‘You laughed at me? You’re next!’

She started towards me with a demonic expression, and I cried out. Dad put his arm round me and said:

‘Gotosleep,my son.Nothingwillharmyou.’

After a long silence, as if answering an important question which the night and his parents and his hopes had put to him, he said:

‘Ihavebeencarryingtheworldonmy headtoday.’

Soon afterwards he fell asleep. He slept like a giant.

FOURTEEN

DAD WAS PRAYING over Mum’s body. There was a herbalist in the room. He looked very fierce and wise and stank of old leaves. He chewed on a root and his teeth were brown. He sprinkled the room with liquid from a half -calabash. There were candles on both sides of Mum’s body. She lay on the mat, breathing gently. Her eyelids shone with antimony. The corpse of a bat lay by her face. Razor incisions had been made on her shoulders and I watched the blood turn black as the herbalist smeared the cut with ash. The herbalist made her sit up and drink from a bowl of bitter liquid. Mum contorted her face. The herbalist began whipping the air, driving out unwanted spirits with his charmed flywhisk. The air crackled with their cries. When he had sealed our spaces with gnomic spells, he made Mum sit up again. Underourintensegaze,hebit Mum’sshoulderandpulledoutalongneedleandthree cowries from her flesh. He went outside and buried them in the earth.

When he had finished with his treatment Mum fell asleep, looking more peaceful than before. The herbalist and Dad haggled about money. Dad’s voice was strained andhekept pleadingforthechargestobealittlelower.Theherbalistwouldn’tbudge. Dad said it was all he had. The herbalist wouldn’t relent. Dad sighed, paid, and they sat talking. I hated the herbalist for taking so much money off Dad, and I cursed him. They talkedasiftheywerefriendsandIhatedhimevenmoreforpretendingtobeour friend. When he got up to leave he seemed to notice me for the first time. He stared hard at me and gave me a pound, which I gave to Dad. I took back my curse, and he left.IsatonDad’slegsandwewatchedMumsleepingsoundly onthebed.

Late in the afternoon Dad said he was thirsty. We went to the bar. Madame Koto’s establishmentwasempty exceptfortheflies.Iheardhersinginginthebackyard.Dad called her but she didn’t hear. We both called her, banging on the table, and still she couldn’t hear us. We were banging away at the table, calling her name, when the front door swungopen and ablack wind camein and circled us and disappeared into an earthenware pot of water.

‘Did you see that, Dad?’ I asked.‘What?’‘The black wind.’‘No.’Madame Koto came in, her hair a mess, her hands covered in animal gore.‘So it’s you two. I’m coming.’She went back out and minutes later was back, her hands clean, her hair in place.‘What do you want to drink?’Dad ordered the usual palm-wine and bushmeat peppersoup. When the wine was served the flies thickened around us. A wall-gecko watched us as we drank. ‘Look at that wall-gecko, Dad.’ ‘Don’t mind it,’ he said without looking. ‘It’s our friend, watching over us.’ Thepeppersoup washotterthanusualandIkeptblowingtocoolitsfire.

‘Drink some water,’ Madame Koto said.‘No, I don’t want water.’ ‘Why not?’‘The black wind went into it.’ ‘What wind?’‘Don’t mind him,’ Dad said. She eyed me suspiciously.‘You have a strange son,’ she said, and sat across from us at the table.‘And a good wife,’ Dad added. ‘I heard what you did. Thank you.’ She ignored

Dad’s gratitude. With her bigeyes fixed on me, shesaid: ‘Aboutthismoney you’reowingme… ‘Me?’ I said. ‘Not you. Your father.’ ‘Yes?’ ‘I’m not like the other people.’ ‘What other people?’ ‘The people you owe and who..” Shestopped, looked axDad, and then at me. ‘I will forget the money if you let your son come and sit in my bar now and again.’ Dad looked at me. ‘Why?’ he asked. ‘Because he has good luck.’ ‘What good luck? He has given us nothing but trouble.’ ‘That’s because he is your son.’ ‘I can’t agree. He is going to school.’ ‘I don’t want to go to school,’ I said. ‘Shut up.’ Madame Koto stared at Dad, her eyes brighter. ‘I will pay for him to go to school.’ ‘I can pay for my own son,’ Dad replied proudly. ‘All right. I will forget the money. Just let him come and sit here for ten minutes every three days or so. That’s all.’

‘Do you want to turn him into a drunkard?’‘His father is not a drunkard.’Dad looked at me. He looked at me with new eyes. The wall-gecko hadn’t moved.

It watched us the whole time.

‘I will discuss it with his mother.’

‘Good.’

‘But these people I owe money, what about them?’

‘What about them?’

‘You were going to tell me something.’

‘Didn’t your son tell you?’

‘What?’

‘That they threw stones at your wife?’

‘Who? Who threw stones?’

Madame Koto got up and fetched some more palm-wine.

‘I can’t tell you.’

Dad turned to me, and he looked so fierce that before he asked me anythingI told him who the people were and what had happened. He downed half a glass of palm-wine in one gulp, rubbed the spillings all over his sweating face, and stormed out of the bar without paying.

By the time we got to our compound Dad had managed to whip himself up into a fantastic rage. We ran into one of the creditors who was just coming out of the toilet. Dad went straight up to him and without saying a single word he feinted with a right jab at the fellow’s face and punched him in the stomach. The creditor bent over, grunting, and Dad, grabbed him round the waist and threw him, back first, on the ground. When Dad straightened, dusting his hands, he saw another creditor, whose son had stoned Mum on the head. The second creditor had witnessed the efficiency of Dad’s fury and had started to run. Dad chased after him, caught him, tripped him, helped him up, lifted the poor fellow on his shoulders, showed him to the sky, and tossed him on to a patch of mud.

The first creditor, who had quickly recovered from his fall, came running towards us swinging high a burning firewood. Dad was delighted. He ducked the arc of the firewood, smashed the fellow in the stomach again and confused him with repeated left jabs to his face. Then with a cry that amazed everyone he floored the creditor with a right cross.

The second creditor, covered in mud, came at Dad, swearing in three languages. Dad practised his right jabs on his nose till he began to bleed and then polished him off with a left hook. People had gathered. The second creditor was a motionless heap on the floor and the wives and relations of the fallen man crowded Dad. He kept hitting at the men, lashing out with both hands in wild swings, intent on entirely separating their heads from their bodies. The men were scared and in their fear they walked into Dad’s swinging punches. He knocked out three of them with his bad arm alone. The crowd was mesmerised by his prowess.

‘Boxer! Boxer!’ they chanted.

The wives of the creditors pounced on Dad and scratched his face and went for his crotch and I heard him cry out. He managed to push them away. Then he ran. The women and children pursued Dad, who fled both from their rage and from his own fear of hurting them. When they couldn’t catch Dad they turned their anger on me and I fled screaming to Madame Koto’s place and hid behind the earthenware pot. The women and relatives shouted outside. They were too afraid of Madame Koto’s reputation to come in and disrupt her establishment. She heard their noises from the backyard and I saw her securing her wrapper tightly round her waist, in complete readiness for battle, as she strode towards them, shouting:

‘Yes, what do you people want? WINE OR WAR?’

The pack of them scattered at Madame Koto’s terrifying advance. When they had retreated completely, I came out from behind the earthenware pot. Madame Koto smiled at me. Then she poured me a tumbler of palm-wine. I drank with the flies and, later, Dad, dodging among the shadows of the bushes, came and joined me on the bench.