‘Your father hasn’t paid for his pictures yet.’

On another day, with a glint in his eyes, in a tone of conspiracy, he said:

‘Worry yourfatherforme.Iwillgiveyouashillingifhepaysforhispictures.’

He went on pestering me like that, asking if I had in turn been pestering Dad. He then threatened never to feed me again or speak to me till the pictures had been paid for. One day I saw him looking hungry and miserable and when I asked him what was wronghesnarledat me,snatchedup thetripodsofhiscameraand,screamingthatno one ever paid for their photographs, pursued me down the street. He was quite fierce that day. His hunger and bitterness made him ugly, and I avoided him for a while.

His hunger got worse. In the mornings he no longer bothered to change the photographs in the glass cabinet. He no longer bothered to surprise us. The old images turned brown and sad and curled up at the edges under the bleaching force of the sunlight. In the nights we heard him raving, abusing everyone for not paying up, shoutingthat it was peoplelikeus who drovehonest men to crimeand corruption. His clothes became shabby and his beard turned wiry and brown. But even his hunger couldn’t extinguish his spirit and in the afternoons he still went up and down the place,takingpictureswithdementedeyesandinaconstancy ofbadtemper.

The children stopped gathering round his cabinet. We invented new games and played football. One afternoon, while playing, we kicked the ball too hard into an unintended goal, smashing the photographer’s cabinet. He came out, waving a machete, his eyes mad, his movements listless, his tongue coated with white sediments. He trembled in the sunlight, feeble and ill. He came to the cabinet, looked at the destruction we had wrought, and said:

‘Don’t touch the cabinet! I kill anyone who touches it!’

And so the football remained in the cabinet with the smashed glass and the browning photographs. The adults who went past shook their heads in bewilderment at this strange new form of photographic montage. The football was still in the cabinet when it rained. Water flooded the images. Insects bred in the cabinet and curious forms of mould and fungi grew on the innocent subjects of his industry and we all felt sad that the photographer had lost interest in his craft. He wasted away in his tiny room, trembling in the grip of an abnormal fever, and when we saw him he was always covered in a filthy black cloth.

I felt so sad about his pictures that I began to pester Dad, who always got into a temper whenever the subject was raised. So I pestered Mum, but she got bonier the more I pestered her; and so I stopped, and forgot the sadness altogether. And in the afternoons, because I couldn’t go to Madame Koto’s bar, nor look at the pictures in the broken glass cabinet, my feet started to itch again, and I resumed wandering the roads of the world.

Sometimes I played in the forest. My favourite place was the clearing. In the afternoons the forest wasn’t frightening, though I often heard strange drums and singing and trees groaning before they fell. I heard the axes and drills in the distances. And every day the forest thinned a little. The trees I got to know so well were cut down and only their stumps, drippingsap, remained.

I wandered through the forest, collecting rusted padlocks, green bird-eggs, abandoned necklaces, and ritual dolls. Sometimes I watched the men felling trees and sometimes the companies building roads. I made some money running errands for the workers, errands to young girls who rebuffed their advances and to married women who were secretive and full of riddles in their replies, errands to buy cooked food and soft drinks. With the pennies they gave me I bought bread and fried coconut chips and iced water for myself. And then I saved some of the money and offered it to the photographer for our pictures. But when he saw how much I offered he burst into a feverish temper, and chased meout, thinkingthat I was mockinghim.

The days were always long except when I played or wandered. The streets were long and convoluted. It took me hours to get lost and many more to find my way back again. I began to enjoy getting lost. In my wanderings I left our area altogether, with its jumbled profusion of shacks and huts and bungalows, and followed the route of the buses that took workers to the city centre. At the roadsides, women roasted corn. In palm-wine bars and eating-houses, men swallowed fist-sized dollops of eba, gesticulating furiously, arguing about politics. At a barber’s shop, I watched a man being shaved bald. Next to the barber’s shop there was a pool office. A man, wearing a blue French suit, his arms round a beautiful woman, came out; I started towards him. He didn’t recognise me. When he got into a car, with the woman, both smiling on that hot day, and when they drove off, it occurred to me that I had seen the future incarnation of my father’s better self, his successful double.

I went on walking till I got to the garage. Activity bustled everywhere. There were lorries and transport vehicles and buses reversing, conductors rhythmically chanting their destinations, commuters clambering on, drivers shouting insults at one another, bicyclists tinkling their bells. Traders cried out their wares, buyers haggled loudly, and no one seemed to be still.

Therewas no stillness anywhereand I went on walkingand saw alot of men carryingloads,carryingmonstroussacks,asifthey weredamned,orasifthey were workingoutanabysmalslavery.They staggeredundertheabsurdweightofsaltbags, cement bags, garri sacks. The weights crushed their heads, compressed their necks, and theveins of their faces wereswollen to burstingpoint. Their expressions wereso contorted that they seemed almost inhuman. I watched them buckling under the weights,watchedthembecomeknockkneed,asthey ran,withfoamingsweatpouring down their bodies. Their trousers were all soaked through and one of the men, rushing past me, farted uncontrollably, wobblingunder thehorribleload. Further on I cameto the lorries that brought the bags of garri from distant regions of the country. The carriersofloadswerelinedup attheopenbacksofthelorriesawaitingtheirturns, with rolled cloths on their heads. I watched the men being loaded, watched them stumble off through the chaos. Each man bore his load differently. Two men at the back of the trucks would lift the bags on to the heads of the load-carriers. Some of the carriers flinched before the shadow of the bags, some recoiled before the loads had evenbeenlifted,andafewinvariably seemedtorisetowardstheload,anticipatingits weight, neutralisingtheir pain, beforetheterriblemoment. But therewas oneamong them who was different. He was huge, had bulbous muscles, a toweringly ugly face, and was cross-eyed, I suspected, from the accumulation of too much weight. He was the giant of the garage. They lifted a bag on his head. He made inscrutable noises and flapped his hand.

‘More! More!’ he said.

They liftedasecondbagonhisheadandhisneckvirtually disappearedandhis mighty feet sank into the muddy street.

‘He’s mad!’ said one of the load-carriers behind him.

‘He’s drunk!’ said another.

He turned towards them, his mouth twisted, his face contorted, and shouted, in a strangled voice:

‘Your father is mad! Your mother is drunk!’

Then he turned to the two men at the back of the truck and gesticulated again. He flappedhishandsoviolently itseemedhewastryingtoattackthem.They drewback in horror.

‘MORE! MORE!’ he cried.

‘That’s enough,’ said one of the two men. ‘Do you think we are politicians?’ said the other. His gestures became more furious.

‘He’s not mad,’ said the carrier behind him. ‘He’s poor, that’s all.’

‘MORE! MORE!’ the giant squealed.

‘Look, go! That’s enough even for you.’

‘MORE! MORE!’ he said, his voice disappearing.

They lifted one more sack on his head and an extraordinary sound came from his buttocks; his head vanished altogether; the sound continued, unstoppable; and he staggered one way and then another. Those waiting to be loaded fled from behind him. He wobbled in all directions, banginginto stalls, topplingtables of fresh fish and neat piles of oranges, staggering into traders’ wares, trampling on basins of snails. Womenscreamedat him,pullingat histrousers.Hewentonstaggering,balancingthe weights, slipping and miraculously regaining his footage, grunting and swearing, uttering the words ‘MORE! MORE!’ under his breath, and when he went past me I noticed that his crossed eyes were almost normal under the crush, and his muscles trembled uncontrollably, and he groaned so deeply, and he gave off such an unearthly smell of sweat and oppression that I suddenly burst into tears.