingers, she asked:
‘What happened to you?’
Dad stared at her without recognition. She jabbed him again. He made insect-noises. She turned to me. Then she looked round the room. She drew up straight on the chair.
‘So nobody wants to talk to me, eh?’ she said, suddenly. ‘What wrong have I done anybody that you all keep quiet when I come in, eh? Have I stolen your money? Did I burn down your houses? Am I your landlord?’
There was a pause. Then:
‘You too proud,’ someone ventured.
‘And you support that party,’ said another.
There was another pause. No one said anything. The silence waited for her reaction. It didn’t have to wait very long.
‘You are all jealous!’ she said. ‘And none of you can touch me.’
She stood up. She began to gesticulate, waving her arms about, but Dad made noises from the bed. Madame Koto restrained herself. She rearranged her wrapper, a clear sign that she had put up with enough and was now leaving. She made her exit address to Dad.
‘I heard you were ill and I came to see you. We are all human beings. We are neighbours. Your son helped me. I brought some gifts for you. I have no quarrel with you. This earth is too small for people to forget that we are all human beings. As for these other people who keep quiet whenever I come into the room, they will see what I am made of, they will find out what I am.’
