The Famished Road

SIX

‘OH, MY FRIEND, you’ve woken up!’ the female midget said to me.

She wore a white dress with lace frills and imitation sequins. I had seen her before. She had a demented smile stretched tightly across her face. Her eyes were moon-like and when I looked into them the insides of my head kept shifting. The eyes of the duiker pulled me. Warm, old, magnetic, they spoke a language of mood and blood.

‘I asked you to dancewithme,butyourefused,’themidgetsaid,flashingherweird animated smile.

She took my hands and placed them on her big frantic breasts. They palpitated like two mighty hearts. The female midget quivered, the smile became fainter on her face. She stared at me with such frightening tenderness and longing that I broke out in a sweat. She dragged me to the dance floor, and amidst bemused laughter from the other celebrants, drew me into the pounding rhythms of the music. She held me tightly to her breasts and drenched me in the strange sexuality of her soft body and before I was aware of it I was swirling amongst the sturdy legs of adults. She turned me round, threw herself at me, shook her breasts in my face, and clasped my young bottom, and clung to me, made me dizzy, and dissolved things around me, in her torrid dance. She kept spi

‘That ship will take us home to your companions across the oceans of sand.’

Then a new music, composed entirely of desert vowels, poured over me and filled mewith anguish. I called out to thegreat kingof thespirit world, but hedidn’t appear. And so I called out, with all my being, for Mum. Out of the stillness of a strange love, I saw her in a tattered wig, a pair of blue glasses on her face, bangles on her arms. She wore a bright wrapper and a blouse blinding in its whiteness. She stood over me and lifted me up. The desert burned its way into my brain, scorching my head. The calmness of cool water flowed down my face and Mum, in the gentlest voice said:

‘Azaro, why are you crying?’

She held me gently. The midget had gone. The four-headed spirit had evaporated into the mysteries of dance. I couldn’t see the giants any more, or the hoofs of part-time human beings, those who would wreck our hopes for two generations, or the bird-feet of strange women. Forms had lost their mutability.

‘What’s wrongwith you?’ Mumasked.

I held on to her. She wiped the tears from my face. My throat was dry. I stayed silent for a long time. Occasionally a cool wind blew in from outside. Mum gave me some iced water to drink. I drank it all and had some more. Then after a while, when I began to feel a little better, I looked up at her. She smiled.

‘We watched you dancing, my son. You danced like your grandfather. And then you fell. Are you all right now?’

I didn’t answer her question.

‘Why areyouwearingthoseblueglasses?’Iaskedher.

She laughed.

‘I will tell you later. It’s a good story.’

‘Tell me now.’

‘There’s too much noise. Where is Madame Koto?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘If you help me find her, I will tell you the story when we get home.’

I set out to search for Madame Koto. Everyone I asked said they had just seen her. The beautiful beggar girl, sitting under a table, watched me as I went up and down. I was about to ask her a question when she motioned me to be quiet. She pointed. I followed her finger with my gaze and saw that the beggars were carrying out a complicated stealing operation. They grabbed fruits and fried meat and bowls of stew and plates of rice from the tables and passed them on in a relay of hands. The food disappeared beneath the tent. Helen was their watch-woman.

‘Do you want me to help?’

She waved me on.

‘Can’t you talk?’

She stared at me mutely and then, gently, pushed me away.