‘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 long moment. 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, watching me 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.
11
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.’
‘Doing what?’
‘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 t
errible 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 all Mum 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.
‘Nothing,’ I said.
‘Nothing?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then what is that mud doing on your mother’s face?’
‘Nothing,’ I said.
He looked at both of us as if we were conspiring against him. He went on asking us and we went on refusing to tell him. He sought a temper but, having eaten and feeling contented, he could not whip one up. Mum was silent, deep in her solitude, and her face was impassive. It showed no pain, no unhappiness, but it showed no joy or contentment either. Dad pleaded for us to tell him what had kept us.
‘Did anyone threaten you?’
‘No.’
‘Did they steal your things?’
‘No.’
‘You didn’t hear any bad news?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Did the thugs harass you?’
Mum paused a little before she said:
‘Nothing.’
Dad creaked his back and stretched. He was deeply uncomfortable and almost miserable. Mum got up, cleared the table, and went to bathe. When she came back she went straight to bed. Dad sat in his chair, belching, and smoking, suffering the insomnia of one who cannot fathom the mystery of his wife’s implacable silence. I spread out my mat and lay watching him for a while. His cigarette became a star.
‘There’s a full moon out tonight,’ he said.
While I watched his silhouette, the moon fell from the sky into the empty spaces of the darkness. I went looking for the moon. I followed great wide paths till I came to a shack near a well. The photographer was hiding behind the well, taking pictures of the stars and constellations. His camera flashed and thugs in dark glasses appeared from the flash and proceeded to beat him up. The camera fell from the photographer’s hands. I heard people screaming inside the camera. The thugs jumped on the camera and stamped on it, trying to crush and destroy it. And the people who were inside the camera, who were waiting to become real, and who were trying to get out, began wailing and wouldn’t stop.
The photographer snatched up the broken camera. We ran into the shack and discovered that it had moved over the well. We fell down the well and found ourselves in a hall. The three men in dark glasses were everywhere, constantly multiplying. Dad was smoking a mosquito coil and he looked at me and said:
‘What was mud doing on your mother’s face?’
One of the thugs in dark glasses heard him and saw us and said:
‘She is not one of us.’
The thugs ran after us. Me and the photographer fled into a room and encountered the sedate figure of Madame Koto, dressed in lace with gold trimmings, with a large fan of crocodile skin in her hand. She invited us in, welcomed us, and as we sat three men came and bound us. They shut us in a glass cabinet which would not break. Outside the cabinet chickens fluttered and turned into politicians. The politicians, wearing white robes, flew about the place, talking in strange languages. I stayed there, trapped behind glass, a photograph that Dad stared at, till dawn broke.
12
A FEW DAYS later I came upon Madame Koto and the three men. They were standing near a tree. They were involved in a passionate argument. Madame Koto looked fat and haggard. She didn’t have the white beads round her neck. When she saw me she stopped arguing. She made a movement towards me and a fear I couldn’t understand made me run.
‘Catch him!’ she cried.
The three men started after me, but without much conviction. They soon gave up the chase. I didn’t stop till I was near our compound.
I sat on the cement platform. Chickens roamed the street. Two dogs circled one another and when the afternoon seemed at its hottest one of the dogs succeeded in mounting the other. It was only when children gathered around them that it occurred to me that the two dogs were stuck. The dogs couldn’t separate themselves and the children laughed. They threw stones at the dogs and the pain forced them to come unstuck and they ran, howling, in opposite directions.
I sat watching the listless motions of the world. The bushes simmered in the heat. Birds settled on our roof. Dust rose from numerous footsteps and became inseparable from the blinding heat. My sweat was dry. The flies came. The wind stirred and turned into little whirlwinds; dust and bits of paper and rubbish spiralled upwards. Children ran round the whirlwinds and only their piercing cries carried, along with the birdsong, over the somnolent air of the world.
Everything blazed in the bright liquid heat. Sounds had their edges softened. Beggars dragged themselves past. Roving cobblers and tailors came around the compounds. Men who sold charms and slippers made in the desert and bamboo artefacts and bright red mats also came round. Then a goatherd led his goats down the street. The goats shat and left their smells in the air, unmoved by the wind. I got bored watching the ordinary events of the world. Flashes from the photographer’s glass cabinet called me. I went over and looked at the pictures. They hadn’t been changed. I went to the photographer’s room. I knocked and no one answered. I knocked again and the door was opened cautiously. The photographer’s face appeared at my level. He was crouching and he said, in a voice spiked with fear:
‘Go away!’
‘Why?’
‘Because I don’t want people to know I’m in.’
‘Why not?’
‘Just go!’
‘What if I don’t go?’
‘I will knock your head and you won’t sleep for seven days.’
I thought about it.
‘Go!’ he cried.
‘What about the men?’
‘What men?’
‘The three men?’
‘Have you seen them?’ he aske
d in a different voice.
‘Yes.’
‘Where?’
‘They were talking with Madame Koto.’
‘That witch! What were they talking about?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘When did you see them?’
‘Not long ago.’
He shut the door quickly, locked it, and then opened it again.
‘Go!’ he said. ‘And if you see them again come and tell me immediately.’
‘What will you do?’
‘Kill them or run.’
He shut the door finally. I stood there for a while. The image of his frightened face lingered in my mind. Then I left his compound and went and sat on our cement platform and kept a steady watch over all movements along the street. The sun made the air and the earth shimmer and as I kept watch I perceived, in the crack of a moment, the recurrence of things unresolved – histories, dreams, a vanished world of great old spirits, wild jungles, tigers with eyes of diamonds roaming the dense foliage. I saw beings who dragged clanking chains behind them, bleeding from their necks. I saw men and women without wings, sitting in rows, soaring through the empty air. And I saw, flying towards me in widening dots from the centre of the sun, birds and horses whose wings spanned half the sky and whose feathers had the candency of rubies. I shut my eyes; my being whirled; my head tumbled into a well; and I only opened my eyes again, to stop the sensation of falling, when I heard the shattering of glass. The noise woke up the afternoon.
Across the street three men were smashing the photographer’s glass cabinet with clubs. Then they hurriedly removed the pictures on display. People of the street, awoken by the noise, came to their housefronts. The men, in a flash, had snatched the pictures and had gone into the photographer’s compound. The people who came out looked up and down the street and saw nothing unusual. The action had moved to the photographer’s room. I rushed across the street.
When I got to the room his door was wide open and the men weren’t there. Neither was the photographer. His window was wide open, but it was too high for me to look out of; I ran to the backyard. I saw no one. But I noticed that the backyard led to other backyards. I followed a route past the bucket latrine alive with flies and maggots. The smell was so bad I almost fainted. Another path led to the swamp and marshes and the forest of massive iroko and obeche and mahogany trees. There were deep footprints in the soft soil behind the houses. I followed the footprints, sinking in the mud, till the soft soil shaded into marshes. There was rubbish everywhere. Strange flowers and wild grass and evil-looking fungal growths were profuse over the marshes. Bushes were luxuriant in unexpected places. A wooden footbridge was being constructed to the other side. The footprints merged into many others on the soft soil. Some of them went into the marshes. I looked around, couldn’t find anyone, and gave up the search. I went back home, washed the mud off my feet, and resumed watch over the street. Nothing unusual happened.