‘This life has not been good to me,’ Mum said.

‘Your reward will come,’ Dad said, absent-mindedly.

‘I will make you happy,’ I said.

Mum stared at me. Then she lay down. Soon she was asleep. The wind blew in through all the cracks in the room and made us shiver.

‘Somethingis goingto happen,’ I ventured.

‘Somethingwonderful,’ Dad said, rockinghis chair expertly.

The wind blew hard. The moth circled the flame. Then suddenly the candle went out. We stayed still in the darkness. The room was quiet.

‘I miss hearing the rats,’ Dad said.

‘Why?’

‘They made me think. Everything has to fight to live. Rats work very hard. If we are not careful they will inherit the earth.’

The silence grew deeper. I lay down and listened to Dad thinking. His thoughts were wide;they spunaroundhishead,bouncingoffeverythingintheroom.Histhoughts filled the place, weighed me down, and after a while I was inside his head, travelling to the beginnings: I went with him to the village, I saw his father, I saw Dad’s dreams runningaway fromhim.Histhoughtswerehard,they bruisedmy head,my eyes ached,andmy heartpoundedfastinthestiflingheatoftheroom.Dadsighed.Mum turned on the bed. The room became full of amethyst and sepia thoughts. Forms moved in the darkness. A green eye regarded me from just above Dad’s head. The eye was still. Then it moved. It went to the door and became a steady tattoo on the wooden frame. The wind increased the sound. Dad creaked his bones. When the knocksbecamelouderIsmeltsomethingsoprofoundly rancidthatIsatup.

‘What’s wrong?’ Dad asked.

‘Somethingis tryingto get into thehouse.’

The knocks sounded on the window. I opened it; the wind came in and blew me towards the bed. Mum sat up and went to the door. She opened it and gave a low scream. Dad was still. The smells of death, of bitterness, of old bodies, decomposing eyes, and old wounds, filled the room. Then several eyes lit up the darkness. There was laughter; and from their breath came the bad food and hunger of the world. They came into the room, surrounding us. In the darkness, a bitter wind amongst them, with the calm of strangers who have become familiar, they sat on the floor, on the bed, on my mat. We couldn’t breathe for their presence. One of them went and sat at Dad’s feet. She was a girl. I could smell her bitter beauty, her bad eye, her unwashed breasts. They came amongst us not like an invasion, but like people who have waited a long timetotaketheirplaceamongtheliving.They saidnothing.Mumstayedatthedoor. All the exiled mosquitoes came in; the fireflies looking for their illumination clustered round the figures in the room. A red butterfly circled the girl’s head and when it settled on her the room was faintly lit up with a ghostly orange light that made my eyes twitch.

‘Who are you people?’ Dad asked, in a voice devoid of fear.

There was a long silence.

‘Azaro, who are they?’

The girl stretched out her hand and placed it on Dad’s foot. Then she began to stroke it. She stroked his feet gently, till they too caught the orange light, and looked burnished, separated from the rest of his body in the dark.

‘My feet are burning,’ Dad said, ‘and I feel no heat.’

‘Who are you?’ Mum shrieked. ‘Get out, now! Get out!’

There was another silence.

‘They are the beggars,’ I said.

Mum caught her breath. Dad pulled his feet away and sat up straight. The orange light died in the room. I heard Dad fumbling for the box of matches. After a moment the match was lit, but not by Dad. The beggar girl held the flame up in the air so we could see. Shelooked so wonderfulsittingthereatDad’sfeet.Herbadeye,inthedeceptive light, had turned a curious yellow colour. Her good eye was almost blue, but it was full of the deepest sadness and silence. Her dress stank. Her face was serene like that of a spirit-child. Without taking her eyes off Mum the beggar girl lit the candle. We looked round and saw them, seated peacefully, as if at a village council meeting, on the floor, their backs against the wall, on the bed, each of them fertile in deformities, their wounds livid, the stumps of missing arms grotesque, their rubber-like legs distorted. There was one with a massive head like a great bronze sculpture eaten by time. Another had a swollen Adam’s apple. Yet another had two of the most protruding and watchful eyes I have ever seen. They seemed to have been made by a perverse and drunken god.

Mum cried out and charged at the beautiful beggar girl. She seemed quite demented. She grabbed the girl by the hair and tried to pull her up. The girl didn’t move,didn’t utterasound.Mumseizedherarmsandtriedtodragherout.Mumwas screaming all the time. We all seemed in a trance. We all watched her without moving. Mum tried to shift the girl, but it was as if she were struggling with an immovable force. The girl’s eyes became strange. She took on a great weight, as if all her poverty and her suffering had invisibly compacted her like a dwarf star. Mum began shouting:

‘Get out, all of you! Get out, you beggars! Can’t you see that we too are suffering, eh? Our load is too much for us. Go! Take our food, but go!’

She stopped shouting suddenly. In the silence that followed, the curious spell was lifted. I breathed in the deep fragrances of wild flowers, of herbs beaten to the ground by rain, of clouds and old wood, of banana plants and great open spaces, of verdant breezes and musk and heliotropes in the sun. The fragrances went. Then Mum turned on Dad, pounced on him, and began hitting him uncontrollably. Dad didn’t move in the chair. Soon he was bleeding from a scratch right next to his eye. Then Mum tore at his shirt and when all the buttons flew off she woke from her fever. She stopped again and went to the beggar girl. She knelt in front of her. The beggar girl began to stroke Dad’s feet. Mum, weeping, said:

‘Ididn’t meananyharm.Mylifeislikeapit.Idigitanditstaysthesame.Ifillitand it empties. Look at us. All of us in one room. I walk from morning till night, selling things, praying with my feet. God smiles at me and my face goes raw. Sometimes I cannot speak. My mouth is full of bad living. I was the most beautiful girl in my village and I married this madman and I feel as if I have given birth to this same child five times. I must have done someone a great wrong to suffer like this. Please, leave us. My husband is mad but he is a good man. We are too poor to be wicked and even as wesuffer our hearts arefullof goodness. Pleasego,wewilldosomethingforyou, but let us sleep in peace.’

A long silence grew in the wake of Mum’s speech. The beggar girl stopped stroking Dad’s feet. I began crying. Dad lit a cigarette. He poured himself more ogogoro. He gave some to the beggar girl. She drank. Dad downed what was left. The girl coughed.

‘Did you hear me?’ Mum asked.

‘She’s a princess,’ Dad said. ‘They travelled for seven days to come to my party. I did not invite them but they came. A river does not travel a new path for nothing. The road gave them a message for me. Can’t you see that they are messengers?’

‘What is their message?’ Mum asked.

‘What is your message?’ I asked them.

All the beggars turned to me.

‘Andwhereisyouroldone?’Isaid,rememberingmy encounterinthebar.

Dad looked at me.

The beggar girl got up. The other beggars changed their postures. Then, without speaking, taking their deformities and their wounds with them, but leaving their vile smells behind, they filed out of the room. The girl was the last to leave. She stared at meintensely,thenat Dad,andshut thedoorbehindher.Iheardthemshufflingupto the housefront. Dogs barked in the distance. Fireflies, mosquitoes, and moths, died on the table and floor, killed, it seemed, by the smell in the room. Dad drank steadily, weaving his head round and round as if he were in a profound dream. Mum leant over, slapped her foot, straightened, and in a low voice, said: