‘You’re still up?’

‘Yes.’

‘Go to sleep.’

‘I’m hungry.’

She was silent. Then after a while she said:

‘Wait for your father. We will all share his food.’

I thanked her. She found me in the darkness and held my head to her and I heard hercryinggently andthenshesaid,inalightervoice:

‘Let me tell you the story about the stomach.’

‘Tell me a story,’ I said, expectantly.

She went back to the bed. I couldn’t see her. The rats ate and the cockchafers fretted. She began.

‘Powerful people eat very little,’ she said.

‘Why?’

‘Because they are powerful. There was once a great medicine man in my village who would fly to the moon at night and then would walk across the mighty ocean to visit spirits in the country of white people..

‘Why?’

‘Because he went to attend an important meetingconcerningthefutureof thewhole world. And to be able to attend the meeting he must do something great. So he flew to the moon and to many planets. After he had done that he went to the country of white people and before they allowed him in they asked him one question.’

‘What?’

‘They said: “Mr Medicine Man from the village of Otu, what did you eat before you went to the moon?”’

‘And what did he say?’

‘A cricket.’

‘Only a cricket?’

‘Yes, a small roasted cricket.’

Weweresilentforawhile.Iponderedthestory withmy feetnottouchingthefloor.

‘Is that the story of the stomach?’

‘No,’ Mum said in the darkness.

We were silent again. Then Mum began, saying:

‘Once upon a time..

I sat back in Dad’s chair and folded up my feet. there was a man without a stomach. Every year he used to worship at a great shrine. One day he met a stomach without a body. The stomach said: “I have been looking for you. What are you doing without me?” And then the stomach jumped on the man and became part of him. The man carried on with his journey to the shrine. But before he got there he became very hungry. The stomach said: “Feed me.” “I will not,” said the man. “When I didn’t have you I travelled far, was never hungry, was always happy and contented, and I was strong. You can either leave me now or be quiet.”..’

Somewhere around that point in the story I fell through the back of the chair and I flew on the back of a cricket and I was the man without a stomach, heading for a feast on the moon.

And then I found my eyes open and there was a candle lit on the table. Dad was standingaboveme, swaying. Helooked both crushed and stunned.

‘My brain has been pressed down, my son,’ he said.

I quickly got down from his chair. He paced up and down the room, holding his head. And then he sat down heavily and was still.

‘I found the candle at the market,’ he said, and fell asleep.

Mum laid out his food and woke him up. He blinked.

‘Ihavebeencarryingthemostterribleloadsinmy dreams,’hegroaned.

‘You should eat,’ Mum said.

We had gathered round the table. Dad didn’t move. His face was lit by the candle. All the tendons on his neck showed up thick and tense. His face glistened, and veins throbbed on his temples. He surprised us by suddenly speaking:

‘They have begun to spoil everything with politics,’ he said in a ghostly and exhausted voice. ‘Now they want to know who you will vote for before they let you carry their load.’

He paused. His eyes were bloodshot.

‘If you want to vote for the party that supports the poor, they give you the heaviest load. I am not much better than a donkey.’

‘Eat, you’re tired,’ Mum said.

Dad shut his eyes and began mumbling something which I took to be a prayer. He didn’t open his eyes for a long time. And it was only when he began to snore that we knew he had fallen asleep again. Mum didn’t want to disturb him a second time so we ate half the food and saved the rest for him to eat in the morning. We ate more quietly than the rats did.

Before I woke up in the morning Dad had gone and all I had of him were the smells of his boots, of mud, of cigarettes, the mosquito coil, and his sweat. The mood of the room was infected with his exhaustion.

Wehadcut downourfood.Thatmorningwehadpapandbread.Mumwentoffto the market, went hawking her boxes of matches, sweets, cigarettes and odds and ends down the roads on a quite empty stomach. She looked much leaner and her blouse hung from her and the straps fell over her shoulders as if she had shrunk in her clothes.

As I walked behind her to the junction where we parted I felt very unhappy about the thinness of her voice amongst the noises of the ghetto. As she went off on her arduous journeys she seemed so frail that the slightest wind threatened to blow her away into the molten sky. Before she went she gave me a piece of bread, and told me to behave myself at school. I followed her a short way. She was barefoot. It pained me to see her stumble on the rubbish and stones of the paths. It seemed very harsh not to be able to go hawking with her, not to be able to protect her feet, and help her sell off all her provisions. I followed her and then she turned, saw me, and waved me on to school. I slowed down, turned back, and watched her disappear into the expanding ghetto.

TWO

WHEN I WENT TO Madame Koto’s bar after school, the place was empty. I was hungry. Sittingneartheearthenwarepot,IkepttellingmyselfthatIdidn’thave a stomach. I slept and woke up. Flies had come into the bar. I went to Madame Koto’s room to ask for food and was about to knock when I heard her chanting. I heard the ringing of a bell. I was about to go back to the bar when two women of the compound saw me and said:

‘What are you doing?’

I said nothing. They held me and I shouted. Madame Koto came out. She had antimony on one side of her face, kaoline on the other, and her mouth was full of the juice of ground tobacco. The women looked at her, then at one another, and hurried on.

‘Why didn’tyouknock?’sheasked,hermouthdrippingwiththetobacco.

‘You were busy.’

‘Go to the bar.’

‘I’m hungry.’

‘How can you be hungry with that small stomach?’

Then she went back to her room. The bells started up. I went to the bar and the flies played around my nose. It got very humid and I couldn’t breathe and my hunger got unbearable.Iwent out ofthebarandwanderedalongthepaths.Itwasexcruciatingly hot. Trees shimmered in the sun. The shadows were dense. Insects sizzled among the bushes. A lizard half crossed my way and then it stopped, turned towards me, and nodded. A bell rang. Its jangling noise scared me and I jumped out of the path, into the bushes, and a huge man with a wide mouth rode past on a little bicycle. He gave an insane laugh as he shot past. I stayed in the bushes and only came running out when I felt my legs burning with stings. I had trodden on an army of ants. I got them off me and was about to return to the bar when I noticed that the poor lizard was dead in the middle of the path. The bicycle had ridden over it and it had died with its head caught in an exaggerated nod. The ants marched towards it and I picked up the lizard by the tail and took it with me towards the bar, intent on giving it a good burial.

Outsidethebartherewasamanstandingbarefootintheheat.Hehadononly apair of sad-looking underpants. His hair was rough and covered in a red liquid and bits of rubbish. He had a big sore on his back and a small one on his ear. Flies swarmed around him and he kept twitching. Every now and then he broke into a titter. I tried to goroundhimbuthekeptcuttingoffmy path.

‘Madame Koto!’ I called.

The man came towards me. He had one eye higher than the other. His mouth looked like a festering wound. He twitched, stamped, laughed, and suddenly ran into the bar. I went after him, carrying the dead lizard as if it were a protective fetish. I found him crouched behind the earthenware pot. He snarled at me.