The Half-God of Rainfall
From the award-winning poet and playwright behind Barber Shop Chronicles, The Half-God of Rainfall is an epic story and a lyrical exploration of pride, power and female revenge.There is something about the boy. When he is angry, clouds darken. When he cries, rivers burst their banks. And when he touches a basketball, deities want courtside seats. Half Nigerian mortal, half Grecian God: Demi is the Half-God of Rainfall.His mother, Modupe, looks on with a mixture of pride and worry. From close encounters, she knows that Gods are just like men: the same fragile egos, the same subsequent fury, the same sense of entitlement to the bodies of mortals. The Gods will one day tire of sports fans, their fickle allegiances and their prayers to Demi.And when that moment comes, it won’t matter how special he is. Only the women in Demi’s life, the mothers, the Goddesses, will stand between him and a lightning bolt.
Читать The Half-God of Rainfall онлайн беплатно
4th Estate
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
This eBook first published in Great Britain by 4th Estate in 2019
Copyright © Inua Ellams 2019
Cover design by Jack Smyth
Inua Ellams asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780008324773
Ebook Edition © April 2019 ISBN: 9780008324780
Version: 2019-03-12
For Veronica Ellams, Mariam Asuquo, Hadiza Alex Ellams, Claire Trévien, Annabel Stapleton Crittendon, Imogen Butler Cole, Joelle Taylor and Michaela Coel.
In solidarity with women who have spoken against or stood up to male abuses of power in all its forms.
I’m a poet so I can empathise with minor gods
– Chuma Nwokolo
The first madness was that we were born,
that they stuffed a god into a bag of skin
– Akwaeke Emezi
I, too, once dribbled that old bubble, happiness,
and found in time the scramble and the rules
doubtful
– W Belvin
I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,
welling and swelling I bear in the tide
– Maya Angelou
Contents
Portrait of Prometheus
as a basketball player.
His layup will start from mountains
not with landslide, rumble or gorgon clash
of titans, but as shadow-fall across stream –
some thief-in-the-night-black-Christ-
type stealth. In the nights before this,
his name, whispered in small circles, muttered
by demigods and goddesses, spread rebellious,
rough on the tongues of whores and queens,
pillows pressed between thighs, moaning.
Men will call him father, son or king
of the court. His stride will ripple oceans,
feet whip-crack quick, his back will scar,
hunched over, a silent storm about him.
Both hands scorched and bleeding;
You see nothing but sparks splash off
his palms, nothing but breeze beneath
his shuck ’n’ jive towards the basket
carved of darkness, net of soil and stars.
Fearing nothing of passing from legend to myth
he fakes left, crossover, dribbles down
the line and then soars – an eagle chained
to hang time.
– Inua Ellams
Òrúnmilà, the God of vision and fiction,
whose unique knowing is borderless, whose wisdom
unmatched, who witnessed the light of all creation,
to whom all stories are lines etched deep in his palms,
from the heavens above Nigeria read the qualm
of oncoming conflict, shook his head and looked down.
- x -
The local boys had chosen grounds not too far from
the river, so a cooled breeze could blow them twisting
in the heat. The boys had picked clean its battered palms,
leaves left from previous years, to make this their grounding,
their patch, their pitch. These local lads levelled it flat,
stood two shortened telephone poles up, centering
both ends of the field. Then they mounted tyres, strapped
one atop each pole and stitched strips of fishing nets
to these black rims. Court lines were drawn in charcoal mashed
into a paste and the soil held the dark pigment,
the free throw lines’ glistening geometry perfect.
They called it Battle Field, The Court of Kings, The Test,
for this was where warriors were primed from the rest,
where generals were honoured and mere soldiers crushed.
Basketball was more than sport, the boys were obsessed.
They played with a righteous thirst. There were parries, thrusts,
shields and shots, strategies and tactics, land won and
lost, duels fought, ball like a missile, targets | + | locked, such
that Ògún, the Òrìṣà God of War, would stand
and watch. He’d stand and watch. The Gods were watching on.
One child, named Demi, was kept from play. He was banned.
He’d crouch on the edge of the court watching boys turn
and glide in the reach towards the rim, a chasm,
a cavernous emptiness between him and them.
He was banned from games for if they lost, tears would come.
Demi would drench his shirt, soak his classroom and flood
whole schools as once he’d done their pitch, the soil swollen,
poles sunk, it all turned to swamp for weeks. Their lifeblood,
the balletic within them, their game had been stalled.
They never forgave him turning their world to mud.
They resented more than they feared Demi and called
him ‘Town Crier’, loud, mercilessly chanting this
as they crossed over the brown orb, dribbling, they’d call
Town Crier! Watch this! They worshipped Michael Jordan, ripped
his moves from old games. They’d practise trash-talking, those
