‘Yes, Dad.’

I turned away from him and faced the wall so as not to see his frightening expression. Besides I feared that if I looked at him it might make him angry and he might pounce on me. He muttered and cursed for a while. He abused the thugs, the party, his job,thecolonialists,thelandlord,andtherain.Histemper,feedingonitself, grew worse. He abused Madame Koto and wondered aloud whether he should burn downherbar.At that point Mumput out thecandle.Iheardhershiftingonthemat. Dad went on cursing in the dark.

EIGHT

ONE MOMENT I was in the room and the next moment I found myself wandering the night roads. I had no idea howl had gotten outside. I walked on the dissolving streets and among the terrestrial bushes. The air was full of riddles. I walked through books and months and forgotten histories. I was following a beautiful woman with a blue head. She moved in cadenzas of golden light. She floated on the windofaroyalserenity.Superimposedondistant plangency ofMumprayinginthe dark, the woman turned and beckoned me. I followed her smile and listened to the fugal birds. She drew my spirit on to fountains of light and lilac music and abiku variations. The air was faintly scented with resinous smoke and incense, flavoured with the fruit of guavas and cherries and crushed pineapples. I walked behind the woman for a long time, walking to the tunes of alto voices beneath cypress trees. I heard someone call my name from a heavier world, but I went on walking. Beyond the hair of the beautiful woman there was a landscape with luminous flying-machines, gardens brilliant with passion-flowers and cana-lilies.

My name sounded heavier. The woman urged me on. Her face, gentle in the light of a dreaming nebula, promised the ecstasies of a secret homeland, a world of holidays. A rough, familiar hand touched me on the shoulder.

‘Where are you going, Azaro?’

It was Mum.

‘That woman told me to follow her.’

‘What woman?’

I pointed at the woman whose smile was forever in bloom, whose hair was blue, and who was disappearing amongst the pomegranate trees and the chorale of roses. Her head became a solitary cloud.

‘There is no one there,’ Mum said.

‘Yes there is.’

‘I’mtakingyou home.’

I said nothing. She lifted me on to her shoulder. I could still see the head of the woman. I could still hear the voices in passionate gardens, could still hear their sunflower cantatas. I saw delicious girls dancing tarantellas in fields of comets. The woman’s head turned to give me a last smile before she vanished altogether in a Milky Way of music. The air became void of riddles. I heard the last notes of a flute adagio floating across a lake of green mirrors. Mum took me home over the mud and wreckage of the street, over the mild deluge, under an arpeggio of watery stars. She was silent. I smelt the gutters and the rude plaster of the corroded houses. Then all I wasleft withwasaworlddrowninginpoverty,amother-of-pearlmoon,andthelong darkness before dawn.

BOOK FIVE

ONE

THE RAIN GOD was merciless for two weeks. It rained so much that the sky seemed to have become as inexhaustible with water as the seas. At night water leaked through our ceiling, which we soon discovered was full of holes. Mum had to sacrificeher basins and pots used for cookingto catch thewater that dripped down. In our room there were so many containers that it became almost impossible to move about. Some of them were near the bed, some in the middle of the room, some on the cupboard. We had to move the clothes-line and Dad’s boots. One night as I slept the rain dripped on my head: it seemed the rain was corrosive and ate through new places in the zinc roof. I had to move my mat. Sometimes it rained so much that the containers filled up and overflowed, and the floor covered in water. The first time that happened I woke up thinking I had wet the mat. My amazement bordered on horror when I thought I had pissed so much in my sleep. I got up and quietly tried to clean the urine. Mum woke up. I felt ashamed. Then, I realised the trick the rain god was playingon me.

The rain swept down so badly that I could no longer sleep on the floor and had to share the single bed with my parents. When more holes opened above us we had to keep movingthebedroundtheroom.Itgotsoawfulthatwecouldn’tfindaplacethat wasn’t leaking. We ended up settling for having the water drip on our feet. Dad complained to the landlord, but he merely threatened to increase the rent further if he fixed the roof. We couldn’t afford the rent as it stood so we had no choice but to settle for being soaked through at night.

Sometimes in the morning we would wake up and find slugs, worms, and millipedes crawling about the room. Little snails appeared on our walls. In the containers we found tiny fishes. Dad was convinced that an enemy was trying to poison us. He became suspicious of the whole compound and warned me not to take anyone’s food or play with their children. We became quite lonely.

The rains made the days short. I was ill a lot of the time. At first Mum went hawking with polythene over her basin of provisions. But as the weather got worse she stayed at home and she made very little money. Dad returned in the evenings covered in mud, his clothes stinking, his eyes mad. He developed livid cuts and boils all over his body. His feet became raw and twisted. It was a rough time for loadcarriers.

Our street turned into one big stream. Water flooded into our rooms from the gutters. Sometimes it rained so much the compound began to stink because of the water that flowed past the pail latrine. During that time children fell ill, and many people caught strange diseases and had to be rushed home to their villages for special herbal treatments. Those who could afford it built little cement dams in front of their rooms to stop the bad waters going in. The rest of us sat helpless in our rooms and watched the water rise. I was cold most of the time. When Mum got back from her restricted hawking she would bathe and change clothes and sit on the bed, huddled up, her teeth chattering. With the steady drone of rain around us, there was little to say. The noise of the fallingrain penetrated our bones, our silences, and our dreams. Dad’s face took on a watery quality. Sometimes when Mum came back from hawking, with earthworms clinging to her ankles, and rain pouring down her face, I couldn’t be sure whether shewas weepingor not.

I continued to attend school in the mornings. My exercise books got soaked, the ink ran, and I was flogged all the time. Our improvised school-building, of mud and cement, roofless and low-walled, crumbled in the rain. Plants grew wild in our classrooms. Snakes slithered in to our hygiene lessons. And when the rain got too much we held our classes under the eaves of nearby buildings.

Onmy way backfromschooloneday itwasrainingheavily.IpassedMadameKoto’s bar. A lot of cars were parked outside. Through the curtains I made out women with red lips and painted faces, men in bright clothes. I didn’t see Madame Koto. As I passed the bar there was a flash in the sky. It broke over me, and I ran. I fled towards the forest, but the wind was strong. It lifted me up and flung me to the ground. I got up, stunned. At that moment I heard a terrible groan. Then a tree fell in slow motion, as if in a dream, and collapsed on several other trees. Branches and leaves blocked off the road behind me. I ran towards the lightning flash. I ran on water. Stones chafed the soles of my feet. The rain whipped my face. Feeling that I couldn’t go much further, my lungs bursting, I ran under the eaves of a house near us. It was only when I was there, shivering, temporarily free from the violence of the weather, that I realised I had run right into the territory of the old man who had been blinded by a passingangel.