It was rapidly getting dark. The wind blew hard through the trees. Trees groaned, branches cracked, and the wind among the leaves sounded like a distant waterfall. Pods exploded from on high and one of them fell on my head, like a mighty knock, and I dropped to the ground. In the silence and darkness that came over me I found myself riding the invisible horse of the night. I rode through the trees. All around me were silent figures in great masks. All around me were ancestral statues. Wherever I rode I saw immemorial monoliths with solemn faces and beaded lapis lazuli eyes. The monoliths were of gold, self-luminating in the darkness. One of the statues moved and turned into MadameKoto.Hergoldenwrapperflutteringabouther,sheclimbedonto a caparisoned horse of the night and commanded the other statues and monoliths to follow her. The figures in great masks moved. The statues moved. They climbed their horses, and rode after me.

I rode furiously and arrived at a place where all the winds of the world converged. The winds blew the army of statues one by one off their horses and they broke into golden fragments. Only Madame Koto, an implacable warrior, stayed on her horse and thudded after me. Just before she fell on me, it began to rain. The water, pouring down, gradually effaced her, beginning with her raised arm and her grim sword. Her arm dissolved into an indigo liquid and poured down her face; and her face dissolved slowly, as if the rain were an acid that ate away flesh and steel. Then her hair fell off and her head became reduced; and then her head rolled off into a ball of red waters and her shoulders melted and eventually her great massive bulk disappeared and all that remained were her two big fierce eyes which throbbed on the ground and stared at me. And then the horse neighed and lifted its front hooves in the air and turned and galloped away, burstingher two eyes with its hind feet. Then it too disappeared, amid infernal sounds, into the effulgent winds.

I found myself wandering under the downpour. The fetish was still in my hand. I wandered in the relentless rain, till I found the clearing. I was weary. The fetish seemed to have grown heavier and its leaden weight frightened me. I threw the fetish into the middle of the clearing, away from any trees. Then I decided to bury it, just in casethespiritsorMadameKotoaccidentally foundit.Idugaholewithastick.Water filled the hole. I didn’t mind. I stuck the fetish into the hole and covered it over with wet earth and then I stuck branches and sticks around the hole to remind me where I had buried the fetish. Then I made my way back to the edge of the forest and stayed under the eaves of a hut till the rain softened.

I was cold. My teeth rattled. The hand with which I had held the fetish was dyed indigo. The skin of the palm peeled away in wet flakes as though the fetish had eaten my flesh. The rain softened, drizzling, and I made my way home cautiously. Dogs howled in the dark. The wind blew strongly and lifted off the roof of a bungalow and knocked it over to the adjoining compound. The tenants wailed in the horrible voices of those who have been judged and damned, as if God had ripped off the cover of their lives and exposed them to a merciless infinity. They screamed in terrible desolation like Adam and Eve being sent out of the Garden of Eden for ever. It was a sad night, with the children crying and the rain pouringover their possessions. There was nothing I could do to help and I went on home, listening to thunder rumbling from its distant homestead, and lightning crackling its multiple candent fingers over the great trees.

Everything held menace for me. The barking of dogs was like the gnashing of vengeful spirits. Branches cracking sounded as if they were about to spring on me. And even theclothes and garments flappingonwashinglinesseemedsolikeMadame Koto, dissolved from the world of flesh, threatening to wreak eternal havoc on me for the loss of her fetish. I went a long and complicated route to avoid going past her barfront. And when I got home Dad was on his three-legged chair, smoking a cigarette; the mosquito coil was on the table; the broken window had been mended; and fresh sweet cooking warmed the room with its aroma. Mum came in with a tray of food and said:

‘You’re just on time.’

Dad looked at me, laughed, and said: ‘So the rain beat you?’

I nodded, shivering.

‘Dry yourself,’ Mum said.

I went and had a quick wash and dried myself with Dad’s towel. I came back in and sat on the half-spread mat. I ate with Mum and Dad from the same bowls. The candlelight illuminated our faces. After I ate, I curled up on the mat, plantingmy secrets in my silence,andsleptasifnothingunusualhadhappened.

EIGHT

I DID NOT go back to Madame Koto’s place for a while. I feared her anger. I feared her customers. And so after schoolI avoided goingpast her barfront. I would come home and find the door locked. I would sit outside our room and wait for Mum, who often returned late from hawking and the market.

The compound was quiet in the afternoons. The sunlight fell heavily on all things and made it difficult for sounds to travel and made the air somnolent. At the compound-front women who had done all their housework dozed on the cement platform. The heaps of powdered milk, beaten by the rain, spread their poisonous whiteness alongtherunnels of thewideningpaths. Dogs slept with oneeyeopen, their tails pestered by flies. Little children played listlessly on the sand. Older children who had returned from school changed their uniforms and came out, their faces dark with sunlight and dust except where the sweat ran down. Their mothers sent them on errands. Transfixed by the sunlight, I listened to the music of distant radios and the muezzin’s rousingcallto prayer.

Across the street the photographer bustled about with his camera, undeterred by the sleep-making sunlight, looking for interesting subjects. Sometimes he hung up the photographs he had washed in the glass cabinet outside his studio. We often went over to look attheweddingpicturesofpeoplewhowerecompletestrangerstous.He pinned up some of the pictures of the celebration of my homecoming. Beside them were the lurid photographs of the chaos unleashed when the politicians came round with their rotten milk. The rest of the cabinet was taken up with images of defiant women, milk heaps, street inhabitants pouring away the milk against a grainy backdrop of poverty. He was very proud of the photographs and when we gathered too close to the cabinet he would rush over and drive us away, saying:

‘Don’t touch the cabinet or you will spoil the photographs!’

The more he drove us away the more we gathered. The cabinet outside the studio became our first public gallery. Every afternoon, after school had ended, we went there to see what new subjects he had on display, what new funerals, what parades, how the thugs were harassing the women traders at the marketplaces, what newborn baby hehadcapturedcryingattheworld.Hewasourfirstlocalnewspaperaswell.

It was thechildren who first showed interest in his photographs. Then theadults,on their way to work in the morning, began to stop to see what new images the industrious photographer had on display. They also stopped in the evenings whenthey returned. He always surprised us and began to play up to our expectations. He became very popular with the children. Whenever we saw him coming down the street with his camera we never failed to cheer him. He would smile, pretend to take pictures of us, and would disappear into the secret chambers of his studio. After a while we forgot his name and he became known to us simply as ‘the photographer’.

In the afternoons, after being driven away from his glass cabinet, I often played with the other children. We had a whole universe in which to play. We played along the maze of streets and expanding paths, around huts and houses, in building sites, and in the forests. When I got tired and hungry I would ask the photographer for food. Sometimes he would complain that I was disturbing him, but mostly he would give me a piece of bread, saying: