Songs of Enchantment (6 page)

I didn’t understand. Had I been dreaming? Had I somehow woven in and out of three separate nights compressed into a single memory? Had time been so different for us? Or was he exaggerating?

I sat beside him and he put his heavy arm round me. His sweat-smells made me more awake. I said:

‘The blind old man was right. Mum is working for Madame Koto.’

Dad put out his cigarette.

‘Then we have to save her,’ he said, rising.

* * *

We went home without saying a word. The night followed us and deepened as we entered the room. Dad tried to light a match three times, and failed. The night seemed to be conquering our attempts at creating illumination. All around in the darkness Madame Koto was growing. She was growing in our room. Her great invisible form surrounded us in the dark, filling out the spaces, deepening in the corners, breathing in the air of our spirit. Her body encompassed us and wherever we tried to go her shadow was there, listening to us, watching us from the heart and eyes of mum’s love, following the motions of our spirit. My heart suddenly began to beat faster. Dad said:

‘I can’t light the match.’

‘It’s the night,’ I said, in an old voice which startled me. ‘She’s everywhere.’

‘Who?’

‘Madame Koto.’

‘Nonsense.’

‘Her body is eating up the night,’ I said.

‘Come and light this candle,’ dad said.

I tried to move forward but Madame Koto’s shadow was everywhere. I stretched out my hand and all around me the darkness was a solid space.

‘I can’t move,’ I said.

‘Move!’ dad commanded. ‘Move like a soldier!’

‘I can’t. And we’re losing mum,’ I said.

‘Come and light this candle then I will do something about your mother.’

Madame Koto’s form flowed around me. I could hear her heart beating. It pounded in the air like the heart of an elephant or the great bull of night. Her heartbeat of forest drums made my ears ache. The pain pierced my head and when I recovered I momentarily found myself deep in the nation of her body. I saw great waves of people in the darkness, their heads disembodied and faintly lit up by the dull flames in the air. They poured in one direction. They moved in ritual organisation, as if sleepwalking. They walked
backwards, and a robed political leader commanded them. They turned into soldiers. The Head of State, a General, barked out orders and they lifted their guns and shot down all the living dreams of the nation. The darkness flowed around them and around me, and I understood the secret of living within the body of the leviathan-spirit of our age. With no choice, resorting to the freedom of the world of spirits, I began to mutate. I turned into a fish: I swam upwards. My scales were of gold. I turned into a butterfly: the air helped me on. I turned into a lizard, and scampered up the body of the night. I fell from the ceiling, hurting my back, and landed at dad’s feet. For an instant I had rediscovered the powers of transformation locked in my spirit and in my will, powers that only came awake because mum was moving deeper into the long room, through the ritual thresholds, changing from a woman full of love and suffering into a half-woman half-antelope, her milk turning sour, her body wrinkling under the force of the night.

When I landed at dad’s feet he kicked me gently and I rolled over and he said:

‘What’s wrong with you?’

‘Mum is changing,’ I said.

‘Light this candle,’ he said.

As I searched for his hands in the dark, Madame Koto offered me cowries. I took them. They burned my palms.

The mosquitoes whined.

‘Shut the door, dad,’ I said.

‘Leave the door alone,’ he growled.

Madame Koto offered me money – it turned to liquid in my hands. She offered me gold, which turned black, and thickened into wax, and flowed down my arms. Dad was crying. I didn’t understand. Eventually I found his hands and took the box of matches. The wind sighed in the room. Dad stopped crying. I lit a match twice and the night ate up the brief illumination. The third time I succeeded in lighting the candle. At the door, sitting on its tail, was the shadow of a cat. Then the apparition vanished. The candle light fought
the darkness, fought the wind, and managed to stay aflame while new forebodings breathed into our lives. Dad looked at the candle with wonder in his shining eyes. He was still standing. Even with the light in the room, light enough for me to see dad’s half-darkened face, and the cobwebs thickening in corners of the ceiling, the room was still occupied by Madame Koto’s presence.

I drew near to the light. So did dad. We were silent. After a while, dad said:

‘The air has changed in our room.’

‘What are we going to do about mum?’

‘I will do something,’ he said.

He looked tortured. His face was shrunken.

‘Get some sleep. I’ll be watching over you. Our spirit is strong, you must fear nothing, you hear?’

I nodded. Fear nothing? I knew he was afraid, but he didn’t know what he was afraid of, so I said:

‘Something is happening.’

‘Something wonderful,’ he replied.

His voice had no conviction. The fact is that a weird anti-magnetism was operating on our lives, pulling everything apart. Dad got up and began pacing the room, stirring his spirit, uttering incantations, filling the place with his energies.

‘The secret of strength is in the spirit,’ he said. ‘Life is often like fighting, and sometimes you have to draw power from your eyes or your toes or from your heart.’

He sat in his chair. I got out my mat and spread it on the floor.

‘Tell me a story,’ I said.

He smiled, stayed silent for a while, and then began speaking in the voice of a story-teller who can spread power with words.

‘There was once a man who suffered all the bad things that can happen to a human being. He was a good man in a world full of wickedness. When a new bad thing happened to him he refused to lose heart and he tried harder to live the good life. Then his only son died. His house burned
down. His wife left him. He was sacked from his job because he refused to be corrupt. He was crossing the road one day when a cow kicked him and broke his face. He lived in the streets and bore his suffering with a smile in his spirit. Then he fell ill and began to die. While he was dying a mosquito landed on his ear and said, “If you stop being a good man wonderful things will happen to you.” “Like what?” he asked. The mosquito replied, “You will be rich and famous. You will have many beautiful wives and lovely children. You will have power. Everybody will love you. And you will live a long and fruitful life.”’

‘So what did the man say?’

‘He said, “And if I don’t stop trying to be good?” The mosquito replied, “You will die when the sun comes out.”’

‘Then what did he do?’

‘He knocked the mosquito away, got up from his bed in the street, and he went from house to house asking people if he could help them in any way because he was going to die that night. He helped the weak to fetch firewood. He carried loads at the night-market and gave the money away to beggars. He went to hospitals and spoke kind words to people who were also waiting to die. He settled quarrels between husbands and wives, between friends and enemies. And he preached everywhere he went, saying that people must learn to love one another because death was coming. He did a lot of things in that night, more in one night than in his whole life.’

‘Then what happened?’

‘Morning drew nearer. When he saw dawn in the sky he went and lay down on his bed in the street. His heart was full of peace. His face suddenly looked younger. His body was surrounded with a powerful and gentle light. Then a dog came to him and licked his feet. Then a goat came and licked his hands. Birds settled round him and began to sing. People whom he had helped saw him and drew a crowd round him. Then the mosquito came and landed on his ear and said, “Your time is up.” “Good,” the man said. “I am
not afraid.” “Why not?” asked the mosquito. “Because”, he said, “love is the real power. And where there is love there is no fear.” The mosquito became very unhappy. It started to cry. The man said, “Why are you crying?” The mosquito answered, “It’s because you are not afraid. I have brought death to thousands of people, but you are the first person I have met who is not afraid of dying.” “But I am not going to die,” said the man. “Why not?” asked the mosquito. The man then pointed to the birds and the animals and the human beings gathered round him. “Because”, he said, “I have given them my life. I used to be one. Now, I am many. They will become more. How many of us can you kill? The more you kill, the more we will become. So you have done me a great favour and I thank you.” Then the man drew his last breath and shut his eyes and the sun came out. All the people buried his body in a special place and his spirit became the guide of all those whose hearts are pure.’

When dad finished there was a silvery silence. Then, in a different voice, he said:

‘Stories can conquer fear, you know. They can make the heart bigger.’

In the new silence I noticed that Madame Koto’s presence had receded from around us. Dad’s story had driven her away. His story made the candle burn brighter and seemed to have increased the serenity of his own spirit. He no longer looked tortured. His eyes shone and sweat glistened on his forehead. When I looked up I noticed a sentient silence among the cobwebs. The spiders had also been listening to dad’s story.

‘So get some sleep, leave the door open, and when you need me I will be here.’

He blew out the candle. I didn’t hear him leave the room. He went out, but a form the exact shape of his body – only larger – remained sitting in his chair. Through the night the form grew even larger, filling out the room. It became lighter and cooler, a gentle shade of gold.

When I woke up in the morning the room had again been
cleaned. There was food on the table. A pleasant aroma lingered in the air. I knew that dad hadn’t returned, but I wasn’t afraid. And I wasn’t afraid because the good spirit had been visiting and keeping our lives company while dad did his penance and I stayed alone.

F
OR THREE DAYS
I followed dad in spirit. I followed his penance and I circled him in his journeys. In the daytime he went away. At night he would tell me a story. When he left, his other form in the chair grew more powerful and it protected me. The good spirit would tiptoe into the room while I was asleep and clean the place and prepare the most savoury dishes. Dad didn’t sleep for seven days. I didn’t see him eat. I ate, and grew leaner. The fleas harassed me. The mosquitoes fattened themselves on my blood and died from over-nourishment.

The wind kept trying to blow away dad’s other form. The harder it tried, the lighter dad’s other form became. It seemed like water. The intentional wind blew it one way, and it flowed, and re-formed in another space. The war between the nightwind and dad’s secret form went on during the periods when dad left the house and carried mountainous loads at the docks, or mighty bales of cloth or bulging bags of garri at the markets, or broke rocks for the construction of roads.

The harder the wind blew, the harder dad worked. He seemed to be punishing himself, filling with suffering the empty spaces where the demon-girl once resided. He starved. He didn’t drink any alcohol and didn’t smoke any cigarettes. He didn’t get into any fights and when provoked he allowed
himself to be beaten. He came back a strange man every evening. He would rest a bit, pace the room, and tell stories about people who were dying and who went around helping others who were also dying and the mosquito said different things to the hero on the dawn of his transformation. Sometimes it was a lion that licked the good man’s feet. Sometimes it was a tiger. Sometimes an elephant bore his body deep into the forest and to the land of spirits. Other times it was a giraffe that bore him on its cushioned hump into the kingdom of pure spirits on the great dawn of his coronation.

For three days I followed my father in spirit as he worked to earn mum’s forgiveness. I never knew that dad also had many people inside him. He grew taller. His eyes became sunken, but they shone brighter. His unshaven look and the broken expression on his face kept making me want to cry. But a moment before I might have started to weep, he would begin a story. And when he left the house, staggering from his loss of weight, I realised that as he grew thinner his other form in the chair became so vast and powerful that it was soon bigger than the whole compound. It was a mystery. The other tenants, for no apparent reason, became kinder to me. They brought me food and kept touching my head fondly. Then one day a most curious thing happened. I was alone, playing in the street, when an old man with reddish teeth came to me. He stared into my eyes, smiled, and made a prayer over me, and went away.

My father carried loads with a vengeful determination. His neck shrank. His boots looked sad. He took to clearing the accumulations of rubbish in our street. He gave the money he had suffered so much to earn to families and total strangers who were poorer than we were. His penance became a new kind of demon. He offered to wash clothes for over-burdened women. He fetched water from our well for everyone. He dug gutters, he helped to build wooden bridges over marshlands near us, he worked on building sites, he visited our poor relations and took them medicines and fruits during their illnesses, and he came back every
night with his head bowed, his eyes raw, unable to forgive himself.

On the third night he came home sadder than usual. He said:

‘My son, I have been unable to gatecrash your mother’s forgiveness.’

I stayed silent. Dad was disappearing. He hadn’t eaten and his body was growing hollow.

‘There is a red wind in my head,’ he continued. ‘When I was carrying loads today a fly sat on top of the load and I fell down and couldn’t get up. No one in the wide world came to help me. I stayed on the ground the whole afternoon. The owners of the load came and kicked me and called me a dog. I didn’t retaliate. Then an old woman came to me and said, “You can’t hide your head from life. If you succeed you will lose your head. You must also learn how to fail.” Then she left. She was a messenger from my father, the priest of Roads. But, Azaro, my son, I don’t understand the message.’