‘What happened?’

‘Troublesome customers,’ was all she said.

We set to work clearingtheplace. I swept thefloor and brushed out alltheants. We moved the tables. She poured sand on the vomit and swept it out to the front. We rearranged the benches. I sprinkled water on the floor and swept again. The areas of the madman’s piss were still greenish. The cross-eyed spirits had gone. As we moved the tables Madame Koto farted. I was startled by the sudden voluminous noise. Her face showed no sign that I had noticed. She sprinkled disinfectant over the vomit-stains and then she opened the front door for air to come through. Then she went to have her bath.

The wind didn’t really come through the bar. It was stuffy and smelt of Madame Koto’s fart. I went outside for a while and when I came back in the smell had cleared. I sat in my corner while Madame Koto struggled with the gourds and calabashes outside. Some of her women friends came to see her on their way back from hawking.

‘My daughter’s husband!’ they said to me as they passed through the bar, with basins on their heads.

In the backyard they talked about politics, about the thugs of politicians and how businessmen and chiefs sprayed money at parties and celebrations. Madame Koto fed them and they prayed for her prosperity and they left, their voices low and sweet as they chatted away down the street.

As the evening wore on the bar stayed empty. No one came; I slept; and I was woken up by a lizard that had dropped from the wall. I got up and saw a man sitting at a table. He had a swollen eye and his lower lip was unnaturally thick. He spoke in a heavy,slowvoice,asifhefoundwordstoobulky torolloverhisbiglip.

‘Is that how you treat customers?’ he asked.

I called for Madame Koto. She came in and the man said:

‘Have my friends come yet?’

‘What friends?’

‘My friends.’

‘No one has come yet. You want some palm-wine?’

‘I will only drink when my friends arrive. They have all the money.’

‘I will serve you,’ said Madame Koto, ‘and when they come you can pay me.’

‘I will wait,’ insisted the man.

Madame Koto went out. The man sat perfectly still. Then he shut his good eye. His bloated eyestayedopen.Soonhewasasleep andbegantosnore.Ihadbeenlookingat him intently for a while when I became aware that the bar was filling up. I looked round and saw no one except the man. But the bar was full of drunken and argumentative voices, laughter, vitriolic abuses, and the unrestrained merriment of hard-drinkingmen. I went and told MadameKoto about it.

‘Rubbish!’ she said, following me.

When we got into the bar the voices had materialised and the place was quite full.

‘Plenty ofpeople,’shesaid,eyeingme.

I was surprised; but when I sat down my surprise turned to bewilderment. The people in the bar were stranger than any I had seen before. The group that sat round the man with the bloated eye looked alike. Their eyes were all swollen and their lips were big and bruised. At first I thought they were all boxers. Then I noticed that two of them had only one hand each and the original man had only three fingers. He wore rings on all the fingers. They talked loudly but their voices were disproportionately more powerful than the movements of their mouths.

Across from them sat two men, dressed identically in agbada of fish-printed material. They both wore skullcaps and very dark glasses. I was convinced that they were both blind; but they talked and gesticulated as though they had perfect sight. On another table there was a man who sat alone. He had no thumbs and his head, amazingly contorted like certain tubers of yam, was altogether bald. He wore a wristwatch that ticked loudly and when he yawned I saw that he had no teeth at all, in spiteof lookingquiteyoung.

There was a woman next to him, whose skin was more indigo than dark-brown. She kept adjustingher shoulders and did not smileor speak.

Madame Koto came round to serve them.

‘These are my friends,’ the original man with the bloated eye said.

‘Where do you all come from?’ Madame Koto asked.

‘Here. This country, this city. Here we live, here we die.’

Just as he finished speaking, two albino men came in. They were freckled, their eyesweregreen,andthey werequitebeautiful.Theireyeskeptshuttingandopening, wobblingfromsidetoside,asifthey couldn’tstandthelight.Therestofthecompany cheered them as they came in. They smiled and took their seats opposite the toothless youngman. ‘What do you want to drink?’ ‘Palm-wine, naturally, and your famous peppersoup,’ said the original man. Madame Koto went out to serve them. While she was out a very tall man and woman came in. Their legs were very long. The rest of their bodies were quite short. They had small heads and eyes that were so tiny that it was only when they came near me that I could perceive their pin-point brightness. They came over, stood perfectly straight for a moment, and then, like bizarre actors, they leant over to me, keeping their legs and top halves straight, and said, in voices that could only have come from children:

‘We want some peppersoup, please.’I ran out and told Madame Koto.‘Leave me alone, I’m coming!’ she said.I went back in. The tall couple had seated themselves at my table. They sat straight and their knees were awkward underneath the table and I noticed that they had the longest necks I had yet seen on any human being. ‘Are you politicians?’ I asked. ‘What?’ asked the man, in his child’s voice. ‘Politicians.’ ‘What is that?’ ‘You’renot politicians,’ I said, closingtheconversation.

They kept glancing at me and I found their faces very disconcerting. I tried to sit there without noticing them when the woman brought out a feather from her wrapper and offered it to me.

‘No, thank you,’ I said. She smiled and put it back. Madame Koto came in with the gourds of palm-wine and voices erupted in weird jubilation. I fetched glasses and cups and distributed them round. When I gave the cups to the men with dark glasses they grabbed my hand and said: ‘What’s your name?’ ‘Why?’ ‘We like you. We want to take you with us.’ ‘Where?’

‘Wherever.’

‘No.’

‘Yes.’

I tried to wrench my hand free but their grips were very strong and their bony fingers bit into my flesh.

‘No.’

‘Yes.’

I pulled again but my flesh bruised and began to bleed. I screamed, but the voices in the room were so loud they cut off my screaming. I kicked, missed, and hurt my toes on the foot of the table. Then I scratched one of them in the face, and snatched off his glasses. Both of his eyes were totally white. They could have been made of milk. They were white and blank and unmoving, as if they had been stuck there, malformed, in the empty sockets.

I opened my mouth to shout, but the man laughed so powerfully and his mouth was so black that I froze in my attempt. I couldn’t move. I felt transfixed, as if I were suffering a living rigor mortis. Then a searing pain went up my spine, ended in my brain, and I woke up to find myself in my usual corner, with the tall, small-eyed couple staring at me. Everyone else was drinking. Steaming bowls of peppersoup were in front of all the customers. They drank steadily and talked in curious voices.

Thetwo albino menkepttwistingandjerkingasiftheirbodieswereuncomfortable. They were silent. The toothless man was also silent. They all kept looking at me. More customers came into the bar. There was a man with a head like that of a camel, a woman with a terrible hip deformation, another man with white hair, and a midget. The woman had a large sack on her back, which she gave to the albinos. The albinos unfurled the sack, shook it out, sending dust clouds into the air. They glanced at me furtively, and hid the sack under the table.

The four people who had come in looked for places to sit and then crowded my table. I had to get up for them. I fetched a little stool and sat near the earthenware pot and watched the bar become overcrowded.