‘Why doyoukeep runningaway fromme,eh?’Dadasked,withsadness.

I said nothing. I stared at the faces of the compound men, big faces stamped with hardship and humour. The night slowly descended on us and the kerosine lamps came alight, one by one, along the street.

That evening Dad became the guardian giant who led me into the discoveries of our new world. We were surrounded by a great forest. There were thick bushes and low trees between the houses. The bushes were resonant with the trilling of birds and crickets. Dad led us down a narrow path. We passed women with bundles of firewood on their heads, buckling along and talking in strange languages. We passed young girls returning from distant streams, with buckets of water balanced on their heads.

‘Do you see all this?’ Dad said, waving his good arm to indicate the forest and the bushes.

‘Yes,’ I replied.

‘It’s bush now, isn’t it?’

‘Yes.’

‘But sooner than you think there won’t be one tree standing. There will be no forest left at all. And there will be wretched houses all over the place. This is where the poor people will live.’

I looked around again in amazement; for I couldn’t see how the solid forest could become so different. Dad chuckled. Then he was silent. He put his hand on my head and, with the voice of a sad giant, he said:

‘This is where you too will live. Many things will happen to us here. If I ever have to go away, if I ever disappear now or in the future, remember that my spirit will always be there to protect you.’

Dad’s voice quivered. When he was silent again, I started crying. He lifted me with his powerful arm and carried me on the rock of his shoulder. He made no attempt to console me. When I had stopped crying, he chuckled mysteriously. We stopped at the first palm-wine bar we came across.

Heorderedagourdofpalm-wineandkept teasingthewomanwhoservedhimand who kept topping off my tiny glass. When Dad drank from his half calabash, I drank from my glass. It made Dad happy. He said:

‘Learn to drink, my son. A man must be able to hold his drink because drunkenness is sometimes necessary in this difficult life.’

I sat beside him on the wooden bench, drinking as he drank, taking in the smells of the bar, its odours of stale wine, peppersoup, and fish-sacks. Flies were exultant everywhere. While talking, the clientele kept waving them off from their faces. At a corner of the bar, on a far bench, in the half light of the lanterns, a man sat with his back against the wall, his head flopped in drunkenness as he dozed. Dad ordered another gourd of wine, his face glistening with delight. He exchanged jokes and anecdotes with the clientele, who were all perfect strangers. Then he began a game of draughts.

At first he played without seriousness, joking all the while. He played a game in this spirit and won. He played another and lost. He joked less the more he lost. His voice grew more aggressive and he hit my head with his sharp elbows without noticing. The two men became so obsessed with their game that they began to accuse one another of cheating. Their fists waved threateningly over the draughtboard. Their voices became heated. The onlookers, who had placed bets on the players, were even more passionate than those who were playing. Dad, losing steadily, abused his opponent virulently; his opponent replied with incredible vehemence. I got worried. Dad placed an absurd bet on himself and his opponent doubled it. Things suddenly got very tense in the bar and Dad drank heavily, sweating. He ordered two more gourds of wine. It got so tense that when the onlookers said anything they were pounced upon. It took long anxious moments to quell the furious exchanges. Dad increased the bet and his head started bleeding again. His opponent, a huge man with asmallhead,kept staringatDadwithsuchcontemptthatIwantedtobitehisfingers. He turned to me with his small drunken eyes and said:

‘Your father doesn’t know how to play.’

‘Shut up,’ I snapped.

There was a startled silence.

‘What did you say?’ he asked incredulously.

‘Nothing.’

Dad said:

‘Leave my son alone. Play the game. Use your brains, not your mouth.’

His opponent, consumed with indignation, said:

‘You mean to tell me that you allow that small boy – whose mother’s liquid hasn’t yet dried on his head – to abuse me!’

‘Play, my friend,’ Dad said coolly.

‘We don’t bring up children like that where I come from,’ the man said, glowering at me.

‘My friend, play your game.’

The man got so angry at Dad’s indifference that his concentration was entirely thrown off balance. He kept fuming at me, swearingin many languages. Dad beat him steadily, drinkingless thecloser victory seemed.Andthenwithadevastatingflourish he won the set of games, and swept his opponent’s hard-earned money into his pocket. His opponent, in an extreme fit of bad-temper, drank down the entire contents of his gourd of palm-wine, rained insults on us, complained bitterly about the contemporary bad breeding of children, and staggered out into the encroaching darkness.

It turned out that hehad left without payingfor his drinks and his peppersoup. The madame of the establishment ran after him and we heard them squabbling. Dad finished off his gourd with perfect serenity. He was very pleased with himself and his face shone with profound satisfaction. When I had finished the wine in my tiny glass, he paid the madame’s assistant, and we left.

Outside a crowd had gathered. The bad-tempered loser refused to pay the madame for the simple reason that I had told him to shut up.

‘I won’t pay till you tell that boy to apologise to me,’ he shouted.

‘That is not my business,’ she bellowed back. ‘All I want is my money!’

‘The boy insulted me in your bar,’ he replied.

The woman stopped listening. When we went past the crowd we saw that she was dragginghimabout,yankinghimaroundby thepants.Hekept tryingtofreehimself from her masterful grip on his trousers, a grip which encompassed his private parts. He tried to prise her fingers apart and when that failed he took to hitting her hands, screaming insults at everyone. Then, suddenly, to our astonishment, the woman lifted him up by the pants and threw him to the ground. The crowd yelled. The man flailed, got up, shouted and huffed. Then he pounced on her, lashing at her face. Dad started towards him, but his rescue attempt was cut short. The madame grabbed the bad loser’s crotch and he screamed so loud that the crowd fell silent. Then, with a practised grunt, she lifted him on her shoulders, turned him round once, showing his mightiness to the sky, and dumped him savagely on the hard earth. He stayed unconscious for a while, his mouth open. She then proceeded to turn him upsidedown, emptying out all the money in his pockets. She took what was owed her, stripped him of his trousers, went into the bar, came back out with a filthy gourd, and drenched him with stale palm-wine.

He recovered instantly. When he saw the fullness of his public disgrace, he screamed in disbelief, and fled towards the forest, his underpants dripping with the shame of stale wine. We never saw him again. The crowd was so amazed at the woman’s performance that everyone stared at her with their mouths wide open. The woman went back into her bar and cleared the tables as if nothing had happened. Then, as we looked on, she broke the draughtboard in half and threw it outside. When she looked up and saw the crowd staring at her in mesmerised silence she strode towards us. In a loud voice, hands on hips, she said:

‘Do you want to drink or do you want to look?’

The crowd, awoken from the spell, broke up into numerous voices. Some went into the bar, to drink of her myth. Others went back to their different areas, taking with them the embellished stories of the most sensational drama they had witnessed for a long time. The woman served her new clientele with superb nonchalance. That evening was the beginning of her fame. Everyone talked about her in low voices. Her legend, which would sprout a thousand hallucinations, had been born in our midst – born of stories and rumours which, in time, would become some of the most extravagant realities of our lives.