Songs of Enchantment (27 page)

The corpse had stopped singing and the moonlight made me sweat. The green light danced among the leaves and eventually led me back to the crocodile with its head on the tree trunk. Jumping everywhere like a compact and luminous butterfly, the light wandered to the marshes and skated over the shadow of bushes, dimming when under the power of the moon, brightening when under the power of the earth. Away from the forest, further up the street, it gathered more light to itself. Then it hovered over a dense whale-like form under the bushes, and suddenly stopped. I noticed that there were more lights around. They were bigger than fireflies, and more intense. They kept moving round the hidden form like eyes without faces.

The moonlight made the forest shimmer, made the air limpid, and it shone on the rooftops with a hallucinatory sheen. The moonlight made all metallic objects sharp with points of unmoving lights, it made the eyes of cats and dogs a little deranged, it made all things weave, but not even the moon with its omnipotent democracy could light up the solid whale-like form beneath the bushes.

Surrounded by errant green lights, I looked around. The area seemed transformed. There was a white heat in my eyes. I couldn’t seem to blink. My eyes were stuck fast, wide open, unable to shut, and my brain was momentarily paralysed. Incomprehension flooded me. The delirium of lights was all about me, luminous without heat, alive without bodies, intense without intention. Then something very peculiar happened to me as I stood there under the bewilderment of an intoxicated moon. I couldn’t move. I was rooted to the
quivering road. Everything began to sizzle. The wind was still.

Suddenly, two green lights, the size of needle points, flew into my eyes, burning my eyeballs. It was as if bitterwood ash had been blown into my brain. Tears flowed down my face. The world was silent. The moon, fertilising me with incandescent hallucinations, planted strange words in my head, words that hinted at the near impossibility of seeing clearly.

I have no idea how long I was rooted to the road, but when I heard something gliding on the ground near me, I was surprised to find that I could turn my head. And to my horror I saw the black form glowing in the dark. There was a white snake stretched out over its length. The snake had eyes of liquid diamonds, and it was staring at me. I jumped in fright and fell and hit my head on the ground. But before I could cry out, I heard the road raging, and I heard the dissonant wailing of the forest spirits, angry at the loss of their companions.

The air turned sinister. The moon spread the incredible stench of a body in advanced decomposition. And when I got up, my head reeling from the fury of the sulphurous smells, I saw the corpse for the first time in seven days.

The night was a forest of disembodied eyes. My head was full of grating noises. While my teeth chattered the snake slid off the corpse and drew itself across the road and disappeared into the forest undergrowth. The corpse was bright under the moonlight. It was a mystery how it always seemed hidden. The dead man had bloated and his feet had split his shoes. His trousers and shirt had burst at the seams. His eyes, still open, were large like two diseased mangoes. And a mushroom, bright yellow, had sprouted from his navel. All sorts of obscene flowers sprouted in my brain. All sorts of harsh voices gnashed in my ears. A strange peppery heat fanned my face.

Everywhere I looked I saw the dead man’s eyes. And with
the boiling rage of the road crashing in my head, the fevers of forest spirits goading my thoughts, and with isolated cries all around me, I ran home as fast as I could, stumbling, but not falling, over the debris in the dark. The errant lights were now everywhere. Insects crawled on my living flesh. The moon made the air shimmer with a new clarity.

W
HEN I GOT
home I found dad staggering around the room with his hands outstretched, talking to the green lights that weren’t there, talking and laughing like a madman. The room looked as if a malign storm had paid a visit. The table and chair were upturned, the mattress had been hurled from the bed, the bed had been wrenched from its position, the cupboard was tipped over. Dad charged round the room, kicking things, throwing clothes and pots about the place, muttering under the influence of an incoherent fever. I held him round the waist and he dragged me all over the room as if he were a deranged bull and I kept telling him that the corpse of Ade’s father was still there but he wouldn’t listen to me because of his new obsession with the fires of sorcerers and the wandering souls. I was very afraid of dad that night because the world was changing and the moon was beginning to brand itself on everything. And it was only when I let go of his waist and sank to the ground, weeping and wailing, that dad heard me and came to me and felt for my eyes and wiped the tears from my face. Then he lifted me up and held me to him so tight it was as if he wanted us to become one person. When his obsession had cooled, and I knew that he was listening, I said:

‘Dad, the dead body is still there.’

He put me down. He felt for his chair, and couldn’t find it. I found it for him. When he sat down, he said:

‘But you told me it had walked away.’

‘It has come back.’

He was silent. I lit a candle. I straightened the centre table. Dad looked doubtful.

‘Did you see it walk back?’

‘No.’

‘Then how do you know it came back?’

‘Because I saw it.’

‘With what?’

I didn’t understand. His question confused me. Then he said:

‘What happened to the light?’

‘What light?’

‘The fire of sorcerers. The light that was flying about the room like a sign.’

‘I don’t know.’

‘It was a wonderful light,’ he said. ‘A homeless miraculous light. Did you see it?’

‘Yes.’

‘Where did it go?’

‘It went away.’

‘Where to?’

‘To the dead man.’

‘What dead man?’

‘Ade’s father.’

‘Is he dead?’

‘Yes. You know he is dead. You saw him die.’

‘Did I?’

‘Yes.’

‘Very strange. I don’t remember.’

‘But you were there.’

‘Is that so?’

‘Yes.’

‘And the light went to him.’

‘Yes.’

‘To do what?’

‘I don’t know.’

Dad sighed. He seemed very confused indeed. And he seemed quite aged when he said:

‘When the light comes back, tell me. I am very tired. I feel as if I have been dreaming for three years.’

Then he fell silent for a long time. The candle kept spitting. I watched dad. He had begun to snore with his eyes open.

I put out the candle and listened to the wind blowing hard. I listened to the silence beneath the wind, wondering what had happened to mum. Everything was dark. I shut my eyes. Time must have passed. When I opened my eyes again, the darkness was still there. I didn’t move. Then I heard mum’s footsteps coming down the passageway. When she entered the room I smelt a strong aroma of leaves and bark, medicinal herbs and the sleeping earth. She noticed the chaos in the room, the mattress flung on the floor, the scattered clothes, but she said nothing. Her hair was wet. She still had the moonlight on her face. A radiant lilac brilliance faintly shone round her cheeks. She came over to me, and crouched. Overwhelming me with the nocturnal aroma of forest vegetation, and speaking in a soothing voice which lifted the heat of ashes and fevers from my brain, she said:

‘Look!’

In her open palms, glowing like incandescent moonstones, like disembodied eyes alight with rainbow sheen, were two errant fires of sorcerers that she had captured.

‘How did you catch them?’ I asked.

‘They came to me.’

‘Where?’

‘In the forest.’

Dad moved on the chair. We both looked at him. I could see his face in the half-darkness. His eyes were still open. His mouth was also open, but he wasn’t drooling.

‘What are you going to do with them?’

‘Put them in your father’s eyes.’

‘Why?’

‘To help him see again.’

‘Won’t they burn him?’

‘They will burn out his blindness.’

‘Are you going to put them in now?’

Mum looked at dad again, and then back at me. Mum had become a fire. Her whole being was alive. She seemed like a secret priestess of the moon. The intensity of her presence made me feel as if I were floating on limpid air.

‘Yes, but we have to wake him up first.’

We were silent. Then, suddenly, in the dark, his eyes still open, dad said:

‘What are you two conspirators talking about, eh?’

‘Nothing,’ I said.

Mum lit the candle. Dad was sweating profusely.

‘I am covered in witch’s piss,’ he said.

‘We are going to cure you,’ I ventured.

‘Of what?’

‘Your eyes.’

While dad thought about it, mum suddenly started to become transformed. She became more erect. An intense energy emanated from her, brightening her face. When she stood up she looked very serene. Then, as if she were in a secret space, enacting a secret ritual, she began muttering words to herself, the same words. Her movements became both fluid and definite. I couldn’t make out the words, but she uttered them rapidly, altering her own energies. The words made the candle flare. And then, in a dream-like voice, mum said:

‘I was in the forest. There was a rock inside my head. I saw an old woman who had fallen on her back and couldn’t get up. She was very old and she was crying. When she saw me she asked me to help her. I was very scared . . .’

‘What were you doing in the forest?’ dad interrupted.

Mum continued, without answering his question.

‘The old woman stank like a dead body. She was very ugly and she had the face of a rotting owl. But something made me want to help her. As I bent down to help her up, she seized my neck with her bony hands. She didn’t let go
of me till I had taken her to a hut deep in the forest. There were birds asleep on the roof. Everywhere on the ground outside the hut there were white eggs. On her wooden bed there were black eggs. When I helped her on to the bed she began to cough. When she stopped coughing she began to laugh. She had sores all over her body and it occurred to me that she was blind. Her mouth stank like a vulture. She said: “You people are all blind because you don’t use your eyes.” I was surprised. “What about you?” I asked her. She didn’t answer. Looking at me with eyes like those of a strange bird, she said, pointing at me: “I know your husband. He likes to fight. Sometimes I watch him training here in the forest. He thinks I am an eagle. He is a good man, but he is also a fool. That’s why he is blind. A good man first has to be blind before he can see.” Then she laughed again. Then she said: “I have got a message for your husband. One day a great animal will visit him. Tell him to take care of it. The animal will show him some of the wonders of the earth.” Then she gave me two lights of sorcerers. “Put these in his eyes. Tell him to bathe with alum and kaolin. He has a strange destiny and he is the only one who can stop the plague of blindness.” Not long afterwards the old woman became different. She started to shout at me as if I were her worst enemy: “Leave my house now!” she said. “Leave now, before I turn you into a goat!” I ran away from her hut, and didn’t stop till I got home.’

When mum finished there was a long silence. Without any ceremony, dad rose from his chair and asked us to fetch him alum and kaolin. Mum had already purchased some. Dad went out with his towel and after a while he came back. He couldn’t find his way. I led him to the bathroom and waited for him to finish bathing and led him back to the room.

‘The world is full of new lights. There are more colours on this earth than the eyes can see,’ he said. ‘When you see too much you become blind.’

We waited for dad to oil himself and dress. And when he
had settled back in his chair, mum began the ritual of his unblinding. After uttering her strange words seven times, after she had prayed to the angel of women, mum pressed the two lights into dad’s eyes. He screamed. Then he shouted that we were burning his eyeballs with bitterwood ash. The lights stung him. They made his eyes red, then yellowish, then greenish. While he groaned me and mum tidied the mess that his storm had created in the room.

All through the night green liquids poured out of dad’s eyes. He couldn’t sleep and it was a wonder that he stayed silent, rocking his head, while his eyes flamed, while the invisible weight pressed down on him, and while the cuts became sores on his face.

In the morning he went around flailing, screaming that he had flames in his eyes, that the fire of sorcerers was burning his brain, turning his old thoughts into green ash. Apart from the pain, the lights had no effect on dad’s eyes. He was as blind as ever. We were bitterly disappointed. Mum stayed silent. Every now and again, she looked at us sheepishly. She had returned to her normal personality. When dad screamed about rocks in his eyes, fire in his brain, all we could do was stare at him. He was in utter agony for three days.

T
HAT MORNING, HOWEVER,
the whole street was talking about the lights they had seen flying about in their rooms. Clusters of blind neighbours, with crude walking sticks in their hands, stood at housefronts, gesticulating excitedly, speculating about the marvellous lights. Some of them had seen yellow balls of fire, some had seen blue flames, others said they watched green lights wandering in the mist of their blindness. They all agreed, however, that the lights vanished after midnight.

Driven by the fever of the new day, I went from one group to another, telling them that the corpse had returned. The ones that hadn’t yet been struck by the plague shouted at me. Others knocked me on the head and drove me away. But wherever I went, repeating the words that had grown roots in my brain, people began to leave. It was as if I was the bringer of a new plague. I carried on saying the words and when no one listened I began to cry. Some of our neighbours jumped on me from behind and sealed my mouth with strips of cloth and tied my hands behind my back. Mum eventually freed me and when I told her what had happened she admonished me, saying: