The Famished Road (31 page)

‘No talking politics in my bar,’ said Madame Koto firmly.

‘You are a wise woman. Politics spoils business,’ said Dad.

‘They are all corrupt. They are all thieves. With the Party of the Rich everyone knows they are thieves. They don’t pretend.’

‘NO POLITICS!’

‘But I won’t vote for them.’

‘They have...’

‘NO POLITICS!’

‘Money and . .’

‘NO POLITICS!’

‘Power. They can help. If you support them they support you. They give you contracts. A poor man has to eat.’

Madame Koto got up and snatched away the carpenter’s bowl.

‘Didn’t you hear me? I said NO POLITICS!’

The carpenter fell silent. Madame Koto went out. The two men resumed drinking.

Dad turned to me.

‘What did they teach you at school today?’

‘About Mungo Park and the British Empire.’

‘They are all corrupt,’ said the carpenter.

Dad stayed quiet. Moths and flies circled the air of the bar. The carpenter was getting visibly drunk and he kept slurring the same phrase. Dad poured some palmwine for me and I drank. Dad’s eyes grew red. The carpenter went on slurring.

Outside a bird piped an insistent melody. I got quite drunk and the carpenter fell silent, began another speech, stopped, and rested his head on the table. Soon he was snoring. Dad got drunk and began to sway gently himself.

‘Very good palm-wine,’ he said, loudly.

The carpenter jerked up, looked round, and went back to sleep. Dad began his own repetition.

‘Politics is bad for friendship,’ he said.

The carpenter didn’t move. When Dad finished his palm-wine he got up, swayed, staggered over to the carpenter, and slapped him on the shoulder. The carpenter started and turned his head in every direction like a bird. His eyes were heavy-lidded.

‘Friendship is bad for politics,’ he said.

‘They are all corrupt,’ the carpenter slurred, and lay his head on the table again.

Dad staggered to the backyard.

‘Madame Koto, we are going,’ he announced.

‘Good night.’

Dad muttered something. At the threshold he said:

‘Let’s go home.’

And we left the edge of reality, the fairyland that no one could see, and went home through the swaying night.

WHEN THE CARPENTER had finished the construction of the counter, the bar lost some of its fairyland quality. Madame Koto set up a chair, her plastic bowls for giving change, her basin of peppersoup, and some gourds of wine behind the counter. She was experimenting with efficiency. The carpenter was paid partly in money and partly in wine. He was already drunk when I arrived and Madame Koto was trying to get him to leave. He wouldn’t budge, he kept requestingmore wine. He said it was important for him to drink after he had completed a job. Madame Koto protested that he had been drunk all through the job, that the counter was bent over in one direction and that it gave an overall impression of unsteadiness.

The carpenter was untouched by the criticism. Madame Koto carried on quibbling and the carpenter went on drinking. A blue fly drowned in his palm-wine and he drank on stolidly, muttering his replies to her, complaining about how poorly he had been paid. The counter took up a lot of space. The fresh wood smelt good in the bar.

There were wood shavings and nails on the floor which the carpenter refused to sweep. Madame Koto refused to give him any more wine. He asked me to fetch him water.

‘I can get drunk on water too,’ he said.

‘Don’t give him any water,’ Madame Koto ordered.

She sat behind her newly built counter, her thick frame wedged between the wood and the wall, surveying everything with a proprietorial air. The carpenter dozed. She whipped the table with a broom. The carpenter got up, staggered to the backyard, and soon we heard him urinating and farting. Madame Koto rushed out, I followed, and we found him urinating on her firewood. She reached for a nearby broom, whipped him round the neck, and he ran, urinating and laughing. She pursued him all the way down the street. I went in and sat at my corner and not long afterwards she returned, sweating above her upper lip. She dropped her broom near the earthenware pot and said:

‘I am going to lie down. If anyone comes, call me.’

She shuffled out. I heard her struggling with the firewood and abusing the carpenter. Then I didn’t hear her any more. It was hot in the bar, but the smell of fresh-planed wood was sweet and soothing. Flies spiralled in the air. I noticed a Coca-Cola poster on the wall. It had the picture of a half-naked white woman with big breasts. Lizards ran into the bar, stopped in the middle of the floor, and saluted me, nodding. I nodded back and they sped on. I lay down on a bench and drifted off to sleep.

I woke up when a man in dirty clothes came running into the bar, holding one of his slippers in his hand. He rushed in and rushed out through the backyard door and came in again. He stood there, in a panic, looking in all directions. Then he brought out a handkerchief, wiped his face, and stared at me pleadingly.

‘Where can I hide?’ ‘Why?’

‘People are after me.’ ‘Why?’

‘Politics.’

‘Are you a politician?’ He looked confused.

‘Does this compound lead to the road at the back?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘If I give you money will you help?’

‘Why?’

‘Are you a dunce or something? Do you want them to kill me?’

‘No.’

He started to speak again, but we heard rough voices coming from the street.

Crowd voices. They were coming towards the bar. The man rubbed his hands together, his slipper between his palms, he ran one way, then the other, said ‘Oh God, save me’ and held my hand. I pointed to the backyard door. As a sort of payment he gave me his handkerchief, and sped out. I couldn’t understand his handkerchief. It was very filthy and it didn’t look like any colour on this earth. I went and threw it away in the backyard.

When I got back the rough voices were just beyond the curtain strips. Some of the people went away towards the street, squabbling and shouting as they went. Then two men, bare-chested and muscle-bound, stepped into the bar. They strode towards me. I had seen them before. One of them had come with the landlord to our room. And the other was one of the thugs that had been involved in the mindless battle along our street. He had a bandage round his head. They both towered over me. The one with the bandage had a massive and ugly pair of nostrils which swelled and contracted as he breathed. The other had large lips and small eyes.

‘Where is the madame?’ the bandaged one asked.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Who are you?’

‘I am a boy.’

They both stared at me with malevolent faces. Their sweat stank out the bar. They exuded an air of raw menace, their mighty chests rising and falling. Then suddenly they spread out and one of them looked under the benches and tables, while the other looked behind the counter and the doors. They came back and stood in front of me again. Then, as if they both shared one brain, they spread out a second time, one went out through the backyard door, and the other went out through the front door. They both came back in through opposite doors. They sat across from me.

‘Is there any palm-wine?’ the small-eyed one growled.

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘The tapper hasn’t brought it yet.’

‘Any water?’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘The well ran dry.’

They glowered at me. The bandaged one said:

‘Any peppersoup?’

‘No.’

‘How come?’

‘The madame hasn’t cooked it yet.’

The small-eyed one went to the earthenware pot, took off its lid, and peered in.

‘Isn’t that water?’

‘Yes, but a madman pissed in it.’

‘How come?’

‘I don’t know. The madame said he was mad.’

‘Why haven’t you thrown it away?’

‘I can’t carry it.’

He put the lid back on. He went back to his bench. Flies circled the men.

‘Are you fooling us?’

‘No.’

The bandaged man brought out a flick-knife from his trouser pocket. He began to cut away at the table, chipping off the wood.

‘Don’t do that,’ I said.

‘Why not?’

‘The madame will be angry.’

‘She won’t. She is our friend. Our party likes her.’

They stayed silent for a while. One of them swotted a fly, killing it, and he flicked it off his palm, and laughed.

‘I killed a fly,’ he said to his companion, who nodded, but stayed silent.

Then the bandaged one looked at me with a ferocious and menacing squint and said:

‘Did anyone come in here?’

‘No,’ I replied.

They stayed still for a while. Then, as if they had ears outside the bar, as if they had smelt something a long distance away, they both got up and ran out through the backyard door. Flies buzzed in the silence. I went to the backyard and looked around.

They had gone.

Later, I heard voices. Two men were shouting, and a thinner voice was protesting its innocence. The voices got closer, louder, and then moved away, became distant.

And then, from the backyard, the voices sounded again, swelled by multitudes. Many people, it seemed, were in argument and disagreement. The thin voice cried out, the noise of multitudes drowned it under. I hurried outside and saw that the two thugs had caught the man. They had dragged him through the passage and into the backyard.

The thugs held the man’s arms and he let them hold on to him while he meekly protested his innocence. Some people in the crowd surrounding them kept asking what the man had done. Madame Koto came out of her room, saw the thugs and the unfortunate man, and hurried back in again.

The crowd and the thugs created a frightening din. The man’s voice became thinner, his protestations feebler, and his face was pathetically contorted as though he wanted the world to know that he had accepted his fate.

Then he began to plead. He pleaded with the men, begging them to leave him to go free, that he would never oppose them again, that he had been blind. Then he begged the crowd to help him. The crowd was becoming increasingly divisive about their response to his fate when the man suddenly bolted. He pushed his way through the crowd, shoving aside a mother and child, accidentally hitting a pregnant woman in the stomach with his elbow, and he ran into me with such frightened force that I fell hard on the ground and banged my head on a thick block of firewood.

‘Catch him! Catch him!’ the thugs shouted.

‘Hold him! Hold the traitor!’

‘Thief! Thief!’

They bounded after him and the small-eyed thug dived and caught the man’s feet in a flying tackle. The man went down and the two thugs set on him and kicked him and slapped him around and hit him in the stomach. He collapsed on his knees and the two men went on unleashing a barrage of blows and kicks on him. He folded himself into a ball and still they went on, inventing new forms of beating, new kinds of handchops, knuckle-cracks, jabs and elbow attacks, enjoying their invention.

‘That’s enough,’ Madame Koto said from the crowd, without much conviction.

The thugs ignored her. They went on beating up the man to their satisfaction. Then they dragged him up. He was weeping and trembling, his nose ran, his mouth quivered, he bled from one eye, his face was all bruised, he had cuts in six places, and the crowd merely looked on. Then someone began to plead for him. The woman spoke of mercy, kindness, God’s love, Allah’s compassion. The two thugs, switching methods to suit the mood of the crowd, said that the man was a vicious creature who had beaten his wife unconscious and abandoned his three children. They were starving and his wife had been in hospital for seven days. His wife, they said, was their sister. The crowd was enraged by the man’s wickedness. And as the thugs dragged him away the women all knocked him on the head and rained curses on him for his cowardice and brutality.

The thugs led the man towards the forest. His clothes were torn. His head hung low.

He walked with the submissiveness of a man who is soon going to die.

When the thugs and the man disappeared, the crowd dispersed, but the compound people remained. In their poor clothes, with their hunger, their pain, their faces stark with the facts of their lives, they stood outside the bar and stared at the forest as though it were about to release an ominous sign, or sound, or yield its awesome secrets.

They did not move, even when they heard the innocent cries of the man echoing through the trees.

It was Madame Koto who broke the stillness. She went to her stack of firewood and began to prepare her fire, as if acknowledging the fact that there are few things that happen which can make it impossible for life to continue.

The women looked at her as she started the fire. I looked at all of them. Madame Koto, in her activity, seemed apart from them, different, separate from their fevers. A formation of birds, densely clustered, and consisting of a fast-changing set of geometric patterns, circled the sky, spreading their shadows on the burning earth. The compound people melted back to their rooms, to their disparate occupations.

I went inside the bar and lay on a bench. I shut my eyes. I heard Madame Koto come in. She said:

‘If you misbehave the same thingwill happen to you.’

‘What?’

‘The forest will swallow you.’

‘Then I will become a tree,’ I said.

‘Then they will cut you down because of a road.’

‘Then I will turn into the road.’

‘Cars will ride on you, cows will shit on you, people will perform sacrifices on your face.’

‘And I will cry at night. And then people will remember the forest.’

She was silent. I didn’t open my eyes. I heard her lifting the earthenware pot, heard her pouringwater out of it, heard her leaving.