Madame Koto fetched a new broom and waded into the crowd of bodies and began lashing out, thrashing everyone with such viciousness that the commotion in the bar became incredible. She whipped the thugs and their guests, pursued them to the door, she turned and flogged the carpenter and chased him round the bar, then she attacked the compound people who had come to help, and who fled screaming that she had gone mad, she lashed me on the back and neck and I ran outside. She went on hitting out and whippingtheair with her broomeven when therewas no oneleft to hit.

She emerged suddenly at the front door and her presence sent the women screaming, the men yelling. She bounded after the thugs and their friends, soundly beatingthewomen on theback, themen roundtheankles,pursuingthemup theroad towards the forest. For a while, we didn’t see her. Then, breathing heavily, she materialised amongst us, and pounced on our astonishment, quick on her feet for one so heavy. Shetoreafter us, managingthecurious featofbeinginseveralplacesatthe same time, and whipping those of us who had run either north or south, west or east, crackling the air with the electric fury of her new broom, cursing everything, raising the dust and kicking up stones, whirling and swearing, chasing us into the bushes, into the backyard and down the passages. People fled everywhere. I ran into the stinking bathroom and remained there for a long time and only came out when I heard other voicestentatively emergingfromtheirhiding-places.Icreptup tothebar.

Madame Koto sat at a table. There was only one functioning lantern in the room. The place was a mess. Tables were broken and burnt, there were broken glasses and bones of chickens and crushed bowls and twisted spoons and shattered calabashes and torn clothes and spilt wine and soup everywhere. There was vomit on one table, the Coca-Cola calendar was on the floor, with peppersoup stains all over the breasts of the white woman. Benches were upside down. There were burnt pound notes on tables and patches of blood on the walls. Madame Koto sat in the soft darkness. Her breasts heaved slightly. Her face was a mask. She sat alone in her bar, surrounded by confusion and night-flies. Her hands trembled.

With her sad, hard eyes she stared straight ahead of her, not surveyingher domain. She bit her lower lip. Then to my greatest amazement she began to tremble worse than ever, sitting bolt upright, her face bold, her eyes defeated. She wept, quivering, and her tears ran down her massive cheeks and dripped on the table. Then she stopped, swallowed, wiped her face with her wrapper, and began to lock up the bar for the day. She too had crossed the divide between past and future. She must have known that a new cycle had begun. She turned suddenly, saw me, became stiff, her eyes widening with the horror of being discovered in a secret moment, and then she said, somewhat harshly:

‘What areyou lookingat?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Haven’t you seen a grown woman cry before?’

I was silent.

‘Go home!’ she commanded.

I didn’t move. Neither Madame Koto, nor her bar, would ever be the same again.

‘Go home!’ she ordered.

I went.

SEVEN

MUM WAS ALONE in the room, praying to our ancestors and to God in three different languages. She knelt by the door, her kerchief partly coveringher face, rubbingher palms together fervently.

‘Shut the door and come in,’ she said.

I went and sat on the bed. The intensity of her prayer overwhelmed the room. I listened to her calling for strength, pleading for Dad to get a good job, for us to find prosperity and contentment. She prayed that we should not die before our time, that we should live long enough for the good harvest, and that our suffering should turn into wisdom.

When she finished she stood up and came and sat beside me on the bed. She was silent. The space around her was full of energies. She asked about Madame Koto and I told her that people thought she was going mad. Mum laughed, till I told her what had happened. There was a long silence. Then I realised that she hadn’t been listening to me. Her eyes were distant.

‘Did you seethedoor?’ sheasked suddenly, breakingout of her contemplation.‘Our door?’‘Yes.’‘I did.’‘Go and look again.’I went out and looked but couldn’t see anything because of the darkness. The compound people, like figures in a red dream, milled about in the backyard, moved about the passage. I came back in. ‘Did you see?’

‘No.’ I took the candle, cupped my palm over a side of its flame, and went out again. Our door had been crudely hacked with machetes. They had almost splintered the wood. Gashes were long rather than deep on the door. A foul-smelling substance, glistening red under the candle-light, had been smeared across the wood in a set of menacing signs. Our door had been marked. I went back in.

‘Who did it?’‘It was the landlord.’‘How do you know?’‘Dad challenged his party.’Mum was silent for a moment. I put the candle back on the table.‘Be careful of the compound people,’ she warned. ‘One day they are our friends and the next day they are our enemies.’ ‘Yes, mother.’ ‘I was cooking food. I came to the room. When I went back to the kitchen someone had poured water on the fire.’ We were silent. ‘I am now afraid to walk the compound at night. Who knows if they are poisoning our food, eh?’ I became afraid. I held on to Mum. She patted my head gently. For a moment I could see our door being broken down at night, while we slept. I saw the great monstrous Egungun, belching white smoke from seven ears, bursting into our room and devouring us all with his bloodied mouth.

‘Let’s run away,’ I said.

Mum laughed. Then she became serious. And for the first time I saw how the world had sharpened her features. Her cheekbones jutted out, her nose was pointed, her chin was sharp, and the two corners of her forehead stood out like the rock-shaped result of permanent bruising. Her eyes were narrowed as if they were endlessly trying to exclude most of what they saw.

‘Our destiny will protect us. Don’t fear anything, my son. The worst they can do is kill us.’ She paused.

Her face took on the bizarre immobility of a mask. Her eyes didn’t move and they seemed to stare past the window in an uncanny vacant concentration.

‘I am tired of this life anyway,’ she said, eventually. ‘I want to die.’

Suddenly I had a vision of her death. It came and went so fast and it left me perplexed. I remembered her face when she nearly died just after my homecoming. I remembered that it was because of her bruised face that I had chosen to live, to stay, in the confines of this world, and to break my pacts with my spirit companions. One of the many promises I made before birth was that I would make her happy. I had chosen to stay, now she wanted to die. I burst out crying. I threw myself on the floor and thrashed and wept. The demon of grief seized me completely. Mum tried to hold me, and console me, and find out why I had so suddenly begun crying. She didn’t know how inconsolable I was at that moment, because she didn’t know the cause of my grief.Shedidn’t knowthattheonlythingthatcouldmakemestopwasapromise from her that she would never die.

‘What’s wrong with you? Is it because of the door? Or the compound people? Or the landlord? Don’t be afraid. We are too strong for them.’

Her words came too late. I could not separate myself from unhappiness. I became my grief. I wept in advance for all the things that would happen, the unimaginable things beyond the horizon of all the narratives of our lives. Misery filled me like water fills a deep well after a heavy downpour. I started to choke. My spirit companions drank of my grief and filled me with sweet songs to make my wretchedness more sublime. My heart stopped beating. I froze, became rigid, didn’t breathe, my mouth open, eyes wide. Darkness rushed over me, a powerful wind from the forest. The darkness extinguished my consciousness.