by Ben Okri
She came to our house, and when I saw her I ran inside. She frightened me with her new beauty. Her transformation made me more scared of her than ever before. Her smile revealed an ivory-white set of teeth. The skin had shrunken round her neck. Her face was robust in health, and it seemed to me that her destiny was invading her, filling her with sensual beauty, enriching her skin.
She didn’t come into our room. She sent a message instead. Dad went out and talked with her briefly. And when she left all the children followed her in silence, magnetised by her new appearance. And we would have followed her all the way to her bar if a cross-eyed man hadn’t emerged from the forest ringing a bell and uttering the direst warnings. He was like a possessed town-crier and when he shouted his warnings Madame Koto hurried on, losing some of her dignity, afraid, it seemed, of the man’s stinging prophecies to the community. He had a harsh voice and he came between us and Madame Koto. He was striking in his long white robe, with a red cloth tied round his head. I recognised him as the herbalist who had once prayed over Madame Koto’s car and who, in a moment of drunken intuition, had gone on to prophesy that the car would become a coffin. Relentlessly, in his scratched voice, he warned us to beware of those who grow beautiful on the milk of young women, of those who extend their lives in the night. He warned us not to trust any of the parties, saying they would sell us to the world for their own purposes.
‘Return to the old ways!’ he cried. ‘Return to the ways of our ancestors! Take what is good from our own way and adapt it to the new times! Don’t follow these witches and wizards. Watch them carefully. Watch these powerful people with all your eyes!’ he shouted, ringing his bell, destroying the magnetic pull Madame Koto exerted on us with her sequins and her moonstones.
‘WHEN A PERSON’S FAME REACHES ITS GREATEST AND STRANGEST HEIGHT,’ he bellowed, ‘VACATE THE SCENE BELOW, FOR THERE MIGHT SOON BE A GREAT CRASH!’
On and on he went, breaking into coded prophecies, speaking of rainbows and the dying forest, national confusion and death and war, dire things lying in wait on the roads of our future.
And when Madame Koto neared her bar the herbalist turned to us and, furiously ringing his bell as if it were a magic instrument of fear, he chased us back down the street, hitting us roughly, kicking sand at us, shooing us away as if we were so many chickens. We scattered in every direction, surprised at the herbalist’s ferocity. I fled to our room, screaming. I stayed in till I no longer heard his bell, and when I went out tentatively, to see what he would do next, it came as no surprise to me to find that he had vanished.
Soon after Madame Koto’s reappearance three trucks came down our street and distributed powdered milk, flour and bags of garri to the different houses. They were from the Party of the Rich. They brought workmen to help with the broken houses, carpenters for the roofs and shacks, axemen to chop up the fallen trees, trucks of sand to fill up the pits in the road. They also distributed leaflets about the forthcoming elections. They presented themselves as the good party, as the organisation that cared for the poor, for communal well-being, and for the country. At first we were suspicious of their loaves of bread, bags of rice, and bundles of dried fish. Some of us were so suspicious that we attacked their vehicles and their drivers. But the party persisted; they made new promises over their loudspeakers; and they continued to bring gifts in spite of our resistance. We were so hungry as a result of the catastrophes, and most families had earned very little during the upheavals, that we began to accept their well-timed gifts. There were those amongst us who urged remembrance of the time of the poisoned milk. But our hunger was more insistent than our memories. One by one we went to the political trucks with outstretched basins.
Dad forbade us having anything to do with the spurious kindness of our former poisoners. He said he would resume work and feed us with his own hands. In the afternoons we watched the re-fragmentation of our community. We noticed that those who accepted the gifts were converted after they had eaten the dried fish and rice and garri. We noticed also that they suffered no after-effects. There were no illnesses and no one complained of poisoning. People began to give the party the benefit of the doubt. Those who did certainly benefited themselves. The lorries returned with more provisions, more help, and they concentrated at first on the new converts. Those of us who doubted watched in silence as the houses of the converts were quickly repaired, as their children received fine clothes. We watched as they ate and drank and regained something of their former well-being. There were times when we felt foolish at having excluded ourselves.
For a while the night-runners were silent. For a while no curfews were unleashed on us in a rash of feverish voices. Masks temporarily stopped invading the night. The Jackal-headed Masquerade didn’t ride through our night-spaces on its white horse. We no longer had dreams of Madame Koto pressing down on lives, sucking in our vitality and will. We no longer had visions of the blind old man and his infernal transformations. If anything we began to dream of them as draped in white robes; we saw them as our saviours, our friends. In dreams they smiled at us, they made our lives secure, they policed the realms in which fear and frustration ate up our hopes, they manifested themselves as the powerful ones who could protect us from our worst enemies, and who would fight by our sides in all our battles.
24
WHAT SERVANTS REVEAL
ON ANOTHER DAY, Madame Koto appeared to us again. She had seven umbrellas held over her by seven women. It wasn’t raining. The sun was bright and the sky was clear. After this brief appearance, which was communicated to all of us by word of mouth, she retreated to her bar and pulled our spirits with a poignant music which was new to our ears. Her appearance seemed designed to make it clear that she was a solid force and that for her a crash would never happen. She seemed destined to rule the fears of men, and to weather all the madness of great heights, like most people of power, to a celebrated old age.
That same afternoon her driver was sent to deliver provisions to us all. He drove up and down the street like a demented clown, his cap askew, dumping fresh fish and rice at our compound-fronts, hurling small bags of crayfish and prawns at us with an unmistakable contempt, the contempt which the party leaders tried to conceal. It is odd how servants always reveal the secret intentions and true feelings of their masters. We couldn’t read these feelings at the time, but when the driver rode roughly amongst us the mutterings began to grow. And it was only when he knocked over one of the carpenters that a delegation, with dad among them, plucked up the courage to confront Madame Koto with their complaints. They couldn’t get an audience. She asked them to pass their message through one of the women in the bar. They did, and she replied that she would scold the driver. He was prevented from using the car for a while. Later, we saw him staggering around the street, drunk, swearing and threatening us for nearly getting him sacked.
25
THE MUSIC OF FORGETFULNESS
IT IS HARD to say what made so many of us new converts to Madame Koto’s way. The ranks of the Party swelled and people who had suffered together during the long nights of the storms and earthquakes now became hostile to one another. The Party gained an enormous following, and every day the supporters converged outside Madame Koto’s bar chanting Party songs. We saw their lives improve visibly.
It may have been the sweet music from the bar which drew us to her. The music spoke of flowers and scented rain, of an ordered life blessed with wealth. The music filled the space where something else had been.
For many weeks after the upheavals dad told no stories, there was no music in our lives, and the forest was silent. At first we didn’t notice the silence. Then we were sad at the absence of the sweet female voices that sang so passionately of another way. The silence seemed to last for ever and we no longer heard people talking about white antelopes in the forest, or about jewelled eyes among the trees in the dark. The silence lasted so long and seemed so final that we began, slowly, to forget that the voices had ever been real. They too seemed like t
hings manufactured during our hallucinations. The upheavals and the storming of our minds had the effect of making us doubt our memory. And because we doubted, we forgot. And because we forgot, we were ready for the turning of a new cycle.
The only music in our lives came from Madame Koto’s bar. And as it didn’t seem malignant – full, as it was, of an indecipherable sweetness – we went there in greater numbers, to drink, to eat, and to celebrate the public birth of a new force in politics.
26
THE MASQUERADE BECOMES AN INVISIBLE CENSOR
ON THE AFTERNOON that I set out to the bar with dad, it came as a surprise to find that the Jackal-headed Masquerade had disappeared. In its place was a ladder which had been thrust into the earth and which stood without support. The ladder climbed into the open sky, a sign which hid its own meaning. We were so taken aback with the disappearance of the Masquerade that dad didn’t want to go into the bar. Its absence confused everyone.
It was only when night fell, and when the wind whistled over the earth without menace, that a sinister thought occurred to me. The Masquerade had gone, but it had entered a higher level of reality, penetrated our fabric, and permeated the wind. It began to be the only explanation for things which puzzled us and which ultimately controlled our behaviour towards the party and towards one another. The invisible Masquerade became our secret censor; it became the eyes of harmless-looking butterflies; it seemed to invest its spying spirit into lizards and moths; it whispered to us of the right ways of doing things; it made us reasonable in ways that made us more powerless. And without knowing it we surrendered ourselves to its directives. The Masquerade became more powerful and fearful for being invisible, for it now seemed to be everywhere, existing in the corners of our eyes, in the margins of our vision, vanishing when we turned to look at its censoring manifestation.
Those who opposed the party, or who spoke ill of it, and suffered inexplicable pains, whose children fell to vomiting, who became temporarily blind, seemed to prove to us the greater powers of the invisible Masquerade. Every illness, every fever, every failure in endeavour, the rain flooding our rooms, children who accidentally cut themselves on glass, men who raved for two hours and returned to a stunned normality, convinced us that we were surrounded by an implacable force. And because we could not see what it was to which we attributed so much power, we feared it even more, and built it up into something which could not be defied.
Under the relentless wind of this new fear, dad was silent most of the time, pondering his strange philosophies, breaking occasionally into interpretations of the fragments he had brought back from his dream. But no one listened to him any more. As everyone else seemed to grow more healthy, mum grew listless. Her eyes were dull, her movements sluggish, and she became lean. She performed her tasks with a sleep-walking lassitude. Meanwhile, the area celebrated. The elections drew closer. And the preparations for the endlessly postponed rally resumed greater intensity.
Then one morning we received a message from Madame Koto. She asked mum to come and help with the preparations. She also invited dad to a party she was throwing. And she requested that I resume going to the bar to sit and keep her women company. Dad completely refused our having anything to do with her. He had forgotten his promises to Madame Koto, promises he had made when mum disappeared. We stayed at home, isolated and hungry. One day mum said to dad:
‘I must go to her. I have seen what will happen. We are only holding back the future.’
Dad was furious. He was furious because he was confused. He forbade mum going to Madame Koto’s bar.
‘The future is coming,’ mum said. ‘In fact it is here already, looking for us.’
The next day she fell ill. We didn’t know what was wrong. People muttered about invisible powers. Dad tramped up and down the street, challenging the forces of the air that were trying to take his wife from him. Mum was feverish for a whole day, muttering strange words about the future leaking into our lives, about the things which must be. Dad became so scared of her utterances that in the dead of night he gave his consent for me and mum to return to the bar.
The next morning mum recovered completely. Early in the afternoon she went to the bar. It was a fated afternoon. The sun was blinding in the sky and the air was sweet-smelling. In fact it was the day that the future broke into our lives, as if it had been waiting impatiently for all of our artificial obstacles to be cleared out of the way. And in its impatience to become real the future pounced on us in the form of countersigns – a white snake, an epileptic road, a gentle wind, and vengeance stalking its victim in the form of a boy whose life was about to enter the stream of a spirit-child’s uncertain destiny.
27
THE SNAKE AND THE SHRINE
IT WAS A day without visions, but I heard the road singing as I set out with dad for Madame Koto’s bar. The ladder had gone. Jacarandas and hibiscus had been planted around the borders of her terrain. The backyard teemed with elephant grass and cocoyam plants. The bar had been extended. There were white poles outside with banners announcing the new date of the big rally. It was a hot day. Inside, the bar was crowded with women, bawling children, and men drinking palm-wine, their eyes dazed, their faces sweaty. Dad and I sat in the bar, harassed by flies. We watched the dance rehearsals going on outside. We were surrounded by women with spiked, plaited hair and overwhelming perfumes. Dad was silent. He didn’t drink and didn’t smoke. After a while mum came to us, her face dull, her eyes bright, and she said:
‘There is a knife in the moon.’
Then she went away.
‘What did she mean by that?’ dad asked me.
‘The moon is going to kill someone,’ I said.
Dad stared at me. A fly settled on his nose. He blew it away.
‘How did the knife get to the moon then?’
‘It’s a message,’ I replied.
He was still puzzled. The heat was solid in the bar. The music made the heat more intense. A woman came to us with a tray of food. She put the tray on a little table in front of us. Dad stared at the jollof rice and the plantain, the bean cakes and the fried meat. The only cutlery the woman had given us was two knives.
‘What meat is this?’ dad asked the woman.
‘Goat,’ she said.
‘Antelope,’ I said.
She glared at me. Dad stuck the knife into a piece of meat and scrutinised it.
‘It’s not antelope,’ she said.
‘White antelope,’ I said.
Dad smelt the meat and was about to take a tentative bite when a volcanic wind in my head made me knock the knife from his hand. The woman shouted at me. I watched her. She picked up the piece of meat and, brandishing the knife, began to abuse me.
‘If you want to use the knife, use it,’ I said.
She stopped abusing me. Then she dropped the knife on the floor and picked it up again and rushed out to the backyard. A moment later we heard a cry from the barfront. We went out and saw a crowd gathered around Madame Koto’s car. The commotion had nothing to do with the woman who had served us. Pushing our way through the crowd, we saw that everyone was watching the car intently as if it might suddenly start dancing. The driver was asleep at the wheel, his cap slipping off his head. The crowd wasn’t staring at the driver. They were staring at the top of the car, with eyes hypnotised by something amazing. Even dad caught his breath, his eyes wide open, his jaw dropping. I couldn’t see what it was that so focused the attention of everyone. I tugged dad’s shirt and he lifted me up and I saw a long white snake whose skin gave off iridescent colours. Its head was like a strange red fruit and its diamond eyes held our gaze. The snake was curled into a flattened spiral and its head of an Egyptian icon was straight, poised; and its tongue clicked in a steady rattle, transfixing us. No one spoke. Then the driver slid down on to the passenger’s seat, while the snake rattled away above on the roof.
Suddenly, the silence was broken by a cry from the street. Released from the snake’s bewitchment, I turned and saw A
de raving, shouting, pouring curses at everyone. I didn’t understand. He looked quite insane and he kept trembling under the assault of sunlight. His hair had been shaved, and he looked demonic and bony, as if he had been initiated into a fiendish sect. His clothes were in tatters, his feet bloody, his neck stringy, his hands stiff, and he unleashed a torrent of ominous words at us. Before anyone could react to his disquieting apparition, we were distracted by another cry. The snake had moved. It had turned its Eygptian head in Ade’s direction. Then, showering rainbow colours in the air, as if it had been drenched in the liquids of melted precious stones, it uncurled itself slowly. Overcome with fear, some people began to poke sticks at the snake. Others threw stones at it, and missed, and hit the side window of the car, startling the driver. He sat up, looked around, saw a crowd of people throwing stones at him, and panicked. He started the car frantically, shot forward (barely disturbing the snake), reversed violently, and sent everyone scattering. Then he drove forward again, ran into the white pole, and brought down the banner announcing the rally, which draped itself across the windscreen. The driver, confused even further, rammed the car into the bushes, and then stopped suddenly. The snake serenely uncoiled itself above, its head elegant and primeval, its eyes like illuminated beads.
Before anyone could make a movement, Madame Koto strode towards her vehicle. She was wearing a yellow robe, with a little mirror on a chain round her neck. Without looking at any of us, having taken in the whole situation in the space of a glance, she strode to the car and grabbed the snake by the neck. The snake stung her once on the wrist, and she let out a piercing cry. She staggered backwards, her face contorted by the agony of her bad foot in its plaster cast. She was still holding on to the snake, but it bit her again, swiftly, bursting a vein. Blood dripped down her arm and evaporated on the hot earth. There was a deep silence. Something curious happened to time, for, in the space of a frozen moment, Madame Koto looked magnificent, she effloresced, her hair twinkled with sheen, her face glowed with well-being, and even her massive stomach had a sculptural grandeur. The moment passed swiftly and the next thing I saw was Madame Koto pouring out incantations, uttering strange sounds and a string of commandments at the snake. To our astonishment, the snake seemed to listen. Its head was still. Then, as we watched, a fantastic battle of wills ensued, and the snake coiled its tail round Madame Koto’s neck, slowly. Then, just as slowly, the grip was tightened. The wind blew in a mild frenzy. The snake, replying to Madame Koto’s incantations with a rattling language of its own, stung her a third time.
