Read Online Songs of Enchantment by Ben Okri - Free Book Online

We entered a big room. The walls were completely white. The ceiling was low. Dad had to stoop. On the walls there were preternatural feathers and flywhisks, empty bird cages and spears, animal hides and the head of an antelope. Beyond that room was another one in which a tumultuous gathering of women was holding a meeting. They fell silent when we came in. They had suffering faces, scoured with the religion of misery. They were petty traders, women without children,women with ailing children, women with angled faces and hollow cheeks and sober eyes, faces that never smiled. They were waiting to be called in to see Madame Koto and they had been arguing about who was next, whose case was more urgent.
    When we passed out through the narrow door the women began arguing again. In the new room we saw an orderly queue of women, all surrounded with the grave aura of people who had travelled vast distances to have their problems heard, people who had been waiting with great patience all their lives and who were waiting patiently now. They had brought food with them. They eyed us with profound indifference. We went past them into a smaller room potent with ritual smells, the smells of power, of the earth liberated by rain, of a mighty woman, of gold and perfume, of childlessness, sweat, eunuchs, virgins and pitchers. A great white veil divided the room. Beyond the veil seven candles were aflame. Two men were fanning a leviathan figure on a regal chair. Young girls were combing and plaiting the hair of this figure. We heard water being poured. Ritual chants reigned in rooms behind rooms. Somewhere a sheep was being slaughtered, a man screamed as if branded, a child wailed, women laughed. Everywhere I looked shadows were changing places.
    The bandaged woman retreated without a word. The darkness in the outer room where we stood became thicker. I noticed the stained-glass windows and the kaolin-painted floor. When dad coughed the leviathan figure made a sign. The white veil was drawn aside. One of the men motioned us to approach. We waded through the dense air of legends.
    Madame Koto, like an ageless matriarch, was sitting on an ornate chair, with the seven red candles surrounding her. She had a yellow mantilla on her shoulders. She had grown so enormous that the large chair barely contained her bulk. She wore a deep blue lace blouse and volumes of lace wrappers. She had acquired gargantuan space. As the evening darkened, her presence increased. Power stank from herliquid and almost regal movements. Behind her, in a large golden cage, was a shimmering peacock.
    The men went on fanning her in slow motion, as if the fan of giant eagle feathers were very heavy, as if they were working monstrous bellows. She studied us in silence and then, with a light gesture of her fat arms, dismissed the men. Drawing up the sleeves of her blouse, she revealed the beauty of her skin, which was the mahogany blue of the forest at night. Her face was large, her eyes big with deep secrets, and her features – serene like the bronze sculptings of ancient queens – defied memory. She neither registered nor betrayed any conceivable expression – as if nothing in the world could stir the great mass of her spirit. I had not seen her in a long time and she looked abnormally resplendent. Her face burned with health. The jewels round her neck bathed her in ghostly lights.
    ‘I know why you have come to see me,’ she said to dad, while looking at me.
    Her voice was unrecognisable, deep with the tones of a bull. She cleared her throat.
    ‘You have stopped coming to my bar,’ she now said, addressing me directly.
    ‘You have been growing in our room,’ I replied.
    ‘What?’
    ‘Are you the nightwind?’ I asked.
    ‘Shut up,’ said dad, pinching me.
    I fell silent. Madame Koto stared at us.
    ‘Both of you have caused me a lot of trouble in the past.’
    Dad began to fidget. Madame Koto didn’t say anything for a while. Her silence made me sweat. Then she