Water poured into the sack. I became convinced that I was being taken to an underwater kingdom, where they say certain spirits reside. As I tried to keep the water out of my mouth, I felt something metallic like a frozen fish banging against my head. It was the pen-knife. I wasted no time in cutting my way out. The sack material was very tough but the water had softened it a little and it took some time to cut my way out and when I did the outside world was black like the bottom of a well. I fell out into the water with a splash.

‘The boy has escaped!’ a voice cried.

It was very dark, the river could have been the night, and the water was bitingly cold. I stayed under without moving. And then very gently I swam back to the shore, serene in my element.

I struggled through the bulrushes and the tiger-lilies of the marsh, over twisted mangrove roots and flickering eels, and when I gained the soft silt-sand I went on running till I got to a main road. It was very dark; I was hungry, wet, lost; and I heard voices all around me, the twittering, vicious voices of my spirit companions wailing in disappointment. I ran till the road became a river of voices, every tree, car, and face talking at me, cats crossing my path, people with odd night faces staring at me knowingly. At crossroads people glared and seemed to float towards me menacingly. I fled all through the night.

The road was endless. One road led to a thousand others, which in turn fed into paths, which fed into dirt tracks, which became streets, which ended in avenues and cul-de-sacs. All around, a new world was being erected amidst the old. Skyscrapers stood high and inscrutable beside huts and zinc abodes. Bridges were being built; flyovers, half-finished, were like passageways into the air, or like future visions of a time when cars would be able to fly. Roads, half-constructed, were crowded with heavy machinery. Here and there nightwatchmen slept under the stars with dull lamps as their only earthly illumination. The moon was round and big and it seemed bright with the face of an awesome king. I was comforted by its presence. I walked on with a terrible hunger for a destination, for Mum’s face, and Dad’s smells. I walked past the kerosine lamps of the somnolent street-traders.

‘Smallboy,whereareyougoingatthistime?’they oftenaskedme.

But I replied to no one. I wandered till my bare feet broke into blisters. And then, as I walked about in the darkness of being lost, I saw a disembodied light ahead of me, a tiny moon the shape of a man’s head. I followed the light. And it led me on longer journeys. And when I got to an area I vaguely recognised, my feet gave up on me and I collapsed at the roadside. I crawled to the nearest tree and curled myself up between its great roots which were above the ground and I fell asleep under the safety of the waning moon. The mosquitoes tormented me. The ants bit into my flesh and their stings persisted. But I slept through it all, and dreamt about a panther.

When I awoke the moon was still in the sky, like a ghost unwilling to disappear under the force of daylight. It was dawn. A few people were standing over me, with puzzlement on their faces.

‘He’s not dead!’ one of them cried.

I got up quickly; they came towards me with arms outstretched; I fled from them. I ran through thequickeningdawn,withthesunridingthesky.Theairheated,thesand warmed underfoot; and women of the new African churches, who wore white smocks andrangbells,criedout tothesleepingworldtoawakeandrepent.Ipassedprophets emerging from the forest with dew and leaves in their hair, cobwebs meshing their beards, their eyes demented with visions. I passed sorcerers with machetes that crackled with flames in the morning light, making sacrifices at dawn of red cocks, who poured gnomic chants on the untrodden roads. I also passed workers who had woken early and with sleepy faces made their ways through the mist, pierced by the sun, to the garages and bus-stops.

My feet were fresh on the paths. Dew wet my ankles. Hunger dried my lips. News-vendors roused the dawn with their horns, announcing to the awakening world the scandals of the latest political violence. The industrious women of the city, who carried basins of peppered aromatic foods on their heads, tempted the appetite of the world with their sweet voices. The worms of the road ate into the soles of my feet.

I came to another familiar place; the passionate chants of the muezzin roused the Muslim world to prayer. I had turned a corner, and had gone up a path that became a track, when three men in blue smocks rushed at me. I tore into the bushes, ran amongst the trees, and cried out into the echoing forest. Birds scattered from branches and pods fell from the treetops. I shook off the men, but I went on running, for the world seemed populated with people intent on me for one obscure reason or another.

While running through the forest paths I stepped on an enamel plate of sacrifices to the road. The plate was rich with the offerings of fried yams, fish, stewed snails, palm oil, rice and kola-nuts. Shell fragments and little pins stuck in the soles of my feet. I started to bleed. I was so hungry that I ate what I could of the offerings to the road and afterwards my stomach swelled and visions of road-spirits, hungry and annoyed, weavedinmy brain.Iwent onbleedingandablackcatwithgoldeneyesfollowedthe trail of my blood. My head boiled with hallucinations. I walked on broken glass, on the hot sand of bushpaths, on hot new tarmac.

The roads seemed to me then to have a cruel and infinite imagination. All the roads multiplied, reproducing themselves, subdividing themselves, turning in on themselves, like snakes, tails in their mouths, twistingthemselves into labyrinths. The road was the worst hallucination of them all, leading towards home and then away from it, without end, with too many signs, and no directions. The road became my torment, my aimless pilgrimage, and I found myself merely walking to discover where all the roads lead to, where they end.

And then I came to a place where I thought the roads terminated. An iroko tree had been felled across it. The tree was mighty, its trunk gnarled and rough like the faces of ancient warriors. It looked like a great soul dead at the road’s end. Beyond, the road sheeredintoadeep pit.Across,ontheotherside,weresand-carryinglorries.Strange sounds lisped in the tree trunk, voices echoed in its hollows. I sat on a branch of the tree to ease my feet. And then, while the road-spirits raged in me, I saw a two-legged dog emerge fromtheforest. It stopped and regarded me, whimperingfrequently. I was so amazed to see the dog standing on only two legs that I forgot my hunger and pain. It had a left forefoot and a right hindfoot and it stood, wobbling, as though on invisible crutches. The dog stared at me. And with a heavy, inconsolable sadness it turned and limped away. In my astonishment at seeing it walk I followed it as it limped on curiously.

The two-legged dog led me through the forest. It was a lean dog, with intense eyes and a sensitive tail and flea-ridden ears. I wanted to get rid of the fleas but I restrained myself and followed it at a distance, till I came to a clearing. I recognised the clearing at once. The dog limped on deeper into the forest. I watched it go and it stopped only once to look at me. I waved, but the dog did not understand my gesture. It went on limping,asolitary andheroicdog,survivingwithonly twolegsandasadface.

I carried on home. At the edge of the forest I saw Madame Koto with a plate of chicken and yam in her hands. The white beads weren’t round her neck. She stopped at the roadside, looked in all directions to make sure no one was about, and proceeded with her passionate supplications. I watched her secret fervour. When she had finished with her praying and chanting, she lit a candle and put it on the plate. She placed a finger of kaoline and some cowries beside the candle. Then she straightened, undid her kerchief, looked in all directions, and hurried away. I passed her road offering. I scurried past her barfront. I ran home.