by Ben Okri
‘Didn’t your mother ever take you with her, eh?’ dad asked.
‘No,’ I replied.
We searched further. We wandered into the dreams lurking in all the sand-whorls, our faces dehydrated, our throats dry like leather, our eyes clogged with dust. After a long time, his voice humbler, deep with shame, dad said:
‘I didn’t know that your mother walked so much every day. Why didn’t she ever tell me that she suffered so much to sell so little, eh?’
I didn’t say anything. I don’t think he really expected an answer. After we had been conquered by fatigue, and had worn out our soles searching, we went to a kiosk and dad bought some beans and soft drinks. He had finished eating when he remembered his promise not to eat or sleep till mum forgave him, and he tried to spit out the food but it had gone inside and I was a little ashamed of him, but I ate and drank because I had made no such promises and because my eyes were throbbing and red with hunger.
We went on searching for mum through the vengeful burnished fury of the ghetto sun. By the late afternoon dad’s face was somewhat bony and darkened. Green veins were visible on his neck and forehead. His eyes were delirious. I had begun to sleepwalk in exhaustion. Dad carried me and went from house to house, describing mum to complete strangers, asking carpenters and brick-layers if they had seen a hawker like mum, and some said they had and pointed us in directions that led to creeks and clay villages; and we spent the worst part of the afternoon, when the sun most tormented the earth, wandering in dad’s frantic and heroic sadness. And when evening came, when dad began to hallucinate that he was seeing mum everywhere, I said:
‘Let’s go home.’
Dad took us back, staggering, tripping, his head bowed, as if the sadness in his mind weighed more than the monstrous loads he carried at work. When we got near our place dad put me down, saying that he could no longer bear my weight. The dust of the world rushed into my eyes. The bad smells of the street, more intense at my height, crowded my nostrils. Everything I saw drew my spirit away from the world: the poverty and the cracked huts, the naked children with sores and the young women who had accelerated in ageing, the men with raw faces and angry eyes. Dad, with his head bowed, like a giant destroyed by the sun, released a profound sigh.
We had started shuffling towards home when we heard a mocking cackle of laughter behind us. I turned and saw the old man who had been blinded by a passing angel. He had two helpers with him. He wore an ill-fitting green suit, a red cravat and a black hat. He tapped dad on the head with his walking stick. In his cracked funeral voice, he said:
‘It is terrible to care too much.’
Dad stared at him in bewilderment. The blind old man, releasing another cackle of laughter that made my eyes twitch, went on to say:
‘If you look too deeply everything breaks your heart.’
Then he was silent. Dad grabbed the old man’s cane.
‘What do you mean by that remark?’ dad wanted to know.
‘Your wife is working for Madame Koto,’ he said, and laughed again.
Dad let go of the cane. The old man brusquely signalled his helpers, and they led him up the street, towards the main road.
‘He’s talking rubbish,’ dad said.
We went home silently. And when we got to our room, with the door still open, we beheld a miraculous sight. The whole place shimmered with cleanliness. The floor had been swept, the walls scrubbed, the bed made with new sheets, the cupboard crammed with food. There was a whole bottle of ogogoro on the table. Fresh stew, excellent pounded yam and choice pieces of fried meat had been prepared. There were new cooking utensils next to the cupboard. There were new curtains over our window. The air, laced with the aroma of incense, smelt wonderfully ventilated and cool. At first we thought we had walked into someone else’s room. Then we thought we had wandered into a dream. And then we saw dad’s three-legged chair. Dad sat, and looked around in astonishment.
‘Maybe a good spirit is helping us,’ I said.
8
PARABLE OF THE PEACOCK
LATE IN THE evening, after we had rested, we went to Madame Koto’s bar to see if mum was there. The bar had undergone another of its fabulous mutations. The walls outside had been freshly re-painted in the colours of blue and yellow. An extension was being constructed at the side nearest the bushes. The bar was encircled with multicoloured bulbs. There was a bigger signboard, and it was brilliantly lit. Madame Koto had transformed her bar into an almost magical enclave.
Inside, it was crowded with women. They bustled everywhere with large cooking utensils. They were dressed as if for a feast or a celebration. Madame Koto, who was no longer seen by the inhabitants of the area, who had now become so powerful that all we knew about her were the legends we invented, had completely entered the realm of myths. She was a colossus in our dreams; her power over us became demonic. Every day was a celebration in her bar – a celebration of power, an affirmation of her legend.
The women, wearing identical wrappers and blouses, were resplendent in their jewels and bangles and amulets. They were mostly mighty women with enormous breasts and eyes that were frightening in their invulnerable stare. They were busy around the barfront, milling about with tables and folding chairs. Their perfume was delicious to the nostrils and they bore themselves proudly, like a select people, or like members of a royal household.
When dad tried to go into the bar, they wouldn’t let him.
‘I have come to look for my wife!’ he said.
‘Go and find a wife somewhere else,’ one of the women replied, stirring laughter amongst the others.
Music started up inside and when we looked through the new curtains of gold and green strips we saw men and women dancing. We saw tables with shining red tops. We saw cages with long-beaked birds pecking away at the wooden frames. Dad kept trying to get in, and the women kept pushing him away. Dad pleaded with them, he said his wife had disappeared. The women replied that it was men like him who made such things happen to their wives.
I went to the backyard. Women swarmed everywhere, busy with what I gathered were the preparations for the great rally. Madame Koto had built a proper kitchen and the rich aroma of stews and roasted chicken hung densely in the night air. I passed the back door and saw a woman who looked just like mum wearing a gold-tricked wrapper and a green blouse. She was dancing with a man who had a bullet-shaped head, a thick neck and a lion-capped walking stick.
‘Mum!’ I cried.
But the music was too loud for her to hear me. She flashed smiles in all directions, red lipstick burning her face, her arms loaded with bangles. I tried to get in, but the solid wall of women’s bodies prevented me. I hurried to the front of the compound and saw dad sitting on the steps.
‘There is someone like mum in there,’ I told him.
He stared at me with dull eyes. He didn’t move. I sat beside him and listened to the parrots squawking above the music. Three peacocks, their tails dazzling like rainbows, sauntered past and stared at us. Dad looked at the peacocks. One of them took a sinister interest in me. I threw a little stone at it, and missed.
‘Leave it alone,’ dad said.
The peacock scurried away and came back, leading the rest. It had silver-tinted eyes whose colours kept changing. Looking at me curiously, it came over and pecked at my foot, drawing blood.
‘That peacock is a witch,’ I cried, knocking it away.
The peacock spread its wings and released a startling, almost human cry. The women in the bar came running out. Some of them went after the peacock, caught it, and began to say soothing words to the bird as if it were a special being. The other women towered over me and asked what I had been doing to the peacock. I showed them what it had done to me. One of the women knocked me on the head and dad regarded her with dull, menacing eyes. The woman tried to hit me again, but I clung to her leg and bit her and she fell over. The others came after me and I gave them the slip. Having no choice, I ran into the bar, into the smells of sacrificial bloo
d and ritual herbs, the juices and rich potencies of bark and earth. At first I was entirely confused by the parrots noisy in their cages, the chained monkey jabbering away, and the demonic music. Wherever I turned a peacock spread its shimmering wings in my face. Wherever I looked women were passing away into empty spaces. I nearly ran into a blue mirror at the back of the bar. On the ledge, over the mirror, I noticed the shell of a tortoise. The constant movement of women pressed me against the wall. Something slid down my face. I yelled. I turned and saw snails on the wall. One of them dropped on my foot, and broke its shell on the floor. Blue water flowed out of its fragmentation.
Looking for the face of my mother, I struggled through the bodies. Women danced as if in a heated trance. Women sang quivering political songs that spoke of the new era of money and power. I couldn’t get very far, so I retreated behind the counter. I climbed on a chair and surveyed the revelling. Suddenly, the music stopped. The parrots began squawking again. The tortoise on the ledge moved. The chief peacock strode into the bar and everyone made way for it. The peacock strutted all around the bar and came over to where I stood and stared up at me. Then a loud voice said:
‘What is that boy doing here? Grab him!’
The women moved towards me. I got down from the chair and the peacock pecked me again on the thigh, drawing blood a second time. I lashed at the peacock and it fell against the mirror and all the voices cried out in horror as if I had committed a monstrous crime in broad daylight. Faced with the angry wave of bodies rushing towards me, I fled into the darkest corner of the room, behind the counter. A white cloth hung over a newly constructed alcove. I ran behind the cloth and something knocked the lights out of my head. When I came to a moment later I found myself in the presence of an enormous woman seated on a black chair. She had red sunglasses on her alabaster face, a yellow cape on her shoulders, a large fan of eagle feathers in one hand, a flywhisk in the other. The voices had stopped behind me.
The woman was perfectly still and exuded a presence both menacing and ancient. For a moment I was transfixed by the snails crawling up her face. Then the monkey broke into its erratic jabbering. The peacock came flapping into the corner and the red sunglasses fell off the woman’s face. Instead of eyes I saw two red stones in her sockets. When the women outside the niche raised their voices at the violation of a sacred corner, when the wind lifted and turned green in my head, raising images of deep forests and places where the dead ride elephants – something exploded at my feet. I drew back. One of the woman’s eyes had fallen from its socket. The red eyestone palpitated on the ground in front of me. With an intent that only animals have, the peacock lashed the air with its wings, quietened, stepped forward daintily, pecked at the eyestone, swallowed it, and fell, choking and kicking. Then it was still.
A darkness bluer than the depths of godless rivers closed over me before I could utter a sound.
9
THE CONQUEST OF DEATH
WHEN I OPENED my eyes the bar was empty. Flies sizzled in the hot air. Mum kept appearing and disappearing from me in the darkness of old rivers. Moths flying past my face opened lighted terrains where, as an unwilling adventurer, I saw Madame Koto growing bigger and vaster than the night. She was bloating, her face was mask-like, and her skin, peeling away, revealed a yellowness underneath. As the lights went on and off, she kept summoning me. I noticed the eunuchs around her, washing her skin in the milk of young girls, bathing her swollen body in the oil of alligators, washing her feet with rosewater. They dressed her in a velvet robe and when she stood up the men fell to their knees in prostration. Women appeared out of nowhere and decked her in cowries and golden necklaces. At the door to the outer chamber, kneeling down, waiting to be summoned, to be accepted into the secret circle of power in our new age, was my mother. She looked very small in that great space.
Madame Koto was encircled with this yellow power. Her radiance set the night on fire. Mum sweated all over, as if she were being fried in dread mysteries.
Startled by deep coughing outside, I waded through the darkness. I seemed to be making good progress when, looking up, my eyes burst into another realm of adventures, and I beheld the awesome sight of the converging spirits of the continent. I saw them in their transfigured procession. I saw the great spirits of all the ages, from all over the world, from all realms, saw them pressing closer, approaching with deep sounds in the air, coming together for their mighty convocation, bringing their spirit-mysteries, their oceanic wisdom, their gnomic lore distilled from countless incarnations, bringing the jewelled terror of their immanent foresight, and their understanding of the secret forces and balances in the universe. I saw the spectral forms of these master spirits as I went slowly out of the bar, with the mosquitoes whining in the heat. I walked into a wall. The lights came on in my eyes and in another realm I saw my mother with medallions in her hair, a garland of coins and cowries round her neck, pound notes stuck to her body, as she advanced deeper into the long room, crossing the inviolable threshold, moving towards Madame Koto, whose face quivered in a weird ecstasy. I turned and went back into the bar, not knowing why. I walked into benches in the dark. My thigh hurt where the peacock had pecked me. And when I heard the forest sighing I felt freer and moved towards its breathing, and heard the night birds singing and the wings of the flying insects, and smelt the peculiar harshness of dad’s cigarette.
He was sitting on the steps, his face weighed down by the night. It seemed he hadn’t moved since I last saw him. When I touched him, he laughed.
‘I have been sitting here for three nights and they still won’t let me see your mother,’ he said, dragging on his cigarette.
I didn’t understand. Had I been dreaming? Had I somehow woven in and out of three separate nights compressed into a single memory? Had time been so different for us? Or was he exaggerating?
I sat beside him and he put his heavy arm round me. His sweat-smells made me more awake. I said:
‘The blind old man was right. Mum is working for Madame Koto.’
Dad put out his cigarette.
‘Then we have to save her,’ he said, rising.
* * *
We went home without saying a word. The night followed us and deepened as we entered the room. Dad tried to light a match three times, and failed. The night seemed to be conquering our attempts at creating illumination. All around in the darkness Madame Koto was growing. She was growing in our room. Her great invisible form surrounded us in the dark, filling out the spaces, deepening in the corners, breathing in the air of our spirit. Her body encompassed us and wherever we tried to go her shadow was there, listening to us, watching us from the heart and eyes of mum’s love, following the motions of our spirit. My heart suddenly began to beat faster. Dad said:
‘I can’t light the match.’
‘It’s the night,’ I said, in an old voice which startled me. ‘She’s everywhere.’
‘Who?’
‘Madame Koto.’
‘Nonsense.’
‘Her body is eating up the night,’ I said.
‘Come and light this candle,’ dad said.
I tried to move forward but Madame Koto’s shadow was everywhere. I stretched out my hand and all around me the darkness was a solid space.
‘I can’t move,’ I said.
‘Move!’ dad commanded. ‘Move like a soldier!’
‘I can’t. And we’re losing mum,’ I said.
‘Come and light this candle then I will do something about your mother.’
Madame Koto’s form flowed around me. I could hear her heart beating. It pounded in the air like the heart of an elephant or the great bull of night. Her heartbeat of forest drums made my ears ache. The pain pierced my head and when I recovered I momentarily found myself deep in the nation of her body. I saw great waves of people in the darkness, their heads disembodied and faintly lit up by the dull flames in the air. They poured in one direction. They moved in ritual organisation, as if sleepwalking. They walked backwards, and a robe
d political leader commanded them. They turned into soldiers. The Head of State, a General, barked out orders and they lifted their guns and shot down all the living dreams of the nation. The darkness flowed around them and around me, and I understood the secret of living within the body of the leviathan-spirit of our age. With no choice, resorting to the freedom of the world of spirits, I began to mutate. I turned into a fish: I swam upwards. My scales were of gold. I turned into a butterfly: the air helped me on. I turned into a lizard, and scampered up the body of the night. I fell from the ceiling, hurting my back, and landed at dad’s feet. For an instant I had rediscovered the powers of transformation locked in my spirit and in my will, powers that only came awake because mum was moving deeper into the long room, through the ritual thresholds, changing from a woman full of love and suffering into a half-woman half-antelope, her milk turning sour, her body wrinkling under the force of the night.
When I landed at dad’s feet he kicked me gently and I rolled over and he said:
‘What’s wrong with you?’
‘Mum is changing,’ I said.
‘Light this candle,’ he said.
As I searched for his hands in the dark, Madame Koto offered me cowries. I took them. They burned my palms.
The mosquitoes whined.
‘Shut the door, dad,’ I said.
‘Leave the door alone,’ he growled.
Madame Koto offered me money – it turned to liquid in my hands. She offered me gold, which turned black, and thickened into wax, and flowed down my arms. Dad was crying. I didn’t understand. Eventually I found his hands and took the box of matches. The wind sighed in the room. Dad stopped crying. I lit a match twice and the night ate up the brief illumination. The third time I succeeded in lighting the candle. At the door, sitting on its tail, was the shadow of a cat. Then the apparition vanished. The candle light fought the darkness, fought the wind, and managed to stay aflame while new forebodings breathed into our lives. Dad looked at the candle with wonder in his shining eyes. He was still standing. Even with the light in the room, light enough for me to see dad’s half-darkened face, and the cobwebs thickening in corners of the ceiling, the room was still occupied by Madame Koto’s presence.
