The Famished Road (66 page)

‘What are you doing here?’ he asked severely.

‘The man in white hit you.’

‘A white man?’

‘No. Him.’ I pointed.

Dad went all over the place, drinking all the cups of wine he could find. Then he shook his head to clear away the thick cobwebs, howled a war cry, and rushed over to the man in white. Before Dad could do anything the man unleashed a whiplash of a punch. Dad crumpled into a heap. He writhed and twisted on the ground like a lacerated worm. I rushed over to him again.

‘Let’s go home,’ I said.

‘Why?’ he yelled.

‘The man is beating you.’

‘What man?’

I was taken aback. Dad seemed to be in an unreal land, a mythical land. He didn’t seem to know what was happening to him. His face had broken out in two monstrous purple bruises as if under the chastisement of an invisible sorcerer. I couldn’t see his right eye. I never knew that a jab could inflict such punishment, such disfigurement, or such disorientation. Dad’s eyes were dazed, slightly crossed, and his lips kept moving. I leant over to hear what he was saying.

‘This is an excellent party,’ he said weakly, slurring his words.

‘Let’s go.’

‘I’m enjoying this dance,’ he said. ‘You’re not dancing.’

‘What am I doing then?’ ‘Losing a fight.’

‘Fight? Black Tyger? Lose a fight? Never!’

He got up, weaved, staggered, and fell on the beggar girl. He stayed down for a while. The music started. The man in white dusted his hands. Madame Koto took an immediate interest in him and sent intermediaries to make enquiries about him. Party chiefs, power merchants and warlords, always seeking new additions to their ranks of warriors and hired protectors, sent their men to ask who he worked for and if he would enter their services. Thugs surrounded him, askingwho he was, where he came from, offering a special place in their organisation. The prostitutes and the low-life courtesans also took a great interest in him. The praise-singers invented names and fabulous deeds for him. The beggar girl, bleeding from her mouth and nose, got out from under Dad. As she got up I noticed that her bad eye was open. It was yellowish and tinged with blue. She shook Dad. The celebrants jeered. Dad sat up, holding his head. When he saw the beggar girl he smiled leeringly, grabbed her, and began to embrace her. The beggar girl freed herself from his punch-drunk embrace. Dad’s face had taken on the softness of an abandoned lover and any moment it seemed he would burst into a grotesque and sentimental love song.

‘My wife, where are you going?’ he asked of the beggar girl. The girl got up and brushed the sand from her hair. Her back was a mess of flesh and torn cloth. Her hair fell from her head as if it were a wig dissolving back to its original constituents.

‘A magician!’ the blind old man said, and played his harmonica.

Dad stood up. The girl backed away. Dad followed her.

‘Let’s go!’ I cried.

‘After I’m married,’ he said, wobbling.

Then he stopped, looked around, and noticed everyone staring at him with amused smiles on their faces. He noticed the man in white and looked at him as if for the first time. He looked at the green moths and the midges and the multicoloured lights and the chaos of overturned tables and trampled food and at the dimensions of the tent.

Then he said:

‘I thought I was dreaming.’

‘You’re not,’ I said.

‘I thought I was in the Land of the FightingGhosts.’

‘He is a FightingGhost.’

‘You mean I wasn’t dreaming?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘You’re losing a fight.’

‘You’re drunk,’ said the blind old man.

‘Punch-drunk,’ said one of the thugs. Dad touched his face. He winced.

‘So they were real blows?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘Who did it?’

‘The man in white.’

Suddenly, with his curious ability to reach into deep places in his spirit, a ferocious energy swirled around Dad.

‘Hurry, go and call Sami, the betting-man,’ Dad said, awakening. ‘We will make money from this and build the beggars a school.’

I rushed out and, with Ade, went to fetch Sami. When I got back Dad had taken off his shirt, and was shadow-boxing, working up a sweat. He seemed wide awake now.

Methodically, he shook his head, did some press-ups, and practised the most amazing exercises. He creaked his joints, limbered up, stretched his muscles, did his special movements, breathed deeply, swelled up, and let out howls of energy. He was very impressive. The crowd watched him disdainfully. Only the inhabitants of the area, who had now ventured into the tent in the wake of the commotion, called out his fighting name and cheered him on. The blind old man was seated on his wheelchair, his harmonica in one hand, a fried piece of antelope meat in the other. Occasionally he kicked his feet in the air and like an over-excited child would say:

‘A prize fight! Very good. Where is the betting-man?’

The man in white, tall, lean, with an air of extraordinary detachment, a small head and pinpoint eyes, stood on one leg. He was very still. His eyes were positively reptilean. He was very disturbing to look at. No one looked at him for very long.

Sami arrived with his bucket and his small army of protectors. He went round taking bets. The odds were against Dad. One of the politicians brought out a great wad of pound notes and said:

‘I have heard too much about that Black Tyger. He is a buffoon. From today I rename him the Black Rat.’

There were bursts of laughter and guffaws all around. Celebrants laughed themselves into contortions. The politician made the odds very low against Dad.

Everyone was excited about the outcome. Sami, sweating, went from group to group, from person to person, jotting down their names and their odds and collecting their money in the bucket. Soon another bucket was needed. All the women, the prostitutes, the low-life courtesans, the casual onlookers, brought out their money. Sami sent for more protection. His entire compound turned up, armed with clubs and dane guns.

When he had finished, he was drenched in sweat. He was drenched in the horror of his utter financial ruin, instant and complete liquidation, total poverty and homelessness.

He went over to Dad. Pleading reverently, mopping his brow, he said:

‘If you win this one you can build a university.’

‘A school for beggars,’ Dad said, correcting him.

‘Whatever you like. Just win, you hear? Or I will be a poor man. My children will starve. My wife will go mad. All my money, all the money I could borrow, all the money I don’t even have, is on this, eh. Win!’

Dad pushed him away. The fight began. Dad circled the man in white. Dad rushed him, but the man wasn’t there. The blind old man, chuckling, waving a chicken bone, said:

‘That is what we call magical boxing, eh.’

I loathed him. Dad went on rushing the man, throwing wide swings, wild flurries of punches which only dazed the green moths and confused the midges, but he couldn’t touch the man.

‘Don’t you want to fight?’ he asked in frustration.

The man cracked Dad with a punch so fast that it was only when the women hurled Dad back into the arena that we registered its effect. The man went on striking Dad with electric punches, his fists were so fast that it seemed he was completely still the whole time, while Dad’s head kept snapping backwards, as if the air, or an invisible hand, were responsible. His nose became swollen, the bridge broke, blood spurted out. Dad tried hard not to breathe in his own blood. When he breathed it was in excruciation and fatigue. Suddenly, he seemed terrified of pain. The man would move his shoulder slightly and Dad’s head would jerk backwards. The man jabbed Dad at will, with cold menacing indifference. I couldn’t bear it. The man went on pounding Dad’s nose, extending the territories of his bruises, discolouring and generally realigning Dad’s face, altering his physiognomy, disintegrating his philosophy, dissolving his reality, dislodging his teeth, and sapping the will from his sturdy legs.

Every time Dad took a punch a searing light from another planet shot through my skull. Blinded by the beatingDad was taking I went out, found Ade, and asked him to give me the lizard spell his father had made.

‘It doesn’t work when the opponent is wearingwhite,’ he said.

‘Get away from here!’ I screamed at him, and went back in.

Dad was absorbing monstrous punishment. The blind old man kept chuckling.

Whenever Dad mounted another futile attack the blind old man would make a curious sound, a dissonant croak, distracting and discouraging Dad. He did this many times.

Soon the celebrants took up the dissonant croak as a sort of dampening anthem. I decided to get rid of the old man. I went out and begged Ade to come and help me.

We stole back in and, very gently, wheeled the old man’s chair out of the tent. In the intense excitement and concentration, no one noticed us. When we got out we wheeled him fast, shouting for people to let us through, saying that the old man was ill. He kept screaming and threatening us with curses. His frenzy only seemed to convince people that they should get out of the way.

‘A wizard is carryingme off!’ he hollered.

No one believed him. We wheeled him up the road, along paths, deep into the forest, and when we stopped his glasses fell from his face.

‘What has happened?’ he shouted.

His blind eyes were ugly in the dark. They had a curious light in them.

‘I can’t see!’ he cried, making our flesh crawl.

As we were about to leave he caught Ade’s hand and wouldn’t let go. I banged him on the head with a stick and he relaxed his grip and protected his head and uttered low cries. Me and Ade fled from him, with the noise of his wail amplified by the forest.

When we got back to the tent the fight was turning. Dad had crossed the desert of his exhaustion, had found new springs and oases of energies. He was covered in sweat and bruises. His head was firmly tucked behind his fists and his shoulders hunched.

He had become more rock-like, like one who was thoroughly resigned to taking punishment as a condition of survival. There was something strange about the way he accepted his beating. He didn’t seem so afraid of every bone-grinding punch the man threw at him. Dad kept staggering, wobbling, under the man’s methodical, scientific combinations. It was astonishing to see that the man still hadn’t worked up a sweat.

Dad went on wobbling, his legs watery, and I was sure he was pretending. I shouted:

‘Black Tyger, dirty his suit!’

All heads turned towards me. The man in white looked in my direction. In the brief moment of his distraction, Dad worked swiftly. He caught the man’s collar and with an insane howl ripped the coat. The man tried to protect the suit, but Dad abandoned all known rules of fighting and concentrated on extending the rippage. He grabbed the torn bits of the coat, he spun the man round, and with the help of a foot to the small of the back, tore the coat off the man. Then Dad pursued him and completed the rippage, snatching off bits of white cloth clinging to his arms. Beneath the coat, there was a shirt, and Dad, with terrible persistence, tore off the shirt and tie as well. Beneath the shirt and coat the man was bare-chested and hairy. He had curious tattoos on his stomach and amulets round his neck. He had a hollow chest and a deep hole of a navel. He was so hairy, and his hair was so much like that of a bush animal that the spectators gave a shocked cry when they saw how inhuman he looked. The man began to cower. Dad feinted a punch to his head, the man blocked his face with both hands, and Dad grabbed his trousers, tripped him, and tore the trousers off him. He had long thin legs, the legs of a spiderous animal. His eyes filled with fear and shame at being unmasked. People backed away, gasping in horror. Sami, the betting-shop man, sent the buckets of money home with some of his protectors. The beggar girl began to cheer. The women’s mouths hung open.

The man got up, enraged. He had on the weirdest underpants. He rushed Dad and couldn’t find him. He rushed again and stunned him with a flurry of solid punches.

They slogged it out for ten minutes. Dad kept hitting him, but he wouldn’t fall. The man caught Dad with an upper cut and rocked his head.

‘Punch his chest, Black Tyger!’ Ade screamed.

Dad paid no attention. His exhaustion had returned. He puffed, he weaved, his punches had no power. The man began the long arc of a fearful swinging punch when the wind blew, shaking the tent, and the lights suddenly went out. They came back on again and the man stood disorientated, hand in the air. Dad, calling on his own name, charging his Own spirit, released one of the most destructive punches I’ve ever seen and sent the man flying right through the tent. Tables, plates, and fried meat, crashed around him. Dad stood, weaving, bobbing, waiting. We all waited for the man to get up. He didn’t. The prostitutes tried to resuscitate him, but he couldn’t move. They couldn’t carry him either. We heard them saying something about him being too heavy. His inert form remained outside the tent, in an outer darkness. We never saw him again.

Sami rushed into the middle of the arena and declared Dad the winner of the contest. The inhabitants of the area, who had been outside looking in, surrounded Dad. The beggar girl, me, and Ade kept touching him, wiping the great flow of sweat from his body. Overcome with the horror of his victory, and with fatigue, Dad sank to the ground. We tried to revive him, but we couldn’t. No one else came to help us.

While all this was happening the blind old man had found his way from the forest and back into the tent. He was raving about wizards and bony demon children. He ran one way, then another. His helpers tried to restrain him but he threw them off. His rage was frightful.

We tried to get Dad to stand up. He was out cold. The beggar girl got the other beggars to come and help. While we were trying to revive Dad the blind old man kept pursuing me round the tent. No one could control him. I ran under the tables. I threw things at him, but he pressed on, he followed me with nightmarish persistence. I ran back to Dad, tried to wake him, but the old man came at me like a demonic sleepwalker, his hands stretched out in front of him. Then suddenly he turned away from me and with the quick movement of a snake striking an unsuspecting prey, he grabbed hold of Ade and wouldn’t let go.