The Famished Road (25 page)

The sounds of the marketplace took on a new quality. A million footfalls magnified on the earth. Voices of every kind rose in massive waves and distilled into whispers.

From afar, I heard the muezzin calling. I felt it was calling me, but I could not move.

Bells and angelic choirs sounded close to my ears and then would melt away. I watched a fight start across from where I was sitting. The two women flew at one another and when they were dragged apart their wrappers drifted in the air like monstrous feathers. They pounced on one another again, in great rage and velocity, and bits of their wigs and kerchiefs and blouses floated around them in slow motion. I was fascinated by their fury. I was about to move closer when a voice, which seemed to come from nowhere, and which was not the voice of a spirit, said:

‘Where is the old man?’

‘Gone.’

‘Where?’

‘He ran away.’

‘From what?’

‘From me.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I am looking for my mother.’ Pause.

‘Where did he run to?’

‘Into the wind.’

‘What direction?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Who is your mother?’

‘My mother is in the market.’

‘How do you know that your mother is the market?’

‘I didn’t say she was the market.’

‘What did you say?’

‘She’s a trader in the market.’

‘Why are you looking for her?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘What is your name?’

I answered the question, but obviously my answer hadn’t been heard, because the question was asked three times, each time fainter than the last. The wind blew my answers away and my head hit the hardness of silence and the world went dark. From the moon, which was suddenly above me, close to me, and which had the luminous face of the great king of the spirit world, I heard other voices, full of darkness, which said:

‘Look at him.’

‘He is looking for his mother.’

‘She has big eyes all over the market.’

‘People pay her to shut her eyes.’

‘Her eyes never shut.’ ‘They see everything.’ ‘They see all our money.’ ‘They eat all our money.’

‘Our power.’ ‘Our dreams.’ ‘Our sleep.’

‘Our children.’

‘They say her son flies to the moon.’

‘That’s why he has big eyes.’

‘Look at him.’

The voices continued, turning on themselves, as in a numinous ritual. The moon lowered over me. My face became the moon and I stared, one-eyed, into the darkness of the marketplace. And then, with the moon’s light inside me, filling the wide open spaces, I felt myself being lifted up by the darkness, pushed on by invisible hands.

And the voices followed me, voices without bodies.

‘Maybe he’s not well.’

‘Maybe he is mad.’

‘Strange things are happening to us.’

‘To our children.’

‘They say he is looking for the spirit of Independence.’

‘They say he is looking for himself.’

‘For his own spirit.’

‘Which he lost when the white man came.’

‘They say he is looking for his mother.’

‘But his mother is not looking for him.’ ‘They say she has gone to the moon.’

‘Which moon? There are many moons.’

‘The moon of Independence.’

‘So he is looking for her moon?’

‘Yes.’

‘Strange things are happening.’

‘The world is turning upside down.’

‘And madness is coming.’

‘And hunger is coming, like a dogwith twelve heads.’

‘And confusion is coming.’

‘And war.’

‘And blood will grow in the eyes of men.’

‘And a whole generation will squander the richness of this earth.’

‘Let us go.’

‘Look at him.’

‘Maybe what is to come is already driving him mad.’

‘Maybe he is not well.’

And then the voices drifted away on the air. A bright wind blew over me. The lightness in me found a weight. The invisible hands became my own. Darkness settled over the market as though it had risen from the earth. Everywhere lamps were lit.

Spirits of the dead moved through the dense smells and the solid darkness.

And then suddenly the confusing paths became clear. My feet were solid on the earth. I followed the bright wind that made the paths clearer. It led me in a spiral through the riddle of the market, to the centre, where there was a well. I looked into the well and saw that there was no water in it. There was only the moon. It was white and perfectly round and still. There were no buckets round the well and the soil around it was dry and I concluded that no one could fetch water from the moon at the bottom of the well and I began to climb down into the well because it seemed the best place to lie down and to rest in a deep unmoving whiteness. But then a woman grabbed the back of my shorts and lifted me up and threw me down and shouted:

‘Get away from here!’

I followed the waning brightness of the path and came to a place where white chickens fluttered and crackled noisily in large bamboo cages. The whole place stank profoundly of the chickens and I watched them fussing and beating their wings, banging into one another, unable to fly, unable to escape the cage. Soon their fluttering, their entrapment, became everything and the turbulence of the market seemed to be happening in a big black cage. Further on, deeper into the night, I saw three men in dark glasses pushing over a woman’s flimsy stall of provisions. They threw her things on the floor and she patiently picked them up again. She cleaned the soiled goods with her wrapper and put them back on the table. The men tipped over the table. The woman cried for help, cried out her innocence, but the marketplace shuffled on, went on with its chaos, its arguing, its shouting and disagreeing, and no single voice, unless it were louder than all the voices put together, could make the market listen. The woman abandoned her pleas. She straightened her table, and picked up her provisions. The men waited calmly till she had finished and tipped the table over again. I went closer. One of the men said:

‘If you don’t belong to our party you don’t belong to this space in the market.’

‘Where will I find another space?’

‘Good question,’ said one of the men.

‘Leave. Go. We don’t want people like you.’

‘You’re not one of us.’

‘Everyone else in this part of the market is one of us.’

‘If you treat people like this why should I want to be one of you, eh?’ the woman asked.

‘Good question.’

‘True.’

‘So go.’

‘Leave.’

‘We don’t want you here.’

‘But what have I done? I pay my dues. I pay the rent for this space, nobody has ever complained about me. .’

Two of the men lifted up her table and began carrying it away, blocking the path.

The woman, screaming like a wounded animal, jumped on the men, tearing at their hair, scratching their faces, clawing off their glasses. One of the men shouted that he couldn’t see. The two other men held the woman and hurled her to the ground. One of the men kicked her and she did not scream. A thick crowd had gathered because of the blocked path. Enraged voices filled the air. The woman got up and ran among the stalls and after a moment reappeared with a machete which she held with awkward and fearful determination in both hands. And, uttering her murderous cries, she hacked at the men, who fled in different directions. The man with his glasses clawed off went on screaming that he had been blinded and he lashed out, flailing, and the woman rushed at him and raised the machete high above his neck and let out a strangled grunt and a great unified voice gathered and broke from the crowd and they surged round her and for a moment all I saw was the machete lifted high above the shadowy heads. Women began clearing their stalls. One of them said:

‘This Independence has brought only trouble.’

And the moon left me and everything became dark and I found myself briefly in a world inhabited by spirits, with voices jabbering ceaselessly. The commotion settled around me and the old man with the ash-coloured beard was saying to the woman:

‘Pack your things and go for the night. You almost killed someone. You were lucky we stopped you. Go home to your husband and child. Those people will be back.

Don’t come to the market for some time. You are a brave and foolish woman.’

The woman said nothing. With a stony face of rugged sweetness, she packed her provisions into her basin. She stopped now and again to wipe her nose and her eyes with her wrapper. All around women were offering advice. She was half-covered in mud. It was difficult to tell what part of her hair was mud and what part wasn’t. When she had finished packing she lifted her basin on to her head and, standing tall, walked through the crowd. The old man disappeared amongst the masses. The moon left me completely and I saw the woman’s face in the lamplights. And when the night stopped turning I saw Mum in the woman I hadn’t recognised. I went after her and held her feet and she pushed me off, forging on in her defiance. And I held on to her wrapper and cried:

‘Mother!’

She looked down, quickly dropped her basin to the floor, and embraced me for a longmoment. Then she held me away and with stony watery eyes said:

‘What are you doing here?’

‘I was looking for you.’

‘Go home!’ she commanded.

I pushed through the crowd and could hear her sobbing behind me. She stayed behind me till we cleared the market. As we left I saw the old man at another stall, with the moon in his eyes, watchingme with a subtle smile. When we got to the main road Mum dropped her basin and picked me up and tied me to her back with the wrapper and lifted the basin on to her head.

‘You are growing,’ she said, as we carried on home.

‘Not everything grows in this place. But at least you, my son, are growing,’ she said, as we made the journey through the streets.

There were lamps burning along the roadsides. There were voices everywhere.

There were movements and voices everywhere. I planted my secrets in my silence.

WHEN WE GOT home it was already very dark and Dad was back. He sat in his chair, smoking a cigarette, brooding. He did not look up when we came in. I was very tired and Mum was worse and when she set down her basin on the cupboard she went over to Dad and asked how the day had been. Dad didn’t say anything. He smoked in silence. After Mum had asked him the same question three times, with increasing tenderness, she straightened and was making for the door, mud on one side of her face like a hidden identity, when Dad exploded and banged his fist on the centre table.

‘Where have you been?’ he growled. Mum froze.

‘And why are you so late?’

‘I was at the market.’

‘Doingwhat?’

‘Trading.’

‘What market? What trade? This is how you women behave when you get into the newspapers. I have been sitting here, starving, and there is no food in the house. A man breaks his back for you all and you can’t prepare food for me when I come home! This is why people have been advising me to stop you trading in that market.

You women start a little trade and then begin to follow bad circles of women and get strange ideas in your head and neglect your family and leave me here starving with only cigarettes for food! Will a cigarette feed me?’ Dad shouted in his angriest voice, his hands lashing out everywhere.

‘I’m sorry, my husband, let me go and...’

‘You’re sorry?Will sorrow feed me? Do you know what kind of a terrible goat and donkey’s day I have had, eh? You should go and carry bags of cement one day to know what sort of an animal’s life I have!’

Dad went on shouting. He frightened us. He made the room unbearably small with his rage. He would not listen to anything and he did not notice anything and he went on about his vicious day. He went on about how idiots had been ordering him around and thugs bossing everyone and that he was a hero and how he felt like giving up this whole life.

‘What about me?’ Mum said. ‘So what about you?’

‘You think I don’t feel like giving up, eh?’

‘Give up!’ Dad screamed. ‘Go on, go on, give up, and let your son starve and wander everywhere like a beggar or an orphan!’

‘Let me go and make food,’ Mum said in a conciliatory tone.

‘I’m not hungry any more. Go and make food for yourself.’

Mum started towards the kitchen and Dad pounced on her and grabbed her neck and pressed her face against the mattress. Mum didn’t resist or fight back and Dad pushed her head sideways, towering over her so I couldn’t see her face, and then went back to his chair.

‘Leave Mum alone,’ I said.

‘Shut up! And where have you been anyway?’ Dad asked, glaring at me.

I didn’t answer. I scurried out of the room. Soon Mum came out and we went to the backyard. We made some eba and warmed the stew.

‘Men are fools,’ was allMum said as we sat in the kitchen, staring into the fire.

When we finished cooking we served the food. We all ate silently. Dad was particularly ravenous. He finished his eba and asked for more. Mum left in the middle of her eating and made some more for him, which he swallowed shamelessly in great dollops. The steaming eba didn’t seem to affect his hands or his throat. When he had polished off his second helping he sat back and rubbed his stomach contentedly.

‘I do a man’s work and eat a man’s food,’ he said, smiling.

We didn’t smile with him.

He sent me off to buy some ogogoro and cigarettes. As he drank and smoked his temper visibly waned. He tried to joke with us and we didn’t respond at all.

‘So what kept you?’ he asked Mother.

‘Nothing.’

‘Nothing?’

‘Nothing,’ she said, not looking at him.

He looked worried and asked me what kept us.