Anansi stories go back as long as people been telling each other stories. Back in Africa, where everything began, even before people were painting cave lions and bears on rock walls, even then they were telling stories, about monkeys and lions and buffalo: big dream stories. People always had those proclivities. That was how they made sense of their worlds. Everything that ran or crawled or swung or snaked got to walk through those stories, and different tribes of people would venerate different creatures.
Lion was the king of beasts, even then, and Gazelle was the fleetest of foot, and Monkey was the most foolish, and Tiger was the most terrible, but it wasn’t stories about them people wanted to hear.
Anansi gave his name to stories. Every story is Anansi’s. Once, before the stories were Anansi’s, they all belonged to Tiger (which is the name the people of the islands call all the big cats), and the tales were dark and evil, and filled with pain, and none of them ended happily. But that was a long time ago. These days, the stories are Anansi’s.
Seeing we were just at a funeral, let me tell you a story about Anansi, the time his grandmother died. (It’s okay: she was a very old woman, and she went in her sleep. It happens.) She died a long way from home, so Anansi, he goes across the island with his handcart, and he gets his grandmother’s body, and puts it on the handcart, and he wheels it home. He’s going to bury her by the banyan tree out the back of his hut, you see.
Now, he’s passing through the town, after pushing his grandmother’s corpse in the cart all morning, and he thinks I need some whisky. So he goes into the shop, for there is a shop in that village, a store that sells everything, where the shopkeeper is a very hasty-tempered man. Anansi, he goes in and he drinks some whisky. He drinks a little more whisky, and he thinks, I shall play a trick on this fellow, so he says to the shopkeeper, go take some whisky to my grandmother, sleeping in the cart outside. You may have to wake her, for she’s a sound sleeper.
So the shopkeeper, he goes out to the cart with a bottle, and he says to the old lady in the cart, “Hey, here’s your whisky,” but the old lady she not say anything. And the shopkeeper, he’s just getting angrier and angrier, for he was such a hasty-tempered man, saying get up, old woman, get up and drink your whisky, but the old woman she says nothing. Then she does something that the dead sometimes do in the heat of the day: she flatulates loudly. Well, the shopkeeper, he’s so angry with this old woman for flatulating at him that he hits her, and then he hits her again, and now he hits her one more time and she tumbles down from the handcart onto the ground.
Anansi, he runs out and he starts a-crying and a-wailing and a-carrying on, and saying my grandmother, she’s a dead woman, look what you did! Murderer! Evildoer! Now the shopkeeper, he says to Anansi, don’t you tell anyone I done this, and he gives Anansi five whole bottles of whisky, and a bag of gold, and a sack of plantains and pineapples and mangos, to make him hush his carrying-on, and to go away.
(He thinks he killed Anansi’s grandmother, you see.)
So Anansi, he wheels his handcart home, and he buries his grandmother underneath the banyan tree.
Now the next day, Tiger, he’s passing by Anansi’s house, and he smells cooking smells. So he invites himself over, and there’s Anansi having a feast, and Anansi, having no other option, asks Tiger to sit and eat with them.
Tiger says, Brother Anansi, where did you get all that fine food from, and don’t you lie to me? And where did you get these bottles of whisky from, and that big bag filled with gold pieces? If you lie to me, I’ll tear out your throat.
So Anansi, he says, I cannot lie to you, Brother Tiger. I got them all for I take my dead grandmother to the village on a handcart. And the storekeeper gave me all these good things for bringing him my dead grandmother.
Now, Tiger, he didn’t have a living grandmother, but his wife had a mother, so he goes home and he calls his wife’s mother out to see him, saying, grandmother, you come out now, for you and I must have a talk. And she comes out and peers around, and says what is it? Well, Tiger, he kills her, even though his wife loves her, and he places her body on a handcart.
Then he wheels his handcart to the village, with his dead mother-in-law on it. Who want a dead body? he calls. Who want a dead grandmother? But all the people they just jeered at him, and they laughed at him, and they mocked him, and when they saw that he was serious and he wasn’t going anywhere, they pelted him with rotten fruit until he ran away.
It wasn’t the first time Tiger was made a fool of by Anansi, and it wouldn’t be the last time. Tiger’s wife never let him forget how he killed her mother. Some days it’s better for Tiger if he’s never been born.
That’s an Anansi story.
‘Course, all stories are Anansi stories. Even this one.
Olden days, all the animals wanted to have stories named after them, back in the days when the songs that sung the world were still being sung, back when they were still singing the sky and the rainbow and the ocean. It was in those days when animals were people as well as animals that Anansi the spider tricked all of them, especially Tiger, because he wanted all the stories named after him.
Stories are like spiders, with all they long legs, and stories are like spiderwebs, which man gets himself all tangled up in but which look so pretty when you see them under a leaf in the morning dew, and in the elegant way that they connect to one another, each to each.
What’s that? You want to know if Anansi looked like a spider? Sure he did, except when he looked like a man.
No, he never changed his shape. It’s just a matter of how you tell the story. That’s all.
CHAPTER THREE
IN WHICH THERE IS A FAMILY REUNION
FAT CHARLIE FLEW HOME TO ENGLAND; AS HOME AS HE WAS GOing to get, anyway.
Rosie was waiting for him as he came out of the customs hall carrying a small suitcase and a large, taped-up cardboard box. She gave him a huge hug. “How was it?” she asked.
He shrugged. “Could’ve been worse.”
“Well,” she said, “at least you don’t have to worry about him coming to the wedding and embarrassing you anymore.”
“There is that.”
“My mum says that we ought to put off the wedding for a few months as a mark of respect.”
“Your mum just wants us to put off the wedding, full stop.”
“Nonsense. She thinks you’re quite a catch.”
“Your mother wouldn’t describe a combination of Brad Pitt, Bill Gates, and Prince William as ‘quite a catch.’ There is nobody walking the earth good enough to be her son-in-law.”
“She likes you,” said Rosie, dutifully, and without conviction.
Rosie’s mother did not like Fat Charlie, and everybody knew it. Rosie’s mother was a high strung bundle of barely thought-through prejudices, worries, and feuds. She lived in a magnificent flat in Wimpole Street with nothing in the enormous fridge but bottles of vitaminized water and rye crackers. Wax fruit sat in the bowls on the antique sideboards and was dusted twice a week.
Fat Charlie had, on his first visit to Rosie’s mother’s place, taken a bite from one of the wax apples. He had been extremely nervous, nervous enough that he had picked up an apple—in his defense, an extremely realistic apple—and had bitten into it. Rosie had signed frantically. Fat Charlie spat out the lump of wax into his hand and thought about pretending that he liked wax fruit, or that he’d known all along and had just done it to be funny; however, Rosie’s mother had raised an eyebrow, walked over, taken the remains of the apple from him, explained shortly just how much real wax fruit cost these days, if you could find it, and then dropped the apple into the bin. He sat on the sofa for the rest of the afternoon with his mouth tasting like the inside of a candle, while Rosie’s mother stared at him to ensure that he did not try to take another bite out of her precious wax fruit or attempt to gnaw on the leg of a Chippendale chair.
There were large color photographs in silver frames on the sideboard of Rosie’s mother’s flat: photographs o
f Rosie as a girl and of Rosie’s mother and father, and Fat Charlie had studied them intently, looking for clues to the mystery that was Rosie. Her father, who had died when Rosie was fifteen, had been an enormous man. He had been first a cook, then a chef, then a restaurateur. He was perfectly turned-out in every photograph, as if dressed by a wardrobe department before each shot, rotund and smiling, his arm always crooked for Rosie’s mother to hold.
“He was an amazing cook,” Rosie said. In the photographs, Rosie’s mother had been curvaceous and smiling. Now, twelve years on, she resembled a skeletal Eartha Kitt, and Fat Charlie had never seen her smile.
“Does your mum ever cook?” Fat Charlie had asked, after that first time.
“I don’t know. I’ve never seen her cook anything.”
“What does she eat? I mean, she can’t live on crackers and water.”
Rosie said, “I think she sends out for things.”
Fat Charlie thought it highly likely that Rosie’s mum went out at night in bat form to suck the blood from sleeping innocents. He had mentioned this theory to Rosie once, but she had failed to see the humor in it.
Rosie’s mother had told Rosie that she was certain that Fat Charlie was marrying her for her money.
“What money?” asked Rosie.
Rosie’s mother gestured to the apartment, a gesture that took in the wax fruit, the antique furniture, the paintings on the walls, and pursed her lips.
“But this is all yours,” said Rosie, who lived on her wages working for a London charity—and her wages were not large, so to supplement them Rosie had dipped into the money her father had left her in his will. It had paid for a small flat, which Rosie shared with a succession of Australians and New Zealanders, and for a secondhand VW Golf.
“I won’t live forever,” sniffed her mother, in a way that implied that she had every intention of living forever, getting harder and thinner and more stonelike as she went, and eating less and less, until she would be able to live on nothing more than air and wax fruit and spite.
Rosie, driving Fat Charlie home from Heathrow, decided that the subject should be changed. She said, “The water’s gone off in my flat. It’s out in the whole building.”
“Why’s that then?”
“Mrs. Klinger downstairs. She said something sprung a leak.”
“Probably Mrs. Klinger.”
“Charlie. So, I was wondering—could I take a bath at your place tonight?”
“Do you need me to sponge you down?”
“Charlie.”
“Sure. Not a problem.”
Rosie stared at the back of the car in front of her, then she took her hand off the gear stick and reached out and squeezed Fat Charlie’s huge hand. “We’ll be married soon enough,” she said.
“I know,” said Fat Charlie.
“Well, I mean,” she said. “There’ll be plenty of time for all that, won’t there?”
“Plenty,” said Fat Charlie.
“You know what my mum once said?” said Rosie.
“Er. Was it something about bringing back hanging?”
“It was not. She said that if a just-married couple put a coin in a jar every time they make love in their first year, and take a coin out for every time that they make love in the years that follow, the jar will never be emptied.”
“And this means…?”
“Well,” she said. “It’s interesting, isn’t it? I’ll be over at eight tonight with my rubber duck. How are you for towels?”
“Um…”
“I’ll bring my own towel.”
Fat Charlie did not believe it would be the end of the world if an occasional coin went into the jar before they tied the knot and sliced the wedding cake, but Rosie had her own opinions on the matter, and there the matter ended. The jar remained perfectly empty.
THE PROBLEM, FAT CHARLIE REALIZED, ONCE HE GOT HOME, with arriving back in London after a brief trip away, is that if you arrive in the early morning, there is nothing much to do for the rest of the day.
Fat Charlie was a man who preferred to be working. He regarded lying on a sofa watching Countdown as a reminder of his interludes as a member of the unemployed. He decided that the sensible thing to do would be to go back to work a day early. In the Aldwych offices of the Grahame Coats Agency, up on the fifth and topmost floor, he would feel part of the swim of things. There would be interesting conversation with his fellow workers in the tearoom. The whole panoply of life would unfold before him, majestic in its tapestry, implacable and relentless in its industry. People would be pleased to see him.
“You’re not back until tomorrow,” said Annie the receptionist, when Fat Charlie walked in. “I told people you wouldn’t be back until tomorrow. When they phoned.” She was not amused.
“Couldn’t keep away,” said Fat Charlie.
“Obviously not,” she said, with a sniff. “You should phone Maeve Livingstone back. She’s been calling every day.”
“I thought she was one of Grahame Coats’s people.”
“Well, he wants you to talk to her. Hang on.” She picked up the phone.
Grahame Coats came with both names. Not Mister Coats. Never just Grahame. It was his agency, and it represented people, and took a percentage of what they earned for the right to have represented them.
Fat Charlie went back to his office, which was a tiny room he shared with a number of filing cabinets. There was a yellow Post-it note stuck to his computer screen with “See me. GC” on it, so he went down the hall to Grahame Coats’s enormous office. The door was closed. He knocked and then, unsure if he had heard anyone say anything or not, opened the door and put his head inside.
The room was empty. There was nobody there. “Um, hello?” said Fat Charlie, not very loudly. There was no reply. There was a certain amount of disarrangement in the room, however: the bookcase was sticking out of the wall at a peculiar angle, and from the space behind it he could hear a thumping sound that might have been hammering.
He closed the door as quietly as he could and went back to his desk.
His telephone rang. He picked it up.
“Grahame Coats here. Come and see me.”
This time Grahame Coats was sitting behind his desk, and the bookcase was flat against the wall. He did not invite Fat Charlie to sit down. He was a middle-aged white man with receding, very fair hair. If you happened to see Grahame Coats and immediately found yourself thinking of an albino ferret in an expensive suit, you would not be the first.
“You’re back with us, I see,” said Grahame Coats. “As it were.”
“Yes,” said Fat Charlie. Then, because Grahame Coats did not seem particularly pleased with Fat Charlie’s early return, he added, “Sorry.”
Grahame Coats pinched his lips together, looked down at a paper on his desk, looked up again. “I was given to understand that you were not, in fact, returning until tomorrow. Bit early, aren’t we?”
“We—I mean, I—got in this morning. From Florida. I thought I’d come in. Lots to do. Show willing. If that’s all right.”
“Absa-tively,” said Grahame Coats. The word—a car crash between absolutely and positively—always set Fat Charlie’s teeth on edge. “It’s your funeral.”
“My father’s, actually.”
A ferretlike neck twist. “You’re still using one of your sick days.”
“Right.”
“Maeve Livingstone. Worried widow of Morris. Needs reassurance. Fair words and fine promises. Rome was not built in a day. The actual business of sorting out Morris Livingstone’s estate and getting money to her continues unabated. Phones me practically daily for handholding. Meanwhilst, I turn the task over to you.”
“Right,” said Fat Charlie. “So, um. No rest for the wicked.”
“Another day, another dollar,” said Grahame Coats, with a wag of his finger.
“Nose to the grindstone?” suggested Fat Charlie.
“Shoulder to the wheel,” said Grahame Coats. “Well, delightful chatting with you. B
ut we both have much work to do.”
There was something about being in the vicinity of Grahame Coats that always made Fat Charlie (a) speak in cliches and (b) begin to daydream about huge black helicopters first opening fire upon, then dropping buckets of flaming napalm onto the offices of the Grahame Coats Agency. Fat Charlie would not be in the office in those daydreams. He would be sitting in a chair outside a little café on the other side of the Aldwych, sipping a frothy coffee and occasionally cheering at an exceptionally well-flung bucket of napalm.
From this you would presume that there is little you need to know about Fat Charlie’s employment, save that he was unhappy in it, and, in the main, you would be right. Fat Charlie had a facility for figures which kept him in work, and an awkwardness and a diffidence which kept him from pointing out to people what it was that he actually did, and how much he actually did. All about him, Fat Charlie would see people ascending implacably to their levels of incompetence, while he remained in entry-level positions, performing essential functions until the day he rejoined the ranks of the unemployed and started watching daytime television again. He was never out of a job for long, but it had happened far too often in the last decade for Fat Charlie to feel particularly comfortable in any position. He did not, however, take it personally.
He telephoned Maeve Livingstone, widow of Morris Livingstone, once the most famous short Yorkshire comedian in Britain and a longtime client of the Grahame Coats Agency. “Hullo,” he said. “This is Charles Nancy, from the accounts department of the Grahame Coats Agency.”
“Oh,” said a woman’s voice at the other end of the line. “I thought Grahame would be phoning me himself.”
“He’s a bit tied up. So he’s um, delegated it,” said Fat Charlie. “To me. So. Can I help?”
“I’m not sure. I was rather wondering—well, the bank manager was wondering—when the rest of the money from Morris’s estate would be coming through. Grahame Coats explained to me, the last time—well, I think it was the last time—when we spoke—that it was invested—I mean, I understand that these things take time—he said otherwise I could lose a lot of money—”