by Ben Okri
There were isolated strikes in the city. The producers of food, the distributors and retailers, managed to make all of us hungry. Fighting was general in many spheres. It even infected the animals. Cats pounced on chickens. Lizards harassed snails. Dogs barked at birds. Through all this the supporters of both parties enlisted new members, and hurled charms and chants at one another. The air became bad. Children fell ill. The air smelt of a corrosive poison. Sulphurous odours hung everywhere. And the spirit of dissension became an ignis fatuus, exploding in brilliant lights of blood, impossible to pin down, so that each attempt at a truce led to bigger misunderstandings, and nothing could be neutral.
It was a weird and compressed era. Two buckets clanging, while fetching water from a well, could make two families into bitter enemies. Words took on more meanings than ever before. A simple greeting could be read as a lethal insult. Every fever diagnosed directed suspicion at an unspecified neighbour. Innocence fled from our community, and to smile was no longer an expression of joy, but of some hidden triumph over others.
Masks multiplied into our nights. We saw crocodile faces turning red. Antelope faces changed into the expressions of hyenas. We ceased to be aware of the numbers of the dead. We began to live with ghosts and spirits. Our night-spaces began to crawl with other presences. The world was changing very fast. Then one day Madame Koto announced that she was going to bury her car. She bought a new one, exactly like the old. On another day someone slaughtered her sacred peacock. It was hinted that Ade’s father, the fierce-eyed carpenter, was responsible. They also said he had taken to the bushes and had become something of a prophet and something of a terrorist against the Party of the Rich. Not long after the death of the sacred peacock, a house belonging to a staunch supporter of the Party of the Poor was set alight. It burned into the morning. No one died. The wars of mythologies escalated and after three days the fighting managed to reap its first significant harvest.
3
THE RED HARVEST
FRUSTRATED BY THE limitations imposed on his movement by all the fighting, dad ventured out into the disrupted world. He took me with him to Madame Koto’s bar, the heartland of dissension. Dad went straight in and ordered a calabash of palm-wine. He was thirsty for confrontation and his eyes were rather crazed with undirected fury. He took the calabash outside, along with two chairs, and he drank steadily, itching for a fight. He kept trying to provoke people by the way he stared at them. His big hands trembled as he drank.
Dad’s reputation as a slayer of giants and a conqueror of boxers from the spirit world made it hard to get the thugs to disagree with him. No one took up his baits. He tripped thugs over with his outstretched foot, he shouldered them, he insulted everyone, but got no results. His frustration grew worse. He drank heavily till his eyeballs were fairly floating in palm-wine.
‘Nothing creates more controversy than the truth,’ dad said, glaring at me with diverging eyes. ‘So I am going to tell these people some very troublesome truths indeed.’
He got up suddenly, weaving, staggering. He trod on the instep of a particularly hideous-looking thug. The thug apologised. Dad called him a coward. He said nothing. The women of the party, seeing that dad was raising trouble, hurried over to defuse the tension. Dad called the thugs animals in disguise. They merely backed away from him. Finding no one to respond to his provocations, dad went slightly berserk.
‘Monsters!’ he shouted. ‘You are all draining our people of sleep. You are stealing our powers, taking over our lives. I am not afraid of you. My name is Black Tyger and I eat stones first thing in the morning. I eat rocks last thing at night. My hands are made of tree trunks. You can only conquer people who are afraid of you. I fear only two people, my wife and my son. You monsters with crocodile faces, I shit on you!’
Still there was no response. So dad went on and on.
‘The only thing you stupid people like is War. Trouble. Confusion. You will destroy this country before we are even free.’
Dad was extremely drunk. His wild gestures had burst open his shirt. He began to shout animatedly about the kind of ruler he would be if people voted for him. He said that in the country he rules anyone who proposes war as a solution to any problem must first enlist their wives, their children, their parents, and all their relations into the army and they must all be given front-line positions before the war can begin. He was launching into another speech when the battle of mythologies started to rage at the barfront.
At first all we saw was a prophet in a white robe, with leaves in his hair, kaolin on his face, and a hammer in his hand. He had emerged from the forest and was threatening vengeance to all those who murdered a rare son of the earth. Mixed in with his wild threats were prophecies delivered in a high-pitched insane voice about the great flood that was coming, about the congregation of spirits from all over the continent, about the dreadful consequences that would be visited on those who had been killing the white antelopes. He spoke in waves of incoherent passion, cursing the rock that would be broken by women, the iroko tree that would be felled by a single drop of black water.
‘All of you who killed my son – Beware!’ cried the insane prophet. ‘BEWARE! BEWARE, because the giant of the night is dying on the road. Grass and weeds have covered its GREAT body. BEWARE, a tree is growing on his heart, and a THOUSAND people are trying to move it. BEWARE, because this GREAT giant was killed by a small bird with blue wings, and the fall of this GIANT will create a hole so DEEP that people will think it is a VALLEY. All of you who think you will avoid judgement, BEWARE. Strange animals with eyes of fire will come out of the forest, animals with the feet of men who never die. BEWARE, because the SACRED PEACOCK has been eaten by fearless men who listen to the songs of the forest!’
It was only during his pause that I recognised the demented prophet to be none other than Ade’s father, the fierce carpenter. His voice was mighty, but his presence was diminished, as if a great part of his stature had been eaten away by his insanity. The hammer shone in his hand like a holy instrument. Suddenly, brandishing the hammer, waving it about in the air like an illuminated sword of war, he shouted:
‘MY SON IS NOT DEAD! MY SON LIVES IN MY HAMMER!’
And then he charged at the startled guests, the astonished thugs, the mesmerised women, the indifferent drunkards. He charged at the supporters of the party, uttering a terrifying war cry, and everyone fled except dad. Ade’s father, waving his hammer like a primeval god of thunder, rushed into the bar and proceeded to destroy everything, shouting:
‘TEAR DOWN THIS TEMPLE!’
He broke the tables and the chairs, he smashed the calabashes and the charms and the images of the new religion and the earthenware pots, he tore down the banners and the political posters and the cultic almanacs. He hammered the doors into broken splinters, he pulverised the plates and the glasses and the walls and the mirrors. He ran out to the backyard and the women fled screaming. He bounded back to the barfront and chased everyone all over the place, but he left me and dad alone. In and out of the bar he went, breaking things and swearing, shouting and destroying. But by the time he came rushing to the barfront again, swirling his hammer like a blood-crazed ancient warrior, the thugs had organised themselves. Fortified with hatchets, leather shields and spears, they calmly waited for his raging presence to re-emerge.
There was a moment during the pandaemonium when I thought I saw Madame Koto inside the bar, looking out. Enormous as the night, her neck quivering, her eyes severe, a yellow light surrounded her, burning her sequined lace clothing without consuming it. She seemed so fat, so enormous, and yet she seemed to be floating, hovering above the ground like a dream-image, with a great peacock in her hand. The moonstones were turning red round her neck. Servants were fanning her as if in a liquid dream.
I was still trying to make out whether she was real or a simulacrum, when I heard a piercing cry. I turned and saw Ade’s father holding his hammer up in the air, holding it high, as if summoning the mighty powers of the heaven
s to charge him with their divine thunder. I thought I heard the road screaming. A car horn blasted. An eagle with the face of a jackal swooped down on Ade’s father’s head. He froze. His hammer remained poised. A swift wind jolted me. The eagle vanished and a fountain of blood, thin and clear, burst from a vein in Ade’s father’s neck as one of the men stabbed him in the throat. Then another man stabbed him in the navel. His white robe sprouted patches of thick blood. The smell of the evening changed and I heard the laughter of the blind old man on the wind. Ade’s father cried out long and loud and a third man struck him in the forehead with the sharp point of a knife. He became stiff as stone and when he fell the earth didn’t move. Ade’s father died with an expression of obscene shock on his face.
There was a yellow silence. The wind blew the darkness from the forest and into the open spaces. Then suddenly, from all around, from the distances, from the isolated huts, from the forest, and in the air, great wailings began to grow, to accumulate, voices awakening other voices, till we were surrounded with cries so frightening and omnipresent that for a moment it seemed there were only outraged spirits left in the world.
The thugs and supporters and guests vanished from the barfront. The wind occasionally blew the darkness away, revealing Ade’s father floating in the dense pool of his own blood. His eyes were wide open, almost bursting at the shock of his end. The blood that spilled out from the hole in his forehead filled out the hollows of his face.
Madame Koto’s holographic form remained in the bar. The electric lights weren’t on, but there was a solitary lamp on a table. The lamp shone upwards, making her face bigger and more unreal, covering her loneliness in deep shadows. She looked out, but she didn’t move. The silence was universal, the wind was cold, and dad stared at the dead body of Ade’s father without comprehension. Then he looked at the lonely figure of Madame Koto. He was confused. His drunkenness, obliterating his memory, bewildered him. He didn’t seem to know where he was. He made a futile movement and I felt the agitation of his thoughts and his muscles.
‘There is a war going on,’ he said, rather pointlessly. ‘We are on a battleground.’
The wailing started again.
‘Isn’t that a dead man there on the ground?’ dad asked, stupidly.
I couldn’t speak. The night suffocated me with an ancient smell of blood. We were alone outside with the dead body and when the lamp went out in the bar a greater darkness fell on us. Then, as if awoken from a nightmare, from a dream of stone, dad began to scream. He screamed for the world to come and do something about the dead man. He cried for help. He wanted to get Ade’s father to a hospital. The universal silence answered him. The wailing had stopped. In the icy silence I felt the swift wind of the eagle again and dad cried out that something had knocked him on the head. He turned, venturing into the darkness, and something hit him again. The darkness became full of the Masquerade’s censoring presences. Hot wind blew into our faces. The blast of a furnace opened above my head. A bucket of ice-cold water landed on us. I felt the lash of a metallic whip across my back, and dad screamed. Something scratched my face, just missing my eyes. I ran, howling, towards the street. Dad was behind me, stumbling, staggering, tripping. Then I saw him wandering down the street towards me, his hands outstretched, as if he had suddenly been struck blind. He wandered into the forest, walking into trees, getting entangled in climbers. I caught his hand, disentangled him, and led him back to our room. My head was feverish with excruciating colours. Mum was waiting for us. And when we came in, with dad blind as if the night had entered his eyes, mum wasn’t even surprised.
4
CITY OF THE BLIND
THAT NIGHT, AND for many nights afterwards, Madame Koto’s enormous presence encompassed us in the room. She did nothing about the dead man at her barfront. What could she do? She couldn’t bring him back to life, so she began to oppress us who were witnesses with more weight than ever before.
The next day, when people of the area gathered near her bar, watching every movement of her supporters, Madame Koto took to hiding from the world. The corpse remained at her doorstep, restricting her activities, attracting blue flies. That afternoon she ordered her men to move the body. They dragged it to the street, and left it near the bushes.
At first we thought that dad’s blindness had something to do with shock. He doggedly refused any treatment. For two days we waited patiently for his sight to clear. He sat in his chair most of the time, cocking his ears to every sound, his eyes open, staring straight ahead, his expression fraught. I stayed with him, watching over him, while mum went out hawking again, to bring in money.
Dad would get up from his chair, would bang into the centre table, walk into the walls, his hands outstretched, his mouth open, trying bravely to fight his blindness. Against my pleas, he insisted on going out, and I would be forced to lead him by the hand, as if we were a pair of beggars. He made me take him to the toilet, to the compound-front, so that he could get some sunlight on his eyes. His frustration made him want to go out further into the street, and he would tread through obstacles with a bizarre obstinacy. He made me take him to Madame Koto’s bar, because he wanted to give her a good piece of his mind. And when I refused he set off by himself, stumbling into stalls, tripping over empty milk cans, walking into patches of mud. Then, suddenly, he would stand in the middle of the street, swearing that he saw spirits moving through him as if they were light passing through glass. With his hands always stretched out, he was assaulted by all the sounds of the world that he had never paid much attention to, and the children baited him as if he were an animal. But nothing deterred him. He wandered through ghosts wearing yellow eye-patches. He began feverishly describing the city of the blind, with its seaport and its fishes swimming in the air, its one-armed musicians playing blue accordions and asking him for money, its beggars with one eye in the middle of their foreheads, its large tortoises with red-rimmed glasses. He staggered to Madame Koto’s bar through a universe in which old warriors rehearsed battle movements in yellow fields. I went with him, guiding him when I could, and often he pushed me away, mistaking me for a legless beggar. When he got to Madame Koto’s barfront, he began to rain imprecations down on everyone, thrashing his arms about. He confused me with his rage, for while he stood at Madame Koto’s barfront he actually thought he was before the palace of a diseased and hidden king. He saw masks riddled with holes everywhere and statues ravaged by woodworm. He abused the minions of the queen. He called attention to her rotting womb, in which children shrank from being born. He shouted about a pool of blood in front of the monstrous palace which the sun couldn’t dry. He said strange maggots had started to grow on the blood and crawl about the place, maggots which seemed indestructible, for when you cut them both halves took on their own lives, and when you burned them new maggot eggs would start to move about in the ash. Dad poured out such abuses and terrifying notions that even the thugs who had previously feared his reputation – whose minds were being overwhelmed with the cries of the dead man, the smell of his blood, the pool of his blood which seemed to attract secret earth-liquids to itself, the pool which had become a vast red patch, thick on the surface, with minute fishes and worms making its outward cohesion bristle – even the thugs who were becoming frightened of the dead man could not restrain themselves under the assault of dad’s words. And when they realised that dad had been struck blind, when they saw him casting about, his face lined with agitation and agony, they set upon him with sticks and metal and proceeded to give him a savage beating.
But dad’s blindness only multiplied his energies and his rage. He threw them off. A punch sent one of the men flying into the pool of blood. When the man got up blood dripped from his hair and he began to scream that the maggots were eating up his face. Ignoring the firewood landing on his head, the blows falling on his wooden face, dad pursued the screaming man, caught him, and pounded him into unconsciousness. The others should have known that dad gets more powerful the more his disadvantages increase,
but they didn’t. They jumped on him, and he swung them round and flung one of them right through the front door of the bar, and hurled another against Madame Koto’s new car, his head smashing the side window. They came at him again, and dad released a thunderous cry, and for a moment it made them pause. But others rushed in with machetes and long poles and dad would most certainly have become one of the unnumbered dead if the people of the street hadn’t come to his rescue, throwing stones and bricks at the thugs, forcing most of them to beat an undignified retreat. Meanwhile, dad flailed about, his voice fearless, shouting of the glories of battle. And when a solid punch from an ex-boxer connected with dad’s chin, he was momentarily immobilised. He was stock-still. His eyes swam, his mouth drooled and, risking my head being chopped off in the confusion of battle, I rushed to him. When I caught his hand, he awoke from his immobility, and said:
‘My son, we are in the most wonderful city.’
‘We are in trouble, dad,’ I said.
‘Everything is covered in gold,’ he replied.
‘Like where?’
He pointed up to the sky, to an empty space where the clouds were thin beneath the fiery sun.
‘There!’ he cried. ‘There the trees bear fruits of precious stones.’
Someone cracked me on the head from behind, crushing me to the floor. Dad was still pointing at different places of the sky and earth, the battle raging around him.
‘There!’ he cried again. ‘There is a man eating a rainbow. And there is a woman just like Madame Koto with worms crawling out of her ears. She has jade eyes.’
He was turning around, naming the mysterious golden city of the blind, when a man brought a thick piece of firewood down on his head. I cried out too late. Dad crumpled at my feet. When he touched the ground, he jumped up again suddenly, as if the earth had somehow regenerated him. He went running and growling in all directions, flailing, swearing. Then he stumbled over the corpse. He got up and the people of our street rushed over and held him and hustled him away before the full fury of the political mob fell on him and deprived us of his mad energies. While he was being whisked away, mum appeared amongst us. I don’t know how. And as dad went, tripping, cursing, refusing to be treated like a blind man, walking off into the bushes, submitting himself to mum’s voice, I heard him swearing that he would never go to Madame Koto’s place again, that the pact with her involving us had been broken for ever. And now he wanted the whole world to broadcast the fact that Madame Koto, Queen of the ghetto, Ruler of a new religion, had just acquired her most terrible adversary. He shouted the fact so loudly, knocking the heads of his protectors with his blind misdirected rage, that those who were helping left his side, and it fell to mum to guide her uncontrollable storm of a husband back to our compound.
