The Famished Road (44 page)

My name sounded heavier. The woman urged me on. Her face, gentle in the light of a dreaming nebula, promised the ecstasies of a secret homeland, a world of holidays. A rough, familiar hand touched me on the shoulder.

‘Where are you going, Azaro?’

It was Mum.

‘That woman told me to follow her.’

‘What woman?’

I pointed at the woman whose smile was forever in bloom, whose hair was blue, and who was disappearing amongst the pomegranate trees and the chorale of roses.

Her head became a solitary cloud.

‘There is no one there,’ Mum said.

‘Yes there is.’

‘I’m taking you home.’

I said nothing. She lifted me on to her shoulder. I could still see the head of the woman. I could still hear the voices in passionate gardens, could still hear their sunflower cantatas. I saw delicious girls dancing tarantellas in fields of comets. The woman’s head turned to give me a last smile before she vanished altogether in a Milky Way of music. The air became void of riddles. I heard the last notes of a flute adagio floating across a lake of green mirrors. Mum took me home over the mud and wreckage of the street, over the mild deluge, under an arpeggio of watery stars. She was silent. I smelt the gutters and the rude plaster of the corroded houses. Then all I was left with was a world drowning in poverty, a mother-of-pearl moon, and the long darkness before dawn.

THE RAIN GOD was merciless for two weeks. It rained so much that the sky seemed to have become as inexhaustible with water as the seas. At night water leaked through our ceiling, which we soon discovered was full of holes. Mum had to sacrifice her basins and pots used for cooking to catch the water that dripped down. In our room there were so many containers that it became almost impossible to move about. Some of them were near the bed, some in the middle of the room, some on the cupboard. We had to move the clothes-line and Dad’s boots. One night as I slept the rain dripped on my head: it seemed the rain was corrosive and ate through new places in the zinc roof. I had to move my mat. Sometimes it rained so much that the containers filled up and overflowed, and the floor covered in water. The first time that happened I woke up thinking I had wet the mat. My amazement bordered on horror when I thought I had pissed so much in my sleep. I got up and quietly tried to clean the urine. Mum woke up. I felt ashamed. Then, I realised the trick the rain god was playing on me.

The rain swept down so badly that I could no longer sleep on the floor and had to share the single bed with my parents. When more holes opened above us we had to keep moving the bed round the room. It got so awful that we couldn’t find a place that wasn’t leaking. We ended up settling for having the water drip on our feet. Dad complained to the landlord, but he merely threatened to increase the rent further if he fixed the roof. We couldn’t afford the rent as it stood so we had no choice but to settle for being soaked through at night.

Sometimes in the morning we would wake up and find slugs, worms, and millipedes crawling about the room. Little snails appeared on our walls. In the containers we found tiny fishes. Dad was convinced that an enemy was trying to poison us. He became suspicious of the whole compound and warned me not to take anyone’s food or play with their children. We became quite lonely.

The rains made the days short. I was ill a lot of the time. At first Mum went hawking with polythene over her basin of provisions. But as the weather got worse she stayed at home and she made very little money. Dad returned in the evenings covered in mud, his clothes stinking, his eyes mad. He developed livid cuts and boils all over his body. His feet became raw and twisted. It was a rough time for loadcarriers.

Our street turned into one big stream. Water flooded into our rooms from the gutters. Sometimes it rained so much the compound began to stink because of the water that flowed past the pail latrine. During that time children fell ill, and many people caught strange diseases and had to be rushed home to their villages for special herbal treatments. Those who could afford it built little cement dams in front of their rooms to stop the bad waters going in. The rest of us sat helpless in our rooms and watched the water rise. I was cold most of the time. When Mum got back from her restricted hawking she would bathe and change clothes and sit on the bed, huddled up, her teeth chattering. With the steady drone of rain around us, there was little to say.

The noise of the falling rain penetrated our bones, our silences, and our dreams. Dad’s face took on a watery quality. Sometimes when Mum came back from hawking, with earthworms clinging to her ankles, and rain pouring down her face, I couldn’t be sure whether she was weeping or not.

I continued to attend school in the mornings. My exercise books got soaked, the ink ran, and I was flogged all the time. Our improvised school-building, of mud and cement, roofless and low-walled, crumbled in the rain. Plants grew wild in our classrooms. Snakes slithered in to our hygiene lessons. And when the rain got too much we held our classes under the eaves of nearby buildings.

On my way back from school one day it was raining heavily. I passed Madame Koto’s bar. A lot of cars were parked outside. Through the curtains I made out women with red lips and painted faces, men in bright clothes. I didn’t see Madame Koto. As I passed the bar there was a flash in the sky. It broke over me, and I ran. I fled towards the forest, but the wind was strong. It lifted me up and flung me to the ground. I got up, stunned. At that moment I heard a terrible groan. Then a tree fell in slow motion, as if in a dream, and collapsed on several other trees. Branches and leaves blocked off the road behind me. I ran towards the lightning flash. I ran on water. Stones chafed the soles of my feet. The rain whipped my face. Feeling that I couldn’t go much further, my lungs bursting, I ran under the eaves of a house near us. It was only when I was there, shivering, temporarily free from the violence of the weather, that I realised I had run right into the territory of the old man who had been blinded by a passing angel.

He too was on the verandah, sitting in a chair, his face turned towards me, his eyes green and half-dissolved. He was smoking a pipe. He wore a hat. When I saw him I was scared. I was about to run out and brave the lightning, when he said:

‘Don’t go, boy.’

His voice was both gentle and frightening in the rain.

‘Why not?’ I asked, trembling.

He knocked his pipe against the chair, and gave me a sinister smile. His eyes moved oddly.

‘Because’, he said, ‘if you don’t listen to me, and if you go, you will drown in a pit.

Snakes will crawl into your mouth.’

The wind sprayed my face.

‘Come here,’ he said.

‘Why?’

‘I want to see with your eyes.’

I wanted to run.

‘Don’t move!’ he commanded.

I froze. My limbs were numb. I was rooted. I couldn’t move. The old man laughed.

His teeth were more or less brown and his mouth was like a wound.

‘COME HERE!’ he commanded again.

I stayed still. The wind rose again and hurled a fine spray of rain at us. After a while, I felt myself moving. Something in me moved. I resisted. But the wind was stronger. The blind old man laughed as I struggled. I discovered that the wind had divided me, had separated me from myself. I felt an inner self floating towards the blind old man. Or was it that the blind old man was floating into me, invading my consciousness? I wasn’t sure.

The wind stopped. The rain fell in silence. Everythingwent dark. I tried to blink, but couldn’t. As if I had woken into a nightmare, thick green substances passed over my eyes. They settled. Gradually, my eyes cleared. When I looked out at the world again, what I saw made me scream. Everything was upside-down. The world was small.

Trees were like slow-moving giants. The rain was a perpetual nightfall, and night a perpetual rain. The earth was full of craters. It kept moving as if it were a monster fretting in sleep. The spaces between things were populated with the most horrifying spirits I have ever seen. They had wounds all over them which dripped pus. When they talked green spit poured from their mouths. I screamed. My eyes caught fire.

Then the smile of the boy-king appeared to me and vanished, cooling my sight. I heard shrieking witches confessing their evils. The monster that was the earth opened its gaping mouth and out sprang a big yellow animal with blazing ruby eyes and long claws. It leapt into my eyes, and I fell back. A savage wind blew in my head. My eyes heated up again, and I thought they would combust. Then blackness came over me.

When I opened my eyes I found myself still standing. The rain poured on my face.

Behind me the blind old man had fallen off his chair. He clawed the air with his crooked fingers. His pipe was on the ground. His hat was in the rain. And in the hat, brilliant against the brown felt, was a bigwhite cat. It was a beautiful cat with gnomic eyes. When I moved the cat leapt. In an instant, it disappeared. The blind old man called for help. A door opened. Two women came out. They saw the old man twisting on the wet ground, his mouth open, choking. They saw me standing there. They made strange connections between us. They shouted. I fled out into the malevolent weather.

They did not follow.

The rain hurt my skin, but I ran without stopping. As I ran, I saw a future history in advance, compacted into a moment. I saw an unfinished house crumble under the force of the rain. And then all that was left were metal rods sticking out of the watery earth. It happened so fast I was convinced I was still seeing the world through the blind old man’s eyes.

When I got home Mum was at the door, balingwater out of the room with a plastic bowl. All the holes were leaking like open taps. The bed was thoroughly wet, the clothes dripped. There were pots and buckets everywhere.

‘Help me empty the pans,’ Mum said as if I had been there all along. I dropped my school bag. Still wet, I began to empty the buckets and pots. I put them back in their places.

‘I’m cold,’ I said.

‘Empty the pans.’

‘I’m going to be ill.’

She went on balingwater out of the room, into the passage.

‘If you don’t fall ill I will give you a big piece of fried fish. And if you empty the pots and help me dry the room, I will tell you a story.’

‘What story?’

‘About rain and the rain god.’

I emptied the pans with greater enthusiasm. Our co-tenants looked out at us from their windows. The rain showed no sign of abating. When I finished emptying the pots I got a rag and helped Mum dry the floor. Night fell over the rain. When the floor was as dry as we could make it, we washed our hands. Mum went out to prepare our dinner. I stayed in, overcome by a chill. I listened to the wind. I lay on the bed and covered myself with a wet blanket. As I slept I heard the momentous growlings of the rain god. When he flashed his eyes, there was a sharp light everywhere. Sometimes it was like a dazzling bottle hurled against a black wall.

The room was warm with the smell of food. A lit candle was on the table. Giant shadows moved fast on the walls. I sat up. Dad was punching the air, ducking, bobbing and weaving, hitting out at his shadow. I watched him till he noticed me. He said:

‘Your father is going to become a world champion.’

‘Of what?’

‘I’m going to be a boxer.’

He sounded very pleased about something. He went on hitting out, grapplingwith the air, in-fighting, blocking. The rain had become gentle. Mum was looking better, her hair was neat, her face glowed a little. Dad boxed round her.

‘Your father has gone mad,’ she said.

‘Why?’

‘He is training to be a boxer.’

We both watched him attacking the mosquitoes and the flying ants. He was sweating and his face was screwed up in absurd concentration.

‘You see how poor we are,’ Mum said. ‘How are we going to feed a boxer, eh?’

Dad suddenly stopped, as if he had been struck in the stomach. Then he slowly collapsed to the floor and lay there, pretending to have been knocked out. Mum laughed. A light flashed past in one of my eyes, as if I had a camera in my brain. For a moment everything was still. The walls dissolved, the room vanished, and in the relative space of that time we moved to somewhere else.

‘We are now on the moon,’ I said.

‘Isn’t food ready?’ Dad asked, getting up and dusting his trousers.

Mum passed the food and we ate in silence. Dad had a tremendous appetite and he ate the poor food with clear relish. After we had finished Dad lit a cigarette while me and Mum cleared the table. Dad smoked on his chair, dragging deeply and exhaling in long sighs. Mum sat down with her basin and began counting her money.

‘This rainy season is going to make us poor,’ she said.

‘Soon there’ll be a break,’ Dad said.

Then I remembered the story Mum promised to tell me. I asked her about it and she smiled, but went on with her calculations, using all her fingers. Suddenly Dad shivered, his shoulders trembled. He got up swiftly, put on his boots, and went out.

‘What happened?’ I asked.

‘Your father felt something.’

‘What?’

‘A message, a warning.’

‘How?’

‘In his body.’

I fell silent. An inexplicable dread came over me. I could hear the world breathing.

Mum stopped counting her money, put the basin away, and sent me to buy a small measure of ogogoro.

Outside it was dark. The rain had stopped falling but the air was wet. Water gleamed from every surface. The passage was covered in puddles. The compound was silent, as if the rain had extinguished all the sounds. The buildings were still in a way I had never noticed before. The walls were wet through and water dripped down from the rooftops. At the compound-front I heard water gurgling in the gutters. There was no one around. The trees weaved in the dark sky and I could only hear them as leaves breathing. I shivered and crossed the street. The burnt van seemed to have reduced in size. Glass splinters on the ground were the only reminder of the photographer’s cabinet. I knocked on the ogogoro-seller’s door. It was a while before she opened.