‘Tell them to stop. You don’t know who that girl is.’

‘She is a thief.’

‘She is not a thief.’

MadameKotobellowedsomethingat Mum.SheinsultedMumloudly,sayingthat Mum too was a beggar. She gave vent to such a torrent of anger and bitterness that Mumwas stunned. ThenMumdidsomethingquiteodd.Shetorethewigoffherhead and threw it on the floor. She took the blue sunglasses off her face. Then she stormed out of the disrupted party uttering the direst curses. The wind blew again when the whipping of the beggar girl was resumed. It was a strident wind. Slowly the beggar girl sank to the ground under the brutality of the whipping. Dad strained furiously against the people holding him down. The duiker let out a low snarl. The beggar girl began to bleed from the mouth. Blood dripped down her lips and fell in drops on the ground. I began to weep. Someone hit me. It was the blind old man. He started playingon his harmonicato thesound of thethrashing.

‘A good whipping, eh,’ he said every now and again.

The wind lifted the edges of the tent. The beggar girl crouched on the floor in a foetal position. I went round the gathered resplendent celebrants. They were fanning themselves. Their faces were animated by the new spectacle. As I pushed through them I again noticed their hoofs, their goat-legs, their spidery legs, and their bristly skins. I crept towards the duiker and untied it from the pole and released it from its sacrificial captivity. A mighty wail erupted from Dad. He stood up in a great burst of manic energy and sent the men flying. The duiker bounded from the backyard into the tent. And as the wind made the tent sway, as the lights began going on and off, a frightening cry rose from the bewildered crowd. The duiker bounded amongst the dazzling array of celebrants, scattering the bird cages, overturning the tables, stampingon thefood, upsettingbasins offriedmeat,mashingthefruits,crashinginto the cage of large parrots, shattering the tables with beer on them, and sowing pandemonium. The parrot beat its wings against the limitations of the tent, the monkey escaped and fled off with its hand full of fruits, the loudspeakers fell with a crash, people trampled on one another, howling and confused, the thugs chased the duiker, trying to recapture it, Dad hurled himself at the woman whipping the beggar girl and pushed her away, Madame Koto knocked Dad on the head with the metallic end of her walking stick, the blind old man squealed in his weird sorcerer’s delight, theduikerleapt out throughthetent openingandthewindburstinandtiltedthetent to one side, and Madame Koto ordered everyone to be calm. The parrot flew out through agapingholeinthetent.ThethugsturnedonDad,andwereabouttodescend on him and beat him to a mash when a voice amongst the celebrants, profound with an unearthly authority, said:

‘Stop!’

Everyone froze as if in an enchantment. Then slowly they turned to see who had spoken with such power. The wind calmed down. The voices had stopped. Most of the motions in the tent ceased. And then the tall man in a white suit who had been waitingfor Dad stepped out fromtheexpectant crowd.

EIGHT

‘LEAVE HIM TO ME,’ he said in his thin ghostly voice. ‘I will thrash this BlackTygerwithoutevenstainingmy whitesuit.’

The blind old man played a strain on his instrument.

‘Ah, lovely, a fight!’ he said.

And before we could register what exactly was happening the man in white struck Dad in the face and sent him reeling. Dad fell on to a table. He didn’t move for fifteen seconds. No one saw the jab that did the damage. The celebrants, awoken from their enchantment, clapped. The old man played a tune. The beggars shuffled and crawled out of the tent. The beggar girl stayed crouched on the ground. Someone poured water on Dad. He jumped up quickly, looked around, and kept blinking.

‘Where am I?’ he wondered out loud.The celebrants burst out laughing. Dad staggered around. Then he fell. He got up again and reached for a cup of palm-wine and drank it down. I went over to him.

‘What areyou doinghere?’ heasked severely.

‘The man in white hit you.’

‘A white man?’

‘No. Him.’ I pointed.

Dad went all over the place, drinking all the cups of wine he could find. Then he shook his head to clear away the thick cobwebs, howled a war cry, and rushed over to the man in white. Before Dad could do anything the man unleashed a whiplash of a punch. Dad crumpled into a heap. He writhed and twisted on the ground like a lacerated worm. I rushed over to him again.

‘Let’s go home,’ I said.

‘Why?’ he yelled.

‘Theman is beatingyou.’

‘What man?’ I was taken aback. Dad seemed to be in an unreal land, a mythical land. He didn’t seemto know what was happeningto him. His facehad broken out in two monstrous purple bruises as if under the chastisement of an invisible sorcerer. I couldn’t see his right eye. I never knew that a jab could inflict such punishment, such disfigurement, or such disorientation. Dad’s eyes were dazed, slightly crossed, and his lips kept moving. I leant over to hear what he was saying.

‘This is an excellent party,’ hesaid weakly, slurringhis words.

‘Let’s go.’

‘I’menjoyingthis dance,’ hesaid. ‘You’renot dancing.’

‘What am I doing then?’ ‘Losing a fight.’

‘Fight? Black Tyger? Lose a fight? Never!’

He got up, weaved, staggered, and fell on the beggar girl. He stayed down for a while. The music started. The man in white dusted his hands. Madame Koto took an immediate interest in him and sent intermediaries to make enquiries about him. Party chiefs, power merchants and warlords, always seekingnew additions to their ranks of warriors and hired protectors, sent their men to ask who he worked for and if he would enter their services. Thugs surrounded him, asking who he was, where he came from, offeringaspecialplacein their organisation. Theprostitutes and thelow-life courtesans also took a great interest in him. The praise-singers invented names and fabulous deeds for him. The beggar girl, bleeding from her mouth and nose, got out from under Dad. As she got up I noticed that her bad eye was open. It was yellowish and tinged with blue. Sheshook Dad. Thecelebrants jeered. Dad sat up, holdinghis head. When he saw the beggar girl he smiled leeringly, grabbed her, and began to embrace her. The beggar girl freed herself from his punch-drunk embrace. Dad’s face had taken on the softness of an abandoned lover and any moment it seemed he would burst into a grotesque and sentimental love song.

‘My wife, where are you going?’ he asked of the beggar girl. The girl got up and brushed the sand from her hair. Her back was a mess of flesh and torn cloth. Her hair fell from her head as if it were a wig dissolving back to its original constituents.

‘A magician!’ the blind old man said, and played his harmonica.Dad stood up. The girl backed away. Dad followed her.‘Let’s go!’ I cried.‘After I’m married,’ he said, wobbling.

Then he stopped, looked around, and noticed everyone staring at him with amused smiles on their faces. He noticed the man in white and looked at him as if for the first time. He looked at the green moths and the midges and the multicoloured lights and the chaos of overturned tables and trampled food and at the dimensions of the tent. Then he said:

‘I thought I was dreaming.’‘You’re not,’ I said.‘I thought I was in the Land of the Fighting Ghosts.’‘He is a Fighting Ghost.’‘You mean I wasn’t dreaming?’‘No,’ I said. ‘You’re losing a fight.’‘You’re drunk,’ said the blind old man.‘Punch-drunk,’ said one of the thugs. Dad touched his face. He winced.‘So they were real blows?’‘Yes,’ I said.‘Who did it?’

‘The man in white.’

Suddenly, with his curious ability to reach into deep places in his spirit, a ferocious energy swirled around Dad.

‘Hurry, go and call Sami, the betting-man,’ Dad said, awakening. ‘We will make money from this and build the beggars a school.’