suspicious of one another, condemned to wander as one, to build as one, to destroy as one, yet always trying to be separate from one another, always failing, for they were all of one body, one ancient and forgotten ancestry, their destinies linked – in union or division – for ever.
My soul was so wounded with the agony of witnessing such strangeness that I turned to the blind old man, all feathered and half-transformed, his phallus erect, and I said:
‘I want to go home.’
He laughed, but no sound issued from him. Then I realised that in his dream he could see but paid the price by being deaf and intermittently dumb. There were glowing pinpoints all over him. And when the lights became lurid in his dreams I noticed that he had eyes all over his body: he had eyes in his feathers like a peacock, he had an eye in the middle of his forehead, and he had a necklace of them round his neck. My fear had become intolerable, and I panicked. Then a voice said to me:
‘Be still.’
I was still. The voice said again:
‘Eat the wild flowers.’
I ate the wild flowers. Nothing happened. The blind old man tried to seize them from me, but he couldn’t. He hit me on the head, and I grew strong. He hit me again, and I grew stronger. I held him by the throat and throttled him with all the herculean might the flowers gave me. And when he eventually let me go everything first went white and then black, and I felt myself falling. I fell for a long time through many undiscovered universes. I fell, but I did not land, I did not hit the earth. Instead I found myself leaning against a tree. My body blazed all over with livid agony. It seemed asif I were entirely covered with bruises and welts, as if I had been flayed. My head throbbed as if I had been hammered with a mighty stick, my eyes were full of fire, and my wrist seemed raw with exposed nerves. All this was the price I paid for sensing and suffering the future on my living flesh.
The lights were still on in Madame Koto’s bar when I hurried past. I heard the strains of the blind old man’s accordion as I fled across his darkened domain. An owl flew overhead, watching me. When I got to our room the door was open, the air was suffused with mosquito coil smoke, and dad was asleep on the mat, his legs spread wide apart. Mum was on the bed, asleep, as if nothing had happened. Lit up with pain, I lay on the mat beside dad. After a while of breathing in the familiar smells it seemed as if time had not moved at all. But I also felt that the world had turned. The new angle of things was strange to me.
7
T HE S ERENITY OF THE F ORESEEN
M Y BRUISES BECAME visible. Dad enquired about them and I told him that I had hurt myself playing in the forest. Mum pressed the stinging juices of poisonous herbs on my welts and lacerations. Poison fought poison and two days later the bruises lessened noticeably. I marvelled at mum’s herbal lore.
That evening a message came from Madame Koto. She asked why I hadn’t been visiting her bar as we had promised, and demanded that I begin the next day. Dad was worried. Fighting had broken out everywhere, and it had become dangerous to wander the streets. Party thugs continued to terrorise people. The world was at a new angle to the sky, but the old violence had returned. People were beaten at street corners for giving the wrong political passwords. The nights became populated by strange men with hard faces and bad smells. Madame Koto’s bar was now the acknowledged centre of mobilising our area for the elections. Her new driver had been fitted out with a superb uniform. As Madame Koto’s personal driver he was a powerful figure in his own right and, like his ill-fated predecessor, had taken to speeding up and down the road, blasting his horn, frightening old women and babies learning to walk.
Dad was worried, but mum said nothing. It was as if she accepted that what would happen had already been foretold. Her serenity in the face of the new violence
My soul was so wounded with the agony of witnessing such strangeness that I turned to the blind old man, all feathered and half-transformed, his phallus erect, and I said:
‘I want to go home.’
He laughed, but no sound issued from him. Then I realised that in his dream he could see but paid the price by being deaf and intermittently dumb. There were glowing pinpoints all over him. And when the lights became lurid in his dreams I noticed that he had eyes all over his body: he had eyes in his feathers like a peacock, he had an eye in the middle of his forehead, and he had a necklace of them round his neck. My fear had become intolerable, and I panicked. Then a voice said to me:
‘Be still.’
I was still. The voice said again:
‘Eat the wild flowers.’
I ate the wild flowers. Nothing happened. The blind old man tried to seize them from me, but he couldn’t. He hit me on the head, and I grew strong. He hit me again, and I grew stronger. I held him by the throat and throttled him with all the herculean might the flowers gave me. And when he eventually let me go everything first went white and then black, and I felt myself falling. I fell for a long time through many undiscovered universes. I fell, but I did not land, I did not hit the earth. Instead I found myself leaning against a tree. My body blazed all over with livid agony. It seemed asif I were entirely covered with bruises and welts, as if I had been flayed. My head throbbed as if I had been hammered with a mighty stick, my eyes were full of fire, and my wrist seemed raw with exposed nerves. All this was the price I paid for sensing and suffering the future on my living flesh.
The lights were still on in Madame Koto’s bar when I hurried past. I heard the strains of the blind old man’s accordion as I fled across his darkened domain. An owl flew overhead, watching me. When I got to our room the door was open, the air was suffused with mosquito coil smoke, and dad was asleep on the mat, his legs spread wide apart. Mum was on the bed, asleep, as if nothing had happened. Lit up with pain, I lay on the mat beside dad. After a while of breathing in the familiar smells it seemed as if time had not moved at all. But I also felt that the world had turned. The new angle of things was strange to me.
7
T HE S ERENITY OF THE F ORESEEN
M Y BRUISES BECAME visible. Dad enquired about them and I told him that I had hurt myself playing in the forest. Mum pressed the stinging juices of poisonous herbs on my welts and lacerations. Poison fought poison and two days later the bruises lessened noticeably. I marvelled at mum’s herbal lore.
That evening a message came from Madame Koto. She asked why I hadn’t been visiting her bar as we had promised, and demanded that I begin the next day. Dad was worried. Fighting had broken out everywhere, and it had become dangerous to wander the streets. Party thugs continued to terrorise people. The world was at a new angle to the sky, but the old violence had returned. People were beaten at street corners for giving the wrong political passwords. The nights became populated by strange men with hard faces and bad smells. Madame Koto’s bar was now the acknowledged centre of mobilising our area for the elections. Her new driver had been fitted out with a superb uniform. As Madame Koto’s personal driver he was a powerful figure in his own right and, like his ill-fated predecessor, had taken to speeding up and down the road, blasting his horn, frightening old women and babies learning to walk.
Dad was worried, but mum said nothing. It was as if she accepted that what would happen had already been foretold. Her serenity in the face of the new violence
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