‘Is this how you welcome customers?’Then the women, wiping their noses, struggling amongst themselves, falling over one another, rushed to the men and led them to a table. ‘More wine!’ Dad said. No one paid any attention. The spirit’s central head turned to Dad as if he had suddenly materialised. ‘And more light!’ he added. One of the women got up and lit the lamps. The spirit was reduced in visibility. ‘Just because you have customers doesn’t mean you shouldn’t serve me,’ Dad said in a bad-tempered voice. ‘Shut up,’ said one of the men. Dad gave the man his vacant, intent stare. The men stared back at him. Dad looked away, sank back into himself, and becamesilent. Thewomanlightingthelampscame over. ‘You want another bottle of palm-wine?’

Dad didn’t speak, nor did he look up. He seemed to have wholly retreated into himself. Thewoman repeated thequestion.Dadstilldidn’tsay anything.Hehunghis head.

‘Leave that useless man alone,’ said one of the men.‘If he doesn’t want to answer you, let him swallow his saliva,’ said another.Dad looked up and looked down again. A man sneezed. The spirit moved one of its heads and looked at him. The woman placed a fist on her hip. Then she went to the backyard, came back with a bottle of palm-wine, and slammed it on the table. Dad poured himself some wine. The woman went and sat with one of the free men. They began talking amongst themselves. The spirit got up and sat next to the man who had sneezed. Dad finished the cup of wine in one swallow and then, with his face set, his eyes charged, he looked up. He surveyed the men. Then he stared at the man who had sneezed. At first I thought he was staring at the spirit. The man he stared at did not notice.

‘What areyou lookingat?’ thewoman with theman asked.

‘None of your business.’

The man looked up and caught Dad’s ferocious stare.

‘Let’s go,’ I said. ‘The rain has stopped.’

Therewas silence. Then Dad stuck outhishandandpointedawaveringfinger,like aman makingan astonishingaccusation. I looked to seewhohewaspointingat.The central head of the spirit looked surprised and its eyes flashed different colours.

‘You coward!’ Dad shouted, standing up, pointing quite unmistakably at the man who had sneezed, and who had an ominous scar near his left eye.

‘Who areyou callingacoward?’ theman asked, rising.

‘You! It was you and your friends who attacked me the other night. You are a coward!’

‘You are mad!’ the man cried. ‘You are a thief! Your father was a coward!’

‘If you are so brave,’ Dad said in a thundering voice, ‘why don’t you fight me yourself, alone, now!’

Another silence. Then the women began to curse Dad, calling him a troublemaker. They triedtorestraintheman,theirhandsclutchinghisshoulders,tryingtogethimto sit down. The man shrugged violently and brushed away their hands. Dad was still standing, trembling, his finger pointed, his jaws working. A woman screamed. Another one sneezed. My eyes were wide open. I couldn’t see the spirit for a while. The man came round the table. The women tried to restrain him. He threw them off. The wind started. The man strode to the centre of the bar and made a great show of taking off his voluminous garment. He was taking it off for a long time. It got stuck round his neck, entangled with the beads and amulets. Another woman screamed. Dad poured himself another glass of palm-wine, downed it, got up and went round our table. He helped the man to remove his voluminous garment. The wind started and seemed strong enough to blow the bar away. I felt the floor tremble. When the man had taken off his great garment he fumed and cursed and then started taking off his shirt. It took a while. Dad went out to urinate. When he got back the man was bare-chested, except for the amulets round his neck. Scar-marks, like weird brandings, ran down his chest and converged at his navel. His followers had by this time surrounded Dad. It was frighteningto seehow collected and calmDad was. I began to cry.

‘We don’t know you,’ one of the women said, amid shrieks. ‘We don’t know you and you come here with your ugly son and spoil our business and cause trouble.’

Her face was quite wild, her eyes twisted, her fingernails like red claws.

Dad ignored her.

‘So what do you want to do?’ the man asked, fingering his amulet. ‘Do you know this thingI havehere, eh?If you touch meyou willfalldown seven times and then..’

Suddenly – it seemed like a flash of lightning was lost in the bar – Dad had hit him in the face. It happened very fast. The next moment the bar door was wide open and the man had disappeared. We heard him groaning outside in the dark. The lightning vanished back into Dad’s fist. Then the woman with the red fingernails pounced on him from behind. She howled like a deranged cat, scratched Dad’s neck, and tried to claw out his eyes. Dad knocked her away and she fell on a table. The man she was with rushed over and jumped on Dad and they rolled outside. I heard them struggling to get up. The woman who had been knocked over saw me, came over, and gave me a resounding slap. The spirit reappeared in the bar. I ran outside. The woman followed. I ran into one of the men. He pushed me away and I fell on Madame Koto’s signboard that was on the soggy ground. It was still drizzling. I could see that the two men were fighting Dad. One of them held him from behind, and the other hit him from the front. Dad jerked forward and downwards and tossed the man behind him over his shoulder. Then he flattened the one in front with a crackling punch to the nose. Both stretched out in a messy heap on the mud. Dad, satisfied, smiled at me. The woman jumped on him and pulled his hair and clung to him with her nails. Dad found it difficult to shake her off. And by the time he had managed to do so the other men inside had come out.

‘Let’s run,’ I said.

The men surrounded Dad. The two that had fallen began to stir. I tried to beat them down with a stick, but it did no good. The men, five in all, tightened the circle round Dad. Shrieking in unnatural voices, the women urged them on, urged them to kill Dad, to rub his face in the mud, force him to eat dirt. One man attempted to punch Dad in the face, missed, and tripped. Another one lunged at Dad and brought him down. Soon the whole lot of them fell on the two bodies on the floor and formed a writhing heap. The fight became confused. Everyone seemed to be hitting everyone else. Then, out of the wriggling mud-covered mass of bodies, emerged the yellow head of the spirit. It looked fairly confused. Then the spirit disentangled itself altogether from the fray and wobbled towards me and stuck its yellow head close to my face, so that I couldn’t escape its flaming red eyes. The voice in my head, again, said:

‘Shut your eyes.’

I did and could still see. The spirit blinked rapidly and the brightness of its eyes hurt me. The men had rolled off the heap. Dad lashed at them wildly, swinging granite punches. Then he ran to the backyard and returned soon afterwards with a terrifying piece of wood. I opened my eyes. The piece of wood had several long nails sticking through it. I shouted. The spirit, ten eyes widened, leant its central head closer to me, and said: ‘They toldmetobringyouwithme.’‘Who?’ ‘Your friends.’ ‘What friends?’

‘In the spirit world. Your companions.’ Dad lashed out with the piece of wood. ‘You had a pact with them. Before you were born. Remember?’ The men scattered as Dad wielded his ugly weapon.

‘Hold him!’ one of the men cried.‘You hold him,’ said another.Dad pursued them. They fled. He pursued the woman. She ran, screaming, towards the forest. ‘They saidImustbringyou,’thespiritsaidagain. ‘I won’t come.’ The other women in the bar were now outside. One of the men picked up a long branch. Dad tore after him with a murderous expression on his face. The man dropped the branch and ran. ‘Cowards!’ Dad shouted, triumphantly.