Songs of Enchantment Read Free Page B

had returned to wreak greater oppression on their lives. When dad saw them he asked in an angry voice where Sami had gone.
    ‘He has left, packed away,’ one of the neighbours said.
    ‘Packed away? To where?’
    ‘Black Tyger, why are you asking us? He’s gone, that’s all we know.’
    ‘Gone? Gone? What about my money?’
    ‘Do I owe you money? Why are you asking me about your money, eh?’
    ‘My fight money, my money, where’s my money?’ dad kept screaming, kicking the door, ripping off the planks, lashing out, foaming at the lips, his rage conquering him.
    Such energy and fury swirled round him that he staggered, quivering, under the blind intensity of the demon’s gift.
    ‘You are all hiding him! This is a plot! You are all trying to keep the money I nearly died winning,’ he yelled, rushing at the compound people.
    The men fell on him and hammered him with their clubs and sticks. I screamed. Dad threw punches in every direction, flooring two of the men. The women, howling, pounced on him with brooms and firewood. The other men went to get reinforcements. Soon the landlord came rushing out, clad only in his wrapper, holding a cocked dane gun in his hands, demanding to know the cause of the commotion. But the reinforcements jumped on dad. There was much hollering. A crowd gathered. Dad disappeared under the tumble of bodies. The men hit out indiscriminately, lashing their own. Children cried around their mothers. A little girl was accidentally clubbed on the head by an over-enthusiastic neighbour. The girl’s mother clubbed the neighbour back, and the fight widened.
    From beneath the crush of bodies I heard a mighty cry, and when the cry reached its frightening pitch the wind cracked a tree branch near us. Helen started to retreat. The crowd swelled, and somehow became included in the scuffle. The rest of the beggars arrived. Seeing that dad was being beaten, they fell in and clawed away at every moving body. They kicked and bit and punched whatever was in their way, till the mountainous tumble became a frenzied hybridous animal of many limbs tortured by its own insanity. The moths flew everywhere, circling the fighting men. And then suddenly dad emerged, his head crowned with mutinous lights, his suit in complete tatters. The beggars were sprawled around him like gigantic insects in mid-transformation. The women groaned about their broken limbs and the men about their battered heads. The landlord stood in the midst of all this, his wrapper torn from round his waist. He was completely naked. His eyes surveyed the chaotic events with controlled disdain. His dane gun was pointed at the writhing centre of bodies. One of the beggars saw his imperious and terrifying stance, and released a strange cry. The landlord,without changing his expression, trained his gun on the beggar; dad jumped in front of him; a child began yelling; and when the moths rushed upwards, surrounding the landlord, when the landlord directed the muzzle of the gun at dad’s chest, the lights changed, everyone screamed, the air darkened, a sulphurous tiger of light leapt out into the new darkness, transfiguring the beggars, and a dreadful noise exploded in our ears. Everyone dived for cover and when the noise cleared there was a curious silence punctuated by the clicking sounds of the multitudinous moths. We looked up and saw only the landlord standing, his eyes crossed in dementia, his gun smoking. Totally naked, and hirsute, his head was framed by the distant stars in the dark blue sky, and by the nimbus of angry moths. It was only when a beggar broke the silence with his wailing that we realised what had happened.
    I got up and frantically began looking for dad. I could not find him amongst all the bodies. Meanwhile the compound men jumped on the stupefied landlord, disarmed him, tied his wrapper round his waist, and led him back into the house. The women were yelling everywhere. Children were crying. The rest of the crowd rose slowly from