‘Madame Koto!’ I called again.

The madman tittered, baring his red teeth, and then he rushed at me. I threw the dead lizard in his face. He laughed, screamed, and fell on the benches, tittering in demented delight. He got up, walked in every direction, oblivious of objects, knocking over the long wooden tables and the benches. He came after me. I ran in circles. He scuttled round the floor like a monstrous quickened crab. With the exhilarated animation of a child, he discovered the dead lizard and began playingwith it. He sat on an upturned table, his eyes making contradictory journeys round their sockets. Then he began to eat the lizard.

‘MADAME KOTO!’ I screamed, with the full volume of my horror.

She came rushing in, holding a new broom. She saw the confusion in her bar, saw the madman eating the lizard, twitching and tittering, and she pounced on him, hitting him with the head of the long broom, as if he were a cow or a goat. The madman didn’t move. He ate with a weird serenity. Madame Koto knocked the lizard from his hands. Then, tyingher wrapper tighter round her waist, shewent for his neck with her bighands.

He turned his head towards me, his eyes bulging. White foam frothed from the sides of his mouth. Then, with a sudden burst of energy, and a cry uttered at white heat, he tossed Madame Koto off him, stood up straight like an awakened beast, and charged at everything. Hefought and clawed theair, utteringhis weird cry.

Then he changed. He brought out his gigantic prick, and pissed in every direction. Madame Koto hit his prick with her broom. He pissed on her. She rushed out and came back with a burning firewood. She burned his feet and he did a galloping dance and jumped around and toreout of thebar and ran titteringtowards theforest.

Madame Koto looked around her wrecked bar. She looked at the burning firewood in her hand and then she stared at me.

‘What sort of child are you?’ she asked.

I began to pick up the benches.

‘Maybe you bring only bad luck,’ she said. ‘Since you have been coming my old customers have gone and there are no new ones.’

‘I’m hungry,’ I said.

‘Attract customers, draw them here, and then you will have food,’ she said, going to the backyard.

Later she took the benches and tables outside and scrubbed them with a special soap. She swept the bar and washed the place with a concentrated disinfectant. She brought the tables and benches back in when the sun had dried them and then went to have the bath she always had before the evening’s customers arrived.

Whenshefinishedbathingshecametothebarwithabowlofpeppersoup andyam. She slammed it down and said:

‘Since you’re so hungry you better finish it.’

I thanked her and she went back out. I washed a spoon and settled down to eat. The soup was very hot and I drank a lot of water. The yam was soft and sweet. There were pieces of meat and offal in the soup and I had almost eaten them all before I realised that one of the pieces was actually a chicken’s head. The pepper burned in my brain and I was convinced that the chicken’s head was eyeing me. Madame Koto came in carrying a fetish glistening with palm oil. She dragged a bench under the front door, climbed on it, and hung the fetish on a nail above the door. I noticed for the first time that she had a little beard.

‘I don’t like chicken’s head,’ I told her.

‘Eat it. It’s good for your brain. It makes you clever, and if you eat the eyes you will be able to see in the dark.’

I didn’t eat it. She came down, dragged the bench back to its position, and stood in front of me.

‘Eat it!’ she said.

‘I’m not hungry any more.’

Madame Koto regarded me. She had rubbed pungent oils on her skin. She looked radiant and powerful. The oils smelt badly and I think they were one of the reasons why the spirits were interested in her.

‘So you won’t eat it?’

I knew she would become angry and would never give me food in future if I didn’t eat it; so, reluctantly, and hating every moment of it, I did. I cracked the chicken’s head with my teeth. I broke its beak. I swallowed down its red comb. I scraped off the thin layer of flesh on its crown.

‘What about the eyes?’

I sucked out the eyes and chewed them and spat them out on the floor.

‘Pick them up!’

I picked up the eyes, cleared the table, and went to wash the plates. When I got back she had set down a glass of her best palm-wine for me. I sat in a corner, near the earthenware pot, and drank peacefully.

‘That’s how to be a man,’ she said.

Thepalm-winegottomefairly quickly andIdozedsittingupright.Iwokeup when some rowdy customers came in. They smelt of raw meat and animal blood.

‘Palm-wine!’ one of them shouted.

Flies congregated round the new customers. Madame Koto brought them a great gourd of wine. They drank the lot very quickly and the evening’s heat increased their smells. They got rowdier. They argued furiously amongst themselves about politics. Madame Koto tried to calm them down but they ignored her altogether. They argued with passionate ferocity in an incomprehensible language and the fiercer they got the more they stank. One of them whipped out a knife, The other two fell on him. In the confusion they scattered the table and benches, broke the gourd and glasses, and managed to disarm the man. When they had put the knife away one of them cried:

‘More palm-wine!’

Madame Koto went out and fetched her broom. They saw the violence on her face.

‘No more palm-wine!’ she said. ‘And pay for what you’ve broken.’ They paid without any complaints and went out arguingas vigorously as they had been doing.

I went back to my corner and finished my glass of palm-wine. Madame Koto poured me some more. The aroma of her rich-scented peppersoup floated in from the backyard. Theeveningworeon and customers drifted in. Odd customers. A man cameinwhowassolidly drunkalready.Hekeptcursingandswearing.

‘Look at that toad,’ he said about me. ‘Look at that fat woman with a beard,’ he said about Madame Koto.

Then he rushed outside, came back, and asked for a gourd of palm-wine. When he wasservedhedrankquietly,occasionally perkingup toabuseeverything.Heabused the lizards, flies, the bench, and the ceiling. Then he fell quiet again and drank peacefully.

Another customer came in who was so totally cross-eyed that I began to feel cross-eyed myself fromstaringat him.

‘What areyou lookingat?’ hedemanded angrily.

‘Your eyes,’ I said.

‘Why? Haven’t you got eyes of your own?’

‘Yes, but I can’t see them.’

He came over and knocked me on the head. I kicked him on the shin-bone. He knocked me again, harder, and I rushed out and grabbed Madame Koto’s broom and came back in and hit him on the head with it. He cried out. He backed off. I hit him again. The drunken man began to curse. He abused cross-eyed people, abused brooms, swore at children, and became quiet. Madame Koto came in and seized the broom from me. I sat down.

‘Serve me palm-wine,’ the cross-eyed man said. ‘And warn that boy of yours. He has been insultingmy eyes.’

‘What’swrongwithyoureyes?’MadameKotoasked,staringintensely athim.

He didn’t reply and he sat down into a moody silence. After he had been served, he drank a great quantity in one go, looked at me, found me staring at him, and then he turned away, tryingto hidehis eyes fromme.

‘Serve me peppersoup!’ he shouted.

Madame Koto served him and he devoured the meat and drank the soup very fast.

‘Tell that boy not to stare at me,’ he said.

‘Why?’

He drank some more palm-wine and peered over his shoulder at me. His eyes interested me. Oneof themwas green. Lookingat thegreen eyehad astrangeeffect on me.

‘I will give you money if you look somewhere else,’ he said.

‘How much?’

Trying to hide his face, he came over and emptied all his spare change on the table. I pocketed it and watched him go back to his seat. He kept checking up on me. I had taken my eyes off him but it was hard to look anywhere else after the experience of seeing him. His eyes, in their strangeness, were magnetic. I kept my eyes off him and looked around the bar and noticed green patches on the floor. I couldn’t understand where they came from. I drank some more palm-wine. The alarming realisation that thegreen patches werethestains of themadman’spisswasbeginningtodawnonme when the lights changed in the bar and the drunken man cursed and from the floor there rose a host of green spirits. They rose up and they grew till their heads touched the ceiling and then they shrank till they were no taller than the average chicken. They were all cross-eyed. They milled around the areas of the madman’s piss and they stamped and made swarming noises. Everywhere I looked I saw cross-eyed spirits. I cried out and the drunken man abused the moon and Madame Koto came and took me outside and gave me some water and alligator pepper to chew on.